TOWARDS AN ENGLISH BIBLE
by Ken Connolly
Part One
The Bible in England before the Reformation
The dry ground
Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would "grow up as a root
out of a dry ground" (Isaiah 53:2). That may also be said of many
reformers who followed their Master, and not least of Wycliffe,
England's first great reformer, known as "the Morning Star of the
Reformation." Though Wycliffe was not the first man to attack
corrupt practices in the church, he was the first to condemn the
underlying doctrine. He was born about 1330 in the village of
Wycliffe, six miles from Richmond, Yorkshire, but he spent most
of his life in Oxford. He was a man of outstanding intelligence,
courage and charisma. In a university where the art of arguing
was all-important, he could dispute with a panel of the greatest
academics and reduce them to silence. When he came to take an
unpopular stand on political and religious matters, he stood
undaunted before threats from king, Parliament, university and
even, most deadly and bitter of all, from the world-wide church.
Young men enlisted in his cause and gave their lives to be
burned at the stake because they believed he was right.
To appreciate the stature of this man, it is necessary to
know something of the "dry ground" of the Middle Ages. The
previous chapter has already touched on the religious climate; we
now consider two other important aspects of medieval life:
language and politics
Language
The people of Wycliffe's day spoke Middle English, which is
basically the same language as modern English, though people
today would not understand it if they heard it spoken. The
English language passed through three stages. The first was Old
English, which began with the tribes who invaded England from the
third century onwards. Remember, this is just a small island.
Only about 800 miles separate John O'Groats in the north of
Scotland from Land's End at the southernmost tip of England. No
place in the island is more than 100 miles from the sea. Foreign
marauders repeatedly swept in and took over different parts of
the country, bringing their language and culture with them. The
Jutes settled in the south-east, the Saxons in the south and the
Angles in the middle of Britain, from the Scottish border to the
river Thames. The islanders consequently spoke three separate
dialects of Old English. The Angles spoke Mercian, a form of
which was also spoken in London.
The transition to Middle English came with William the
Conqueror, who landed in England only 260 years before Wycliffe
was born. His forces spoke Norman French, and this became the
language of law and government. But the ordinary people and
merchants continued to speak English, though borrowing many words
from the French. Modern English, therefore, often has two words
for the same thing - for example, the word "lamb," which was used
by the serfs, and "mutton," which came from their French masters.
The one referred to the animal as it was in the fields, and the
other to the meat on the tables.
Two writers of Middle English stand out. Geoffrey Chaucer
(c1340-1400) is still regarded as one of the greatest English
poets. Everyone knows his masterpiece, the Canterbury Tales, but
few people are familiar with the great prose writings attributed
to Chaucer's friend John Wycliffe.
Politics
In politics there was a similar state of flux. When William
the Conqueror took over the island in 1066, he ruled through
barons who governed regions for him, collecting taxes and
marshaling armies. They grew very powerful, and succeeding kings
became dependent on them. Within 150 years they were stubbornly
refusing to co-operate with the king without being granted a
larger voice in national affairs. King John (who reigned from
1199 to 1216) inherited enormous debts along with his crown, and
added further debt by going to war with France. He could receive
no assistance from the Pope because he had appointed his own
Archbishop of Canterbury and rejected the Pope's appointee. But
he needed money so desperately that he was forced to submit, and
even laid his crown at the feet of a Papal legate - an act of
monumental importance because it subordinated the crown to the
miter, the throne to the church.
John could not survive without the financial support of the
barons. In return, in 1215 the barons forced him to sign the
Magna Carta, which limited the power of the king and recognized
the rights of barons, church, and freemen. He later attempted to
rescind the document, but when he lodged in a monastery in the
north of England a monk laced his wine with poison, and the
document outlived him. Out of that political conflict came the
English Parliament, the forerunner of the American Congress and
many other legislative bodies around the world.
Wycliffe was to play a leading role in directing England out
of the political quagmire in which church and state were
embroiled, and one of his tools would be the Bible.
The morning star
Of Wycliffe's childhood we know nothing. He spent a number
of years in Oxford as an undergraduate - becoming a fellow of
Merton College by 1356 - and the next sixteen years studying for
his doctorate, also at Oxford. In the last twelve years of his
life, he kept up his links with Oxford. Though he did some
traveling in the service of the crown, Oxford was his base, and
here he did most of his teaching and writing: he was truly a
citizen of Oxford. He spent the last two years of his life in
Lutterworth, where he died in 1384.
What was Oxford like when Wycliffe arrived? When the French
evicted all the English students from the University of Paris in
1167, these students had formed their own University in Oxford.
The town was hostile to this invasion of robed academics, and a
"town and gown" controversy ensued in which opposing sides
sometimes came to blows. Consequently, in 1209 some of the
students fled to Cambridge, where they founded another
university. These two universities quickly became the leading
universities of Europe. The year before Wycliffe graduated,
sixty-two students were killed by the townspeople in a riot on
St Scholastica Day. For the next 468 years, on the same day, the
townspeople placed sixty-two pennies on the altar at St Mary's to
atone for that misdeed.
When Wycliffe was a student, the dreaded Black Death arrived
in England. It was merciless, touching both rich and poor, young
and old. The people of London used the open acres of ground at
Smithfield as a common burial site, and soon they were burying
200 victims a day. This continued until the plague had claimed
over 100,000 lives.
During this terrifying plague, Wycliffe experienced a
profound spiritual revival that reached to the core of his being.
The holy fear of God that came upon him brought a disregard for
human Popes and potentates: it seemed that he held communion with
the citizens of the invisible world. He rearranged his priorities
and became more earnest in his theological studies. The
transformation was soul-shattering and proved to be permanent.
In 1356 he graduated from Merton College. Five years later, in
1361, he added his Master of Arts, and eight years later, in
1369, when he was in his forties, he was awarded his Bachelor of
Divinity degree. Then in 1372 he earned his doctorate in
divinity. By this time he was already considered the outstanding
philosopher and theologian of Oxford, which means he was probably
the most prominent theologian of England. He was the leading
speaker at theological debates, and when he lectured his
classrooms were always crowded.
In 1361 he was ordained for the ministry and accepted a
living at Fillingham in Lincolnshire, which maintained him until
he was appointed to the rectory of Lutterworth. He did not live
in either of these places, however, except when he retired to
Lutterworth at the end of his life, for neither was within
commuting distance of Oxford and his first love was teaching. (It
was acceptable practice, in those days, to have "absentee
parsons," but it was the parson's responsibility to find someone
to take his place in the parish.) Wycliffe's debates in Oxford
sharpened his convictions and his studies led him to value truth
above tradition. The longer he studied, the more he saw issues in
terms of truth or falsehood, black or white. He could see clearly
where there was wrong thinking and evil practice, even when they
were robed in the red and purple garments of a high-ranking
clergyman. Whether the issues were sacred or secular, political
or ecclesiastical,
Right was right and wrong was wrong, and right the day must
win. To doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would be sin.
In Oxford, Wycliffe the fighter was born, and his sword was,
above all, the Bible.
(God was beginning to open up the Bible and truths that had been
hidden to much of the Holy Roman Empire. Wycliffe had some truth
but certainly not all, and not the truth of the correct Sabbath
day or the Festivals of the Lord, as opposed to the Roman
Catholic's Sunday and feasts from pagan Rome. God's people with
more truth that Wycliffe were scattered in the hills and valleys
of Europe and in the East where the Holy Roman Empire had not
taken rule - Keith Hunt)
The Cold War
During this time Rome and Oxford were engaged in a cold war,
fighting a battle on two fronts.
The political front
In Wycliffe's day nearly all the leading positions of state
were occupied by the clergy, who were influential and aggressive.
This state of affairs was wrong. It harmed the clergy, who were
called to a superior ministry, and it was damaging for the state,
since these men took their orders from Rome. Quite simply, it was
bad politics.
In addition, major religious positions were filled by the
Pope's nominees, many of whom were foreigners, who never even set
foot on English soil but had their lucrative salaries sent to
them. While Wycliffe could see the political harm of this policy,
he felt the religious harm more keenly. Clergymen were being
bought, sold and traded in return for favors to their religious
superiors, and any sense of sacred service to Christ had vanished
from their pulpits. Wycliffe wrote a tract on this subject before
Parliament presented a petition to the king concerning the grip
which Rome had on England. Most students of history are persuaded
that it was Wycliffe who gave Parliament the ammunition and the
incentive for its action.
The highest insult to England came when French priests were
awarded positions in the church in England. This was a foolish
move on the part of Rome. England at that time was engaged on the
Hundred Years War against France, and these appointments only
inflamed passions and aggravated hostilities. This was the final
straw and it provoked the English Parliament to pass two very
important statutes.
The first was the Statute of Provisors, in 1351. This stated
that no one had the right to make any appointment on foreign soil
when that appointment could be considered an insult to the
sovereign of the country. The statute ruled that foreign
appointments within the English realm must first receive the
king's approval.
The second was the Statute of Praemunire, passed in 1353.
This law prevented any foreign court from demanding trial, or
exacting penalty from any Englishman, before he had been tried in
an English court. It also nullified any existing writ demanding
that an Englishman appear for trial in a foreign country. In
future such writs would require the permission of Parliament.
These statutes were soon to be tested. When King John had
placed his crown before a Papal legate, Pope Innocent III had
imposed an annual tax of 666 pound on the British crown. It was
paid, erratically, until 1320. In 1365, the Pope demanded the
reinstatement of this tax, and an immediate payment of the
arrears. To add insult to injury, the following year a Papal Bull
was issued ordering the king to appear in Rome and defend
himself. Those decisions on Rome's part trampled over
Parliament's Statute of Praemunire.
Six years later, in 1372, the year Wycliffe received his
doctorate, Rome sent an agent to collect money for the Pope's war
with Milan. The agent's extravagant and pompous retinue, his
costly robes, and his large staff of accountants requiring
numerous rooms, were all more suitable for a minister of state
than a representative of the church. The Pope's emissary promised
Parliament that he would do nothing that was against the
interests of the king, but Wycliffe could see that he was
promising what he could not perform. Immediately Wycliffe
published a tract pointing out that the nature of the agent's
mission was inconsistent with his promise to Parliament, which,
in effect, made him a liar.
Two years later, Wycliffe was appointed to a royal
commission which was sent to Bruges in an attempt to relieve
tension between London and Rome. That assignment occupied the
next two years of his life but proved to be a tedious waste of
time. Many of the English bishops on the commission gave way when
their foreign superiors promised them lucrative jobs, but
Wycliffe could not be bribed or swayed, and resolutely opposed
payment of the tribute. Though he failed to turn the
negotiations, his stance endeared him to Parliament and earned
him the friendship of John of Gaunt, the powerful fourth son of
the king. Wycliffe was later made a royal chaplain.
The theological front
The second front in the cold war centered on Wycliffe's
rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation. This doctrine, a
recent innovation, dating only to 1215, attempted to explain the
words of Jesus, "This is my body." The church contended that
though the "accidents" or "species" (the bread and wine
observable by human senses) remained the same, their substance
was literally and mysteriously changed into the actual body and
blood of Christ. Wycliffe saw serious problems in this
interpretation, which he considered to be unscriptural. The fact
that he had received his doctorate in 1372 suggests that he was
not considered heretical by the church at that time, but after he
published his book On the Eucharist in 1381 he lost most of his
friends in palace, Parliament and university.
The pen is mightier
Wycliffe gave lectures to his students on the secular
immoralities of the church. But he decided that his pen was more
powerful than his pulpit. There were no printing presses and all
publications had to be hand written, and then painstakingly
hand-copied for distribution; but the pen was nevertheless the
most potent vehicle for the dissemination of revolutionary ideas.
Wycliffe's earliest writing was a tract written in 1360
entitled it Objections to Friars, in which he accused the friars
of disrupting school discipline and domestic relationships, and
called them a pestilence. He said they were guilty of ignorance
and proselytizing, and were a major inconvenience both to church
and to university. Two important facts about this tract deserve
notice. First, it was not an attack on the church but on a
corrupt order of friars within it. Second, it gained Wycliffe
great support in the University of Oxford.
His great treatise on Civil Dominion, written in 1376, was
aggressive and strong. He declared that "England belongs to no
Pope. The Pope is but a man, subject to sin; but Christ is the
Lord of lords, and this kingdom is held directly and solely of
Christ alone." John Wycliffe considered that the division between
Rome and London was irreconcilable and went so far as to argue
that "every Papal resident in England, and every Englishman
living at the court of Rome, should be punished with death."
In 1378 he wrote The Truth of Holy Scripture in which he made
clear his view on truth in the Bible. He stated that the
scriptures are without error and contain God's entire revelation.
No further teaching from any other source is necessary, and all
other teaching must be tested against the Bible.
His book On the Eucharist, published in 1381, was followed
by Twelve Propositions. As we have seen, his courageous stance
against what he regarded as unbiblical teaching lost him the
friendship and support of much of the establishment.
