[BBC List]

[Mike Abendroth]

"Always Singing One Note"-A Vernacular Bible: Why William Tyndale Lived and
Died
Bethlehem Conference for Pastors
January 31, 2006
What Was the "One Note" He Always Sang?
Stephen Vaughn was an English merchant commissioned by Thomas Cromwell, the
king's adviser, to find William Tyndale and inform him that King Henry VIII
desired him to come back to England out of hiding on the continent. In a
letter to Cromwell from Vaughan dated June 19, 1531, Vaughan wrote about
Tyndale (1494-1536) these simple words: "I find him always singing one
note." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "1" \o
"1ref" 1 That one note was this: Will the King of England give his official
endorsement to a vernacular Bible for all his English subjects? If not,
Tyndale will not come. If so, Tyndale will give himself up to the king and
never write another book. 
This was the driving passion of his life-to see the Bible translated from
the Greek and Hebrew into ordinary English available for every person in
England to read.
Henry VIII was angry with Tyndale for believing and promoting Martin
Luther's Reformation teachings. In particular he was angry because of
Tyndale's book, Answer to Sir Thomas More. Thomas More (famous for his book
Utopia and the movie A Man for All Seasons) was the Lord Chancellor who
helped Henry VIII write his repudiation of Luther called Defense of the
Seven Sacraments. Thomas More was thoroughly Roman Catholic and radically
anti-Reformation, anti-Luther, and anti-Tyndale. So Tyndale had come under
the same excoriating criticism by Thomas More. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "2" \o
"2ref" 2 In fact More had a "near-rabid hatred" HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "3" \o
"3ref" 3 for Tyndale and published three long responses to him totaling near
three-quarters of a million words. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "4" \o
"4ref" 4
But in spite of this high court anger against Tyndale, the king's message to
Tyndale, carried by Vaughan, was mercy: "The kings' royal majesty is . . .
inclined to mercy, pity, and compassion." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "5" \o
"5ref" 5
The thirty-seven-year-old Tyndale was moved to tears by this offer of mercy.
He had been an exile from his homeland for seven years. But then he sounds
his "one note" again: Will the king authorize a vernacular English Bible
from the original languages? Vaughan gives us Tyndale's words from May,
1531:
I assure you, if it would stand with the King's most gracious pleasure to
grant only a bare text of the Scripture [that is, without explanatory notes]
to be put forth among his people, like as is put forth among the subjects of
the emperor in these parts, and of other Christian princes, be it of the
translation of what person soever shall please his Majesty, I shall
immediately make faithful promise never to write more, not abide two days in
these parts after the same: but immediately to repair unto his realm, and
there most humbly submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering
my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace will, so
this [translation] be obtained. Until that time, I will abide the asperity
of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains
as it is able to bear and suffer. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "6" \o
"6ref" 6
In other words, Tyndale will give himself up to the king on one
condition-that the king authorize an English Bible translated from the Greek
and Hebrew in the common language of the people.
The king refused. And Tyndale never went to his homeland again. Instead, if
the king and the Roman Catholic Church would not provide a printed Bible in
English for the common man to read, Tyndale would, even if it cost him his
life-which it did five years later. 
The Great Achievement: New Testament and Reformation
When he was twenty-eight years old in 1522, he was serving as a tutor in the
home of John Walsh in Gloucestershire spending most of his time studying
Erasmus' Greek New Testament which had just been printed six years before in
1516. And we should pause here and make clear what an incendiary thing this
Greek New Testament was in history. David Daniell describes the magnitude of
this event:
This was the first time that the Greek New Testament had been printed. It is
no exaggeration to say that it set fire to Europe. Luther [1483-1546]
translated it into his famous German version of 1522. In a few years there
appeared translations from the Greek into most European vernaculars. They
were the true basis of the popular reformation. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "7" \o
"7ref" 7
Every day William Tyndale was seeing these Reformation truths more clearly
in the Greek New Testament as an ordained Catholic priest. Increasingly he
was making himself suspect in this Catholic house of John Walsh. Learned men
would come for dinner, and Tyndale would discuss the things he was seeing in
the New Testament. John Foxe tells us that one day an exasperated Catholic
scholar at dinner with Tyndale said, "We were better be without God's law
than the pope's." In response Tyndale spoke his famous words, "I defy the
Pope and all his laws. . . . If God spare my life ere many years, I will
cause a boy that driveth the plow, shall know more of the Scripture than
thou dost." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "8" \o
"8ref" 8
Four years later Tyndale finished the English translation of the Greek New
Testament in Worms, Germany, and began to smuggle it into England in bails
of cloth. He had grown up in Gloucestershire, the cloth-working county, and
now we see what that turn of providence was about. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "9" \o
"9ref" 9 By October of 1526 the book had been banned by Bishop Tunstall in
London, but the print run was at least three thousand. And the books were
getting to the people. Over the next eight years, five pirated editions were
printed as well. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "10" \o
"10ref" 10
In 1534 Tyndale published a revised New Testament, having learned Hebrew in
the meantime, probably in Germany, which helped him better understand the
connections between the Old and New Testaments. Daniell calls this 1534 New
Testament "the glory of his life's work." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "11" \o
"11ref" 11 If Tyndale was "always singing one note," this was the crescendo
of the song of his life-the finished and refined New Testament in English.
