The attack on the traditional teachings of the Church, moreover, was not confined to unimportant points. From the first, high and fundamental doctrines, as it seemed to men in those days, were put in peril. The works sent forth by the advocates of the change speak for themselves, and, when contrasted with those of Luther, leave no room for doubt that they were founded on them, and inspired by the spirit of the leader of the revolt, although, as was inevitable in such circumstances, in particulars the disciples proved themselves in advance of their master. Writing in 1546, Dr. Richard Smythe contrasts the old times, when the faith was respected, with the then state of mental unrest in religious matters. “In our days,” he writes, “not a few things, nor of small importance, but (alack the more is the pity) even the chiefest and most weighty matters of our religion and faith are called in question, babbled, talked, and jangled upon (reasoned I cannot nor ought not to call it). These matters in time past (when reason had place and virtue with learning was duly regarded, yea, and vice with insolency was generally detested and abhorred) were held in such reverence and honour, in such esteem and dignity, yea, so received and embraced by all estates, that it was not in any wise sufferable that tag and rag, learned and unlearned, old and young, wise and foolish, boys and wenches, master and man, tinkers and tilers, colliers and coblers, with other such raskabilia might at their pleasure rail and jest (for what is it else they now do?) against everything that is good and virtuous, against all things that are expedient and profitable, not sparing any Sacrament of the Church or ordinance of the same, no matter how laudable, decent, or fitting it has been regarded in times past, or how much it be now accepted by good and Catholic men. In this way, both by preaching and teaching (if it so ought to be called), playing, writing, printing, singing, and (Oh, good Lord!) in how many other ways besides, divers of our age, being their own schoolmasters, or rather scholars of the devil, have not forborne or feared to speak and write against the most excellent and most blessed Sacrament of the Altar, affirming that the said Sacrament is nothing more than a bare figure, and that there is not in the same Sacrament the very body and blood of our blessed Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, but only a naked sign, a token, a memorial and a remembrance only of the same, if they take it for so much even and do not call it (as they are wont to do) an idol and very plain idolatry.”[219]

As to the date of the introduction of these heretical views into England, Sir Thomas More entirely agreed with Dr. Smythe, the writer just quoted. He places the growth of these ideas in the circulation of books by Tyndale, Frith, and Barnes, and even as late as 1533, declares that the number of those who had accepted the new teaching was grossly exaggerated. He states his belief that “the realm is not full of heretics, and it has in it but a few, though that few be indeed over many and grown more also by negligence in some part than there has been in some late years past.”[220] It was, indeed, part of the strategy pursued by the innovators in religion to endeavour to make the movement appear more important than it had any claim to be. It is, writes More, the “policy” of “these heretics who call themselves ‘evangelical brethren,’” to make their number appear larger than it is. “Some pot-headed apostles they have that wander about the realm into sundry shires, for whom every one has a different name in every shire, and some, peradventure, in corners here and there they bring into the brotherhood. But whether they get any or none they do not hesitate to lie when they come home, and say that more than half of every shire is of their own sect. Boast and brag these blessed brethren never so fast, they feel full well themselves that they be too feeble in what country so ever they be strongest. For if they thought themselves able to meet and match the Catholics they would not, I ween, lie still at rest for three days.”

“For in all places where heresies have sprung up hitherto so hath it proved yet. And so negligently might these things be handled, that at length it might happen so here. And verily they look (far as they be yet from the power) for it, and some of them have not hesitated to say this, and some to write it, too. For I read the letter myself which was cast into the palace of the Right Reverend Father in God, Cuthbert, now Bishop of Durham, but then Bishop of London, in which among other bragging word … were these words contained: ‘There will once come a day.’ And out of question that day they long for but also daily look for, and would, if they were not too weak, not fail to find it. And they have the greater hope because … they see that it begins to grow into a custom that among good Catholic folk they are suffered to talk unchecked.” For good men in their own minds indeed think the Catholic faith so strong that heretics with all their babbling will never be able to vanquish it, “and in this undoubtedly their mind is not only good, but also very true. But they do not look far enough. For as the sea will never surround and overwhelm all the land, and yet has eaten it in many places, and swallowed whole countries up and made many places sea, which sometime were well-inhabited lands, and has lost part of its own possession again in other places, so, though the faith of Christ shall never be overwhelmed with heresy, nor the gate of hell prevail against Christ’s Church, yet as in some places it winneth in new peoples, so by negligence in some places the old may be lost.”[221]

Sir Thomas More is all for vigilance on the part of the authorities. He likens those who are in power and office to the guardians of a fertile field who are bound to prevent the sowing of tares on their master’s land; and the multiplication of evil books and their circulation among the people, cannot, in his opinion, have any other effect than to prevent the fertilisation of the good seed of God’s word in the hearts of many. “These new teachers,” he says, “despise Christ’s Sacraments, which are His holy ordinances and a great part of Christ’s New Law and Testament. Who can place less value on His commandments than they who, upon the boldness of faith only, set all good works at naught, and little consider the danger of their evil deeds upon the boldness that a bare faith and slight repentance, without shrift or penance, suffices, and that no vow made to God can bind a man to live chastely or hinder a monk from marriage. All these things, with many pestilent errors besides, these abominable books of Tyndale and his fellows teach us. Of these books of heresies there are so many made within these few years, what by Luther himself and by his fellows, and afterwards by the new sects sprung out of his, which, like the children of Vippara, would now gnaw out their mother’s belly, that the bare names of those books were almost enough to make a book. Some of every sort of those books are brought into this realm and kept in ‘hucker mucker’ by some shrewd masters who keep them for no good. Besides the Latin, French, and German books of which these evil sects have put forth an innumerable number, there are some made in the English tongue. First, Tyndale’s English Testament, father of them all by reason of his false translating, and after that, the Five Books of Moses translated by the same man; we need not doubt in what manner and for what purpose. Then you have his Introduction to Saint Paul’s Epistle, with which he introduces his readers to a false understanding of Saint Paul, making them believe, among many other heresies, that Saint Paul held that faith only was always sufficient for salvation, and that men’s good works were worth nothing and could not deserve thanks or reward in heaven, although they were done in grace.… Then we have from Tyndale The Wicked Mammona, by which many a man has been beguiled and brought into many wicked heresies, which in good faith would be to me a matter of no little wonder, for there was never a more foolish frantic book, were it not that the devil is ever ready to put out the eyes of those who are content to become blind. Then we have Tyndale’s Book of Obedience, by which we are taught to disobey the teaching of Christ’s Catholic Church and set His holy Sacraments at naught. Then we have from Tyndale the First Epistle of Saint John, expounded in such wise that I dare say that blessed Apostle had rather his Epistle had never been put in writing than that his holy words should be believed by all Christian people in such a sense. Then we have the Supplication of Beggars, a piteous beggarly book, in which he would have all the souls in Purgatory beg all about for nothing. Then we have from George Joye, otherwise called Clarke, a Goodly Godly Epistle, wherein he teaches divers other heresies, but specially that men’s vows and promises of chastity are not lawful, and can bind no man in conscience not to wed when he will. And this man, considering that when a man teaches one thing and does another himself, the people set less value by his preaching, determined therefore with himself, that he would show himself an example of his preaching. Therefore, being a priest, he has beguiled a woman and wedded her; the poor woman, I ween, being unaware that he is a priest. Then you have also an Exposition on the Seventh Chapter of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians, by which exposition also priests, friars, monks, and nuns are taught the evangelical liberty that they may run out a-caterwauling and wed. That work has no name of the maker, but some think it was Friar Roy who, when he had fallen into heresy, then found it unlawful to live in chastity and ran out of his Order. Then have we the Examinations of Thorpe put forth as it is said by George Constantine (by whom I know well there has been a great many books of that sort sent into this realm). In that book, the heretic that made it as (if it were) a communication between the bishop and his chaplains and himself, makes all the parties speak as he himself likes, and sets down nothing as spoken against his heresies, but what he himself would seem solemnly to answer. When any good Christian man who has either learning or any natural wit reads this book, he shall be able not only to perceive him for a foolish heretic and his arguments easy to answer, but shall also see that he shows himself a false liar in his rehearsal of the matter in which he makes the other part sometimes speak for his own convenience such manner of things as no man who was not a very wild goose would have done.