In Wycliffe's writings we see all the seeds of the
Reformation. For nearly every issue on which he expressed his
opinion, godly men were burned at the stake 150 years later. He
condemned trust in personal works, pardons, indulgences and
priestly absolution. He called the sale of indulgences "a subtle
merchandise of Antichrist's clerks to magnify their counterfeit
power, and to get worldly goods, and to cause men to dread sin."
He held that Scripture comes "from the mouth of God": it is the
truth - superior to the teaching of the Pope, the Church or the
Fathers, and tells us all we need to know. Wycliffe set the table
and wrote the menu for the great reform that was to shake Europe
to its roots.
One of his last tracts was the Trialogue which took the form
of a conversation between Truth, Falsehood and Understanding.
"The church has fallen," he argued, "because she has abandoned
the gospel and preferred the laws of the Pope. Although there
should be a hundred Popes in the world at once [there were two
contending at the time], and all the friars living should be
transformed into cardinals, we must withhold our confidence from
them in the matter of faith, except so far as their teachings are
those of the Scriptures."
Wycliffe's powerful and prolific pen was dipped in acid. But
its greatest product was yet to come - a Bible in the language of
the ordinary Englishman and woman (see the next section).
However, he had first to face the fury of an offended church.
The lion's den
After Wycliffe wrote Civil Dominion, the opposition
determined that, by one means or another, Wycliffe must be
silenced. The threats now turned into action.
On February 19, 1377, Wycliffe was called to answer charges
before a convocation of bishops at St Paul's. The trial drew a
fanatical crowd, blindly obedient to the church. When Wycliffe
arrived, it was with a small procession of men who supported and
helped him. These included the two most powerful men in England:
Lord Percy, the marshal of England, and John of Gaunt, the Duke
of Lancaster, who was administering the kingdom during the
terminal sickness of Edward III. These two great men walked ahead
of Wycliffe. Following him were four doctors of divinity, who
were his counsel. They bravely threaded their way through the
hostile crowds thronging the entrances to the church. Once they
stepped across the threshold, they were confronted by a solid
wall of booing people, who swayed to and fro, their hands raised
in anger. The prince turned to Wycliffe and assured him that they
were there to protect him. Some sharp, angry words passed between
Percy and Courtenay, the Bishop of London. When Percy noticed
that Wycliffe stood during this exchange, he turned to him and
said, "Sit down and rest yourself." This assumption of authority
enraged Courtenay, who was acting as chairman, and he cried, "It
is unreasonable that one cited to appear before a bishop should
sit down during his answer. He must and shall stand." A riot
broke out which disrupted the entire proceedings, and Wycliffe
and his escort providentially escaped from the threatening
danger.
Later that year five Papal Bulls were issued against
Wycliffe, the Benedictines having examined his writings and taken
exception to eighteen propositions, and King Edward III was
ordered to place Wycliffe in prison awaiting the Pope's pleasure.
The king, however, was a sick man, on the point of death, and no
action was taken against Wycliffe.
Early in 1378, with the new Richard II a mere boy of ten,
Wycliffe appeared once more before the bishops. The citation was
issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury; the king and the
university were silent. The venue was astutely changed from St
Paul's to Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop
of Canterbury. Again there were angry crowds. "Men expected that
he should be devoured," wrote one historian, "being brought into
the lion's den." But there was uneasiness at the royal palace. As
we have seen, a law had been passed stating that Papal Bulls
should have no effect in England without the consent of
Parliament and king. Shortly after the trial began, it was
interrupted by Sir Louis Clifford with a message from the old
king's widow to the effect that they should pass no verdict on
the Reformer. The bishops were panic-stricken. They made an
immediate about-turn, attempted to placate Wycliffe, and told him
simply that he should not argue his controversial opinions in
Oxford university or preach them from the pulpit.
In the winter of 1380-1381, a commission of twelve Oxford
doctors investigated Wycliffe's teaching on the Mass and
concluded, by a majority of seven to five, that Wycliffe was in
error. The chancellor warned that anyone who held such views,
taught them or defended them would be imprisoned, suspended from
university office and excommunicated. In response, Wycliffe
declared that the chancellor could not possibly make him weaken
his opinion; and in May 1381 he published a defense of the
condemned opinions.
This was the year of the Peasants' Revolt, when, under the
leadership of Wat Tyler and John Ball, peasants marched on London
to air their grievances, and the King was obliged to seek refuge
in the Tower of London. Those in authority suggested that
Wycliffe's views had inspired the revolt, and in 1382 a Council
of theologians meeting at Blackfriars in London decreed that his
writings contained both heresy and error. In the middle of their
proceedings, an earthquake shook the whole building, whereupon
both the supporters of Wycliffe and his detractors claimed that
it showed God agreed with them. Wycliffe's enemies instigated a
Parliamentary bill condemning Wycliffe's teachings and this bill
was given royal assent without ever being debated by the Commons.
The attack was now concentrated on Wycliffe's Oxford
disciples, many of whom were brought to recant publicly. Wycliffe
himself, who had not been present at Blackfriars, escaped such a
fate. In 1382 he left Oxford and retired to Lutterworth, where he
continued to write despite the effects of a stroke. On December
28, 1384, while he was at communion in his parish church, he
suffered a second stroke and slumped back into his chair. Four
men came forward, lifted up the chair and carried it silently out
through a side door of the church to the parsonage. The old man
never spoke another word until he talked with his Savior in the
presence of the angels on the last day of that year (the false
immortality of the soul is here taught by the writer - Keith
Hunt).
A book for burning
Before Wycliffe, others had translated parts of the Bible
into English... In addition, about the year 1200, Orm, an
Augustinian monk, made a metrical paraphrase of parts of the
Gospels. He was followed by William of Shoreham, a parish priest
living in Kent, who made a translation of the Psalms in 1320. A
third translator was Richard Rolle, a hermit from Yorkshire, who
in 1340 also made a translation of the Psalms, adding a verse by
verse commentary. But it was left to Wycliffe and his followers
to provide the first complete Bible in the English language.
Wycliffe fervently believed that the Bible needed no special
interpretation even for laymen to understand, but since the
ordinary man could not understand Latin, the Bible had to be
translated into English.
Wycliffe's Bible was not a translation from the original
languages, for two reasons: first, the manuscripts which later
became available had not yet been discovered, and second, Hebrew
and Greek were little known in England.
(The Greek and Hebrew Scriptures were preserved in the East from
the Greek church and the Jews, hence God's people in that part of
the world were never without true light. It was the Holy Roman
Empire that was in spiritual darkness and many a false teaching -
Keith Hunt)
But Wycliffe and his followers were good Latin scholars, and
the source for their translation of the Scriptures was Jerome's
Vulgate of AD 405. As the church accepted the authority of the
apocryphal writings, the Wycliffe Bible included them.
It is not clear whether or not Wycliffe himself did any of
the translation but he certainly inspired, instigated and
probably supervised the work. There is every reason to believe
that the Old Testament, as far as Baruch 3:20, was translated by
(or under the direction of) Nicholas Hereford, one of Wycliffe's
disciples and fellow workers. There is a sharp contrast between
the style of the translation before and after that point. The
first part was scholarly, stiff and excessively literal - it may
have been intended chiefly as a "crib" for those clergy who
needed help with following their Latin Bibles - whereas the
remainder inclined more to the common language of the people. We
know that Nicholas Hereford was summoned to stand trial in London
as a heretic, and was excommunicated from the church. We do not
know for certain who was responsible for the rest of the
translation, but tradition has it that Wycliffe worked on some or
all of the New Testament.
(Some light was beginning to shine through in the work and
writings of Wycliffe. Certainly some of the false claims of Rome
were being exposed, and the Bible was beginning to move into the
hands of those outside of the clergy of Rome - Keith Hunt)
That was the Bible in English until, in 1396, a dozen years
after Wycliffe's death, a revision was made by John Purvey, who
had been Wycliffe's close assistant and secretary during the
Reformer's retirement at Lutterworth. Purvey revised the literal,
crabbed style of the original Old Testament translation to make
it much more readable and in keeping with the style of the New
Testament. It is Purvey's revision that was circulated as the
Wycliffe Bible, and it is impossible to over-emphasise its
importance and influence.
Remember, there were as yet no printing presses. It took ten
months to reproduce one copy of the Bible, and the cost of a copy
was between 30 and 40 pound. It was reported that two pennies
could buy a chicken, and four a hog. 40 pound was 9,600 pennies -
an enormous amount of money. Fox wrote of people who provided a
load of hay for the privilege of having the New Testament to read
for one day. Some would save for a month in order to purchase a
single page. Soon copies had to be made and distributed by
stealth, the Arundel Constitutions of 1408 having decreed that
"no one henceforth do by his own authority translate any text of
Holy Scripture into the English tongue or into any other, by way
of book or treatise; nor let any book or treatise now lately
composed in the time of John Wycliffe, or since, or hereafter be
composed, be read in whole or in part, in public or private,
under pain of the greater excommunication... He that shall do
contrary to this shall likewise be punished as a favorer of
heresy and error." The "punishment" referred to involved
execution by burning. Nevertheless, so many copies were produced
that even today there still exist over 200 manuscript copies of
this Bible. Wycliffe had started something in England which it
was impossible to stop. He had released an irresistible force
that would dispel the darkness, liberate the church and elevate
the social conditions of mankind for generations to come.
No man is an island
By the time of Wycliffe's death, his disciples, or Lollards,
looked upon themselves as a Christian church, dependent on the
Bible, and independent of Rome. They accepted the priesthood of
all believers and administration of the sacraments by men who had
not been ordained by a bishop. The poverty of the Wycliffites,
and their insistence on preaching in the language of the people
rather than in Latin, won them respect. Their views were so
popular that Wycliffite slogans and insults were placarded on the
walls of St Paul's and other public places. In 1395 a manifesto
was nailed to the door at Westminster Hall demanding that
Parliament "abolish celibacy, transubstantiation, prayers for the
dead, offerings at images, auricular confession, the practice of
blessing the oil," and so on.
When Wycliffe's supporters nailed the Twelve Conclusions, a
summary of the teaching of the early Lollards, on to the doors of
St Paul's and Westminster Abbey, Arundel, the Archbishop of York,
and Bray brooke, the Bishop of London, reacted angrily, storming
off to King Richard II, who was in Ireland at the time. By then
the king's wife, Anne of Bohemia, had died, and without her
influence for good, the king was easily swayed by these men. When
he returned to England, he ordered Parliament not to deliberate
the issue, threatening to punish anyone who persisted in
defending the followers of Wycliffe. A strange twist of
circumstances then occurred. Richard had previously quarreled
violently with his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, the son of
Wycliffe's patron John of Gaunt, and had banished Bolingbroke
from the country. When Richard was in Ireland, Bolingbroke had
landed in Yorkshire and amassed a rebel army. His efforts were a
success. In 1399, he dethroned Richard and became England's new
king, Henry IV.
Thomas Arundel, now Archbishop of Canterbury, had seen the
handwriting on the wall and had already deserted Richard to align
with Henry. It was he who placed the crown on the head of Henry,
and directed him at the coronation to "consolidate the throne,
conciliate the clergy and sacrifice the Lollards." Henry replied,
"I will be the protector of the church." Two years later, in
1401, the infamous De Haeretico Comburendo, the Act for burning
heretics, was passed by Parliament. Within eight days of its
passage, the fires of Smithfield were burning for William Sawtre,
the first martyr for Wycliffe's doctrine, who had been guilty of
saying, "Instead of adoring the cross on which Christ suffered, I
adore Christ who suffered on it." He was dragged to the precincts
of St Paul's cathedral, where his head was ceremonially shaved. A
layman's cap was put on his head and then he was handed over to
the "mercy" of the state.
With Lollardy condemned in the Constitutions of Arundel, a
Lollards' prison was built at Lambeth Palace, the London
residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a room twelve
feet by twelve, with a ceiling seven feet high; it is still
there, with iron rings attached to the wall a few feet apart. You
can still see the etchings made on the wall by the prisoners. One
reads "Jesus amor meus" (Jesus is my love).
In Norwich, the Bishop was zealous in his persecution of the
Lollards, causing so many to be killed that the place of public
execution became known as the Lollards' Pit. Such burnings took
place all over England, testifying to the large numbers of
Lollards who were willing to die for their faith.
The faith of these persecuted people is exemplified by Sir
John Oldcastle who took the title of Lord Cobham through his
third wife. He became a disciple of Wycliffe's theology, attended
the preaching of Lollard priests, and helped to provide
literature in English for them to distribute. He was brought to
trial at St Paul's on September 23, 1413. When he was questioned,
and the shouting priests demanded, "Believe!" Sir John responded:
"I am willing to believe all that God desires, but that the Pope
should have authority to teach what is contrary to Scripture -
that I can never believe." At this he was led back to the Tower
of London. Two days later he was attacked in the most abusive
language by the priests, canons, friars and indulgence-sellers,
but he was adamant. He informed them: "I ask not for your
absolution: it is God's only that I need."
