of the time. What
Warham and More saw over sea might well have turned them from a
movement which seemed breaking down the very foundations of religion
and society. Not only was the fabric of the Church rent asunder and the
centre of Christian unity denounced as "Babylon," but the reform itself
seemed passing into anarchy.

Luther was steadily moving onward from the denial of one Catholic dogma
to that of another; and what Luther still clung to, his followers were
ready to fling away. Carlstadt was denouncing the reformer of Wittenberg
as fiercely as Luther himself had denounced the Pope, and meanwhile the
religious excitement was kindling wild dreams of social revolution, and
men stood aghast at the horrors of a peasant war which broke out in
Southern Germany. It was not therefore as a mere translation of the
Bible that Tyndale's work reached England. It came as a part of the
Lutheran movement, and it bore the Lutheran stamp in its version of
ecclesiastical words. "Church" became "congregation," "priest" was
changed into "elder." It came too in company with Luther's bitter
invectives and reprints of the tracts of Wycliffe, which the German
traders of the Steelyard were importing in large numbers. We can hardly
wonder that More denounced the book as heretical, or that Warham ordered
it to be given up by all who possessed it.

Wolsey took little heed of religious matters, but his policy was one of
political adhesion to Rome, and he presided over a solemn penance to
which some Steelyard men submitted in St. Paul's. "With six-and-thirty
abbots, mitred priors, and bishops, and he in his whole pomp mitred,"
the Cardinal looked on while "great baskets full of books were
commanded; after the great fire was made before the Rood of Northen (the
crucifix by the great north door of the cathedral), thus to be burned,
and those heretics to go thrice about the fire and to cast in their
fagots."

But scenes and denunciations such as these were vain in the presence of
an enthusiasm which grew every hour. "Englishmen," says a scholar of the
time, "were so eager for the Gospel as to affirm that they would buy a
New Testament even if they had to give a hundred thousand pieces of
money for it." Bibles and pamphlets were smuggled over to England and
circulated among the poorer and trading classes through the agency of an
association of "Christian Brethren," consisting principally of London
tradesmen and citizens, but whose missionaries s