Tyndale left Marburg, perhaps to return again by the time it was issued; in any case, however, we find him in the great seaport of the Netherlands in the course of 1529, when, if Foxe be correct in his date, he paid a visit to Hamburg.*

As the old story goes, Augustine Packington came to Tyndale, while in the city, and said, "William, I know thou art a poor man, and hast a heap of New Testaments and books by thee, for which thou hast both endangered thy friends and beggared thyself, and I have now gotten thee a merchant, which, with ready money, shall dispatch thee of all that thou hast, if you think it profitable for yourself.” “Who is the merchant?" said Tyndale. "The Bishop of London," replied Packington. "Oh! that is because he will burn them," rejoined Tyndale. "Yes," quoth Packington. "I am the gladder," rejoined Tyndale; "for these two benefits. will come thereof-I shall get money to bring myself out of debt, and the whole world will cry out against the burning of God's Word, and the overplus of the money that shall remain to me shall make me more studious to correct the said New Testament, and so newly to imprint the same once again; and I trust the second will much better like [please] you than ever did the first." "So," remarks the chronicler, Hall, who preserves this narrative, "forward went the bargain; the bishop had the books-Packington had the thanks-and Tyndale had the money."+ Doubts about some particulars of the story may fairly be entertained. That Tyndale should be the man of whom the books were purchased seems unlikely, for the editions purchased must have been those produced by the Antwerp printers, to

* Acts and Mon. vol. v. p. 120.

+ Hall's Chronicle, quoted in Demaus's Life of Tyndale, pp. 221, 222.

whom, in all probability, they belonged.

However, they were obtained in some way, and in the following year were publicly consumed.

There was a great gathering in the churchyard of old St. Paul's, on the 4th of May, 1530. The spectacle-loving folks of those days might be seen wending up Ludgate Hill, and along the side of Chepe, to assemble round St. Paul's Cross. The promenade in the middle aisle of the old Gothic cathedral-where London citizens were wont to saunter and chat, transact business, and while away an idle hourwas almost emptied by the attractive influence of the scene to be enacted without the walls.

This, and previous acts of the same order, were performed by virtue of ecclesiastical authority, which, in those days, by royal permission, in some respects reigned supreme.

On this occasion Tonstall caused the books obtained at Antwerp to be committed to the flames. Testament after Testament was flung on the blazing pyre—the people were solemnly warned against the sin of reading vernacular versions. The church was the only teacher. The Bible was not for the people to read, but for the priest to explain. The version made in the English tongue was only fit for the flames! The crowds about the old churchyard looked on the spectacle that day with varied feelings. Some thought all was right; others, that all was wrong. "This burning, says Burnet, "had such a hateful appearance in it, being generally called a burning of the Word of God, that people from thence concluded there must be a visible contrariety between that book and the doctrines of those who handled it; by which both their prejudice against the clergy, and their desire of reading the New Testament, was increased.”*

* History of the Reformation.