He was given forty days to prepare his soul for death in the
hope that he would recant before his execution, and so weaken the
Lollard cause. Miraculously he escaped from the Tower, and fled
to Wales, where he led a Lollard rising. After three years, he
was recaptured, in December of 1417, and dragged on a hurdle to
St Giles's Fields, tied by chains to a spit over a slow fire, and
slowly roasted to death like a hog.
Wycliffe's followers could not be stamped out by
persecution. They were still numerous and active 125 years later,
when the Reformation started in earnest and turned all Europe
upside down.
(The sacrifice of these men and women in giving their very lives,
often in a horrible death, we should honor and value. Those true
saints [though they did not understand all the truths of the
Lord] brought forth people who would only honor the Bible, and
not men, be it Pope or King. It was the beginning towards an
English Bible - Keith Hunt)
The priest of Prague
The fires of reform that were being kindled in England were
burning also in Bohemia (today part of the Czech republic). In
1360 the king of Bohemia invited Conrad of Waldhausen to come and
preach against the corruption which was prevalent in the church.
That was the beginning of a national reform movement which was
later to focus in a man called John Huss.
Born in 1372, Huss entered an elementary school when he was
twelve. Five years later he enrolled as a student at the
University of Prague, where he remained as student and professor
for the rest of his life. He earned his B.A. and his M.A. degrees
in 1396 and was then invited to teach on the faculty. He used
this opportunity to pursue a bachelor's degree in theology, which
he gained in 1404. By then he had become a prominent leader in
the reform movement.
In 1400 he was ordained as a priest, and two years later he
was appointed to the key position of rector and preacher at the
Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. The chapel had been founded by a
wealthy merchant as a center of the reformed movement, and two
sermons were delivered there daily. Into this environment came
the explosive ideas of John Wycliffe.
The Wycliffe connection came through a Bohemian princess,
Anne, who, in 1382, had married Richard II of England. In England
Anne came across Wycliffe's writings and became an ardent
supporter of his teaching. Not only was she able to sway the
king's thinking, but she brought an entourage of ladies-in-
waiting who exerted considerable spiritual influence over the
court in England. The presence of a Bohemian queen in the courts
of Richard led several students to come over from Bohemia to
study in England. One of these students returned to Prague with
several of the more reformed writings of Wycliffe. When Anne died
in 1394, her bereaved ladies-in-waiting returned to Bohemia with
the writings of Wycliffe in their traveling bags. These were
distributed throughout the state of Bohemia.
Though Huss did not agree with Wycliffe's views on
transubstantiation, he did accept several of Wycliffe's
propositions, notably Wycliffe's denial of the need for Popes,
priests and prelates, and his support for the participation of
the laity in the cup of the communion, an idea which was totally
unacceptable to Rome.
There were a large number of Germans in Prague, with power
to vote, and as a result of their influence the University
condemned Wycliffe on forty-five issues. This divided the entire
country, and led the king to eliminate the German vote at the
University. At this, the Germans packed their bags and quit
Prague, leaving Huss with supreme influence over the city and its
university.
The Church of Rome was furious, and in February 1411 the
archbishop obtained a Papal ban on all preaching at the Bethlehem
Chapel. Huss refused to obey, so he was excommunicated. The
archbishop burned 200 volumes of Wycliffe's writings, and Huss
responded by publicly defending Wycliffe. For this he was ordered
to go to Rome and respond to questions. Once more, he refused to
comply with the Pope's orders.
In 1412, Pope John XXIII launched a crusade against the King
of Naples and offered all the supporting soldiers full remission
of sins in return for their assistance. Huss was so outraged at
such unwarranted spiritual concessions that he more openly
attacked the entire idea of the sale of indulgences. The result
was that the city of Prague was placed under interdict by the
Pope, which meant that no religious services could be conducted,
not even baptisms or funerals. Under this pressure, Huss left the
city and went into southern Bohemia, spending his time in writing
two important books, one on the church and the other on the
buying and selling of positions in the church.
During this time three contesting Popes were simultaneously
attempting to rule the Church: Gregory XII in Rome, Benedict XIII
in Perpignan and John XXIII in Avignon, France. They had been
condemning and anathematizing each other and so dividing the
power of the church. In 1414-1418 a Council was convened in the
Swiss city of Constance, in the hope that the schism might be
resolved and the Papacy reunited. The emperor, Sigismund, wanted
to resolve the Huss/Wycliffe issue at the same time, and invited
Huss to Constance, promising safe passage in both directions, no
matter what the outcome of the dispute might be. With great
hesitation Huss accepted the emperor's offer. The Council did
mend the Papal schism, but behaved treacherously to Huss.
Within a month of his arrival, he was captured on orders from the
Popes, and put in prison, awaiting trial for heresy. When the
Bohemians heard about it, they protested vehemently, but the
Popes maintained that the arrest was in keeping with canon law
and to deceive heretics was a pious act. After languishing in
prison for eight months without a trial, Huss was taken from his
dungeon to the cathedral in Constance. On July 6, 1415, he was
publicly disgraced by the removal of every article of priestly
clothing, each with a curse. Then he was made to wear a conical
cap with an inscription identifying him as a heretic. At the city
gates, tied with water-soaked ropes, he was burned to death. His
martyrdom became the symbol of the reformed movement.
Candles in the darkness
If we were to delineate the Middle Ages politically, they
would begin at the fall of Rome in 476 and reach to the discovery
of America in 1492. In terms of religion, the period stretches
from the conversion of Constantine in 312 to Erasmus' Greek New
Testament in 1516. Looked at from the point of view of
scholarship, the Middle Ages begin with the fall of Rome, and end
some time after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the
development of the printing press in 1454. Within this period we
may distinguish between the "Dark Ages" of the earlier part and
the revival of learning in the later part. This revolution in
academic attitudes came about in three stages.
Scholasticism
When all the secular schools of the Roman empire were swept
away by the barbarian hordes, the only institution left was the
church. In 800 Charlemagne became the emperor and he gradually
established cathedral schools for the training of priests, and
convent schools for the training of monks. He also had a palace
school for his own children and the children of his nobles, and
often studied with them. He ordered manuscripts, especially
manuscripts of the Bible, to be copied with extreme care, and it
became axiomatic that the church was the guardian of education.
Knowledge increased and minds began to open. Though theology was
the only subject of study, the approach was philosophical.
Attempts were made to reduce Christian doctrine to scientific
form, and to harmonize reason and religion. Because the teachers
were known as schoolmen, or scholastics, this movement, which
flourished from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, became
known as scholasticism. Some of the discussions were trifling and
absurd and scholasticism came under severe criticism from Roger
Bacon, who died some thirty years before Wycliffe was born. In
fact, Wycliffe was considered the last of the scholastics.
Humanism
The second stage came with Francesco Petrarch, an Italian
poet who was contemporary with John Wycliffe. He studied art,
society and especially literature, focusing attention on human
achievement. Under his influence, scholasticism gave way to
humanism and the foundation was laid for an age of "inner
motivated" men who emphasised human values and rational thought
and studied the liberal arts, such as history, poetry, philology
and rhetoric. This stage reached its peak at the beginning of the
sixteenth century with such scholars as John Colet, Thomas More,
and Erasmus.
The Renaissance
The third stage came with the fall of Constantinople in
1453. The ancient city of Byzantium, which Constantine had
enlarged and renamed, became, in AD 330, the seat of government
for the whole Roman Empire. It survived for more than eleven
centuries before falling to the Turks, who made it the capital of
their Ottoman Empire. At its fall, the Greeks fled from
Constantinople to the west, taking with them their humanist
scholarship and culture. The mixing of eastern and western
cultures brought about a renaissance of learning in western
Europe which affected many fields of endeavor. In fine art, when
Raphael or Leonardo da Vinci put paint on canvas, they expressed
the humanism that had captured the minds of Europe. They painted
people, even nudes, with a new care for accuracy of
representation. Michelangelo's sculpture showed the same interest
in the human body. In architecture, builders became imaginative
and inventive, introducing new ideas in space, decoration and
style. The dome was brought from the east and began to be seen on
many western buildings.
The new appreciation of art of all kinds spread to music.
Musicians and composers were esteemed as important people in
their own right, and there was a resurgence of creativity. Music
was also secularised. Composers turned to poets for lyrics and
the madrigal was born.
In the field of scholarship, there was a rebirth of what is
called classical education. Scholars not only explored new
subjects, but also adopted new tools, such as the classical
language of Greek. This led to a study of Greek and Latin
authors, and required the collecting, printing, annotating and
translating of the writings of the great thinkers of Greece and
Rome.
The exploration of new concepts and the intellectual
interest in Greek led to an interest in the original text of the
New Testament. Study of the New Testament in Greek was no longer
frowned upon, since it was associated with a revival in learning.
The day had dawned on the dark medieval night.
The end of ignorance
Johann Gutenberg
About the time that Constantinople fell, the process began
for the publication of the first printed Bible. It came to
fruition some three years later, on August 15, 1456. Its printer,
Johann Gutenberg, was a visionary of the type who has millions of
dollars in the bank but cannot afford the cab fare to get there
and collect it.
Johann was born in Mainz, Germany, about 1398. His father,
Friele zum Gensfleisch, was a well-to-do gentleman and one of the
city's leading officials. (Gutenberg took his name from the place
of his mother's birth.) How his father made his fortune is not
known to us. Some historians relate that he was a scribe who
carefully copied manuscripts, and it was that tedious and tiring
work that motivated his son to invent the printing press. We have
no doubt that the father lost his fortunes. Johann's later
financial calamities prove it - and it is surmised that he lost
them at the uprisings of the artisans in 1428. The family was
finally forced to leave Mainz in 1434 and for the next ten years
they lived in Strasbourg. While at Strasbourg, Johann seized and
imprisoned the town clerk of Mainz for a debt owed to him by the
corporation of that city. But when the mayor and the councilors
of Strasbourg disapproved of his conduct, he withdrew his charges
and forfeited all claims to the money.
The story is told that as a boy Johann entertained himself
in his father's workshop by carving the separate letters of his
name on soft wood. He was lining them up on his father's table
when the "H" fell off into a bucket of purple dye. He quickly
retrieved it, cleaned off the excess on the side of the bucket,
and let it rest on a piece of paper to dry. The impression it
left on the paper, and in his mind, was indelible. This was where
the concept of a printing press with movable type was born. If
this story is true, it took some forty years for the press to
move from an idea to a reality.
Gutenberg eventually produced a steel stamp, or punch, of
each letter of the alphabet, which, when stamped into a block of
the softer metal, copper, created a mold or matrix into which hot
metal could be poured, and any amount of type cast. But this
process was expensive: it involved not only the manufacture of
type and the building of presses, but also the creation of
special printing inks. The paper of that day, made from rags, was
also expensive. Gutenberg was to print 200 copies of the Bible on
paper. Each page had two columns of 42 lines, and each Bible had
a total of 1,282 pages. He was also to produce 30 of his Bibles
on vellum, made from the hides of calves; and it required 10,000
calves just to accomplish this task. All this required money, and
it was money he did not have. He had to find it.
In 1450, a lawyer by the name of Johann Fust advanced 800
guilders to Gutenberg to promote his work, requiring no other
security than the tools which were to be made by the investment.
Fust was also to have provided 300 guilders every year for
expenses, though there is no record that this ever happened. In
1452, Fust had to come up with another 800 guilders, in order to
prevent the collapse of Gutenberg's entire venture. Some time
before November 1455 Fust took legal proceedings against
Gutenberg, apparently won the case, and moved all the tools to
his own house in Mainz. There, with the assistance of Peter
Schoeffer, they published various books. It is not known if the
Bible had been printed before the court case. If it had, all the
money that came from its sale would have undoubtedly gone to
Fust.
Johann Gutenberg died in Mainz in 1468, destitute and
forgotten. He was buried in the Franciscan church, but it was
demolished and replaced by another church, which in turn has also
been demolished. It is tragic how simple it was to erase the
knowledge of a man who had created a machine which did so much to
bring about the sudden death of medieval ignorance.
Some thirty years later, his invention had been reproduced
in nearly every country in Europe. By 1500, there were no fewer
than 151 printing shops in Venice alone; and in the town of
Wittenberg, Luther's city, a printer by the name of Lufft
produced more than 100,000 Bibles. Because the paper contained no
wood, the pages have remained white to this day, and the gold of
the illuminated initials has lost none of its splendor.
William Caxton
William Caxton was the first English printer. He had been an
apprentice to Robert Large, the Lord Mayor of London, upon whose
death he was sent to Bruges, where he was responsible for the
central foreign market of the Anglo-Flemish trade. He later
became the commercial adviser to Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy.
