Let us read in the word of God
from the epistle to the Hebrews, the eleventh
chapter, and from the thirty-second verse, Hebrews
chapter eleven and verse thirty-two.
And what shall I more say?
For the time would fail me to tell
of Gideon and of Barak, and of Samson,
and of Jephthah, of David also, and Samuel,
and of the prophets, who through faith subdued
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouth
of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped
the edge of the sword.
Out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant
in fight, turned to fight the armies of
the aliens.
When in received their dead, raised to life
again.
And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that
they might obtain a better resurrection.
And others had trial of cruel mockings and
scourging, yea moreover of bonds and imprisonment.
They were stoned, they were sworn asunder, were
tempted, were slain with the sword.
They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being
destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was
not worthy.
They wandered in deserts and in mountains, and
in dens and caves of the earth.
And these all having obtained a good report
through faith, received not the promise, God having
provided some better thing for us, that they
without us should not be made perfect.
Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with
so great a cloud of witnesses, let us
lay aside every weight and the sin which
doth so easily beset us, and let us
run with patience the race that is set
before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and
finisher of our faith, who for the joy
that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame that is set down at
the right hand of the throne of God.
In the blessing which God has given to
us in the British Isles, in the measure
in which the Calvinistic faith has been rediscovered,
there have been two influences which working side
by side have contributed above everything else to
that movement which God has granted to us.
The first influence is the exposition of the
word of God.
Through a very long period in England, there
were very few who seriously and accurately expounded
scripture.
But through the ministry of certain older men,
and one in particular, there was a witness
to expository preaching.
And I would say that our main emphasis
in our work now is that the word
of God should be expounded.
We don't believe in topical preaching, we don't
really believe in just extracting text, we believe
in expository preaching.
But secondly, the influence which has played a
great part in what has taken place is
that influence of which we have been reminded
in those closing verses of Hebrews 11.
It is the influence of historical truth, the
awareness of that which God has done and
wrought in ages past.
It may well be that it was this
second influence that had almost a primary place
in the beginning of the change of direction
which has taken place in many of our
lives.
But through a rediscovery of historical truth, there
has been a new searching of the word
of God.
Now, as I have just the opportunity this
week to speak twice, I determined that what
I must do would be to take one
address on a more expository line, and the
second must be on a historical line.
So that I stand before you this evening
to seek to draw your attention to some
of the mighty things which have moved us
greatly in these last years.
I want to take you back to the
county of England where we were this morning,
to the county of Gloucestershire in the southwest
of England, and I want you to stand
with me on top of a hill that
is exactly 15 miles south of Gloucester.
That hill is called Stinchcombe Hill, and on
top of that hill, in the year 1522,
there stood a young man in his middle
twenties, short-statured.
This was his native county, and he had
come home to Gloucester.
You may not know it, but if you
have an authorized version on your lap now,
90 percent of that translation in the English
tongue you owe to that man.
Or if you have a revised version before
you, 75 percent of the English of that
translation you owe to that man.
He was the first, the peer of all
English Bible translators, but he was more than
that.
He was the first English Puritan of the
16th century.
His life and his ministry represents the true
fountainhead of the whole Puritan movement, and his
name, of course, was William Tyndale.
William Tyndale.
Now, before we come back to Stinchcombe Hill
and the year 1522, let's turn back for
a moment to his previous history.
I said at that date he was in
his middle twenties.
Tyndale was born about the year 1495.
We know practically nothing of his child, except
that he was born in western Gloucestershire, in
that area which we call the Cotswolds.
John Fox, the Protestant historian, in his first
edition of his Book of Martyrs, which was
published in 1563, some years later, in his
first edition, John Fox says that William Tyndale
was converted at Oxford through the influence of
Luther's books, and that means that Tyndale must
have been converted about the year 1520.
But, in the second edition of John Fox's
Book of Martyrs, in the meanwhile, somebody had
written to Fox, evidently, and put him right,
and John Fox omitted that statement, and instead
he tells us that as a child in
the University of Oxford, William Tyndale was brought
to a knowledge of the gospel.
Now, that's a very interesting thing.
Tyndale had gone up to Oxford as a
boy of eight or so years old, about
the year 1506.
