Beholde God

For the Lorde

yet thyne anger is turned, and thou hast comforted me. is my salvation: I will be bolde therfore and not feare. God is my strength and my prayse whereof I synge: and is become my Savyoure. And ye shall drawe water in gladnes oute of the welles of salvacion. And ye shal saye in that daye: Geve thanks unto the Lorde: call on his name: make his dedes knowen amonge the hethen: remember that his name is hye. Lyfte up an hye. Synge unto the Lorde, for he hath done excellentlye, and that is knowen thorowe oute all the worlde. Crye and showte thou inhabiter of Syon, for great amonge you is the holye of Israel.

This edition again was speedily followed by still another, and the introduction of the volume assumed such wholesale proportions that Tonstal's zeal against it found vent in most violent and very unecclesiastical measures, which were, nevertheless, eclipsed by those of some of his brethren on the bench, who did not content themselves with the burning of the books, for they committed their readers to the flames.

At the treaty of Cambray, in 1529, where Tonstal, More, and Hacket represented England, it was stipulated that the contracting parties were not "to print or sell any Lutheran books on either side." Tonstal took Antwerp on his way to England, and to that visit (in 1529) is referred the following incident narrated by Halle, the chronicler (Chronicle, p. 762, London, 1809). The bishop consulted there with Austin Packington, a mercer and merchant of London, as to the best way of securing the English Testaments for the purpose of burning them. The mercer, who is said to have been a friend of Tyndale, and knowing that he had a great number of Testaments on his hands, and that he was sadly in want of money, deemed it a fair opportunity to serve the bishop and his friend at the same time, and told the former that if he would pay for them, he believed his interest with the Dutchmen, and strangers who had bought them of Tyndale, to be sufficient to procure for his lordship every copy that was yet unsold. The bishop consenting, Packington got the books

from Tyndale, and sent them to England, where, on the bishop's return, they were publicly burnt at St. Paul's Cross. But when the supply continued from the same source in spite of the burning, the bishop sent for Packington to expostulate with him, who stated in reply that his lordship had received all the unsold copies of that impression, according to his bargain, but that more had been printed since, and he could not see how that could be prevented, unless he should likewise buy the types and the presses. Halle adds that George Constantine, a Cambridge LL.B., suspected of sympathy with Luther, who fled on that account to the continent, and had there made the acquaintance of Tyndale, being apprehended and examined by the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, and asked how Tyndale, Joye, etc., were furnished with money to support them, replied that "it was the Bishop of London who had helped them, since his lordship had distributed a great deal of money among them by his buying the New Testaments, which he burnt, which had been, and yet was, their only succor and comfort." Burnet says this occurred in 1529, Foxe that it was in 1530. But as Sir Thomas More, in his Dialogues, printed in June, 1529, refers to the burning of the Testaments, and Tyndale himself, in the preface to the Parable of the Wicked Mammon, published May 8th, 1527, says explicitly, "In burning the New Testament they dyd none other thing than that I looked for," it follows that either it must have taken place before that date, or that there was more than one such public burning of New Testaments.

Tonstal preached against Tyndale's Testament, and alleged, at St. Paul's Cross, that it contained not less than two thousand mistranslated texts. The importers of the book were prosecuted, compelled to abjure, and to do penance (especially John Roremund, [Raymond], a Dutchman, John Tyndale, the translator's brother, and Thomas Patmore) for having imported them, by iding with their faces to their horses

tails, with the books fastened thick about them, pinned or tacked to their gowns or cloaks, to the Standard in Chepe, and there with their own hands to fling them into the fire made on purpose to burn them (Foxe, II., p. 315; Lewis, 1. c., 66). Tonstal, likewise, with a view to convince the people of "the reasonableness of these proceedings," induced Sir Thomas More, reputed to be the greatest wit and philosopher of the age, to write against Tyndale. This he did in the Dyalogue already referred to, written in a witty, pleasant, and popular style, and full of anecdote, but destitute of merit in point of scholarship, reasoning, and Christian spirit. In the third book, e. g., Sir Thomas's imaginary interlocutor, desiring to "know his mind concerning the burning of the new testament in english which Tyndal lately translated, and, as men said, right well, which made them much marvail of the burning," was told by Sir Thomas "that whoso called those books which were burned New Testaments gave them a wrong name, since they were rather Tyndale's or Luther's Testament, it being so corrupted and changed from the good and wholesome doctrine of Christ to their own devilish heresies as to be quite another thing," observing in proof thereof that "Tyndale had mistranslated three words of great weight, and they often repeated and rehearsed in the book; they were the words priests, church, and charitie. The first of these he never called priests, but seniors; the second he styles the congregation; and the third he nameth love;" adding that he commonly "changed the word grace into favour; that he translated confession into knowledging, penance into repentance, and a contrite heart into a troubled heart; that by this means he would with his false translation make the people believe that such articles of the faith as he laboured to destroy, and which were well proved by scripture, were in holy scripture nothing spoken of, but that the preachers have all this fifteen hundred years misrepresented the gospel, and englished the scripture wrong, to