“Then have we Jonas made out by Tyndale, a book that whosoever delight therein shall stand in such peril, that Jonas was never so swallowed up by the whale, as by the delight of that book a man’s soul may be so swallowed by the devil that he shall never have the grace to get out again. Then, we have from Tyndale the answer to my Dyalogue. Then, the book of Frith against Purgatory. Then, the book of Luther translated into English in the name of Brightwell, but, as I am informed, it was translated by Frith; a book, such as Tyndale never made one more foolish nor one more full of lies.… Then, we have the Practice of Prelates, wherein Tyndale intended to have made a special show of his high worldly wit, so that men should have seen therein that there was nothing done among princes that he was not fully advertised of the secrets. Then, we have now the book of Friar Barnes, sometime a doctor of Cambridge, who was abjured before this time for heresy, and is at this day come under a safe conduct to the realm. Surely, of all their books that yet came abroad in English (of all which there was never one wise nor good) there was none so bad, so foolish, so false as his. This, since his coming, has been plainly proved to his face, and that in such wise that, when the books that he cites and alleges in his book were brought forth before him, and his ignorance showed him, he himself did in divers things confess his oversight, and clearly acknowledged that he had been mistaken and wrongly understood the passages.

“Then, we have besides Barnes’s book, the A B C for children. And because there is no grace therein, lest we should lack prayers, we have the Primer and the Ploughman’s Prayer and a book of other small devotions, and then the whole Psalter too. After the Psalter, children were wont to go straight to their Donat and their Accidence, but now they go straight to Scripture. And for this end we have as a Donat, the book of the Pathway to Scripture, and for an Accidence, the Whole sum of Scripture in a little book, so that after these books are learned well, we are ready for Tyndale’s Pentateuchs and Tyndale’s Testament, and all the other high heresies that he and Joye and Frith and Friar Barnes teach in all their books. Of all these heresies the seed is sown, and prettily sprung up in these little books before. For the Primer and Psalter, prayers and all, were translated and made in this manner by heretics only. The Psalter was translated by George Joye, the priest that is wedded now, and I hear say the Primer too, in which the seven Psalms are printed without the Litany, lest folks should pray to the saints; and the Dirge is left out altogether, lest a man might happen to pray with it for his father’s soul. In their Calendar, before their devout prayers, they have given us a new saint, Sir Thomas Hytton, the heretic who was burned in Kent. They have put him in on St. Matthew’s Eve, by the name of St. Thomas the Martyr.

“It would be a long work to rehearse all their books, for there are yet more than I have known. Against all these the king’s high wisdom politically provided, in that his proclamation forbade any manner of English books printed beyond the sea to be brought into this realm, or any printed within this realm to be sold unless the name of the printer and his dwelling-place were set upon the book. But still, as I said before, a few malicious, mischievous persons have now brought into this realm these ungracious books full of pestilent, poisoned heresies that have already in other realms killed, by schisms and war, many thousand bodies, and by sinful errors and abominable heresies many more thousand souls.

“Although these books cannot either be there printed without great cost, nor here sold without great adventure and peril, yet, with money sent hence, they cease not to print them there, and send them hither by the whole sacks full at once; and in some places, looking for no lucre, cast them abroad at night, so great a pestilent pleasure have some devilish people caught with the labour, travail, cast, charge, peril, harm, and hurt of themselves to seek the destruction of others.”[222]

In his introduction to the Confutation of Tyndale’s answer, from which the foregoing extracts are taken, Sir Thomas More gives ample evidence that the teaching of “the New Learning” was founded entirely upon that of the German Reformer Luther, although on certain points his English followers had gone beyond their master. He takes for example what Hytton, “whom Tyndale has canonized,” had been teaching “his holy congregations, in divers corners and luskes lanes.” Baptism, he had allowed to be “a sacrament necessary for salvation,” though he declared that there was no need for a priest to administer it. Matrimony, he thought a good thing for Christians, but would be sorry to say it was a sacrament. Extreme Unction and Confirmation, together with Holy Orders, he altogether rejected as sacraments, declaring them to be mere ceremonies of man’s invention. “The mass,” he declared, “should never be said,” since to do so was rather an act of sin than virtue. Confession to a priest was unnecessary, and the penance enjoined was “without profit to the soul.” Purgatory he denied, “and said further, that neither prayer nor fasting for the souls departed can do them any good.” Religious vows were wrong, and those who entered religion “sinned in so doing.” He held further, that “no man had any free-will after he had once sinned;” that “all the images of Christ and His saints should be thrown out of the Church,” and that whatsoever laws “the Pope or a General Council might make beyond what is expressly commanded in Scripture” need not be obeyed. “As touching the Sacrament of the Altar, he said that it was a necessary sacrament, but held that after the consecration, there was nothing whatever therein, but only the very substance of material bread and wine.”[223]

