Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: William Tyndale 3

Tyndale’s Passion, Skill, and Love for the Gospel

So, my answer to the question, how did William Tyndale accomplish what he accomplished in writing his books and in translating the New Testament is, number one, he worked assiduously. He never married.

He just worked until they killed him to try to put the Bible into English. He worked assiduously as a skilled, Oxford-trained artist of language. And secondly, he was deeply passionate, unlike Erasmus, for the gospel, for the doctrinal truths of sovereign grace.

Man is lost, spiritually dead, condemned, hell-bound. God is sovereign, Christ is sufficient, faith is all, and the Bible must be translated so that the average man can have his own exposure to this great truth.

Why the Church Opposed Bible Translation

Now, at this point, what takes my breath away is, why is it not incomprehensible that the church so hated the translation of Scripture? What in the world does that mean? That the church... This was not Muslims burning Christians who wanted to translate the Bible.

It was the church of Jesus Christ burning people because they wanted to translate the Bible. I mean, I have to get inside that. I've got to figure that out. In the late 1300s, it was beginning to happen.

John Wycliffe and the supporters called lollards, it was just a term of abuse that meant tongue-waggers, they began to translate the Bible by hand, distribute the copies around. So, in 1401, the parliament passed De Heretico Comburendo on the burning of heretics to make heresy punishable by burning at the stake.

1401, and they had one kind of person in view, Bible translators. This is pre-Luther, way pre-Luther, 60 years earlier. Then, 1408, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, created what were called the Constitutions of Oxford, which were still the law when Tyndale came along, and they said this.

It's a quote from the Constitutions of Oxford. It is a dangerous thing, as witnesseth blessed Saint Jerome, to translate the text of the Holy Scripture out of one tongue into another, for in the translation, the same sense is not always easily kept.

We, therefore, decree and ordain that no man hereafter, by his own authority, translate any text of Scripture into English or any other tongue, and that no man can read any such book in part or in whole.

Now, you put the Oxford Constitutions together with De Heretico Comburendo, and you have one clear meaning. If you read this, we will burn you alive.

And they did. They did.

John Bale, the dramatist who died in 1563, born in 1495, a year after Tyndale, wrote that as a boy of 11, he watched the burning of a young man in Norwich for possessing the Lord's Prayer in English. John Fox records that seven Lollards were burned at Coventry in 1519 for teaching their children the Lord's Prayer in English.

The church burned seven men for teaching their children the Lord's Prayer in English. Tyndale hoped to escape this condemnation by going to London in 1524 and asking the bishop for permission, because that's what the Oxford Constitution says.

If you get authority from the church, it's not against the law. Then he hoped he could get it. Not only could he not get it, but he had to flee for his life when they found out he wanted to do it, and he left in 1524 and never came home again.

And you get a flavor of what happened in those years. Twelve years, he was in exile on the continent, the Netherlands, and Germany, Belgium. He watched the rising tide of persecution and the pain he felt as he watched young men burned for being converted by his books.

For example, his closest friend, John Frith, F-R-I-T-H, was arrested in London, 28 years old, tried by Thomas More, and burned alive July 4, 1531. Then came Richard Bayfield, another friend of Tyndale.

Betrayed, he was the one who ran the ships back and forth with the manuscripts, not manuscripts, the printed leaves, which were then sewn together in England. Thomas More wrote on December 4, 1531, Bayfield, the monk and apostate, was well and worthily burned in Smithfield.

Three weeks later, John Tewkesbury, converted by reading the parable of the wicked mammon written by William Tyndale, falling in love with the doctrine of justification, was arrested and tied to a tree in Thomas More's garden, had bands of leather wrapped around his head and tightened until blood came out of his eyes, was sent to the tower and put in the rack until he was lame and then burned alive.

Thomas More wrote that he rejoiced that his victim was now in hell where Tyndale is like to find him when they come together. Don't get your biography from movies like a man for all seasons. Bainham was next.

John Bainham, he abjured because of his wife the first time. You know what abjure means? He denied Christ because his wife was being threatened. I mean, it's one thing to be threatened, have your wife threatened.

His conscience plagued him so bad that he walked one Sunday morning into St. Augustine's Church in London and at a point in the service, stood, signed his death warrant by lifting up a copy of Tyndale's New Testament and pleading with the people to die rather than deny the Word of God.

And so they burned him. There was Thomas Bilney, Thomas Duskate, John Bent, Thomas Harding, Andrew Hewitt, Elizabeth Barton, and others burned alive for sharing Tyndale's view and loving his translation.

Surface Reasons and Deeper Reasons for Hostility to English Scripture

Why? Why so hostile to the Bible in English? Well, there were surface reasons and there were deeper reasons. It shocked, it just absolutely shocked Tyndale that Bishop Tunstall, in 1526, burned the Bible.

They collected the Bibles and burned the Bible. That shocked him more than burning people. He said, if they will burn the Word of Christ, they would burn Christ. The surface reasons went something like this.

You can collect them by reading any of the histories. One, the English language is rude and unworthy of the exalted language.

Of the Bible.

