Transcriber's Note:
The "Tindale" of this book is usually rendered as "Tyndale".
Entries in the Index to words and names mentioned in the Introduction
(pp xvii-xxi) are mostly incorrect.
[Illustration: The Window of Thanksgiving in the Bible House,
London]
THE LIFE AND WORK
OF
WILLIAM TINDALE
BY
REV. W. B. COOPER, M.A., D.D.,
TORONTO
_2nd Edition_
[Printer's mark]
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
210 VICTORIA STREET, TORONTO
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
1925
Copyright, Canada, 1924
By CANADIAN BIBLE SOCIETY
TORONTO
_1st Edition, September, 1924._
_2nd Edition, May, 1925._
PRINTED IN CANADA
T. H. BEST PRINTING CO. LIMITED. TORONTO
_To
A. M. C.
and
C. C. C._
"A seed is sown in Britain and whether men wait
for a hundred or a thousand years they will find
it flowering."
(King Arthur).
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
The author is gratified at the cordial reception which the first edition
of his work has met with. The issue of a second edition has given the
opportunity of making some minor corrections, and of including in the
closing paragraphs an appreciative reference to the work of the American
Bible Society.
Contemplation of the published work has suggested to the author that
greater significance might have been attributed to the background and
environment of Tindale's early manhood. The breaking up of the social
and religious structure of his time, and the spread of the New Learning
over Western Europe were events profoundly affecting the character and
career of contemporary English youth. Thus, the disintegration and
dissolution of the overawing authority of the Church, though she
retained for decades sufficient power to strike down her foes; the
splintered social unity which resulted from the decadence of the Feudal
Order, with class suspicion and hatred ensuing, combined to throw men
off their moral balance: and then into this moral confusion came rumours
of literatures, unknown and ancient, which opened to the startled minds
of teachers and students knowledge that at once widened and made more
wondrous the world which men thought they knew. The discovery of the
Greek and Latin literatures excited the imaginations of the younger men.
Oxford and Cambridge students in groups crossed the English Channel and
enrolled themselves in the Continental Universities that they might gain
at first hand the knowledge they desired. Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet
came back eager to teach and guide. But most significant of all was
this, that Erasmus landed in England.
Romantic stories were in the air of a New World beyond the seas.
Now the reaction of all this on the nation at large was a disquietude
and disturbance that led confusion towards fear and panic.
Such was the atmosphere which as a youth Tindale breathed. Not the least
of his claims to greatness are his deep insight into that disturbance of
the national soul, and the adventurous confidence with which he entered
on that long self-discipline which fitted him for the enterprise he so
brilliantly fulfilled.
When four hundred years ago the Low Countries of Europe, Holland and
Belgium, passed by inheritance to the reigning Spanish Sovereign,
Charles I, these lands became the theatre of long and devastating
warfare. Siege and sally, slaughter and suffering brought misery on the
people like a flood.
Yet it was in that distracted country, amid suffering almost universal,
that there came into being the unrivalled sweetness of belfry music.
Singing towers all over the Netherlands sprang into the air. Carillons
by the score were hung, and have been the delight and pride of the
people for a dozen generations or more.
To much the same effect, we may say, out of the disquietude and
suffering of those early years of the Sixteenth Century there came in
our English tongue a work which has proved to be "the most majestical
thing in our literature, the most living spiritual thing in our
tradition"; and we owe it to this high-hearted Apostle of our Faith,
William Tindale.
APRIL, 1925.
PREFACE
With the approach of the Fourth Centenary there is a demand for a memoir
of Tindale, less detailed than the standard biography, yet preserving
the perspective of history. To meet this demand this miniature has been
prepared. It sets forth especially the ardent force of vision which
sustained the exile in the depth and tumult of his toil.
Diligent use has been made of recognized authorities on the subject
treated; and it is hoped the little volume may make room for itself in
this busy age. For helpful suggestions, the author is indebted to Mr. A.
M. Denovan and Mr. B. R. Brooker; and to the Religious Tract Society for
kind permission to reproduce illustrations from their standard Biography
of Tindale.
It is offered to the public under the tolerant aphorism: "So long as a
man says sincerely what he thinks, he tells us something worth while."
