Further, More blames Tyndale’s translation in its substitution of senior or elder for the old-established word priest. This word, presbyter, in the Greek, he says, “as it signifies the thing that men call priest in English, was sometimes called senior in Latin. But the thing that Englishmen call a priest, and the Greek church called presbyter, and the Latin church also sometimes called senior, was never called elder either in the Greek church, or the Latin or the English.”[267] He considers, therefore, the change made by Tyndale, in the second edition of his translation, from senior into elder was not only no improvement, but a distinct and reiterated rejection of the well-understood word of priest.… “I said and say,” he continues, “that Tyndale changed the word priest into senior with the heretical mind and intent to set forth his heresy, in which he teaches that the priesthood is no sacrament … for else I would not call it heresy if any one would translate presbyteros a block, but I would say he was a blockhead. And as great a blockhead were he that would translate presbyteros into an elder instead of a priest, for this English word no more signifies an elder than the Greek word presbyteros signifies an elderstick.”[268] “For the same reason he might change bishop into overseer, and deacon into server, both of which he might as well do, as priest into elder; and then with his English translation he must make us an English vocabulary of his own device, and so with such provision he may change chin into cheek, and belly into back, and every word into every other at his own pleasure, if all England like to go to school with Tyndale to learn English—but else, not so.”[269]
In the same way More condemns Tyndale for deliberately changing the word “Grace,” the meaning of which was fully understood by Catholic Englishmen, into “favour,” “thinking that his own scoffing is sufficient reason to change the known holy name of virtue through all Scripture into such words as he himself liketh.”[270] He says the same of the change of the old familiar words Confession into knowledge, and penance into repentance. “This is what Tyndale means: he would have all willing confession quite cast away and all penance doing too.”[271] And “as for the word penance, whatsoever the Greek word be, it ever was, and still is, lawful enough (if Tyndale give us leave) to call anything in English by whatever word Englishmen by common custom agree upon.… Now, the matter does not rest in this at all. For Tyndale is not angry with the word, but with the matter. For this grieves Luther and him that by penance we understand, when we speak of it … not mere repenting … but also every part of the Sacrament of Penance; oral confession, contrition of heart, and satisfaction by good deeds. For if we called it the Sacrament of repentance, and by that word would understand what we now do by the word penance, Tyndale would then be as angry with repentance as he is now with penance.”[272]
Speaking specially in another place about the change of the old word charity into love in Tyndale’s translation, More declared that he would not much mind which word was used were it not for the evident intention to change the teaching. When it is done consistently through the whole book “no man could deem but that the man meant mischievously. If he called charity sometimes by the bare name love, I would not stick at that. But since charity signifies in Englishmen’s ears not every common love, but a good virtuous and well-ordered love, he that will studiously flee from the name of good love, and always speak of ‘love,’ and always leave out ‘good,’ I would surely say he meant evil. And it is much more than likely. For it is to be remembered that at the time of this translation Huchins (or Tyndale) was with Luther in Wittenberg, and put certain glosses in the margins, made to uphold the ungracious sect.”… And “the reason why he changed the name of charity and of the church and of priesthood is no very great difficulty to perceive. For since Luther and his fellows amongst their other damnable heresies have one that all salvation rests on Faith alone—therefore he purposely works to diminish the reverent mind that men have to charity, and for this reason changes the name of holy virtuous affection into the bare name of love.”