He became a Bachelor of Arts in the
year 1512, but evidently, by about the year
1510, he was already a Christian.
As a child, Fox says, in the second
edition of his Book of Martyrs.
Now, when Erasmus went to Oxford a few
years later, he said that in Oxford theology
was dumb, poor, and in rags.
There was certainly no truth there, and we
may well suppose how Tyndale came to a
knowledge of the truth, and the answer to
that question we do not know.
In all probability, it was that under the
conviction of sin, he searched the Latin Vulgate,
and through the text of Scripture alone in
the Latin tongue, he was brought to a
knowledge of the truth.
He went to Cambridge about 1516, and he
was gradually in the process of throwing off
the trammels of medieval scholasticism.
He went to Cambridge to study Greek.
He left Cambridge about the year 1521, and
he came home to Gloucester to work as
the tutor in the home of Sir John
Walsh, and here he is.
The year is 1522.
Tyndale has come home as a Christian, as
a man who now believes the word of
God.
I want you to try and get into
his mind as he stood on that hilltop
on that year.
From the top of Stinchcombe Hill, you can
see seven counties of England.
If you ever go to England, you must
go to Stinchcombe Hill.
England was then a very wooded country from
one side of the land to another.
It was forested, but amongst all the forests
of Gloucestershire, there were innumerable churches.
It was a local proverb, a sure as
God in Gloucester, and yet when Tyndale stood
there in that year, he knew that Gloucester,
with all its abbeys and great cathedrals, was
as dark as though there was no church
there at all.
Tyndale says that he comments in one place
on the 28th chapter of the book of
Deuteronomy, where God speaks of making the heavens
as brass and the earth like iron.
He says it would make a Christian man's
heart bleed to read of it, and Tyndale's
heart did bleed, because that was the situation
in which he then was living.
The heavens were brass and the earth under
it like iron, and Tyndale knew that beyond
the horizon which he could see from that
vantage point, there were about three million people
in England, almost the whole population, who had
no other knowledge, said Tyndale, no other knowledge
except that the oil savours them unto their
damnation and denying of Christ's blood.
The oil, of course, the anointing oil used
in the ritual of the Roman church.
To the west of Stinchcombe Hill, there runs
the River Severn.
It's a river that begins in the midlands
of England, and it flows down south westward
till it comes out in a great estuary.
Across the other side of that river, which
Tyndale could see every day, were the mountains
of Wales.
Wales was a dark and utterly pagan land.
Sir Thomas Moore, who was one of Tyndale's
great opponents in later years, he joked about
the ignorance of the Welsh, and Tyndale was
later to rebuke Sir Thomas Moore.
He said, I wonder that Moore can laugh
at it and not rather weep for compassion
to see the souls for which Christ shed
his blood to perish.
We can well imagine if Tyndale looked across
to Wales how those thoughts would be.
And then as he looked down into the
River Severn, he no doubt remembered how less
than a hundred years before, in 1428, the
body of John Wycliffe had been dug out
of the ground and burnt at Lutterworth, and
Wycliffe's ashes had been thrown into one of
the upper tributaries of this River Severn.
Tyndale knew that.
He also knew that only two years before,
seven Lollards had been burnt to death in
Coventry, and yet here he was alone as
a Christian man in such a situation.
He had evidently decided that he could not
enter the active ministry of the church as
it then was.
To put it in his own words, he
could not be nozzled by the bishops in
long matins, long evensongs, long masses, long dirges.
And instead he chose then to teach the
six-year-old son of Sir John Walsh
in the little manor house at Sudbury.
You can see that house, you can see
today the room where Tyndale worked and prayed.
John Fox tells us how Tyndale, although he
was no parish priest, how he began to
preach.
He began at the dinner table in Sir
John Walsh's home.
Sir John Walsh was a well-to-do
man.
The local clergy used to gather in the
evenings at his hospitable table, and Fox tells
us how William Tyndale began with open scripture
to confront the abbots, deans, archdeacons, and other
diverse doctors.
After several such experiences, Fox says, these great
benefic doctors waxed weary and bear a secret
grudge in their heart against Master Tyndale.
The lady of the house, Lady John Walsh,
said to Tyndale one day, she said, were
it reason that we should believe you before
so great and so learned benefic men?