For the first time ever in history, the Greek New Testament was translated
into English. And for the first time ever the New Testament in English was
available in a printed form. Before Tyndale there were only hand-written
manuscripts of the Bible in English. These manuscripts we owe to the work
and inspiration of John Wyclif and the Lollards HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "12" \o
"12ref" 12 from a hundred-thirty years earlier. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "13" \o
"13ref" 13 For a thousand years the only translation of the Greek and Hebrew
Bible was the Latin Vulgate, and few people could understand it, even if
they had access to it.
Before he was martyred in 1536 Tyndale had translated into clear, common
English HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "14" \o
"14ref" 14 not only the New Testament HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "15" \o
"15ref" 15 but also the Pentateuch, Joshua to 2 Chronicles, and Jonah.
HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"16" \o "16ref" 16 All this material became the basis of the Great Bible
issued by Miles Coverdale in England in 1539 HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "17" \o
"17ref" 17 and the basis for the Geneva Bible published in 1557-"the Bible
of the nation," HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "18" \o
"18ref" 18 which sold over a million copies between 1560 and 1640.
We do not get a clear sense of Tyndale's achievement without some
comparisons. We think of the dominant King James Version as giving us the
pervasive language of the English Bible. But Daniell clarifies the
situation:
William Tyndale gave us our English Bible. The sages assembled by King James
to prepare the Authorized Version of 1611, so often praised for unlikely
corporate inspiration, took over Tyndale's work. Nine-tenths of the
Authorized Version's New Testament is Tyndale's. The same is true of the
first half of the Old Testament, which was as far as he was able to get
before he was executed outside Brussels in 1536. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "19" \o
"19ref" 19
Here is a sampling of the English phrases we owe to Tyndale:
"Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3).
"Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9)
"The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon
thee and be merciful unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee,
and give thee peace" (Numbers 6:24-26).
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was
God" (John 1:1).
"There were shepherds abiding in the field" (Luke 2:8).
"Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4).
"Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name" (Matthew 6:9).
"The signs of the times" (Matthew 16:3)
"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41).
"He went out . . . and wept bitterly" (Matthew 26:75). Those two words are
still used by almost all modern translations (NIV, NASB, ESV, NKJV). It has
not been improved on for five hundred years in spite of weak efforts like
one recent translation: "cried hard." Unlike that phrase, "the rhythm of his
two words carries the experience." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "20" \o
"20ref" 20
"A law unto themselves" (Romans 2:14)
"In him we live, move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). 
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels" (1 Corinthians 13:1)
"Fight the good fight" (1 Timothy 6:12).
According to Daniell, "The list of such near-proverbial phrases is endless."
HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"21" \o "21ref" 21 Five hundred years after his great work "newspaper
headlines still quote Tyndale, though unknowingly, and he has reached more
people than even Shakespeare." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "22" \o
"22ref" 22 
Luther's translation of 1522 is often praised for "having given a language
to the emerging German nation." Daniell claims the same for Tyndale in
English:
In his Bible translations, Tyndale's conscious use of everyday words,
without inversions, in a neutral word-order, and his wonderful ear for
rhythmic patterns, gave to English not only a Bible language, but a new
prose. England was blessed as a nation in that the language of its principal
book, as the Bible in English rapidly became, was the fountain from which
flowed the lucidity, suppleness and expressive range of the greatest prose
thereafter. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "23" \o
"23ref" 23
His craftsmanship with the English language amounted to genius. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "24" \o
"24ref" 24
He translated two-thirds of the Bible so well that his translations endured
until today. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "25" \o
"25ref" 25
This was not merely a literary phenomenon; it was a spiritual explosion.
Tyndale's Bible and writings were the kindling that set the Reformation on
fire in England.
How Did Tyndale Accomplish This?
The question arises: How did William Tyndale accomplish this historic
achievement? We can answer this in Tyndale's case by remembering two ways
that a pastor must die in the ministry. We must die to the notion that we do
not have to think hard or work hard to achieve spiritual goals. And we must
die to the notion that our thinking and our working is decisive in achieving
spiritual goals.
Paul said in 2 Timothy 2:7, "Think over what I say, for the Lord will give
you understanding in everything." First, think. Work. Don't bypass the hard
work of thinking about apostolic truth. But second, remember this: "the Lord
will give you understanding." You work. He gives. If he withholds, all our
working is in vain. But he ordains that we use our minds and that we work in
achieving spiritual ends. So Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10, "I worked
harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is
with me." The key to spiritual achievement is to work hard, and to know and
believe and feel and be happy that God's sovereign grace is the decisive
cause of all the good that comes.
