Lastly. Anthony À. Wood in his Ath. Oxon, i. 59, Ed. 1813, while giving us the wrong year of his death, tells us of his place of burial.
At length being overtaken by the pestilence, died of it in fifteen hundred thirty and one, and was buried in the church of St. Dunstan (in the West).
Tyndale had often preached in this church.
IV.
Hat a picture of the cruel, unclean and hypocritical monkery that was eating at the heart's core of English society is given to us in this terse and brave little book? Abate from its calculations whatever in fairness Sir T. More would have wished us to deduct; we cannot but shudder as we try to realize the then social condition of our country; and all the more, when we remember that the fountain of all this unmercifulness, impurity and ignorance was found in the very persons who professed to be, and who should have been the Divine Teachers of our nation. It argues, too, much for the virility of the English race, that it could have sustained, in gradually increasing intensity, such a widespread mass of festering and corroding blotches of vice, and could by and bye throw it off altogether; so that in subsequent ages no other nation has surpassed us in manhood.
It is marvellous to us how the ecclesiastical fungus could have ever so blotted out of sight both the royal prerogative and the people's liberties. Was not Henry VIII the man for this hour? A bold lusty and masterful one, imperious and impatient of check, full of the animal enjoyment of life; yet a remarkable Theologian, a crafty Statesman, a true Englishman. Often referred to in the literature of this time as "our Lord and Master." Had England ever had such a Master! ever such a Lord of life and limb since? A character to the personal humouring and gratification of whom, such an one as Wolsey devoted his whole soul and directed all the powers of the State.
How necessary was so strong a ruler for our national disruption with Rome! It is not easy for us to realize what an amazingly difficult thing that wrench was. Moddys' story witnesses to us of the King's great perplexity. By what difficult disillusions, what slow and painful thoughtfulness did Henry's mind travel from the Assertio of 1522 and the consequent Defensor fidei, to the destruction of the monasteries in 1536. Truly, if in this "passion" he vacillated or made mistakes; we may consider the inherent difficulty of disbelief in what—despite its increasing corruptions—had been the unbroken faith of this country for a thousand years.
