Ir is a curious fact that most of the earlier ecclesiastical legends are grouped around persons who never exercised much influence in the church; and in some cases they cluster about names to which in all probability there never was any corresponding personal existence. And at the same time, individuals of the highest mark and power, men, who by their writings or their character, stamped an impress on their own age, and on after times are left with little or nothing in the way of stirring incident to help biographers in their compilations. In like manner, some in later days, who have most eminently served their generation according to the will of God, have passed away without any remarkable memorials of their history having been preserved. How gladly would we give up stories of less memorable mortals for the sake of recovering vestiges of their steps, who so closely walked with Christ on earth in doing good, and are now so near Him and like Him in the world of spirits!

In our sketch of Wicliffe, we felt the paucity of anecdote, illustrative of his character and ways. Not to the same extent is there such a lack in the case of Tyndale; but, then, the life of the latter was so full of travel, and must have been so full of adventure, that, on reflection, we are convinced there must be an immense deal lost touching the good man, which, if we could recover, it VOL. XXXVI.

would place his memoirs among the most interesting in our literature.*

The village of North Nibley, in Gloucestershire, was the place of Tyndale's birth and boyhood. Neither the time when he was born, nor the names of his parents, can be determined with certainty; but the researches of Mr. Anderson† render it probable that his birth occurred between the years 1483 and 1487, and that his father and mother were Thomas and Alicia Tyndale. With the pastures, the fields, the trees, and the churches, all about Nibley, William must have been familiar from his earliest years; and many would be the associations, not only of play, but of questionings and wonder, which would strike and awe his thoughtful mind, as the child's eyes looked up to the stars, or watched the clouds, or rested on the pages of some rare book from the press of Caxton, or Wynkyn de Worde. He left his native village for awhile to study at Oxford; possibly, too, he went to Cambridge. His ordination as a priest is said to have taken place in St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield. He is also reported to have been a monk

What follows is an abridgement of the "The Pen, The account of Tyndale in Palm, and The Pulpit:" A memorial read at the Autumnal Meeting of the Congrega tional Union, and just published for the benefit of British Missions.

+ See "Annals of the English Bible," vol. i.

p. 16.

F

at Greenwich. But all this looks more than questionable; and we must confess that research and reflection with respect to Tyndale's early history have only increased the obscurity which covers it.

Tyndale became tutor to the son of Sir John Walsh, who lived at Sodbury Manor House. There he met "with sundry abbots, deans, and archdeacons, with divers other doctors and beneficed men." They talked, as we are wont to do, on the questions of the day. The new learning, the movement in Germany, Luther and Tetzel, the Leipsic disputation, the burning of the Pope's bull at Wittenberg-these were topics exciting the deepest interest, and leading to discussion the most earnest. Tyndale, through the study of the Scriptures, had come to see many of the errors of Popery, and was on the side of a sweeping reformation. He was not a man to conceal his convictions, but skilfully debated the matter with the guests at Sir John Walsh's table, whereat, as Foxe says, "they waxed weary, and bore him a secret grudge.”

On one occasion, a memorable interview took place between him and a Romanist divine, who went so far as to declare "he were better without God's laws than the Pope's." Upon which Tyndale boldly replied, in words that struck the key-note of his life, "I defy the Pope and all his laws. If God spare me, ere many years, I will cause the boy who driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than you do." The words were uttered, probably, during the time that Martin Luther was in his Patmos on the Wartburg, near Eisenach, busy with his German translation of the Bible; thus flinging an inkstand at the devil, which did more effectual service than the one which, tradition says, bespotted the walls of the brave reformer's study. Was Tyndale's exclamation a sudden flash of zeal kindling a purpose that had never burnt before, or was it the outburst of a fire that had been smouldering long? Most likely the latter. At any rate, in

1523 we find him in London, bent on the accomplishment of an English version of the Scriptures. He tried to get a situation in the palace of the metropolitan bishop, where he might pursue his holy purpose; but found, as he afterwards said, that there was no room in my Lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament, nor indeed anywhere in England.

In 1524 we see him setting sail with his little library and his bundles of manuscript for the good city of Hamburgh. In some retired street in that thriving commercial port, Tyndale worked away at his translation. Much of mystery rests on his doings, for only secrecy could insure success; but, in the year following, a glimpse of him is caught in the far-famed city of Cologne. There he was with one Roye, "a crafty and selfish man," engaged in getting a translation of the New Testament to press. But an enemy watched them-a man named Cochlæus-who obtained an order from the municipal senate to interdict the printing. And now one sees a boat upon the Rhine, stealthily loaded with a precious cargo of half-printed sheets, and then with Tyndale and his companion on board, there it goes gliding up the river; the fishermen, the traders, and the men-atarms they meet and hail, little dreaming of the merchandize which the humble vessel carries. Tyndale came to Worms, a worker, with little sympathy, and less help. He had begun with a quarto edition, he now resolved on an octavo, and that was finished in 1526.

In our days, when the Scriptures are translated into so many tongues and dialects, it is counted no wonder for a man to make a version of the New Testament; but when it is remembered that Tyndale was the first man to translate the book out of the original into English, that Greek was then little known, that scarcely any critical helps existed, that he was poor and unpatronized, that he had himself to manage the printing as well as the translating, that the publication was unlawful, that