The way these two truths come together in Tyndale's life explains how he
could accomplish what he did. And one of the best ways to see it is to
compare him with Erasmus, the Roman Catholic humanist scholar who was famous
for his books Enchiridion and The Praise of Folly and for his printed Greek
New Testament. 
Erasmus was twenty-eight years older than Tyndale, but they both died in
1536-Tyndale martyred by the Roman Catholic Church, Erasmus a respected
member of that church. Erasmus had spent time in Oxford and Cambridge, but
we don't know if he and Tyndale ever met.
On the surface, one sees remarkable similarities between Tyndale and
Erasmus. Both were great linguists. Erasmus was a Latin scholar and produced
the first printed Greek New Testament. Tyndale knew eight languages: Latin,
Greek, German, French, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, and English. Both men loved
the natural power of language and were part of a rebirth of interest in the
way language works. 
For example, Erasmus wrote a book called De copia that Tyndale no doubt used
as a student at Oxford. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "26" \o
"26ref" 26 It helped students increase their abilities to exploit the
"copious" potential of language. This was hugely influential in the early
1500s in England and was used to train students in the infinite
possibilities of varied verbal expression. The aim was to keep that language
from sinking down to mere jargon and worn-out slang and uncreative,
unimaginative, prosaic, colorless, boring speech. 
One practice lesson for students from De copia was to give "no fewer than
one hundred fifty ways of saying 'Your letter has delighted me very much.'"
The point was to force students "to use of all the verbal muscles in order
to avoid any hint of flabbiness." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "27" \o
"27ref" 27 It is not surprising that this is the kind of educational world
that gave rise to William Shakespeare (who was born in 1564). Shakespeare is
renown for his unparalleled use of copiousness in language. One critic
wrote, "Without Erasmus, no Shakespeare." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "28" \o
"28ref" 28
So both Erasmus and Tyndale were educated in an atmosphere of conscious
craftsmanship. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "29" \o
"29ref" 29 That is, they both believed in hard work to say things clearly
and creatively and compellingly when they spoke for Christ.
Not only that, but they both believed the Bible should be translated into
the vernacular of every language. Erasmus wrote in the preface to his Greek
New Testament,
Christ wishes his mysteries to be published as widely as possible. I would
wish even all women to read the gospel and the epistles of St. Paul, and I
wish that they were translated into all languages of all Christian people,
that they might be read and known, not merely by the Scotch and the Irish,
but even by the Turks and the Saracens. I wish that the husbandman may sing
parts of them at his plow, that the weaver may warble them at his shuttle,
that the traveler may with their narratives beguile the weariness of the
way. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "30" \o
"30ref" 30
Tyndale could not have said it better.
Both were concerned with the corruption and abuses in the Catholic Church,
and both wrote about Christ and the Christian life. Tyndale even translated
Erasmus' Enchiridion, a kind of spiritual handbook for the Christian
life-what Erasmus called philosophia Christi. 
But there was a massive difference between these men, and it had directly to
do with the other half of the paradox, namely, that we must die not just to
intellectual and linguistic laziness, but also to human presumption-human
self-exaltation and self-sufficiency. Erasmus and Luther had clashed in the
1520s over the freedom of the will-Erasmus defending human
self-determination and Luther arguing for the depravity and bondage of the
will. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "31" \o
"31ref" 31 Tyndale was firmly with Luther here. 
Our will is locked and knit faster under the will of the devil than could an
hundred thousand chains bind a man unto a post. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "32" \o
"32ref" 32
Because . . . [by] nature we are evil, therefore we both think and do evil,
and are under vengeance under the law, convict to eternal damnation by the
law, and are contrary to the will of God in all our will and in all things
consent to the will of the fiend. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "33" \o
"33ref" 33
It is not possible for a natural man to consent to the law, that it should
be good, or that God should be righteous which maketh the law. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "34" \o
"34ref" 34 
This view of human sinfulness set the stage for Tyndale's grasp of the glory
of God's sovereign grace in the gospel. Erasmus-and Thomas More with him-did
not see the depth of the human condition, their own condition, and so did
not see the glory and explosive power of what the reformers saw in the New
Testament. What the reformers like Tyndale and Luther saw was not a
philosophia Christi but the massive work of God in the death and
resurrection of Christ to save hopelessly enslaved and hell-bound sinners.
Erasmus does not live or write in this realm of horrible condition and
gracious blood-bought salvation. He has the appearance of reform in the
Enchiridion, but something is missing. To walk from Erasmus into Tyndale is
to move (to paraphrase Mark Twain) from a lightning bug to a lightning bolt.

