Afterwards he settled at Antwerp, where, under shelter of the liberties of the city, he established a printing press, and, assisted by Frith, composed a series of books which were to accomplish for the teaching of England what Luther and Melancthon were accomplishing for Germany. Such volumes as the people most required were multiplied as fast as the press could produce them; and for the dissemination of these precious writings, the brave London Protestants dared, at the hazard of their lives, to form themselves into an organized association.
It is well to pause and look for a moment at this small band of heroes; for heroes they were, if ever men deserved the name. Unlike the first reformers who had followed Wycliffe, they had no earthly object, emphatically none; and equally unlike them, perhaps, because they had no earthly object, they were all, as I have said, poor men—either students, like Tyndal, or artisans and labourers who worked for their own bread, and in tough contact with reality, had learnt better than the great and the educated the difference between truth and lies. Wycliffe had royal dukes and noblemen for his supporters—knights and divines among his disciples—a king and a House of Commons looking upon him, not without favour. The first Protestants of the sixteenth century had for their king the champion of Holy Church, who had broken a lance with Luther; and spiritual rulers over them alike powerful and imbecile, whose highest conception of Christian virtue was the destruction of those who disobeyed their mandates. The
