At the opening of the sixteenth century, a period of great interest to all the world, were four men—Le Fevre, in France; Zwingli, in Switzerland; Luther, in Germany, and Tyndale, in England—destined to make a great impression on the world for all time. But they were wholly unknown to each other. In France, Switzerland and Germany were the living voices throughout life, of the men raised up, calling upon their countrymen to hear and obey the truth; and so it was in England a century and a half before, in the case of Wyclif. But in the case of Tyndale, the procedure is entirely different, and out of the usual course pursued in other lands. He had, it is true, lifted up his voice with some effect, but he was driven from his native land, never to return. In the other cases the men lived and died at home. Le Fevre when above one hundred years old wept because he had not felt and displayed the courage of a martyr; Zwingli, in battle for his country; and Luther, after his noble intrepidity, expired in his sick chamber; but Tyndale was strangled and his body burnt to ashes in a foreign land. Englishmen, Scotchmen and Germans were gathered together against him; yes, men of three nations at least concur to confer upon him the martyr’s crown, so that among all his contemporaries, in several respects, but especially as a translator of the Scriptures, he stands alone. The political and literary condition of England under Cardinal Wolsey did not afford the slightest indication that the Scriptures were about to be given to the people in their native tongue, but the reverse. In justice to that event it is necessary to observe, also, the nature of that connection which had existed for ages between Britain and Rome. Indeed, under Henry VIII it reached its climax. This connection sustained a peculiarly complicated character. There were no fewer than twelve distinct sources of revenue that went directly to Rome. These altogether were operating on the inhabitants without exception, and with as much regularity as the rising and setting of the sun. “It was a pecuniary connection of immense power, made to bear upon the general conscience, which knew no pause by day or night; falling, as it did, not merely on the living, but on the dying and the dead!” In no other country throughout Europe was the papal system in all its oppressive and fearful integrity more fully maintained. Under the unscrupulous and imperative Henry VIII, who gloried in his knowledge of divinity and prided himself on his orthodoxy, with a prime minister so well known in every foreign court, and who himself yearned for the pontificate, England had become the mainstay of the system. In Worcester diocese above every other part of England was this power of Rome most intensely felt, yet here in about 1484 was William Tyndale born whose labors were destined to work the overthrow of its power in the realm. ERASMUS ARRIVES IN ENGLAND