The discomfited priests came no more to the house of Sir John Walsh, but they did not forget the tutor at Sodbury Hall, who, with his Greek Testament ever at his side, had bidden them “Look and read,” and judge for themselves which was worthy of being honored and believed, the word of God, or their own tradition. By degrees it became known throughout the vale of the Severn that Sir John Tyndale was a dangerous man, one who though himself a priest was at war with some of the most cherished doctrines of the church; one who not only dared speak the truth, but who constantly appealed to the word of truth in support of what he said―and already the first mutterings of the storm which was soon to burst upon him were heard.
We are told that it was his habit at this time, when the work of the day was over, to take his way to a neighboring hill, and seated upon the top amid the ruins of a Roman camp, think long and deeply. There was much to make him uneasy, as he looked around upon what was passing in England; but, like David, he encouraged himself in the Lord his God, and when the time of trial came it came not as a strange or unexpected thing, but as that which he had looked in the face calmly and steadfastly, and was, by God’s grace, prepared to meet in a strength and by a wisdom not his own.
He still spoke boldly and uncompromisingly as occasion offered, and on Sundays he preached in the little village church with a sweetness and simplicity which made some say, as they listened, that as Tyndale explained his gospel they seemed to be hearing the beloved apostle John himself speak to them. Some words which fell from his lips in that little church were remembered long afterward, when news came from over the sea of how he who spoke them had died a cruel death―a witness for the truth in a foreign land, and men only treasured them more.
“According to the pope,” he said―and we, who have never known what it is to be in bondage such as that in which many a child of God was held in those days, can hardly measure the boldness of such words―“according to the pope, we must first be good after his doctrine, and then compel God to be good again for our goodness. Nay, verily, God’s goodness is the root of all goodness.” Again, alluding to the custom enjoined by the church of burning many candles in the chamber of death, as though they could light the departing spirit upon its solemn journey, he cried, “Faith is the holy candle wherewith we must bless ourselves at the last hour; without it you will go astray in the valley of the shadow of death, though you had a thousand tapers lighted around your bed.”
But it was not only in the church of Sodbury that Tyndale preached; he went about from village to village, and sometimes even to Bristol, which was a very large and important city at that time. Crowds gathered around him as he stood in College Green, hard by the old cathedral, and preached to them under the pleasant shade of the beech trees.
It is plain that he could not long be hidden, and at last his enemies, who had long called him “heretic,” and “hypocrite,” not content with hard names, brought secret accusations against him, and he was summoned, along with all the Gloucestershire priests, to appear before the chancellor of his diocese.
Of what he might be accused he did not certainly know; but as he went on his way alone, yet not alone, for surely the Lord stood by him, as He stood by the Apostle Paul when he was about to answer for himself before his enemies, Tyndale must have felt that his hour was come.
Long afterward, when speaking of this time to a friend, he said that he “cried heartily to God in his mind, to give him strength to stand fast in the truth of His word.”
He was not deceived as to the malice of his enemies, nor as to his confidence in God, who was able to deliver him from it. Many accusations had been brought against him, as false as they were injurious; the “chancellor,” he says, “threatened me grievously and reviled me, and rated me as if I had been a dog, and laid to my charge whereof there could be none accuser brought forth, yet all the priests of the country were there.” It must indeed have been a wonderful spectacle, and one from which we may well learn a lesson of the power of God to restrain the wrath of man. Alone, no man standing with him, Tyndale calmly looked around upon the assembly―there were the abbots and deans, and yonder stood the priests who had secretly accused him to them.
“Where are your witnesses?” he said, “let them come forward, and I will answer them.”
Awe struck and ashamed, not one stirred; the chancellor was obliged to dismiss the assembly, and Tyndale went on his way, pondering many things. He was not ignorant of the danger from which he, had for the time escaped, and as he thanked God, who “delivereth and rescueth,” for having thus interposed between him and his enemies, his heart was filled with compassionate longing for those who had thus sought his ruin. “Why should they so hate me?” he thought; “why should they seek to stop my mouth that I should no longer proclaim the word of God? Why should they seek to fasten upon me that of which they full well know I am not guilty? It is because they are ignorant; they know not Latin enough to read their missal; poor souls! if they but knew what God hath made me to know, they would be even as I am.” And the more he thought on these things the more anxious did he become to give to these ignorant priests, as well as to the poor people who looked to them for teaching and guidance, the New Testament in their own language. C. P.