Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/512

492 went across the Channel to Luther, and thence to Antwerp; and how he there, in the year 1526, achieved and printed the first edition of the New Testament. It was seen how copies were carried over secretly to London and circulated in thousands by the Christian Brothers. The council threatened; the bishops anathematized. They opened subscriptions to buy up the hated and dreaded volumes. They burnt them publicly in St Paul's. The whip, the gaol, the stake, did their worst; and their worst was nothing. The high dignitaries of the earth were fighting against Heaven, and met the success which ever attends such contests. Three editions were sold before 1530; and in that year a fresh instalment was completed. The Pentateuch was added to the New Testament; and afterwards, by Tyndal himself, or under Tyndal's eyes, the historical books, the Psalms, and Prophets. At length the whole canon was translated, and published in separate portions.

All these were condemned with equal emphasis and all continued to spread. The progress of the work of propagation had, in 1531, become so considerable as to be the subject of an anxious protest to the Crown from the episcopal bench. The bishops complained of the translations as inaccurate—of unbecoming reflections on themselves in the prefaces and side notes. They required stronger powers of repression, more frequent holocausts, a more efficient inquisitorial police. In Henry's reply they found that the waters of their life were poisoned at the spring. The King, too, was infected with the madness. The King would have the Bible in English; he directed them, if the translation