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 Hir. 
 
 BY 
 
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 ASHBEL WELCH, 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 Hunterdon County Bible Society, 
 
 AUGUST 31st, 1880. 
 
.VJ43 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESS 
 
 I NOV 15 19^ 
 
 ashbelV/elch, 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 Hiiiiterdoii County Bible Society, 
 
 ON THE 
 
 FIVE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 iranslation of ll|c ^iblc bg 1|}gt(^Ii)}Vt 
 
 AUGUST 31st, 1880. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE SOCIETY. 
 
 LAMBERTVILLE, N. J.: 
 <'LARK PlERSON, PbINTKR . TllE RECORD OFFICE. 
 
 1880. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 I propose to illustrate the value of the English Bible, by 
 showiug that it alone was the means of effecting the English 
 Reformation, and so of giving us the Protestant religion ; and 
 that too, in spite of the opposition of the government, the church, 
 and the most prominent of the so-called reformers ; and against 
 the whole public teachings heard by the people. 
 
 As we are Protestants, we may without offence to those who 
 differ from us, assume that the Reformation was an invaluable 
 blessing. 
 
 By the Reformation I mean, not the improvement in manners 
 and spirituality that took place within the Roman Catholic 
 Church itself, nOr the mere secession of a part of that Church 
 from the rest, with no radical change, except a new head for the 
 separated fragment ; but that all-important change in religious 
 sentiment that involved the separation of the Protestants from 
 the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 By Protestant, I mean the positively religious class so-called 
 in England and America, keeping out of view the etymology 
 and the historical origin of the word, and not using it in its 
 more extended continental sense; and I shall use the word 
 Church only in its ecclesiastical sense of an organization. 
 
 To understand what the Reformation was, it is necessary to 
 point out the cardinal principle on which the Roman Catholic 
 and the Protestant differ. Both alike believe that all mankind 
 are sinners exposed to punishment, and that Christ has effected 
 salvation for sinners. Then comes in an irreconcilable difference. 
 The Roman Catholic believes that Christ constituted a great 
 corporation, perpetuated ever since by uninterrupted succession, 
 calling itself "The Church," (or to distinguish it from other 
 organizations, making the same claim, "the Roman Catholic 
 Church,") and that it is this corporation which is called " the 
 church " in the New Testament ; and that through it alone 
 salvation is conveyed from God to man, by means of certain 
 forms and rites which are attended with spiritual and saving, 
 and in some cases miraculous effects. On the other hand the 
 
Protestant believes that each individual christian receives salva- 
 tion direct from God, without any other intermediate channel 
 than the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 The other differences flow from this. I point some of them 
 out to be used hereafter in determining what was protestant and 
 what was not. 
 
 The evangelical Protestant believes that salvation is gratuitous, 
 only on condition of faith. The Roman Catholic, besides some 
 other modifications, believes that it also requires the mediation 
 of the church. 
 
 One of the supernatural effects claimed for one Roman 
 Catholic rite is, that the bread used in the sacrament is converted 
 into " the body and blood, soul and divinity " of Christ. This 
 transmutation, or to speak technically transubstantiation, is of 
 course denied by the Protestant. This doctrine is admitted on 
 all hands to be a test tenet that distinguishes the two parties. 
 We shall often have occasion to refer to it, as a test. 
 
 Many of the disputes about particular rites and tenets, frivo- 
 lous and childish in themselves, with which history is so full, 
 are rescued from contempt only by what they express or imply 
 respecting the cardinal point already stated. 
 
 True, most Protestants believe that there are a few divinely 
 appointed rites to be observed, but which are not essential to 
 salvation. True there are those in some Protestant connections, 
 whose views conform rather to the Roman Catholic than to the 
 Protestant principle, but such do not like to be called Protestants. 
 
 One of the claims of this mighty organization, " the church," 
 harmonizing with its claim of being the dispenser of salvation, 
 is, that the word of God contained partly in the bible and partly 
 in tradition outside the bible, is entrusted to it alone, to be by 
 it given out to the people at its discretion, and interpreted by it 
 alone under the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit. All 
 this the Protestant denies, believing that the word of God is 
 contained only in the bible, and that, whatever helps he may 
 use, each person must understand it for himself; and that this 
 word is sent direct from God, like the rain from heaven, to 
 every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. 
 
 When Wyckliffe, " the Morning Star of the Reformation," 
 arose, five hundred years ago, this all-powerful corporation had 
 been paramount for many centuries, and its teachings had been 
 received as infallibly true throughout Christian Europe, except 
 by the Greek Church in the far East. Its decrees had become 
 
in most countries, including England, a part of the law of the 
 land. Dissent it is true had arisen, but it had been put down 
 by the strong arm. Only a few dissentient refugees survived, 
 such as the handful of Waldenses among the recesses of the Cot- 
 tian Alps. 
 
 The Reformation that ultimately succeeded in Europe, as far 
 back as it can be distinctly traced, began in England, five 
 hundred years ago, with Wyckliffe, whose anniversary we now 
 celebrate. 
 
 Five hundred years carries us back more than a century before 
 the discovery of America, more than half a century before the 
 invention of printing, centuries before the use of steam. Ve- 
 nice was one of the great powers of Europe, its commercial 
 metropolis, and mistress of the sea. The Russians were of little 
 more account in Europe than the Pottowattamie Indians are in 
 America. Houses were commonly thatched with straw, and 
 being without cliimnies, the smoke found its way out as best it 
 could. The floors of the mansions of the great were covered 
 with rushes, among which the dogs hunted successfully for 
 chicken bones.* 
 
 We can best realize the changes of 500 years, by thinking 
 over those of one-tenth jiart of that time, and within the mem- 
 ory of some of us. Fifty years ago there were no railroads, no 
 telegraphs, no steamships. 
 
 Five hundred years carries back into the gloom of the dark 
 ages, though not the darkest. Morals were at a low ebb. Re- 
 ligion among the people was very much a round of ceremonies. 
 Divinity among the clergy was very much in the hands of the 
 schoolmen, who are thus described by Pope : 
 
 "Once school diviues this zealous isle o'ei spread ; 
 " Who knew most sentences was deepest read ; 
 " Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed ; 
 " And none had sense enough to be confuted." 
 