Daniell puts it like this:
Something in the Enchiridion is missing. . . . It is a masterpiece of
humanist piety. . . . [But] the activity of Christ in the Gospels, his
special work of salvation so strongly detailed there and in the epistles of
Paul, is largely missing. Christologically, where Luther thunders, Erasmus
makes a sweet sound: what to Tyndale was an impregnable stronghold feels in
the Enchiridion like a summer pavilion. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "35" \o
"35ref" 35 
Where Luther and Tyndale were blood-earnest about our dreadful human
condition and the glory of salvation in Christ, Erasmus and Thomas More
joked and bantered. When Luther published his 95 theses in 1517, Erasmus
sent a copy of them to More-along with a "jocular letter including the
anti-papal games, and witty satirical diatribes against abuses within the
church, which both of them loved to make." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "36" \o
"36ref" 36 
I linger here with this difference between Tyndale and Erasmus because I am
trying to penetrate to how Tyndale accomplished what he did through
translating the New Testament. Explosive reformation is what he accomplished
in England. This was not the effect of Erasmus' highbrow, elitist, layered
nuancing of Christ and church tradition. Erasmus and Thomas More may have
satirized the monasteries and clerical abuses, but they were always playing
games compared to Tyndale. 
And in this they were very much like notable Christian writers in our own
day. Listen to this remarkable assessment from Daniell, and see if you do
not hear a description of certain emergent church writers and New
Perspective champions:
Not only is there no fully realized Christ or Devil in Erasmus's book . . .
: there is a touch of irony about it all, with a feeling of the writer
cultivating a faintly superior ambiguity: as if to be dogmatic, for example
about the full theology of the work of Christ, was to be rather distasteful,
below the best, elite, humanist heights. . . . By contrast Tyndale . . . is
ferociously single-minded ["always singing one note"]; the matter in hand,
the immediate access of the soul to God without intermediary, is far too
important for hints of faintly ironic superiority. . . . Tyndale is as
four-square as a carpenter's tool. But in Erasmus's account of the origins
of his book there is a touch of the sort of layering of ironies found in the
games with personae. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "37" \o
"37ref" 37
It is ironic and sad that today supposedly avant-garde Christian writers can
strike this cool, evasive, imprecise, artistic, superficially reformist pose
of Erasmus and call it "post-modern" and capture a generation of unwitting,
historically naïve, emergent people who don't know they are being duped by
the same old verbal tactics used by the elitist humanist writers in past
generations. We saw them last year in Athanasius' day (the slippery Arians
at Nicaea), and we see them now in Tyndale's day. It's not post-modern. It's
pre-modern-because it is perpetual.
What drove Tyndale to sing "one note" all his life was the rock-solid
conviction that all humans were in bondage to sin, blind, dead, damned, and
helpless, and that God had acted in Christ to provide salvation by grace
through faith. This is what lay hidden in the Latin Scriptures and the
church system of penance and merit. The Bible must be translated for the
sake of the liberating, life-giving gospel. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "38" \o
"38ref" 38
There is only one hope for our liberation from the bonds of sin and eternal
condemnation, Tyndale said: "Neither can any creature loose the bonds, save
the blood of Christ only." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "39" \o
"39ref" 39 
By grace . . . we are plucked out of Adam the ground of all evil and graffed
[sic] in Christ, the root of all goodness. In Christ God loved us, his elect
and chosen, before the world began and reserved us unto the knowledge of his
Son and of his holy gospel: and when the gospel HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "40" \o
"40ref" 40 is preached to us openeth our hearts and giveth us grace to
believe, and putteth the spirit of Christ in us: and we know him as our
Father most merciful, and consent to the law and love it inwardly in our
heart and desire to fulfill it and sorrow because we do not. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "41" \o
"41ref" 41
This massive dose of bondage to sin and deliverance by blood-bought
sovereign grace HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "42" \o
"42ref" 42 is missing in Erasmus. This is why there is an elitist lightness
to his religion-just like there is to so much of evangelicalism today. Hell
and sin and atonement and sovereign grace were not weighty realities for
him. But for Tyndale they were everything. And in the middle of these great
realities was the doctrine of justification by faith alone. This is why the
Bible had to be translated, and ultimately this is why Tyndale was martyred.

By faith are we saved only in believing the promises. And though faith be
never without love and good works, yet is our saving imputed neither to love
nor unto good works but unto faith only. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "43" \o
"43ref" 43 
Faith the mother of all good works justifieth us, before we can bring forth
any good work: as the husband marryeth his wife before he can have any
lawful children by her. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "44" \o
"44ref" 44 
This is the answer to how William Tyndale accomplished what he did in
translating the New Testament and writing books that set England on fire
with the reformed faith. He worked assiduously like the most skilled artist
in the craft of compelling translation, and he was deeply passionate about
the great doctrinal truths of the gospel of sovereign grace. Man is lost,
spiritually dead, condemned. God is sovereign; Christ is sufficient. Faith
is all. Bible translation and Bible truth were inseparable for Tyndale, and
in the end it was the truth-especially the truth of justification by
faith-that ignited Britain with reformed fire and then brought the death
sentence to this Bible translator.
