Tindal with money, enabled him to print a new
and correct edition of his work, and gave great scandal to the people,
in thus committing to the flames the word of God.[*]

The disciples of the reformation met with little severity during the
ministry of Wolsey, who, though himself a clergyman, bore too small a
regard to the ecclesiastical order to serve as an instrument of their
tyranny: it was even an article of impeachment against him,[**] that by
his connivance he had encouraged the growth of heresy, and that he had
protected and acquitted some notorious offenders. Sir Thomas More,
who succeeded Wolsey as chancellor, is at once an object deserving our
compassion, and an instance of the usual progress of men's sentiments
during that age. This man, whose elegant genius and familiar
acquaintance with the noble spirit of antiquity had given him very
enlarged sentiments, and who had in his early years advanced principles
which even at present would be deemed somewhat too free, had, in the
course of events, been so irritated by polemics, and thrown into such a
superstitious attachment to the ancient faith, that few inquisitors have
been guilty of greater violence in their prosecution of heresy. Though
adorned with the gentlest manners, as well as the purest integrity,
he carried to the utmost height his aversion to heterodoxy; and James
Bainham, in particular, a gentleman of the Temple, experienced from him
the greatest severity. Bainham, accused of favoring the new opinions,
was carried to More's house; and having refused to discover his
accomplices, the chancellor ordered him to be whipped in his presence,
and afterwards sent him to the Tower, where he himself saw him put to
the torture. The unhappy gentleman, overcome by all these severities,
abjured his opinions; but feeling afterwards the deepest compunction for
his apostasy, he openly returned to his former tenets, and even courted
the crown of martyrdom. He was condemned as an obstinate and relapsed
heretic, and was burned in Smithfield.[***]

* Hall. fol. 186. Fox, vol. i. p. 138. Burnet, vol. i p.
159.

** Articles of impeachment in Herbert. Burnet.

*** Fox. Burnet, vol i. p. 165.

Many were brought into the bishops' courts for offences which appear
trivial, but which were regarded as symbols of the party: some for
teaching their children the Lord's prayer in English; others for reading
the New Testament in that language, or for speaking ag