[Illustration: WILLIAM TINDALE]
CONTENTS
Page
Introduction xvii
Conditions in England 1
The Making of Tindale 11
At Little Sodbury 15
In London 19
In Exile (1) Intercourse with Luther 24
In Exile (2) Translating the New Test. 29
Personality 46
Conclusion 50
ILLUSTRATIONS
Tindale Memorial Window in Bible House London _Frontispiece_
Facing Page
William Tindale. Drawn by I. H. Lynch from an old portrait
by Pass xiii
Erasmus: 1526, after Dürer 2
Printing Press, 1511. The earliest known representation
of a Printing Press, from the title page of Hegesippus' Hist.
de Bello Judaico, printed by Jodocus Badius Ascensius, Paris 1511 30
[1]Page of Octavo New Testament, 1525 33
[1]Page of Octavo New Testament, Revised, 1534-6 36
[1]Facsimile of the only known letter of Tindale 48
Tindale's Monument at North Nibley, near Little Sodbury 50
[1] By kind permission of the Religious Tract Society.
INTRODUCTION
"The first scholar and the first divine of his epoch"—the words stand
true of William Tindale; but his personality is even more arresting, for
only a man richly endowed with courage, sincerity, uprightness, the
sense of duty and the love of country, could have served England so
nobly as he did: yet England knows not the man.
Fifteen years, or sixteen at most, early in the Sixteenth Century,
1520-1536, enclose the immemorial labors of William Tindale. During that
decade and a half there were for him experiences and enterprises which
went to the making of the man, and show what manner of man he was: but
which also set him forth as one of the greatest of his race.
Formative years preceded these; some thirty of them one conjectures; of
which, however, we can discover little. We get glimpses of him and his
doings; but they are like flashes of lightning in a dark sky. A
narrative of this man's life would seem forever impossible: what letters
there were, or other documents, disappeared long ago: and the path he
trod with unfaltering step we can trace in patches only.
For all that it is possible to set out the features of the man, realize
the massive qualities he possessed, recall his surroundings, the
atmosphere he breathed, the hostility he aroused, the victory he won at
the cost of his life; and so to recognize the valor, the magnanimity,
and in a word the greatness of this too little known English worthy.
A biographic blank like this, where incidents of consequence must have
transpired, is not altogether unknown in history.
History encounters the same difficulty in the life of Wyclif. The
character of his parents is unknown. Not an anecdote of his boyhood
remains. His life at Oxford, extending over forty years, yields but a
single incident.
In one of Tindale's younger contemporaries in the northern kingdom,
there occurs a similar desert stretch, where the silence is even more
profound; and which the most diligent research has failed to break. John
Knox was born in 1505; and of his inner life for the first forty years
we know absolutely nothing. Then suddenly, against a background darker
in Scotland than that in England, he emerges holding George Wishart's
two-edged sword in his hand.
Of the crisis which lay behind, which changed him from a priest before
the altar to the beloved disciple of this early martyr, we hear not a
word. "In the solemn days of early faith", wrote the late Taylor Innes,
"not a few men like him were in the desert until the time of their
showing unto Israel. Not the polished shaft only, but the rough
spear-head too was in the shadow of a mighty hand until the day when it
was launched."
If ever Papini's paradoxical dictum be credible, it is in a life like
this: "The most highly educational biographies are those of men of whom
little or nothing is known. Those are the books that set forth the human
ideal, that tell us what a man ought to be." The paradox is elsewhere
resolved by him when he says: "I care less for the whole course of a
man's life than for his own distilling of its essence."
The distilled essence of Tindale's life comes to view again and again
during these brief years; which were crowded with events, dramatic and
of age-long significance, and which passed from drama to tragedy in the
martyr fires he had long foreseen.
Centenaries are apt to miscarry. If such occasions serve only for the
display of erudition and platform vanity, and fail to lead us to seek
the essential message and the continuing inspiration of the great men
they celebrate, what riches of the past remain sealed to us! There have
been celebrations loudly acclaimed by men who would have bayed at the
heels of the brave revolutionary whom they now eloquently praise. They
simulate seeing he is no longer alive and dangerous, but a hero dead:
and they join the chorus of universal praise. The effect is to emphasize
the deadness of the past, not to rekindle glorious life—this is
rekindled only where there is eagerness to be in or near the succession
of the great, where there is sympathy with admiration, where there is in
fine some kinship of spirit.
