on 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.[483] The continent
was covered with disfrocked monks who had become the pedlars of these
precious wares;[484] and as the contagion spread, noble young spirits from
other countries, eager themselves to fight in God'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 God 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."[485]
Thither came young Patrick Hamilton from Edinburgh, whose "reek" was of so
much potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious 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 Gloucestershire, 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,[486] he fell into disgrace.
From Gloucestershire 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."[487] The half year being passed, Monmouth gave him ten
pounds, with which provision he went off to Wittenberg; and