And although I can't tell you exactly what
Tyndale said in reply, I can tell you
in his own words his testimony in another
place.
He said, well I know, speaking of his
knowledge of the truth, well I know I
never deserved it, nor prepared myself unto it,
but ran another way, clean contrary in my
blindness, and sought not that way.
But he sought me, and found me out,
and showed it me, and therewith drew me
to him, and I bow the knees of
my heart unto God, night and day, that
he will show it unto all other men.
And we can picture Tyndale in that little
manor house at Sobre, exercised in prayer for
these men whom he daily met.
He was a man who at this period
in his life was being filled by the
Holy Spirit, and filled with the power of
the truth.
Tyndale says, whom God chooseth to reign everlastingly
with Christ, him sealeth he with his mighty
spirit, and poureth strength into his heart to
suffer afflictions with Christ, forbearing witness unto the
truth.
You may well remember the story how Tyndale,
very soon after this, was warned by one
of the local doctors of the church.
Do you not know, said the man quietly
to Tyndale one day, do you not know
that the Pope is the very Antichrist of
which the scripture speaks?
But be careful what you say, he said,
for if it is known that you be
of that opinion, it will cost you your
life.
And shortly after that, Tyndale was called by
the ecclesiastical authorities to an ecclesiastical court at
Chipping Sobre.
A man by the name of Webb was
his accuser, and Tyndale, we read as he
walked that day to that court meeting, he
in going thitherwards prayed in his mind heartily
to God to strengthen him to stand fast
in the truth of his word.
And then we read when he came to
this court meeting that the Chancellor of the
court, he rated him like a dog.
You bear yourself boldly, the Chancellor said to
Tyndale, you bear yourself boldly with the gentlemen
here in this county that you will be
otherwise dealt with.
Tyndale pleaded that he might have liberty to
go anywhere in England, and if he were
only paid, he said, ten pounds a year,
so that he could only teach children and
preach.
But as he left that courtroom, he must
well have known that his time was speedily
drawing to a close in Gloucestershire.
It was perceived that he had drawing influence.
More than once, Tyndale had gone down right
into Bristol, and there on St. Austin's Green,
where Whitfield was to preach 200 years later,
there Tyndale had preached in the open air
the word of life.
But Tyndale was now acutely aware of the
tremendous opposition against which the truth was being
opposed, or with which the truth was being
opposed.
There was custom, custom as thick as the
old solid wall of that manor house.
There was prejudice.
Better be without God's laws than the Pope.
Sorry, the other way around.
No, that is the right way around.
Men said to Tyndale, better be without God's
laws than the Pope's laws.
Prejudice, superstition, and appalling ignorance, Tyndale said.
He said, we have above 20,000 clergy
that know no scripture except that which is
written in their quartetes, that is their liturgical
manual, and we have many other testimonies to
the same truth.
John Hooper, for example, John Hooper, who was
later martyred in the city of Gloucester itself,
Hooper wrote in the year 1546, he said,
he that had sought all the churches in
England before 16 years ago should not have
found one bible, but in every church such
abomination and idolatry as the like was not
since the time of Josiah.
Everywhere idols with all abomination.
This is what Tyndale saw, ignorance.
And he also saw that he had only
one short and mortal life, and that even
though he were able in some other part
of England to hide himself and to do
a little work for the gospel, it would
be very small.
And so God formed in his mind and
heart the vision of a power that could
be unloosed, that could sweep through the land,
and that power would be the word of
God in the English tongue.
Tyndale's vision then was that that Latin bible
in which the truth had been locked up
for so many centuries, that that bible should
be so open that the plow boy on
the hillside, the man working in the village,
the people in Bristol, that they should have
it in their mother tongue.
He went then, and we might think it's
strange, he went to Cuthbert Tunstall, who was
the Bishop of London, the year was 1523.
Tunstall was one of the new humanists.
Now, of course, that word doesn't mean what
it means now, but Tunstall was a man
with a reputation for literature, for the learning
of the Renaissance, a man who applauded Erasmus,
who believed in reviving the Greek tongue.