The Implacable Opposition to the Bible
It is almost incomprehensible to us how viciously opposed the Roman Catholic
Church was to the translation of the Scriptures into English. John Wyclif
and his followers called "Lollards" HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "45" \o
"45ref" 45 had spread written manuscripts of English translations from the
Latin in the late 1300s. In 1401 Parliament passed the law de Haeretico
Comburendo-"on the burning of heretics"-to make heresy punishable by burning
people alive at the stake. The Bible translators were in view. 
Then in 1408 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundell, created the
Constitutions of Oxford which said,
It is a dangerous thing, as witnesseth blessed St. 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 the Scripture into English or any other tongue . . . and that no
man can read any such book . . . in part or in whole. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "46" \o
"46ref" 46
Together these statutes meant that you could be burned alive by the Catholic
Church for simply reading the Bible in English. The dramatist John Bale
(1495-1563) "as a boy of 11 watched the burning of a young man in Norwich
for possessing the Lord's prayer in English. . . . John Foxe records . . .
seven Lollards burned at Coventry in 1519 for teaching their children the
Lord's Prayer in English." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "47" \o
"47ref" 47
Tyndale hoped to escape this condemnation by getting official authorization
for his translation in 1524. But he found just the opposite and had to
escape from London to the continent where he did all his translating and
writing for the next twelve years. He lived as a fugitive the entire time
until his death near Brussels in 1536.
He watched a rising tide of persecution and felt the pain of seeing young
men burned alive who were converted by reading his translation and his
books. His closest friend, John Frith, was arrested in London and tried by
Thomas More and burned alive July 4, 1531, at the age of twenty-eight.
Richard Bayfield ran the ships that took Tyndale's books to England. He was
betrayed and arrested, and Thomas More wrote on December 4, 1531, that
Bayfield "the monk and apostate [was] well and worthily burned in
Smythfelde." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "48" \o
"48ref" 48
Three weeks later the same end came to John Tewkesbury. He was converted by
reading Tyndale's Parable of the Wicked Mammon which defended justification
by faith alone. He was whipped in Thomas More's garden and had his brow
squeezed with small ropes till blood came out of his eyes. Then he was sent
to the Tower where he was racked till he was lame. Then at last they burned
him alive. Thomas More "rejoiced that his victim was now in hell, where
Tyndale 'is like to find him when they come together.'" HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "49" \o
"49ref" 49
Four months later James Bainham followed in the flames in April of 1532. He
had stood up during the mass at St. Augustine's Church in London and lifted
a copy of Tyndale's New Testament and pleaded with the people to die rather
than deny the word of God. That virtually was to sign his own death warrant.
Add to these Thomas Bilney, Thomas Dusgate, John Bent, Thomas Harding,
Andrew Hewet, Elizabeth Barton and others, all burned alive for sharing the
views of William Tyndale about the Scriptures and the reformed faith.
HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"50" \o "50ref" 50
Why this extraordinary hostility against the English New Testament,
especially from Thomas More who vilified Tyndale repeatedly in his
denunciation of the reformers he burned? Some would say that the New
Testament in English was rejected because it was accompanied with
Reformation notes that the church regarded as heretical. That was true of
later versions, but not the first 1526 edition. It did not have notes, and
this is the edition that Bishop Tunstall had burned in London. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "51" \o
"51ref" 51 The church burned the word of God. It shocked Tyndale.
There were surface reasons and deeper reasons why the church opposed an
English Bible. The surface reasons were that the English language is rude
and unworthy of the exalted language of God's word; and when one translates,
errors can creep in, so it is safer not to translate; moreover, if the Bible
is in English, then each man will become his own interpreter, and many will
go astray into heresy and be condemned; and it was church tradition that
only priests are given the divine grace to understand the Scriptures; and
what's more, there is a special sacramental value to the Latin service in
which people cannot understand, but grace is given. Such were the kinds of
things being said on the surface.
But there were deeper reasons why the church opposed the English Bible: one
doctrinal and one ecclesiastical. The church realized that they would not be
able to sustain certain doctrines biblically because the people would see
that they are not in the Bible. And the church realized that their power and
control over the people, and even over the state, would be lost if certain
doctrines were exposed as unbiblical-especially the priesthood and purgatory
and penance.
Thomas More's criticism of Tyndale boils down mainly to the way Tyndale
translated five words. He translated presbuteros as elder instead of priest.
He translated ekklesia as congregation instead of church. He translated
metanoeo as repent instead of do penance. He translated exomologeo as
acknowledge or admit instead of confess. And he translated agape as love
rather than charity.
Daniell comments, "He cannot possibly have been unaware that those words in
particular undercut the entire sacramental structure of the thousand year
church throughout Europe, Asia and North Africa. It was the Greek New
Testament that was doing the undercutting." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "52" \o
"52ref" 52 And with the doctrinal undermining of these ecclesiastical
pillars of priesthood and penance and confession, the pervasive power and
control of the church collapsed. England would not be a Catholic nation. The
reformed faith would flourish there in due time.
