decree of the Emperor Charles V. Considered as an event, amidst all the widespread and long-continued violence of the times, his martyrdom rises up to view, and appears like a conspicuous solitary column. If there be any memento inscribed, it is a double one-German on one side, but English on the other. . . . He had engaged attention not only abroad, but especially at home, and that of public men, both dead and still alive. But then, besides, he was not merely the only conspicuous Englishman thus slain, with the full cognition of this country and the Continent; but the only translator of the Sacred Volume in Europe, so put to death. The moral crime attached itself, at once, to home and foreign authorities. ANDERSON, CHRISTOPHER, 1845-49, The Annals of the English Bible, ed. Prime, p. 223.

Tyndale indulged in his pleasant dreams no longer. He saw that he was on the point of being arrested, condemned, and interrupted in his great work. He must

seek a retreat where he can discharge in peace the task God has allotted him. "You cannot save me from the hands of the priests," said he to Sir John, "and God knows to what troubles you would expose yourself by keeping me in your family. Permit me to leave you." Having said this, he gathered up his papers, took his Testament, pressed the hands of his benefactors, kissed the children, and then descending the hill, bade farewell to the smiling banks of the Severn, and departed alone, alone with his faith. What shall he do? What will become of him? Where shall he go? He went forth like Abraham, one thing alone engrossing his mind: the Scriptures shall be translated into the vulgar tongue, and he will deposit the oracles of God in the midst of his countrymen.-D'AUBIGNÉ, J. H. MERLE, 1853, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, tr. White, vol. v, bk. xviii, ch. iv.

In character, Tyndale was one of those fearless, simple-minded men whose heroism would be bound to show itself in times of peril. There was little of the worldly element in his nature; he lived for higher aims. To curry favour with the great, or to whittle down his opinions merely to please the higher powers in the State, was utterly repugnant to him. Morally, he was a high type of man; there is nothing

to extenuate, and nothing to apologise for, as regards his personal character; for even his chief prosecutor, the Procureur-General, described him as "a learned, good, and godly man."-SMITH, GEORGE BARNETT, 1896, William Tyndale and the Translation of the English Bible, p. 159.

Bulielmus Tyndalus, Martyr
Olim er auf: Magd:

This canvas represents (which is all that
Art can do)

the likeness of William Tyndale, formerly

student and pride of this Hall;

Who after reaping here the happy first-fruits of a purer saith,

Devoted his energy at Antwerp to the trans lation

of the New Testament and Pentateuch into the native language:

work so beneficial to his English countrymen, that he is

of undeservedly called the Apostle of England.

He received the crown of martyrdom at Wilvorde, near Brussels, 1536.

man (if we may believe his opponent, the Procurator-General

of the Emperor) very learned, pious, and good.

-INSCRIPTION ON PORTRAIT IN HERTFORD COLLEGE, OXFORD, Demaus' Tyndale, p. 33.

BIBLE

Them that are learned christenly, I beseche for as moche as I am sure and my concience beareth me recorde, that of a pure entent, singilly and faythfully, I have interpreted itt as farre forth as god gave me the gyfte of knowledge and understandynge: that the rudeness off this worke nowe at the fyrst tyme offende them not: but that they consyder howe that I had no man to counterfeit, nether was holpe with englysshe of eny that had interpreted the same or soche lyke thinge in scripture before tyme. TYNDALE, WILLIAM, 1525, New Testament, Epistle to Reader.

Yet none will deny, but that many faults, needing amendment, are found in his translation; which is no wonder to those who consider: First. Such an undertaking was not the task for a man, but men. Secondly. No great design is invented and perfected at once. Thirdly. Tyndal, being an exile, wanted many necessary accomodations. Fourthly. His

the mind of one man- -William Tyndal. FROUDE, JAMES ANTHONY, 1856-70, History of England, vol. III, ch. xii.

This patience of laborious emendation completes the picture of the great translator. In the conception and style of his renderings, he had nothing to modify or amend. Throughout all his revisions he preserved intact the characteristics of his own great work. Before he began, he had prepared himself for a task of which he could comprehend the full difficulty. He had rightly measured the momentous issues of a vernacular version of the Holy Scriptures, and determined once for all the principles on which it must be made. His later efforts were directed simply to the nearer attainment of his ideal. To gain this end he availed himself of the best help which lay within his reach; but he used it as a master, not as a disciple. In this work alone, he felt that substantial independence was essential to success. In exposition or exhortation he might borrow freely the language or the thought which seemed suited to his purpose, but in rendering the sacred text he remained throughout faithful to the instincts of a scholar. From first to last, his style and his interpretation are his own; and in the originality of Tyndale is included, in a great measure, the originality of our English version. WESTCOTT, BROOKE FOSS, 1868, A History of the English Bible, p. 209.

I have before me one of these old square folios, in black letter, in which the pages, worn by horny fingers, have been patched together, in which an old engraving figures forth to the poor folk the deeds and menaces of the God of Israel, in which the preface and table of contents point out to simple people the moral which is to be drawn from each tragic history, and the application which is to be made of each venerable precept. Hence have sprung much of the English language, and half of the English manners; to this day the country is biblical; it was these big books which had transformed Shakspeare's England. To understand this great change, try to picture these yeomen, these shopkeepers, who in the evening placed this Bible on their table, and bareheaded, with veneration, heard or read one of its chapters. Think that they have no other books, that theirs was a

virgin mind, that every impression would make a furrow, that the monotony of mechanical existence rendered them entirely. open to new emotions, that they opened this book not for amusement, but to discover in it their doom of life and death; in brief, that the sombre and impassioned imagination of the race raised them to the level of the grandeurs and terrors which were to pass before their eyes. - TAINE, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, tr. Van Laun, vol. 1, bk. iv, ch. v, p. 367.