Tunstall was a learned, scholarly, polite gentleman, and
Tyndale hoped that with his learning and with
his knowledge he would be ready to countenance
the first translation of the bible from the
Greek into the English tongue.
But when Tyndale came to the palace of
the Bishop of London, he had a cold,
polite, very evasive reply.
Tunstall regretted that he had no room in
his palace, and that he was not able
to help Tyndale in what he wanted to
do.
And, of course, Tyndale came to learn, and
no doubt this event helped him greatly.
He came to learn, just as Luther learned
with Erasmus, what a tremendous gulf there is
between the learning and the scholarship of this
world, and that truth which God has revealed.
When I think of Tyndale walking away from
the palace of the Bishop of London, I
invariably think of another man, a couple of
centuries later, Andrew Fuller, the particular Baptist who
joined hands with William Carey and John Ryland
to begin that first great missionary work.
Andrew Fuller, in the late 1780s, he went
down to London to stir up the Christians
of the city of London to give their
money for the advancement of the gospel amongst
the heathens.
And Andrew Fuller tells us that as he
saw the reception which he got in London,
that often he had to turn aside down
some alleyway and stand and quietly weep at
the indifference of the church.
You may remember that when William Carey finally
went out to India in 1793, he went
with only the sum of about 13 pounds,
having been originally subscribed to that mission.
Tyndale then was rebuffed, but he was absolutely
persuaded of the necessity of doing this work.
This is what he said with regard to
the need of the translation of God's word.
He said, I had perceived by experience how
that it was impossible to establish the lay
people in any truth except the scripture were
plainly laid before their eyes in their mother
tongue, that they might see the process, the
order, the meaning of the text.
Or else, he says, whatsoever truth is taught
them, these enemies of all truth quench it
again, resting the scripture unto their own purpose,
clean contrary to the context, and the process,
and the meaning of the text.
And so Tyndale made that great decision.
In 1524, he sailed from London, never to
return, with 10 pounds in money with him,
given by Sir Humphrey Monmouth, a Christian merchant,
and he went to Flanders, to the continent
of Europe, there to live for 11 years
as a fugitive in hiding on the run,
but in order to get the word of
God to his native land.
It's a tremendous and amazing story.
Nobody really knows often where Tyndale was in
those 11 years.
He was hunted in every place.
Sir Thomas More, one of his greatest enemies,
speaks in 1532, and he says, speaking of
Tyndale, he says, the heretic of England, who
is both nowhere and everywhere, that Tyndale's influence,
More said, seemed to be everywhere, and yet
he's a big man in nowhere.
He moved from place to place in hiding,
working under conditions of extraordinary difficulty, and yet
let's just take a little time to say
what he did.
First of all, he seems to have gone
to Wittenberg, and he arrived in Wittenberg the
same year that Martin Luther published his Bondage
of Will.
I don't know that there's any particular connection
there, but he was of kindred spirit with
the German reformers.
Can't you imagine them sitting down to supper
in Wittenberg, and speaking of the work of
God, and how that kingdom could be advanced
in the earth?
And Tyndale began to learn German.
Before his death, before his death, it was
said that he could speak seven languages as
his native tongue.
He was working now on the text of
the New Testament from the Greek, and by
the end of 1525, he had prepared to
the end of the New Testament, and he
took to the city of Cologne, and by
the end of 1525, he had prepared to
the end of the New Testament, and he
took to the city of Cologne that first
New Testament to be printed in the English
tongue, but it wasn't printed at Cologne.
Mark's gospel was printed, they had just begun
to print Matthew's gospel, when one of the
printers went out one evening and becoming drunk,
he began to speak to some of the
people about the strange thing that was being
printed.
Six thousand copies, he said, of this New
Testament we're printing.
It wasn't long before the word had reached
the ears of the priests, and Tyndale simply
had the time to rush to this printer's
shop, and collecting what he could of these
fragments of manuscripts, he took them by ship
up the Rhine to Worms, and there that
fragment, the first bit of the New Testament
ever to be printed in the English tongue,
it was printed, and began to be shipped
into England in the year 1526.
If you want to know the first date
of English Puritanism, this is the date, 1525
-1526.
I wish I could start to read to
you some of Tyndale's burning language in his
preface to this New Testament.