 John de Wyckliffe was born in 1324. He studied at Oxford, 
 
 where in 1360, when he was 36 years old, he became head of 
 
 •Chaucer, thus describes a fine lady of that period : 
 
 ''At mete was she woly taught withalle; 
 
 "She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle, 
 
 " Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauco depe, 
 
 " Wei coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe, 
 
 " That no drope ne fell upon liire hrest." 
 
 " Hire over lippe wiped she so clene 
 
 "Thatte in hire cuppe was no fcrfhing sene 
 
 "Of grese, when she dronken hadde hire draught." 
 That is, this elegant lady had such excellent table manners, that she didn't let the 
 food "sqush" out of her mouth, and fall into her lap, aud when she picked out the cut up 
 meat Irom the platter, she did not stick her tingers unnecessarily deep into the gravy, 
 and did not smear the front of her dress with the drippings, and wiped her upper lip so 
 clean, that when she drank, no grease flowed back from her lip Into the cup. 
 
one of the colleges. He also became one of the chaplains to the 
 king. He was a powerful preacher and writer, and a man of 
 extraordinary genius, activity, courage, piety and learning. He 
 died in 1384, four years after completing his translation of the 
 bible. 
 
 Few laymen at that time had ever seen a bible, and few 
 priests had ever studied it. Wyckliffe however, like every 
 other one of the reformers, and like every one of the English 
 martyrs, with whose history I am acquainted, studied the scrip- 
 tures thoroughly early in his career. He became convinced 
 that they alone contain the word of God, and that they were 
 intended to be read by, or to, all the people as well as the 
 learned. He was also led by this study to deny all saving 
 efficacy of sacraments, and of course rejected transubstantiation, 
 and denied the necessity of baptism in order to salvation. He 
 held to only two sacraments. He denied the authority of the 
 church to make laws or interpret the scriptures. . He denounced 
 the hierarchy, pope, cardinals, bishops, and all, and held that 
 no one was the better or the worse for their benedictions, or 
 their maledictions ; but that every one's standing before God 
 depended only on his own spiritual condition. That is, he de- 
 nied the distinctive doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, 
 and adopted those now called Protestant, goin^ in some things 
 further than most Protestants now go. Of course he held to 
 the fundamental doctrines professed alike by both parties. 
 
 At that time half the land in England, and more than half 
 the revenues, belonged to the church. Wyckliffe, " the Elijah 
 of the Reformation," was disgusted by the wealth and luxury of 
 the clergy, very much as the founders of the mendicant orders 
 had previously been. He denounce(i not only that luxury, but 
 all ecclesiastical endowments. To enforce his protest, and set 
 an example (but not in the way of penance, which he denounc- 
 ed,) he and his " poor j)riests," as his followers were called, wore 
 the coarsest garments, and went barefoot. 
 
 Confident that by his bible study he had arrived at God's 
 truth, he taught it boldly, though he well knew that so many 
 thousands had perished for lesser departures from the teachings 
 of the church. Students came from all parts of Europe to hear 
 him. But he could personally teach only for a limited time and 
 over a limited space. He wished every cue to hear God him- 
 self speak his own truth in his own word. So with great labor, 
 doubtless extending though many years, and with some help, he 
 
translated the bible into English, that by it God's word might 
 be heard as far and as long as the language then in use should be 
 spoken. It was finished in 1380, five hundred years ago. 
 Wyckliffe was then fifty-six years old. 
 
 This translation was made from the Vulgate, itself a 
 Latin translation made from the originals by St. Jerome, a 
 thousand years before. As the Vulgate was held to be correct 
 by the church, it was better to use it, even if Wyckliffe had un- 
 derstood the original languages, and had manuscripts in the 
 original to translate from ; for then the church could not deny 
 that it was real scripture. 
 
 In his preface Wyckliffe says: " Cristen men and wymmen, 
 " olde and yonge, shulden studie fast in the Newe Testament, 
 " for it is of ful autorite aud opyn to understonding of simple 
 " men as to the poyntis that be moost nedeful to salvacioun." 
 This sentiment was the germ of the Reformation, 
 
 An extract from the writings of a contemporary priest, shows 
 how this work was regarded by the clergy : " This Master 
 '' John Wyckliffe hath translated the gospel out of Latin into 
 " English, which Christ had entrusted with the clergy and doc- 
 " tors of the church, that they might minister it to the laity and 
 " weaker sort, according to the state of the times, and the wants 
 " of men ; so that by this means the gospel is made vulgar, an(.l 
 " laid more open to the laity, even to women who can read, than 
 " it used to be to the most learned of the clergy." 
 
 Among the people it was heartily welcomed, copies were 
 multiplied and distributed with immense zeal and industry, and 
 read with great avidity. The great Roman Catholic historian, 
 Dr. Lingard, says that Wyckliffe made "a new translation, 
 " multiplied the copies with the aid of transcribers, and by his 
 " poor priests recommended it to the perusal of his hearers. 
 " In their hands it became an engine of wonderful power. Men 
 ." were flattered with the appeal to their private judgments, the 
 " new doctrines insensibly acquired partisans and protectors in 
 "the higher circles, who alone were acquainted with the use of 
 " letters; a spirit of enquiry was generated ; and the seeds sown 
 " of that religious revolution, which in little more than a 
 "century, astonished and convulsed the nations of Europe." 
 
 Here we have the testimony of this distinguished historian, 
 that the translation of the bible into English originated what 
 we call the reformation, not only in England, but in Europe 
 generally. 
 
8 
 
 Lingard does not notice the important fact that, though the 
 common people could seldom read, yet they were read to, 
 especially by the " poor priests." 
 
