Vaughan did not consider himself worsted. The messenger, who remained at a distance, and could hear nothing, was astonished at seeing the two men in that solitary field conversing together so long and with so much animation. ‘Tell me what guarantees you desire,’ said Vaughan: ‘the king will grant them you.’ ‘Of course the king would give me a safe-conduct,’ answered Tyndale; ‘but the clergy would persuade him that promises made to heretics are not binding.’ Night was coming on. Henry’s agent might have had Tyndale followed and seized.[[99]] The idea occurred to Vaughan, but he rejected it. Tyndale began, however, to feel himself ill at ease.[[100]] ‘Farewell,’ he said; ‘you shall see me again before long, or hear news of me.’ He then departed, walking away from Antwerp. Vaughan, who re-entered the city, was surprised to see Tyndale make for the open country. He supposed it to be a stratagem, and once more doubted whether he ought not to have seized the Reformer to please his master. ‘I might have failed of my purpose,’ he said.[[101]] Besides it was now too late, for Tyndale had disappeared.

The King On Tyndale’s Treatise.

As soon as Vaughan reached home, he hastened to send to London an account of this singular conference. Cromwell immediately proceeded to court, and laid before the king the envoy’s letter and the Reformer’s book. ‘Good!’ said Henry; ‘as soon as I have leisure, I will read them both.’[[102]] He did so, and was exasperated against Tyndale, who refused his invitation, mistrusted his word, and even dared to give him advice. The king in his passion tore off the latter part of Vaughan’s letter, flung it in the fire, and entirely gave up his idea of bringing the Reformer into England to make use of him against the pope, fearing that such a torch would set the whole kingdom in a blaze. He thought only how he could seize him and punish him for his arrogance.

He sent for Cromwell. Before him on the table lay the treatise by Tyndale, which Vaughan had copied and sent. ‘These pages,’ said Henry to his minister, while pointing to the manuscript, ‘These pages are the work of a visionary: they are full of lies, sedition, and calumny. Vaughan shows too much affection for Tyndale.[[103]] Let him beware of inviting him to come into the kingdom. He is a perverse and hardened character, who cannot be changed. I am too happy that he is out of England.’

Cromwell retired in vexation. He wrote to Vaughan; but the king found the letter too weak, and Cromwell had to correct it to make it harmonize with the wrath of the prince.[[104]] An ambitious man, he bent before the obstinate will of his master; but the loss of Tyndale seemed irreparable. Accordingly, while informing Vaughan of the king’s anger, he added that, if wholesome reflection should bring Tyndale to reason, the king was ‘so inclined to mercy, pity, and compassion’[[105]] that he would doubtless see him with pleasure. Vaughan, whose heart Tyndale had gained, began to hunt after him again, and had a second interview with him. He gave him Cromwell’s letter to read, and, when the Reformer came to the words we have just quoted about Henry’s compassion, his eyes filled with tears.[[106]] ‘What gracious words!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes,’ said Vaughan; ‘they have such sweetness that they would break the hardest heart in the world.’ Tyndale, deeply moved, tried to find some mode of fulfilling his duty towards God and towards the king. ‘If his Majesty,’ he said, ‘would condescend to permit the Holy Scriptures to circulate among the people in all their purity, as they do in the states of the emperor and in other Christian countries, I would bind myself never to write again. I would throw myself at his feet, offering my body as a sacrifice, ready to submit, if necessary, to torture and death.’

But a gulf lay between the monarch and the Reformer. Henry VIII. saw the seeds of heresy in the Scriptures, and Tyndale rejected every reformation which they wished to carry out by proscribing the Bible. ‘Heresy springeth not from the Scriptures,’ he said, ‘no more than darkness from the sun.’[[107]] Tyndale disappeared again, and the name of his hiding-place is unknown.

Henry Fails To Gain Tynsdale.

The King of England was not discouraged by the check he had received. He wanted men possessed of talent and zeal—men resolved to attack the pope. Cambridge had given England a teacher who might be placed beside, and perhaps even above, Latimer and Tyndale. This was John Fryth. He thirsted for the truth; he sought God, and was determined to give himself wholly to Jesus Christ. One day Cromwell said to the king, ‘What a pity it is, your Highness, that a man so distinguished as Fryth in letters and sciences should be among the sectarians!’ Like Tyndale, he had quitted England. Cromwell, with Henry’s consent, wrote to Vaughan: ‘His Majesty strongly desires the reconciliation of Fryth, who (he firmly believes) is not so far advanced as Tyndale in the evil way. Always full of mercy, the king is ready to receive him to favor. Try to attract him charitably, politically.’ Vaughan immediately began his inquiries,—it was May, 1531,—but the first news he received was that Fryth, a minister of the Gospel, was just married in Holland. ‘This marriage,’ he wrote to the king, ‘may by chance hinder my persuasion.’[[108]] This was not all: Fryth was boldly printing, at Amsterdam, Tyndale’s answer to Sir Thomas More. Henry was forced to give him up, as he had given up his friend. He succeeded with none but Latimer, and even the chaplain told him many harsh truths. There was a decided incompatibility between the spiritual reform and the political reform. The work of God refused to ally itself with the work of the throne. The Christian faith and the visible Church are two distinct things. Some (and among them the Reformers) require Christianity—a living Christianity; others (and it was the case of Henry and his prelates) look for the Church and its hierarchy, and care little whether a living faith be found there or not. This is a capital error. Real religion must exist first; and then this religion must produce a true religious society. Tyndale, Fryth, and their friends desired to begin with religion; Henry and his followers with an ecclesiastical society hostile to faith. The king and the reformers could not, therefore, come to an understanding. Henry, profoundly hurt by the boldness of those evangelical men, swore that, as they would not have peace, they should have war, ... war to the knife.

CHAPTER IX.
THE KING OF ENGLAND RECOGNIZED AS HEAD OF THE CHURCH.
(January to March 1531.)

Henry VIII. desired to introduce great changes into the ecclesiastical corporation of his kingdom. His royal power had much to bear from the power of the clergy. It was the same in all Catholic monarchies; but England had more to complain of than others. Of the three estates, Clergy, Nobility, and Commons, the first was the most powerful. The nobility had been weakened by the civil wars; the commons had long been without authority and energy; the prelates thus occupied the first rank, so that in 1529 an archbishop and cardinal (Wolsey) was the most powerful man in England, not even the king excepted. Henry had felt the yoke, and wished to free himself, not only from the domination of the pope, but also from the influence of the higher clergy. If he had only intended to be avenged of the pontiff, it would have been enough to allow the Reformation to act; when a mighty wind blows from heaven, it sweeps away all the contrivances of men. But Henry was deficient neither in prudence nor calculation. He feared lest a diversity of doctrine should engender disturbances in his kingdom. He wished to free himself from the pope and the prelates, without throwing himself into the arms of Tyndale or of Latimer.