Two, when one translates, errors creep in and it's safer for the soul not to translate. Three, if the Bible is in English, each man will become his own interpreter and many will be led astray into heresy and be condemned for their soul's sake.

We shouldn't allow that to happen. Four, only priests are given the divine unction and grace to understand.

The Scriptures.

Five, there is a special sacramental value to the Latin service that people do not understand. That's very key. Grace is mediated through the priestly ministry of Latin that does not work through the brain of the listener.

There were deeper reasons. One was doctrinal and one was ecclesiastical. Thomas More and others knew that for some centuries, the church had begun to teach and practice things that could not be found in the Bible.

And that if the Bible were unleashed to enough people, this could become known and the power and the control over people's lives would collapse, which is exactly what happened. The priesthood, purgatory, penance would come down.

Thomas More's criticism, and nobody criticized with more words and more violently and with more hatred the translation of the Bible into English than Thomas More did. And there were five basic words that he hated the way Tyndale translated.

Number one, Tyndale translated presbyteros as elder, not priest. Number two, ecclesia, Tyndale translated as congregation, not church. Three, Tyndale translated metanao as repent and not do penance. And exomologeo, Tyndale translated as acknowledge or admit, not confess.

And he translated agape as love, not charity. Almost all of the three-quarters of a million words that were poured out by More were in response to those five issues. And David Danielle comments like this, Tyndale cannot possibly have been unaware that those words in particular undercut the entire sacramental structure of the 1 ,000-year church throughout Europe, Asia, and North Africa.

It was the Greek New Testament that was undoing and undercutting. So there it came, the Reformation. England would not be a Catholic nation. The Reformed faith would very soon flourish in due time. Let me move toward an end with this question.

Tyndale’s Exile, Arrest, and Imprisonment

So, Tyndale, what did it cost you to do this? What did it cost you to write your books and to translate all the New Testaments so well with such passion and craftsmanship that we quote it in our Bible?

My guess is if somebody did a study, the ESV today would be 70 Tyndale. That would be my guess, maybe a little more. What did it cost you to do this, Tyndale? He fled his homeland in 1524. The reason I'm not telling you more about his life because we don't know more about his life in detail.

He was killed in 1536. So for 12 years, he was a fugitive, needed to stay in hiding, have friends around him who would protect him in Antwerp or Worms or Hamburg. Stephen Vaughan, in that letter I referred to earlier, gives a glimpse in Tyndale's own words of his condition during those years.

He refers to, my pains, my poverty, my exile out of my natural country, my bitter absence from my friends, my hunger, my thirst, my cold, the great danger wherewith I am everywhere encompassed and finally innumerable other hard and sharp fightings which I endure.

And those sufferings, 12 years long, came to a climax May 21, 1535, in the midst of Tyndale's great Old Testament labors. Oh, that we had Psalms in Tyndale. We think that the King James did a beautiful job.

Would that we had Tyndale on the Psalms, but we don't because on May 21, as David Daniel gives us just in this one sentence, the ugliness of what happened, malice, self-pity, villainy, deceit were about to destroy everything.

These evils came to the English house in Antwerp wholly uninvited in the form of an egregious Englishman, Henry Phillips. Phillips had won Tyndale's trust by long visits, and fawning, and lying, and deceit, and false support, and financial help, and sharing meals.

And John Fox tells what happened on May 21. I'll read it to you. So, when it was dinnertime, Master Tyndale went forth with Phillips, and at the going forth of Points' house was a long, narrow entry so that two could not go in a front.

Mr. Tyndale would have put Phillips before him, but Phillips would in no wise, but put Master Tyndale before, for that he pretended to show great humanity. So, Master Tyndale, being a man of no great stature, went before, and Phillips, a tall, comely man, followed behind him, who had set officers on either side of the door upon two seats, who being there might see who came in the entry, and coming through the same entry, Phillips pointed with his finger over Master Tyndale's head down to him, that the officers who sat at the door might see that it was he whom they should take.

Then they took him and brought him to the emperor's attorney or procurer general where he dined. Then came the procurer general to the House of Points and sent away all that was there of Master Tyndale's, as well as his books, as other things, and from thence, Tyndale was had to the Castle of Ilford, 18 English miles from Antwerp, and there he remained until he was put to death 18 months later.

Now, that castle is located about six miles north of Brussels, about the same distance from Louvain, and he was there for 18 months. What was the charge? The charge was heresy for not agreeing with the Holy Roman Emperor, in a nutshell, being a Lutheran, which in a nutshell meant justification.

By faith.

Latomus was one of the four charged to prove he was heretic. So four professors or clergymen from Louvain, highly intelligent, mostly respectful, sat with him in jail for months grilling him. Latomus wrote three books in response to what he heard from Tyndale.

Tyndale, he said, wrote a book, it's a long essay, in prison, entitled, Sola Fides Justificat Apudeum, Faith Alone Justifies Before God. This was the key issue for why the Bible had to be translated and why he was burned.

