THE APOSTLE OF ENGLAND; OR, THE MAN WHO IS FORGOTTEN BECAUSE OF HIS SUCCESS.
“How seldom, friend, a good, great man inherits
Honor or wealth, with all his toil and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits,
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.”
—COLERIDGE.
“Did you ever sit and look at a handsome or well-made man, and thank God from your heart for having allowed you such a privilege and lesson?"—KINGSLEY.
“There is an inscrutability of truth which sometimes increases its power, while we wait with solemn reverence for the hour when it shall be fully revealed to us; and our faith, like the setting sun, may clothe celestial mysteries with a soft and rosy-colored light, which makes them more suitable to our present existence. "CHEEVER.
“PUT IT ON THE SHELF"—A BLANK WORLD I—CLEVERNESS NO CREDIT—THE FARMER'S SON—NEW LIGHT FROM THE OLD CHRONICLES—THE MIDNIGHT DARKNESS AND THE MORNING STAR.
“I HAVE long adopted an expedient which I have found of singular service to me," said Richard Cecil. "I have a shelf in my study for tried authors, and one in my mind for tried principles and characters.
“When an author has stood a thorough examination and will bear to be taken as a guide, I PUT HIM ON THE SHELF!
“When I have most fully made up my mind on a principle, I PUT IT ON THE SHELF “When I have turned a character over and over on all sides, and seen it through and through in all situations, I PUT IT ON THE SHELF!”
William Tyndale is a man whose character may be placed upon the shelf, for he and his life have successfully endured the test of the ages that have in turn examined him, and sometimes not with the kindest of feelings. It is difficult for us to estimate adequately the magnitude of his success, because the whole current of religious life has changed since his time, and mainly because of what he accomplished. A great writer has imagined what would occur if some morning every sentence of the Scriptures were obliterated both from the printed page and from the minds of men; he believes that a blank Bible would mean a blank world, and that was largely the moral condition of things into which Tyndale was born. There was no Bible, at least in circulation, and therefore there were ignorance, tyranny, hopelessness, and discord. The Reformation was not only a bringing-in of a new life beyond the grave, it also gave fresh hope and meaning to the existence on this side of death; so that commercial enterprise and national liberty are products of that period.
Frith, in his amusing autobiography, tells us of a picture-dealer who said of Dickens and his writings, "He couldn't help writing 'em. He deserves no credit for that. He a clever man! Let him go and sell a lot of pictures to a man that don't want 'em, as I have done lots of times; that's what I call being a clever man!”
The same has practically been long felt if not expressed about William Tyndale, for it is only of late years that his supreme ability has been admitted. Yet he was undoubtedly a great man; Foxe calls him "the true servant and martyr of God, who, for his notable pains and travail, may well be called the Apostle of England." Tyndale is rightly so called, for he, in spite of the Bishops, gave to the world a book which they did not desire, and in so doing he did more for the English Reformation than the King and Parliament combined.
Of the early days of this great man but very little is known. Foxe, in his Life of William Tyndale, says that he " was born about the borders of Wales, and brought up from a child in the University of Oxford, where he, by long continuance, grew up and increased as well in the knowledge of tongues and other liberal arts, as especially in the knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singularly addicted, insomuch that he, lying then in Magdalen Hall, read privily to certain students and fellows of Magdalen College some parcel of divinity; instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the Scriptures. His manners also and conversation, being correspondent to the same, were such that all they that knew him reputed and esteemed him to be a man of most virtuous disposition and of life unspotted. Thus he, in the University of Oxford, increasing more and more in learning and proceeding in degrees of the schools, spying his time, removed from thence to the University Of Cambridge, where, after he had likewise made his abode a certain space, being now further ripened in the knowledge of God's Word, leaving that University also, he resorted to one Master Welch, a knight of Gloucestershire." In these few lines Foxe concentrates the history of several years, and these were years of supreme interest and importance both to the man and to us. Nor has subsequent research done very much to fill in this gap, although one or two things are now clear to us.
It was for a long time believed that William Tyndale was a son of Thomas Tyndale of Hunts Court, the manor-house of North Nibley, a village in Gloucestershire. Accordingly a monument has been erected upon Nibley Knoll (one of the Cotswold Hills) in his honor—a noble column which is still conspicuous from far in that pleasant country. But it has been shown that this could not have been, and that not to the manor-house, but to a farmhouse, must we look for the birthplace of our hero. At Melksham Court, in the parish of Stinchcombe, there had long lived a family of Tyndales, who, it is said, had originally come from the North of England. This was during the Wars of the Roses, and in order to elude the proscription which in turn visited the adherents of each house, these Tyndales assumed the name of Hutchins.
It is probable that these farmers, whose lands were principally swamps that had been reclaimed from the Severn, were the ancestors of William. Tyndale. The Tyndales of North Nibley were, however, probably relatives of these farmers. The precise date of William Tyndale's birth cannot be stated, but from the fact that, in his reply to Sir Thomas More, Tyndale said, "These things to be even so M. More knoweth well enough, for he understandeth the Greek, and he knew them long ere I did," it is inferred that More was at least some years the elder. More was born in the year 1478 A.D., and therefore it is conjectured that about 1480 was the date of Tyndale's birth. Of Slymbridge, his probable birthplace, Demaus says that it " was then, as now, wholly engrossed in the production of cheese and butter; a quiet agricultural parish, where life would flow on calmly as the great river that formed its boundary. The dairymaid was the true annalist of Slymbridge; and the only occurrence beyond drought which would distress the peaceful population would be occasional predatory incursions of their lawless neighbors from the Forest of Dean, which waved in hills of verdure towards the west, as a picturesque counterbalance to the Cotswolds in the east. Such a place one naturally associates with stagnant thought and immemorial tradition.”
