their defeat. Three of their fanatical agents undertook to extricate them from their difficulties. Climbing to his cell at midnight (3rd December, 1514), and dragging Hun out of bed, they first strangled him, and then putting his own belt round his neck, they suspended the body by an iron ring in the wall, to make believe that he had hanged himself.1

A great horror straightway fell upon two of the perpetrators of the deed, so that they fled, and thus revealed the crime. "The priests have murdered Hun," was the cry in London; and the fact being amply attested at the inquest, as well as by the confession of the murderers, the priests were harder put to than ever, and had recourse to the following notable device :-They examined the Bible which Hun had been wont to read, and found it was Wicliffe's translation. This was enough. Certain articles of indictment were drafted against Hun; a solemn session of Fitzjames, Bishop of London, with certain assessors, was held, and sentence was pronounced, finding Hun guilty and condemning his dead body to be burned as that of a heretic. His corpse was dug up and burned in Smithfield on the 20th of December. "The bones of Richard Hun have been burned," argued the priests, "therefore he was a heretic; he was a heretic, therefore he committed suicide." The Parliament, however, not seeing the force of this syllogism, found that Hun had died by the hands of others, and ordained restitution of his goods to be made to his family. The Bishop of London, through Wolsey, had influence enough to prevent the punishment of the murderers.2

There was quite a little cloud of sufferers and martyrs in London, from the accession of Henry VIII. to 1517, the era of Luther's appearance. Their knowledge was imperfect, some only had courage to witness unto the death, but we behold in them proofs that the Spirit of God was returning to the world, and that he was opening the eyes of not a few to see in the midst of the great darkness the errors of Rome. The doctrine about which they were generally incriminated was that of transubstantiation. Among other tales of persecution furnished by the times, that of John Brown, of Ashford, has been most touchingly told by the English martyrologist. Brown happened to seat himself beside a priest in the Gravesend barge. "After certain communication, the priest asked him," says Fox, "Dost thou know who I am?

Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. iv., pp. 183-185. Lond., 1846.

* Ibid., p. 188.

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Thou sittest too near me: thou sittest on my clothes.' 'No, sir,' said Brown; 'I know not what you are.' I tell thee I am a priest.' 'What, sir, are you a parson, or vicar, or a lady's chaplain?' 'No,' quoth he again; I am a soulpriest, I sing for a soul,' saith he. Do you so, sir?' quoth the other; that is well done.' ‘I pray you sir,' quoth he, where find you the soul when you go to mass?' 'I cannot tell thee,' said the priest. I pray you, where do you leave it, sir, when the mass is done?' 'I cannot tell thee,' said the priest. You can neither tell me where you find it when you go to mass, nor where you leave it when the mass is done: how can you then have the soul?' said he. Go thy ways,' said the priest; 'thou art a heretic, and I will be even with thee.' So at the landing the priest, taking with him Walter More and William More, two gentlemen, brethren, rode straightway to the Archbishop Warham."

Three days thereafter, as Brown sat at dinner with some guests, the officers entered, and dragging him from the house, they mounted him upon a horse, and tying his feet under the animal's belly, rode away. His wife and family knew not for forty days where he was or what had been done to him. It was the Friday before Whit-Sunday. The servant of the family, having had occasion to go out, hastily returned, and rushed into the house exclaiming, "I have seen him! I have seen him!" Brown had that day been taken out of prison at Canterbury, brought back to Ashford, and placed in the stocks. His poor wife went forth, and sat down by the side of her husband. So tightly was he bound in the stocks, that he could hardly turn his head to speak to his wife, who sat by him bathed in tears. He told her that he had been examined by torture, that his feet had been placed on live coals, and burned to the bones, "to make me," said he, "deny my Lord, which I will never do; for should I deny my Lord in this world, he would hereafter deny me. I pray thee, therefore," said he, "good Elizabeth, continue as thou hast begun, and bring up thy children virtuously, and in the fear of God." On the next day, being Whit-Sunday, he was taken out of the stocks and bound to the stake, where he was burned alive. His wife, his daughter Alice, and his other children, with some friends, gathered round the pile to receive his last words. He stood with invincible

courage amid the flames. He sang a hymn of his own composing; and feeling that now the fire had nearly done its work, he breathed out the prayer offered by the great Martyr: "Into thy hands I commend my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O

Lord of truth," and so he ended.' Shrieks of anguish rose from his wife and daughter. The spectators, moved with compassion, regarded them with looks of pity; but, turning to the executioners, they cast on them a scowl of anger. "Come," said Chilton, a brutal ruffian who had presided at the dreadful tragedy, and who rightly interpreted the feeling of the bystanders-"Come, let us cast the children into the fire, lest they, too, one day become heretics." So saying, he rushed towards Alice and attempted to lay hold upon her; but the maiden started back, and avoided the villain."

