Book I, Homily 5 Remixed: How To Do Well At Doing Good (Thomas Cranmer)

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In the last Homily, I told you what true and lively Christian faith is. Specifically, I said that it does make anyone lazy but instead spurs one to do good deeds, as the opportunity arises. Now, by God’s grace, I will tell you about the second thing I noted about faith: without true and lively faith, no good deed can be done that is acceptable and pleasant to God. For Our Savior Christ says, “No branch can bear fruit by itself, but only if it remains united with the vine; no more can you bear fruit, unless you remain united with me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Anyone who dwells in Me, as I dwell in him, bears much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). And likewise St. Paul proves that Enoch had faith, because “he pleased God. But without faith, it is impossible to please Him” (Heb. 11:5-6). St. Paul also writes to the Romans, “anything that does not arise from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).

Faith gives life to the soul. Those who lack faith are just as dead in the eyes of God as bodies without souls appear to us. Without faith, all that we do is dead before God, although everyone else may see them as joyful and glorious. Just as engravings or paintings are dead representations of what they depict, since they are without life and motion, so are the works of all unfaithful people in the sight of God. They appear to be lively works, but they are, in truth, dead, because they do not lead to eternal life. They are but shadows and play acting of living and good things, but not really living and good things. For true faith gives life to our deeds, and out of such faith do good deeds come, those deeds that are truly very good works. But without faith, no work is good before God.

            St. Augustine says of this principle, “We must not place good works before faith, nor think that anyone does good deeds before faith. For such works may seem to us to be praiseworthy, yet indeed they are simply useless” and not allowed before God.  And he says as well, “They are just like a horse that goes veering off the race track in a great gallop, but to no purpose. Let no one therefore count upon his good works prior to his faith, for where there was no faith, there were no good works.” “The intent”, Augustine says, “makes good works, but faith must guide and order human intent.” As Christ says, “If your eyes are bad, your whole body will be in darkness” (Matt. 6:23). St. Augustine interprets this to mean that, “the eye signifies the intent whereby someone does something.” So one who does not do good deeds with a godly intent and a true faith expressing itself through love (Gal. 5:6) has a whole body (symbolizing the totality of their deeds) that is dark, for there is no light in it. For good deeds are not distinguished from vices on the basis of what they achieve, but by the ends and intents for which they were done. If an unbeliever clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, and does similar things; his deeds are dead, useless, and fruitless to him, because he does not do them in faith for the honor and love of God. Faith is what commends our deeds to God, for as St. Augustine says, “whether you will it or not, the work that does not come from faith is nothing.” Where the faith of Christ is not the foundation, there is no good work, no matter the building we make. There is one work that contains all works: faith expressing itself through love. If you have it, you possess the base of all good works, for the virtues of strength, wisdom, self-control, and justice are all derived from this same faith. Without this faith, we lack these virtues and only possess their names and shadows, as St. Augustine says, “The life of all who lack the true faith is sin; and nothing is good without Him who is the Author of goodness; where God is not, virtue is only make believe, although it is present in the best of deeds.” And St. Augustine finds this idea in the Psalms, “The swallow has her nest where she rears her brood” (Ps. 84:3). He argues that Jews, heretics, and unbelievers do good deeds; they clothe the naked, feed the poor, and do other works of mercy, but because they are not done in the true faith, the birds are lost. But if they remain in faith, then “faith is the nest” and safeguard “of their birds”, i.e., the safeguard of their good works, so that their reward is not utterly lost.

            And while St. Augustine widely discusses this matter in a variety of books, St. Ambrose handles it in a few words, “He who by nature would resist vice, either by natural will or reason, does uselessly embellish their life in this world and does not attain the truest virtues, for without the worship of the true God, what seems to be virtue is vice.”

