THE author is gratified at the cordial reception which the first edition of his work has met with. The issue of a second edition has given the opportunity of making some minor corrections, and of including in the closing paragraphs an appreciative reference to the work of the American Bible Society.
Contemplation of the published work has suggested to the author that greater significance might have been attributed to the background and environment of Tindale's early manhood. The breaking up of the social and religious structure of his time, and the spread of the New Learning over Western Europe were events profoundly affecting the character and career of contemporary English youth. Thus, the disintegration and dissolution of the overawing authority of the Church, though she retained for decades sufficient power to strike down her foes; the splintered social unity which resulted from the decadence of the Feudal Order, with class suspicion and hatred ensuing, combined to throw men off their moral balance: and then into this moral confusion came rumours of literatures, unknown and ancient, which opened to the startled minds of teachers and students knowledge that at once widened and made more wondrous the world which men thought they knew. The discovery of the Greek and Latin literatures excited the imaginations of the younger men. Oxford and Cambridge students in groups crossed the English Channel and enrolled themselves in the Continental Universities that they might gain at first hand the knowledge they desired. Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet came back eager to teach and guide. But most significant of all was this, that Erasmus landed in England.
Romantic stories were in the air of a New World beyond the seas.
Now the reaction of all this on the nation at large was a disquietude and disturbance that led confusion towards fear and panic.
Such was the atmosphere which as a youth Tindale breathed. Not the least of his claims to greatness are his deep insight into that disturbance of the national soul, and the adventurous confidence with which he entered on that long self-discipline which fitted him for the enterprise he so brilliantly fulfilled.
When four hundred years ago the Low Countries of Europe, Holland and Belgium, passed by inheritance to the reigning Spanish Sovereign, Charles I, these lands became the theatre of long and devastating warfare. Siege and sally, slaughter and suffering brought misery on the people like a flood.
Yet it was in that distracted country, amid suffering almost universal, that there came into being the unrivalled sweetness of belfry music. Singing towers all over the Netherlands sprang into the air. Carillons by the score were hung, and have been the delight and pride of the people for a dozen generations or more.
To much the same effect, we may say, out of the disquietude and suffering of those early years of the Sixteenth Century there came in our English tongue a work which has proved to be "the most majestical thing in our literature, the most living spiritual thing in our tradition"; and we owe it to this high-hearted Apostle of our Faith, William Tindale.
APRIL, 1925.