+Source.+--Tyndale's _Obedience of a Christian Man and how Christian
Rulers ought to Govern_, 1528, p. 12.
That thou mayest perceive how that the Scripture ought to be in the
mother tongue, and that the reasons which our spirits make for the
contrary are but sophistry and false wiles to fear thee from the
light, that thou mightest follow them blindfold and be their captive
to honour their ceremonies and to offer to their belly.
First God gave the children of Israel a law by the hand of Moses in
their mother tongue, and all the prophets wrote in their mother
tongue, and all the psalms were in the mother tongue. And there was
Christ but figured and described in ceremonies, in riddles, in
parables and in dark prophecies. What is the cause that we may not
have the Old Testament with the New also, which is the light of the
old, and wherein is openly declared before the eyes that there was
darkly prophesied? I can imagine no cause verily, except it be that we
should not see the work of Antichrist and juggling of hypocrites. What
should be the cause that we which walk in the broad day should not see
as well as they that walked in the night, or that we should not see as
well at noon as they did in the twilight? Came Christ to make the
world more blind? By this means, Christ is the darkness of the world,
and not the light as he saith himself, John viii.
Moreover, Moses saith, Deutero. vi, "Hear, Israel, let these words
which I command thee this day stick fast in thine heart, and whet them
on thy children, and talk of them as thou sittest in thine house and
as thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou
risest up, and bind them for a token of thine hand, and let them be a
remembrance between thine eyes, and write them on the posts and gates
of thine house." This was commanded generally unto all men. How cometh
it that God's word pertaineth less unto us than unto them? Yea, how
cometh it that our Moseses forbid us and command us the contrary, and
threat us if we do, and will not that we once speak of God's word? How
can we whet God's word (that is put in practise, use and exercise)
upon our children and household, when we are violently kept from it
and know it not? How can we (as Peter commandeth) give a reason for
our hope, when we wot not what it is that God hath promised or what to
hope? Moses also commandeth in the said chapter: if the son ask what
the testimonies, laws and observances of the Lord mean, that the
father teach him. If our children ask what our ceremonies (which are
no more than the Jewses were) mean, no father can tell his son. And in
the xi chapter he repeateth all again, for fear of forgetting.
They will say haply "the Scripture requireth a pure mind and a quiet
mind. And therefore the lay-man, because he is altogether cumbered
with worldly business, cannot understand them." If that be the cause,
then it is a plain case that our prelates understand not the
Scriptures themselves. For no lay-man is so tangled with worldly
business as they are. The great things of the world are ministered by
them. Neither do the lay people any great thing but at their
assignment.
"If the Scripture were in the mother tongue," they will say, "then
would the lay people understand it every man after his own ways."
Wherefore serveth the curate but to teach them the right way?
Wherefore were the holidays made but that the people should come and
learn? Are ye not abominable schoolmasters in that ye take so great
wages, if ye will not teach? If ye would teach, how could ye do it so
well and with so great profit as when the lay people have the
Scripture before them in their mother tongue? For then should they
see, by the order of the text, whether thou juggledest or not. And
then would they believe it because it is the Scripture of God, though
thy living be never so abominable. Where now, because your living and
your preaching are so contrary and because they grope out in every
sermon your open and manifest lies and smell your unsatiable
covetousness, they believe you not when you preach truth. But alas,
the curates themselves (for the most part) wot no more what the New or
Old Testament meaneth than do the Turks. Neither know they of any more
than that they read at masse, matins, and evensong, which yet they
understand not. Neither care they but even to mumble up so much every
day (as the pie and popinjay speak they wot not what) to fill their
bellies with all. If they will not let the lay-man have the word of
God in his mother tongue, yet let the priests have it, which, for a
great part of them, do understand no Latin at all; but sing and say
and patter all day with the lips only that which the heart
understandeth not.