3. Anne Askew
3. ANNE ASKEW
The fi rst examination of Mistress Anne Askew before the inquisitors. 1545.
To satisfy your expectation: good people (saith she) this was my fi rst examination in the year of our Lord 1545 and in the month of March.
The fi rst examination of Anne Askew.
First Christopher Dare examined me at Sadler's Hall, being one of the quest, and asked if I did not believe that the sacrament, hanging over the altar, was the very body of Christ really. Then
I demanded this question of him: wherefore Saint Stephen was stoned to death, and he said, he could not tell. Then I answered that no more would I assoil his vain question.
Christopher Dare, inquisitor.
The fi rst article against Anne Askew.
Secondly, he said that there was a woman, which did testify that I should read, how God was not in temples made with hands. Then I showed him the seventh and seventeenth chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, what Stephen and Paul had said therein.* Whereupon he asked me how I took those sentences? I answered, 'I would not throw pearls among swine,* for acorns were good enough.'
The second article.
Thirdly, he asked me wherefore I said that I had rather read fi ve lines in the Bible, than to hear fi ve masses in the temple?
I confessed, that I had said no less: not for the dispraise of either the epistle or the gospel, but because the one did greatly edify me, and the other nothing at all. As Saint Paul doth witness in the fourteenth chapter of his fi rst epistle to the Corinthians, whereas he saith, 'If the trumpet giveth an uncertain sound, who will prepare himself to the battle?'*
The third article.
1 Corinthians 14.
Fourthly: he laid unto my charge that I should say: 'If an ill priest ministered, it was the devil and not God'.
The fourth article.
My answer was, that I never spake any such thing. But this was my saying: that whosoever he were that ministered unto me, his ill conditions could not hurt my faith, but in spirit
I received nevertheless, the body and blood of Christ.
Ill conditions of the ministers hurt not the faith of the receivers.
He asked me what I said concerning confession? I answered him my meaning, which was as Saint James saith, that every
The fi fth article.