            And St. John Chrysostom pretty much says the same thing, “You will find many who lack the true faith and are not part of the flock of Christ, and yet it appears that they flourish in good works of mercy; you shall find them full of pity, compassion, and given to justice; and yet for all that, they have no fruit of their works, because they lack the most important work. For when Jesus was asked by the crowd how to do the work of God, He answered, ‘This is the work that God requires: to believe in the one whom He has sent’ (John 5:29), so that He called faith ‘the work of God.’ And as soon a man has faith, he soon will flourish in good deeds, for faith itself is full of good deeds, and nothing is good without faith.” And he confirms his position elsewhere, saying, “they who glitter and shine in good deeds without faith in God are like dead men, who have attractive and expensive graves, which do them no good. […] Faith cannot be independent of deeds for then it is no true faith: and when deeds are done in faith, faith is above the deeds. For, as men, they are really men, have life and then are nourished; so must our faith in Christ come first and are nourished with good works afterwards. Life may exist without nourishment, but nourishment cannot exist without life. […] I can show you a man who lived and went to heaven by faith and without works: but without faith, no man ever had life. The thief that was crucified with Jesus merely believed, and the most merciful God justified him. I will not argue whether he would have done good works if he had the time, but I will surely affirm that faith alone saved him. If he had lived and disregarded faith and the works proceeding from it, he would have lost his salvation again. But this is what I say: faith itself saved him, but works by themselves never justified anyone.” Here, you have heard the mind of St. John Chrysostom; by which you may perceive that faith, given the opportunity, does not fail to result in good deeds, nor do good works lead to eternal life in the absence of faith.

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Three aspects of true and lively faith were discussed in the previous Homily: (1) faith is never idle and without good deeds when there is the opportunity to do then; (2) good deeds acceptable to God cannot be done without faith. We now discuss the third point, which is what kind of works spring out of true faith and lead faithful people into eternal life.

No one knows better the answer to this question than our Savior Christ Himself, who was asked the same question by a certain man of great wealth, “What good must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered, “If you wish to enter into eternal life, keep the commandments.” The rich young man was not satisfied and asked, “Which commandments?” (Matt. 19:16-19). He asked this, because the Scribes and Pharisees had created so many of their own laws and traditions that were in addition to God’s commandments so as to bring people to heaven .The man was confused. What was the way to heaven? Was it the commandments and traditions of the Pharisees? Or was it the laws of God? And so the rich young man asked what Christ meant.

Christ clearly answered him in this way by reciting the commandments of God, “Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not give false evidence. Honor your father and your mother. Love your neighbor as yourself.” In these words, Christ declared that the laws of God are the road to eternal life, not the traditions and laws of human beings. Let this be heard as a most true lesson from Christ’s own mouth: the works of the moral commandments of God are the very true works of faith that lead to the blessed life to come.

Yet human blindness and malice from the start has ever been ready to depart from God’s commandments. Adam, the first of us, had only one commandment: do not eat of the forbidden fruit. Despite God’s commandment, Adam believed Eve, herself deceived by the subtle persuasion of the serpent. And so Adam followed his own will and violated God’s commandment. And ever since that time, all of us descended from him have been blinded by original sin so as to be quite ready to violate God’s law and commandments and to invent new paths to salvation by deeds of our own choice; so much so that nearly the entire world abandoned giving honor to the only eternal living God and wandered about in the frauds of their imagination. Some worshipped the sun, the moon, and the stars. Others worshipped deities like those of the Roman or Norse pantheon as well as other dead men and women. Some, not satisfied with worshipping dead humans, instead worshipped a menagerie of mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles. Indeed, every country, town, and house had a place set apart for setting up images of whatever he or she liked and worshipping those idols. Such was the rudeness of the people after they indulged their own fantasies and left the eternal living God and his commandments, that they devised innumerable images and gods. And they remained in this error and blindness until Almighty God took pity on human blindness and sent his true prophet Moses into the world to reprove and rebuke this extreme madness and teach people the true knowledge, honor, and worship of the only living God.

Yet human instinct was so corrupt as to follow their own fancies, preferring as the Icelanders say, “the smell of their own farts”, that all of the admonitions, exhortations, benefits, and threats of God could not keep our ancestors from their inventions. The people of Israel were showered with gifts by God, yet when Moses went up to the mountain to speak to God, he had only been up there a few days when the people started making new gods (Exod. 32:1-6). It came into their heads to make a golden calf and to kneel down and worship it. And after that, they followed the Moabites and worshipped the Baal of Peor: the god of the Moabites (Num. 25:1-3). Read the Book of Judges, the Books of the Kings, and the Prophets. There you will find how faithless the people were, how full of making up their own religions, and more prepared to indulge their own fantasies than obey God’s most holy commandments. You can read there of a laundry list of what they worshipped: Baal, Moloch, Chamos, Melchom, the Baal of Peor, Ashtaroth, Bel, the Dragon, Priapus, the Brazen Serpent, the Twelve signs of the Zodiac, and many others. And the people would come on makebelieve pilgrimages to the images of these false gods and behave with great devotion, decorating them expensively, censing them, kneeling before them, and making offerings to them, thinking that this would earn them favor with God and be more meritorious than obeying God’s commandments and precepts.