What It Cost Tyndale to Translate the Bible
What did it cost William Tyndale under these hostile circumstances to stay
faithful to his calling as a translator of the Bible and a writer of the
reformed faith?
He fled his homeland in 1524 and was killed in 1536. He gives us some
glimpse of those twelve years as a fugitive in Germany and the Netherlands
in one of the very few personal descriptions we have from Stephen Vaughan's
letter in 1531. He refers to 
. . . my pains . . . my poverty . . . my exile out of mine natural country,
and 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. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "53" \o
"53ref" 53 
All these sufferings came to a climax on May 21, 1535, in the midst of
Tyndale's great Old Testament translation labors. We can feel some of the
ugliness of what happened in the words of David Daniell: "Malice, self-pity,
villainy and 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 Philips." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "54" \o
"54ref" 54 Philips had won Tyndale's trust over some months and then
betrayed him. John Foxe tells how it happened:
So when it was dinner-time, Master Tyndale went forth with Philips, and at
the going forth of Poyntz's house, was a long narrow entry, so that two
could not go in a front. Mr. Tyndale would have put Philips before him, but
Philips 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 Philips, a tall comely person, 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, Philips 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 Poyntz, and sent away all that was there of Master
Tyndale's, as well his books as other things: and from thence Tyndale was
had to the castle of Filford, eighteen English miles from Antwerp, and there
he remained until he was put to death. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "55" \o
"55ref" 55 
Vilvorde Castle is six miles north of Brussels and about the same distance
from Louvain. Here Tyndale stayed for 18 months. "The charge was heresy,
with not agreeing with the holy Roman Emperor-in a nutshell, being
Lutheran." HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "56" \o
"56ref" 56 A four-man commission from the Catholic center of Louvain was
authorized to prove that Tyndale was a heretic. One of them named Latomus
filled three books with his interactions with Tyndale and said that Tyndale
himself wrote a "book" in prison to defend his chief doctrinal standard:
Sola fides justificat apud Deum-Faith Alone Justifies Before God. This was
the key issue in the end. The evil of translating the Bible came down to
this: are we justified by faith alone?
These months in prison were not easy. They were a long dying leading to
death. We get one glimpse into the prison to see Tyndale's condition and his
passion. He wrote a letter to in September, 1535, when there seems to have
been a lull in the examinations. It was addressed to an unnamed officer of
the castle. Here is a condensed version of Mozley's translation of the
Latin:
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,
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 shirts are also worn out. He has a woolen shirt, if he will be
good enough to send it. I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth to
put on above; he has also warmer night-caps. 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 I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the
commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew
grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study. In
return may you obtain what you most desire, so only that it be for the
salvation of your soul. 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 HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "57" \o
"57ref" 57
We don't know if his requests were granted. He did stay in that prison
through the winter. His verdict was sealed in August, 1536. He was formally
condemned as a heretic and degraded from the priesthood. Then in early
October (traditionally October 6), he was tied to the stake and then
strangled by the executioner, then afterward consumed in the fire. Foxe
reports that his last words were, "Lord! Open the King of England's eyes!"
HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"58" \o "58ref" 58 He was forty-two years old, never married and never
buried.
Tyndale's Closing Words to Pastors
His closing words to us in this conference on the theme "How Must a Pastor
Die" are clear from his life and from his writings. I will let him speak
them in his own words from his book The Obedience of a Christian Man:
If God promise riches, the way thereto is poverty. Whom he loveth he
chasteneth, whom he exalteth, he casteth down, whom he saveth he damneth
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 unto such a case, that
men may see how that his hand, his power, his mercy, his goodness and truth
hath wrought all together. He will let no man be partaker with him of his
praise and glory. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "59" \o
"59ref" 59 
Let us therefore look diligently whereunto we are called, that we 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. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "60" \o
"60ref" 60
For if God be on our side: what matter maketh it who be against us, be they
bishops, cardinals, popes or whatsoever names they will. HYPERLINK
"http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l "61" \o
"61ref" 61
So let Tyndale's very last word to us be the last word he sent to his best
friend, John Frith, in a letter just before he was burned alive for
believing and speaking the truth of Scripture:
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 his steps,
who did no sin. Hereby have we perceived love that he laid down his life for
us: therefore we ought to be able 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 you." And pray to our
Father in that name, and he will ease your pain, or shorten it. . . . Amen.
Footnotes
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"1ref" \o "1" 1 David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1994), p. 217.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"2ref" \o "2" 2 For example, in More's 1529 book, Dialogue Concerning
Heresies.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"3ref" \o "3" 3 Daniell, Tyndale, p. 4.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"4ref" \o "4" 4 Thomas More wrote vastly more to condemn Tyndale than
Tyndale wrote in his defense. After one book called An Answer Unto Sir
Thomas More's Dialogue (1531), Tyndale was done. For Thomas More, however,
there were "close on three quarters of a million words against Tyndale . . .
