Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF WILLIAM TINDAL, MARTYR, 1536. William Tindal was born about the year 1500, on the borders of Wales, and was sent at an early age to Magdalen hall, in the University of Oxford. He was generally esteemed for his virtuous conduct and learning, and especially applied himself to the study of the scriptures. He also became acquainted with the writings of Luther and Erasmus, and privately instructed his fellow-students in scriptural truth. On account of his abilities, Tindal received an appointment in cardinal Wolsey's newly-founded college, but becoming suspected of Lutheranism, he was imprisoned, and being compelled to leave the university of Oxford, he removed to Cambridge. When Tindal had finished his studies, he became tutor in the family of sir John Welch, of Little Sodbury, in Gloucestershire. Here he had access to many of the clergy, with whom he conferred on religious subjects, frequently engaging in disputations with those who were the most strenuous supporters of the papacy. The knight and his lady were much surprised at the boldness of their tutor, and returning one day from a banquet, to which they had been invited by some dignified ecclesiastics, they repeated some of the trite arguments advanced by the priests. Tindal, answering by the scriptures, maintained the truth, and reproved their false opinions. Then said lady Welch, Well, there was such a doctor, who may spend a hundred pounds, and another two hundred pounds, and another three hundred pounds; and what, were it reason, think you, that we Ti.mial. 1 should believe you before them? To this personal argument, Tindal found it was unavailing to reply at that time, but shortly after he presented the knight and his lady with a translation he had made of a work written by ...