Note 17 — THE PREFACE.

William Tyndal, otherwise called Hitchens, was born on the borders of Wales, and educated at Oxford. He was one of the earliest Protestants, and so boldly maintained the doctrines of the Reformation, that he was obliged to leave England. He employed himself, while abroad, in executing a translation, first of the New Testament, and afterwards of the Pentateuch, with prologues to the different books. But as he was a zealous Lutheran, and as it had not pleased King Henry VIII. that his subjects should become Protestants, though they had ceased to be Papists, Tyndal's version of the New Testament was publickly burned, and prohibited by royal proclamation, as tending to disturb the brains of weak persons. This grossly indecorous expression was not altogether without foundation. A rule of faith, containing the most sublime doctrines both of faith and moral practice, and which had long been acknowledged the only guide to heaven, could not be exposed at once to the vulgar, who had been bred up in the grossest ignorance of its nature and contents, without dazzling and confounding them, as the beams of the sun suddenly let in upon the inmates of an obscure dungeon. It was not till the sacred Scriptures, with the expositions of judicious pastors, became a part of the regular education of the people, that their minds were duly prepared to make the proper use of that inestimable gift.

The fate of Tyndal was melancholy enough. By the influence of Henry, he was seized at Brussels; and, under pretence of his being a pragmatical incendiary, one of the first translators of the New Testament was strangled and burned, at Filford castle, about twenty miles from Antwerp, in 1536. His last words were, "Lord, open the king of England's eyes."