Now, it was to defend these points of Catholic faith, as More, in common with the most learned in the land, believed them to be, that he took up his pen against Tyndale and others. I wish, he says, to second “the king’s gracious purpose, as being his most unworthy chancellor,” since “I know well that the king’s highness, for his faithful mind to God, desires nothing more effectually than the maintenance of the true Catholic faith, whereof is his no more honourable than well-deserved title, ‘defensor.’ He detests nothing more than these pestilent books which Tyndale and others send over into the realm in order to set forth their abominable heresies. For this purpose he has not only by his most erudite famous books, both in English and Latin, declared his most Catholic purpose and intent, but also by his open proclamations divers times renewed, and finally in his own most royal person in the Star Chamber most eloquently by his mouth, in the presence of his lords spiritual and temporal, has given monition and warning to all the justices of peace of every quarter of his realm then assembled before his Highness, to be declared by them to all his people, and did prohibit and forbid under great penalties, the bringing in, reading, and keep of those pernicious poisoned books.”[224]

The other writers of the time, moreover, had no doubt whatever as to the place whence the novel opinions had sprung, and they feared that social disturbances would follow in the wake of the religious teaching of the sectaries as they had done in the country of their birth. Thus Germen Gardynare, writing to a friend about the execution of John Frith for heresy, says that he was “amongst others found busy at Oxford in setting abroad these heresies which lately sprang up in Germany, and by the help of such folk are spread abroad into sundry places of Christendom, tending to nothing else but to the division and rending asunder of Christ’s mystical body, His Church; and to the pulling down of all power and the utter subversion of all commonwealths.”[225]

Sir Thomas More, too, saw danger to the ship of State from the storms which threatened the nation in the rise of the religious novelties imported from abroad. As a warning anticipation of what might come to pass in England if the flood was allowed to gain head, he describes what was known of the state of Germany when he wrote in 1528. What helped Luther to successfully spread his poison was, he says, “that liberty which he so highly commended unto the people, inducing them to believe that having faith they needed nothing else. For he taught them to neglect fasting, prayer, and such other things as vain and unfruitful ceremonies, teaching them also that being faithful Christians they were so near cousins to Christ that they were, in a full freedom and liberty, discharged of all governors and all manner of laws spiritual and temporal, except only the Gospel. And though he said that, as a point of special perfection, it would be good to suffer and bear the rule and authority of Popes and princes and other governors, whose rule and authority he calls mere tyranny, yet he says the people are so free by faith that they are no more bound thereto than they are to suffer wrong. And this doctrine Tyndale also teaches as the special matter of his holy book of disobedience. Now, this doctrine was heard so pleasantly in Germany by the common people that it blinded them in looking on the remnant, and would not allow them to consider and see what end the same would come to. The temporal lords also were glad to hear this talk against the clergy, and the people were as glad to hear it against the clergy and against the lords too, and against all the governors of every good town and city. Finally, it went so far that it began to burst out and fall to open force and violence. For intending to begin at the most feeble, a boisterous company of the unhappy sect gathered together and first rebelled against an abbot, and afterwards against a bishop, wherewith the temporal lords had good game and sport and dissembled the matter, gaping after the lands of the spirituality, till they had almost played as Æsop tells of the dog, which, in order to snatch at the shadow of the cheese in the water, let the cheese he had in his mouth fall, and lost it. For so it was shortly after that those uplandish Lutherans took so great boldness and began to grow so strong that they set also upon the temporal lords. These … so acquitted themselves that they slew in one summer 70,000 Lutherans and subdued the rest in that part of Germany to a most miserable servitude.… And in divers other parts of Germany and Switzerland this ungracious sect is so grown, by the negligence of governors in great cities, that in the end the common people have compelled the rulers to follow them.…

“And now it is too piteous a sight to see the ‘dispiteous dispyghts’ done in many places to God and all good men, with the marvellous change from the face and fashion of Christendom into a very tyrannous persecution, not only of all good Christians living and dead, but also of Christ Himself. For there you will see now goodly monasteries destroyed, the places burnt up, and the religious people put out and sent to seek their living; or, in many cities, the places (the buildings) yet standing with more despite to God than if they were burned to ashes. For the religious people, monks, friars, and nuns, are wholly driven or drawn out, except such as would agree to forsake their vows of chastity and be wedded; and places dedicated to cleanliness and chastity, left only to these apostates as brothels to live there in lechery. Now are the parish churches in many places not only defaced, all the ornaments taken away, the holy images pulled down, and either broken or burned, but also the Holy Sacrament cast out. And the abominable beasts (which I abhor to think about) did not abhor in despite to defile the pixes and in many places use the churches continually for a common siege. And that they have done in so despiteful a wise that when a stranger from other places where Christ is worshipped resorts to these cities, some of those unhappy wretched citizens do not fail, as it were, for courtesy and kindness, to accompany them in their walking abroad to show them the pleasures and commodities of the town, and then bring them to the church, only to show them in derision what uses the churches serve for!” Then, after pointing out that “of this sect were the greater part of those ungracious people who lately entered into Rome with the Duke of Bourbon,” Sir Thomas More details at considerable length the horrors committed during that sack of the Eternal City; adding: “For this purpose I rehearse to you these their heavy mischievous dealings, that you may perceive by their deeds what good comes of their sect. For as our Saviour says: ‘ye shall know the tree by the fruit.’”[226]

The activity of the teachers of the new doctrine was everywhere remarkable. More only wished that the maintainers of the traditional Catholic faith were half so zealous “as those that are fallen into false heresies and have forsaken the faith.” These seem, he says, indeed to “have a hot fire of hell in their hearts that can never suffer them to rest or cease, but forces them night and day to labour and work busily to subvert and destroy the Catholic Christian faith by every means they can devise.”[227] The time was, “and even until now very late,” when no man would allow any heresy to be spoken at his table; for this “has been till of late the common Christian zeal towards the Catholic faith.” But now (1533) “though, God be thanked, the faith is itself as fast rooted in this realm as ever it was before (except in some very few places, and yet even in those few the very faithful folk are many more than the faithless), even good men are beginning to tolerate the discussion of heretical views, and to take part in ‘the evil talk.’”

