XI the English language had existed. Tyndale was, in CHAP fact, thrusting himself forward as a translator for party purposes, and rather hindering than otherwise the progress of that Authorized Version, which alone was ever likely to win its way with a people naturally respecting authority. It should also be added that Tyndale was executed (by strangling, his dead body being afterwards burned) at Vilvorden, in the Netherlands, by the order of the Emperor Charles V.; and that his death had nothing to do with his translation of the New Testament. Tyndale had been a Franciscan friar, one of the Greenwich Observants, but cast off his obligations in early life, and being disappointed in his efforts to obtain permanent homes in rich men's families, went abroad about 1524. Little is known of his life while living abroad, but all his works appear to have been written during the ten years which elapsed between his leaving England and his death in 1535; and from these it is evident that he spent his time in attacking the doctrines and the spiritual rulers of the Church which he had forsaken. His principal works were the "Practice of Prelates," the "Obedience of a Christian Man," the "Parable of the Wicked Mammon," a book on the Sacraments, and his prologues, or prefaces, to the several books of the Pentateuch, the prophet Jonah, and the books of the New Testament. These works all show the marks of a keen and clever, but extremely self-sufficient man, with enough knowledge of languages to make such a man suppose 5 It must be mentioned to Tyn- the King's divorce from Queen dale's credit that in this work, Catherine. printed in 1530, he wrote against ΧΙ CHAP himself learned, but without any real depth of learning, and with enough facility of expression to lead him to argue, but without any argumentative power. He was also of a very cankered and bitter temper, which led him to fill his pages with abusive language, even when writing of the most sacred subjects. His language respecting the latter was often so shocking, and at the same time so utterly illogical, that it led Sir Thomas More to stigmatize him as a "blasphemous fool." It is certainly a strong evidence of the extent to which party feeling will lead that Tyndale should ever have been respected as a theological writer. A few extracts from Tyndale's writings will show what the early dissenters from the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England had to say for their principles: and probably no other writer among them stated these principles with more vigour. Respecting the ministerial office, he writes thus in the "Obedience of a Christian Man :”— "Sub-deacon, deacon, priest, bishop, cardinal, patriarch, and pope, be names of offices and service, or should be, and not sacraments. There is no promise coupled therewith. If they minister their offices truly, it is a sign that Christ's Spirit is in them; if not, that the devil is in them. O dreamers and natural beasts, without the seal of the Spirit of God; but Tyndale quarrelled with both his assistant-translators, Joye and Roye; and writes of the latter in his preface to the "Wicked Mammon" that he was the most crafty man he had ever known with a tongue, able to make fools stark mad, and only a friend so long as he wanted money. He says that he could not do without Roye's help in the translation, but "when that was ended, I took my leave, and bade him farewell for our two lives, and (as men say) a day longer." He speaks against another friend, Jerome (who like Roye and himself was an Observant) in similar terms, calling him Judas; and, insinuating that they were both Antichrists, he quotes St. Paul's words about Antichrist against them. Roye was burned in Portugal in 1531, four years before Tyndale himself suffered. ΧΙ sealed with the mark of the beast and with cankered con- CHAP sciences. By a priest understand nothing but an elder to teach the younger, and to bring them unto the full knowledge and understanding of Christ, and to minister the sacraments which Christ ordained, which is also nothing but to preach Christ's promises. According, therefore, as every man believeth God's promises, longeth for them, and is diligent to pray unto God to fulfil them, so is his prayer heard; and as good is the prayer of a cobbler as of a cardinal, and of a butcher as of a bishop, and the blessing of a baker that knoweth the truth is as good as the blessing of our most holy father the Pope. Neither is there any other manner or ceremony at all required in making of our spiritual officers than to choose an able person, and then to rehearse him his duty, and give him his charge, and so put him in his room." . What were his principles respecting the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist may be judged from the foregoing quotations; as to Confirmation and other rites of the Church it is enough to say that he spoke of the laying on of hands as a perfectly unnecessary ceremony, and of anointing with the sign of the Cross as "the bishop buttering the child in the forehead." This will be recognised by all who are familiar with Puritan writings as the ordinary style of their controversial theology, and Tyndale may be looked upon as its originator. The marvel is that such a man could ever have been supposed to represent the principles of the Church of England, or to be a martyr for the sake of her reformation.s That his writings had great influence and were widely circulated there cannot be a doubt. They established a form of "religious opinion" among the rising middle class, who were socially 7 Tyndale's Doctrinal Treatises, Parker Soc. ed., pp. 254-259. 8 Ibid., p. 277. XI CHAP opposed to the clergy, and being very imperfectly educated, were easily seduced by the racy English of a Reformation Cobbett: and the form of religious opinion so established has been the atmosphere in which all subsequent plantations of unbelief have spread abroad their branches, and lustily thriven in their unfruitful leafiness. Low social position of . Dissenters The social status of the early anti-Church party the early is indicated by Tyndale's contrast of a cobbler with a cardinal, a butcher with a bishop, and a baker with our holy father the Pope; which is very much confirmed by the narratives of Foxe, whose "martyrs' are mostly of a low social class and it may be remarked that the classes thus indicated are not placed in a high light as to morals, intelligence, or piety by Shakespeare. They seemed to have been especially unsavoury to the nostrils of the bishops so long ago as 1529, for these said in their reply to the charges of the House of Commons, "Truth it is that certain apostates, friars, monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants, vagabonds, and lewd, idle fellows of corrupt intent, have embraced the abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany :" and certainly, as far as one can judge, it does seem as if the ranks of those who "believed not" had been largely recruited from "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort" taken out of several classes. But the dissenting faction was to be made still more repulsive to the Importa conservative and gentle part of society by the inroad Anabap of Anabaptists from abroad, driven thence by the A.D. 1534 severities which their rebellion and folly had brought upon them. tion of tists These foreign Anabaptists were the fathers of 9 Froude's Hist. of Eng., i. 211. XI the modern English Baptists. They had been CHAP driven out of Lutheran Saxony, and put under the ban of capital punishment in Calvinistic Zurich; A.D. 1554 but were rehabilitated for a time in Northern Germany under the leadership of John Bockhold, better known as John of Leyden. In 1533 this absurd and savage infidel organized a large body of insurgents at Munster, with the object of sacking that city and taking possession of Amsterdam and other places of importance. The religion of this new prophet and his followers consisted chiefly in anathematizing the Church, running naked in a state of frenzy about the streets, and marrying a number of wives instead of one only. There was nothing to be done with these primitive Baptists but to put them down; and this Charles V. did with a stern and merciless hand that left no room for them in the Netherlands, or in any other part of his dominions. Those who were neither burned nor hanged fled to the universal asylum of all unsuccessful revolutionists, and being somewhat toned down in the course of their transportation were not so outrageously extravagant when they settled in England but that they could find sympathizers among the anti-Church party. These "Anabaptist strangers" are first distinctly noticed in a proclamation of 15341 when they were already beginning to give trouble. In this pro clamation it is stated that many strangers are come into this realm who, although they were baptized in their infancy, yet have, in contempt of the Holy Sacrament of Baptism, "rebaptized themselves." They also deny the reality of Christ's presence in 1 Wilkins' Concil., iii. 779. |