The true aim of Centennials is more psychological than historical. Not
so much the magnification of the subject as the discovery of what was
his lofty purpose, his high endurance, his nobility of spirit: not even
his success, but his endeavor; and this in order that in our admiration
we may draw inspiration for ourselves and emulate his spirit in the
altered circumstances of the time. That resolve to recapture for the
world of to-day a courage and a consecration of which the world of his
day was contemptuous, and to devote these invaluable virtues to the
opportunities of our time—that is the soul-stirring aim in revivifying
the past; and is not that the true heritage of all the ages?
CHAPTER I.
CONDITIONS IN ENGLAND
Can we picture to ourselves the world in which Tindale gradually came
into public view, made his voice heard in palaces, manor houses and
homes of the common people; making enemies rage, but winning friends
innumerable, until finally a price was set on his head: and there were
Englishmen eager to entrap him to his death?
What was the condition of England then? What figures stand out
conspicuous in the life of the nation? In whose hands did administrative
power lie? In what directions were events moving? In the forefront of
the nation strode Wolsey, clothed with power, dominating every avenue of
corporate action, the master of church and state, and irresistible so
long as he could retain the indulgence of the king. It was the time when
Wolsey had succeeded in substituting royal despotism for
quasi-representative government, and had himself risen to giddy heights
of power and affluence, only to fall headlong in infamy and remorse. His
sovereign had at length turned with Tudor frenzy against his minister.
The king's marriage projects, his impatience with the Cardinal's vanity,
as extravagant as it was grotesque, were not the only cause for
dishonor; the King had purposes which called for servants of another
type, and Henry was resolved to wield the royal power alone.
[Illustration: DESIDERIUS ERASMUS.
After Albert Durer.]
Erasmus, More and Colet were the men of letters conspicuous in ability
and influence during Tindale's boyhood. The three men were in intimate
sympathy with one another; and each in his own fashion, exponents of the
new learning, gave the country whole-hearted service. All were men of
outstanding talent, and labored unceasingly for the ends they had in
view. Colet was the preacher of renown. His University lectures on St.
Paul's Epistles were scarcely less notable than his sermons in London.
Sir Thomas More was witty, intense, versatile, broad-minded, gifted with
imagination and courage; but when he encountered the violence of Luther
suddenly changed to the recusancy of the bigots and the bishops.
Erasmus, the greatest of the three, never altered his plans. He held on
his way alike in all weathers undeterred, enlightening his time with the
treasures he had found in the New Testament. It was in the year 1516 he
issued his Greek Testament, with a Latin version alongside, correcting
errors in the Vulgate; and that issue was a landmark in the history of
the whole of Europe.
These three men incensed the conservatism of the Church. They refused to
shut their eyes to the prevalent ignorance and unworthiness of the
priesthood. They laid bare the open sores in the body ecclesiastic.
Their irony and satire played about abbots, bishops and curés; but in
all the castigation inflicted, there was no sign given by the priesthood
of change or desire for reformation; only rancour and rage. As the truth
got utterance given to it, the people took sides slowly, and the tides
of feeling rose and spread. Listen to one voice from the multitude:
Men hurt their souls,
Alas! for Goddes will;
Why sit ye Prelates still
And suffer all this ill?
Ye Bishops of estates
Should open broad the gates
Of your spiritual charge
And come forth at large
Like lanterns of light
In the peoples' sight
In pulpits awtentike
For the weal publyke
Of priesthood in this case.
—John Skelton.
Gloucestershire was a stronghold of the Church. The proverb "As sure as
God is in Gloucester" gave point to it. Only a few of the clergy
understood the Latin services they read or sang. None of them knew the
contents of the Bible; and many were outspoken in their disparagement of
it. When argument arose and some rare voice made reference to the Bible,
they thought to silence him by saying the Pope, or this or that, was
above the Bible. It was in the course of conversation and debate that a
certain man ejaculated to Tindale "We were better be without God's laws
than the Pope's". The attitude is the more to be remarked because as a
consequence of the new learning there had been a wide diffusion of the
Bible in the Latin language (the Vulgate) since the invention of
printing. No fewer than eighty editions, although one cannot ascertain
what was the size of the editions, had been issued between 1462 and
1500.
