And fainting spirits uphold.”
—Milton.
“When such men use great plainness of speech we must not complain much, since they purchase it at a high price—THEIR LIFE-BLOOD.”—Davies.
LEAVES WORMS FOR MARBURG—FARTHER FROM ROME, YET NEARER TO THE TRUTH—“THE WICKED MAMMON,” AND “THE OBEDIENCE OF A CHRISTIAN MAN”—READ BY KING HENRY—“THE PRACTICE OF PRELATES”—NOTES ON THE PENTATEUCH.
Tyndale, it is supposed, reached Worms after his hurried flight to Cologne about October 1525, and there he remained for two years. Until the following April or May, he would be fully occupied with the labour which the issuing of the three thousand octavo and the three thousand quarto Testaments from the press involved. Immediately that this was accomplished, he parted cheerfully from his troublesome friend William Roye.
It has also been supposed that during his residence in Worms, Tyndale gave himself to the study of Hebrew, as a qualification for his work of translation.
In the year 1528 he left Worms for Marburg, which, under the rule of Landgrave Philip, was one of the most eminent of the Protestant cities of Germany. Here the work of the Reformation had been more thorough than in any other part of the Empire, as the Landgrave himself was a believer in Zwingle’s doctrine. Here Tyndale was both in safety, and yet in the society of learned men, who were able to assist him in his arduous enterprise. For the Landgrave had done his very utmost to attract men of piety and letters to his capital, and the reformed flocked to it as to a second metropolis of religion, and as next to Wittemberg. Here Tyndale met with the heroic Patrick Hamilton and other young men from Scotland, and here, also, he conversed with Barnes, who was then a fugitive from the Papal persecution which still raged in England. Sir Thomas More declared that Barnes then induced Tyndale to abandon the Lutheran view of the Sacrament, and his testimony is probably correct. In his Confutation he says:—
“Friar Barnes was of Zwinglia’s sect against the sacrament of the altar, believing that it is nothing but bare bread. But Tyndale was yet at that time not fully fallen so far in that point, but though he were bad enough beside, he was yet not content with Friar Barnes for holding of that heresy. But within a while after, as he that is falling is soon put over, the Friar made the fool mad outright, and brought him down into the deepest dungeon of that devilish heresy wherein he sitteth now fast bounden in the chair of pestilence with the chain of pertinacity.”
The diction and the spirit are certainly not to be commended, but Sir Thomas More sometimes endeavoured to compensate for a bad cause by virulent abuse. We shall have occasion to refer again to some of his coarse expressions with regard to the Reformers, and, therefore, we now only notice the fact that, while at Marburg, Tyndale adopted the Zwinglian view of the Sacrament. But a better companion than Barnes now came to comfort and sustain him; he was John Fryth, whom Tyndale called “his own son in the faith.”