At that time, God commanded that sacrifice only be made at Jerusalem. Yet the people of Israel and Judah did the very opposite thing. They made altars and sacrifices everywhere: in hills, woods, and houses, disregarding God’s commandments but holding their own religious ideas and devotions to be superior. And this error was so widespread that not only the uneducated people but also the priests and teachers of the people were corrupted by a mix of ignorance, greed, and desire for glory to follow these abominations; so much so that King Ahab had only Elijah as a true minister and teacher on the side of the Lord. Yet there were eight hundred fifty priests of Baal to convince Ahab to honor Baal and to sacrifice in woods and groves (1 Kings 18:19-22). And so that horrible error continued until Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, the three noble kings, God’s chosen ministers, destroyed idols and sacrificial altars and brought the people from the errors to the way of God’s commandments (2 Chron. 17:3-6, 30:14, 31:1, 34:2-7). For these deeds, their eternal reward and glory is with God and shall remain with God forever.

And along with the invention of false gods, our inclination to create our own holy devotions resulted in the creation of new sects and religions called Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes. These sects created many holy and godly traditions or at least ones that were so fancy that they appeared to be good and holy. In reality, the practices of these sects all tended to idolatry, superstition, and hypocrisy, for their hearts were full of malice, pride, greed, and all wickedness. Christ cried out vehemently against these sects and fake holiness than anyone else, saying over and over again, “Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of a cup or a dish, and leave the inside full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! Clean the inside of the cup first; then the outside will be clean also” (Matt. 23:25-26). For although they appeared to be the world to be the best and holiest among men because of their traditions and outward good deeds, Christ saw that the inside of their hearts were most unholy, most abominable, and furthest from God of everyone. Therefore He said to them, “You have God’s law null and void for the sake of your tradition. What hypocrites! How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you, ‘This people pays me lip-service, but their heart is far from me; they worship me in vain; for they teach as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matt. 15:7-9; Isa. 24:13-14).

And though Christ said that those who teach the commandments of men as doctrines worship God in vain, he did not mean to overthrow all human law, for he himself was always obedient to the civil authorities and the laws they made for the good order and governance of the people: but he objected to the laws and traditions made by the Scribes and Pharisees, which were not made only for the good order of the people (as the civil laws were), but these laws were put on a higher pedestal. Their purpose was nothing less than erect a right and pure worship of God that was equal to or superior to God’s laws, for many of God’s laws could not be kept if the other laws were heeded. God detested their arrogance: that humans should give such high regard to their own laws as to consider them equal to God’s laws concerning the right worship of God. Indeed, the Jewish sects valued their laws so highly that they neglected God’s laws. God has made laws concerning what honors and pleases Him. His pleasure is that all human laws that are not contrary to His laws should be obeyed and kept, as long as they concern what is good and necessary for every government and does not touch those matters that principally concern His honor. And all civil and human law either should be or should be made to direct us to keep God’s laws better, so that we should better honor God. The Scribes and Pharisees were not satisfied that their laws should have no greater esteem than other positive and civil laws, nor were they were interested in having their laws called by the name of temporal laws; but they called them holy and godly traditions. They desired that their laws not only to be thought to honor God rightly and correctly (as God’s laws ensure) but also to be the highest way of honoring God, to which God’s own laws were apparently irrelevant. And it was for this reason that Christ speaks against them so vehemently, saying, “You are the people who impress others with your righteousness; but God sees through you; for what is considered admirable in human eyes is detestable in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).

            One common consequence of these traditions is that people are more devoted to keeping and more conscientious about not breaking these traditions than of God’s commandments. Because the Scribes and Pharisees so superstitiously and scrupulously kept the Sabbath, they were incredibly offended that Christ healed the sick on the Sabbath, and they were angry with His famished Disciples for gathering corn to eat on the Sabbath (Matt. 12:1-14). The Scribes and Pharisees also quarreled with Christ and His Disciples for not washing their hands as often as tradition required, asking, “Why do your disciples break the traditions of the elders?” (Matt. 15: 1-6). But Christ then charged them with keeping their own traditions by breaking the very commandments of God. The Pharisees taught a devotion in which people offered their goods to the treasure house of the temple in pretended honor to God, yet in such a way that they denied financial support to the ones they were most obligated to support: their own mothers and fathers; and so they broke the commandments of God to keep their own traditions (Mark 7:11-13). They valued an oath made by gold in the temple treasury or an offering at the temple than an oath made in the name of God Himself or of the temple. They were more careful to pay their tithes on mint and dill than to do any of the greater things commanded by God as works of mercy, or to do justice, or to deal sincerely, uprightly, and faithfully with God and man. “These,” Christ says, “ought to be done, and the others not left undone.” And, to keep it short, they were so blind in judgment that they stumbled over a straw and leaped over a block: they would, as the expression goes, carefully remove a fly from their cup but swallow a camel whole (Matt. 23). And therefore Christ called them “blind guides,” warning his disciples from time to time to reject their teaching. They may have seemed to the whole world to be most perfect men, both in living and teaching, but their lives were just hypocrisy, and their teaching was bad yeast mingled with superstition, idolatry, and overconfidence in their own judgment, for they set up the traditions and ordinances of human beings in the place of God’s commandments.