 As printing was not invented till about half a century after 
 Wyckliffe's time, and as then for a century more nobody dared 
 to print iiis bible, and by the end of that time its language be- 
 came obsolete, it was never printed till centuries afterwards. I 
 suppose the cost of one of those manuscript bibles was as much 
 as a laboring man could earn in excess of his board during his 
 whole lifetime. Few men could have copies all their own. 
 But they were widely scattered and read to the people in groups. 
 
 The eagerness to read this bible, doubtless stimulated the lay- 
 men of England to learn to read, for we soon after find them 
 more educated than was common on this side of the Alps. 
 
 But this bible had to fight its way against seemingly insupera- 
 ble obstacles. Both the Greek and Roman churches strictly for- 
 bade the reading of the scriptures by the laity, or their 
 translation into any spoken language. The council of Thonlouse 
 in 1229, decree as follows : " We forbid the laity to possess any 
 " of the books of the Old or New Testament, except perhaps the 
 " Psalter * * * Having any of them translated into the vulgar 
 " tongue we strictly forbid." When Sir Thomas More, Chan- 
 cellor of England, wished to read Tyndale's translation of the 
 New Testament, in order to write against it, he first got per- 
 mission of his bishop. It ought in fairness to be said that the 
 church has since allowed the bible to be read by more enlightened 
 generations. 
 
 Notwithstanding the opposition of the church, the bible and 
 Wyckliffe's doctrines circulated more or less freely for nearly 
 twenty years. The king, Edward 3d, refused to pay certain 
 tribute demanded by the pope from England. Wyckliffe, de- 
 nying the spiritual authority of the great corporation of which 
 the pope was the head, of course denied his right to collect 
 tribute from the nations of Christendom and wrote with great 
 power against the payment. This secured for him the royal 
 protection against the church. The victorious Edward 3d 
 closed his splendid career in 1377. His eldest son, the Black 
 . Prince, the favorite hero of English history, had died the year 
 before, leaving one son, a young boy, who now succeeded his 
 grandfather as Richard 2d. One of the young king's uncles, 
 a son of the late king, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was 
 a great friend and protector of Wyckliffe. The queen mother. 
 
the widow of the Black Prince, was also a strong friend, and an 
 earnest render of the scriptures. Though WycklifFe was re- 
 peatedly brought before ecclesiastical tribunals, though the pope 
 interfered to effect his condemnation, their influence always got 
 him off. 
 
 This princely protection would hardly have saved Wyckliffe, 
 his followers and his bible from the flames, if it had not been 
 for the great quarrel in the church itself. Each of the two great 
 factions into which it had split, elected its own pope ; and 
 then each i)ope, claiming to be the vicegerent of heaven, officially 
 sent the other one and all his followers to perdition. Neither of 
 them could afford to quarrel with the king of England, even if 
 he did protect heresy. Of course when the two infallible heads 
 of the church were charging each other with falsehood, many 
 people were lead to doubt whether they should believe either of 
 them. Thus it providentially occurred, that, until the accession 
 of Henry 4th, in 1399, bibles were multiplied, and read, and 
 listened to, all over England. 
 
 The seed of the word thus sown in the hearts of the people, 
 rapidly bore fruit. It is estimated that before the close of the 
 century, that is within twenty years after the translation was 
 finished, one quarter of the nation, and almost a majority of 
 the House of Commons, were converts to Wyckliffe's doctrines. 
 One of Wyckliffe's admirers was his contemporary, Geoffrey 
 Chaucer, the father of English poetry. 
 
 Among the strong friends of Wyckliffe, readers of his bible, 
 and advocates of his cause, was Anne of Bohemia, Queen of 
 Richard 2d, " the good Queen Anne," as the people lovingly 
 called her. It was she who sent the seeds of the Reformation 
 from England to her native Bohemia. Among the converts to 
 Wyckliffe's doctrines there, were John Huss and Jerome of 
 Prague. Tliose doctrines spread so wide, and took root so deep, 
 and created so much alarm, that in 1410 the archbishop of 
 Prague, publicly and olficially burned Wyckliffe's writings; and 
 a few years later the Council of Constance, which had burned 
 the living Huss and Jerome, ordered the bones of the dead 
 Wyckliffe to be dug up and burned. The Reformation in 
 Bohemia could never be entirely stamped out, and was influen- 
 tial in promoting the great movement under Luther. So we 
 see how the Reformation commenced with Wyckliffe's bible, and 
 went from England to the Continent, a hundred years before 
 Luther was born. 
 
10 
 
 In 1399, Richard 2d having lost his guardian angel^ the good 
 Queen Anne, misbehaved himself, and was deposed. Henry 
 of Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, mounted the vacant 
 throne, under title of Henry 4thy and was the ancestor of the 
 kings of the house of Lancaster, whose badge was the red rose, 
 passing over the rightful heir afterwards represented by the 
 House of York, whose badge was tiie white rose. This after- 
 wards led to the wars of the roses, which dekiged England with 
 blood for thirty years. 
 
 This usurpation of Henry 4th, as it turned out, kept back the 
 Reformation more than a century. His title being bad, it was 
 necessary to strengthen himself by alliance with the church. 
 To please it, he tried to root out the doctrines sustained! by the 
 English bibles. Under him and his successor, acts of parlia- 
 ment were passed, enabling any bishop to burn any disciple of 
 Wyckliffe's, and forbidding the reading of the bible in English 
 on pain of death. A man was burned at Coventry for teaching 
 his children the ten commandments and the Lord's Prayer in 
 English. Many were burned, many recanted, many left the 
 country and sowed the seeds of the Reformation in other 
 countries, and a great but unknown number continued to read 
 the English bible in secret, and in secret taught their children 
 and neighbors the doctrines they thought, and we think, the 
 bible teaches. History can give no particulars about them. 
 They made few records, for records would bring exposure and 
 death. The bible was concealed in boxes and jars in the ground, 
 in chinks of walls and hollows of trees, and leaves of it in beds 
 and cushions and chair bottoms. Of course there could be no 
 public preaching, but for a century and a quarter, the secret 
 reading of the English bible nourished and kept alive the roots 
 of that mighty tree, which when it displayed itself, was called 
 the Reformation. 
 
