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 question—what was to be done in the matter? Copies of the printed edition must have reached England some time in 1526, for in October of that year Bishop Tunstall of London addressed a monition to the archdeacons on the subject. “Many children of iniquity,” he says, “maintainers of Luther’s sect, blinded through extreme wickedness, wandering from the way of truth and the Catholic faith, have craftily translated the New Testament into our English tongue, intermeddling therewith many heretical articles and erroneous opinions, pernicious and offensive, seducing the simple people; attempting by their wicked and perverse interpretations to profane the majesty of Scripture, which hitherto hath remained undefiled, and craftily to abuse the most holy Word of God, and the true sense of the same. Of this translation there are many books printed, some with glosses and some without, containing in the English tongue that pestiferous and pernicious poison, (and these are) dispersed in our diocese of London.” He consequently orders all such copies of the New Testament to be delivered up to his offices within thirty days.[253]
This was the first action of the English ecclesiastical authorities, and it was clearly taken not from distrust of what the same bishop calls “the most holy Word of God,” but because they looked on the version sent forth by Tyndale as a profanation of the Bible, and as intended to disseminate the errors of Lutheranism.
Of the Lutheran character of the translation the authorities, whether in Church or State, do not seem to have had from the first the least doubt. The king himself, in a rejoinder to Luther’s letter of apology, says that the German reformer “fell in device with one or two lewd persons, born in this our realm, for the translating of the New Testament into English, as well with many corruptions of that holy text, as certain prefaces and other pestilent glosses in the margins, for the advancement and setting forth of his abominable heresies, intending to abuse the good minds and devotion that you, our dearly beloved people, bear toward the Holy Scripture and infect you with the deadly corruption and contagious odour of his pestilent errors.”[254]
Bishop Tunstall, in 1529, whilst returning from an embassy abroad, purchased at Antwerp through one Packington, all copies of the English printed New Testament that were for sale, and, according to the chronicler Hall, burned them publicly at St. Paul’s in May 1530. For the same reason the confiscated volumes of the edition first sent over were committed to the flames some time in 1527,[255] and Bishop Tunstall explained to the people at Paul’s Cross that the book was destroyed because in more than two thousand places wrong translations and corruptions had been detected. Tyndale made a great outcry at the iniquity of burning the Word of God; but in The Wicked Mammon he declares that, “in burning the New Testament they did none other thynge than I looked for.” Moreover, as he sold the books knowing the purpose for which they were purchased, he may be said to have been a participator in the act he blames. “The fact is,” says a modern authority, “the books were full of errors and unsaleable, and Tyndale wanted money to pay the expense of a revised version and to purchase Vastermann’s old Dutch blocks to illustrate his Pentateuch, and was glad to make capital in more ways than one by the translation. ‘I am glad,’ said he, ‘for these two benefits shall come thereof: I shall get money to bring myself out of debt, and the whole world will cry out against the burning of God’s Word, and the overplus of the money that shall remain to me shall make me more studious to correct the said New Testament, and so newly to imprint the same once again, and I trust the second you will much better like than you ever did the first.’”[256]
Tyndale allowed nine years to elapse before issuing a second edition of his Testament. Meantime, as his former assistant, Joye, says, foreigners looking upon the English Testament as a good commercial speculation, and seeing that the ecclesiastical authorities in England had given orders to purchase the entire first issue of Tyndale’s print, set to work to produce other reprints. Through ignorance of the language, the various editions they issued were naturally full of typographical errors, and, as Joye declared, “England hath enough and too many false Testaments, and is now likely to have many more.” He consequently set to work himself to see an edition through the press, in which, without Tyndale’s leave, he made substantial alterations in his translation. Joye’s version appeared in 1534, and immediately Tyndale attacked its editor in the most bitter, reproachful terms. In George Joye’s Apology, which appeared in 1535, he tried, as he says, “to defend himself against so many slanderous lies upon him in Tyndale’s uncharitable and unsober epistle.” In the course of the tract, Joye charges Tyndale with claiming as his own what in reality was Luther’s. “I have never,” he says, “heard a sober, wise man praise his own works as I have heard him praise his exposition of the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew, insomuch that mine ears glowed for shame to hear him; and yet it was Luther that made it, Tyndale only translating it and powdering it here and there with his own fantasies.”
In a second publication Joye declares Tyndale’s incompetence to judge of the original Greek. “I wonder,” he says, “how he could compare it with the Greek, since he himself is not so exquisitely seen therein.… I know well (he) was not able to do it without such a helper as he hath ever had hitherto.”[257] Tyndale, however, continued his work of revision in spite of opposition, and further, with the aid of Miles Coverdale, issued translations of various portions of the Old Testament.
Shortly after the public burning of the copies of the translated Testament by Bishop Tunstall, on May 24, 1530, an assembly was called together by Archbishop Warham to formally condemn these and other books then being circulated with the intention of undermining the religion of the country. The king was present in person, and a list of errors was drawn up and condemned “with all the books containing the same, with the translation also of Scripture corrupted by William Tyndale, as well in the Old Testament as in the New.” After this meeting, a document was issued with the king’s authority, which preachers were required to read to their people. After speaking of the books condemned for teaching error, the paper takes notice of an opinion “in some of his subjects” that the Scripture should be allowed in English. The king declares that it is a good thing the Scriptures should be circulated at certain times, but that there are others when they should not be generally allowed, and taking into consideration all the then existing circumstances, he “thinketh in his conscience that the divulging of the Scripture at this time in the English tongue to be committed to the people … would rather be to their further confusion and destruction than for the edification of their souls.”
In this opinion, we are told, all in the assembly concurred. At the same time, however, the king promised that he would have the New Testament “faithfully and purely translated by the most learned men,” ready to be distributed when circumstances might allow.
Sir Thomas More plainly states the reason for this prohibition. “In these days, in which Tyndale (God amend him) has so sore poisoned malicious and new-fangled folk with the infectious contagion of his heresies, the king’s highness, and not without the counsel and advice, not only of his nobles with his other counsellors attending upon his Grace’s person, but also of the most virtuous and learned men of both universities and other parts of the realm, specially called thereto, has been obliged for the time to prohibit the Scriptures of God to be allowed in the English tongue in the hands of the people, lest evil folk … may turn all the honey into poison, and do hurt unto themselves, and spread also the infection further abroad … and by their own fault misconstrue and take harm from the very Scripture of God.”[258]
Early in 1534 Tyndale took up his abode once more in Antwerp at the house of an English merchant, and busied himself in passing his revised New Testament through the press. This was published in the following November. To it he prefixed a second prologue dealing with the edition just published by George Joye. This he declares was no true translation, and charges his former assistant with deliberate falsification of the text of Holy Scripture in order to support his errors and false opinions. The edition itself manifests many changes in the text caused by the criticism to which the former impression had been subjected, whilst many of the marginal notes “exhibit the great change that had taken place in Tyndale’s religious opinions, and show that he had ceased to be an Episcopalian.”[259]