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If you recall, the purpose of this Homily is to teach us all how to correctly evaluate good works. In the second part of the Homily, I discussed the kind of religious and moral life God would have us lead, that is, one following the commandments of the Holy Scriptures and not engaging in practices created by our own imaginations and blind zeal of devotion without the foundation of the word of God. Recall also that when we have mistakenly judged bad works to be good, we have displeased God and wandered from His will and commandments. And this has happened in our own time (to our greater regret) [Ed: the Reformation] no less than it did in the time of Isaiah or Jesus among the Jews; and the errors of our time have come through the corruption or at least the negligence of those who should have been the strongest proponents of God’s commandments and most stolid preservers of the pure and heavenly doctrine left by Christ.

            What person, with any education or judgment combined with true zeal for God, does not see and mourn the extent to which such false teaching, superstition, idolatry, hypocrisy, and other enormities and abuses have entered into Christ’s religion? Indeed, little by little, such sourdough as this has hindered the making of the sweet bread of God’s holy word. Never did Israel in their deepest blindness of idolatry make so many pilgrimages to images, nor did so much kneeling, kissing, and censing of them as they do today. Sects and pretend religions are at least forty times greater in number than among the Jews of Jesus’s day, and the sects of our day [Ed.: the religious orders] exceed those of the past in superstitious and ungodly abuses. These sects and religions have had so many hypocritical and pretended works in their form of religion (as they arrogantly named it) that they said that their lamps always ran over, able to make satisfaction for their own sins but also for their benefactors, brothers and sisters of their religion. In a most ungodly and clever way, they persuaded the multitude of ignorant people of their conceits and kept in many places markets of merits full of holy relics, images, shrines, and works of overflowing abundance ready for sale. And they called all of their possessions holy: holy cowls, holy girdles, holy pardoned beads, holy shoes, holy rules, and all full of holiness. And what thing can be called more foolish, superstitious, or ungodly than that men, women, and children should wear a friar’s coat to deliver them from pain or disease, or wear it in the hour of death or burial as means of salvation? Fortunately, this superstition has been rarely practiced in England, yet in other countries it has been practiced by both the uneducated and educated alike.

            But let us pass over the uncounted superstitions that have arisen in religious communities in manner of dress, silence, the conditions of the dormitory, the seclusion of the cloister, the order in chapter, and choice of food and drink. Let us consider what enormities and abuses that have surrounded the three foundations of religious life, that is, the vows of obedience, chastity, and voluntary poverty. First, they ignored their divinely mandated obligations of obedience to their parents and temporal rulers in favor of their self-ordained vows of obedience to their father in religion. And so profession of voluntary obedience allowed them to forsake those obediences that are mandatory. And it would be best to pass over in silence how well their profession of chastity was kept; let the world judge about what is well known. It would not do any of us good to speak of their unchaste life with unchaste words and so offend the sensibilities of chaste and godly ears. And voluntary poverty is pretty much a dead letter. With the phrase proprium in communi, “held in common,” they held possessions, jewels, plate, and riches equal to or above merchants, gentlemen, barons, earls, and dukes, but yet mocked us all with their property. They persuaded us that they somehow kept their vow and were in voluntary poverty. Yet despite all of their wealth, they might help neither father, mother, nor any other very needy or poor person without the permission of their father abbot, prior, or warden. They might solicit donations from anyone but not give to anyone, including those whose God’s laws commanded them to help. And so their traditions and rules excluded the authority of God. And of them, it can be truly said what Christ said to the Pharisees, “You break the commandments of God in the interest of your tradition. You pay God lip-service but your heart is far from Him” (Matt. 15:3,8). And think on the longer prayers they used by day and by night to appear holy so that they might convince widows and other gullible people to purchase thirty Masses and other liturgies for their husbands and friends and admit one’s dear departed relatives into monastic prayers. Do they not fall under this saying of Christ, “Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You eat up property of widows, while for appearances’ sake you say long prayers. You will receive the severest sentence. Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You travel over sea and land to recruit new members of your sect; and when you have succeeded, you make him twice as fit for hell as yourselves” (Matt. 23:14-15)?

