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Midnight Riders The Story Of The
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 Midnight Riders The Story
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.
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 is very commonly believed that until the influence of Cranmer

had made itself felt, the ecclesiastical authorities continued to
maintain the traditionally hostile attitude of the English Church
towards the English Bible. In proof of this, writers point to the
condemnation of the translations issued by Tyndale, and the
wholesale destruction of all copies of this, the first printed edition of
the English New Testament. It is consequently of importance to
examine into the extent of the supposed clerical hostility to the
vernacular Scriptures, and into the reasons assigned by those having
the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs at that period for the prohibition
of Tyndale’s Testament.
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