The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities

5. The Book of Reason

f i v e The Book of Reason I suggested in the previous chapter that Pecock’s books provide a source for devotional practices, an abundant resource of truths upon which an individual reader can meditate in a way that engenders love and desire for God. Studying the way that Pecock’s books develop spiritual practices of prayer and meditation among the laity brings me to the conclusion that his books propose changes to ways of organizing religion in his imagined textual community. In this chapter, I study the impact of his books on the practices that generate belief— processes of knowledge acquisition—among the laity. Pecock’s project of vernacular theology adapts modes of cognition and learning from the university environment to revitalize modes of understanding religion in his textual community. The focus of this chapter is the role of the book of reason in Pecock’s imagined textual community. As I pointed out in the introduction , the book of reason is one of Pecock’s sources for his teaching in The Reule of Crysten Religioun, The Donet, and The Folewer. He also marshals arguments from the book of reason in his Repressor to Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy and his Book of Faith. Basically, the book of reason is our primary source for knowledge of God’s moral law. Pecock calls this book “the largist book of autorite that ever god made, which is the doom of resoun” (Folewer, 9−10). Pecock defines the “doom of resoun” as “moral lawe of kinde and moral lawe of God,” or “the book of lawe of kinde in mennis soulis, prentid into the 148 image of God” (Repressor, 18). In its original form, this text is not actually a material book—it is written by the finger of God on each man’s soul. Its value surpasses that of all other manmade books: it is an “inward book or inward writing of resounis doom passing all outward bookis in profite to men for to serve God” (Repressor, 31). In terms of its teaching on the articles of natural law, this book’s value surpasses even that of the Bible. The book of reason contains those truths about ethics and human conduct that we can determine with the use of our rational faculty. We do not need God’s direct aid in acquiring knowledge about the nature of man’s soul, the uses of the five wits, the nature of a virtuous deed, the varying degrees of sin, the goodness of God, the need for each person to love and serve his neighbor, and the uses of pilgrimages and images in worship. Our power of judgment allows us to deduce general truths about God’s natural law by observing certain aspects of our nature, our tendencies, and our surroundings. The book of reason teaches the truths of moral philosophy, which were discovered by ancients like Aristotle. What does it mean to read the book of reason, to see the contents of this inner book? Pecock tells us about the nature of this reading experience when he distinguishes his own books from the book of reason itself. Books like Pecock’s, which inscribe the truths of the inner book of reason, present moral truths that an individual actually can learn on his own by cultivating his rational faculties to recognize the moral law that God has set out for man. Essentially, reading the book of reason means using the intellect to decipher the moral law that God wrote for mankind. This is difficult, however, because mankind has been at a natural cognitive disadvantage since the Fall. Had Adam and Eve not sinned, the eye of reason would not have become bleary: “if man had not falle into derking of resoun by fal fro innocencie into sinne in paradise wherby he muste have now labour to encerche and finde the trouthis of thy lawe, but that he mighte have redy remembraunce of alle of hise pointis in lawe of resoun and kinde as he schulde have had if he hadde continued in innocencie fro sinne, ther schulde no bokis or tables written have be yoven to man upon the iii kinde of maters, for therto schulde have be no neede” (Reule, 463). Before the Fall, mankind had clarity of vision and ready remembrance The Book of Reason 149 of God’s law without the need of external aids like...