A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)

by Thomas M. Lindsay

Henry VIII. afterwards revised the Bishops’ Book according to his own ideas. The revision was published in 1543, and was known as the King’s Book.[439]

Perhaps the greatest boon bestowed on the people of England by the Ten Articles and the Injunctions which enforced them was the permission to read and hear read a version of the Bible in their own tongue. For the vernacular Scriptures had been banned in England as they had not been on the Continent, save perhaps during the Albigensian persecution. The seventh of the Constitutions of Thomas Arundel ordains “that no one hereafter translates into the English tongue or into any other, on his own authority, the text of Holy Scripture either by way of book, or booklet, or tract.” This constitution was directed against Wiclif’s translation, which had been severely proscribed. That version, like so many others during the Middle Ages, had been made from the Vulgate. But Luther’s example had fired the heart of William Tyndale to give his countrymen an English version translated directly from the Hebrew and the Greek originals.

Tyndale was a distinguished scholar, trained first at Oxford and then at Cambridge. When at the former University he had belonged to that circle of learned and pious men who had encouraged Erasmus to complete his critical text of the New Testament. He knew, as did More, that Erasmus desired that the weakest woman should be able to read the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul; that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he followed the plough; that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle; and that the traveller should beguile the tedium of the road by repeating their stories; and he did not, like More, turn his back on the ennobling enthusiasms of his youth.[440]

Tyndale found that he could not attempt his task in England. He went to Germany and began work in Cologne; but, betrayed to the magistrates of that centre of German Romanism, he fled to Worms. There he finished the translation of the New Testament, and printed two editions, one in octavo and the other in quarto—the latter being enriched with copious marginal notes. The ecclesiastical authorities in England had early word of this translation, and by Nov. 3rd, Archbishop Warham was exerting himself to buy and destroy as many copies as he could get hold of both in England and abroad; and, thanks to his exertions, Tyndale was supplied with funds to revise his work and print a corrected edition. This version was welcomed in England, and passed secretly from hand to hand. It was severely censured by Sir Thomas More, not because the work was badly done, but really because it was so scholarly. The faithful translation of certain words and sentences was to the reactionary More “a mischievous perversion of those writings intended to advance heretical opinion”;[441] and, strange to say, Dr. James Gairdner seems to agree with him.[442] Tyndale’s version had been publicly condemned in England at the Council called by the King in 1530 (May), and copies of his book had been publicly burnt in St. Paul’s Churchyard, while he himself had been tracked like a wild beast by emissaries of the English Government in the Netherlands.

Cranmer induced Convocation in 1534 to petition for an English version of the Bible, and next year Cromwell persuaded Miles Coverdale to undertake his translation in 1535. It was made from the Vulgate with some assistance from Luther’s version, and was much inferior to the proscribed version of Tyndale; but it had a large private sale in England, and the King was induced to license it to enable the clergy to obey the Injunctions of 1536, which had ordered a copy of the English Bible to be placed in all the churches before August 1537.[443]

The Archbishop, however, had another version in view, which he sent to Cromwell (Aug. 1537), saying that he liked it better than any other translation, and hoped it would be licensed to be read freely until the Bishops could set forth a better, which he believes will not be until after Doomsday. This version was practically Tyndale’s.

Tyndale had entrusted one of his friends, Rogers, with his translation of the Old Testament, finished as far as the Book of Jonah, and with his complete version of the New Testament. Rogers had taken Tyndale’s New Testament, his Old Testament as far as the Book of Chronicles, borrowed the remaining portion of the Old Testament from Coverdale’s version, and printed them with a dedication to the King, signed Thomas Matthew.[444] This was the edition recommended by Cranmer to Cromwell, which was licensed. The result was that Tyndale’s New Testament (the same version which had been denounced as pernicious, and which had been publicly burnt only a few years before) and a large part of his Old Testament were publicly introduced into the parish churches of England, and became the foundation of all succeeding translations of the Bible into the English language.[445] On reconsideration, the translation was found to be rather too accurate for the Government, and some changes (certainly not corrections) were made in 1538—39. Thus altered, the translation was known as the Great Bible, and, because Cranmer wrote the preface, as Cranmer’s Bible.[446] This was the version, the Bible “of the largest volume,” which was ordered to be placed in the churches for the people to read, and portions of which were to be read from the pulpit every Sunday, according to the Injunctions of 1538.

From 1533 on to the middle of 1539, there was a distinct if slow advance in England towards a real Reformation; then the progress was arrested, if the movement did not become decidedly retrograde. It seems more than probable that if Henry had lived a few years longer, there would have been another attempt at an advance.

Part of the advance had been a projected political and religious treaty with the German Protestants. Neither Henry viii. nor John Frederick of Saxony appears to have been much in earnest about an alliance, and from the English King’s instructions to his envoys it would appear that his chief desire was to commit the German divines to an approval of the Divorce.[447] Luther was somewhat scornful, and seems to have penetrated Henry’s design.[448] The German theologians had no doubt but that the marriage of Henry with Catharine was one which should never have taken place; but they all held that, once made, it ought not to be broken.[449] Determined efforts were made to capture the sympathies of Melanchthon. Bishop Foxe, selected as the theological ambassador, was instructed to take him presents to the value of £70.[450] His books were placed on the course of study for Cambridge at Cromwell’s order.[451] Henry exchanged complimentary letters, and graciously accepted the dedication of Melanchthon’s De Locis Communibus.[452] An embassy was despatched, consisting of Foxe, Bishop elect of Hereford; Heath, Archdeacon of Canterbury; and Dr. Barnes, an English divine, who was a pronounced Lutheran. They met the Protestant Princes at Schmalkald and had long discussions. The confederated Princes and Henry found themselves in agreement on many points: they would stoutly disown the primacy of the Pope; they would declare that they would not be bound by the decrees of any Council which the Pope and the Emperor might assemble; and they would pledge each other to get their Bishops and preachers to declare them null and void. The German Princes were quite willing to give Henry the title of “Defender of the Schmalkald League.” But they insisted as the first articles of any alliance that the English Church and King must accept the theology of the Augsburg Confession and adopt the ceremonies of the Lutheran Church; and on these rocks of doctrine and ritual the proposed alliance was shattered.[453] The Germans had their own private view of the English Reformation under Henry VIII., which was neither very flattering nor quite accurate.