He talks about what the gospel is, about
what the blood of Christ is.
Give diligence, reader, I exhort thee, that thou
come with a pure mind, and as the
scripture says, with a single eye to these
words of health and of eternal life, by
the which, if we repent and believe them,
we are born anew, created afresh, and enjoy
the fruits of the blood of Christ, which
blood crieth not for vengeance as the blood
of Abel, but hath purchased life, love, favour,
grace, blessing, and whatsoever is promised in the
scripture to them that believe and obey God,
and standeth between us, and wrath, vengeance, curse,
and whatsoever the scripture threateneth against the unbeliever.
Now it's hard for us to realize what
Tyndale did in that translation.
We sometimes hear, do we not, from the
Wycliffe translators today of their difficulty in coining
new terms in strange languages where there doesn't
exist the vocabulary to put these things into
writing.
But you know that many of the words
that we now use continually, they didn't exist
before Tyndale coined these words.
The mercy seat, Tyndale coined that word.
The scapegoat, the tender mercies of God, the
long suffering of God, these are all Tyndale's
words.
Words that did not exist before Tyndale wrote
them down, the Passover, that's Tyndale's words.
I said at the beginning that 90%
of our authorized version is the language of
William Tyndale.
Very few Christians realize that.
1526 then, Tyndale's New Testament, needless to say
after that fragment was printed, the whole New
Testament soon followed and was printed at Cologne.
But Tyndale was far more than a translator.
He was a great preacher.
You can see that in his writing.
In the same year, 1526, he wrote a
little book, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon.
Now I just want to give you this
statement on justification.
Faith, Tyndale says, unites us to Christ, so
that Christ is thine and all his deeds
are thy deeds.
Christ is in thee and thou in him,
knit together inseparably.
Neither canst thou be damned, except Christ be
damned with thee.
Neither can Christ be saved, except thou be
saved with him.
Tyndale's next book was a book, The Obedience
of the Christian Man, which he published in
1528.
That's a very interesting and a very important
book, because in that book, Tyndale anticipated that
one of the great problems in the Reformation
era would be the relationship of believers to
the powers that be.
The civil powers, for example, and also the
church powers.
You know that those powers were dovetailed together.
And Tyndale, in that book, The Obedience of
the Christian Man, he had to show the
Christian doctrine of submission to magistrates and those
in authority, and at the same time he
had to show that submission to the powers
that be in the church, instead of being
a biblical duty, was something which every Christian
should repudiate.
So that when Tyndale wrote The Obedience of
the Christian Man, he knew that he was
advising Christians to do something that would lead
them straight to martyrdom and to suffering.
He knew that, and therefore he wrote in
the preface to that book, he said, let
us be bold in the Lord and comfort
our souls.
Christ is with us unto the world's end.
Let his little flock be bold therefore, for
if God be on our side, what matter
is it who be against us, be they
bishops, cardinals, popes, or whatsoever names they will.
We are called not to dispute, as the
pope's disciples do, but to die with Christ,
that we may live with him, and to
suffer with him, that we may reign with
him.
In that year 1528, or thereabout, Tyndale's thinking
went through quite a serious change.
When he first printed the New Testament, he
had practically no marginal notes that were derogatory
to the church.
He made no comment on the corruption or
the unbelief of the clergy.
He simply let the scripture go out without
comment.
But in those two years, Tyndale had seen
a great deal.
For one thing, he saw Cuthbert Tunstall ordering
the burning of his New Testament in the
streets of London.
He heard of Cardinal Woodley persecuting the few
believers in Cambridge.
He heard of four Christians dying in the
dungeons under Christchurch in Oxford.
He heard of a printer who had been
tortured for handling Tyndale's books.
And as Tyndale heard of these things, he
began to realize that this ecclesiastical institution was
not just a body that was ignorant and
poor, but it was a body that was
anti-Christian.
It was a body, therefore, that had to
be opposed.
And from about the year 1528, we find
Tyndale beginning to speak to the church issue,
beginning to apply the scripture to the contemporary
condition of the church in that day.
He says, the Jews look still for Christ,
though he is come 1500 years ago, and
they are not aware of it.
We also have looked for Antichrist, and he
has reigned as long, and we not aware.