By July 1471, he was in Cologne, where he learned the art of
printing. In 1476 when he returned to England, he set up a
printing press "at the sign of the Red Pale" in Westminster. He
published about a hundred volumes, printing over 18,000 pages,
and although he did not print the Bible, his presses fired the
imagination of English reformers. Burning in their minds was a
new idea: a printed English Bible.
Playing with matches
A child came into the world in 1466 or 1467, born (like his
brother Peter) the illegitimate son of a monk. The parents later
married, and the father named the boy Herasmus. Later, Herasmus
decided to adopt the Greek form of his name, Erasmus, preceding
it with the Latin equivalent, Desiderius, and, because he was
born in Rotterdam, he added Roterodamus. Desiderius Erasmus
Roterodamus became known to the world as Erasmus, one of the
keenest brains of the humanist movement.
At the age of eight he went to the School of the Brethren of
the Common Life, attached to St Lebuins' church in Deventer,
where he made important acquaintances, including Adrian of
Utrecht, who became Pope during the great Lutheran debate.
At the age of eleven, he suffered a very great tragedy when first
his mother and then his father died of the plague. Though
custodians for his welfare were named, one of them soon died of
the same plague. In that day, defenseless and immature children
were kidnapped by monks or enticed into religious orders. His
brother Peter submitted to the enticements of the monks, but
Erasmus refused. His health was weak and he felt he would be
unable to stand the rigors of monastic life. Moreover, he was a
free spirit and did not want to be in bondage to any person or
power on earth. He did, however, agree to a friend's suggestion
that he become a boarder in an Augustinian monastery for a
three-month trial period. This gave him access to the library and
required no fasting.
At the end of the three months, facing the prospect of being
homeless and penniless, Erasmus had little choice but to take the
next step and become a novice. This led, in 1486, to his
reluctantly becoming an Augustinian canon. He was ordained in
1492, but left the monastery a few years later, and took up the
position of Latin secretary to the Bishop of Cambrai. Thus ends
the first chapter of his life.
The second chapter opened when an old schoolmaster persuaded
the Bishop to let Erasmus study at the University of Paris. Poems
he had written were already circulating in Paris, and he was
welcomed there by the intelligentsia. To augment his income, he
started both learning and teaching Greek. One of his students,
William Blount, invited him to England to become a student of
Greek at Oxford. There he was introduced to Richard Charnock, the
prior of one of the colleges, who in turn brought him to meet Dr
John Colet, who was lecturing on the book of Romans at the
university. One day Colet took Erasmus for a meal at the home of
the Lord Mayor of London and at the table he sparred with a
nineteen-yearold boy who sat opposite him, whose name was Thomas
More. They were to become lifelong friends. More took Erasmus to
the royal nursery to meet the nine-year-old Henry, who was to be
the future King Henry VIII. On every occasion, Erasmus dazzled
and amazed his hosts with his sharp mind and keen wit.
One of Erasmus' friends enabled him to accomplish a lifelong
dream and travel to Italy. Venice was a thrilling experience. At
Rome he had a great and flattering reception, meeting cardinals
and strengthening his existing friendship with Pope Julius II.
The Pope asked him to stay and write papers on the pontiff's
military activities, but he declined, considering Rome another
tempting cage in which he would end up with his wings clipped. On
his way back to England he was awarded a doctorate at the
University of Turin.
Erasmus owed much of his popularity to his writings. The
early poems of the 1490s gave way to his Manual of the Christian
Soldier, in which he showed that much of the dogma and ceremony
in the church were irrelevant. Writings such as this fed the
future reform movement. William Tyndale, who was born the year
Erasmus died, had the manuscript translated into English, and
then printed and circulated.
When Erasmus returned to England in 1505, he stayed with Sir
Thomas More and wrote his famous satire In Praise of Folly, in
which he portrayed kings, bishops, princes and popes in bondage
to Folly. But his greatest work was his edition of the Greek New
Testament, which appeared in 1516. For this, Erasmus collected
the Greek documents of antiquity for the entire New Testament,
and compiled and printed them with a Latin translation, on 672
pages. To assure its acceptance, he dedicated it to Pope Leo X.
This was the first time the New Testament in its original
language was made generally available - about 3,300 copies were
printed of the first two editions. The only other Greek edition
available was confined to about 600 unwieldy and expensive
copies. Erasmus' edition formed the basis of vernacular
translations of the New Testament for much of Europe: Zwingli and
Calvin used it to give their people a Bible, Luther did the same
for the German nation, and Tyndale for England. The fourth and
fifth editions of 1527 and 1536 were used in the King James
version. Erasmus had never intended to create such a
conflagration, but then, he should have known better than to play
with matches. As he himself admitted, he "laid the egg which
Luther hatched."
Review
It might be helpful to see where our trail has led us so
far.
We have seen that the New Testament writings were the work
of apostles or men who knew the apostles. The young church grew
rapidly, turning the world upside down. Persecution, far from
destroying the church, fanned the fire of faith into a blaze.
Though the church was often bitterly split by controversies and
heresies, out of these inner turmoils emerged the creeds.
With Constantine there came new dangers... the church became
materialistic, secular, power-seeking, and immoral. Ritual
increased. Preacher gave way to priest, the Lord's table to the
altar, the apostle to the Pope. Excommunication turned into
execution. The Latin Bible was known only to priest and monk, and
even then was little studied. Without the Bible, apostasy went
unchecked while ordinary people fed on superstition and fear.
In the middle of the medieval night, scholasticism opened up
an opportunity for debate. In the fourteenth century the voice of
reform was heard in the West. Since John Wycliffe's benefactor
was the king's brother, every attempt to silence his voice was
frustrated.
As humanist learning spread from Constantinople, scholars
began to study Erasmus' Greek New Testament. With the invention
of printing new and subversive ideas spread rapidly throughout
Europe. The door was open at last for the Reformation, and for
the collapse of the wall which had divided the people from the
indestructible book.
.....................
To be continued
Note:
Most today in our 21st century space-age world, with all of our
modern tech computers, cell phones, iPads, and other forms of
contact and translating in high speed form, language and photos,
most will not stop to investigate the history of HOW we got our
English Bible. It is a story of people who loved the word of God
above any physical man, even above their very own lives; they
often had to die to defend the Bible and the truths they were
seeing taught in its pages, in contradiction to the false
teachings of the Church of Rome. Many of them were part of the
Church of Rome, but could see where falsehood above truth had
prevailed in Rome, where traditions had been placed above the
truth and commandments of God.
Many of them DIED for the truths that God was granting them to
see. We need to ever give honor to them. They started the freedom
we now enjoy in being free to have and to read the entire Bible.
Our English Bible was founded upon their work, their vision,
their sacrifice, even upon their death, so we today can enjoy
reading our English Bible.
The work that people like Wycliffe undertook cannot be
overestimated for its value for us today. It was the beginning of
the promised end time work of "the Elijah to come" whom Jesus
said would come and "restore all things" (Matthew 17:9-13). John
the baptist was the fulfilment for Jesus' first coming. Another
will fulfil at the end time "Elijah shall truly first come, and
restore all things" just as promised in the very end time
prophecy of Malachi 3:1 and 4:1-6. Before the coming of the great
and dreadful day of the Lord [the last year or so of this age]
God will make sure someone comes in the spirit and power of
Elijah, to RESTORE ALL THINGS!
What Wycliffe and others of his age started was the beginning of
getting the Bible to the native language, the English language,
that God would choose, to be the universal language of the entire
world. Then the world would be ready for "the Elijah shall truly
first come, and restore all things" as Jesus promised.
What about YOU? Are you reading the Bible wanting to be taught,
corrected, instructed? Are you wanting, desiring, to see the
restitution of all things. The time has come when all things are
being restored. God is working; are you recognizing His voice? I
pray you are!
Keith Hunt
June 2010
More STAND UP for TRUTH!Even to their Death! TOWARDS AN ENGLISH BIBLE #2
By Ken Connolly
THE FIRST English Bibles
The pioneer
Just as it is sometimes very difficult to find the source of
a mighty river, so it is not always easy to find the beginning of
a mighty movement. The German Reformation had its Luther;
Switzerland its Zwingli and Calvin; and Scotland its thundering
voice of Knox. But in the English Reformation there was no one
great human voice. The voice was simply the word of God in the
indestructible book. But as the movement progressed, individual
people had important roles to play. The man who may perhaps be
called the initiator in the translation of the Bible into English
was a man called Thomas Bilney.
Bilney was born in Norfolk around 1495. In 1517, he was at
Trinity Hall in Cambridge, studying canon law, the subject
usually taken by aspiring priests such as Bilney. Canon law had
its beginning when Roman law and church policy were in
disagreement, and major church councils had to be held. Records
were kept of the decisions, and by the fifth century these were
collected into "canons." Later, the decrees of individual bishops
were added, and by AD 1140 they were compiled into Gratian's
Decretum, which became a major field of study and reference for
future priests.
Bilney's religious life was barren. Fasting, vigils and
indulgences had left him with little money (forgiveness being
expensive), poor health (he was too frail physically for
additional penance), and an empty heart, because through it all
he found no peace.
Afraid that every generation had its Judas and that he was
the one for his generation, he decided he might as well go to
hell for good reasons. One night he went out and bought a
blackmarket copy of the Erasmus New Testament, which had been
published the previous year and, though banned, was part of the
religious sub-culture in Cambridge. As he read it, Bilney was
thrilled and stunned. When he read Paul's words in 1 Timothy 1:15
they went like an arrow to his heart. On the spot, he trusted in
the Christ of those pages and his life turned upside down. Doubt
gave way to assurance, hostility was exchanged for peace, and an
effervescent joy dominated his heart. At once he wanted to share
his new-found faith with others.
He picked the White Horse Inn for the field in which to sow
the seed. Nicknamed "Little Germany" because Luther's writings
were often discussed there, the White Horse was a meetingplace
for the scholars of Cambridge who gathered to talk about subjects
prohibited in the classroom. Bilney brought his New Testament to
these discussion tables and the result was cataclysmic.
The news spread through Cambridge and began to attract
notable lecturers from the university. These men came to the
White Horse out of curiosity, and were converted as they read and
discussed Bilney's New Testament. They included Thomas Arthur, a
Fellow of St John's College, who became Bilney's traveling
companion; and the famous Hugh Latimer, though he was converted
in the confessional booth rather than in the pub. George
Stafford, an influential young Fellow of Pembroke Hall, also
joined their ranks. He was probably the most admired professor of
Cambridge, and his conversion shook the entire academic world.
Stafford tried to influence Robert Barnes, another Doctor of
Divinity, who was the prior of a monastery in Cambridge. What
Stafford failed to achieve, Bilney accomplished, and Robert
Barnes became a convert.
The stir aroused all England, attracting other men, such as
Matthew Parker, the future Archbishop of Canterbury; William
Tyndale, the martyr who, as we will go on to see, was the man who
gave England its first English printed Bible; and John Frith, an
eighteen-year-old student of mathematics, the brains of the
Reformation.
Bilney graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree and was
admitted to holy orders in 1519. In 1525 he was licenced to
preach by the Bishop of Ely, and started to proclaim the gospel
from the pulpit, denouncing the worship of saints and relics. In
1527 he was arrested while preaching in Ipswich, and taken to the
Tower of London. At his trial in the chapter house in
Westminster, his judges included Cardinal Wolsey, the Archbishop
of Canterbury, and several bishops and lawyers. Wolsey had to
depart on urgent business, leaving Tunstall, Bishop of London, in
charge. They played cat and mouse with Bilney. His friends were
allowed to talk to him, and, on the grounds that it would be "for
the benefit of the movement," they succeeded in undermining his
resolve. On December 7, 1527, he signed his recantation. The
following Sunday, with his head shaven and bare, he walked to St
Paul's where he heard a sermon denouncing his heresy, and was
forced to light a fire under a stack of Tyndale's Bibles. This
shattered his soul and left him almost demented. He resolved to
get arrested again so that he could make a stand for the truth.
His second trial took place in 1531 at Norwich, where he had
ministered. His public burning there was intended to put an end
to his influence. The night before his death, he was eating a
hearty meal when Matthew Parker and some friends came to visit
him. They tried to comfort him before the horrible ordeal of the
following day, but Bilney said nothing. When he had finished
eating his meal, he slipped down the bench to where they were
sitting, put his open Bible on the table beside him, held his
index finger over the flame of the candle and burned it to the
bone. He looked at his stunned friends and pointed to Isaiah
43:2: "When thou walkest through fire, thou shalt not be burned."
His captors took Bilney from his cell on the morning of August
19, 1531. As they crossed the Bishop's Bridge he ran forward to
embrace the stake and thank God for the privilege of having a
second opportunity to die for Christ. He was a noble example to
his contemporaries. First, he taught the reformers how to live
for Christ, and then he taught them how to die for Him.