To understand the Reformation in England, it is important to note the progress of its growth, and to note that the lines upon which it developed were to all intents and purposes those which had been laid down by Luther for the German religious revolution, although, in many ways, England was carried along the path of reformed doctrines, even further than the original leader had been prepared to go. The special points of the traditional faith of the English people, which the reforming party successfully attacked, were precisely those which had been the battle-ground in Germany, and Sir Thomas More’s description of the result there might somewhat later have been written of this country. Tyndale was described by More as “the captain of the English heretics,” and the influence of his works no doubt greatly helped to the overthrow of the traditional teaching. The key of the position taken up by the English Reformers, as well as by their German predecessors, was the claim that all belief must be determined by the plain word of Holy Scripture, and by that alone. Tradition they rejected, although Sir Thomas More pointed out forcibly that the Church had always acknowledged the twofold authority of the written and unwritten word.[228] Upon this ground Tyndale and his successors rejected all the sacraments but two, attacked popular devotion to sacred images and prayers to our Lady and the saints, and rejected the old teaching about Purgatory and the help the souls of the departed faithful could derive from the suffrages and penances of the living. Confirmation and the anointing of priests at ordination they contemptuously called “butter smearing,” and with their denial of the priesthood quickly came their rejection of the doctrine of the Sacrifice in the Mass, and their teaching that the Holy Eucharist is a “token and sign” rather than the actual Body and Blood of our Lord.

No means were left untried to further the spread of the new views. Books of prayer were drawn up, in which, under the guise of familiar devotions, the poison of the reformed doctrine was unsuspectedly imbibed. Richard Whitford complains that his works, which just on the eve of the Reformation were deservedly popular, had been made use of for the purpose of interpolating tracts against points of Catholic faith, which people were induced to buy under the supposition that they were from the pen of the celebrated monk of Sion. John Waylande, the printer of some Whitford books, in 1537 prefixed the following notice to the new edition of the Werke for Householders. “The said author required me instantly that I should not print nor join any other works with his, specially of uncertain authors. For of late he found a work joined in the same volume with his works, and bought and taken for his work. This was not his, but was put there instead of his work that before was named among the contents of his book, and yet his (real) work was left out, as is complained in this preface here unto the Reader.”

In his preface Whitford says that the substituted work was obviously by one of the Reformers, and “not only puts me into infamy and slander, but also puts all readers in jeopardy of conscience to be infected (by heresy) and in danger of the king’s laws, for the manifold erroneous opinions that are contained in the same book.” He consequently adds a warning to his readers: “By my poor advice,” he says, “read not those books that go forth without named authors. For, doubtless, many of them that seem very devout and good works, are full of heresies, and your old English poet says, ‘There is no poison so perilous of sharpness as that is that hath of sugar a sweetness.’”[229]

In a subsequent volume, published in 1541, called Dyvers holy instructions and teachings, Whitford again complains of this device of the teachers of the new doctrines. In the preface he gives the exact titles of the four little tracts which go to make up the volume, in order, as he says, “to give you warning to search well and surely that no other works are put amongst them that might deceive you. For, of a certainty, I found now but very lately a work joined and bound with my poor labours and under the contents of the same volume, and one of my works which was named in the same contents left out. Instead of this, was put this other work that was not mine. For the title of mine was this, ‘A daily exercise and experience of death,’ and the other work has no name of any author. And all such works in this time are ever to be suspected, for so the heretics are used to send forth their poison among the people covered with sugar. For they seem to be good and devout workers, and are in very deed stark heresies.”[230]

Even the smallest points were not deemed too insignificant for the teaching of novel doctrines destructive of the old Catholic spirit. To take an example: John Standish, writing in Mary’s reign about the vernacular Scripture, complains of the translation which had been made in the time of Henry VIII. “Who is able,” he writes, “to tell at first sight how many hundred faults are even in their best translation (if there is any good). Shall they be suffered still to continue? Shall they still poison more like as they do in a thousand damnable English books set forth within the last twenty-two years? Lord deliver us from them all, and that with all speed! I take God to record (if I may speak only of one fault in the translation and touch no more) my heart did ever abhor to hear this word Dominus … translated the Lord, whereas it ought to be translated our Lord, the very Latin phrase so declaring. Is not St. John saying to Peter (John, xxi.), Dominus est, ‘it is our Lord’? whereas they have falsely translated it as in many other places ‘the Lord.’ And likewise in the salutation of our Lady, ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace, dominus tecum,’ does not this word dominus here include noster, and so ought to be translated ‘our Lord is with thee’? Would you make the Archangel like a devil call him the Lord? He is the Lord to every evil spirit, but to us He is our most merciful Lord and ought to be called so. If, perchance, you ask of a husbandman whose ground that is, he will answer, ‘the lord’s,’ who is perhaps no better than a collier. Well, I speak this, not now so much for the translation, seeing that it swarms as full of faults as leaves (I will not say lines) as I do, because I wish that the common speech among people sprung from this fond translation, ‘I thank the Lord’; ‘the Lord be praised’; ‘the Lord knoweth’; with all such-like phrases might be given up, and that the people might be taught to call Him ‘our Lord,’ saying, ‘I thank our Lord’; ‘our Lord be praised,’[231] &c., &c.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE PRINTED ENGLISH BIBLE

It may not be without utility to point out that the existence of any determination on the part of the Church to prevent the circulation of vernacular Bibles in the fifteenth century has been hitherto too hastily assumed. Those who were living during that period may be fairly considered the most fitting interpreters of the prohibition of Archbishop Arundel, which has been so frequently adduced as sufficient evidence of this supposed uncompromising hostility to what is now called “the open Bible.” The terms of the archbishop’s monition do not, on examination, bear the meaning usually put upon it; and should the language be considered by some obscure, there is absolute evidence of the possession of vernacular Bibles by Catholics of undoubted orthodoxy with, at the very least, the tacit consent of the ecclesiastical authorities. When to this is added the fact that texts from the then known English Scriptures were painted on the walls of churches, and portions of the various books were used in authorised manuals of prayer, it is impossible to doubt that the hostility of the English Church to the vernacular Bible has been greatly exaggerated, if indeed its attitude has not altogether been misunderstood. This much may, and indeed must, be conceded, wholly apart from the further question whether the particular version now known as the Wycliffite Scriptures is, or is not, the version used in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century by Catholic Englishmen. That a Catholic version, or some version viewed as Catholic and orthodox by those who lived in the sixteenth century, really existed does not admit of any doubt at all on the distinct testimony of Sir Thomas More. It will be readily admitted that he was no ordinary witness. As one eminent in legal matters, he must be supposed to know the value of evidence, and his uncompromising attitude towards all innovators in matters of religion is a sufficient guarantee that he would be no party to the propagation of any unorthodox or unauthorised translations.