One would have been thankful for an account of the home life of the Tyndales, and especially for some information about the two parents. We can imagine the grave, sober farmer given up to religious observances like his neighbors, thinking grimly but silently of the evils which he saw in the Churches around him; perhaps also with a tinge of Lollardism as carefully concealed as might be. And the sober, diligent mother, not wholly occupied with the pursuits of the farm, but thinking high thoughts about God and life, that from time to time she communicated to her sons. From what we know of their children, we must form a high estimate of the parents.
Four sons, it would seem, formed the family group, and they were named respectively Richard Tyndale (who succeeded to the farm), Edward Tyndale, William the Martyr, and John Tyndale, a merchant in London.
It is a fact that the last named was fined for sending money to his brother William when the latter was abroad, and for aiding him in the circulation of the Scriptures, so that in all probability the brothers were of one mind in religious opinions. One brother, Edward Tyndale, was appointed receiver of the revenues of Berkley, which had been left to the Crown in the year 1492, so that he at any rate was fairly well-to-do.
Tyndale himself, in his "Obedience of a Christian Man," to which reference will be further made later on in this biography, makes the following allusion to his own childhood:—"Except my memory fail me, and that I have forgotten what I read when I was a child, thou shalt find in the English Chronicle, how that King Adelstone (Athelstone) caused the Holy Scripture to be translated into the tongue that then was in England, and how prelates exhorted him thereto.”
We may therefore suppose that the child was taught at home in the ancient records of the Kingdom, and perhaps, his attention was called by his father to the significant fact that then the Scriptures could not be read by the people, whereas this had been permitted in earlier days. It is singular that the boy should have noticed such a fact, and it suggests that someone significantly indicated it to him. It is certain that a strong sympathy for the opinions of Wycliffe and his followers existed all through the West of England, and probably William Tyndale's father hinted to his sons what he did not dare to speak out to others. And there were also here and there, men, in monasteries, vicarages, and dwelling-houses, who were beginning to discern the coming dawn.
“Midnight being past," says Fuller, "some early risers were beginning to strike fire and enlighten themselves from the Scriptures." And there was indeed great need for them to do so, for the religious condition of England was at that time lamentable.
As an example of the dissoluteness of the national manners, and principally amongst the clergy, it is said of Mr. Edmund Loud, a gentleman of rank in Huntingdonshire, that he "was disgusted at the dissolute lives of the monks of Sawtry, an abbey in his neighborhood, and even ventured to chastise one of them who had insulted his daughter. For this, and other circumstances, they determined to be revenged; and he was waylaid and assaulted by six men, tenants of the abbey. He defended himself with a billhook for some time, till a constable came up and stopped the fray, and Mr. Loud was required to give up his weapon. They then proceeded peaceably with the constable; but, watching an opportunity, as Mr. Loud was crossing a stile, one seized him by the arms, while another fractured his skull with the blow of a club, and he died seven days afterward. The murderers escaped, and the influence of the Roman clergy prevented the matter being properly followed up.”
Dr. Henry in his history of this period observes, however, that “there was one vice, indeed, which the clergy most zealously endeavored to extirpate. This was what they called the damnable vice of heresy, which consisted in reading the New Testament in English, the works of Wickliffe and Luther, and of others of that learning; in denying the infallibility of the Pope, transubstantiation, purgatory, praying to saints, worshipping images, &c. Notwithstanding the cruel punishments that had been inflicted on those who entertained these opinions, their number was still considerable, particularly in London, and in Colchester, and in other parts of Essex. They called themselves Brethren in Christ, and met together with great secrecy in one another's houses, to read the New Testament and other books, and to converse upon religious subjects. Many of them were apprehended, and brought before Cuthbert Tonstall, bishop of London, and Dr. Wharton, his chancellor. But Bishop Tonstall, being a prelate of uncommon learning and eloquence, and of great humanity, earnestly tried to prevail upon them to renounce, or rather to dissemble, their opinions, by which they escaped a painful death, but incurred the painful reproaches of their minds.”
As a specimen of those who were brought before the tribunals, take these cases:—
“Elizabeth Wightil deposed against her mistress, Alice Doly, that speaking of John Hacher, a water-bearer in Coleman Street, London, she said he was so very expert in the Gospels and the Lord's Prayer in English, that it did her good to hear him. She was also said to have heretical books in her possession.
“Roger Hackman, of Oxfordshire, was accused for saying in the county of Norfolk, 'I will never look to be saved for any good deed that ever I did, neither for any that I shall ever do, unless I have my salvation by petition, as an outlaw pardoned by the king; ' adding, `that if he might not have his salvation so, he thought he should be lost.' "If such doctrine as this was condemned, we cannot wonder at hearing of" certain heretical books called the Epistles and Gospels.”
The darkness was indeed thick, but happily the dawning was at hand.