strongly against the worldly love of the clergy, their "feasts and banquetings," their "hunting and hawking," their covetousness and ambition. "There is no heresy more dangerous to the Church," he said, “than the vicious lives of its priests. A reformation is needed; and that reformation must begin with the bishops and be extended to the priests." Many of the clergy took alarm, and sought to silence him; but, strong in his integrity and moderation, as well as in the truth he preached, he maintained his position and influence till his death in 1519.

In the mean time a new and more vigorous reforming influence was beginning in the universities. The publication of Erasmus's Greek Testament, and the news from Germany, started a spirit of inquiry in both universities almost simultaneously. Students, wearied with the subtleties of the schools, felt a fresh world opened to them in the original pages of the Gospels and Epistles. They read; and as they read, a new impulse came to them from their own quiet study. It was impossible that, amid the religious excitement everywhere astir, young and earnest and aspiring minds could be brought into contact with the Divine Word without catching the life that in every page appealed to them, and being drawn under its stimulating power. Luther's opinions, propagated to the very centres of the old Catholicism of England, helped this awakening. His writings passed from hand to hand under every attempt to suppress them; and the enthusiasm of his grand example gave effect to his daring words. The reform movement in the English universities, however, retained a distinctive spirit of

its own. Although indebted to the writings of Luther, it was still more indebted to the Greek Testament, and in its whole spirit was characteristically English. There was an earnestness and yet moderation in it— an intensity practical rather than doctrinal,-a simplicity and purity of Christian apprehension which, without lacking vigour, shrank sensitively from all violence-eminently notable, and corresponding to its source in the ancient seats of learning, and in the original soil of Scripture, rather than in the cloister, and in the solitary struggles of any one great and vehement soul.

The three names that may be said to represent the earlier phase of this movement are those of Tyndale, Bilney, and Frith, whom we find associated at Cambridge in the year 1520. Tyndale was a native of Gloucestershire, and descended from an old family which had suffered greatly in the Wars of the Roses. He was early sent to Oxford, where he became the pupil of Grocine and Linacre, and imbibed their liberal principles, and especially their love of the Greek New Testament. Gradually his mind opened to the great truths which it revealed; and, collecting around him "certain students and fellows, he read privily to them, and instructed them in the knowledge and truths of the Scriptures."* The monks arose against him, denounced his Greek learning and the doctrines that he taught; and he fled to Cambridge. Here he found Bilney, who, like himself, had been some time before drawn to the study of Erasmus's Testament, and, after much struggle, had reached the same truth in which

* FOXE.

he rested. Weary with fasting and vigils, and buying of masses and indulgences, in which he could find no peace, he at length lighted on the precious words of St Paul, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." "This one sentence," he says, "through the power of God working on my heart, in a manner at that time unknown to me, rejoiced my soul, then deeply wounded by a sight and sense of my sins, and almost in the depths of despair, so that I felt an inward comfort and quietness which I cannot describe, but it caused my broken heart to rejoice." Frith was the worthy associate of these two men. He was distinguished in mathematics as Tyndale was in classics. He was not only a "lover of learning," Foxe says, but an exquisite learned man ;' "* of which we need no higher proof than Wolsey's appointment of him to be one of the masters of the new college which he had instituted at Oxford. Through his acquaintance with Tyndale, he first received into his heart the seed of the Gospel, and of sincere godliness;† and together with Bilney, they laboured to promote the good cause in Cambridge.

These men, and especially Tyndale, exercised a powerful influence in awakening the religious life of England. After leaving Cambridge Tyndale retired to his native county, and resided for some time as tutor in the house of Sir John Walsh. Here he was in the habit of holding disputations with the various clergy-" abbots, deans, archdeacons, with divers other doctors and great beneficed men" that resorted to the

house. He appealed openly to Scripture in confutation of their errors and in support of his own opinions. At the same time he was busy preparing his Christian Soldier's Manual, which had the effect of fully converting his host and hostess to his views, so that the "doctorly prelates" were no more so often invited to the house, nor received the same welcome as before.* Tyndale, it may be imagined, soon became an object of hatred to the clergy, and felt that he was no longer safe in the country. He was burning, moreover, with desire to enter upon his great work of translating the Scriptures into the English tongue. He could find "no place in all England" to do this, and accordingly he repaired to Hamburgh, and there set about his design. At length, in 1524, his version of the New Testament appeared at Worms, and copies found their way rapidly into England. Tonstall, Bishop of London, employed a person to buy them all up; but the presses of the Low Countries supplied them more swiftly than they could be bought and consumed. The volumes circulated widely, and the light thus kindled spread throughout the country..

In the universities the movement continued to strengthen and grow into prominence. New Testaments and heretical tracts passed numerously from hand to hand. All the vigilance of the authorities failed to check the inroads of a literature which was fast sapping their power, and the effects of which some of them fully discerned. They seized and burned volumes without number; but new agents, with increased supplies of the prohibited volumes, arose on

* FOXE, v.

R

all sides. A very minute and interesting narrative has been preserved of the search instituted at Oxford for Master Garret, who had come down to the university loaded with Greek Testaments and other "mischievous books." By the help of a friend, Anthony Delaber, he contrived for the time to escape; but subsequently he was captured, and, along with Delaber himself, Clarke, Farrar, and others, imprisoned and threatened with the stake. Clarke died in prison, a confessor to the truth that he had maintained, declaring with his last breath that the "true sacrament is faith." The courage of the others gave way under their sufferings *-they recanted, and bore faggots as Barnes had done at St Paul's. The Oxford authorities breathed for a while in their labours of persecution; but the number of names mentioned in Delaber's narrative shows how widely extended were the ramifications of heresy, and how deeply the "poison" had penetrated the minds of many of the most promising youth.

In Cambridge the movement had taken even deeper root. The labours of Tyndale and Bilney had not been without their reward; and, passing over names of lesser note, such as Barnes, we find a group of men like Cranmer and Ridley and Latimer, rising into prominence during the years that succeeded the conversion of Frith in 1520. These were all Cambridge students, and about the same period. There is no evidence of concert or of any special friendship between them thus early; but the spirit which afterwards united them, and the faith for which they

* Afterwards, however, a braver spirit came at least to Garret and Farrar, both of whom suffered for their faith.