He had

Next to the heretics, the priests dreaded the scholars. Their instincts taught them that the new learning boded no good to their system. Of all the learned men now in England the one whom they hated most was Erasmus, and with just reason. He stood confessedly at the head of the scholars, whether in England or on the Continent. great influence at court; he wielded a pungent wit, as they had occasion daily to experience-in short, he must be expelled the kingdom. But Erasmus resolved to take ample compensation from those Iwho had driven him out. He went straight to Basle, and establishing himself at the printing-press of Frobenius, issued his Greek and Latin New Testament. The world now possessed for the first time a printed copy in the original Greek of the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It was the result of combined labour and scholarship; the Greek was beautifully pure; the Latin had been purged from the barbarisms of the Vulgate, and far excelled it in elegance and clearness. Copies were straightway dispatched to London, Oxford, and Cambridge. It was Erasmus' gift to England-to Christendom, doubtless, but especially England; and in giving the country this gift he gave it more than if he had added the most magnificent empire to its dominion.

The light of the English Renaissance was now succeeded by the light of the English Reformation.

1 Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. iv., pp. 181, 182. 2 Ibid., p. 182.

:

The monks had thought to restore the darkness by driving away the great scholar his departure was the signal for the rising on the realm of a light which made what had been before it seem but as twilight. The New Testament of Erasmus was hailed with enthusiasm. Everywhere it was sought after and read, by the first scholars in Greek, by the great body of the learned in Latin. The excitement it caused in England was something like that which Luther's appearance produced in Germany. The monk of Saxony had not yet posted up his Theses, when the Oracles of Truth were published in England. "The Reformation of England," says a modern historian, who of all others evinces the deepest insight into history-"The Reformation of England, perhaps to a greater extent than that of the Continent, was effected by the Word of God.”s To Germany, Luther was sent; Geneva and France had Calvin given to them; but England received a yet greater Reformer-the Bible. Its Reformation was more immediate and direct, no great individuality being interposed between it and the source of Divine knowledge. Luther had given to Germany his Theses; Calvin had given to France the Institutes; but to England was given the Word of God. Within the sea-girt isle, in prospect of the storms that were to devastate the outer world, was placed this Divine Light-the World's Lamp

surely a blessed augury of what England's function was to be in days to come. The country into whose hands was now placed the Word of God, was by this gift publicly constituted its custodian. Freely had she received the Scriptures, freely was she to give them to the nations around her. She was first to make them the Instructor of her people; she was next to enshrine them as a perpetual lamp in her Church. Having made them the foundation-stone of her State, she was finally to put them into the hands of all the nations of the earth, that they too might be guided to Truth, Order, and Happiness.

3 D'Aubigné, Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, vol. v., p. 199; Edin., 1853.

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ERASMUS had laid his New Testament at the feet of England. In so doing he had sent to that country, as he believed, a message of peace; great was his astonishment to find that he had but blown a trumpet of war, and that the roar of battle was louder than ever. The services of the great scholar to the Reformation were finished, and now he retired. But the Bible remained in England, and wherever the Word of God went, there came Protestantism also.

There was at Trinity College, Cambridge, a young student of the canon law, Thomas Bilney by name, of small stature, delicate constitution, and much occupied with the thoughts of eternity. He had striven to attain to the assurance of the life eternal by a constant adherence to the path of virtue, nevertheless his conscience, which was very tender, reproached him with innumerable shortcomings. Vigils, penances, masses-all, in short, which the "Church" prescribes for the relief of burdened souls, he had tried, but with no effect save that he had wasted his body and spent nearly all his means. He heard his friends one day speak of the New Testament of Erasmus, and he made haste to procure a copy, moved rather by the plea sure which he anticipated from the purity of its Greek and the elegance of its Latin, than the hope of deriving any higher good from it. He opened the book. His eyes fell on these words: "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." "The chief of sinners," said he to himself, musing over what he had read: "Paul the chief of sinners! and yet Christ came to save him! then why not me?" "He had found," says Fox, "a better teacher" than the doctors of the canon law-"the Holy Spirit of Christ."1

That

hour he quitted the road of self-righteous performances, by which he now saw he had been travelling, in pain of body and sorrow of soul,

1 Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. iv., p. 620; Lond., 1846..

and he entered into life by Him who is the door. This was the beginning of the triumphs of the New Testament at Cambridge. How fruitful this one victory was, we shall afterwards see.

We turn to Oxford. There was at this university a student from the valley of the Severn, a descendant of an ancient family, William Tyndale by name. Nowhere had Erasmus so many friends as at Oxford, and nowhere did his New Testament receive a more cordial welcome. Our young student, "of most virtuous disposition, and life unspotted," was drawn to the study of the book, fascinated by the elegance of its style and the sublimity of its teaching. He soon came to be aware of some marvellous power in it, which he had found in no other book he had ever studied. Others had invigorated his intellect, this regenerated his heart. He had discovered an inestimable treasure, and he would not hide it. This pure youth began to give public lectures on this pure book; but this being more than Oxford could yet bear, the young Tyndale quitted the banks of the Isis, and joined Bilney at Cambridge.

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These two were joined by a third, a young man of blameless life and elevated soul. John Fryth, the son of an inn-keeper at Sevenoaks, Kent, was possessed of marvellously quick parts; and with a diligence and a delight in learning equal to his genius, he would have opened for himself, says Fox, an easy road to honours and dignities, had he not wholly consecrated himself to the service of the Church of Christ." It was William Tyndale who first sowed "in his heart the seed of the Gospel." These three young students were perfectly emancipated from the yoke of the Papacy, and their emancipation had been accomplished by the Word of God alone. No infallible Church had interpreted that book to them. They read their

2 Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. v., p. 115,

3 Ibid., p. 3.

4 Ibid., p. 4.