This attempt to drive Tyndale away from Gloucestershire by false accusations having failed, an effort of another and more subtle kind was made. A very clever and learned divine was sent to argue with him, and bring him back, as a loyal son of the church, to more faithful allegiance to her. To all arguments he replied by referring to the Greek Testament of Erasmus, and no subtleties of the scholar could drive him from his full and unshaken confidence in every word of God. Baffled and irritated at finding that he prevailed nothing, the clever doctor at last said—
“It were better to be without God's laws than the pope's."
It needed but such a bold affront to the majesty of God and of His word to rouse in Tyndale that strong spirit of indignation which slept, so long as it was only a question of himself and his reputation being set at naught.
“I defy the pope and all his laws!” he cried; "and if God spares my life I will take care that a plowman shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost."
Now his secret was out—that cherished secret, which had been in his mind so long, the hope of translating that Greek Testament which had become so dear to him, and giving it, as bread from heaven, to his countrymen—those " hungry sheep," whom he saw all around him, who " looked up and were not fed"—to be their daily food. How long he had thought of this we cannot tell, but it is possible that even while he lived at the manor house he may have begun his work. Before long, aware that he was watched more closely than ever, and unwilling to bring trouble or suspicion upon the family under whose friendly roof he had lived in peace and security, Tyndale bade farewell to Sir John Walsh and his lady, kissed the little boys who had been his pupils, and left his pleasant home beside the Severn, never to return to it.
"I perceive," he said, when the family at the manor house urged him to abide with them, “that I shall not be suffered to tarry long here in this country, nor will you be able to keep me out of their hands; and what displeasure you might have thereby is hard to know, for which I should be right sorry."
So, Master John Foxe tells us, “with the goodwill of his master he departed from him to London."
It was in the hope of finding in the great city some place of quietude and liberty where he, who had been in Gloucestershire "so turmoil," might go on with the work which he believed God had given him to do, that Tyndale came to London. The great city was before him, but where should he go, or how should he live, while he gave himself to the work?
Sir John Walsh had given him a letter to a friend of his, a man of some influence, and through him Tyndale asked and obtained an interview with Ton stall, the new-made bishop of London, a man noted for his learning and for the helping hand which he ever stretched forth to poor scholars.
Tyndale remembered that Erasmus, in his notes on the New Testament, had greatly praised the scholarship and benevolence of the bishop, and he felt assured that such a man would befriend him and assist him in his undertaking, if he had but the opportunity of making it known to him. He, therefore, sent with his letter asking leave to wait upon him, a copy of a translation which he had made of one of the speeches of a celebrated Grecian orator, that the bishop might have proof of his knowledge of the Greek language. There was probably another reason which made Tyndale hope to find a safe asylum in the house of this learned bishop. He knew that although, by a law which we may remember was made a hundred years before, it was forbidden to anyone to undertake a translation of the Scriptures into English of his own authority, yet it was in the power of the bishop to give leave, and one authorized by him would have nothing to fear.
But the man who had welcomed the Greek Testament of Erasmus had no words of encouragement or promise of help to bestow upon the poor unknown priest from the country, who desired to translate it into the tongue of the common people, and he received Tyndale coldly and suspiciously. "My lord answered me," he said, when describing the interview upon which he had rested such great hopes, "that his house was full, and advised me to seek in London, where, he said, I could not lack a service." Tyndale retired, cast down indeed, but not in despair. There was no room in the palace of the Bishop of London to translate the New Testament, but God could make a way for him to do it elsewhere. “I hunger for the word of God," he said, " and I will translate it, whatever they may say or do. He never made a mouth but He made food for it, nor a body but He made raiment also."