And that because either we looked carnally for
him, and not in the place where we
ought to have sought the Antichrist.
Tyndale has a sentence which has always struck
me.
He says, Antichrist will always be the best
Christian man.
The best Christian man.
He began then to deal with the corruption
of the church.
Now I can't, despite the liberty I've been
given this evening, I can't pause on that,
except I just want to state one thing
which is perhaps most important of all.
It was William Tyndale who first laid down
the great Puritan principle that everything in the
church is to be measured by the word
of God.
It is to have the warrant of scripture.
Now Tyndale used this principle as a mighty
lever in dealing with the abuses of his
day.
Just listen to him dealing with 1 Timothy
chapter 3, dealing with these marks of a
true minister and elder in the church.
He says, bishops and priests that preach not,
or that preach ought, are none of Christ,
nor of his anointing, but servants of the
beast, whose mark they bear, whose word they
preach, whose law they maintain, clean against God's
law.
Behold these monsters, how they are disguised with
mitres, clothiers, and hats, with crosses, pillars, and
poleaxes, and with three crowns.
What names have they?
My Lord Prior, my Lord Abbot, my Lord
Bishop, my Lord Archbishop, Cardinal, Legates.
If it please your fatherhood, if it please
your lordship, and so on.
If they minister their offices truly, Tyndale says,
it is a sign that Christ's spirit is
in them, if not that the devil is
in them.
Well, you'll readily understand that when that kind
of thing was being read in England, in
the palace of Henry VIII, and in the
palace of Cardinal Wolsey, there was great indignation.
John Fox says that Tyndale's book had the
same effect in England, that our Lord's coming
had upon Herod, and upon Jerusalem, there was
great disturbance.
And in 1529, the ring of men who
were being paid to hunt Tyndale down, this
ring closed very tightly on Tyndale.
By God's providence, he escaped from Antwerp, where
he was at that time, and he took
a ship northwards along the coast of the
Netherlands to Hamburg.
Now, on that sea journey, Tyndale had the
most precious thing that he could have with
him.
He had now finished, from the Hebrew language,
a translation of the whole of the Pentateuch.
Think of that.
In those years, there was no Hebrew taught
at either Oxford or Cambridge, but Tyndale, by
God's grace and God's strength, had so mastered
that language that we are still reading his
translation of the Pentateuch.
He took it with him, but he'd never
got to Hamburg.
The ship was wrecked.
Tyndale's life was spared, but he lost all
his manuscripts, his books, and his writing, and
had to begin again in Hamburg.
That set him back a year or two.
Mr. Darling Morgan knows something of the discouragement
that that would have been to be set
back like that.
In 1530, he published his Just Genesis.
That was followed by the Pentateuch.
I must pass on from all that, except
to say there that Tyndale has been criticized
for not continuing with his translation work more
quickly, because after he had finished the Pentateuch,
he proceeded to write two more books.
One was the Practice of Prelates.
The other was His Answer to Sir Thomas
More.
Those are great books.
Those books really give you the pattern, the
beginnings of English Puritanism.
In the Practice of Prelates, Tyndale gives us
his convictions with regard to the ordering of
the church.
In His Answer to Sir Thomas More, he
gives us the theology which was later to
be written in documents of the Westminster Confession.
They're two great books, and people who regret
that Tyndale spent time on those books show
that they don't realize what Tyndale was.
He was more than a translator.
He was a leader.
He was a man who was setting down
a policy which he knew that others would
follow, even after he was dead and martyred.
And those martyrdoms were now coming thick and
fast.
Tyndale had a little group of men around
him.
One of those men was John Frith.
John Frith escaped from the dungeons of Oxford
in 1528, and he crossed over to Antwerp
and joined with Tyndale.
There was also John Lambert.
There was Richard Byfield, who carried these New
Testaments across the English Channel.
There were other men who I could mention,
but in a space of two or three
years, nearly all these men were burnt to
death.
In 1530, Thomas Hitton, a friend of Tyndale's,
was burnt to death at Maidstone.
In 1531, Thomas Bilney was burnt to death
at Norwich.
He had given a copy of Tyndale's New
Testament to a nun.
For that, he died in the flames in
August 1531.