 Some Historians who see nothing till it takes a public and 
 official shape, say the Wyckliffeites had become extinct before 
 the reign of Henry 8th, because they had ceased to be a visible 
 society. Such a historian is like a naturalist who should begin 
 his history of the growth of a plant only when it comes up, 
 and take no notice of the seed, and how it sprouted, how the 
 roots reached out under ground, and how before anything was 
 seen above ground the character was developed, that accounts 
 for all that is in sight. The history of religion is very different 
 from the history of the church ; one often has little to do with 
 
11 
 
 the history of the world, tlie other is commonly mixed up with it. 
 
 In spite of the long continued efforts to destroy these bibles, 
 and through their language becoming obsolete, they were super- 
 seded, and then little care was taken of them, a good many are 
 still in existence. 
 
 We now come down to (he second act in the great drama of 
 the Reformation, in the days of Henry 8th. Constantinople 
 had been taken by the Turks, and Greek scholars and Greek 
 learning scattered thence all over Europe. Manuscripts of the 
 bible in the original languages had been secured by the Uni- 
 versities. The English language had very much changed since 
 Wyckliffe's time. A new translation was needed, and that 
 direct from the original Hebrew and Greek, not second handed 
 through the Latin. 
 
 To make this new translation, God raised up the illustrious 
 Tyndale, whose devoted piety, industry, learning, and surpas- 
 sing genius, enabled him to make a translation of the New 
 Testament, which all the learning and ttdent of the three 
 hundred and fifty years since, had not been able to supersede. 
 We read it to-day substantially as he wrote it. 
 
 William Tyndale was borne in 1484, just one hundred years 
 after the death of Wyckliffe, during the short and bloody reign 
 of Richard 3d. He was almost exactly of the same age as 
 Luther and Zuinglious, the great contemporary continental re- 
 formers. He studied first at Oxford, then at Cambridge, where 
 he read Greek with the great Erasmus, and became a thorough 
 Greek and Hebrew scholar. A'^ery early he studied the bible in 
 the original languages, and gave lectures upon it. Very early 
 he arrived at those opinions we call protestant, probably before 
 he ever heard of Luther. 
 
 The roots of the Reformation started to grow vigorously just 
 al)out the same time in Germany, Switzerland and England, 
 independently of each other, but in each case directly from the 
 study of the bible. Luther had never seen a bible till he was a 
 monk, and over twenty years old, when in rummaging through 
 the library at Erfurth, he came across one. This he eagerly 
 studied, and the result was the Reformation in Germany. 
 
 When about thirty-five years old, Tyndale left the Universi- 
 ty and became a tutor in the family of Sir John Walsh, (or 
 Welch, as old John Fox writes the name) in Gloucestershire. 
 Here his protestantism got him into disfavor with the clergy, 
 and he left to avoid compromising his patron. It was there that 
 
12 
 
 he said to a learned divine, " If God spares my life, ere many 
 years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to know more 
 of the scriptures than you do." And he kept his word. The 
 intention thus expressed, and ever after acted on, was to make 
 a translation for plain people. So he put it in good old home- 
 spun English that goes right to the heart, and that still lives 
 almost unchanged. 
 
 Tyndale went up to London, and in his inexperience and 
 simplicity applied to the Bishop of London for facilities for 
 translating. But a translation of the scriptures was exactly 
 what the Bishop didn't want. After a year in London spent in 
 hard study and unavailing effort for a chance to do his work, 
 Tyndale says he found there was " no place to translate the 
 bible in all England." So in 1523 he sailed to Hamburg and 
 there went on with his work. The New Testament was printed 
 in 1525 ; the printing began at Antwerp, and when he was 
 driven from there continu^ at Cologne, and when driven from 
 there finished at Worms. It was circulated in England as early 
 as January, 1526, that season to the number of six thousand 
 copies. 
 
 In his modest and touching preface, Tyndale beseeches the 
 learned, that " If they perceive in any place that I have not 
 attained the true sense of the tongue or meaning of the scrip- 
 ture, or have not given the right English word, that they put to 
 their hands to amend it." He says he made his translation of 
 the New" Testament alone without help from any one, and tliat 
 he imitated no other man's imterpretation. He did not make 
 use of Luther's translation as Coverdale afterwards did. The 
 next year however, the learned and pious John Fryth join- 
 ed him, and was of great service to him for the next five or six 
 years. After that the noble martyr John Rodgers came to him, 
 helped him to the end of his life, and after his death finished 
 what Tyndale left incomplete. 
 
 We must now leave Tyndale, going on with translations, and 
 look at the state of thino-s in Eny-land. 
 
 King Henry 8th was, up to about the middle of his reign, 
 highly popular, and so deported himself, that if he had died 
 then, no king would have stood fairer on the page of English 
 history. The people were intensely loyal. The memory of the 
 civil wars was so recent and so terrible, that rather than risk 
 their recurrence by opposing the king, the nation were willing 
 to submit to any amount of tyranny. Hence he was permitted 
 
13 
 
 to cut off the heads of his wives when he got tired of them, 
 send his nobles and his ministers to the block or to the Tower, 
 and to burn anybody who refused to profess whatever he told 
 them to believe. 
 
 Henry having quarreled with the po])e, the submissive loyalty 
 of the nation enabled him to withdraw himself and them from 
 the jurisdiction of Rome, and to become himself practically the 
 pope of England. This secession was not the Reformation. If 
 you cut oif a slice from an apple, the slice cut otf is apple 
 still, just as much as it was before, and just as much as the rest 
 is. The difference between the seceded church and the residu- 
 ary church, was, that the former had a new chief. We must 
 be careful not to confound Henry's anti-protestant church with 
 the Protestant Episcopal Church, afterwards established in Eng- 
 land. Henry and his church retained up to the end of his life the 
 same cardinal principles of salvation through a great corporation, 
 and test tenets of transubstantiation, and many other such that 
 they held before the secession. 
 
