Volume II Part 2 (1/2)
The Protestants were thus isolated in single groups or families, without organization, without knowledge of each other, with nothing to give them coherency as a party; and so they might have long continued, except for an impulse from some external circ.u.mstances. They were waiting for direction, and men in such a temper are seldom left to wait in vain.
[Sidenote: General condition of the Teutonic nations.]
[Sidenote: The theses on the church-door at Wittenberg,]
[Sidenote: And the kindling of Europe.]
[Sidenote: The gathering under the banner of the Cross.]
[Sidenote: Tyndal's first appearance and character.]
[Sidenote: The translation of the Bible, and the press at Antwerp.]
The state of England did but represent the state of all Northern Europe.
Wherever the Teutonic language was spoken, wherever the Teutonic nature was in the people, there was the same weariness of unreality, the same craving for a higher life. England rather lagged behind than was a leader in the race of discontent. In Germany, all cla.s.ses shared the common feeling; in England it was almost confined to the lowest. But, wherever it existed, it was a free, spontaneous growth in each separate breast, not propagated by agitation, but springing self-sown, the expression of the honest anger of honest men at a system which had pa.s.sed the limits of toleration, and which could be endured no longer.
At such times the minds of men are like a train of gunpowder, the isolated grains of which have no relation to each other, and no effect on each other, while they remain unignited; but let a spark kindle but one of them, and they shoot into instant union in a common explosion.
Such a spark was kindled in Germany, at Wittenberg, on the 31st of October, 1517. In the middle of that day Luther's denunciation of Indulgences was fixed against the gate of All Saints church, Wittenberg, and it became, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, the sign to which the sick spirits throughout the western world looked hopefully and were healed. In all those millions of hearts the words of Luther found an echo, and flew from lip to lip, from ear to ear. The thing which all were longing for was done, and in two years from that day there was scarcely perhaps a village from the Irish Channel to the Danube in which the name of Luther was not familiar as a word of hope and promise.
Then rose a common cry for guidance. Books were called for,--above all things, the great book of all, the Bible. Luther's inexhaustible fecundity flowed with a steady stream, and the printing-presses in Germany and in the Free Towns of the Netherlands multiplied Testaments and tracts in hundreds of thousands. Printers published at their own expense as Luther wrote.[35] The continent was covered with disfrocked monks who had become the pedlars of these precious wares;[36] and as the contagion spread, n.o.ble young spirits from other countries, eager themselves to fight in G.o.d's battle, came to Wittenberg to learn from the champion who had struck the first blow at their great enemy how to use their weapons. ”Students from all nations came to Wittenberg,” says one, ”to hear Luther and Melancthon. As they came in sight of the town they returned thanks to G.o.d with clasped hands; for from Wittenberg, as heretofore from Jerusalem, proceeded the light of evangelical truth, to spread thence to the utmost parts of the earth.”[37] Thither came young Patrick Hamilton from Edinburgh, whose ”reek” was of so much potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as ill.u.s.trious as his birth; and thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work and whose epitaph is the Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence to Cambridge, thence to Gloucesters.h.i.+re, to be tutor in a knight's family, and there hearing of Luther's doings, and expressing himself with too warm approval to suit his patron's conservatism,[38]
he fell into disgrace. From Gloucesters.h.i.+re he removed to London, where Cuthbert Tunstall had lately been made bishop, and from whom he looked for countenance in an intention to translate the New Testament. Tunstall showed little encouragement to this enterprise; but a better friend rose where he was least looked for; and a London alderman, Humfrey Monmouth by name, hearing the young dreamer preach on some occasion at St.
Dunstan's, took him to his home for half a year, and kept him there: where ”the said Tyndal,” as the alderman declared, ”lived like a good priest, studying both night and day; he would eat but sodden meat, by his good will, nor drink but small single beer; nor was he ever seen to wear linen about him all the time of his being there.”[39] The half year being pa.s.sed, Monmouth gave him ten pounds, with which provision he went off to Wittenberg; and the alderman, for a.s.sisting him in that business, went to the Tower--escaping, however, we are glad to know, without worse consequences than a short imprisonment. Tyndal saw Luther,[40] and under his immediate direction translated the Gospels and Epistles while at Wittenberg. Thence he returned to Antwerp, and settling there under the privileges of the city, he was joined by Joy, who shared his great work with him. Young Frith from Cambridge came to him also, and Barnes, and Lambert, and many others of whom no written record remains, to concert a common scheme of action.
In Antwerp, under the care of these men, was established the printing-press, by which books were supplied, to accomplish for the teaching of England what Luther and Melancthon were accomplis.h.i.+ng for Germany. Tyndal's Testament was first printed, then translations of the best German books, reprints of Wycliffe's tracts or original commentaries. Such volumes as the people most required were here multiplied as fast as the press could produce them; and for the dissemination of these precious writings the brave London Protestants dared, at the hazard of their lives, to form themselves into an organized a.s.sociation.
[Sidenote: The London Protestants.]
[Sidenote: The opposing powers.]
[Sidenote: The Protestant armoury.]
