"But that is slow, slow," said Tyndale, shaking his head. "It is too costly, too," he added, "for when once the translation is made copies should be made quickly; and this could only be done by the printing press, an invention that would give the Scriptures to serving men and maidens, as well as people of quality, who could afford to pay large sums of money to the scrivener who wrote them. That is how it must be at last, Lady Audrey, if ever the Bible is to have any power in this our England; for it is the only way it can get into the hands of the people."
Lady Audrey soon found that this was the dream of Master Tyndale's life,—to bring the new learning, that had wrought such changes at the universities, down to the comprehension of the common people. But she was not sure that she liked this idea.
It was, of course, quite the right and proper thing for people like herself and the Patons to know all about what was said of the difference between the Latin Vulgate and the new translation, but she thought the doctrine of penances and Masses for the dead, and the other doctrines of the Church taught by the priests, were much better suited to the common people than this new learning; for if they were taught to think for themselves as the New Testament taught, might they not be even more troublesome than they were now to the landlords? She had heard something of this from her late husband and his father, and so she thought it would be a great mistake to get the Scriptures put into the hands of such common people as yeomen and ploughmen,—and she said so.
"But, my lady, have you thought that these same yeomen and ploughmen have souls for whom the Lord Christ died, as well as for the rich and great?" said Master Tyndale, in a tone of rebuke.
The lady tossed her head. "What will become of the rich and great if the poor are taught that they have a right to share in all their possessions? I quite agree with the priest who came to dinner yesterday. My mother said he was a wise, foreseeing man, and if this new learning is to be of any use to us we must keep it to ourselves, and not make it common by translating books into English."
"But what would you have known of this New Testament of Erasmus if your friend had not translated it into English?" said the tutor, slyly.
"Oh! I spoke not so much against the book being done into English, but it being made common through the printing of it, such as you wish. Of course, if the book is written out fairly by a good scrivener, he must be paid for his work, and the books will cost a large sum, and—"
"And the rich only can become possessed of them," interrupted Tyndale, hotly; for the selfish ignorance of the young widow made him angry, the more so perhaps that he had hoped great things of her during the first part of her stay in his master's house.
Like many others, Lady Audrey was content to take up the new notion that reading the Testament had given her, but when she heard the dinner-table talk about the poor rising and throwing off the duty they owed to their masters as well as the priests, she drew back, and began to think that Miles Paton must be as mad as his father said, for, if the Gospel was to be followed out to its logical conclusion, as one of the gentlemen said, we should have the ignorant poor pulling out their eyes and cutting off their right hands, and the number of beggars would be increased tenfold. She brought forward this second-hand argument now, but Master Tyndale only laughed at her for thinking sensible men would be so foolish as to believe that this command was to be taken literally.
"See you now, Lady Audrey, we have a picture at Sodbury Hall of a fox preaching in a friar's hood and gown, but whoever believes that a fox ever mounted a pulpit steps? Yet we say the picture is a true one, because we know that many of the friars and monks are as cunning and hypocritical as a fox. So with this command to pluck out the eye and cut off the hand; it but teaches that if some sin is as dear to us, and as close to us, aye, and as useful to us as a right hand or a right eye, still they must be given up if we are to enter the kingdom of heaven."