Had the ravages of time alone been directed against the book, no doubt not a few might still be found safe in the shelter of our older libraries; but the New Testaments were for many years rigorously prohibited, they were eagerly sought for by the officers of the Church, and publicly burned whenever they were discovered. Thus it has happened that of the three thousand quarto New Testaments, only a single copy remains, and that in a most imperfect state: and of the octavo only two are known to exist; one, incomplete, in the library of St. Paul's Cathedral, and the other wanting only the title-page, in the Baptist College at Bristol. The history of the one perfect copy of the octavo Testament of Worms can be traced back for upwards of a century. Somewhere about the year 1740, the Earl of Oxford, the collector of the famous Harleian Library, secured it through one of his numerous agents, whom he rewarded for the discovery with a payment of ten pounds, and an annuity of twenty. the death of Lord Oxford his library was purchased by Osborne, the famous London bookseller, who, in complete ignorance of the value of the work, sold it to the great bibliographer, Joseph Ames, for fifteen shillings. After passing through the hands of another bookseller, it came into the possession of the Rev. Dr. Gifford, one of the Assistant Librarians of the British Museum, who gave twenty guineas for it. Dying in 1784, he bequeathed the precious treasure, with the rest of his valuable collection of Bibles and rare books, to the Baptist College in his native city of Bristol; and there the volume rests in a fire-proof safe, secure, it is to be hoped, against all further vicissitudes. of time.-DEMAUS, ROBERT, 1871, Will- . iam Tyndale, A Biography, pp. 123, 126.

At

That Tyndale's English is decidedly superior to the writings of his time which have come down to us, cannot be disputed; it is a noble translation, the basis of every subsequent English version (the Rhemish is not English), and on several accounts better than all subsequent versions; it has an individuality as pronounced as Luther's, its Saxon is racy and strong, sometimes majestic, and above all things, it is hearty and true, the reader feels that the translator felt what he wrote, that his heart was in his work, and that he strove in prayer to reproduce in his own mothertongue to the very best of his ability what he believed to be the true sense of the word of God, as he understood it.MOMBERT, J. ISIDOR, 1883, English Versions of the Bible, p. 93.

GENERAL

Now when Tyndale calleth his heresies by the name of faith, and maketh men to serve the devil while they wene to serve God, what abominable idolatry is this! If it be idolatry to put trust in the devil, and serve the devil with faith, it is worse than idolatry to make men wene they serve God with faith, whilst they despite him with a false belief. And if it be very infidelity to do as the Turks do,-bid men believe in Mahomet's Alchoran, it is more infidelity to do as Tyndale hath done,purposely mistranslate Christ's holy gospel to set forth heresies as evil as the Alchoran.

These pestilent infi

delities, and these abominable kinds of idolatries, far exceed and pass and incomparably more offend the majesty of our Lord God, than all the setting up of Bel, and Baal and Beelzebub and all the devils in hell.-MORE, SIR THOMAS, 15323, Confution of Tyndale's Answer.

It has been much the custom to speak of Sir Thomas More as the first great master of English prose-writing. Sir James Mackintosh, by some strange forgetfulness, even goes so far as to call him "the first writer of a prose which is still intelligible." More's "History of Richard III." was written some years before Tyndale began to write; but neither this, nor any other of his works, can be compared with those of Tyndale in excellence of style. The choice of words and the arrangement of sentences are less according to modern usage; and in place of the concise point and eloquent earnestness of

Tyndale's pages, there is a heavy diffuseness, an inelegant strength, pervading those of the chancellor. But Tyndale's liberality of sentiment has prevented even the style of his works from being generally appreciated in England. -NORTON, CHARLES ELIOT, 1848, The Life of William Tyndale, North American Review, vol. 67, p. 342, note.

His principal works were the "Practice of Prelates," the "Obedience of a Christian Man," the "Parable of the Wicked Mammon," a book on the Sacraments, and his prologues, or prefaces, to the several books of the Pentateuch, the prophet Jonah, and the books of the New Testament. These works all show the marks of a keen and clever, but extremely self-sufficient man, with enough knowledge of languages to make such a man suppose himself learned, but without any real depth of learning, and with enough facility of expression to lead him to argue, but without any argumentative power. He was also of a very cankered and bitter temper, which led him to fill his pages with abusive language, even when writing of the most sacred subjects. His language respecting the latter was often so shocking, and at the same time so utterly illogical, that it led Sir Thomas More to stigmatize him as a "blasphemous fool." It is certainly a strong evidence of the extent to which party feeling will lead that Tyndale should ever have been respected as a theological writer.BLUNT, JOHN HENRY, 1869, The Reformation of the Church of England, p. 547.

Tyndale, whose monument is the Reformation.GEIKIE, JOHN CUNNINGHAM, 1878, The English Reformation, p. 190.

The medium between the fifteenth century and all after time. In him the best powers of the ripened language are harvested, recapitulated, and transmitted in a consecrated vessel to all posterity.EARLE, JOHN, 1890, English Prose, p. 426.

In judging of Tindale as an author he must not be compared with Luther. The concise brevity, the striking logic, the genial flashes of intellect, which characterize the writings of the German Reformer, will be looked for in vain in the Englishman. The breadth of Tindale's presentation, his various digressions, render it difficult for the reader to concentrate his attention upon the subject;