They were not easy months. It was a long dying. We get one glimpse and only one from his letters, and I want to read you this beautiful, beautiful word. It just shows almost everything I've tried to say, as well as a remarkably sweet spirit, though he could be very brutal with his criticism at times.

I don't want to misstate it. Here's what he wrote in a letter to the overseer of the castle in September. Arrested in May, September, it's starting to get cold in the cell. I beg your lordship, that of the Lord Jesus, I beg your lordship and that of the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here through the winter, you will request the commissary to have the kindness to send me from the goods of mine, which he has, a warmer cap, for I suffer greatly from cold in the head and am afflicted by a perpetual catarrh, infection of the respiratory system, which is much increased in this cell, a warmer coat also, for this, which I have, is very thin, a piece of cloth, too, to patch my leggings.

My overcoat is worn out. My shirt is also worn out. He has a woolen shirt, if he will be good enough to send it. I have also with him leggings of a thicker cloth to put on above. He has also warmer nightcaps, and I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening.

It is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark. But most of all, take that very seriously, after what he just said. But most of all, I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary that he will kindly permit me to have a Hebrew Bible, a Hebrew grammar,.

And a Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study.

In return, may you, this is Peon he's writing to probably, who ran the thing. In return, may you obtain what you most desire so that only it be for your salvation. But if any other decision has been taken concerning me to be carried out before winter, I will be patient, abiding the will of God to the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ, whose spirit, I pray, may ever direct your heart.

Amen.

W. Tindalus. We don't know if any of those requests were ever granted. He did stay through the winter. August of the next year, he was formally condemned as a heretic and degraded from the priesthood.

They put oil, the anointing oil, on your hands, and then they scrape it off. They put the chalice in your hand, and then they take it out, and they strip the cloak from you. That happened before. Then comes October, traditionally October 6th.

The Anglican Church still celebrates his day on October 6th. He was tied to a stake, and because he was formerly a priest, he enjoyed the privilege of being strangled by the executioner and then afterwards consumed.

And probably his most famous sentence was his last one, Lord, open the King of England's eyes. Is it not tragic that three years later, both Henry VIII and Bishop Arundel signed off on Coverdale's Bible in England?

They were playing games. They didn't oppose it. It was just politically expedient during Tyndale's lifetime not to have a Bible. As soon as it became politically expedient, the ones who were burning Bibles and burning people put the Bible out.

Tyndale’s Closing Exhortation to Pastors

What's his closing word to us in this conference? How must a pastor die? I'll quote in closing first an excerpt from The Obedience of the Christian Man, which he wrote, "'If God promise riches,' this is, I believe, Tyndale's word to you and me.

"'If God promise riches, the way thereto is poverty. Whom he loveth, he chasteneth. Whom he exalteth, he casteth down. Whom he saveth, he dammeth first. He bringeth no man to heaven except he send him to hell first.

If he promise life, he slayeth it first. When he buildeth, he casteth all down first. He is no patcher. He cannot build on another man's foundation. He will not work until all be past remedy and brought into such a case that men may see how that his hand, his power, his mercy, his goodness, and truth hath wrought altogether.

He will let no man be partaker with him of his praise and his glory. Let us, therefore, look diligently whereunto we are called that we may deceive not ourselves. We are called not to dispute as the pope's disciples do, but to die with Christ, that we may live with him and to suffer with him, that we may reign with him.

For if God be on our side, what matter maketh it who be against us, be they bishops, cardinals, popes, or whatsoever name they will.". Now, let me give you one last quote. And this one, appropriately, I think, from his last letter to his best friend, John Frith, just before John Frith was burned alive for loving Tyndale's New Testament.

Your cause is Christ's gospel, a light that must be fed with the blood of faith. If when we be buffeted for well-doing, we suffer patiently and endure, that is thankful with God. For to that end, we are called, for Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps who did no sin, hereby we have perceived love, that he laid down his life for us, and therefore, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

Let not your body faint. If the pain be above your strength, remember, whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will give it to you. And pray to your Father in that name, and he will ease your pain or shorten it.

Amen.

Father, we here, with more Bibles in our houses than we have light bulbs sometimes, can scarcely imagine having six of our friends burned for teaching their children the Lord's Prayer in English, or being hated by all the powers that be because we want the plow boy to read the Bible in something he can understand.

So, Lord, fill us, I pray, with a profound conviction that we, too, would burn people given the right circumstances, and give us a profound sense of gratitude that grace has been shown to us in bringing us a Bible, a Greek Testament, a Hebrew Old Testament, an English in so many versions and so many forms.

Oh, God, I plead with you, make us faithful expositors of this glorious word, and grant that we would be willing to bear whatever pains, whatever hardships, whatever conflicts it takes to make the Bible the central piece of our ministry.

May we be ministers of the word, saturated with prayer. May we be spared from pragmatism, and may we not be enamored by the vague fog of poetic pretense. May we be foursquare like Tyndale, I pray. The world is in such great need of creative craftsmen who have died and are alive to Christ, and who have passion, and who have a purpose to make it understood by every generation.

Lord, work this, I pray, in this conference, in these friends, and in their churches, and for the sake of the nations, I ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.