he cried out, "Boundless! Boundless!" and added with great difficulty,

"Mercy's full power I soon shall prove,

Loved with an everlasting love."

His last act upon earth was to raise his right hand again and again in token of the presence of Jesus with him, and of the glory which was breaking upon his soul. After being for twenty-four hours in a comatose state, "he was not; for God took him."

Our purpose in this review has been to give a bird's-eye view of the character and life of this wonderful man of God. Following the full and graphic account furnished by Mr. Tyerman in his invaluable book, we have grouped together, in a succinct form, its salient points. Those who desire ampler information concerning him should by all means obtain and read carefully the entire volume. His name is still, after nearly a century has passed since he went up on high, "as ointment poured forth." The aroma will fill the Church of God for ages to come. Many pilgrims annually make their way to Madeley, to view the place where he labored and wrote and fell asleep in Jesus; and where his precious remains rest. Precious relics of him are shown to visitors by the vicar and his wife a lock of his silken hair; his study, nine feet by twelve, a portion of whose wall is still stained with his breathings while engaged in prayer; the oaken communion-table at which he celebrated his last sacrament, and the Church Register, containing a list of the baptisms, marriages, and deaths during his incumbency. Two monuments have been erected to his memory-one at Madeley, with an inscription written by his widow; the other in City Road, London, "Methodism's Westminster Abbey," immediately under Wesley's monument, with an inscription by Richard Watson. Mr. Wesley, who for a number of years had designated Mr. Fletcher as his successor, and urged him in vain to agree to his arrangement, lived and labored six years after his departure. So short-sighted is man; so limited his vision. But although the Wesleys, and Fletcher, and Coke, and the Fathers of the Church, have passed away, Methodism still lives, and Mr. Wesley has his successors in all parts of the world.

-ART. II.-WILLIAM TYNDALE,

THE FIRST TRANSLATOR OF THE BIBLE INTO THE PRINTED ENGLISH VERNACULAR.

EDUCATIONAL PERIOD, 1484-1519.

In one of the loveliest districts of England, lying along the banks of the Severn, and sprinkled with villages, church steeples, and ancient castles, is the hamlet of North Nibley. Here, under the shadows of the ancestral fortress of the Saxon Earls of Berkeley, was born William Tyndale, the first translator of the Holy Scriptures into the printed English vernacular. The year of his birth is uncertain. Probably it was in 1484. The closing quarter of the fifteenth century was prolific of children who subsequently rose to the highest stature of Christian manhood. The birth of Martin Luther at Eisleben, in Germany, and that of Ulrich Zwingle, the Swiss reformer, on the mountains of the Tockenburg, was nearly synchronous with that of Tyndale, whose history is largely "lost in his work, and whose epitaph is the Reformation." *

Little is certainly known of his ancestry. Some writers state that his forefathers had held baronial rank, and had lost it through faithfulness to the falling fortunes of the Lancastrian claimants of the crown. Certain it is that, under Henry VII., who united in himself the houses of York and Lancaster, his parents were sufficiently wealthy to send their boy, at an early age, to the University of Oxford. There he studied grammar and philosophy in the school of St. Mary Magdalen; and also the learned languages, under the tuition of Grocyn, W. Latimer, and Linacre, the first classical scholars of England. Apt and assiduous, he soon obtained the customary diplomas of proficiency.

Better works than those of heathen antiquity next challenged his scrutiny. The Greek Testament, edited by the celebrated Erasmus, whom admirers called "the light of the world," was rousing Christendom from spiritual torpor. Tyndale turned to it as a work of learning, or manual of devotion, whose rare and manifold beauties were adapted to excite religious feeling. He found it to be all that he had conjectured, infinitely more

* Froude's "History of England,” vol. ii, p. 40.

than he had imagined. It spoke to him in tones of divine authority. It pointed out the way of salvation from sin and its sequences. It presented the Lord Jesus Christ as the only and all-sufficient Saviour. It supplied all his religious and moral needs. With rapture greater than that of Archimedes, he shouted, "Evpηка!"-"I have found it!"

Gladly accepting the Christ as his Lord and Saviour, Tyndale is freely justified by grace through faith; exhibits such purity of life, and such charms of conversation, that he attracts the younger members of the University; tells them of the treasure he has found; invites them to share it; and dwells on its contents in his lectures on Greek literature. Ignorant and fanatical, the adherents of the papacy take alarm, and overwhelm both Greek literature and Greek lecturer with violent abuse. This is in 1517.