 The mysterious and awful powers claimed for his church, by 
 Henry its absolute master, made it in his hands a tremendous 
 engine of state. Men feared to offend or oppose the dreaded 
 monarch, who could send not only their bodies to prison and to 
 death, but through the machinery of his church their souls to 
 hell, or at any rate to purgatory. His obsequious parliament 
 passed an act declaring that he had charge of the souls, as well 
 as the bodies, of his subjects. This claim he pertinaciously as- 
 serted to the end of his life. 
 
 Hence Henry and his church were, from first to last, bitterly 
 opposed to the reformation. He often announced his hatred of 
 Protestants in the most public manner, and emphasized it by 
 burning them. 
 
 Henry asserted his power over religion by altering details, 
 while adhering to the cardinal principles of the old faith — for 
 instance he reduced the number of sacraments in his church to 
 three. He might burn a Protestant one day for saying there 
 were not seven sacraments, and a Catholic another day for say- 
 ing there were more than ihree. On one occasion he sent six 
 men to execution together, three Roman Catholics to be hanged 
 for denying that he was head of the church, and three 
 Protestants to be burnt for denying the doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation. 
 
 We can now understand why Tyndale was hated l)y the king, 
 
14 
 
 his ministers and his bishops. In his notes he taught that in 
 spiritual things men are accountable not to the king, but direct- 
 ly to God, and also, that the authority of kings was not 
 unlimited. Besides, he had translated the bible without royal 
 permission. Hence both under the Tudors and Stuarts, when 
 they were compelled to adopt Tyndale's translation because 
 nobody else could make one as good, they always called it after 
 somebody else's name. 
 
 Henry's will begins, " In the name of God and of the 
 Glorious and Blessed Virgin, our lady St. Mary, and of all the 
 holy company of heaven." This don't sound as if he was the 
 author of the Reformation, and yet many historians, and even 
 the philosophic Guizot, confound the secession effected by Henry 
 with the Reformation. 
 
 The government and the church, (or that branch of the gov- 
 ernment called the church), prohibited the circulation and reading 
 of Tyndale's Testament, under penalty of the whip, the 
 dungeon and the stake. A.mong those put to death for circulat- 
 ing these testaments was Richard Bayfield, in 1531, who after 
 being put to the torture to make him tell who else was guilty of 
 the same terrible crime, was slowly wasted to death by the 
 bishop of London. He was in the fire half an hour before he 
 died. The bishop said " these testaments in the English 
 tongue" were "to the peril and danger" of his flock, "and 
 the destruction of their souls." And yet during the whole 
 twenty remaining years of Henry's life, during a considerable 
 part of which time these penalties continued, Tyndale's Testa- 
 ments and Bibles continued to pour into England in an ever 
 increasing stream, and to be read with ever increasing avidity. 
 
 For translating the bible into English, and for expressing 
 sentiments that it does not seem possible to us that anybody 
 ever could have disputed, Tyndale was hunted down like a wild 
 beast by Henry and his church, all the nine remaining years of 
 his life. We have not time, if we had the information, to fol- 
 low him from one hiding place to another ; neither can we 
 follow him minutely in his work, for it was all done in secret. 
 We know that the five books of Moses were printed in 1529, 
 and the book of Jonah in 1531. He finished, but did not him- 
 self print, the rest of the historical books of the Old Testament. 
 How much of the rest was his work I do not know. During 
 those nine years " in hunger and thirst and cold," in what he 
 calls " bitter absence from friends," among " sharp fightings " 
 
15 
 
 as he expresses it, in hourly clanger of his life, this great and 
 good man went on witli his work, and gave us a translation of 
 the greater part of the bible, which all the efforts of learning 
 and talent since have never been able to supersede. What he 
 wrote, we read to-day nearly as he wrote it. Unfortunately for 
 himself he was some centuries ahead of his time. 
 
 From Henry's early reputation, and his break with Rome, 
 Tyndale had formed great hopes of him, and had ventured to 
 speak some plain truths intended for the royal ear. His loyal 
 and sensitive heart was almost broken at their reception, and he 
 mournfully says : " Very death were better to me than life, con- 
 sidering man's nature to be such that he can bear no truth." 
 
 In 1535 Tyndale was betrayed by a pretended friend sent 
 from England, into the hands of the government of the Nether- 
 lands, and confined in the castle of Velvoorde, near Brussels, till 
 the 6th of October, 1536. He then met the death he had so 
 long been looking for. Crurawell and Cranmer, the so-called 
 reformers, never lifted a finger to save him. The ministers of 
 vengeance had the humanity to choke him to death before they 
 lighted the fire that consumed him. So passed from sorrow 
 and hatred and ignominy, to the realms of joy and love and 
 glory, the noblest martyr since the days of the apostles. 
 
 Tyndale's last words were : " Lord open the eyes of the king 
 of England." Like all prayers of faith, this was answered in 
 effect, but as so often in other cases, not in form. God did 
 open the eyes, not of the king, but what was much better, of 
 the people of England, and that by the reading of the bible he 
 had given them. 
 
 Next year, (1537), John Rodgers, who had been helping 
 Tyndale towards the close of his life, published the first edition 
 of the whole bible, under the a^ssumed name of Thomas Mat- 
 thew. Under that name it might not be so bitterly opposed by 
 Henry and his church, as if it bore the name, so odious to them, 
 of Tyndale. 
 
 Why did not Tyndale seek shelter among the Protestant 
 princes of Germany? Henry, as we have seen, claimed the 
 right to make his subjects profess what he told them to, and 
 to punish those who refused. To a less degree, the same doc- 
 trine began to prevail among the Protestant princes, according 
 to the celebrated maxim, " Whose the region, his the religion." 
 Henry claimed the same right to say what religion should be 
 professed by his subjects as to say what kind of coats should be 
 
16 
 
 worn by the yeomen of his guard. He probably conceded the 
 same rights to the Protestant princes. Hence we are not so 
 much suprised to see him burning English Protestants at home, 
 and protecting German Protestants abroad. Tyndale, an Eng- 
 lish subject, being a Protestant, was in Henry's eyes, and 
 23erhaps in those of the German princes, a criminal and an outlaw. 
 Those princes wished Henry's alliance against the Emperor, 
 and could hardly afford to give him mortal offence by harboring 
 such outlaw. 
 
