Ecclesia Militans: Where we got the Bible

Tyndale’s Condemnation Vindicated by Posterity

So much then for John Wycliff and his unhappy version. The next man of any consequence we are confronted with is another favorite of the Reformation, another ‘martyr’ for the Bible, and that is William Tyndale. His treatment is also flung in our teeth by critics, as fresh evidence of Rome’s implacable hatred of the open Bible. Did she not persecute and burn poor Tyndale, and consign his copy of the Scriptures in English to the flames? So here again, we must show how wise and consistent was the action of the Catholic Church in England in regard to Tyndale and his translations, and clear her absolutely from the slightest shadow or suspicion of hostility to God’s written Word.

(i) What we are about to speak of now, be it remembered, is the Printed Bible, for in 1450 the art of printing was discovered by a man rejoicing in the melodious name of John Gooseflesh, (a German), and in 1456 the first book ever printed issued from the press at Mayence, and it was – what? It was the Bible, and it is known as the Mazarin Bible, after Cardinal Mazarin. This again, demonstrates anew what hatred Catholics had in those days to the Bible, and their fear and dread lest it should be known even to exist! The best way to keep it secret, of course, was to print it. Besides, how could the Bible be printed in 1456? Did not Martin Luther discover it for the first time in 1507? However, joking apart, the fact remains that we have now in our historical review arrived at the point where we bid farewell to copies of the Bible written by the hand, and have to consider only those that were turned out by the printing press from 1456 onwards. On Protestant principles it must seem a pity that the Lord waited so many centuries before He invented printing machines to spread Bibles about among the people; and it seems also very hard on all preceding generations that slipped away without this lamp to their feet and light unto their path.

(iii) Well, William Tyndale (and for that matter Martin Luther too), was born almost a 100 years after John Wycliff died, that is, 1484. He studied at Oxford and became a priest, and was seized with the ambition of getting the Bible printed in England. Now, there were three great objections to this step being approved. (I) In the first place, Tyndale was not the man to do it; he was utterly unfitted for such a great work. He says himself he was ‘evil favored in this world, and without grace in the sight of men, speechless and rude, dull and slow witted.’ He had no special qualifications for the task of translation. He was but a mediocre scholar, and could not boast of anything above the average intellect. Indeed, non-Catholic authors have admitted that the cause of Scripture reading in the vernacular was distinctly prejudiced by having been taken in hand by incapable men like Tyndale. Then (2) in the second place, he was acting entirely on his own account, and without authorization from ecclesiastical superiors, either in England or in Rome; he was simply a private obscure priest, and was acting without commission and without sanction from higher quarters. Indeed, I go further and say that he was acting in disobedience to the decision of higher authorities. At the very beginning of the sixteenth century (I am now quoting the Anglican Dore) ‘the authorities of the English church took into consideration the desirability of introducing a vernacular Bible [i.e. Bible in English] into England, and the great majority of the Council were of opinion that, considering the religious troubles on the Continent and the unsettled state of things at home, at this juncture the translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue, and its circulation among the people, would rather tend to confusion and distraction than to edification.’ Now, you may lament if you like (as Dore does) this decision as an error of judgment, and affirm that the postponement of an English version in print authorized by the Bishops was a most unfortunate event, as leading to false and corrupt versions being issued by irresponsible individuals. But right or wrong in their judgment, this was the conscientious conclusion at which the Council under Archbishop Wareham arrived: no printed English Bible meanwhile was to be allowed; and after all is said and done, they were probably better judges than we are as to what was best for the Church at that time in England. The Lutheran Revolution was in full swing abroad (1520), and the Lutheran heresy was spreading everywhere, carrying with it rebellion and immorality, and the English Bishops might as well have cause to fear lest the infection should poison the faithful under their own jurisdiction. (3) In the third place, there was no demand for a printed English Bible to any great extent – certainly not to the extent of making it at all an urgent or pressing duty on the part of the authorities to issue one. Dore (so often quoted already) ridicules the idea that at that time England was a ‘Bible-thirsty land’. He declares that ‘there was no anxiety whatever for an English version excepting among a small minority of the people’, and ‘the universal desire for a Bible in England we read so much of in most works on the subject existed only in the imagination of the writers’. Dr. Brewer, another Protestant, also scoffs at the idea. ‘To imagine,’ he says, ‘that ploughmen and shepherds in the country read the New Testament in English by stealth, or hat smiths and carpenters in towns pored over its pages in the corner of their master’s workshops, is to mistake the character and acquirements of the age.’ There has, in short, been a great deal of wild and groundless talk about the intense desire of the people of that century to devour the Scriptures. And we can prove it by these simple facts, that (I) the people had to be compelled by law to buy Bibles, for Acts were passed again and again threatening the King’s displeasure and a fine of 40s. per month if the Book was not purchased; (2) we have documentary evidence that inhabitants of certain parts of the country, such as Cornwall and Devonshire, unanimously objected to the new translation, and that even among the clergy Reformers like Bishop Hugh Latimer almost entirely ignored the English copy and always took their texts from the Latin Vulgate; (3) printers had large stocks of printed Bibles left unsold on their hands, and could not get rid of them at any price, except under coercion; (4) the same edition of the Bible was often re-issued with fresh titles and preliminary matter, and new title-pages were composed for old unsold Bibles, without any regard to truth, simply to get them sold. I do not see how we can resist the conviction that there was really no extensive demand for English Bibles among the mass of Christians at that time in England, whether clergy or laity, and that the design of spreading them wholesale among the masses was borrowed from the Continent which was then in a perfect ferment of Religious and Civil Revolution. Hence you can understand at once how Tyndale’s proposal was viewed with suspicion and disfavor by the Bishops, and himself refused any assistance or encouragement from Tunstall, Bishop of London, and other prelates. And when we further bear in mind (as the Athenaeum pertinently remarked, 24^th August, 1889) that this irresponsible private chaplain had become already known as a man of dangerous views, who was exceedingly insulting in his manner, unscrupulous, and of a most violent temper; that in postprandial discussions he repeatedly abused and insulted Church dignitaries who were present; that with him the Pope was anti-Christ and the whore of Babylon, whilst the monks and friars were ‘caterpillars, horseleeches, drone-bees, and draff’, we shall not be vastly astonished that these dignitaries did not evince much enthusiasm in pushing on Mr. Tyndale’s scheme.