    Glory to God, who enlightened the heart of his faithful and true minister of most famous memory, King Henry VIII, and gave him the knowledge of His word, and an earnest affection to seek His glory, and to put away every superstitious and Pharisee-like sect invented by Antichrist and set against the true word of God and glory of His most blessed Name, just as He gave the same spirit to the most noble and famous princes, Jehoshaphat, Josiah, and Hezekiah! God grant us all, true and faithful subjects of the Queen, to eat of the sweet and flavorful bread of God’s own word, and as Christ commanded, avoid all of the Pharisee-like yeast of pretended human religion. This religion, although it was abominable to God and contrary to His commandments and the pure religion of Christ, yet it was praised as the most godly life and highest state of perfection, as though a person might be more godly and perfect keeping rules, traditions, and professions of human design rather than by keeping the holy commandments of God.

            And let us rehearse some examples of ungodly and counterfeit religion from recent times, such as Beads, Lady Psalters, and Rosaries, the Fifteen Os, St. Bernard’s Verses, St. Agatha’s Letters, Purgatory, Masses Satisfactory, Stations, Jubilees, fake relics, holy Beads, holy Bells, holy Bread, holy Water, holy Palms, holy Candles, holy Fire, and other similar things. Let us not forget superstitious Fastings and Brotherhoods of Pardons, with similar products for sale. All of these things were held in such esteem and used stupidly to the great prejudice of God’s glory and commandments, so much so that they were exalted and sanctified to the height of being marketed as able to obtain eternal life or the remission of sins. Yes, as well, stupid inventions, fruitless ceremonies, ungodly laws, decrees, and Councils of Rome grew to such importance that nothing was thought comparable to them in authority, wisdom, scholarship, and godliness. They even said that the laws of Rome were to be obeyed by all just as they would obey the words of the Gospels. The laws of temporal rulers must give way to them, while the laws of God were ignored or held in less esteem so that the laws, decrees, and councils of Rome along with their traditions and ceremonies be obeyed and held in greater esteem. Thus, the people were so blinded by the fair appearance of these practices and ceremonies that they considered keeping them to be greater holiness, more perfect service, and more pleasing to God than keeping God’s commandments. Such has been the corrupt inclination of human beings to make new ways to honor God out of their own head and keep them with greater affection and devotion than their devotion to searching for God’s commandments and keeping them. They have confused human laws for God’s commandments and vice versa. And indeed they have come to think that the legislation of men was the highest, most perfect, and most holy of all God’s commandments. And the situation became so confusing that few among the best educated knew and dared affirm the truth that the commandments of God needed to be distinguished from those of human beings. And so, much error, superstition, idolatry, useless religion, overconfident judgment, and great arguments grew, and so did ungodly living.

            And therefore, if you have any passion for rightly and purely honoring God; if you have any regard for your own soul and the life of the world to come, which is both without pain and without end; direct your energies above all things to read and to hear God’s word, observe diligently there what He wants you to do; and then do it with all your might. First, you must have a sure faith in God and give yourselves completely to Him, love Him in good times and bad, and fear to offend Him all the days of your life. Then, for his sake, love everyone, friend and enemy, because they are His creation, and redeemed by Christ just as much as you are. Think carefully how you may do good to all according to your ability and do no harm to anyone. Obey those in political authority, serve your employers faithfully and diligently, not because you fear punishment but because you know that you are obligated to do so by God’s commandments. Do not disobey your parents, but honor, help, and please them to the best of your ability. Do not oppress, kill, assault, or slander anyone, but love, speak well of, and help and comfort everyone you can. Yes, your enemies, too, though they hate you, say nasty things about you, and harm you. Take no one’s property, nor desire anyone else’s property, but be content with you truly have earned and give generously of your own property, according to need and circumstance. Avoid all idolatry, witchcraft, and perjury. Do not commit adultery, fornication, or general fooling around in thought or deed with anyone not your wife. Or husband. And if you labor throughout your life in keeping God’s commandments (the pure, principal, and right honor of God as well as what God has ordained to be the right profession and pathway to heaven for those who turn to Him in faith), you shall not fail to grasp the promises of Christ and come to that blessed and everlasting life where you shall live in glory and joy with God for ever. To whom are praise, honor, and dominion forever and ever. Amen.