Tyndale had already, almost unknown to himself, found a friend in Sir Humphrey Monmouth, a rich cloth merchant, who had traveled much; for he had visited Rome and even Jerusalem, and had a good library. He was one of those who, fifteen years before, had listened to Colet, as he explained the gospel of St. Matthew at St. Paul's church, and had become known as “a scripture man," and ever ready to befriend those who were in distress. Hearing Tyndale preach in the church of St. Dunstan, he came up to him after his sermon was over, and asked the poor stranger what means of living he had. Tyndale replied that he had none, but that he hoped to enter the service of the Bishop of London.
It was to this good merchant that he now betook himself, and in an interesting letter which he afterward wrote to Wolsey, the (Treat cardinal, who was now rising to the height of his power, Sir Humphrey himself tells how he took the poor scholar into his house, where he abode more than half a year, wearing poor clothes, and living upon the simplest fare, while "he studied most part of the day and of the night at his book." From the latter part of the letter it would seem that Tyndale had not told his friend what the object of his study was, for he goes on to say, " When I heard my lord of London "—for we shall hear of Tonstall by-and-by as a burner of the English New Testament"— When I heard my lord of London preach at St. Paul's Cross that Sir William Tyndale had translated the New Testament into English, and that it was naughtily translated, that was the first time that ever I suspected or knew any evil by him. I did promise him," he adds, "ten pounds sterling "—a sum worth almost ten times as much then as now—" to pray for my father and mother their souls, and for all Christian souls."
How strange and sad this seems! At the very time Tyndale was speaking boldly in his sermons such words as these:—"Itis the blood of Christ that opens the gates of heaven; " and yet he himself was not yet free from such a dreadful thought as that God could send the soul, washed white in that precious blood, to a place of pain and punishment and banishment from Him, and that the only hope of speedy deliverance from that place lay in the prayers offered by the faithful.
We may indeed wonder, but we must remember that Tyndale had been bred a priest of the church which taught this doctrine, so dishonoring to God, so destructive to the peace of the human soul, and that these were times when the light came, pure and unsullied indeed, as light must ever be, but slowly to the hearts of men; for the darkness which covered the people was like that which lay upon the land of Egypt, a darkness which might be felt.
Let us be thankful that we were never taught as the truth so terrible a falsehood as the doctrine of purgatory, and let us rejoice as we read the closing words of the will of the good merchant, written fifteen years later, in which he commends his soul " unto Christ Jesus, my Maker and Redeemer, in whom, and by the merits of whose blessed passion, is all my whole trust of clean remission and forgiveness of my sins," and directs that his body be buried without any prayer for the dead being said or sung.
So Tyndale abode in the house of Sir Humphrey, and while he was there God gave him the good gift of a friend, John Fryth, whom he had known at Cambridge, who now helped him much in his work, and with whom he could hold sweet counsel upon what lay nearest his heart. "My learning is small," said Fryth, "but the little I have I am determined to give to Jesus Christ," and so he heartily threw himself into the work of turning the Scripture, as he said, "into the vulgar speech, that the poor people might also read and see the simple, plain word of God." He was much younger than Tyndale, who spoke of him as his “dear son in the faith," yet he was the first to suffer death for the truth's sake.
But the two friends did not labor long undisturbed. There were rumors abroad that some Londoners, who were wont to meet together to read portions of the Scripture in English, had been arrested by order of Bishop Tonstall, and had been in danger of their lives. If such be the case of those who read, what has he who translates to look for? thought Tyndale; and at last with a deep pang of wounded affection for his poor enslaved country, he says, "I understood not only that there was no room in my lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do it in all England." Helped over the sea by the good merchant, he bade a last farewell to his native land, and sailed away to Hamburg, then as now a great trading city of Germany, about the year 1524, not long after the handsome young king Henry VIII. returned from the famous show which took place on the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
" The priests," said Tyndale in the bitterness of his spirit," when they had slain Christ, set poleaxes to keep Him in His sepulcher, that He should not rise again; even so have our priests buried the Testament of God, and all their study is to keep it down, that it rise not again. But the hour of the Lord is come, and nothing can hinder the word of God, as nothing-could hinder Jesus Christ of old from issuing from the tomb." C. P.