This essay provides the first edition and discussion of the ballad When all that is to Was ys brought, copied sometime between 1561 and 1585 into a draft account book relating to the will of Dr William Bill, dean of Westminster (Durham Cathedral Add. MS 243, fol. 93r-v). Its last line, ‘Amen Quoth Iohn heywood’, indicates that its author was the court entertainer John Heywood (b. 1496/7–d. in or after 1578) and internal evidence suggests that it was written shortly before he went into exile on account of his Catholic faith in 1564. The ballad includes references to Heywood’s family and allusions to several works of Thomas More, especially A Dialogue of Comfort, suggesting that it is Heywood’s personal reflection on his spiritual life under four English monarchs. Its subject matter makes it likely that it is also the poem described as ‘a rythme declaringe his own life and nature’, which Heywood sent to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Queen Elizabeth via John Wilson in 1574 to support his petition to be allowed to remain in the Spanish Netherlands.

Hebrews 2.14–15 goes beyond the epistle's cultic symbolism and embeds its image of Christ in a poly-mythic framework, thereby illuminating its existential relevance. Faith enables the believer to see through death in order to cope with fear of death. The author does not reflect explicitly on anxiety about death but integrates it into the Christ drama, thus inspiring his addressees to transform their conceptualization of self and purpose (‘terror management’). Arousing eschatological fear of judgment (6.4–8; 10.26–31; 12.16–17) forms part of the deliberative rhetorical strategy. Immediately subsequent to the warnings, the addressees are guided to the opposite emotion of hope. To postulate a theological perpetuum (exclusion of ‘second repentance’) on the basis of a pathetic temporale would be to miss the emotion-centred guidance of the hearer, the rhetorical truth game, and the pragmatic intention of Hebrews.