lead the people purposely out of the way" (More, Works, p. 309).

Tyndale, in An Answere unto Sir Thomas More's Dialogue (1530), said: "That Sir Thomas, who understood Greek, and knew these words long before he did, could not prove that he gave not the right English unto the Greek words; but that what made them, whose cause Sir Thomas espoused, so uneasy and impatient, was they had lost their juggling terms, wherewith they imposed on and misled the people. For instance, the word church, he said, was by the popish clergy appropriated to themselves, whereas of right it was common to all the whole congregation of them that believe in Christ. So, he said, the school-doctors and preachers were wont to make many divisions, distinctions, and sorts of grace; with confession they juggled, and made the people, as oft as they spake of it, to understand by it shrift in the eare. So by the word penance they made the people understand holy deeds of their enjoining, with which they must make satisfaction for their sins, to God-ward." As for rendering "presbuteros" senior, he owned "that senior was no very good English . . . but that he had spied his fault since long before Sir Thomas had told him of it, and had mended it in all the works which he had made lately, and called it an elder"; as to his rendering "agapee" love, and not into charity, he said “charity was no known English in that sense which 'agapee' requireth."

*

The retail price of these Testaments in 1528 was seven or eight groats apiece, the wholesale price charged by the Dutchmen being at the rate of thirteen pence apiece, or three hundred for sixteen pounds, five shillings.

The question of Tyndale's movements on the continent is

*Cor. Nary and other Romish translators give as their reason for rendering the Greek"metanoia," and the Latin "pœnitentia" penance, that they do not signify a bare sorrow or repentance, but a repentance accompanied with fasting, weeping, and other penal works.

confusion. cumstances.

one of great interest, but apparently involved in inextricable The confusion is the result of three sets of cirFirst, as Tyndale was hunted down by emissaries of Henry VIII., Wolsey, and Tonstal, in order to elude them and enhance his own safety, he was compelled not only to move with great secrecy, but to assume a feigned name— e. g., at the time when West, Hacket, and Rincke were after him, he called himself Hutchyns; * so Frith had assumed the name of Jacob for the same reason, and Tyndale wrote to him under that pseudonyme. Secondly, many of the documents are without dates and the names of the places where they were written. Thirdly, many of the writers on Tyndale follow Anderson, who, in his Annals of the English Bible, exhibits a surprising recklessness in departing from every known principle of chronological order, and is perfectly infatuated with the idea of proving that Tyndale's translation was made without any help derived from Luther and his version. Ruling out, therefore, the unreliable data furnished by Anderson and the numerous writers who have transferred them to their pages, we have to go back to Lewis (Complete History, etc.), who is rather credulous, † the works of Tyndale, Burnet (also

* Tyndale had a certain right to the name of Hutchins, as will be seen from the following extract from a letter written by Thomas Tyndale, of Kingston, St. Michael, near Calne, dated February 3d, 1663, to a namesake, whom he addressed as his cousin, and whose father was a grandson of the reformer's elder brother:

"The first of your family came out of the north, in the times of the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, at what time many of good sort (their side going down) did fly for refuge where they could find it. Coming into Gloucestershire, and changing his name to that of Hutchins, he afterwards married there, and so having children, he did, before his death, declare his right name, and from whence, and upon what subject he came thither; and so taking his own name, did leave it unto his children, who have since continued it, as it was fit they should. This I have heard from your good father himself." Professor Walter in Doctrinal Treatises, etc., By William Tyndale. Parker Society's Edition, Cambridge, 1848, Preface, p. ix.

† Horne, in the main, depends upon Lewis, and has made no independent researches, and Plumptre (in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible) for similar reasons is equally unreliable.