Of the quarto testaments which were completed at Worms, after the hurried flight from Cologne, only one fragment remains, and that is deposited in the British Museum. It consists of thirty-one leaves only, and terminates at the 12th verse of the 22nd chapter of St. Matthew. It was discovered in the year 1836 by a London bookseller bound up with a tract by Æcolampadius. This fragment is all that remains of the three thousand copies in quarto that were commenced at Cologne and completed at Worms.
Of the three thousand octavo Testaments which, although commenced at Worms, were issued probably before the quarto, one perfect copy is preserved in the library of the Baptist College in Bristol. This book was purchased for the Earl of Oxford about the year 1740, and he rewarded the agent who discovered the treasure with a donation of ten pounds, and an annuity of twenty pounds per year. This latter annuity was paid for fourteen years, so that the total cost of the book to the Earl was £290. At the death of the Earl of Oxford, his library was purchased by Osborne, the bookseller, for less money than the bindings had cost their collector. Osborne, in turn, sold the book for fifteen shillings; then it came into the hands of Dr. Gifford, a Baptist minister, who bequeathed it to the college in his native city. In the same college, amongst many other Biblical treasures and curiosities, is a copy of what is called the Droll-Error Tyndale. It is a handsome volume, well printed upon good paper, but full of printers’ blunders. Amongst them is that which has given a name to the edition; thus, 2 Cor. x., instead of “Let him that is such think on this wise,” the printer has put “Let hym that is foche (long s) think on his wyfe.” This book is supposed to be later in date than either the octavo or quarto editions, but it may be perhaps most conveniently referred to here.
The spirit in which the work of translation was undertaken by Tyndale appears in his prologue:—
“I have translated, brethren and sisters most dear and tenderly beloved in Christ, the New Testament for your spiritual edifying, consolation, and solace, exhorting instantly, and beseeching those that are better seen in the tongues than I, and that have higher gifts of grace to interpret the sense of Scripture and the meaning of the Spirit than I, to consider and ponder my labour, and that with the spirit of meekness, if they perceive in any places that I have not attained the very sense of the tongue or meaning of the Scripture, or have not given the right English word, that they put to their hands to amend it, remembering that so is their duty to do. For we have not received the gifts of God for ourselves only or for to hide them, but for to bestow them unto the honouring of God and Christ, and edifying of the congregation which is the body of Christ.”
Of Tyndale’s qualifications for his work there can be no doubt whatever. Buschius, a distinguished German scholar, speaks of him as “so skilled in seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, French, that whichever he spoke you would suppose it his native tongue.”
The Greek text that he followed in his translation was, of course, that which Erasmus had given to the world, and although Tyndale was evidently more familiar with the second, he now and then uses the third edition. At the same time, it has been shown by Demaus that, “as he proceeded in his undertaking, Tyndale had before him the Vulgate, the Latin version of Erasmus, and the German of Luther, and that, in rendering from the original Greek, he carefully consulted all these aids; but he did so not with the helpless imbecility of a mere tyro, but with the conscious independence of an accomplished scholar.”
At the same time, it is but justice to bear in mind that some of the alleged faults of our version are due to Tyndale. For example, the manner in which he translates the same Greek word differently in the same connection, and sometimes in the same verse, adds indeed to the beauty, but it diminishes the force of the book.
But the most heinous offence in the eyes of the Papists, after his translating the Scripture at all, was the putting of notes in the margin.
Of these we select a few examples:—
“Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;” Tyndale says, “Here all bind and loose.” Beside the words, “If thine eye be single, all thy body is full of light,” he writes, “The eye is single when a man in all his deeds looketh but on the will of God, and looketh not for land, honour, or any other reward in this world; neither ascribeth heaven nor a higher room in the heaven unto his deeds: but accepteth heaven as a thing purchased by the blood of Christ and worketh freely for love’s sake only.”