Just at the time this invaluable cargo was ascending the river, an invisible hand had dispersed the preventive guard. Tonstall, bishop of London, had been sent to Spain; Wolsey was occupied in political combinations with Scotland, France, and the empire; Henry VIII, driven from his capital by an unhealthy winter, was passing the Christmas holidays at Eltham; and even the courts of justice, alarmed by an extraordinary mortality, had suspended their sittings. God, if we may so speak, had sent his angel to remove the guards.
Seeing nothing that could stop them, the five merchants, whose establishment was at the Steel yard in Thames Street, hastened to conceal their precious charge in their warehouses. But who will receive them? Who will undertake to distribute these Holy Scriptures in London, Oxford, Cambridge, and all England? It is a little matter that they have crossed the sea. The principal instrument God was about to use for their dissemination was an humble servant of Christ.
THOMAS GARRET.
In Honey Lane, a narrow thoroughfare adjoining Cheapside, stood the old church of All Hallows, of which Robert Forman was rector. His curate was a plain man of lively imagination, delicate conscience, and timid disposition, but rendered bold by his faith, to which he was to become a martyr. Thomas Garret, for that was his name, having believed in the Gospel, earnestly called his hearers to repentance;[584] he urged upon them that works, however good they might be in appearance, were by no means capable of justifying the sinner, and that faith alone could save him.[585] He maintained that every man had the right to preach the word of God;[586] and called those bishops pharisees, who persecuted christian men. Garret's discourses, at once so quickening and so gentle, attracted great crowds; and to many of his hearers, the street in which he preached was rightly named Honey Lane, for there they found the honey out of the rock.[587] But Garret was about to commit a fault still more heinous in the eyes of the priests than preaching faith. The Hanse merchants were seeking some sure place where they might store up the New Testaments and other books sent from Germany; the curate offered his house, stealthily transported the holy deposit thither, hid them in the most secret corners, and kept a faithful watch over this sacred library.[588] He did not confine himself to this. Night and day he studied the holy books; he held Gospel meetings, read the word and explained its doctrines to the citizens of London. At last, not satisfied with being at once student, librarian, and preacher, he became a trader, and sold the New Testament to laymen, and even to priests and monks, so that the Holy Scriptures were dispersed over the whole realm.[589] This humble and timid priest was then performing alone the biblical work of England.
WHAT MEN FOUND IN THE SCRIPTURES.
And thus the word of God, presented by Erasmus to the learned in 1517 was given to the people by Tyndale in 1526. In the parsonages and in the convent cells, but particularly in shops and cottages, a crowd of persons were studying the New Testament. The clearness of the Holy Scriptures struck each reader. None of the systematic or aphoristic forms of the school were to be found there: it was the language of human life which they discovered in those divine writings: here a conversation, there a discourse; here a narrative, and there a comparison; here a command, and there an argument; here a parable, and there a prayer. It was not all doctrine or all history; but these two elements mingled together made an admirable whole. Above all, the life of our Saviour, so divine and so human, had an inexpressible charm which captivated the simple. One work of Jesus Christ explained another, and the great facts of the redemption, birth, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, and the sending of the Holy Ghost, followed and completed each other. The authority of Christ's teaching, so strongly contrasting with the doubts of the schools, increased the clearness of his discourses to his readers; for the more certain a truth is, the more distinctly it strikes the mind. Academical explanations were not necessary to those noblemen, farmers, and citizens. It is to me, for me, and of me that this book speaks, said each one. It is I whom all these promises and teachings concern. This fall and this restoration ... they are mine. That old death and this new life.... I have passed through them. That flesh and that spirit.... I know them. This law and this grace, this faith, these works, this slavery, this glory, this Christ and this Belial ... all are familiar to me. It is my own history that I find in this book. Thus by the aid of the Holy Ghost each one had in his own experience a key to the mysteries of the Bible. To understand certain authors and certain philosophers, the intellectual life of the reader must be in harmony with theirs; so must there be an intimate affinity with the holy books to penetrate their mysteries. "The man that has not the Spirit of God," said a reformer, "does not understand one jot or tittle of the Scripture."[590] Now that this condition was fulfilled, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Such at that period were the hermeneutics of England. Tyndale had set the example himself by explaining many of the words which might stop the reader. "The New Testament!" we may suppose some farmer saying, as he took up the book; "what Testament is that?" "Christ," replied Tyndale in his prologue, "commanded his disciples before his death to publish over all the world his last will, which is to give all his goods unto all that repent and believe.[591] He bequeaths them his righteousness to blot out their sins—his salvation to overcome their condemnation; and this is why that document is called the Testament of Jesus Christ."
"The law and the Gospel," said a citizen of London, in his shop; "what is that?" "They are two keys," answered Tyndale. "The law is the key which shuts up all men under condemnation, and the Gospel is the key which opens the door and lets them out. Or, if you like it, they are two salves. The law, sharp and biting, driveth out the disease and killeth it; while the Gospel, soothing and soft, softens the wound and brings life."[592] Everyone understood and read, or rather devoured the inspired pages; and the hearts of the elect (to use Tyndale's words), warmed by the love of Jesus Christ, began to melt like wax.[593]
MORE'S SON-IN-LAW.
This transformation was observed to take place even in the most catholic families. Roper, More's son-in-law, having read the New Testament, received the truth. "I have no more need," said he, "of auricular confession, of vigils, or of the invocation of saints. The ears of God are always open to hear us. Faith alone is necessary to salvation. I believe ... and I am saved.... Nothing can deprive me of God's favour."[594]