“Sir, your wife is well content with the will of God, and would not for her sake have the glory of God hindered.”
The glory of God was not hindered, for Fryth went to the stake, and three years after his martyrdom, Tyndale was also called upon in like manner to suffer for the truth.
Meanwhile Tyndale had quietly settled down at Antwerp, and Foxe has given to us a picture of his life and doings there. The reader will probably prefer to read the narrative in Foxe’s own words:—
“And here to end and conclude this history with a few notes touching his private behaviour in diet, study, and especially his charitable zeal and tender relieving of the poor. First, he was a man very frugal and spare of body, a great student and earnest labourer, namely [especially] in the setting forth of the Scriptures of God. He reserved or hallowed to himself two days in the week, which he named his days of pastime, and those days were Monday the first day in the week, and Saturday the last day in the week. On the Monday he visited all such poor men and women as were fled out of England by reason of persecution into Antwerp; and those, well understanding their good exercises and qualities, he did very liberally comfort and relieve; and in like manner provided for the sick and diseased persons. On the Saturday he walked round about the town in Antwerp, seeking out every corner and hole where he suspected any poor person to dwell (as God knoweth there are many); and where he found any to be well occupied, and yet overburdened with children, or else were aged or weak, those also he plentifully relieved. And thus he spent his two days of pastime, as he called them. And truly his almose [alms] was very large and great; and so it might well be, for his exhibition that he had yearly of the English merchants was very much; and that for the most part he bestowed upon the poor, as aforesaid. The rest of the days in the week he gave him wholly to his book, wherein most diligently he travailed. When the Sunday came, then went he to some one merchant’s chamber or other, whither came many other merchants; and unto them would he read some one parcel of Scripture, either out of the Old Testament or out of the New; the which proceeded so fruitfully, sweetly, and gently from him (much like to the writing of St. John the Evangelist), that it was a heavenly comfort and joy to the audience to hear him read the Scriptures; and in likewise after dinner he spent an hour in the aforesaid manner. He was a man without any spot or blemish of rancour or malice, full of mercy and compassion, so that no man living was able to reprove him of any kind of sin or crime; albeit his righteousness and justification depended not thereupon before God, but only upon the blood of Christ and his faith upon the same, in which faith constantly he died, as is said at Vilvorde, and now resteth with the glorious company of Christ’s martyrs blessedly in the Lord, who be blessed in all His saints. Amen.”
CHAPTER X.
TRAPPED AT LAST; OR, DYING FOR THE
TRUTH.
“He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain
Can touch him not and torture not again;
He is secure, and now can never mourn.”
—Shelley.