Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 1500s, church leaders in England insisted on Latin remaining the language for church and religious study, including Bible reading. This excluded the masses from Scripture and Christian literature. English law prohibited translating the Bible. Authorities thought laymen could not be trusted to interpret Scripture.
William Tyndale disagreed, wondering how anyone could be “so blind to ask why light should be showed to them that walk in darkness, where they cannot but stumble, and where to stumble is the danger of eternal damnation.” Speaking to one steeped in Catholicism, he said: “If God spare my life ere many years…a boy that driveth a plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”
Tyndale made that famous statement after 12 years of pouring over books at Oxford. Having mastered Greek, he approached the Bishop of London seeking permission to translate the New Testament. The Bishop turned him down. Undeterred, the Oxford graduate left his homeland, traversed Europe, and continued to render Greek Scripture into English. One of his landlords said,
“He studied most part of the day and of the night, at his book.” He approached publishers sympathetic to the Reformation and found some willing to cooperate on the dangerous project. His title pages contained fabrications, one listing the publisher as Adam Anonymous, one giving the place as Utopia. Notes exposing errors in the church accompanied his translations.
Those with enough courage smuggled works by Tyndale and Martin Luther into England, hiding books in bales of cloth, sacks of flour, barrels of wine, and chests with false sides. Most got away with it, but authorities caught John Tewkesbury, a “leatherseller of London.” They tortured and killed him.
As Tyndale’s New Testament secretly circulated in England, the same bishop who rebuffed the translator earlier wrote: “Many children of iniquity, maintainers of Luther’s sect, blinded through extreme wickedness, wandering from the way of truth and the Catholic faith, have craftily translated the New Testament into our English tongue, intermeddling therewith many heretical articles and erroneous opinions, seducing the common people.” Sir Thomas More called the translator “a hellhound in the kennel of the devil” and “a new Judas.”
Having landed in Antwerp, Belgium, Tyndale kept a low profile, but authorities were close on his trail. In 1535, a fellow-Englishman and Oxford graduate, Henry Phillips, befriended him. Phillips, however, was no friend. He had been commissioned to find and betray the translator.
About May 21, Phillips lured his prey to a location where officers arrested him. They hauled him to an old prison-castle. After 18 months of confinement, authorities tied him to a stake. Tyndale prayed, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” The executioner received the signal, tightened the chain around the prisoner’s neck, and, upon his death, lit the fire. Tyndale’s great accomplishments carried a great price.
About the Columnist: Paul V. Harrison has pastored Madison FWB Church in Madison, Alabama since 2015. Previously, he pastored Cross Timbers FWB church in Nashville, Tennessee, for 22 years. He was an adjunct professor at Welch College for 17 years, teaching church history and Greek. Paul is the creator of Classic Sermon Index, a subscription-based online index of over 66,000 sermons, with clients including Harvard, Baylor, and Vanderbilt, among others: classicsermonindex.com.
