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 accomplishing 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 association.

[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 noblemen 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 masses 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 God," 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 ign