05. William Tyndale

The first decided steps, however, toward giving to the English nation a Bible printed in their own tongue, were the translations of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, made by William Tyndale, and by him printed at Hamburg, in the year 1524;—and a translation of the whole of the New Testament, printed by him partly at Cologne, and partly at Worms, in 1525. After six editions of the Testament had been issued, he published Genesis and Deuteronomy, in 1530; and next year the Pentateuch. In the year 1535 was printed the entire Bible, under the auspices of Miles Coverdale, who mostly followed Tyndale as far as he had gone; but without any other connection with him. Of Coverdale, further mention will be made. But in the year 1537 appeared a folio Bible, printed in some city of Germany, with the following title,—“THE BYBLE, which is the Holy Scripture; in which are contayned the Olde and Newe Testament, truely and purely translated into Englysh—by Thomas Matthew.—MDXXXVII.” This is substantially the basis of all the other versions of the Bible into

English, including that which is now in such extensive use. It contains Tyndale's labors as far as he had gone previous to his martyrdom by fire about a year before its publication. That is to say, the whole of the New Testament, and of the Old, as far as the end of the Second Book of Chronicles, or exactly two-thirds of the entire Scriptures, were Tyndale's work. The other third, comprising the remainder of the Old Testament, was made by his friend and co-laborer, Thomas Matthew, who was no other than John Rogers, the famous martyr, afterwards burnt in the days of "bloody Mary;" and who, at the time of his immortal publication, went by the name of Matthew.

William Tyndale, whose vast services to the English-speaking branches of the Church of God have never been duly appreciated, was born in the Hundred of Berkeley, and probably in the village of North Nibley, about the year 1484. His family was ancient and respectable. His grandsire was Hugh, Baron de Tyndale. From an early age, he was brought up at the University of Oxford. Here, during a lengthened residence in Magdalen College, he became a proficient in all the learning of that day, and in the latter part of his time read private lectures in divinity. He was ordained a priest in 1502; and became a Minorite Observantine friar. His zeal in the exposition of the Scriptures excited the displeasure of the adversaries, and "spying his time," says Foxe, "he removed from Oxford to the University of Cambridge, where he likewise made his abode a certain space." This place he had left by 1519. In total independence of Luther, he arose at the same time with that great translator of the Bible into German; being equally moved with him to resist the corruptions and oppressions of a priesthood, which sought to imprison and enslave the minds of all nations, by keeping from them "the key of knowledge."

Returning from Cambridge to his native county, he spent nearly two years in the manor-house of Little Sodbury, as tutor to the children of Sir John Walsh. On the Sabbath he preached in the neighboring parishes, and especially at St. Austin's Green, in Bristol. At Sir John's hospitable board, the mitred abbots, and other ecclesiastics who swarmed in that neighborhood, were frequent guests; and Tyndale sharply and constantly disputed their mean superstitions. At the first, Sir John and his lady Anne took the part of the "abbots, deans, archdeacons, with divers other doctors and great-beneficed men;" but after reading a translation of Erasmus's "Christian Soldier's Manual," which Tyndale made for them, they took his part. Upon this, those "doctorly prelatists" forbore Sir John's good cheer, rather than to take with it what Fuller calls "the sour sauce" of Tyndale's conversation. A storm was now gathering over his head. Not only the ignorant hedge-priests at their ale-houses, but the dignified clergymen in the Bishop's councils began to brand him with the name of heretic. In 1522 he was summoned, with all the other priests of the district, before the bishop's Chancellor. In their presence he was very roughly handled. In his own account, he says, "When I came before the Chancellor, he threatened me grievously, and reviled me, and rated me as though I had been a dog."

It was not long after this, that in disputing with a divine reputed to be quite learned, Tyndale utterly confounded him with certain texts of Scripture; upon which the irritated papist exclaimed,—"It were better for us to be without God's laws, than without the Pope's!" This was a little too much for Tyndale, who boldly replied, "I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scrip-

INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE ture than you do!" A noble boast; and nobly redeemed at the cost of his life! He now clearly saw, that nothing could rescue the mass of the English nation from the impostures of the high priests and low priests of Rome, unless the Scriptures were placed in the hands of all. "Which thing only," he says, "moved me to translate the New Testament. Because I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in the mother tongue."