Some quotations from Sir Thomas More’s works will illustrate his belief better than any lengthy exposition. It is unnecessary, he says, to defend the law prohibiting any English version of the Bible, “for there is none such, indeed. There is of truth a Constitution which speaks of this matter, but nothing of such fashion. For you shall understand that the great arch-heretic Wycliffe, whereas the whole Bible was long before his days by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people and with devotion and soberness well and reverently read, took upon himself to translate it anew. In this translation he purposely corrupted the holy text, maliciously planting in it such words, as might in the readers’ ears serve to prove such heresies as he ‘went about’ to sow. These he not only set forth with his own translation of the Bible, but also with certain prologues and glosses he made upon it, and he so managed this matter, assigning probable and likely reasons suitable for lay and unlearned people, that he corrupted in his time many folk in this realm.…

“After it was seen what harm the people took from the translation, prologues, and glosses of Wycliffe and also of some others, who after him helped to set forth his sect for that cause, and also for as much as it is dangerous to translate the text of Scripture out of one tongue into another, as St. Jerome testifieth, since in translating it is hard to keep the same sentence whole (i.e. the exact meaning): it was, I say, for these causes at a Council held at Oxford, ordered under great penalties that no one might thenceforth translate (the Scripture) into English, or any other language, on his own authority, in a book, booklet, or tract, and that no one might read openly or secretly any such book, booklet, or treatise newly made in the time of the said John Wycliffe, or since, or should be made any time after, till the same translation had been approved by the diocesan, or, if need should require, by a Provincial Council.

“This is the law that so many have so long spoken about, and so few have all this time sought to look whether they say the truth or not. For I hope you see in this law nothing unreasonable, since it neither forbids good translations to be read that were already made of old before Wycliffe’s time, nor condemns his because it was new, but because it was ‘naught.’ Neither does it prohibit new translations to be made, but provides that if they are badly made they shall not be read till they are thoroughly examined and corrected, unless indeed they are such translations as Wycliffe and Tyndale made, which the malicious mind of the translator has handled in such a way that it were labour lost to try and correct them.”

The “objector,” whom Sir Thomas More was engaged in instructing in the Dialogue, could hardly believe that the formal Provincial Constitution meant nothing more than this, and thereupon, as Sir Thomas says: “I set before him the Constitutions Provincial, with Lyndwood upon it, and directed him to the place under the title De magistris. When he himself had read this, he said he marvelled greatly how it happened that in so plain a matter men were so deceived.” But he thought that even if the law was not as he had supposed, nevertheless the clergy acted as if it were, and always “took all translations out of every man’s hand whether the translation was good or bad, old or new.” To this More replied that to his knowledge this was not correct. “I myself,” he says, “have seen and can show you Bibles, fair and old, written in English, which have been known and seen by the bishop of the diocese, and left in the hands of laymen and women, whom he knew to be good and Catholic people who used the books with devotion and soberness.” He admitted indeed that all Bibles found in the hands of heretics were taken away from them, but none of these, so far as he had ever heard, were burnt, except such as were found to be garbled and false. Such were the Bibles issued with evil prologues or glosses, maliciously made by Wycliffe and other heretics. “Further,” he declared, “no good man would be so mad as to burn a Bible in which they found no fault.” Nor was there any law whatever that prohibited the possession, examination, or reading of the Holy Scripture in English.[232]

In reply to the case of Richard Hunn, who, according to the story set about by the religious innovators, had been condemned and his dead body burnt “only because they found English Bibles in his house, in which they never found other fault than because they were in English,” Sir Thomas More, professedly, and with full knowledge of the circumstances, absolutely denies, as he says, “from top to toe,” the truth of this story.[233] He shows at great length that the whole tale of Hunn’s death was carefully examined into by the king’s officials, and declares that at many of the examinations he himself had been present and heard the witnesses, and that in the end it had been fully shown that Hunn was in reality a heretic and a teacher of heresy. “But,” urged his objector, “though Hunn were himself a heretic, yet might the book (of the English Bible) be good enough; and there is no good reason why a good book should be burnt.” The copy of this Bible, replied More, was of great use in showing the kind of man Hunn really was, “for at the time he was denounced as a heretic, there lay his English Bible open, and some other English books of his, so that every one could see the places noted with his own hand, such words and in such a way that no wise and good man could, after seeing them, doubt what ‘naughty minds’ the men had, both he that so noted them and he that so made them. I do not remember the particulars,” he continued, “nor the formal words as they were written, but this I do remember well, that besides other things found to support divers other heresies, there were in the prologue of that Bible such words touching the Blessed Sacrament as good Christian men did much abhor to hear, and which gave the readers undoubted occasion to think that the book was written after Wycliffe’s copy, and by him translated into our tongue.”[234]

More then goes on to state his own mind as to the utility of vernacular Scriptures. And, in the first place, he utterly denies again that the Church, or any ecclesiastical authority, ever kept the Bible in English from the people, except “such translations as were either not approved as good translations, or such as had already been condemned as false, such as Wycliffe’s and Tyndale’s were. For, as for other old ones that were before Wycliffe’s days, they remain lawful, and are in the possession of some people, and are read.” To this assertion of a plain fact Sir Thomas More’s opponent did not dissent, but frankly admitted that this was certainly the case,[235] although he still thought that the English Bible might be in greater circulation than it was.[236] Sir Thomas More considered that the clergy really had good grounds not to encourage the spread of the vernacular Scriptures at that time, inasmuch as those who were most urgent in the matter were precisely those whose orthodoxy was reasonably suspected. It made men fear, he says, “that seditious people would do more harm with it than good and honest folk would derive benefit.” This, however, he declared was not his own personal view.[237] “I would not,” he writes, “for my part, withhold the profit that one good, devout, unlearned man might get by the reading, for fear of the harm a hundred heretics might take by their own wilful abuse.… Finally, I think that the Provincial Constitution (already spoken of) has long ago determined the question. For when the clergy in that synod agreed that the English Bibles should remain which were translated before Wycliffe’s days, they, as a necessary consequence, agreed that it was no harm to have the Bible in English. And when they forbade any new translation to be read till it were approved by the bishops, it appears clearly that they intended that the bishop should approve it, if he found it to be faultless, and also to amend it where it was found faulty, unless the man who made it was a heretic, or the faults were so many and of such a character that it would be easier to retranslate it than to mend it.”[238]

This absolute denial of any attitude of hostility on the part of the Church to the translated Bible is reiterated in many parts of Sir Thomas More’s English works. When, upon the condemnation of Tyndale’s Testament, the author pointed to this fact as proof of the determination of the clergy to keep the Word of God from the people, More replied at considerable length. He showed how the ground of the condemnation had nothing whatever to do with any anxiety upon the part of ecclesiastics to keep the Scriptures from lay people, but was entirely based upon the complete falsity of Tyndale’s translation itself. “He pretends,” says Sir Thomas More, “that the Church makes some (statutes) openly and directly against the Word of God, as in that statute whereby they have condemned the New Testament. Now, in truth, there is no such statute made. For as for the New Testament, if he mean the Testament of Christ, it is not condemned nor forbidden. But there is forbidden a false English translation of the New Testament newly forged by Tyndale, altered and changed in matters of great weight, in order maliciously to set forth against Christ’s true doctrine Tyndale’s anti-Christian heresies. Therefore that book is condemned, as it is well worthy to be, and the condemnation thereof is neither openly nor privily, directly nor indirectly, against the word of God.”[239]

