WILLIAM TYNDALE ON THE TRANSLATION OF THE SCRIPTURES (1528).
Source.—Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man and how Christian Rulers ought to Govern, 1528, p. 12.
That thou mayest perceive how that the Scripture ought to be in the mother tongue, and that the reasons which our spirits make for the contrary are but sophistry and false wiles to fear thee from the light, that thou mightest follow them blindfold and be their captive to honour their ceremonies and to offer to their belly.
First God gave the children of Israel a law by the hand of Moses in their mother tongue, and all the prophets wrote in their mother tongue, and all the psalms were in the mother tongue. And there was Christ but figured and described in ceremonies, in riddles, in parables and in dark prophecies. What is the cause that we may not have the Old Testament with the New also, which is the light of the old, and wherein is openly declared before the eyes that there was darkly prophesied? I can imagine no cause verily, except it be that we should not see the work of Antichrist and juggling of hypocrites. What should be the cause that we which walk in the broad day should not see as well as they that walked in the night, or that we should not see as well at noon as they did in the twilight? Came Christ to make the world more blind? By this means, Christ is the darkness of the world, and not the light as he saith himself, John viii.
Moreover, Moses saith, Deutero. vi, "Hear, Israel, let these words which I command thee this day stick fast in thine heart, and whet them on thy children, and talk of them as thou sittest in thine house and as thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up, and bind them for a token of thine hand, and let them be a remembrance between thine eyes, and write them on the posts and gates of thine house." This was commanded generally unto all men. How cometh it that God's word pertaineth less unto us than unto them? Yea, how cometh it that our Moseses forbid us and command us the contrary, and threat us if we do, and will not that we once speak of God's word? How can we whet God's word (that is put in practise, use and exercise) upon our children and household, when we are violently kept from it and know it not? How can we (as Peter commandeth) give a reason for our hope, when we wot not what it is that God hath promised or what to hope? Moses also commandeth in the said chapter: if the son ask what the testimonies, laws and observances of the Lord mean, that the father teach him. If our children ask what our ceremonies (which are no more than the Jewses were) mean, no father can tell his son. And in the xi chapter he repeateth all again, for fear of forgetting.
They will say haply "the Scripture requireth a pure mind and a quiet mind. And therefore the lay-man, because he is altogether cumbered with worldly business, cannot understand them." If that be the cause, then it is a plain case that our prelates understand not the Scriptures themselves. For no lay-man is so tangled with worldly business as they are. The great things of the world are ministered by them. Neither do the lay people any great thing but at their assignment.
"If the Scripture were in the mother tongue," they will say, "then would the lay people understand it every man after his own ways." Wherefore serveth the curate but to teach them the right way? Wherefore were the holidays made but that the people should come and learn? Are ye not abominable schoolmasters in that ye take so great wages, if ye will not teach? If ye would teach, how could ye do it so well and with so great profit as when the lay people have the Scripture before them in their mother tongue? For then should they see, by the order of the text, whether thou juggledest or not. And then would they believe it because it is the Scripture of God, though thy living be never so abominable. Where now, because your living and your preaching are so contrary and because they grope out in every sermon your open and manifest lies and smell your unsatiable covetousness, they believe you not when you preach truth. But alas, the curates themselves (for the most part) wot no more what the New or Old Testament meaneth than do the Turks. Neither know they of any more than that they read at masse, matins, and evensong, which yet they understand not. Neither care they but even to mumble up so much every day (as the pie and popinjay speak they wot not what) to fill their bellies with all. If they will not let the lay-man have the word of God in his mother tongue, yet let the priests have it, which, for a great part of them, do understand no Latin at all; but sing and say and patter all day with the lips only that which the heart understandeth not.