(So was the light of truth and God's word held in such high
esteem. It is our debt that we own our English Bible to such men,
who would freely die to make sure the words of the Bible could be
read by the everyday person in the English language. May we be as
strong as they, when our faith is tested - may we be willing to
die for the faith once delivered to the saints - Keith Hunt)
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer
Thomas Cranmer was very different from most heroes of the
Reformation; in fact, he was more of a coward than a hero. But
his very ability to bend under pressure enabled him to play a
vital role among the promoters of the "Indestructible Book."
He was born in Nottinghamshire on July 2, 1489. Recalling his
schooldays, he later said that he attended school under a very
severe master, but became quite skilled as a hawker and a horse
rider.
His father died in 1501 and his mother sent him to
Cambridge, where, in 1510, he became a Fellow of Jesus College.
He had to forfeit his privileges as a Fellow when he married
"Black Joan," a relative of the landlady of the Dolphin Inn, but
he was reinstated after his wife died in childbirth. He was
ordained in 1523, and graduated the following year.
He was given a position teaching divinity at Magdalen
College, and also became an examiner for the University.
When the "sweating sickness" broke out in the summer of 1529,
Cranmer determined to take two boys who were under his
supervision back home to their parents in the county of Essex. By
happenstance, he arrived in the town of Waltham, Essex, when
Henry VIII was also there. While Cranmer was eating, he
recognized Gardiner, the king's secretary, who was traveling with
the king, and they began to talk. During the conversation he
commented that if the university theologians decided that the
king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon had been illegal in the
first place, any ecclesiastical court would grant him a divorce.
When the King heard this, he is reported as saying: "This man I
trow, has got the right sow by the ear."
After an interview with the king at Greenwich, Cranmer was
asked to write down his opinions, quoting the church fathers,
scriptures and general councils which supported the argument. He
was then promoted to the position of an archdeacon and
subsequently was made one of the king's chaplains. He defended
his views before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and in
1530 was dispatched to Rome to plead the king's case.
Failing at Rome, Cranmer was sent to Germany to air his
views before the Lutheran princes. Also, and significantly, he
was given political authority to lift certain trade embargoes, if
he felt that would strengthen his cause. While he was there, he
stayed with a gifted minister named Osiander, and in 1532 was
secretly married to his niece. The marriage, though difficult to
conceal, was dangerous to reveal, and was kept a secret for many
years. On March 30 the following year, he was consecrated
Archbishop of Canterbury.
We have already seen that it was Cranmer who declared
Henry's marriage to Catherine to be "null and void," Cranmer who
crowned Anne Queen - and Cranmer who, less than three years
later, signed the papers for Henry's divorce from Anne. But above
all, it was Cranmer who supervised the events of the Reformation.
This was his most significant role. In 1538 the king commanded
every parish church to buy an English Bible, and under Cranmer's
influence the order was renewed in 1541. He stood almost alone in
his opposition to Henry's Six Articles of 1539, which spelt out
England's anti-Lutheran position, upholding the Roman doctrine of
transubstantiation, and the celibacy of the priesthood. Though
they were passed, despite his objections, and set Protestantism
back, compliance with them was not rigidly enforced and the
defeat proved to be temporary.
Cranmer was at Henry's bedside when he died. Henry VIII was
never a Protestant at heart and he left a sum of 600 pounds to
pay for prayers to be said to shorten his time in purgatory.
Cranmer crowned Edward VI, shortening the ceremony because of
the young king's frail health, and was at his bedside when he
went out into eternity six years later. Others, seeing the
dangers about to fall on Protestantism in England, fled to the
continent, but Cranmer stayed beside Lady Jane Grey during her
nine days on the throne.
Mary, who, as we have seen, seized the throne from Lady Jane
Grey, was crowned in 1553. She vowed vengeance on Cranmer, whose
views on Henry's divorce from her mother had made Mary
illegitimate and who had helped to turn England towards the
Protestant faith. Later that year he was taken to the Tower of
London on the charge of treason. In September 1555, along with
Ridley and Latimer, he was ordered to be tried, in his absence,
by a papal commission sitting in Rome. In February 1556, when he
was sixty-seven years old, he was stripped of his office by a
special commission sent from Rome. It was at this time that he
signed two recantations.
Because his position was second only to that of the monarch,
and he had served as Archbishop of Canterbury for twenty-three
years, Cranmer was given a specific day to make his recantation
public. At St Mary's church, on March 21, 1556, to the shocked
horror of his judges, he recanted his recantation. He held his
right hand to the crowd and condemned it, promising that it would
be the first part of his body to burn. With quiet confidence, he
submitted himself to his fate. That day he held a meeting with
Ridley, Latimer, Bilney and several other martyrs on the other
side of Jordan.
The brain
John Frith was born in 1503 in Westerham, Kent, the son of
Richard Frith, an inn-keeper. When he was a young man, he was
sent to Cambridge, where he enrolled at the impressive King's
College. It was there that he met Tyndale, who showed him how to
find peace with God. He was a student of the classics, and was
gifted with a brilliant mind and a photographic memory. He
received his degree from Cambridge on December 7, 1525.
At that time Cardinal Wolsey was in the process of founding
Cardinal College in Oxford (later to become Christ Church), and
came to Cambridge in search of men qualified to become its
foundation members. Cranmer, the future Archbishop of Canterbury,
declined his offer, but Frith, with many others, accepted. He
moved to Oxford and became a junior canon when the college opened
in 1526.
It was in November 1527 that Bilney was arrested. At his
trial in London, it came out that Thomas Garret had sold 350
books of Reformed theology on the black market. All of Bilney's
known friends in Cambridge came under suspicion and were
arrested. Frith's position was made more perilous when John
Clark, an ex-Cambridge student and one of Frith's companions in
Oxford, was found in his bedroom in Oxford reading his Bible to
several other students. This led to the arrest of all Bilney's
friends in Oxford, including Frith.
The group were imprisoned in a cave beneath the college,
where salted fish was stored, and the experience killed three of
them, including John Clark. At this point, Wolsey demanded the
release of the rest. Some were made to carry faggots to the top
of the Carfax intersection in Oxford, and burn a collection of
forbidden books, but Frith managed to evade that punishment.
Frith escaped and fled across the Channel to Antwerp, where he
met Tyndale, and a close friendship sprang up between the two
men. Tyndale was one of Wolsey's intended victims, and Frith was
able to strengthen Tyndale's resolve to stand firm. Stephen
Vaughan, an English agent in Antwerp who had attempted to
separate the two reformers, reported that John Frith had married,
but nothing else is known about this.
Frith was out of England from 1528 to 1532, and during this
time he wrote a number of books which were published in Antwerp.
He became known for his forceful logic, his knowledge of the
church fathers, and his forthright attack on Roman doctrines
which needed reforming. The leaders of the opposition marked him
down as a dangerous reformer and put a price on his head.
We are never told why, but Frith crossed the Channel back to
England like a lamb wandering into a lion's lair. He made for the
town of Reading, where the Prior was a friend of the reformers,
holding Protestant services privately in his own home. But Frith
was arrested for loitering before he could reach the prior's
house. When he refused to give his name, he was put into stocks
and held as a rogue and vagabond. Almost starving, he asked to
see a schoolmaster named Cox, who managed to secure his release.
Frith then found that it was easier to get into England than
to get out. He was again arrested at Southend, identified as a
reformer, and sent to the Tower. Two secret reformers, Cromwell
and Cranmer, held him as "a prisoner of the Crown," depriving his
enemies of any opportunity to vent their hatred on him. This
ensured his safety, within his captivity. Five uneventful months
elapsed. During this time Frith endeared himself to the jailor,
and secured some privileges and liberties. A few people were
permitted to visit him in prison, and on more than one occasion
he was even given permission to leave his cell for a night. The
jailor also allowed his friends to smuggle paper into and out of
his cell. Those amenities secured for England the richest
literature produced during the Reformation period. With the aid
of the printing press, Frith was able to conduct a debate from
his cell with no less an enemy of the Reformation than Sir Thomas
More himself, the Chancellor of England. The papers were smuggled
out of prison, published on the continent, and then circulated
throughout England. Frith would write a challenge to More, and
then reply to More's response. He quoted Ambrose, Chrysostom,
Jerome, Tertullian, Origen and Athanasius - yet in his prison he
did not have a single book. It was all entirely from memory. He
was a controversialist par excellence.
Frith's writings on the Lord's Supper were powerful, clear,
and effective. He was able to bring about the conversion of one
of his opponents, and persuade other reformers that the subject
of the Lord's Sup per was serious - so serious that they should
be willing to burn for what they believed. His arguments were
later enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer of 1552.
Refusing many opportunities and encouragements to escape,
Frith was tried at St Paul's on June 20, 1533, found guilty and
imprisoned in Newgate to await execution. On July 4, 1533, he was
taken to Smithfield and tied at the stake, back to back with a
twenty-four-year-old tailor named Andrew Hewet. Though the wind
blew the flames away from Frith, he smiled, knowing that, though
it would prolong his suffering, it would quicken his friend's
death. Frith had just turned thirty years of age when his spirit
left his body at Smithfield.
(Again, what a testimony for us, to hold fast to the faith once
delivered to the saints, even if it means our death at the hands
of those who think they do God a service. Jesus said, at the end
time, once more there would come a great tribulation on the true
Church of God, and some would be called upon by the Lord to die
for the truth of God's word. Such it has been through the ages,
from righteous Abel to those you are now reading about, to whom
truth was being revealed which they could not deny, and would
defend even to their death. May we be of their same mind -
defenders of THE faith - Keith Hunt)
The orator
John Frith debated the teaching of the Bible, Queen Anne
Boleyn encouraged its circulation, and Hugh Latimer preached its
message. He was probably born in 1485 at Thurcaston, only twelve
miles from Lutterworth, where John Wycliffe had ministered. His
father was a yeoman who rented his farm, and was earning "three
or four pounds a year at the uttermost." To help his father, he
looked after the five sheep and milked the thirty cows.
Latimer was enrolled as a student at Clare College,
Cambridge, where he earned his B.A. degree in 1510, and his M.A.
degree four years later. After that, he decided to study
divinity. He worked hard and
.......................
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gained his degree in 1524. To graduate, he was required to
deliver an oration on a religious subject, and selected for his
topic a denunciation of Melanchthon, Luther's associate. His
scathing criticisms of the German Reformation and the dexterity
and skill with which they were delivered marked him out as a man
of indisputable leadership gifts.
Latimer's mental prowess, along with his gift as an orator,
were noticed by Thomas Bilney, who, as a Fellow of a college, was
compelled to be present at the oration. As he listened, Bilney
could visualize that gift being used in the cause of the
Reformation. But Bilney was wellknown as a heretic. How could he
get a hearing with Latimer? When the applause had ended, and the
congratulatory remarks were over, Bilney approached Latimer, and
asked if he would hear his confession. In the confessional Bilney
quoted very many passages of Scripture, and asked for his
understanding of them to be corrected. Latimer listened for two
hours, and then admitted that what Bilney had, he needed; and so
another reformer was born.
When Latimer associated himself with the radicals who met at
the White Horse Inn, he provoked anger from the opposition. The
Bishop of Ely forbade him to preach in the region of Cambridge;
but, strangely, Cardinal Wolsey gave him freedom to preach
anywhere in all England. In December 1529, he preached his two
famous sermons entitled Sermons on Cards, in which he denounced
card playing during the Christmas celebrations and suggested
better employment with "Christ's cards," that is, His
commandments.
(We must remember it was only SOME truths that God was revealing
to these men; many other theology matters they were as blind as
bats on. But some truth to proclaim in a spiritually dark world
was still a victory for the Lord and His word. This was only the
very beginning of events and people that would in the years
before Jesus comes will be the restitution of all things - Keith
Hunt)
The sermons caused turbulent controversy and attracted the
king's attention. Latimer was invited to preach before Henry
during Lent 1530, and that resulted in his appointment as a royal
chaplain. Unlike others who addressed the king, Latimer was
forthright. He reminded Henry that he was a mortal man, "having
in you the corrupt nature of Adam ... and no less needing the
merits of Christ's passion." He even pictured the apostle Paul
being forced to "carry faggots" to St Paul's for having declared,
"Ye are not under law, but under grace."
John Stokesley, the Bishop of London, summoned Latimer to be
examined by a board of bishops. This resulted in his
excommunication and imprisonment. But the king intervened in
Latimer's favor. The Encyclopedia Britannica comments: "It was,
however, Latimer's preaching more than the edicts of Henry that
established the principles of the Reformation in the minds and
hearts of the people. His sermons are classics of their kind.
Vivid, racy, terse in expression; profound in religious feeling,
sagacious in their advice on human conduct. To the historical
student they are of great value as a mirror of the social and
political life of the period."