It is well to pause and look for a moment at this small band of heroes; for heroes they were, if ever men deserved the name. Unlike the first reformers who had followed Wycliffe, they had no earthly object, emphatically none; and equally unlike them, perhaps, because they had no earthly object, they were all, as I have said, poor men--either students, like Tyndal, or artisans and labourers who worked for their own bread, and in tough contact with reality had learnt better than the great and the educated the difference between truth and lies. Wycliffe had royal dukes and n.o.blemen for his supporters--knights and divines among his disciples--a king and a House of Commons looking upon him, not without favour. The first Protestants of the sixteenth century had for their king the champion of Holy Church, who had broken a lance with Luther; and spiritual rulers over them alike powerful and imbecile, whose highest conception of Christian virtue was the destruction of those who disobeyed their mandates. The ma.s.ses of the people were indifferent to a cause which promised them no material advantage; and the Commons of Parliament, while contending with the abuses of the spiritual authorities, were laboriously anxious to wash their hands of heterodoxy. ”In the crime of heresy, thanked be G.o.d,” said the bishops in 1529, ”there hath no notable person fallen in our time;” no chief priest, chief ruler, or learned Pharisee--not one. ”Truth it is that certain apostate friars and monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants, vagabonds and lewd idle fellows of corrupt nature, have embraced the abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany, and by them have been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if judgment have been exercised according to the laws of the realm, we be without blame. If we have been too remiss or slack, we shall gladly do our duty from henceforth.”[41] Such were the first Protestants in the eyes of their superiors. On one side was wealth, rank, dignity, the weight of authority, the majority of numbers, the prestige of centuries; here too were the phantom legions of superst.i.tion and cowardice; and here were all the worthier influences so preeminently English, which lead wise men to shrink from change, and to cling to things established, so long as one stone of them remains upon another. This was the army of conservatism. Opposed to it were a little band of enthusiasts, armed only with truth and fearlessness; ”weak things of the world,” about to do battle in G.o.d's name; and it was to be seen whether G.o.d or the world was the stronger. They were armed, I say, with the truth. It was that alone which could have given them victory in so unequal a struggle. They had returned to the essential fountain of life; they rea.s.serted the principle which has lain at the root of all religions, whatever their name or outward form, which once burnt with divine l.u.s.tre in that Catholicism which was now to pa.s.s away: the fundamental axiom of all real life, that the service which man owes to G.o.d is not the service of words or magic forms, or ceremonies or opinions; but the service of holiness, of purity, of obedience to the everlasting laws of duty.
[Sidenote: The early Protestants did not bring forward any new scheme of doctrine,]
[Sidenote: But protested only against a false superst.i.tion, and insisted on the principle of obedience.]
When we look through the writings of Latimer, the apostle of the English Reformation, when we read the depositions against the martyrs, and the lists of their crimes against the established faith, we find no opposite schemes of doctrine, no ”plans of salvation;” no positive system of theology which it was held a duty to believe; these things were of later growth, when it became again necessary to clothe the living spirit in a perishable body. We find only an effort to express again the old exhortation of the Wise Man--”Will you hear the beginning and the end of the whole matter? Fear G.o.d and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of man.”
Had it been possible for mankind to sustain themselves upon this single principle without disguising its simplicity, their history would have been painted in far other colours than those which have so long chequered its surface. This, however, has not been given to us; and perhaps it never will be given. As the soul is clothed in flesh, and only thus is able to perform its functions in this earth, where it is sent to live; as the thought must find a word before it can pa.s.s from mind to mind; so every great truth seeks some body, some outward form in which to exhibit its powers. It appears in the world, and men lay hold of it, and represent it to themselves, in histories, in forms of words, in sacramental symbols; and these things which in their proper nature are but ill.u.s.trations, stiffen into essential fact, and become part of the reality. So arises in era after era an outward and mortal expression of the inward immortal life; and at once the old struggle begins to repeat itself between the flesh and the spirit, the form and the reality. For a while the lower tendencies are held in check; the meaning of the symbolism is remembered and fresh; it is a living language, pregnant and suggestive. By and bye, as the mind pa.s.ses into other phases, the meaning is forgotten; the language becomes a dead language; and the living robe of life becomes a winding-sheet of corruption. The form is represented as everything, the spirit as nothing; obedience is dispensed with; sin and religion arrange a compromise; and outward observances, or technical inward emotions, are converted into jugglers'
tricks, by which men are enabled to enjoy their pleasures and escape the penalties of wrong. Then such religion becomes no religion, but a falsehood; and honourable men turn away from it, and fall back in haste upon the naked elemental life.
[Sidenote: The last form of the corruption of Catholicism.]
This, as I understand it, was the position of the early Protestants.
They found the service of G.o.d buried in a system where obedience was dissipated into superst.i.tion; where sin was expiated by the vicarious virtues of other men; where, instead of leading a holy life, men were taught that their souls might be saved through ma.s.ses said for them, at a money rate, by priests whose licentiousness disgraced the nation which endured it; a system in which, amidst all the trickery of the pardons, pilgrimages, indulgences,--double-faced as these inventions are, wearing one meaning in the apologies of theologians, and quite another to the mult.i.tude who live and suffer under their influence,--one plain fact at least is visible. The people substantially learnt that all evils which could touch either their spirits or their bodies might be escaped by means which resolved themselves, scarcely disguised, into the payment of moneys.
[Sidenote: The Protestants turn to the Bible and to the life of Christ.]
The superst.i.tion had lingered long; the time had come when it was to pa.s.s away. Those in whom some craving lingered for a Christian life turned to the heart of the matter, to the book which told them who Christ was, and what he was; and finding there that holy example for which they longed, they flung aside in one n.o.ble burst of enthusiastic pa.s.sion the disguise which had concealed it from them. They believed in Christ, not in the bowing rood, or the pretended wood of the cross on which he suffered; and when that saintly figure had once been seen,--the object of all love, the pattern of all imitation,--thenceforward neither form nor ceremony should stand between them and their G.o.d.