HARD FARE MAKES FIRM MEN—WHAT ERASMUS WISHED, AND TYNDALE ACCOMPLISHED—WEALTH MADE THE TEST OF TRUTH—A MAN OF PUTTY HELPING A MAN OF IRON—DRIVEN AWAY, BUT NOT CONQUERED.
At an early age William Tyndale was sent to Oxford, where he was entered at Magdalen Hall. Here we can perhaps picture him from the words of Thomas Lever, who in a sermon which was preached later describes the University life of his day. With some modifications, it may perhaps stand for Tyndale’s experience:—
“There are divers there which rise daily between four and five o’clock in the morning, and from five until six o’clock use common prayer, with an exhortation of God, and in a common chapel. From six until ten o’clock they use either private study or common lectures. At ten of the clock they go to dinner, whereat they be content with a greasy piece of beef amongst four, having a few pottage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else. After this slender dinner, they be either teaching or learning until five of the clock in the evening, when they have a supper not much better than their dinner. Immediately after which they go either to reasoning in problems or unto some other study, until it be nine or ten of the clock, and then, being without fire, are fain to walk or run up and down half an hour, to get a heat in their feet, when they go to bed.”
With some few modifications, this description may stand for the student life of Tyndale, and it is certainly a picture of hard living and of stern training. In the year 1512 William Tyndale received his degree of B.A., and in 1515 he was licensed M.A. For some reason which cannot very clearly be discovered, Tyndale afterwards left Oxford for Cambridge, where Erasmus was at that time lecturing.
It has been pointed out by Demaus, in his admirable and exhaustive biography, that Tyndale’s famous sentence was merely a re-echo of what Erasmus had said long before. In the exhortation prefixed to one of his works Erasmus wrote: “I totally dissent from those who are unwilling that the Sacred Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, should be read by private individuals, as if Christ had taught such subtle doctrines that they can with difficulty be understood by a very few theologians, or as if the strength of the Christian religion lay in men’s ignorance of it. The mysteries of kings it were perhaps better to conceal, but Christ wishes His mysteries to be published as widely as possible. I would wish even all women to read the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. And I wish they were translated into all languages of all people, that they might be read and known, not merely by the Scotch and the Irish, but even by the Turks and the Saracens. I wish that the husbandman may sing parts of them at his plough, that the weaver may warble them at his shuttle, that the traveller may with their narratives beguile the weariness of the way.”
These are indeed noble words, and one wishes that Erasmus had possessed the courage of his convictions, but his selfishness, weakness, and love of ease prevented him from braving the risks that Luther and Tyndale incurred. He was like the courtier who advised Latimer to remain a papist until “it pleased God to add to Latimer’s opinions converts in such honest number” as to make profession of his belief safe and respectable. Tyndale was of other and of harder material than Erasmus, and therefore he obtained the success that he did. Withes may be useful for making baskets, but heart of oak and iron are required for the construction of warships. “In almost all plans of great enterprise,” says John Foster, “a man must systematically dismiss at the entrance every wish to stipulate with his destiny for his safety. He voluntarily treads within the precincts of danger; and though it be possible he may escape, he ought to be prepared with the fortitude of a self-devoted victim. This is the inevitable condition on which ... Reformers must commence their career. Either they must allay their fire of enterprise, or abide the liability to be exploded by it from the world.” Such was William Tyndale; while the character of Erasmus is sketched in the words in which the same writer describes the man without decision of character: “He belongs to whatever can make capture of him. One thing after another vindicates its right to him while he is trying to go on, as twigs and chips floating near the edge of a river are intercepted by every weed and whirled in every little eddy.”
At Cambridge, therefore, Tyndale remained, and there he not only began “to smell the Word of God,” but he also made choice of his future profession. During his course at the Universities, Tyndale had at least one pupil to whom he made reference in his last letter to Fryth the martyr. In the year 1521 Tyndale left Cambridge and went to live as chaplain and tutor at the house of Sir John Walsh in Little Sodbury, Gloucestershire. The mansion of this local magnate “is charmingly situated on the south-western slope of the Cotswolds, and enjoys a magnificent prospect over the richly wooded vale of the Severn, to the distant hills of Wales. Though somewhat shorn of its former dignity, and only in part inhabited, the house is still, in the main, intact; time indeed has dealt gently with it, and has added to the beauties of its graceful and varied architecture those mellowing touches which delight the eye of the lover of the picturesque.”[2]
Here Tyndale lived for years, and in this quiet seclusion he had sufficient leisure to reflect upon the matters which had previously engaged his attention; it was here that he fully resolved to devote himself to the great enterprise with which his name is inseparably associated. For the intellectual revival that had set in all through Europe had reached England also; and men no longer cared to waste their time in discussing such puerilities as Erasmus states that in the solemn disputations of the scholars were discussed. As, for example, such questions as—“Whether the Pope can command angels?” “Whether he be a mere man, or, as God, participates in both natures with Christ?” “And whether he be not more merciful than Christ was, since we do not read that Christ ever recalled any from the pains of purgatory?”
Old Foxe who obtained his information from an eye-witness, who is believed by Demaus to have been Richard Webb, who was afterwards servant to Latimer, speaks thus of Tyndale’s life in the old manor-house: “Master Tyndale being in service with one Master Walsh, a knight, who married a daughter of Sir Robert Poyntz, a knight dwelling in Gloucestershire. The said Tyndale being school-master to the said Master Walsh’s children, and being in good favour with his master, sat most commonly at his own table. Which Master Walsh kept a good ordinary commonly at his table, and there resorted unto him many times sundry abbots, deans, archdeacons, with divers other doctors, and great beneficed men; who there, together with Master Tyndale sitting at the same table, did use many times to enter communication, and talk of learned men, as of Luther and of Erasmus; also of divers other controversies and questions upon the Scripture. Then Master Tyndale, as he was learned and well practised in God’s matters, so he spared not to show unto them simply and plainly his judgment in matters, as he thought; and when they at any time did vary from Tyndale in opinions and judgment, he would show them in the book, and lay plainly before them the open and manifest places of the Scriptures, to confute their errors and confirm his sayings. And thus continued they for a certain season, reasoning and contending together divers and sundry times, till at length they waxed weary, and bare a secret grudge in their hearts against him.