Latimer was consecrated Bishop of Winchester in 1535. Five
years later, as bishop, he had the unpleasant task of preaching
at the burning of John Forest, who had refused to acknowledge the
king as head of the Church - this was required by the Six
Articles of 1539. Latimer himself could not do this either, and
so he resigned his bishopric, and was confined to the precincts
of the palace belonging to the Bishop of Chichester. For the
following seven years, he seems to have dropped out of sight. In
1546 he was brought before the Privy Council at Greenwich, and
was again condemned and imprisoned at the Tower of London. By
this time, Henry VIII had died, to be succeeded, as we have seen,
by his only legitimate son, the young and sickly Edward VI, who
strongly supported the Protestant faith. Latimer was released and
the House of Commons invited him to return to his see. In January
of 1548 he resumed his preaching to larger crowds than ever.
In 1553, when Mary occupied the throne, he was summoned once
more to appear before a council at Westminster. Though he could
have escaped to the continent, he chose to attend, passing
Smithfield on the way and commenting that it "groaned" for him.
In 1554, he occupied a cell in the Tower with two good friends,
Ridley, the Bishop of London, and Cranmer, the Archbishop of
Canterbury. At their trial they were interrogated about the
elements of the Lord's Supper and the propitiatory effects of the
Mass. They were offered a final chance to recant, which neither
Ridley nor Latimer accepted. On October 16, 1555, they were taken
to the Oxford "town ditch" for execution on October 16, 1555.
After listening to a sermon preached against them, they were tied
to the stake and the faggots were lit. Latimer encouraged Ridley,
saying, "Master Ridley, play the man. We shall this day light
such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never
be put out."
Latimer was seventy when his charred body, held up by
chains, slumped over the embers. It was the "Indestructible Book"
that changed his life, comforted him in distress, and from which
he preached to others; and it changed England.
(Such were a few of the great men of faith, that for the faith
and truth revealed to them they were willing to die, and indeed
light began to be seen which was never put out. To this day more
and more light has been revealed, and so we move forward to the
restitution of all things - Keith Hunt)
The bridge builder
It is impossible to tell the story of the "Indestructible
Book" without including the name of Thomas Cromwell. Many of his
motives are questionable, but his involvement was fundamental to
the success of reform in England. Without him, the story of the
English Bible would have been significantly different. He was the
bridge builder between the political and religious reforms.
Thomas Cromwell was probably born in 1485. His father Walter
Cromwell, alias Smith, of Putney, was a drunken and dishonest
brewer, blacksmith and fuller. After a quarrel, Thomas fled from
his father's house, and it seems he went to Italy, where he
joined the French army.
In December 1503, at the age of eighteen, he fought in the
battle of Garigliano. From Italy he went to Florence and all we
know is that he was befriended by a banker. When we next hear of
him it is 1510 and he is in Antwerp, where he met a small group
of Bostonians who were on their way to Rome seeking an indulgence
from the Pope to build a business guild in Boston. They hired
Thomas to be their spokesman. He agreed, but before he addressed
Pope Julius II he managed to present him with some candies from
England. Permission for the guild was granted.
His next appearance is in London in 1512, when he married a
wellto-do lady from Putney. By the early 1520s he was on the
staff of the famous Cardinal Wolsey. By 1523 he became a Member
of Parliament, and in 1524 was admitted to Grays Inn, one of the
legal societies of London. His first speech in Parliament was on
November 2, 1529, against the bill condemning Wolsey. The bill
had already passed the House of Lords, and Wolsey was in serious
trouble, but Cromwell's brilliant defense in the Commons turned
the tide in Wolsey's favor. That speech brought Cromwell into the
national spotlight. For the next decade, Cromwell was Henry's
spokesman in Parliament, and Henry governed Parliament through
Cromwell.
Cromwell was not the source of Henry's policy, but he was
the instrument by which it was executed. The Reformation Acts
which came between 1532 and 1539 were drafted by him. He was
privy to all the off-the-record discussions, and dutifully
reported them to the king. Cromwell's philosophy was clear. When
Parliament considered independence from Rome, it was he who
stated: "We have reflected upon the wants of the realm, and have
come to the conclusion that the nation ought to form one body;
that body can have but one head, and that head must be the king."
Forming "one body" meant that the church must be an arm of the
state, with the king as its head in place of the Pope. As we have
seen, good men on both sides of the Reformation divide suffered
martyrdom for refusing to acknowledge this edict - men such as
Sir Thomas More, and Bishop Fisher of Rochester. This Act of
Parliament had unprecedented influence on the course to be
followed by the church and the state, and Cromwell was the bridge
between them.
In 1533 Cromwell became secretary to the king, in 1534
principal secretary and Master of the Rolls, and in 1536 keeper
of the Privy Seal. He was the administrator responsible for
effecting the king's decision to close down all monasteries in
England, with the money from their sale going to the king. It was
not the monks' immorality that drove him with such ruthless
efficiency, but their submission to a foreign potentate in Rome.
He was later rewarded by being made Earl of Essex, and his two
associates were made secretaries to the king. Cromwell also
centralized the administration of the country, so adding to his
own importance.
But Cromwell over-played his hand, and the higher you go,
the further there is to fall. His downfall was brought about by
the changing faces of international politics. Charles V and
Francis 1, two powerful rulers in Europe, totally committed to
the Catholic faith, were planning to unite against Henry, and
Cromwell devised a scheme to gain a counteralliance with the
Schmalkaldic League of German states. Henry was, at this time,
between wives, and Princess Anne was available for marriage. She
was the daughter of the Duke of Cleves, and sister-in-law to the
Elector of Saxony. With the king's consent, Cromwell arranged the
marriage. After great public fanfare, Anne of Cleves arrived in
England, and was escorted to the king's palace at Greenwich. She
turned out to be portly, ungainly, and ugly, lacking in grace and
refinement. Henry was vastly disappointed, and although he felt
he had to go through with the wedding for reasons of state, he
never consummated the marriage.
The Anne of Cleves fiasco enabled Cromwell's enemies to turn
Henry against Cromwell. Henry struck at Cromwell remorselessly
and suddenly, like a beast of prey. On June 10, 1540, six months
after the arranged marriage, Henry accused Cromwell of treason,
and sent him to the Tower. His ruthlessness and powerseeking had
made him unpopular and a bill to have him executed was passed in
Parliament, without a dissenting voice. He had not one friend
left in the world, except perhaps for Cranmer. He lost his head
by an axe on Tower Hill on June 20, 1540. He died attesting that
he was a loyal and faithful adherent of the Catholic religion.
It must be said to Cromwell's credit that he was the principal
instrument in making the Bible available to every Englishman,
through every parish church in England. That fact cannot be
overlooked, and will leave the church forever indebted to him. He
also imposed the keeping of a register of births, deaths and
marriages, and changed centuries of tradition by ordering certain
parts of Anglican services to be recited in English instead of
Latin.
(Even in being a Roman Catholic God obviously still used Cromwell
to bring the English Bible to the common people - the Lord can
use whom He decides for His work to do - Keith Hunt)
Father of the English Bible
William Tyndale is in most respects "the father of the
English Bible." It is true that Wycliffe's Bible preceded
Tyndale's by 143 years, but it had never been printed. Moreover,
since it had not been translated from the original languages but
from the Latin Vulgate, it contained many errors. Erasmus' New
Testament preceded Tyndale's by nine years, but it was in Greek
and Latin, and only the academic world benefited. While Erasmus
desired, according to the preface of his New Testament, "that the
ploughman would sing a text of Scripture at his plough," he did
not make it possible, unless the ploughman was educated in Greek.
It was Tyndale who provided the Bible in the laborer's
language.
William Tyndale was born near the Welsh border in the early
1490s. Nothing is known about his parents, or his brothers John
and Edward. He became a student at Magdalen Hall in Oxford, and
graduated with his Master's degree in 1515. He left Oxford for
Cambridge and may have become associated with Bilney's White
Horse Inn fellowship which was to produce archbishops, bishops
and martyrs. It was here in Cambridge that Tyndale witnessed the
spellbinding and regenerating power of the Word of God.
Tyndale realized that only the barriers of culture prevented
revival spreading beyond Cambridge and decided that if the
ordinary man cannot step up to where he can understand the Bible,
then the Bible must step down. Thus he was fired with the vision
of translating the Bible into the language of the common man. It
became the task of his life and the cause of his death.
Tyndale left Cambridge in 1521 for Little Sodbury Manor,
near the city of Bristol, where he worked for Sir John Walsh,
probably as tutor to his children. He spent his spare time
preaching in the neighborhood, and in his small attic room he
started on the work of translating the Bible. But this was a
dangerous occupation. Back in 1408 a law had been passed against
the Lollards, forbidding any use of Scripture that was not in
Latin. Just two years before Tyndale started his task, six men
and one woman had been burned to death in Coventry for teaching
their children to recite the Lord's Prayer in English. Tyndale
was endangering the lives of the Walsh family by translating the
Bible under their roof.
(Do you see what the terrible climate was in those days - people
being burnt to death for teaching their children to recite the
Lord's Prayer in English!!! Such was the horror of the spiritual
dark ages! It seems today impossible to imagine some nations of
that age actually went that far as to burn people to death for
learning the Bible in English. All of this history is seldom
taught anywhere today. And being so we still have over ONE
BILLION Roman Catholics on earth today - the GREATEST tool Satan
the Devil has used for centuries to bring the whole world under
the "mysteries of Babylon" and the whore drunk with the blood of
the saints, as the book of Revelation depicts this false church -
Keith Hunt)
Tyndale knew it was within the power of the Bishop of
London, Cuthbert Tunstall, to give him a job in his household
translating the Bible, so he left Little Sodbury for London, but
it soon became clear that neither in London nor in all England
would he receive the permission he needed. Tyndale was determined
to translate the Bible into English no matter what the cost, and
he decided to exile himself from his native land. He spent six
months working for a merchant who was involved in subsidizing and
importing forbidden Protestant books, and then set sail for the
continent, never to see his homeland again.
The translation was finished in Wittenberg, Luther's town.
Though Luther was ten years Tyndale's senior, and they did not
agree on all interpretations of Scripture, they were strongly
united by the motto "Isola scriptura" - the Scriptures alone.
While he was in Wittenberg, Tyndale enrolled at the university
under an assumed name and became friends with William Roy, a
fellow Englishman, who assisted him with the writing and promised
to help him get the manuscript published.
The printing was the most difficult task of all. They went
to Cologne, where they found a willing printer, but English spies
broke up the operation. As the spies came in through the front
door Tyndale was escaping through the back door with whatever
copies were finished. It was a narrow escape. If he had been
found it would almost certainly have meant imprisonment and
death. The two men traveled to Worms, where they found Peter
Schoeffer, a printer who was willing to complete the task. The
Bibles were ready for shipping in December, 1525, and Tyndale and
Roy parted company, the goal of their partnership achieved.
The Bibles reached England in the spring of 1526 and
fomented national unrest. The king condemned them to a public
burning and harassed and persecuted all found guilty of
possessing or distributing them. The story is told that Tunstall
authorized a merchant trading in Antwerp to buy every available
volume and bring them back to London for burning. What Tunstall
did not know was that the merchant was Tyndale's friend, and at
the king's expense paid Tyndale four times the cost of production
for each copy. So, for every Bible Tunstall burned, the king paid
for three more to be added to Tyndale's arsenal.
There was now a price on Tyndale's head. Bounty hunters from
England began traveling all over the continent, wearing
disguises, paying for information and tracking down leads, but
all without success. They would bump into each other - but not
into Tyndale! Not one of them had the slightest knowledge of his
whereabouts. Tyndale moved to Marburg and, in disguise, started
to study Hebrew so that he might begin the translation of the Old
Testament. Having mastered this language, he moved to Hamburg,
and from there to Antwerp. It was at this point that he
influenced both John Frith and Miles Coverdale. Frith was to die
by burning at Smithfield, but Coverdale survived to play a major
part in the translation and publication of the Bible in English.
For the next few years, Tyndale must have known how a fox
feels when the countryside is surrounded by hounds in the hunt.
He became a fugitive, wandering in various disguises from city to
city. What made him particularly elusive was his mastery of seven
languages, each of which he spoke like a native.
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Indelible ink
The difficulties of life on the run were not the only
pressures on Tyndale. He also had the pressure of his exacting
translation work. "Scripture derives its authority from him who
sent it," he stated, and he never deviated from this conviction
that he was translating the inspired Word of God. Such a task
demanded the utmost care, no matter how adverse the conditions.
Foxe reports that Tyndale would say: "I call God to record that I
have never altered, against the voice of my conscience, one
syllable of his Word. Nor would do this day, if all the
pleasures, honours, and riches of the earth might be given me."
