AS one of that noble band of witnesses who sealed their testimony with their life-blood, William Tindale is worthy of being remembered by all that love the truth. But he has other claims upon us as the translator of the Scriptures into English, which should never be forgotten. “With Tindale,” says Dr Westcott, “the history of our present English Bible begins; and for fifteen years the history of the [English] Bible is almost identical with the history of Tindale. The fortunes of both, if followed out in detail, are even of romantic interest.”* At present we intend confining our attention to a brief biographical account of this noteworthy Reformer and martyr. This is all the more necessary in view of what the Rev. Robert Demaus says in the opening sentences of his standard biography of William Tindale. “The history of Tindale,” remarks a great English writer, “has almost been lost in his work.” His work remains, and is likely long to remain, loved and reverenced by all English-speaking people throughout the world, as their noblest inheritance; but the man, to whose patient labour and heroic self-sacrifice we are mainly indebted for the English Bible, has been allowed to almost drop out of memory.”
Of Tindale’s early life not much is known with certainty. Tindale himself seldom makes any allusion to his early years, and even Foxe, the indefatigable martyrologist, has contented himself with the vague statement—”Touching the birth and parentage of this blessed martyr of Christ, he was born about the borders of
* History of the English Bible, p. 25 (3rd edit.).
Wales.” Mr Demaus, to whose excellent work† reference has already been made, and which we most heartily recommend to our readers as a book of the deepest interest, giving an account, as it does, of one of the nobles in the household of faith and of his great work as a translator, has gathered a vast amount of information about Tindale, but he has to confess after all his researches that “the whole story of the birth and early life of Tindale is involved in uncertainty.”
Mr Demaus is of opinion that Tindale’s birthplace was Melksham Court, in the parish of Stinchcombe, and not at Hunt’s Court, Nibley Knoll Gloucestershire. He was born some time between 1490 and 1495. At an early age he was sent to Oxford. Even at this time, according to Foxe, he was “singularly addicted to the study of the Scriptures.” From Oxford he went to Cambridge. In 1520 he returned to his native county as tutor in the family of Sir John Walsh of Little Sodbury. Here he spent two years, and in one of his controversies with a “learned man,” who “said we were better without God’s laws than the Pope’s,” he met him with the bold challenge—“I defy the Pope and all his laws, and if God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough, shall know more of the Scriptures than thou doest.” Towards this goal he turned his eyes, and with unwearied perseverance he proved to the world that it was not an idle boast he made in a passionate outburst which spent its energy in the utterance.
He tells us what moved him to translate the Bible—“I perceived by experience how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scriptures were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text.” Tindale came to London expecting encouragement from Bishop Tunstall, who was a great lover of scholarship. But Tunstall proved a disappointment. God, however, ordered it that in Humphrey Munnouth, an alderman of London, he found a true and generous friend. He spent a year in London, and reviewing the time spent were he sorrow-
† William Tindale: A Biography, being a contribution to the Early History of the English Bible, by Robert Demaus, M.A., author of “Hugh Latimer: A Biography.” Popular Edition, revised by Richard Lovett, M.A. London: The Religious Tract Society, 4 Bouverie Street, E.C. 5s net.
fully adds:—”I abode almost a year, and marked the course of the world, and understood at the last not only that there was no room in my lord of London’s [Tunstall’s] palace to translate the New Testament, but also there was no place to do it in all England.” So he left his native land and went to Hamburg. Tindale here carried on his great work of translating the New Testament, but was hindered in it by Cochlaeus, a relentless enemy of the Reformation. Baffled at Hamburg, he fled to Worms, which four years before had witnessed the entry of Martin Luther to bear witness to the truth before the Emperor Charles. The New Testament was issued in English at the end of 1525, and early in 1526 copies had reached England. The books were eagerly bought by the people and as eagerly proscribed by the ecclesiastical leaders. A determined onset was made against the translation. Other editions followed, and Tindale was now a marked man. In 1534 his revised edition appeared. The following year he was in the hands of his enemies. Foxe, in his account, brings out the singleness of the character of the man, whom he worthily called “for his notable pains and travail an apostle of England.” His betrayal by a deceiver is one of the darkest incidents in connection with his martyrdom. The traitor, Henry Philips, had put Tindale completely off his guard, notwithstanding the warning he got from his friend Poyntz, in whose house he put up in Antwerp, as Philips appeared to him to be “honest, handsomely learned, and very conformable.” Philips even furnished him with money, “for in the wily subtleties of this world,” says Foxe, “he was simple and inexpert.” It is not necessary to dwell at any length on his trial and sentence to be burned, except to say that, alike before his judges and at the last fiery ordeal he conducted himself with that Christian dignity and courage that so often ennobled frail men and women in similar circumstances.
While in prison his keeper, and his keeper’s daughter, and others of the keeper’s household, were won over by him to his belief. His last prayer, when fastened to the stake, witnessed, as has been well said, alike to his loyalty and his faith:—”Lord! open the King of England’s eyes.”
Tindale counted the cost of following his Lord and Master, and with unhesitating steps walked the stern path that at length brought him to the stake. His sterling honesty as a translator is finely set forth in his own words to Firth while the latter lay in the
Tower:—”I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus to give a reckoning of our doings, that I never altered one syllable of God’s Word against my conscience, nor would this day, if all that is in the earth, whether it be pleasure, honour, or riches, might be given me.”