 The man who, more than any other, gets the credit of the 
 English Reformation is Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury ; notwithstanding the fact that up to the moment of 
 Henry's death, he was, next to the king, first in dignity and 
 power in a church and government that did its worst to crush 
 out the Reformation. Whatever his private opinions or wishes 
 may have been, his official actions and his professions were 
 against the Protestant religion. This is best shown by an exam- 
 ple. 
 
 The learned and pious John Fryth, the bosom friend and 
 helper of Tyndale in revising the New Testament and translat- 
 ing the Pentateuch, was brought before a commission, of which 
 Cranmer was chairman, charged with denying the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation ; that is, with being a Protestant. The com- 
 mission turned him over to the Bishop of London, and he to 
 the secular arm, each of which transfers meant death. Fryth 
 was put into a dungeon in that grimmest of prisons Newgate, 
 and loaded with irons, one of which was a ring round his neck, 
 fastened to a post in such manner that he could neither stand 
 straight up, sit, nor lie down. After two weeks he was taken 
 to Smithfield, an irregular open space in London, then and still 
 used as a cattle market, and there slowly roasted to death. 
 
 Cranmer writing to the English Ambassador at the Imperial 
 Court, the most public place in Europe, after the condemnation, 
 but before the execution, says, that Fryth denied that " the very 
 corporal presence of Christ was in the host," that he had tried 
 to get him to give up that imagination, meaning that silly fancy; 
 and so he coolly adds, " Fryth looketh to the fire." 
 
 Another example will show that Henry the 8th's government 
 was opposed to the Reformation to the very last. A few 
 months before his death the heroic Anne Askew was charged 
 with denying transubstantiation, and with saying " The most 
 High dwelleth not in temples made with hands," meaning that 
 
17 
 
 lie could be worshipped any where else as well as in a Cathedral, 
 She said, as so many other martyrs had said before, that she had 
 teamed her Protestant opinions from Tyndale's bible. She was 
 put to the torture to make her tell what other heretics she 
 knew; which she refused to do. When almost torn limb from 
 limb on the rack, and the Lieutenant of the Tower refused to 
 pull any harder, the Lord High Chancellor of England stripj)ed 
 off his robes, and with his own hands gave another turn to the 
 windlass, and I suppose had the pleasure of hearing more of her 
 tendons and ligaments snap. She was carried to Smithfiold 
 in a chair; (of course she could not walk.) and there, in the 
 presence of the Lord High Chancellor of England, the Duke of 
 Norfolk, first peer of the realm, the Lord Mayor of London, 
 and other great dignitaries, the flames that<3onsumed her lighted 
 up the darkness of the night. 
 
 And yet on the death of Henry, in 15^7, the nation, under 
 the leadership of Cranmer, avowed itself Protestant. Though 
 •every officer of church and state had up that moment avowed 
 hostility to Protestantism, though the council of regency after 
 the king's death was itself divided on that question, though so 
 many of the great and learned still adhered to ttie old faith, 
 though there was no pressure in favor (5f Protestantism from 
 abroad, though the new king, being a little boy, could give no 
 royal j^restige in favor of that belief, the nation avowed its be- 
 lief in what Anne Askew had so lately been burned for 
 believing. 
 
 There is but one possible explanation of this seemingly 
 juiraculous change ; the people were secretly Protestant already. 
 Not probably the majority in numbers, but an overwhelming 
 majority of the intelligence and vigor of the nation. If it were 
 not so, no sane man, however daring or determined, would have 
 •dared to undertake the change. The iron-nerved Bismark 
 would have shrunk back in terror from such an attempt. And 
 yet Cranmer, the most timid of meii, going with the current, 
 announced Protestantism as the religion of the nation, and its 
 most daring and bitter opponents made little resistance. 
 
 Cranmer did not make the Reformation; it made him. He 
 only officially recognized, announced, expressed and organized 
 what already existed. He expressed it nearly in the language of 
 Geneva; he organized it after the existing forms. 
 
 As in some region blest with abundant rains, little rills are 
 formed in the .secluded nooks of the hills, and flow together in 
 
18' 
 
 flecrec}" and silence to form larger streams, aud they to form still 
 larger, until some great obstruction holds them all back fur 
 awhile, and then when that obstruction is removed, the waters^ 
 unseen and unheard before,^ burst forth into- a magnificent river 
 tlovving in full view across the plains ; so watered by the wor(J 
 of God in the mother tongue, the English Reformatio-n, origin- 
 rng at the fireside of castle aind cottage, in the boudoir and by 
 the wash tub, in the counting room and at the work bench, \n 
 the lawyer's chambers and in the curate's study, all in enforced 
 secrecy and silence, as soon as Henry,, the great obstruction, wa» 
 removefl, burst forth all at once and mo-ved majestically on in the 
 sight of all the world. 
 
 It is no^t material to the present question, whether Henry, by 
 l)reaking the poAver af Rome in England, removed a greater 
 obstruction than himself. 
 
 Let us look at some direct proofs of this gro'wing Protestant- 
 fsm among the people. 
 
 In 1533, a preacher before the king said of it, "this abomi- 
 nable heresy do much prevail anj(mg us." In 1536 the lower 
 House of Convocation of the archiepiscopal Province of Canter- 
 bury, complain that the pbopi.e have come to the opinion that 
 nothing is to be believed unless it can he proved by scripture, 
 and then enumerating other distinctive Protestant doctrines, 
 they say they are accepted by the i>eople. The Bishop of Here- 
 ford laments on this wise : " The lay people do now know the 
 holy scriptures better than many of us," and these testimonies 
 multiply in subsequent years. 
 
 The ever increasing floods of Tyndale's bibles pouring into 
 England, and the ever increasing eagerness with which they 
 were read at the risk of liberty and life, prove the rapid, 
 though silent, growth of Protestantism. Thousands on thous- 
 ands continued to be imported every year, concealed in bags of 
 grain or bales of cloth, for twenty years. Apprentices clubbecJ 
 together to buy a testament. A contemporary writei" says : 
 " Every man has a bible." 
 