A further pressure was the burden to complete his task. When
he had translated the Pentateuch, he traveled from Antwerp to
Hamburg by ship. On the voyage, a fierce storm wrecked the ship
and everything was lost, including his precious manuscripts and
his money. He had lost many hours' work. When he eventually
arrived in Hamburg, Miles Coverdale met him there, and between
April and December 1529 they worked together on the translation
of the five books of Moses. Early in 1530, the first publication
of Tyndale's Pentateuch came off the presses. By the time of his
capture, he had finished translating up to 2 Chronicles and the
book of Jonah. He was never able to complete the rest of the Old
Testament, but, inspired by his vision, others completed it on
his behalf.
It might be assumed that a man of such indomitable
commitment would have no time for anything else, but Tyndale
wrote other books dealing with the issues of the Reformation. In
1528 he wrote two which were to become standards for the reform
movement. The first was The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, and the
second was The Obedience of a Christian Man. These two books
defended two significant principles: the authority of the Bible
in the church, and the supremacy of the king in the state. They
were followed two years later by another publication, The
Practice of Prelates, which was a strong indictment against the
Roman Catholic Church and the divorce of Henry VIII. These became
well known and influential in England. A martyr named Tewkesbury
was put to the body rack at the Tower of London because he
refused to renounce the teaching in Wicked Mammon. He testified
that this book had introduced him to Christ.
1529 was the year of one of Tyndale's most famous
controversies. Thomas More had written his Dialogue of Sir Thomas
More, touching the Pestilent Sect of Luther and Tyndale, and as
More was considered the leading English defender of the Church of
Rome, Tyndale picked up his pen to reply. The dispute which
followed dealt with all the arguments for and against the
Reformation, and centered on whether the church or Scripture held
the higher authority. C. S. Lewis described the debate as a
"great Platonic dialogue, perhaps the best specimen of that form
ever produced in English." Some of Tyndale's strongest critics
complimented him on his skill, and Erasmus, one of More's closest
friends, wrote to Tunstall, the Bishop of London, admitting, "I
cannot heartily congratulate More."
Tyndale found refuge for some time in the city of Antwerp,
where he may have stayed at the home of Thomas Poyntz, a relative
of Mrs Walsh from Little Sodbury Manor. Here he worked on his
translations, and edited his previous publications. He was unable
to stay and supervise a new edition of his New Testament, which
was published in 1534, "full of printing errors." He returned in
1535 to the same home, where he met Henry Phillips, a man to whom
the family had shown much kindness, and who professed to be a
student of the new faith. It was Phillips who betrayed the
identity of the reformer. He borrowed forty shillings from
Tyndale and, going out to dine, pointed him out to the men lying
in wait. On May 24, 1535, Tyndale was captured and taken to the
impregnable Vilvorde Castle near Brussels, in Belgium.
When he was tried, Tyndale rejected the offer of counsel. He
deemed his judges to be both prejudiced and bitter, and felt that
the outcome was already decided. His counsel would merely have
argued over issues of no real consequence, but he himself could
bear witness to the truth of the gospel. He did not want to
defend himself, but he did want to defend his Bible. He was found
guilty of sacrilege, dressed in his sacerdotal robes and brought
before the bishop. The bishop pronounced him excommunicated, had
the official robes taken from him, and had a barber shave his
head; then he was taken back to his cell.
Bibles imported from Europe are burned at the bishop's
instruction.
It was not until September or October 1536 that his
executioners brought him out to be killed. They chained him to a
pillar with two holes in it, through which they threaded a piece
of wire in order that, according to his sentence, he might be
strangled as well as burned. Tyndale showed no fear, regret or
hesitation. When the executioner was attaching the wire around
his throat, he made his last recorded comment. It was a prayer:
"Lord, open the king of England's eyes."
They strangled his voice. They burned his hands. They
ravaged and destroyed his property, burning every Bible they
could find. But their efforts to silence him failed. Though only
one copy of the first edition of his New Testament survived the
biblical holocaust, his commitment inspired thousands, his
priorities gave guidance to the movement, and his translation
influenced nearly every succeeding translation of the Bible.
(Another mighty hand in the hand of the Lord had to suffer death
for the glory of God; for the truth of God; for the writing of
the English Bible, so the common people could have it, read it,
find in it the wonder of the truths of God, and so in time, God's
time, the restitution of all things could be accomplished; a
people prepared to stand on the Bible alone for the faith once
delivered to the saints - Keith Hunt)
The Bishop of Exeter
Another young man who came through that unique Bible study
group at the White Horse Inn in Cambridge was Miles Coverdale. He
was born in Yorkshire in 1488, was ordained priest at Norwich in
1514, and entered the convent of Augustinian friars at Cambridge,
where he studied philosophy and theology. While there he made the
acquaintance of Sir Thomas More, and in More's home he met Thomas
Cromwell, the future Chancellor of England. The prior of his
abbey was Robert Barnes, who was converted under the ministry of
Thomas Bilney. Barnes introduced Coverdale to the study of the
scriptures, and this eventually led him to participate in the
disputes at the White Horse Inn. When his prior was arrested, and
placed on trial in London, Coverdale went to give him legal
assistance.
Coverdale later left the friary, abandoning his vows to
become an itinerant preacher. He traveled considerably,
especially on the continent. He was in Hamburg in 1529, where, as
we have seen, he aided Tyndale in his translation of the
Pentateuch, though it is difficult to know what assistance he
gave, since as far as we can tell he had no knowledge of the
Hebrew language. At the same time, he started his own writing
career. Most of his twenty-six publications were English
translations of reformed writers.
Jacob van Meteren, an Antwerp merchant, hired him to produce
an English translation of the Bible, a task he completed in 1535.
When his fellow clergy argued for the retention of the Scriptures
in Latin, he said: "No, the Holy Ghost is as much the author of
it in Hebrew, Greek, French, Dutch, and English, as in Latin."
The first edition of this, the first Bible to be printed in
English, appeared on October 4, 1535. There are no complete
copies in existence, and on the five or six fragments which have
a title page there is no indication of the publisher or the place
of its publication. In order to make his translation more
acceptable in England, Coverdale dedicated it to the king and to
"his dearest just wife, and most virtuous princess, Queen Anne."
But when Anne was disgraced and executed a few months later, this
dedication became a liability.
In December 1534, Coverdale had attended a Convocation
called by Archbishop Cranmer, which petitioned for an authorized
translation of the scriptures in English. Coverdale now wanted to
have his edition authorized, but this attempt failed. The version
was not even particularly scholarly. Some of the title pages
state that it was translated out of German and Latin but
Coverdale admitted to using five translationstwo Latin, two
German (Luther's and the Zurich Bible), and Tyndale's New
Testament and Pentateuch. Two fresh editions appeared in 1537,
but none received official approval; in fact, in 1542
CoverdaleI's Bible was placed on a list of banned books.
Coverdale was in Geneva in December 1538, and participated in the
preparation of the Geneva Bible. But his greatest accomplishment
in the history of the English Bible was yet ahead of him. This
came in 1539 when Thomas Cromwell commissioned him to edit the
Matthew Bible, giving England its greatest authorized version of
Henry's reign.
Apart from his work on the Bible, Coverdale contributed to
the reform movement by offering support and help in many ways.
First, though the Six Articles condemned marriage among priests,
Coverdale defied this law by openly marrying Elizabeth Machson.
Second, he was staying at Windsor Castle in October 1548 when
Cranmer was drawing up the First Book of Common Prayer, and he
helped in that task. Third, he was active in many of the
reforming measures of the reign of Edward VI. Fourth, as Bishop
of Exeter, a position he held from 1551 to 1553, he was in
constant attendance at the Parliaments. Fifth, he was an
aggressive persecutor of the anabaptist movement, which at that
time was considered detrimental to the reformers' cause. Finally,
and most important, he was an exceptionally gifted preacher. (On
one significant occasion, he preached at St Paul's on the second
Sunday of Lent to mark the ceremonial abolition of multiple
altars and masses, and his sermon was immediately followed by the
pulling down of the high altar.)
Coverdale lost his bishopric when Mary came to the throne in
1553. He was required to stand before the Privy Council but was
spared burning by the intercession in his favor of Christian III
of Denmark, and was allowed to go to the continent "with two of
his servants" (one of whom was his wife!). He returned to England
when Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558 and ministered in the
area of London Bridge, always attracting large crowds. He died in
February 1568, and is buried in the graveyard at St Magnus
Church.
(Some light given to Coverdale, much light not given. God brings
light to whom He will and the amount of light that they will have
- Keith Hunt)
Mary's first victim
While it is contended by some that "Matthew" was merely a
harmless pen name attached to a Bible translation, it would be
more accurate to say that the name was used in a deliberate
attempt to deceive the authorities, and get the book distributed
on the black market. While Tyndale also broke the law by
distributing an undercover Bible, he did not use a false name.
The Matthew Bible, as it came to be known, is directly traced to
John Rogers.
Rogers was born near the city of Birmingham about the year
1500. He was educated at Pembroke Hall, in Cambridge, and in 1526
graduated with a B.A. degree, apparently unmoved by the spiritual
stirring which affected the university during his student days.
In 1532 he became rector of Holy Trinity, Queenhithe, in London.
Two years later, he accepted the post of chaplain to the English
merchants who traded in Antwerp. It was there that he came into
contact with William Tyndale.
Tyndale had a profound effect upon Rogers, though their
friendship was very brief. The change in Rogers' life was
evidenced by his desertion of the Catholic Church; by his
marriage to a woman from Antwerp; and by the fact that Tyndale
trusted him so implicitly that he left all his unpublished
translations in his possession for safe keeping. Tyndale had
already translated the Old Testament as far as 2 Chronicles, but
nothing had been published since the Pentateuch. The translation
had to be finished and the complete Bible published.
It is questionable whether John Rogers knew enough Hebrew to
complete the translating work. The similarity of the second half
of the Old Testament to that of Coverdale's Bible seems to
indicate that Coverdale helped to supervise the finishing of the
Old Testament. It seems there was a deliberate subterfuge, and
that Tyndale's translation was edited in order to conceal the
source. The completed Bible, under the pseudonym of Thomas
Matthew, was published in 1537, just one year after Tyndale's
death.
The manuscripts were given for publication to Richard
Grafton, a merchant in Antwerp who felt constrained to go to
England and present a copy to Cranmer, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, in an effort to get approval for an English
publication. Cranmer examined the book and was greatly impressed,
but he felt he was not the best person to obtain the king's
approval. He therefore asked Thomas Cromwell to submit it and
obtain permission from Henry VIII. The permission he was asking
for was temporary: it was to be only until a better translation
could be produced by the bishops - which, suggested Cranmer,
"will not be till a day after domesday." The king took the book
and looked through it. At the end of Malachi, Rogers had etched
the initials W.T., standing for William Tyndale. The letters were
large enough to cover half the page, but either the King's
fingers skipped the page, or he did not look at the initials
properly, or his mind was too dull to interpret their
significance; as far as he could see, Tyndale's name was not
associated with the new Bible. The book had a pleasant dedication
to His Majesty, and Henry thought that it might be a useful
implement to weaken the grip of Rome on England. He handed it
back to Cromwell and granted permission, provided Cromwell could
get Cranmer's approval! Cromwell had succeeded, and an edition of
1,500 copies was sold in England as the first "authorized"
version. According to its title page, it was published "by the
king's most gracious licence."
This was a red-letter day in the history of the English
Bible. Though the Matthew Bible was not to survive for long, it
paved the way for later editions and translations. It succeeded
where Coverdale's had failed, in obtaining the king's
authorization.
For several years Rogers was the pastor of a Protestant
congregation in Wittenberg, returning to England in 1548. In 1550
he ministered at two churches in London, and the following year
he was made a preben dary of St Paul's. After a brief examination
of his gifts, he was made a lecturer in divinity.
When Mary became sovereign, many of the leaders of the
Reformation fled to the continent, but Rogers was obstinate,
determined and a fully committed reformer. On July 27, 1553, he
preached at St Paul's on "the true doctrine taught in King
Edward's days" and warned his congregation against any going back
to "pestilent Popery." Ten days later he was placed under house
arrest.
In January 1554, Bonner, the new Bishop of London, sent
Rogers to Newgate, where he was imprisoned with John Hooper and
John Bradford. He was confined in Newgate for twelve months until
January 22, 1555, and then was brought to the home of Gardiner,
the notorious persecutor of the reformers. Six days later he had
to face a commission appointed by Cardinal Pole, at which
Gardiner sentenced him to death for denying the Christian
character of the Church of Rome and refusing to accept that the
elements at the Lord's Supper turned into the actual body and
blood of Christ. Six days later, on February 4, 1555, he was
taken to Smithfield and was burned to death, the first Christian
martyr during the reign of Mary. His fellow prisoner, Bradford,
said "he broke the ice valiantly."
Chains of freedom
The Matthew Bible, which was growing in popularity, had many
strongly anti-Catholic footnotes. Since the edition had official
approval, these were something of an embarrassment to Cromwell
when he was handling delicate foreign affairs involving Catholic
countries. Cromwell therefore decided that another Bible must
replace the Matthew version.