Persecuted at Oxford, Tyndale flees to Cambridge. There he meets with Bilney and Fryth, who have also been enlightened by the entrance of the word. Together they radiate still greater light and love on the spiritual night around them. They boldly declare that no religious rite or priestly absolutions can impart remission of sins; that assurance of forgiveness is to be had through faith alone, and that faith purifies the heart. Their doctrines strike at the root of priestly despotism, and cut off the hope of priestly gains. Who will pay for an absolution that is powerless and worthless? Thus queried the priests, who stormed at the young preachers as the Ephesian craftsmen had done against St. Paul. It soon became expedient for Tyndale, who had received priest's orders in 1502, to seek another field of toil. Full of faith in his Divine Master, and full of hope for the future of England, he left Cambridge

in 1519.

The Reformation of the Christian Church had begun in several countries. It originated with God alone, and in the study of "God's word written." In Oxford, Cambridge, London, as in continental cities, the Greek Testament had many and diligent readers.

The times were ripe for the Reformation. The events which had threatened the destruction of Christianity in the East were overruled to its salvation in the West. Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks in 1453. Greek professors and

Greek literature sought refuge from their merciless tyranny, and were warmly welcomed in the south and west of Europe. Classical learning revived in its new seats. Erasmus collated manuscripts of the New Testament, and edited and published the inspired volume, out of which the doctrines and polity of the Christian Church exclusively sprung. It was eagerly received by prepared readers. Under God, it changed the

hearts and lives of many. It impelled them to examine the pretensions and organization of the Church of Rome. It opened their eyes to the hideous fact of that Church's apostasy, debasement, and slavery. Their hearts began to burn with holy desire for its reformation.

No one can paint in colors too dark the degradation and wickedness of the papal Church, as a whole, at that period. The Pontiff was its visible head, and the proud pretender to the vicegerency of Christ upon earth. As a temporal prince, he maintained armies and fought battles; as a diplomatist, he was crafty, intriguing, and deceitful; as a viveur, he and his court derided Christianity as a fable profitable to their lusts and pleasures. Rome was drunken with the blood of the saints. Savonarola, John Huss, Jerome of Prague, and many others had been burned at the stake, or otherwise put to a cruel death. England was on the same moral level with other European nations. Her clergy were not only ministers, but also politicians, tradesmen, mechanics, and brewers. They had ceased to preach, except on special occasions, and then they preached monkish fables, but the Gospel never. The priests were unmarried, but many were unblushing fathers of families. Multitudes of them were lascivious and lewd, partners with thieves, drunkards, brawlers, profane, vicious. Monasteries, for the most part, were cages of unclean birds. Many nunneries bore the reputation of brothels. Popery, then as now, was an Antichrist. It would not permit the people to pray in their native tongue. On the 4th of April, 1519, the year that Tyndale left Cambridge, "Dame Smith, Robert Hatchets, Archer, Hawkins, Thomas Bond, Wrigsham, and Landsdale were burned alive at Coventry, in the Little Park, for the crime of teaching their children the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Commandments of God,"* in

* D'Aubigné's "History of the Reformation," vol. v, p. 171.

English. Popery dreads the truth, as the unknown criminal dreads discovery.

The commonwealth of England felt that the Church was mortally sick, but knew not how to diagnose the disease, nor where to find an appropriate remedy. The monks were more detested for their palpable frauds than for their brazen debaucheries. Both were foul and feculent. Ecclesiastical dignitaries openly kept women as concubines. Sometimes an

individual would maintain five or six. But all this was borne more patiently than the impositions wherewith the monks extorted money. At St. Anthony's Convent, in Bristol, they exhibited "a tunic of our Lord, a petticoat of the Virgin, a part of the Last Supper, and a fragment of the stone upon which Jesus was born at Bethlehem. All these brought in money." * Mountebanks, tricksters, conjurers, and always liars in these deceptions, they hesitated not to do any thing that would fill their coffers, or gratify their carnal lusts.

The English were nauseated by the corruptions of Rome, and rebellious under her oppressions, but could not free themselves from her shackles until possessed of that Gospel which has brought life and immortality to light. Tyndale was to present them with that priceless boon, and that in their mothertongue; and by presenting that truth which maketh free to bring them out of Egyptian darkness into Calvary's lightout of bondage into the glorious liberty of the children of God. The England that now is, with her greatness and glory, is instrumentally his work.

DETERMINATIVE PERIOD, 1519-1523.

Leaving Cambridge, Tyndale returned to the home of his parents. Soon afterward he was requested by Sir John Walsh, the owner of Sodbury Hall, to take charge of the education of his children, and accepted the invitation. Entering upon his new duties, Tyndale finds himself in a plain but large mansion, that commands an extensive view of the beautiful vale of Severn. Sir John is an old companion-in-arms of the puissant Henry VIII., and is a favorite with that willful monarch. He is genial, jovial, hospitable, and keeps open house for the fat rectors, rubicund friars, and all the churchly and civic notables

* D'Aubigné's "History of the Reformation," vol. ii, p. 88.