[compared to] Tyndale's eighty thousand in his Answer." Ibid., p. 277.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"5ref" \o "5" 5 Ibid., p. 216.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"6ref" \o "6" 6 Ibid.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"7ref" \o "7" 7 William Tyndale, Selected Writings, edited with an
introduction by David Daniell (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. ix. "Modern
champions of the Catholic position like to support a view of the
Reformation, that it was entirely a political imposition by a ruthless
minority in power against both the traditions and the wishes of the pious
people of England. . . . The energy which affected every human life in
northern Europe, however, came from a different place. It was not the result
of political imposition. It came from the discovery of the Word of God as
originally written . . . in the language of the people. Moreover, it could
be read and understood, without censorship by the Church or mediation
through the Church. . . . Such reading produced a totally different view of
everyday Christianity: the weekly, daily, even hourly ceremonies so lovingly
catalogued by some Catholic revisionists are not there; purgatory is not
there; there is no aural confession and penance. Two supports of the
Church's wealth and power collapsed. Instead there was simply individual
faith in Christ the Saviour, found in Scripture. That and only that
'justified' the sinner, whose root failings were now in the face of God, not
the bishops or the pope." Daniell, Tyndale, p. 58.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"8ref" \o "8" 8 Daniell, Tyndale, p. 79.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"9ref" \o "9" 9 "Not for nothing did William Tyndale, exiled in Cologne,
Worms and Antwerp use the international trade routes of the cloth merchants
to get his books into England, smuggled in bales of cloth." Ibid., p. 15.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"10ref" \o "10" 10 Ibid., p. 188.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"11ref" \o "11" 11 Ibid., p. 316.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"12ref" \o "12" 12 "In the summer of 1382, Wyclif was attacked in a sermon
preached at St. Mary's, Oxford, and his followers were for the first time
denounced as 'Lollards'-a loose and suitably meaningless term of abuse
('mutterers') current in the Low Countries for Bible students, and thus
heretics." David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 73.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"13ref" \o "13" 13 Gutenberg's printing press came in 1450.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"14ref" \o "14" 14 "Tyndale transmitted an English strength which is the
opposite of Latin, seen in the difference between 'high' and 'elevated',
'gift' and 'donation', 'many' and 'multitudinous.'" Daniell, Tyndale, p. 3.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"15ref" \o "15" 15 Tyndale did not follow Luther in putting Hebrews, James,
Jude, and Revelation in a special section of the New Testament set apart as
inferior. "Tyndale, as shown later by his preface to James in his 1534 New
Testament, is not only wiser and more generous-he is more true to the New
Testament." Ibid., p. 120.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"16ref" \o "16" 16 This is available now in print with all its original
notes and introductions: Tyndale's Old Testament, translated by William
Tyndale (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); as is Tyndale's New
Testament, translated by William Tyndale (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989).
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"17ref" \o "17" 17 How could it be that Tyndale was martyred in 1536 for
translating the Bible into English, and that his New Testament could be
burned in London by Bishop Tunstall, and yet an entire printed Bible,
essentially Tyndale's, The Great Bible, could be published in England three
years later officially endorsed by this Bible-burning bishop? Daniell
explains: "Tunstall, whose name would shortly appear on the title pages
approving two editions of the Great Bible, was playing politics, being a
puppet of the Pope through Wolsey and the king, betraying his Christian
humanist learning at the direction of the church, needing to be receiving
[Thomas] Wolsey's favor. . . . To burn God's word for politics was to
Tyndale barbarous." Tyndale, p. 93.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"18ref" \o "18" 18 Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. xi.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"19ref" \o "19" 19 Tyndale, p. 1. Daniell speaks with more precision
elsewhere and says that the Authorized Version is 83 percent Tyndale's
(Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. vii). Brian Moynahan, in God's Bestseller:
William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible-A Story
of Martyrdom and Betrayal (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002, p. 1),
confirms this with his estimates: Tyndale's words "account for 84 percent of
the [King James Version] New Testament and 75.8 percent of the Old Testament
books that he translated." Daniell also points out how remarkable the Old
Testament translations were: "These opening chapters of Genesis are the
first translations-not just the first printed, but the first
translations-from Hebrew into English. This needs to be emphasized. Not only
was the Hebrew language only known in England in 1529 and 1530 by, at the
most, a tiny handful of scholars in Oxford and Cambridge, and quite possibly
by none; that there was a language called Hebrew at all, or that it had any
connection whatsoever with the Bible, would have been news to most of the
ordinary population." Tyndale, p. 287.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"20ref" \o "20" 20 Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. xv.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"21ref" \o "21" 21 Tyndale, p. 142.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"22ref" \o "22" 22 Ibid., p. 2.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"23ref" \o "23" 23 Ibid., p. 116.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"24ref" \o "24" 24 Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. xv.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"25ref" \o "25" 25 Daniell, Tyndale, p. 121. "Tyndale gave the nation a
Bible language that was English in words, word-order and lilt.   He invented
