Sir Thomas More and Erasmus were close
friends, and More's Utopia and Erasmus's
Greek New Testament appeared the same year,
probably while Tindale was a student at Cambridge.

But he came at a troubled time. The new
learning had no power to deepen or strengthen
the moral life of the people. It could not make
religion a vital thing. Morality and religion
were far separated. The priests and curates
were densely ignorant. We need not ask Tindale
what was the condition. Ask Bellarmine,
a cardinal of the Church: "Some Years before
the rise of the Lutheran heresy there was almost
an entire abandonment of equity in ecclesiastical
judgments; in morals, no discipline; in
sacred literature, no erudition; in divine things,
no reverence; religion was almost extinct." Or
ask Erasmus, who never broke with the Church:
"What man of real piety does not perceive with
sighs that this is far the most corrupt of all
ages? When did iniquity abound with more
licentiousness? When was charity so cold?"
And, as a century before, Wiclif had felt the
social need for a popular version of the Bible,
so William Tindale felt it now. He saw the
need as great among the clergy of the time as
among the laity. In one of his writings he
says: "If you will not let the layman have the
word of God in his mother tongue, yet let the