In concluding his justification of the condemnation of Tyndale’s Testament and his criticism of the translator’s Defence, Sir Thomas More says: “Every man knows well that the intent and purpose of my Dyalogue was to make men see that Tyndale in his translation changed the common known words in order to make a change in the faith. As for example: he changed the word Church into this word congregation, because he would raise the question which the church was, and set forth Luther’s heresy that the church which we should believe and obey is not the common known body of all Christian realms remaining in the faith of Christ and not fallen away or cut off with heresies.… But the church we should believe and obey was some secret unknown kind of evil living and worse believing heretics. And he changed priest into senior, because he intended to set forth Luther’s heresy teaching that priesthood is no sacrament, but the office of a layman or laywoman appointed by the people to preach. And he changed Penance into repenting, because he would set forth Luther’s heresy teaching that penance is no sacrament. This being the only purpose of my Dyalogue, Tyndale now comes and expressly confesses what I proposed to show. For he indeed teaches and writes openly these false heresies so that he himself shows now that I then told the people the truth … his own writing shows that he made his translation to the intent to set forth such heresies as I said he did.”[273]
John Standish in the tract on the vernacular Scriptures, published in Queen Mary’s reign, uses in some places the same language as Sir Thomas More in condemning the translations which had been later in vogue. “At all times,” he writes, “heretics have laboured to corrupt the Scriptures that they might serve for their naughty purposes and to confirm their errors therewith, but especially now in our time. O good Lord, how have the translators of the Bible into English purposely corrupted the texts, oft maliciously putting in such words as in the readers’ ears might serve for the proof of such heresies as they went about to sow. These are not only set forth in the translations, but also in certain prologues and glosses added thereunto, and these things they have so handled (as indeed it is no great mastery to do) with probable reasons very apparent to the simple and unlearned, that an infinite number of innocents they have spiritually poisoned and corrupted within this realm, and caused them to perish obstinately.”[274]
If further proof were wanting that the New Testament as set forth by Tyndale was purposely designed to overthrow the then existing religious principles held by English churchmen, it is furnished by works subsequently published by the English Lutherans abroad. The tract named The Burying of the Mass, printed in Germany shortly after the burning of Tyndale’s Testament, was, as Sir Thomas More points out, intended as a direct attack upon the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacramental system. In it the author poured out the vials of his wrath upon all those who caused Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament to be destroyed, saying that they burned it because it destroyed the Mass. “By this,” adds More, “you may see that the author accounted the translation very good for the destruction of the Mass.”[275] Moreover, in a book called The Wicked Mammon, published by Tyndale himself shortly after this, although he blames the style of the author of The Burying of the Mass, he tacitly accepts his assertion that his translation of the New Testament was intended to bring about the abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass.[276]
In later times, after the experience of the religious changes in the reign of Edward VI., some writers pointed to the evils, religious and social, as evidence of the harm done by the promiscuous reading of the Scriptures. In their opinion, what More had feared and foretold had come to pass. “In these miserable years now past,” says Standish of Mary’s reign, in this tract on the vernacular Scriptures: “In these miserable years now past, what mystery is so hard that the ignorant with the Bible in English durst not set upon, yea and say they understood it: all was light! They desired no explanation but their own, even in the highest mysteries.… Alas! experience shows that our own men through having the Bible in English have walked far above their reach, being sundry ways killed and utterly poisoned with the letter of the English Bible.”[277]
The spirit in which the study of Sacred Scripture was taken up by many in those days is described by the Marian preacher, Roger Edgworth, already referred to. “Scripture,” he says, “is in worse case than any other faculty: for where other faculties take upon them no more than pertaineth to their own science, as (for example) the physician of what pertains to the health of man’s body, and the carpenter and smith of their own tools and workmanship—the faculty of Sacred Scripture alone is the knowledge which all men and women challenge and claim to themselves and for their own. Here and there the chattering old wife, the doting old man, the babbling sophister, and all others presume upon this faculty, and tear it and teach it before they learn it. Of all such green divines as I have spoken of, it appeareth full well what learning they have by this, that when they teach any of their disciples, and when they give any of their books to other men to read, the first suggestion why he should labour (at) such books is ‘because of this,’ say they, ‘thou shalt be able to oppose the best priest in the parish, and tell him he lies.’”[278]
The result is patent in the history of the religious confusions which followed, for this much must be allowed, whatever view may be taken of the good or evil which ultimately resulted. Dr. Richard Smith, in 1546, then states the position as he saw it: “In old times the faith was respected, but in our days not a few things, and not of small importance, but (alack the more the pity) even the chiefest and most weighty matters of religion and faith, are called in question, babbled about, talked and jangled upon (reasoned, I cannot and ought not to call it).”[279]
Although the cry for the open Bible which had been raised by Tyndale and the other early English reformers generally assumed the right to free and personal interpretation of its meaning, no sooner was the English Scripture put into circulation than its advocates proclaimed the need of expositions to teach people the meaning they should attach to it. In fact, the marginal notes and glosses, furnished by Tyndale chiefly from Lutheran sources, are evidence that even he had no wish that the people should understand or interpret the sacred text otherwise than according to his peculiar views. Very quickly after the permission of Henry VIII. had allowed the circulation of the printed English Bible, commentators came forward to explain their views. Lancelot Ridley, for example, issued many such explanations of portions of the Sacred Text with the object, as he explains, of enabling “the unlearned to declare the Holy Scriptures now suffered to all people of this realm to read and study at their pleasure.” For the Bible, “which is now undeclared (i.e. unexplained) to them, and only had in the bare letter, appears to many rather death than life, rather (calculated) to bring many to errors and heresies than into the truth and verity of God’s Word. For this, when unexplained, does not bring the simple, rude, and ignorant people from their ignorant blindness, from their corrupt and backward judgments, false trusts, evil beliefs, vain superstitions, and feigned holiness, in which the people have long been in blindness, for lack of a knowledge of Holy Scripture which the man of Rome kept under latch and would not suffer to come to light, that his usurped power should not have been espied, his worldly glory diminished, and his profit decayed.”[280]