P026 A Short History of the English Bible.

P026 A Short History of the English Bible. In 1526, 1527, and 1528, three surreptitious editions were issued at Antwerp.

Bishop Tunstall, through an agent, bought up all of these he could, and on the 4th of May, 1530, publicly burned them in St. Paul’s church-yard.

Three weeks later a Convocation of the king and bishops issued an order forbidding the use of the "pernicious books." This document manifested the same spirit shown thirteen years later, when the Parliament, in 1543, passed an act directing "that all manner of bokes of the olde and newe Testament, in English, of this [Tyndale’s] translation, should be by authoritie of this act cleerly and utterly abolished, extinguished and forbidden to be kept and used in this realme, or els where in anie the king’s dominions."(1) In 1527 Tyndale left Worms and went to Marburg, in Hesse Cassel, where he stayed nearly four years.

Here, in 1530, he issued, in an octavo volume, the Pentateuch, in English, each of the five books having a separate title-page. In the year following he published, probably at Antwerp, a translation of Jonah. It was about this time, also, that he is supposed to have translated the Old Testament from Joshua to 2 Chronicles inclusive, though this part of his work was not published during his lifetime. In 1534 he issued in Antwerp his revised edition of the New Testament, with certain selections from the Old Testament, called "Epistles." In May, 1535, Tyndale, betrayed by one whom he had benefited, was arrested at Antwerp, on a charge of heresy, no doubt at the instigation of his enemies in England, and conveyed to Vilvorde, a castle about eighteen miles from Brussels.

Here he remained until October 6, 1536, when he was strangled, and his corpse burned. At the moment before his death he prayed, "Lord, open the eyes of the King of England!"

Tyndale’s qualifications for his work are beyond question.

------------ (FN1)Cited by Townley, vol. ii, p. 107.

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