 The nation became Protestant by reading the English bible. 
 It was not by public teaching; that was put down by the strong 
 arm. Some that attempted it were sent to Smithfield, and went 
 up in chariots of fire. Ridley languished in the Tower. Honest 
 old Hugh Latimer, brave as he was, shrank back. It was not 
 the writings of Luther that made England Protestant. They 
 were prohibited, and there was no such eagerness for them as 
 
19 
 
 to break through the prohibition. The distinctive doctrines of 
 Luther did not prevail in Englaud. The light that illuminated 
 England was of a different color from that wliich shone out in 
 Germany. The contemporary reformations in England, Swit- 
 zerland and Germany, led by Tyndale, Zuinglius and Luther 
 resi)ectively, were quite independent of each other. Each 
 started froui the bible. In England it was carried on by the 
 bible alone, without public teaching. In Switzerland and Ger- 
 many it was by the bible and public teaching. As Luther and 
 the German Reformation were most prominent, contemporary 
 writers sometimes very incorrectly called all Protestants Lu- 
 therans. 
 
 A great ecclesiastical body in Henry's time bore witness 
 that the people got their religion from the English bible, by 
 calling it " that great book of heresy." 
 
 The character of the religion of the people after Henry's 
 death, shows that it came direct from the bible ; and they ex- 
 pressed it in bible language. 
 
 When the Reformation in England, which had been kept 
 alive by Wycklitfe's bible, expanded under the influence of 
 Tyndale's, it was at first especially among the people ; not 
 among the great and learned till afterwards. In 1529 the Con- 
 vocation boasted, that " in the crime of heresy, thanked be God, 
 there hath no notable person believed in our time." Plain 
 people and the less learned inferior clergy, became Protestants 
 sooner than those of greater pretensions like Cranmer, (who 
 himself says, he wasted six years in scholastic divinity, and that he 
 came to the truth slowly and little by little), because their heads 
 were not so full of the rubbish of the dark ages and the quib- 
 bles of Scotists and Thomists. All got their instructions from 
 the scriptures, but the scholars got it sooner than the teachers. 
 The leaders were led. The English Reformation did not come 
 from the people in power, but from the power of the people. 
 
 After Henry's death there were multitudes of Protestant 
 congregations, and but few ministers able to preach to them. 
 Hence the necessity for the Homilies and for a liturgy. 
 
 The real kingdom of God in England came not with obser- 
 vation. Its movements, as so often in other cases, had little to 
 do with great men or governments or ecclesiastical organiza 
 tions. It grew up in the hearts of the people from the seed 
 of the word as found in the English bible, without external 
 aid, except that it was warmed up by the fires of Smithfield, 
 
20 
 
 and against the opposition of church and state, and of the 
 most prominent of the so-called reformers, and of the whole 
 public teachings of the time. For that bible in English they 
 were indebted to John Wyckliffe and William Tyndale. 
 
 Justice requires a few words more about Tyndale. Badly 
 as his enemies treated him in his lifetime, they have done 
 but little worse than his friends, the Protestants, since his 
 death. He expressed or implied opinions universally received 
 among us now, but distasteful to the rulers of that time, both 
 in church and state. Hence Crumwell and Cranmer denounc- 
 ed him, and Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, wrote 
 a big book against him. And when Cranmer afterwards su- 
 perintended the issue of bibles, and adopted Tyndale's with 
 a few alterations, because he could get nothing else as good, 
 those bibles were always called by somebody else's name. 
 
 It was the same way with King James 1st. The divine 
 right and unlimited power of kings, and their right to con- 
 trol the religion of their subjects, were fundamental principles, 
 dear to the heart of " the Lord's Anointed," as James loved to 
 be called. It was for attempting to enforce the first of these, 
 that his son Charles 1st lost his head, and for asserting the 
 second, that his grandson James 2(1 lost his crown. Of course 
 James and his flatterers, in and out of tiie church, could not 
 abide Tyndale, for he had dared to speak for freedom. So when 
 great and learned men were appointed by James to make a new 
 translation of the scriptures, they were cautioned to have as lit- 
 tle to do with Tyndale as possible. 
 
 But, with the advantage of all the new light that had shone 
 out in the eighty years since Tyndale's death, with the benefit 
 of other modern translations, with every facility such as the li- 
 braries of all Europe, and under the sunshine of royal favor, 
 those great and learned men were unable to make a translation 
 of the New Testament as good as poor, destitute, hunted down, 
 Tyndale had made, and so they properly adopted Tyndale's 
 translation. That was all right ; the wrong was that they gave 
 him no credit for it. It is true they did really retranslate some 
 parts of the Old Testament, and they made some verbal altera- 
 tions in Tyndale's translation, sometimes for the better, sometimes 
 for the worse. And James really did a great service by estab- 
 lishing a standard version. 
 
 The men who from Coverdale and Cranmer down to King 
 James, have adopted Tyndale's translation, altered a few words, 
 
21 
 
 and then called it by their own names, have done it, not, I snp- 
 pose, to steal the credit of his work, but to disconnect it from 
 a name odious to despotic ears. But the sentiments that made 
 his name odious beinj^j axioms among us, and dear to our hearts, 
 we should undo the wrong, which for three centuries and a half 
 has been doing to the author of this incomparable translation, 
 and the champion of civil and religious freedom. Instead of 
 that, in our popular accounts of the English bible, Tyndale's 
 work is ignored, or only mentioned as one of several superseded 
 translations, and the whole credit of our present English bible 
 IS given to King James' revisers. We speak of King James' 
 translation of the New Testament, made two and a half centuries 
 ago, instead of King James' revised edition of Tvndale's trans- 
 lation, made three and a half centuries ago. When false phases 
 get into history, they continue to be repeated long after their 
 falsehood is exposed. 
 