Richard Byfield, the book carrier, was burnt to
death the same year.
And the greatest loss of all, John Frith,
one of all the reformers, John Frith was
burnt to death in 1533.
John Frith was such an able man, and
such an attractive personality, that Henry VIII offered
a special pardon to Frith through Sir Thomas
More, if he would desist from his preaching.
And this is what John Frith replied to
Thomas More.
He said, I assure you that I neither
will nor can cease to speak, for the
word of God boileth in my body like
a fervent fire, and will need have an
issue.
Two years later, Tyndale, still alive, was betrayed
in the city of Antwerp.
Rather like the assassination, if you know the
story of the assassination of William of Orange,
it's a similar kind of story.
A man of the character of Judas Iscariot
came into Tyndale's friendship, was befriended by him,
and then suddenly betrayed Tyndale.
One lunchtime, as they were going out for
a meal together, Tyndale was captured in the
street of Antwerp, possessing literally nothing except the
clothes in which he was standing.
A few years before, when Tyndale was commenting
on Genesis, he speaks about Joseph being put
into prison, and this is what he says,
that when Joseph was put into prison, those
promises, that is the promises of God, accompanied
him always, and went down with him even
into the deep dungeon, and brought him up
again, and never forsook him till all that
was promised was fulfilled.
And I want to give you a quotation
from Tyndale's exposition of the Sermon on the
Mount.
It's a quotation which seems to be so
autobiographical, you can almost feel that when Tyndale
wrote these words, he was anticipating his own
death.
Commenting on Matthew 5 verse 9, he says,
Well, though iniquity so highly prevail, and the
truth for which thou diest be so low
kept under, and be not once known before
the world, insomuch that it seemeth rather to
be hindered by thy death than furthered, which
is the greatest of all grief.
Yet let not thine heart fail thee, neither
despair as though God had forsaken thee, or
loved thee not, but comfort thyself with old
examples, how God has suffered all his old
friends to be so entreated, and also his
only and dear son Jesus, whose example above
all others set before thine eyes, because thou
art sure he was well beloved above all
others, that thou doubt not, but that thou
art also beloved.
You see, he's arguing, it's faith, arguing against
reason, but though these men were so few,
and though they were to die, and it
seemed that the truth was going to perish
from the earth, yet Tyndale says, remember God
has dealt so with all his friends, and
his dear and only beloved son, and therefore
he says, realize that thou art loved also,
and much more loved, the more thou art
like to the image of Christ in his
suffering.
Now, how are you bearing up?
Oh, I don't know, I don't know.
Five, six minutes.
Well, really just what I wanted to do
was to draw out some of the main
lessons that Tyndale gives us.
I have a number of quotations which I'll
pass over, which were written in this century,
which speak of Tyndale, as somebody says, dying
for a doctrine which hardly anybody in England
now holds.
The Times newspaper in 1536, on the anniversary
of Tyndale's martyrdom, incidentally I forgot to tell
you about his martyrdom, we'll come back to
it, but speaking of Tyndale, the Times said,
Tyndale, the controversialist, is a figure of pathos,
whose acrimonious treaties are already forgotten, and then
one of the bishops of the Church of
England a few years ago, he said that
Tyndale's books are little read, and these writings,
which multitudes of readers ran desperate risks to
obtain, fail to stir the faintest flicker of
interest in our minds.
Now, there's a proof of that fact.
Just before the last war, there was a
very fine life of Tyndale, published by J
.F. Moseley, he was the author, by the
SPCK, the publishers.
Do you know that after nearly 20 years,
that book was still plodding on through a
first edition?
I think it was only last year that
the edition was sold out.
It's an example of the evangelical indifference to
their great heritage.
Now, I just have two points that I'll
try and make very briefly.
Tyndale was the first reformer, the first English
reformer, to recover what it means to be
a Christian, what it means to be a
Christian, and one could spend time with Tyndale
on justification, Tyndale against free will, Tyndale on
effectual calling, and these kindred doctrines.
But I just want to give you a
quote on not what it is to become
a Christian, but listen to Tyndale on how
a Christian lives.
And here, Tyndale is really the Apostle John
of the 16th century, the apostle of love.