Having obtained the king's permission, Cromwell commissioned
Coverdale and the publisher Richard Grafton to revise the Matthew
text and eliminate the footnotes. To speed the operation and
improve the quality of production, Cromwell arrannged for it to
be printed in Paris, where there was finer paper and a superior
printing press. Charles I of France agreed, since it would be in
a language his people did not understand and would immediately be
shipped out of France. At the end of spring, 1538, Coverdale and
his assistant arrived in Paris, selecting Francois Regnault as
printer.
On December 13 Coverdale and Grafton, who were worried about
a resurgence in the activities of the Inquisition, persuaded the
English ambassador, Bonner, to take most of the completed pages
to Cromwell. Whether because of the Inquisition or because
Charles had changed his mind, work stopped, and four days later
the revisers had to flee for their lives. The pages they had to
leave behind were condemned to be burned in the Place Maulbert.
However, a haberdasher who was an English agent bought some on
the pretext that he needed the paper to stuff his hats, and other
agents, working at night in cloak and dagger style, stole the
presses and all the type and even the printers, and transported
them all to London. In April 1539 the whole Bible was finished,
and the editors added the words: "To the Lord the achievement is
due."
Because the work was undertaken under royal patronage, there
was no dedication. The 9 x 15 - inch pages had no footnotes. The
title page was a wood engraving, artistically created by Holbein,
which eloquently told the story of royal supremacy. The Bible was
given to the public not by the church but by the king, and was
distributed through the priests to the people.
The title page reads: "The Byble in Englyshe, that is to
saye the content of all the Holy Scrypture, bothe of ye Olde and
Newe Testament, truly translated after the veryte of the Hebrue
and Greke Textes, by ye dylygent studye of dyuerse excellent
learned men, expert in theforsayde tongues. Prynted by Rychard
Graftoni & Edward Whitchurch ... 1539."
Within two years, 20,000 copies had been sold (rendering
obsolete another version of the Matthew Bible with softened
footnotes, which the Oxford scholar Richard Taverner had
published in 1539). Cranmer passed the verdict that it contained
"no heresies," and a royal declaration commanded it to be bought
by every parish church in the land and made accessible on a
reading desk for the public to read at any time. Readers had to
be provided for those who could not read it themselves. Bible
reading, which had once been forbidden, then silently tolerated,
then licensed, was now commanded, and for this we are indebted to
Thomas Cromwell.
Because of its bulk, the new Bible came to be known as the
Great Bible. It is also sometimes called the Chained Bible,
because copies were chained to the reading desks, or Cranmer's
Bible, because of an elaborate preface which Cranmer added to the
second edition in 1540. By the end of 1541 there were no fewer
than seven editions.
Based as it was on the Matthew Bible, which in turn had been
based on Tyndale, this stands as Tyndale's memorial. The Great
Bible remained the English Bible for twenty years. Tyndale had
burned to ashes in a foreign land, but the Great Bible was in
every respect the fruit of his labor and the memorial of his
life.
........................
To be continued
Towards the KJV of 1611A Bible in English for EVERYONE! TOWARDS AN ENGLISH BIBLE #5
Continued from previous page:
Committee work
It seems odd that an English Bible should have the word
Geneva in its title, yet that is what happened. Here is the story
behind it. In 1543 an Act of Parliament for the "Advancement of
True Religion," took away permission for the use of any Bible
other than the Great Bible. The Act specifically outlawed the
writings of Tyndale, and a later Act added Wycliffe and
Coverdale. Tyndale's Bible was "clearly and utterly abolished and
forbidden to be kept or used." But Henry VIII died on January 28,
1547, and the young Edward VI's coronation brought a reversal of
attitude. At his coronation, when he was given the three swords
symbolizing the countries under his dominion, he asked the
whereabouts of the fourth. His nobles asked him what he meant.
"The Bible," he responded, "the sword of the Spirit, and to be
preferred before these swords." During Edward's reign, there were
at least thirteen editions of the whole Bible and thirty-five of
the New Testament. It was during his reign that the Book of
Common Prayer was introduced, and the Church of England's
doctrinal standard appeared in the Forty-Two Articles, later to
be reduced to the Thirty-Nine Articles.
But as we have seen, "Bloody Mary" came to the throne in
July 1553 and her husband, Philip II of Spain, was a fanatical
champion of the Inquisition. When Mary forbade the public use of
Scripture, a migration to Europe began, especially to Calvin's
city; deans and bishops of England and Scotland, including Miles
Coverdale and Scotland's John Knox, made a European London out of
Geneva.
Whittingham's New Testament
A new translation of the New Testament in English came out
of Geneva in 1557. It was the work of one man, William
Whittingham, who was married to Calvin's sister-in-law and who
succeeded Knox in the pastorate of the English congregation in
Geneva in 1559. His New Testament was a revision of Tyndale's,
with an introduction written by Calvin, and was addressed to
"simple lambs which partly are already in the fold ... and partly
wandering, through ignorance." It aimed to use everyday
Anglo-Saxon language rather than literary words derived from
Latin. Thus a parable was a "biword," regeneration was
"gainbirth," and crucified became "crossed."
Whittingham's New Testament had two unique features. First,
it used verse divisions for the first time in an English Bible.
While traveling between Paris and Lyons in 1551, the printer
Robert Estienne had hastily marked up the verses for one of his
editions of the Greek Testament. Some of his divisions are
questionable: "I think it had been better done on his knees in a
closet," said one Bible historian. But though these divisions are
criticized, they remain in universal use.
Whittingham's second innovation was the use of different
type to indicate words added in translation which are not in the
original text - a practice which was to be followed by the King
James version of 1611. So extensive are Whittingham's analyses
and notes that the edition has been called "the first critical
edition of the New Testament in English."
While the reformers in Geneva waited for political change to
come at home, they "could think of nothing which could be more
acceptable to God, and as comfortable to His Church, than in the
translating of the Scriptures into our native tongue." The Bible
they produced was called the Geneva Bible, and was printed in
1560.
Geneva Bible
The group who produced the Geneva Bible included John Knox,
Miles Coverdale, William Whittingham and other less well known
authorities. They were, to use their own description, "so many
godly and learned men." John Calvin and Theodore Beza were at
hand when they needed scholarly help, and they had access to
other translations in several foreign languages. In fact, their
source material was greater than that afforded to any previous
translator. They painstakingly worked over every minute detail of
the text, giving a faithful translation and achieving agreement
between all the collaborators. They prided themselves on their
accomplishment: the text proved to be so good that a complete
revision was never needed, and the method of translation worked
so well that it was later adopted by the committees who worked on
the King James Version.
The Bible became known as the Breeches Bible because of its
translation of Genesis 3:7, which says that Adam and Eve sowed
fig leaves into "breeches." The translators also included
marginal readings. Though some were biased in favor of Calvin's
theology, and some were strongly anti-papal, the majority were
simply explanatory notes. The Bible was intended for personal use
rather than for reading in church and therefore it was issued in
a moderate quarto format which made it easier to carry.
Though it was never sanctioned for public use in England,
its convenient size quickly made the Geneva Bible the "household"
Bible. When the 1644 edition appeared in England, thirty-three
years after the publication of the Authorized Version, it had
already passed through more than 140 editions. It was
particularly the puritans' Bible, and became the Bible of the
Commonwealth army. Soldiers did not carry a full Bible, but they
did have a pocket-sized reader, which quoted from the Geneva
version. It was the Bible exclusively used by the Pilgrim
Fathers. The Geneva text was also used for the first Bible
printed in Scotland, named the Bassandyne Bible after its printer
(1679). Parliament required every householder having a certain
income to possess a copy. In June, 1580, a man called John
Williamson was commissioned to visit and search every house, "and
to require sight of their Bible and Psalm-book, if they have one,
to be marked with their own name." The name was to stop anyone
trying to get away with borrowing a copy from a neighbor!
The Bishops' Bible
As Elizabeth's coronation procession wound its way through
the streets of London, a man appeared with a scythe and wings,
representing Father Time, leading his daughter, representing
Truth. She carried an English Bible, bearing the inscription The
Word of Truth, and presented it to Her Majesty. Queen Elizabeth
graciously received it and pressed it to her breast, having
promised that she would "oftentimes read over that book."
In 1559 Elizabeth pleased her citizens by originating an Act, as
Edward VI had done before her, which stated that "one book of the
whole Bible of the largest volume in English" should be set up in
every parish. The following year she allowed an English printing
of the Geneva Bible to be dedicated to her.
The next Reformation Bible appeared in 1586. Sometimes
called the fourth revision of the Tyndale translation, it came
into existence through the insistence of Matthew Parker. He had
been Anne Boleyn's chaplain, and by 1544 had been elected the
master of Corpus Christi College, at the recommendation of Henry
VIII. When Anne Boleyn was executed, she surrendered her young
daughter Elizabeth to his care; and on August 1, 1559, Elizabeth,
now the reigning queen, appointed him Archbishop of Canterbury.
Parker believed that a new Bible was needed because the success
of the Geneva Bible not only undermined the prestige of the Great
Bible, England's official Bible, but also weakened the authority
of the bishops. In 1564, he organized a committee of some eight
or nine bishops whom he considered to be the bestqualified men
among the clergy, and they determined to make another revision of
the Great Bible, re-establishing its prestige. Their revision
became known as the Bishops' Bible.
Parker divided "the whole Bible in to parcels," and told his
translators to "peruse and collate" the text. They were, he said,
to "follow the common English translation used in the churches,
and not recede from it, but where it varieth manifestly from the
Hebrew or Greek original." They were to "make no bitter notes
upon any text," nor were they allowed to "set down any
determination in places of controversy."
The bishops' version followed the Great Bible in the
historical sections, but elsewhere it showed the distinct
influence of the Geneva Bible. Some scholars contend that the
translators purposely limited the number of times they used the
Geneva version-after all, they could not show too much
indebtedness to the very version they were attempting to replace.
It was claimed by others that this reduced its accuracy. The 1574
version marked certain passages in "places not edifying ... so
that the reader may eschew them in his public reading."
To improve the quality of the production, the thickest paper was
used, together with the best printing facilities available. The
Bible included a number of woodcuts, a description of the Holy
Land, and a chart of St Paul's journeys. The front page contained
the simple title, The Holie Bible, with the words of Romans 1:16
written in Latin beneath the title. The title page had an
engraving of Elizabeth, and there were portraits of the Earl of
Leicester and the Earl of Cecil at the beginning of the Book of
Joshua and the Book of Psalms.
Its many woodcuts made the book costly and cumbersome.
Moreover, scholars did not find the translation satisfying.
Different sections were translated in a variety of styles by
scholars from different fields of study, and nobody attempted to
co-ordinate and harmonize the finished product.
The English Bible: Chronology
THE BIBLE IN MANUSCRIPT
1384 Wycliffe's translation (from the Latin)
1396 Purvey's revision
THE BIBLE IN PRINT
1525 Tyndale's New Testament
1530 Tyndale's Old Testament
1534 Tyndale's New Testament (revised)
1535 Coverdale's Bible (from the Latin, Luther and Zwingli)
1537 Matthew (based on Tyndale)
1539 Taverner's revision (based on Matthew)
1539 Great Bible (based on Matthew)
1557 Whittingham's New Testament
1560 Geneva Bible
1568 Bishops' Bible
1582 Rheims New Testament (based on Latin)
1610 Douai Bible (Old Testament based on Latin)
1611 Authorized Version
1881 Revised New Testament
1885 Revised Old Testament
1901 American Revision (of the Revised Version)
Parker assumed that he would obtain royal favour for his
efforts. On October 5, 1568, a copy of the completed translation
was ready for presentation to the queen. It was to be presented
by Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State, and Parker wrote to ask
him to get the queen to licence it as the sole edition for public
reading in churches. This, he said, would achieve uniformity. But
despite the favor Parker enjoyed with Elizabeth, she never
granted him his desire. The Constitutions and Canons of 1571
stated that "Every archbishop and bishop should have at his house
a copy of the Holy Bible of the largest volume, as lately printed
in London." But the Bible referred to here was the Great Bible.
The decree of 1573 that the Bishops' Bible should be read
publicly in the churches came from Parker himself, without royal
authority.
The Bishops' Bible was never officially accepted. Though it
survived for forty years, and went through twenty editions, the
last being in 1606, it was considered to be the weakest of all
the Reformation Bibles.
.........................
So was the life and death of many dedicated people, to bring the
Bible into the English language, so we today can read it from cover
to cover, as I trust you will do. It is the word of LIFE to those
who will believe and obey, who will "trust and obey", as one famous
hymn is called, "for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus,
But to trust and obey."
For you that will live into the final 42 months of the end of this age,
the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord, may you be inspired
by the lives of those who have gone before, who were willing to stand
up and be counted, willing to not save their life, but put it down
in death, even for the glory of the Lord, and for the faith once
delivered to the saints.
Keith Hunt
June 2010
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