 The estimate of Tyndale commonly presented now, even in 
 Protestant and Republican America, is that handed down from 
 Henry and James and their satellites. Good and just men 
 among us, speak as if they too were in the plot to blot Tyndale's 
 name from the page of history. It is as if we should take our 
 estimate of the Apostle Paul from the High Priest and the 
 Sanhedrim. 
 
 To show that our present New Testament is really Tyndale's, 
 it is only necessary to compare this old book (Tyndale's edition 
 of 1549, edited by John Rodgers), with this pulpit copy. The 
 New Testament is substantially the same in each. One word is 
 sometimes substituted for another, but James' revisers seldom 
 recast a sentence. 
 
 A distinguished Roman Catholic author says : " The uncom- 
 mon beauty and marvelous English of the Protestant bible is 
 one of the great strongholds of heresy," {i. e., Protestantism) " in 
 "this country. It liv'es on the car like music that can never be 
 forgotten." That music is Tyndale's. The tone, the pathos, the 
 rhythm and ring, are his. 
 
 How closely they followed Tyndale is best shown by an ex- 
 ample. In the last verse of the third chapter of Philippians, 
 Tyndale has the clause, " change our vile body," meaning our 
 lowly body ; vile expressing the very humble condition of a 
 villien, that is of a kind of bondman, who tilled the land. But 
 in King James' time villienage had almost ceased, and villien 
 had come to mean not a bondman, but a detestable scamp, and is 
 
22 
 
 constantly so used by Shakespeare just before James' time; and 
 vile had come to mean, not humble, but, as now, detestable. 
 Nevertheless the revisers copied the clause just as it stood in 
 Tyndale, including the word vile, and thus made the passage 
 mean something at which the Apostle Paul, the writer of the 
 original, would have been shocked. The clause is not a literal 
 translation; that would be, "transform the body of our humilia- 
 tion," or as the Rhiems (Roman Catholic) Testament has it, " Re- 
 form the body of our lowness." They did not adopt any one of the 
 many phrases that would have expressed the meaning, but copied 
 a phrase which had come to mean something very different. 
 It is certain that in this case they did not translate, but only 
 copied. And so we might cite many other cases where they 
 copied words whose meaning had changed, or which had became 
 obsolete. 
 
 In many cases kijig James' revisers have substituted words of 
 Latin origin for Tyndale's Saxon words, intended for the plough 
 boy. For example, " convenient," meaning becoming, is sub- 
 stituted for Tyndale's "comly;" "communicate," meaning 
 participate, for " have part " ; " mystery," meaning something 
 unknown, for "secret" ; and " prevent," meaning to precede, 
 for " come before." Tyndale's Saxon continues to mean what 
 he meant by it, and is still a correct translation of the original. 
 James' words of Latin origin mean something very different 
 from what they did in his time. 
 
 The most remarkable case of this kind is the substitution of 
 the word " charity " for Tyndale's word " love," especially in 
 the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. It is said that 
 this change was made by James' express order. Now whatever 
 the Latin word anglicised into charity may mean, charity in 
 its modern sense does not express the idea intended at all. Our 
 present Revisers will doubtless restore the language as Tyndale 
 left it, and instead of charity, (cold as the proverb makes it,) 
 they will give us back again the dear old English word love. 
 
 I ought to say here, that the two words, vile and charity, are 
 the only ones I know of where the inaccuracy affects the truth 
 of the teaching. 
 
 We might go on all day, showing that the New Testament 
 was not retranslated, and then when alterations were made, they 
 were often for the worse. How often have I been surprised at 
 the wonderful genius and accuracy of Tyndale, when I have 
 heard pointed out from this very pulpit, failures in King James' 
 
23 
 
 version to express some niceties of meaning of tlie original, and 
 then found on consulting this old book, that Tyndale had it 
 precisely as our learned pastor said it ought to be. 
 
 We have seen how, by the genius and labors of Wyckliffe, 
 our English ancestors had the unprinted bible from 1380 till 
 1526; then that they had the printed bible of Tyndale and 
 ijthers from that time to this. We have seen how the bible in 
 our own language, in spite of the opposition of the authorities 
 of church and state, and with no help from those afterwards 
 called reformers, wrought that mighty change we, call the Eng- 
 lish Reformation. What is the moral of this history? 
 
 It teaches us our present duty, to read, to study, to get our 
 instruction directly from this wondrous bible. 
 
 We admire the bible, we comment on it, we prove it to be 
 true, we print and circulate it, we translate it into many lan- 
 guages and send it all over the world ; we do everything but read 
 it. With all it« circulation, though there is a copy in almost 
 every room in our houses, we read it far less than our fathers 
 did. Good men and women who used to read the bible on 
 Sundays, now read big religious newspapers. Good boys and 
 girls who used to learn verses and chapters by heart, now read 
 religious novels. From the printing press has flowed a great 
 stream of bibles, but there has also gone forth from it a deluge 
 of other things, which have covered up the bible almost out of 
 sight. 
 
 What is to be done about it ? 
 
 Would it be asking too much to ask every man and woman, 
 and especially every Christian, to spend one hour at least every 
 Sunday in a careful study of the bible itself, and to ask that 
 every child should learn by heart a few verses, not scattered 
 helter-skelter over the bible, as if the verses were disconnected 
 proverbs, but consecutive, say beginning with the book of John? 
 
 People are interested in sermons and get good out of them, 
 very much as they are familiar with the bible. Sermons I mean 
 such as we hear in this county, whose real text is from the bible, 
 not from the New York Herald, or from somebody's poems 
 And I suppose all ministers and observant Christians will agree 
 with Mr. Moody when he says that conversions are reliable very 
 nmch in proportion to the converts' acquaintance with the bible. 
 
 While we are attempting to draw instruction for the present 
 from the history of the past, let us be duly grateful not only to 
 the Father of all mercies, but also to our benefactors seen in 
 
24 
 
 history ; and let the illustrious names of Wyckliffe and Tyn- 
 dale be held in everlasting remembrance. 
 

 PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
 Syracuse, N. Y 
 
 S'ocklon, Cah*. 
 
BS455 .W43 
 
 Historical address ... : before the 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00081 3644