(iii) Unable therefore to proceed with the work in his own land because of ecclesiastical prohibition, Tyndale goes abroad, and after much wandering about settles at Worms, where in 1525 the Bible was printed and thence smuggled in considerable quantities into England. At once, as to be expected, it was denounced by the Bishop of London, and I do not deny (nor can I see any reason to deplore) the fact that copies of it were burned ceremonially at St. Paul’s Cross. But why? Because it was a false and erroneous and anti-Catholic version of the Holy Scriptures. It was full of Lutheran heresies. Tyndale had fallen under the influence of the German Reformer, who by this time had revolted from Rome. About 1522 he had been suspected and tried for heresy; he had declared: ‘I defy the pope and all his laws’; and now he actually embodied in his English version Luther’s notes and explanations of the texts, which were as full of venom and hatred against Rome as an egg is full of meat. ‘It has long been a notorious fact,’ says Mr. Allnatt (in his Bible and the Reformation), ‘that all the early Protestant versions of the Bible literally swarmed with gross and flagrant corruptions – corruptions consisting in the willful and deliberate mistranslation of various passages of the sacred text, and all directly aimed against those doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church which the "Reformers" were most anxious to uproot. They did give the people an "open Bible", but what a Bible!’ And Canon Dixon, the cultured Anglican historian, referring to the fact that copies of Tyndale’s Bible were burnt, makes these striking remarks: ‘If the clergy had acted thus simply because they would have the people kept ignorant of the word of God, they would have been without excuse. But it was not so. Every one of the little volumes, containing portions of the sacred text that was issued by Tyndale, contained also a prologue and notes written with such hot fury of viturpation against the prelates and clergy, the monks and friars, the rites and ceremonies of the Church, as was hardly likely to commend it to the favor of those who were attacked.’ Tunstall, Bishop of London, declared he could count more than 2,000 errors in Tyndale’s Bible ‘made in Germany’; whilst the learned Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, found it necessary to write a treatise against it, and asserted that to ‘find errors in Tyndale’s book were like studying to find water in the sea’. In short there is not an unprejudiced enquirer now but admits that the Church could not possibly tolerate Tyndale’s Bible as though it were a true or correct version of the Holy Scriptures; she had no alternative but to prescribe and forbid it; otherwise she would have been sinfully neglectful of her guardianship over the word of God, and idly standing by whilst her children were being poisoned. But who will be so obtuse or so malicious as to twist this action of hers into a determined hatred of the Scriptures as Scriptures and to represent her as hostile and opposed to all reading of the Bible whatsoever, even of a true and correct version? Surely to hate the Bible is one thing, and to prohibit a false version of the Bible is quite another. Has the Catholic Church not as a matter of fact put a correct copy of the Bible into the hands of her children in their own language in the Douai version? As for the burning of Tyndale’s version, there is nothing to be wondered at in it; it was probably the only, or at least the most striking and effective way of stemming its sale and instilling a horror of it into the hearts of the people. It was the custom of the age (as Dore remarks) to burn the works of opponents, as Luther a few years before burned the books of Canon Law, and the Bull of Pope Leo, and in 1522 John Calvin burnt all the copies he could collect of Servetus’ Bible at Geneva because these contained some notes he did not think were orthodox. Indeed Calvin went a step further than that – he burned Servetus himself. And surely it must be plain enough to everyone that, in the case before us, what the ecclesiastical authorities meant to destroy was, not the Word of God, but the errors of Luther and Tyndale which were corrupting it.