Again, in another place, More replies to what he calls Tyndale’s “railing” against the clergy, and in particular his saying that they keep the Scripture from lay people in order that they may not see how they “juggle with it.” “I have,” he says, “in the book of my Dyalogue proved already that Tyndale in this point falsely belies the clergy, and that in truth Wycliffe, and Tyndale, and Friar Barnes, and such others, have been the original cause why the Scripture has been of necessity kept out of lay people’s hands. And of late, specially, by the politic provision and ordinance of our most excellent sovereign the king’s noble grace, not without great and urgent causes manifestly rising from the false malicious means of Wycliffe and Tyndale,” this has been prevented. “For this (attempt of Tyndale) all the lay people of this realm, both the evil folk who take harm from him, and the good folk that lose their profit by him, have great cause to lament that ever the man was born.”[240]

The same view is taken by Roger Edgworth, a popular preacher in the reign of Henry VIII. After describing what he considered to be the evils which had resulted from the spread of Lutheran literature in England, he says: “By this effect you may judge the cause. The effect was evil, therefore there must needs be some fault in the cause. But what sayest thou? Is not the study of Scripture good? Is not the knowledge of the Gospels and of the New Testament godly, good, and profitable for a Christian man or woman? I shall tell you what I think in this matter. I have ever been in this mind, that I have thought it no harm, but rather good and profitable, that Holy Scripture should be had in the mother tongue, and withheld from no man that was apt and meet to take it in hand, specially if we could get it well and truly translated, which will be very hard to be had.”[241]

There is, it is true, no doubt, that the destruction of Tyndale’s Testaments and the increasing number of those who favoured the new religious opinions, caused people to spread all manner of stories abroad as to the attitude of the Church authorities in England towards the vernacular Scriptures. Probably the declaration of the friend, against whom Sir Thomas More, then Chancellor, in 1530, wrote his Dyalogue, “that great murmurs were heard against the clergy on this score,” is not far from the truth. Ecclesiastics, he said, in the opinion of the common people, would not tolerate criticism of their lives or words, and desired to keep laymen ignorant. “And they” (the people) “think,” he adds, “that for no other cause was there burned at St. Paul’s Cross the New Testament, late translated by Master William Huchin, otherwise called Tyndale, who was (as men say) well known, before he went over the sea, as a man of right good life, studious and well learned in the Scriptures. And men mutter among themselves that the book was not only faultless, but also very well translated, and was ordered to be burned, because men should not be able to prove that such faults (as were at Paul’s Cross declared to have been found in it) were never in fact found there at all; but untruly surmised, in order to have some just cause to burn it, and that for no other reason than to keep out of the people’s hands all knowledge of Christ’s Gospel and of God’s law, except so much as the clergy themselves please now and then to tell them. Further, that little as this is, it is seldom expounded. And, as it is feared, even this is not well and truly told; but watered with false glosses and altered from the truth of the words and meaning of Scripture, only to maintain the clerical authority. And the fear lest this should appear evident to the people, if they were suffered to read the Scripture themselves in their own tongue, was (it is thought) the very cause, not only for which the New Testament translated by Tyndale was burned, but also why the clergy of this realm have before this time, by a Constitution Provincial, prohibited any book of Scripture to be translated into the English tongue, and threaten with fire men who should presume to keep them, as heretics; as though it were heresy for a Christian man to read Christ’s Gospel.”[242]

It has been already pointed out how Sir Thomas More completely disposed of this assertion as to the hostility of the clergy to “the open Bible.” In his position of Chancellor of England, More could hardly have been able to speak with so much certainty about the real attitude of the Church, had not the true facts been at the same time well understood and commonly acknowledged. The words of the “objector,” however, not only express the murmurs of those who were at that period discontented with the ecclesiastical system; but they voice the accusations which have been so frequently made from that day to this, by those who do not as a fact look at the other side. Sir Thomas More’s testimony proves absolutely that no such hostility to the English Bible as is so generally assumed of the pre-Reformation Church did, in fact, exist. Most certainly there never was any ecclesiastical prohibition against vernacular versions as such, and the most orthodox sons of the Church did in fact possess copies of the English Scriptures, which they read openly and devoutly. This much seems certain.

Moreover, Sir Thomas More’s contention that there was no prohibition is borne out by other evidence. The great canonist Lyndwood undoubtedly understood the Constitution of Oxford on the Scriptures in the same sense as Sir Thomas More. In fact, as it has been pointed out already, to his explanation Sir Thomas More successfully appealed in proof of his assertion that there was no such condemnation of the English Scriptures, as had been, and is still, asserted by some. It has, of course, been often said that Sir Thomas More, and of course Lyndwood, were wrong in supposing that there were any translations previous to that of the version now known as Wycliffite. This is by no means so clear; and even supposing they were in error as to the date of the version, it is impossible that they could have been wrong as to the meaning and interpretation of the law itself, and as to the fact that versions were certainly in circulation which were presumed by those who used them to be Catholic and orthodox. Archbishop Cranmer himself may also be cited as a witness to the free circulation of manuscript copies of the English Scriptures in pre-Reformation times, since the whole of his argument for allowing a new version, in the preface to the Bishops’ Bible, rests on the well-known custom of the Church to allow vernacular versions, and on the fact that copies of the English Scriptures had previously been in daily use with ecclesiastical sanction.