some words (for example, 'scapegoat') and the great Oxford English
Dictionary has mis-attributed, and thus also mis-dated a number of his first
uses." (Ibid., p. 3)
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"26ref" \o "26" 26 "Tyndale could hardly have missed De copia." Daniell,
Tyndale, p. 43. This book went through 150 additions by 1572.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"27ref" \o "27" 27 Ibid., p. 42.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"28ref" \o "28" 28 Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977), p. 13.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"29ref" \o "29" 29 "Tyndale as conscious craftsman has been not just
neglected, but denied: yet the evidence of the book that follows makes it
beyond challenge that he used, as a master, the skill in the selection and
arrangement of words which he partly learned at school and university, and
partly developed from pioneering work by Erasmus." Daniell, Tyndale, p. 2.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"30ref" \o "30" 30 Ibid., p. 67.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"31ref" \o "31" 31 Erasmus' book was titled On the Freedom of the Will, and
Luther's was The Bondage of the Will.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"32ref" \o "32" 32 Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. 39.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"33ref" \o "33" 33 Ibid., p. 37.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"34ref" \o "34" 34 Ibid., p. 40.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"35ref" \o "35" 35 Daniell, Tyndale, pp. 68-69.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"36ref" \o "36" 36 Ibid., p. 254.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"37ref" \o "37" 37 Ibid., pp. 69-70.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"38ref" \o "38" 38 "Central to Tyndale's insistence on the need for the
Scriptures in English was his grasp that Paul had to be understood in
relation to each reader's salvation, and he needed there, above all, to be
clear." Ibid., p. 139.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"39ref" \o "39" 39 Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. 40.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"40ref" \o "40" 40 Here is Tyndale's definition of the "gospel" that rings
with exuberant joy: "Evangelion (that we call the gospel) is a Greek word
and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man's
heart glad and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy. . . . [This gospel
is] all of Christ the right David, how that he hath fought with sin, with
death, and the devil, and overcome them: whereby all men that were in
bondage to sin, wounded with death, overcome of the devil are without their
own merits or deservings loosed, justified, restored to life and saved,
brought to liberty and reconciled unto the favor of God and set at one with
him again: which tidings as many as believe laud, praise and thank God, are
glad, sing and dance for joy." Ibid., p. 33.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"41ref" \o "41" 41 Ibid., p. 37.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"42ref" \o "42" 42 "Tyndale was more than a mildly theological thinker. He
is at last being understood as, theologically as well as linguistically,
well ahead of his time. For him, as several decades later for Calvin princes
and in the 20th century Karl Barth) is the overriding message of the New
Testament is the sovereignty of God. Everything is contained in that. It
must never, as he wrote, be lost from sight. . . . Tyndale, we are now being
shown, was original and new-except that he was also old, demonstrating the
understanding of God as revealed in the whole New Testament. For Tyndale,
God is, above all, sovereign, active in the individual and in history. He is
the one as he put it, in whom alone is found salvation and flourishing."
Ibid., p. ix.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"43ref" \o "43" 43 Ibid., p. 38.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"44ref" \o "44" 44 Daniell, Tyndale, pp. 156-157.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"45ref" \o "45" 45 See note 12.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"46ref" \o "46" 46 Moynahan, God's Bestseller, p. xxii.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"47ref" \o "47" 47 William Tyndale, The Obedience of A Christian Man, edited
with an introduction by David Daniell (London: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 202.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"48ref" \o "48" 48 Moynahan, God's Bestseller, p. 260.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"49ref" \o "49" 49 Ibid., p. 261.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"50ref" \o "50" 50 The list and details are given in Daniell, Tyndale, pp.
183-184.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"51ref" \o "51" 51 Daniell, Tyndale, pp. 192-193.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"52ref" \o "52" 52 Ibid., p. 149.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"53ref" \o "53" 53 Ibid., p. 213.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"54ref" \o "54" 54 Ibid., p. 361.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"55ref" \o "55" 55 Ibid., p. 364.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"56ref" \o "56" 56 Ibid., p. 365.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"57ref" \o "57" 57 Ibid., p. 379.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"58ref" \o "58" 58 Ibid., pp. 382-383. "Contemporaries noted no such words,
however, only that the strangling was bungled and that he suffered
terribly." Moynahan, God's Bestseller, p. 377.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"59ref" \o "59" 59 Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, p. 6.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"60ref" \o "60" 60 Ibid., p. 8.
 HYPERLINK "http://desiringgod.org/library/biographies/2006_tyndale.html" \l
"61ref" \o "61" 61 Ibid., p. 6.


Charis,
 
Mike Abendroth
 
"Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to
be contented with half truth when whole truth can be won.   Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns
to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when right and truth
are in jeopardy."
  - West Point Military Academy Cadet Prayer
 
HYPERLINK "http://www.bbcchurch.org"www.bbcchurch.org
 


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