In England from Wicliffe to Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

sufferings; "consuming alive in the fire," says Bale,
"and praising the name of the Lord so long as his
life lasted." The priests and friars stood by the
while, forbidding the people to pray for one who,
as he was departing "not in the obedience of their
Pope," was about to be plunged into fiercer flames
than those in which they beheld him consuming.
The martyr, now near his end, lifting up his
voice for the last time, commended his soul into
the hands of God, and "so departed hence most
Christianly." "Thus," adds the chronicler, "rested
this valiant Christian knight, Sir John Oldcastle,
under the Altar of God, which is Jesus Christ;
among that godly company which, in the kingdom
of patience, suffered great tribulation, with the
death of their bodies, for his faithful word and
testimony; abiding there with them the fulfilling of
their whole number, and the full restoration of his
elect.
"Chains, gallows, and fire," as Bale remarks,
are no pleasant things, and death by their means is
not precious in the eyes of men; and yet some of
106