The same conclusion must be deduced from books printed by men of authority and unquestionable piety. In them we find the reading of the Scriptures strongly recommended. To take an example: Thomas Lupset, the friend and protégé of Colet and Lilly, gives the following advice to his sisters, two of whom were nuns: “Give thee much to reading; take heed in meditation of the Scripture, busy thee in the law of God; have a customable use in divine books.”[243] The same pious scholar has much the same advice for a youth in the world who had been his pupil. After urging him to avoid “meddling in any point of faith otherwise than as the Church shall instruct and teach,” he adds, “more particularly in writings you shall learn this lesson, if you would sometimes take in your hand the New Testament and read it with a due reverence”; and again: “in reading the Gospels, I would you had at hand Chrysostom and Jerome, by whom you might surely be brought to a perfect understanding of the text.”[244]

Moreover, the testimony of Sir Thomas More that translations were allowed by the Church, and that these, men considered rightly or wrongly, had been made prior to the time of Wycliffe, is confirmed by Archdeacon John Standish in Queen Mary’s reign. When the question of the advisability of a vernacular translation was then seriously debated, he says: “To the intent that none should have occasion to misconstrue the true meaning thereof, it is to be thought that, if all men were good and Catholic, then were it lawful, yea, and very profitable also, that the Scripture should be in English, as long as the translations were true and faithful.… And that is the cause that the clergy did agree (as it is in the Constitution Provincial) that the Bibles that were translated into English before Wycliffe’s days might be suffered; so that only such as had them in handling were allowed by the ordinary and approved as proper to read them, and so that their reading should be only for the setting forth of God’s glory.”[245]

Sir Thomas More, in his Apology, points out that although, in his opinion, it would be a good thing to have a proper English translation, still it was obviously not necessary for the salvation of man’s soul. “If the having of the Scripture in English,” he writes, “be a thing so requisite of precise necessity, that the people’s souls must needs perish unless they have it translated into their own tongue, then the greater part of them must indeed perish, unless the preacher further provide that all people shall be able to read it when they have it. For of the whole people, far more than four-tenths could never read English yet, and many are now too old to begin to go to school.… Many, indeed, have thought it a good and profitable thing to have the Scripture well and truly translated into English, and although many equally wise and learned and also very virtuous folk have been and are of a very different mind; yet, for my own part, I have been and am still of the same opinion as I expressed in my Dyalogue, if the people were amended, and the time meet for it.”[246]

The truth is, that there was then no such clamour for the translated Bible as it has suited the purposes of some writers to represent. In view of all that is known about the circumstances of those times, it does not appear at all likely that the popular mind would be really stirred by any desire for Bible reading. The late Mr. Brewer may be allowed to speak with authority on this matter when he writes: “Nor, indeed, is it possible that Tyndale’s writings and translations could at this early period have produced any such impressions as is generally surmised, or have fallen into the hands of many readers. His works were printed abroad; their circulation was strictly forbidden; the price of them was beyond the means of the poorer classes, even supposing that the knowledge of letters at that time was more generally diffused than it was for centuries afterwards. To imagine that ploughmen and shepherds in the country read the New Testament in English by stealth, or that smiths and carpenters in towns pored over its pages in the corners of their masters’ workshops, is to mistake the character and acquirements of the age.”[247]

“So far from England then being a ‘Bible-thirsty land,’” says a well-informed writer, “there was no anxiety whatever for an English version at that time, excepting among a small minority of the people,”[248] and these desired it not for the thing in itself so much as a means of bringing about the changes in doctrine and practice which they desired. “Who is there among us,” says one preacher of the period, “that will have a Bible, but he must be compelled thereto.” And the single fact that the same edition of the Bible was often reissued with new titles, &c., is sufficient proof that there was no such general demand for Bibles as is pretended by Foxe when he writes: “It was wonderful to see with what joy this book of God was received, not only among the learneder sort, and those that were noted for lovers of the Reformation, but generally all England over among all the vulgar common people.” “For,” says the writer above quoted, “if the people all England over were so anxious to possess the new translation, what need was there of so many penal enactments to force it into circulation, and of royal proclamations threatening with the king’s displeasure those who neglected to purchase copies.”[249]

There can be little doubt that the condemnation of the first printed English Testament, and the destruction, by order of the ecclesiastical authority, of all copies which Tyndale had sent over to England for sale, have tended, more than anything else, to confirm in their opinion those who held that the Church in pre-Reformation England would not tolerate the vernacular Scriptures at all. It is of interest, therefore, and importance, if we would determine the real attitude of churchmen in the sixteenth century to the English Bible, to understand the grounds of this condemnation. As the question was keenly debated at the time, there is little need to seek for information beyond the pages of Sir Thomas More’s works.

The history of Tyndale’s translation is not of such importance in this respect, as a knowledge of the chief points objected against it. Some brief account of this history, however, is almost necessary if we would fully understand the character and purpose of the translation. William Tyndale was born about the year 1484, and was in turn at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and professed among the Friars Observant at Greenwich. In 1524 he passed over to Hamburg, and then, about the middle of the year, to Wittenberg, where he attached himself to Luther. Under the direction at least, of the German reformer, and very possibly also with his actual assistance, he commenced his translation of the New Testament. The royal almoner, Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York, being on a journey to Spain, wrote on December 2, 1525, from Bordeaux, warning Henry VIII. of the preparation of this book. “I am certainly informed,” he says, “that an Englishman, your subject, at the solicitation and instance of Luther, with whom he is, hath translated the New Testament into English; and within a few days intendeth to return with the same imprinted into England. I need not to advertise your Grace what infection and danger may ensue hereby if it be not withstanded. This is the way to fill your realm with Lutherans. For all Luther’s perverse opinions be grounded upon bare words of Scripture not well taken nor understood, which your Grace hath opened (i.e. pointed out) in sundry places of your royal book.”[250]

Luther’s direct influence may be detected on almost every page of the printed edition issued by Tyndale, and there can be no doubt that it was prepared with Luther’s version of 1522 as a guide. From the general introduction of this German Bible, nearly half, or some sixty lines, are transferred by Tyndale almost bodily to his prologue, whilst he adopted and printed over against the same chapters and verses, placing them in the same position in the inner margins, some 190 of the German reformer’s marginal references. Besides this, the marginal notes on the outer margin of the English Testament are all Luther’s glosses, translated from the German. In view of this, it can hardly be a matter of surprise that Tyndale’s Testament was very commonly known at the time as “Luther’s Testament in English.”

In this work of translation or adaptation, Tyndale was assisted by another ex-friar, named Joye, with whom, however, he subsequently quarrelled, and about whom he then spoke in abusive and violent terms. At first it was intended to print the edition at Cologne, but being disturbed by the authorities there, Tyndale fled to Worms, and at once commenced printing at the press of Peter Schœffer, the octavo volume which is known as the first edition of Tyndale’s New Testament. Although the author is supposed to have been a good Greek scholar, there is evidence to show that the copy he used for the work of translation was the Latin version of Erasmus, printed by Fisher in 1519, with some alterations taken from the edition of 1522, and some other corrections from the Vulgate.