(iv) But the most interesting point about the whole affair is that time has abundantly justified the action of the Catholic Church and proved that she did the proper thing in attempting to stamp out Tyndale’s Bible. For (I) the reading of this pernicious book produced the most disastrous effects upon the morals of the people, who became rebellious, profane, and irreligious, and disaffected to the civil as well as to the spiritual authorities. Hence we find that for ten years, Tyndale’s version was denounced and opposed even more by the Court and secular officials than by the Bishops; and that at least two royal proclamations were issued for every one clerical, against all who read or concealed the obnoxious volume. In fact in the year 1531 King Henry VIII, with the advice of his Council and prelates published an edict that ‘the translation of the Scripture corrupted by William Tyndale should be utterly expelled, rejected, and put away out of the hands of the people, and not be suffered to go abroad among his subjects’. What a commentary upon the good and godly doctrines inculcated by Mr. William Tyndale! And further still – some years later (the King’s veto not having secured the desired effect), after several other editions of the English Bible had been issued and the condition of the Scripture-reading masses was becoming worse and worse in consequence, the same Royal Defender of the Faith caused another Act to the passed (1543) entitled ‘for the advancement of true religion and for the abolishment of the contrary’. By force of this it was decreed that, seeing what abuses had followed the indiscriminate reading of certain versions of Holy Scripture, and what ‘tumults and schisms’ had sprung up, and ‘divers naughty and erroneous opinions’, and ‘pestiferous and noisome teachings and instructions’, including ‘writings against the holy and blessed Sacrament of the Altar, and for the maintenance of the damnable opinions of the sect of Anabaptists’ – all to the ‘great unquietness of the realm and great displeasure of his Majesty’ as a result of all this, it was enacted that ‘all manner of books of the Old and New Testament in English, being of the crafty, false, and untrue translation of Tyndale’, along with any writings containing doctrine contrary to that of the King, ‘shall be clearly and utterly abolished, extinguished, and forbidden to be kept or used in this realm’. The Act then goes on to explain what versions of the Bible might be used, and by whom, and forbids the general reading of it by women, artificers, journeymen and certain other classes; and lays down sundry other restrictions in regard to it, which are to be observed, under pains and penalties, ranging from fines of 40s. and £5 and £40 up to imprisonment for life. I shall not dwell on the reflections that arise in one’s mind on reading such legal enactments coming from such a man as Henry VIII; but, to complete our remarks about Tyndale’s version and to pursue to the end the King’s dealing with it, I may add that he very year before he went to his account (1546) he struck one more blow, which no doubt he intended to be and hoped would be fatal, at this hated volume. He deliberately condemned all copies of it (along with Coverdale’s) to be delivered up and burned. Verily the ‘whirligig of time brings in his revenges’. After this, one finds somewhat amusing to be told that only priests and Popes burn and hate the Word of God. Henceforth Protestant readers of these lines would do well to remember that the great Reformer and Founder of the Church of England, Henry VIII, set a high example in the matter. However, that is by the way. I was saying that the time justified the action of the Church which first proscribed and did its utmost to repress Tyndale’s version, and I have shown how the secular power felt itself driven in self-protection to do the same. (2) But another, and perhaps to Protestants a more telling proof of the statement is found in the fact that their subsequent versions of Scripture deliberately omitted Tyndale’s characteristic features, such as his notes, prefaces and prologues. They appeared and then they disappeared. They had their day, and they ceased to be. They were considered unfit to find a place in what purported to be a pure copy of the work of the Apostle and Evangelist. Posterity, then, has justified Sir Thomas More, and has condemned Tyndale. What is this but to vindicate the Church in her action towards the corrupt volume? Wisdom is indeed ‘justified of her children.’

Chapter Thirteen