When he could no longer remain at Sir John Walsh's without bringing that worthy knight, as well as himself, into danger, Tyndale went to London, with letters introducing him, as a ripe Greek scholar, to the patronage of that Dr. Tunstall, then bishop of London, who afterwards burned so many of Tyndale's New Testaments. The courtly and classical bishop refused to befriend him; and he who had hoped in that prelate's own house to translate the New Testament, was obliged to seek a harbor elsewhere. For nearly a year, he resided in the house of Humphrey Munmouth, a wealthy citizen of London, and afterwards an alderman, knight, and sheriff. During this time, he used to preach in the Church of St. Dunstan's in the West. By this time, he was convinced that no where in all England would he be permitted to put in act the glorious resolve he had formed at Little Sodbury.

In January, 1524, with a heart full of love and pity for his native land, Tyndale sailed for Hamburg, being "helped over the sea" by the generous Munmouth, who also assisted him during his fifteen months' abode in that city. Here he so improved his time, that in May, 1525, he went to Cologne, and began to print his New Testament in quarto form. Ten sheets had hardly been worked off, before an alarm was raised, and the public authorities forbade the work to go on. Tyndale and his amanuensis, William Roye, managed to save those sheets and to sail with them up the Rhine to Worms, where they finished the edition of three thousand copies in comparative safety. A precious relic, containing the Prologue and twenty-two chapters of Matthew, is all that is known to exist of this memorable edition, which is in the German Gothic type. In the same year and place, there was printed another edition, in small-octavo, of which one copy is extant in the Bristol Museum. During the subsequent ten years of the

Translator's unquiet life, spent in labor and concealment from foes, more than twenty editions of this work, with repeated revisions by himself, were passed through the press. These, through the agency of pious merchants and others, were secretly conveyed into England, and there with great privacy sold and circulated, not without causing constant peril and frequent suffering to those into whose hands they came. Many copies fell into the grasp of the enemy, and were destroyed; but very many more were secretly read and pondered in castles and in cottages, and powerfully prepared the way for the liberation of England from the yoke of Rome. This New Testament has been separately printed in not less than fifty-six editions, as well as in fourteen editions of the Holy Bible.

Besides all these impressions of the work as Tyndale left it, it has been five times revised by able translators, including those appointed by King James; and still forms substantially, though with very numerous amendments, the version in common use. The changes made in these revisions, though generally for the better, were not always so. The substitution of the word charity, where Tyndale had used love, was not a happy change; neither was that of church, where he had

THE MASTER'S COLLEGE

POWELL LIBRARY employed congregation. Still, large portions of his work remain untouched, and are read verbally as he left them, except in the matter of spelling. The fidelity of his rendering is such as might be expected from his conscientious care. "For I call God to record," he says, in his reply to Lord Chancellor More, "against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, to give a reckoning of our doings, that I never altered one syllable of God's Word against my conscience; nor would this day, if all that is in the earth, whether it be pleasure, honor, or riches, might be given me."

Not only was this holy man faithful in his great work, but he was fully qualified for it by his scholarship. His sound learning is evident enough on reading his pages. Certain historians, however, while acknowledging his proficiency in Greek literature, have represented him as having little or no acquaintance with Hebrew, and as making his translations of the Old Testament from the Latin or else the German. As for German, then a rude speech just taking its "form and pressure" from the genius of Martin Luther, there is no evidence that Tyndale ever had much acquaintance with it. But of his knowledge of Hebrew there can be no question. In his answer to Sir Thomas More's huge volume against him, he accuses the prelates of having lost the understanding of the plain text, "and of the Greek, Latin, and especially of the HEBREW, which is MOST of need to be known, and of all phrases, the proper manner of speakings, and borrowed speech of the Hebrews." In these words he clearly indicates his critical familiarity with the Hebraisms of the New Testament, which contains so many expressions conformed rather to the idiom of the Hebrew tongue than to that of the Greek. George Joye, once occupied as his amanuensis, who turned against him, bears unwitting testimony upon this point. "I am not afraid," he says, "to answer Master Tyndale in this matter, for all his high learning in HEBREW, Greek and Latin, &c." What were the other tongues Joye referred to, we learn from Herman Buschius, a learned professor, who was acquainted with Tyndale both at Marburg and Worms. Spalatin, the friend of Luther, says in his Diary,—"Buschius told me, that, at Worms, six thousand copies of the New Testament had been printed in English. The work was translated by an Englishman staying there with two others,—a man so skilled in the seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, and French, that whichever he spake, you would suppose it his native tongue."