To Tyndale, the nature of the Christian life
is the love of Christ constraining us to
obedience and to service.
If any man asks me, says Tyndale, seeing
that faith justifies me, why do I work?
I answer, love compels me, for as long
as my soul feeleth what love God has
showed me in Christ, I cannot but love
God again and love his commands.
Now, I've lost the other quotation that I
was going to give you, so, oh no,
here it is.
This is a beautiful quotation, I think I
like it more than any of the others.
He's speaking of the nature of the Christian
life.
He says, if we be in Christ, we
work for no worldly purpose but of love,
as Paul says, the love of Christ compels
us.
We are otherwise minded than when Peter drew
his sword to fight for Christ.
We are ready to suffer with Christ and
to lose life and all for our very
enemies to bring them unto Christ.
If we be in Christ, we are minded
like unto Christ.
Christ is all to the Christian man.
Christ is the cause why I love thee.
Now, imagine this, here is some Englishman brought
up in all the superstitions of Rome, and
someone has given him this little book that
has been hidden and brought in from the
continent, and this is what he reads.
Christ is the cause why I love thee,
why I am ready to do the uttermost
of my power for thee, and why I
pray for thee, and as long as the
cause abideth, so long last the effect.
Do therefore the worst thou canst unto me,
take away my good, take away my good
name, yet as long as Christ remains in
my heart, so long do I love thee,
not a bit the less, and so long
thou art as dear unto me as my
own soul.
And so long am I ready to do
thee good for thine evil, and so long
I pray for thee with all my heart,
for Christ desireth it of me, and hath
deserved it of me.
Thine unkindness compared unto his kindness is nothing
at all, yea, it is swallowed up as
a little smoke of a mighty wind, and
is no more seen or thought of.
William Tyndale was the apostle of love.
One of the articles for which Tyndale was
condemned as a heretic by the Roman church,
now this is a historical fact that is
written on paper, Tyndale was condemned for, amongst
other articles of belief, for the following statement
that they took out of Tyndale's writing, I
am bound, Tyndale said, I am bound to
love the Turk with the very bottom of
my heart.
John Fox gives us some beautiful stories of
Tyndale's influence amongst the gentlemen of Gloucestershire, when
he was put in prison, he was in
prison for a little over a year, the
jailer was converted, the jailer's daughter was converted
in that prison at Beaubourg.
Fox tells us that before Tyndale was imprisoned,
that often he used to preach to a
little group of believers secretly in Antwerp, and
Fox says that he spoke so fruitfully, so
sweetly, and so gently, that it was much
like to the writing of John the Evangelist.
My other point which I, oh I mustn't
pass over this point, Tyndale's last word, he
was burnt to death on the 6th of
October, or thereabouts, 1536, alone in a foreign
country, he was taken out of the prison
at Beaubourg, to the south gate of the
city, and there he was strangled and burnt.
Do you know the last word that Tyndale
prayed?
You ought to know them, they're often quoted,
but it teaches us what the man was.
Lord, he said, crying, John Fox says with
a fervent voice, Lord open the king of
England's eyes.
That king who had hunted him and persecuted
him, and at last had him trapped and
burnt, Lord open the king of England's eyes.
That's William Tyndale.
I would have spoken on his dependence upon
God.
How through all things, Tyndale never trimmed the
truth, he never hid any truth, there wasn't
the slightest shade of expediency in this man.
He stood, and he stood sometimes alone, and
he said, God will take care of what
comes to pass.
He will only have us care to keep
his commandments, and to leave the rest to
him.
All things are in his hand, and he
can remedy all things, and he will, for
his truth's sake, if we pray to him.
And then when John Frick lay in prison
in London, Tyndale got a letter through to
him, shortly before Frick was burned, and in
that letter Tyndale says to Frick, his friend,
he says, if you give yourself, cast yourself,
yield yourself, commit yourself wholly to your loving
father, then shall his power be in you,
and make you strong.
To look for no man's help brings the
help of God to them who are overcome
in the eyes of the hypocrite.
Yea, it will make God to carry you
through sick and sin, for his truth's sake.
Therefore, if not a hair of your head
shall his hour become, and when his hour
is come, necessity carryeth us then, though we
do not will it.