Tyndale, William

IN PRAISE OF WILLIAM TYNDALE

"He was brought forth to the place of execution, was tied to the stake, and then strangled first by a hangman, and afterwards with fire consumed, in the morning at the town of Vilvoorde, AD1536: crying thus at the stake with a fervent zeal and a loud voice; 'Lord, open the King of England’s eyes’”.

With those few brief words, Foxe describes the death of William Tyndale whose memory we recall on the 6th October every year in the Church's Liturgical Cycle.

Who was William Tyndale? What did he do? What is his legacy to the church and why did he ask God to 'open the eyes of the King of England'?

Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire in or about 1494. He studied first at Oxford University and later at Cambridge where he came under the influence of Erasmus and his translation of the New Testament in Greek and Latin. In those days, all academic discourse was in Latin, and English was seldom, if ever, used.

He was ordained into the priesthood about 1521 and entered the household of Sir John Walsh of Old Sodbury in Gloucestershire as Chaplain and domestic tutor. Here he lived for the next two years, spending his spare time preaching in the nearby village and in Bristol.

In his travels he became disturbed at what he saw and heard about the clergy. The morals of many left much to be desired. Their ignorance was abysmal. Some clerics could not even repeat the Ten Commandments let alone say the Lord's Prayer. Above all, their knowledge of the scriptures was minimal, to say nothing of the ignorance of the members of their congregations.

In the light of this, he resolved, in conversation with an unknown learned man, that 'If God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the scriptures than thou doth'.

Thus he was determined to translate the scriptures into the English language which we today take so much for granted. After all, the people of France, Spain, Italy, Bohemia and Holland had had the scriptures in their own language, long before Henry VIII had come to the throne, and Luther had given the German people the scriptures also in their own language. Why should not the people of England have the same opportunity in studying the Word of God.

So Tyndale decided to seek for a Patron who would encourage and support him in his endeavours. Such a person he thought he would find in Cuthbert Tonstall who had recently been installed as Bishop of London. He was known to be a considerable scholar; reputed to be a liberal to the new thought that was sweeping through England from the continent, besides being well in with the king.

Alas, such high hopes were ill founded and Tonstall declined being suspicious of the influence of Lutheranism which led Tyndale to describe him as "a ducking hypocrite".

However, he got employment as a preacher at St Dunstan’s-in-the-West in the City of London and worked at his translation, living as chaplain in the house of Humphrey Monmouth who was an Alderman of the City.

Realising that his attempts to translate the New Testament into everyday English would not find support in England, but rather excite hostility, he moved across to the continent in 1524. For the next twelve years he was to work in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium until his untimely death at the age of 42 years. Even whilst translating, he did not neglect his pastoral duties and sought to visit the sick and needy at least two days a week and even at the end won over his gaoler to Christ.

Whilst in prison awaiting trial on trumped up charges of perjury, due to the betrayal of a close friend, he did not become bitter at the reluctance of the Church in England to accept the need of the scriptures in their own language, but rather patiently continued with his work of translation, as the following letter to a person in authority testifies.

'I believe, right worshipful, that you are not unaware of what may have been determined concerning me. Wherefore I beg your Lordship, and that by the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here through winter, you will request the commissary to have the kindness to send me, from the goods of mine which he has, a warmer cap: for I suffer greatly from cold in the head, and am afflicted by perpetual catarrh, which is much increased in this cell: a warmer coat also, for this which I have is very thin; a piece of cloth to patch my leggings.....But most of all I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew Dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study. In return may you obtain what you most desire, so onIy that it be for the salvation of your soul. But if any other decision has been made concerning me to be carried out before winter, I will be patient, abiding the will of God, to the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ; whose Spirit (I pray) may ever direct your heart. Amen'

Such was Tyndale's determination to give to the people of England, the Bible in their own language. Equally determined was the Church in England not to permit such a gift. Tonstall issued an injunction against importing Lutheran books into England.

Other powerful men, such as William Wareham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Sir Thomas More ganged up to destroy those copies of Tyndale’s New Testament which filtered into England, hidden in bales of cloth and by other secret means.

So proficient were they in their destruction that only one leaf of the thirty one leaves of the first edition of St Matthews Gospel survives, and this is in the British Museum.

Of the second edition of the New Testament, one imperfect copy is in St Paul's Cathedral and another perfect copy, with only the title page missing, was until 1994, at the Baptist College in Bristol, when the British Museum bought it for £1million.

Tyndale was a linguist who knew seven or eight languages including Greek, Hebrew, Latin and German. This enabled him to make an independent translation whilst mindful of Erasmus' Greek text, the Latin Vulgate and Lutheran German text. Sometimes he accepted their translation of the original Greek or Hebrew; sometimes he rejected it preferring his own. He revised and revised again and again. He translated into English the whole of the New Testament, the Pentateuch, the Book of Jonah and the Books from Joshua to 2 Chronicles of the Old Testament.

Some of the objections from the English Church were due to his apparent undermining of the church's traditional teaching based upon erroneous but convenient translation. So he translated 'repentance' for 'penance', 'elder' for 'priest' and 'congregation' for 'church'.

Although he died in 1536, his influence was to continue long after his death. It has been estimated that 90% of his second edition of the New Testament is to be found unaltered in the Authorised Version of the Bible published in 1611 and that 75% of it is to be found unaltered in the Revised Version of the Bible, published in 1870.

Even today, many of the expressions used by Tyndale are in everyday usage of the English language. Phrases such as, "Until the day dawn and the daystar arises in your hearts"; "in him we live and move and have our being", "for here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come", "the heat and burden of the day", "eat, drink and be merry", "the powers that be", "a prophet hath no honour in his own country". It has been said no other Englishman, not even Shakespeare, has reached so many.

And did God answer Tyndale’s dying prayer? Did the "Lord, open the King of England’s eyes?"

Yes he did. Within a year his prayer was answered due to the political change of heart of King Henry VIII towards Rome. A royal licence was issued to Matthew and Coverdale to publish a Bible in the English language based almost exclusively upon that of William Tyndale. Two years later, in 1539 the Great Bible was ordered to be set up in all parish churches of the land so that the men and women of England could have access to the Word of God in their own native tongue.

Thus, William Tyndale’s final prayer at the stake outside Brussels was finally answered, though he never lived to see it.