We must draw this account of Tyndale to a close.* But one curious incident must be mentioned, which took place in 1529. Tunstall, then bishop of the wealthy see of Durham, bought up the balance of an edition of the New Testament, which hung on Tyndale's hands at Antwerp, and burned them. The purchase was made through one Packington, a merchant who secretly favored Tyndale. The latter rejoiced to sell off his unsold copies, being anxious to put to press a new and corrected edition, which he was too poor to publish till thus furnished with the means by Tunstall's simplicity. A year or two after, George Constantine, one of Tyndale's coadjutors, fell into the hands of Sir Thomas More. That bitter persecutor promised his prisoner a pardon, provided he would give up the name of the person who defrayed the expense of this Bible-printing business. Constantine, being something of a wag, and aware that More was a dear lover of a

* Those who would know all they can of Tyndale are referred to the First Volume of Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, which might have been entitled, Tyndale and his Times.

joke, accepted the offer, and amused the Chancellor by informing him that the bishop of Durham was their greatest encourager; for, by buying up the unsold copies at a good round sum, he had enabled them to produce a second and improved edition. Sir Thomas greatly enjoyed the joke, and said he had told Tunstall at the time, that such would be the result of his fine speculation. "This," as D'Israeli says, "was the first lesson which taught persecutors that it is easier to burn authors than books."

Early in 1535, Tyndale who had been constantly hunted by the emissaries of his English persecutors, was betrayed by one Phillips, a tool of Stephen Gardiner, the cruel and crafty bishop of Winchester. He suffered an imprisonment of more than eighteen months in the castle of Vilvorde, where he was the means of converting the jailor, the jailor's daughter, and others of the household. All that conversed with him in the castle bore witness to the purity of his character; and even the Emperor Charles the Fifth's Procurator-General, or chief prosecuting officer, who saw him there, said that he was "homo doctus, pius, et bonus,"—"a learned, pious, and good man." It was Friday, the sixth of October, 1536, when this man, "of whom the world was not worthy," and who ought to be famed as the noblest and greatest benefactor of the English race in all the world, was brought forth to die. Being fastened to the stake, he cried out with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice,—" LORD, OPEN THE EYES OF THE KING OF ENGLAND!" He was then strangled, and burned to ashes. Thus departed one for whom heaven was ready; but for whom earth, to this hour, has no monument, except the Bible he gave to so many of her millions.

"He lived unknown

Till persecution dragged him into fame,

And chased him up to Heaven. His ashes flew—

No marble tells us whither. With his name

No hard embalms and sanctifies his song;

And history, so warm on meaner themes,

Is cold on this."

But there is a better world, where he is not forgotten. "Also now, behold, his witness is in heaven, and his record is on high."

Old John Foxe, the martyrologist, who justly calls Tyndale "the Apostle of England," gives the following beautiful sketch of the man—"First, he was a man very frugal, and spare of body, a great student and earnest laborer in setting forth the Scriptures of God. He reserved or hallowed to himself, two days in the week, which he named his pastime, Monday and Saturday. On Monday he visited all such poor men and women as were fled out of England, by reason of persecution, unto Antwerp; and these, once well understanding their good exercises and qualities, he did very liberally comfort and relieve; and in like manner provided for the sick and diseased persons. On the Saturday, he walked round the town, seeking every corner and hole, where he suspected any poor person to dwell; and where he found any to be well occupied, and yet overburthened with children, or else were aged and weak, these also he plentifully relieved. And thus he spent his two days of pastime, as he called it. And truly his alms were very large, and so they might well be; for his exhibition [i. e. pension] that he had yearly of the English merchants at Antwerp, when living there, was considerable, and that for the most part he bestowed upon the poor. The rest of the days of the week he gave wholly to his Book, wherein he most diligently travailed. When the Sunday came, then went he to some one merchant's chamber, or other, whither came many other merchants, and unto them would he read some one parcel of Scripture; the which proceeded so fruitfully, sweetly, and gently from him, much like to the writing of John the Evangelist, that it was a heavenly comfort and joy to the audience, to hear him read the Scriptures: likewise, after dinner, he spent an hour in the same manner. He was a man without any spot or blemish of rancor or malice, full of mercy and compassion, so that no man living was able to reprove him of any sin or crime; although his righteousness and justification depended not thereupon before God; but only upon the blood of Christ, and his faith upon the same. In this faith he died, with constancy, at Vilvorde, and now resteth with the glorious company of Christ's martyrs, blessedly in the Lord."

The good man's work did not die with him. During the last year of his life, nine or more editions of his Testament issued from the press, and found their way into England "thick and threefold." But what is strangest of all, and is unexplained to this day, at the very time when Tyndale by the procurement of English ecclesiastics, and by the sufferance of the English king, was burned at Vilvorde, a folio-edition of his Translation was printed at London, with his name on the title-page, and by Thomas Berthelet, the king's own patent printer. This was the first copy of the Scriptures ever printed on English ground.

The next year, 1537, two translations of the entire Bible, printed in folio on the continent, made their appearance in England.