As a sign of the times, this diffusion of the Latin Bible was curiously
significant. Significant it was indeed in more ways than one. It showed
(1) that the scholars of the church were being influenced by the new
learning; but also (2) that a strict reservation was to be enforced in
confining it to scholars. The Bible was for scholars, not for others. A
fine instance is in the case of the Complutensian Polyglot. Complutum
was the Latin name of Alcala. In 1502 Cardinal Ximenes, the founder of
Alcala University, decided on the issue of a Polyglot edition of the
Bible wherein the Vulgate should be placed alongside of the best Hebrew
and the best Greek manuscripts. "Every theologian", he said, "should
also be able to drink of that water which springeth up to eternal life
at the fountain head itself.... Our object is to revive the hitherto
dormant study of the Sacred Scriptures". The very men who thus engaged
in the publication of the Bible, denounced with the direst of penalties
its distribution outside the charmed circle of the learned.
Freedom of conscience there was none. Tolerance was proclaimed as an
emanation of Hell. Difference of opinion was deadly. To acknowledge
misgiving or doubt or dissent was incontinently to be rated as a rebel
and exposed to the truculency of a pitiless hierarchy.
There is a companion picture of the English world at that time, lurid
and indeed sickening. The bishops sank their humanity in frenzied
partisanship, gave rein to cruel and monstrous passion, aided and
abetted therein by More as Lord Chancellor. They lit the fires of
Smithfield, and the spectacle of Englishmen perishing at the stake for
honesty of thought and sincerity of life, became so familiar as to
case-harden the people at the scenes. One story, typical of scores of
others, may be given.
The story has reference to Bainham's execution: "Among the lay officials
present at the stake, was 'one Pavier', town clerk of London. This
Pavier was a Catholic fanatic, and as the flames were about to be
kindled he burst out into violent and abusive language. The fire blazed
up, and the dying sufferer, as the red flickering tongues licked the
flesh from off his bones, turned to him and said, 'May God forgive thee
and shew more mercy than thou, angry reviler, shewest to me.' The scene
was soon over: the town clerk went home. A week after, one morning when
his wife had gone to mass, he sent all his servants out of the house on
one pretext or another, a single girl only being left, and he withdrew
to a garret at the top of the house, which he used as an oratory. A
large crucifix was on the wall; and the girl, having some question to
ask, went to the room, and found him standing before it, 'bitterly
weeping'. He told her to take his sword, which was rusty, and clean it.
She went away and left him; when she returned, a little time after, he
was hanging from a beam, dead. He was a singular person. Edward Hall,
the historian, knew him, and had heard him say, that, 'if the king put
forth the New Testament in English, he would not live to bear it.' And
yet he could not bear to see a heretic die. What was it? Had the meaning
of that awful figure hanging on the torturing cross suddenly revealed
itself? Had some inner voice asked him whether, in the prayer for his
persecutors with which Christ had parted out of life, there might be
some affinity with words which had lately sounded in his own ears? God,
into whose hands he threw himself, self-condemned in his wretchedness,
only knows the agony of that hour. Let the secret rest where it lies,
and let us be thankful for ourselves that we live in a changed world."
(_Froude, Henry VIII._)
When the mind pauses to reflect on this doing to death of men because
their faith did not square with that of those in high places, and
succeeds in freeing itself from the numbing influence which its very
familiarity causes, the amazement and horror of the practice help us to
measure the criminal folly of it. One must make an effort indeed to
shake off that deadening influence; and then, and only then, the
arrogance and impiety of claiming injustice, torture, judicial murder,
as a service to God, make one shudder as at blasphemy. Yet what awful
pages of history in every part of Christendom record the deeds of this
sanguinary orthodoxy. How hard has mankind found it to learn that
persuasion and forbearance are the real solvents of dissent; for the
faith in force is hardly shaken to this day. Forcible suppression is in
high favor still. It may not, dare not, perhaps, work by the same crude
and sanguinary tools, although the disclosures of the Great War, or of
Soviet Russia, may give the lie to that caveat: but little observation
is needed to show how in subtler forms, alike in politics and in
religion, there is the same impatience with disagreeing opinion, and the
same self-assurance that does not hesitate to silence a disputant by
death or shame. Wherever it lifts its head, it is the head of
Anti-Christ.