Marburg. There he associated with many of the eminent Reformers, including Tyndale, who had preceded him, and Patrick Hamilton of Scotland. Frith’s first publication was a translation of Hamilton’s
Patrick’s Places from Latin into English. While abroad, Frith married and had several children.
In 1529 Tyndale and Frith left Marburg and went to Antwerp. The New Testament had been completed, and the learned Frith was now a great aid to Tyndale in translating the Old Testament. The king was ready to welcome Frith back to England any time he would renounce his heresies, but this he was not ready to do.
He returned to England without Henry’s permission in 1532, perhaps to seek his friend, the prior at Beading. When he arrived in the city his disreputable appearance, for “exile had not used him well,” caused him to be set in stocks for vagabondage. He remained there for some time because he refused to give his name, lest the king hear about it.
Finally, in desperation and in a semistarved condition, he sent for Leonard Coxe, the master of the grammar school, who was greatly astonished to hear a tramp clad in rags speak such eloquent Latin. With the
schoolmaster, Frith conversed in both Latin and Greek concerning the universities, and he even quoted from the Iliad some lines which applied to his case. With great respect Coxe hastened to the mayor to obtain Frith’s release, on the basis that a great wrong was being done a worthy man.
Thus Homer was credited with saving a Beformer’s life.
After he was set free from the stocks, Frith went to Bow Lane, London, and there he taught the Scriptures to those who wished to hear. For one of his listeners who desired an explanation of the eucharist he wrote a Lytle Treatise on the Sacraments, but without any intention of having it circulated. In it he expressed the following views:
“1. The doctrine of the sacrament is not an article of faith to be held under pain of damnation.
“2. The natural body of Christ had the same qualities as those of all men, except that it was free from sin, and it is therefore not ubiquitous.
“3. It is neither right nor necessary to take the word of Christ literally, for it should be construed according to the analogy of the Bible.
“4. The sacrament should be received according to the institution of Christ, and not according to the order in use.” — Quoted in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.
A tailor named William Holt, under pretense of friendship, asked for a copy, and forthwith presented it to Sir Thomas More, then lord chancellor and successor to the ill-fated Cardinal Wolsey.
About this time Tyndale, back on the Continent, was becoming greatly alarmed lest his friend Frith should fall into enemy hands. He regarded Frith as “the great hope of the church in England,” and he did not wish any evil to happen to him. He wrote:
“Beloved in my heart, there liveth not one in whom I have so great hope and trust, and in whom my heart rejoiceth, not so much for your learning and what other gifts else you may have, as because you walk in those things that the conscience may feel, and not in the imagination of the brain. Cleave fast to the rock of the help of God; and if aught be required of you contrary to the glory of God and His Christ, then stand fast and commit yourself to God. He is our God, and our redemption is nigh.”
When More received Frith’s statement on the Lord’s Supper he was angered and wrote a tract in reply, characterizing Frith’s doctrine “under the image of a cancer.” Then he sought to have him imprisoned, and by all means available hunted him everywhere. He even offered a great reward for his capture. “There was no county or town or village where More did not look for him, no sheriff or justice of the peace to whom he did not apply, no harbor where he did not post some officer to catch him.” Frith fled from place to place, changing his garb frequently to elude his pursuers.
Irked at the successes of the evangels, More gave vent to his feelings against them: “These diabolical people,” he said, “print their books at great expense, notwithstanding the great danger; not looking for any gain, they give them away to everybody, and even scatter them abroad by night.
They fear no labor, no journey, no expense, no pain, no danger, no blows, no injury.”
As Frith made preparation to flee to Holland and rejoin Tyndale, More’s agents were stationed at the wharf of a small seaport in Essex. They caught him as he attempted to board a ship, in spite of all his precautions.
From there he was transported to the Tower, where, for a time, he enjoyed considerable freedom, even going out on parole and conversing all night long with friends of the gospel. One such friend was Petit, a prosperous merchant and a member of Parliament, who later suffered imprisonment because of his Protestant views. With them Frith planned ways and means to promote the Reformation. He also wrote much, part of which
constituted his debate with More and his associates about the Lord’s Supper, and also about purgatory, which Frith termed an invention of the papists. His little tract “Bulwark” converted Rastell, More’s brother-in- law, thereby creating such a sensation that many people came to visit the prisoner. This encouraged him to write still more, insomuch that with his pen he “enlightened many souls” and “contributed powerfully to the renovation of England.”
During Lent of 1533, Dr. Curwin, a friend of the papists, preached a sermon against those who denied the physical presence of Christ in the eucharist; and he mentioned that it was not surprising that this pernicious doctrine was gaining such headway when “a man now in the Tower of London has the audacity to defend it, and no one thinks of punishing him.”
Aroused by these remarks, Henry VIII commanded Cromwell and Cranmer to bring Frith to trial, and added, “If he does not retract, let him suffer the penalty he deserves.”
Cranmer, who, twenty-three years later, was to go to the stake for the same belief, sympathized with Frith and wanted to save him; but he wrote to Archdeacon Hawkins, “Alas, he professes the doctrine of
Oecolampadius.” Cranmer believed with Luther and Osiander in
consubstantiation or impanation, the doctrine of ubiquity, which teaches that Christ is present everywhere. But he still considered Frith a disciple of Jesus.
Four times, as one of a six-man board appointed by Henry VIII to try Frith, Cranmer privately attempted to influence him to change his mind.
He even made provision whereby the prisoner could escape, by calling him
to Croydon for a conference. As his escorts took him on the twelve-mile journey at night and on foot between Lambeth and Croydon they
presented him with Cranmer’s plans, so that he could flee. But he refused, going resolutely forward to his final trial and death.
On June 20, 1533, the geformer appeared before a committee in his last formal trial, and again he refused to state that the doctrine of purgatory and transubstantiation were necessary articles of faith. The bishop of London condemned him to be burned at the stake.
Again Tyndale wrote from Antwerp:
“Dearly beloved, fear not men that threat, nor trust men that speak fair. Your cause is Christ’s gospel, a light that must be fed with the blood of faith. The lamp must be trimmed daily, that the light go not out..See, you are not alone: follow the example of all your other dear brethren, who choose to suffer in hope of a better resurrection. Bear the image of Christ in your mortal body, and keep your conscience pure and undefiled..The only safety of the conquered is to look for none. If you could but write and tell us how you are..Your wife is well content with the will of God, and would not for her sake have the glory of God hindered.”
Frith was now confined to a dark cell in Newgate prison, where he was chained in such a manner that he could neither lie down nor stand up. Yet by the light of a small candle he continued writing. The priests and the bishops visited him with the intent of getting him to recant. As they accused him of “having collected all the poison that could be found in the writings of Wycliffe, Luther, Oecolampadius, Tyndale, and Zwingli,” he exclaimed, “No! Luther and his doctrine are not the mark I aim at, but the Scriptures of God.” He prayed his judges to shed his blood the next day, if by his death the king’s eyes might be opened.
Imprisoned with Frith was a young man, named Andrew Hewet, who also believed in the symbolic presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Back to back, they were tied to the stake at Smithfield, July 4, 1533. And thus at the age of thirty died Frith, who had “seemed destined to become one of the most influential Reformers of England.” His interpretation of the Lord’s Supper was some twenty-six years later adopted in the Book of Common Prayer and became “the publicly professed faith of the English nation.”