John Cochlæus, who had a full and personal knowledge of all the Lutheran movements at the time, writing in 1533, says: “Eight years previously, two apostates from England, knowing the German language, came to Wittenberg, and translated Luther’s New Testament into English. They then came to Cologne, as to a city nearer to England, with a more established trade, and more adapted for the despatch of merchandise. Here … they secretly agreed with printers to print at first three thousand copies, and printers and publishers pushed on the work with the firm expectation of success, boasting that whether the king and cardinal liked it or not, England would shortly ‘be Lutheran.’”[251]

It was this scheme that Cochlæus was instrumental in frustrating, his representations forcing Tyndale to remove the centre of his operations to Worms. For the benefit of the Scotch king, to whom his account was addressed, Cochlæus adds, that Luther’s German translation of the New Testament was intended of set purpose to spread his errors; that the people had bought up thousands, and that thereby “they have not been made better but rather the worse, artificers who were able to read neglecting their shops and the work by which they ought to gain the bread of their wives and children.” For this reason, he says, magistrates in Germany have had to forbid the reading of Luther’s Testament, and many have been put in prison for reading it. In his opinion the translation of the Testament into the vernacular had become an idol and a fetish to the German Lutherans, although in Germany there were many vernacular translations of both the Old and the New Testaments, before the rise of Lutheranism.[252]

With a full understanding of the purpose and tendency of Tyndale’s translation and of the evils which at least some hard-headed men had attributed to the spread of Luther’s German version, upon which almost admittedly the English was modelled, the ecclesiastical authorities of England approached the practical question—what was to be done in the matter? Copies of the printed edition must have reached England some time in 1526, for in October of that year Bishop Tunstall of London addressed a monition to the archdeacons on the subject. “Many children of iniquity,” he says, “maintainers of Luther’s sect, blinded through extreme wickedness, wandering from the way of truth and the Catholic faith, have craftily translated the New Testament into our English tongue, intermeddling therewith many heretical articles and erroneous opinions, pernicious and offensive, seducing the simple people; attempting by their wicked and perverse interpretations to profane the majesty of Scripture, which hitherto hath remained undefiled, and craftily to abuse the most holy Word of God, and the true sense of the same. Of this translation there are many books printed, some with glosses and some without, containing in the English tongue that pestiferous and pernicious poison, (and these are) dispersed in our diocese of London.” He consequently orders all such copies of the New Testament to be delivered up to his offices within thirty days.[253]

This was the first action of the English ecclesiastical authorities, and it was clearly taken not from distrust of what the same bishop calls “the most holy Word of God,” but because they looked on the version sent forth by Tyndale as a profanation of the Bible, and as intended to disseminate the errors of Lutheranism.

Of the Lutheran character of the translation the authorities, whether in Church or State, do not seem to have had from the first the least doubt. The king himself, in a rejoinder to Luther’s letter of apology, says that the German reformer “fell in device with one or two lewd persons, born in this our realm, for the translating of the New Testament into English, as well with many corruptions of that holy text, as certain prefaces and other pestilent glosses in the margins, for the advancement and setting forth of his abominable heresies, intending to abuse the good minds and devotion that you, our dearly beloved people, bear toward the Holy Scripture and infect you with the deadly corruption and contagious odour of his pestilent errors.”[254]

Bishop Tunstall, in 1529, whilst returning from an embassy abroad, purchased at Antwerp through one Packington, all copies of the English printed New Testament that were for sale, and, according to the chronicler Hall, burned them publicly at St. Paul’s in May 1530. For the same reason the confiscated volumes of the edition first sent over were committed to the flames some time in 1527,[255] and Bishop Tunstall explained to the people at Paul’s Cross that the book was destroyed because in more than two thousand places wrong translations and corruptions had been detected. Tyndale made a great outcry at the iniquity of burning the Word of God; but in The Wicked Mammon he declares that, “in burning the New Testament they did none other thynge than I looked for.” Moreover, as he sold the books knowing the purpose for which they were purchased, he may be said to have been a participator in the act he blames. “The fact is,” says a modern authority, “the books were full of errors and unsaleable, and Tyndale wanted money to pay the expense of a revised version and to purchase Vastermann’s old Dutch blocks to illustrate his Pentateuch, and was glad to make capital in more ways than one by the translation. ‘I am glad,’ said he, ‘for these two benefits shall come thereof: I shall get money to bring myself out of debt, and the whole world will cry out against the burning of God’s Word, and the overplus of the money that shall remain to me shall make me more studious to correct the said New Testament, and so newly to imprint the same once again, and I trust the second you will much better like than you ever did the first.’”[256]

Tyndale allowed nine years to elapse before issuing a second edition of his Testament. Meantime, as his former assistant, Joye, says, foreigners looking upon the English Testament as a good commercial speculation, and seeing that the ecclesiastical authorities in England had given orders to purchase the entire first issue of Tyndale’s print, set to work to produce other reprints. Through ignorance of the language, the various editions they issued were naturally full of typographical errors, and, as Joye declared, “England hath enough and too many false Testaments, and is now likely to have many more.” He consequently set to work himself to see an edition through the press, in which, without Tyndale’s leave, he made substantial alterations in his translation. Joye’s version appeared in 1534, and immediately Tyndale attacked its editor in the most bitter, reproachful terms. In George Joye’s Apology, which appeared in 1535, he tried, as he says, “to defend himself against so many slanderous lies upon him in Tyndale’s uncharitable and unsober epistle.” In the course of the tract, Joye charges Tyndale with claiming as his own what in reality was Luther’s. “I have never,” he says, “heard a sober, wise man praise his own works as I have heard him praise his exposition of the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew, insomuch that mine ears glowed for shame to hear him; and yet it was Luther that made it, Tyndale only translating it and powdering it here and there with his own fantasies.”

In a second publication Joye declares Tyndale’s incompetence to judge of the original Greek. “I wonder,” he says, “how he could compare it with the Greek, since he himself is not so exquisitely seen therein.… I know well (he) was not able to do it without such a helper as he hath ever had hitherto.”[257] Tyndale, however, continued his work of revision in spite of opposition, and further, with the aid of Miles Coverdale, issued translations of various portions of the Old Testament.

Shortly after the public burning of the copies of the translated Testament by Bishop Tunstall, on May 24, 1530, an assembly was called together by Archbishop Warham to formally condemn these and other books then being circulated with the intention of undermining the religion of the country. The king was present in person, and a list of errors was drawn up and condemned “with all the books containing the same, with the translation also of Scripture corrupted by William Tyndale, as well in the Old Testament as in the New.” After this meeting, a document was issued with the king’s authority, which preachers were required to read to their people. After speaking of the books condemned for teaching error, the paper takes notice of an opinion “in some of his subjects” that the Scripture should be allowed in English. The king declares that it is a good thing the Scriptures should be circulated at certain times, but that there are others when they should not be generally allowed, and taking into consideration all the then existing circumstances, he “thinketh in his conscience that the divulging of the Scripture at this time in the English tongue to be committed to the people … would rather be to their further confusion and destruction than for the edification of their souls.”