The Eve of the Reformation

The activity of the teachers of the new doctrine was everywhere remarkable. More only wished that the maintainers of the traditional Catholic faith were half so zealous “as those that are fallen into false heresies and have forsaken the faith.” These seem, he says, indeed to “have a hot fire of hell in their hearts that can never suffer them to rest or cease, but forces them night and day to labour and work busily to subvert and destroy the Catholic Christian faith by every means they can devise.”227 The time was, “and even until now very late,” when no man would allow any heresy to be spoken at his table; for this “has been till of late the common Christian zeal towards the Catholic faith.” But now (1533) “though, God be thanked, the faith is itself as fast rooted in this realm as ever it was before (except in some very few places, and yet even in those few the very faithful folk are many more than the faithless), even good men are beginning to tolerate the discussion of heretical views, and to take part in ‘the evil talk.’”

To understand the Reformation in England, it is important to note the progress of its growth, and to note that the lines upon which it developed were to all intents and purposes those which had been laid down by Luther for the German religious revolution, although, in many ways, England was carried along the path of reformed doctrines, even further than the original leader had been prepared to go. The special points of the traditional faith of the English people, which the reforming party successfully attacked, were precisely those which had been the battle-ground in Germany, and Sir Thomas More’s description of the result there might somewhat later have been written of this country. Tyndale was described by More as “the captain of the English heretics,” and the influence of his works no doubt greatly helped to the overthrow of the traditional teaching. The key of the position taken up by the English Reformers, as well as by their German predecessors, was the claim that all belief must be determined by the plain word of Holy Scripture, and by that alone. Tradition they rejected, although Sir Thomas More pointed out forcibly that the Church had always acknowledged the twofold authority of the written and unwritten word.228 Upon this ground Tyndale and his successors rejected all the sacraments but two, attacked popular devotion to sacred images and prayers to our Lady and the saints, and rejected the old teaching about Purgatory and the help the souls of the departed faithful could derive from the suffrages and penances of the living. Confirmation and the anointing of priests at ordination they contemptuously called “butter smearing,” and with their denial of the priesthood quickly came their rejection of the doctrine of the Sacrifice in the Mass, and their teaching that the Holy Eucharist is a “token and sign” rather than the actual Body and Blood of our Lord.

No means were left untried to further the spread of the new views. Books of prayer were drawn up, in which, under the guise of familiar devotions, the poison of the reformed doctrine was unsuspectedly imbibed. Richard Whitford complains that his works, which just on the eve of the Reformation were deservedly popular, had been made use of for the purpose of interpolating tracts against points of Catholic faith, which people were induced to buy under the supposition that they were from the pen of the celebrated monk of Sion. John Waylande, the printer of some Whitford books, in 1537 prefixed the following notice to the new edition of the Werke for Householders. “The said author required me instantly that I should not print nor join any other works with his, specially of uncertain authors. For of late he found a work joined in the same volume with his works, and bought and taken for his work. This was not his, but was put there instead of his work that before was named among the contents of his book, and yet his (real) work was left out, as is complained in this preface here unto the Reader.”

In his preface Whitford says that the substituted work was obviously by one of the Reformers, and “not only puts me into infamy and slander, but also puts all readers in jeopardy of conscience to be infected (by heresy) and in danger of the king’s laws, for the manifold erroneous opinions that are contained in the same book.” He consequently adds a warning to his readers: “By my poor advice,” he says, “read not those books that go forth without named authors. For, doubtless, many of them that seem very devout and good works, are full of heresies, and your old English poet says, ‘There is no poison so perilous of sharpness as that is that hath of sugar a sweetness.’”229

In a subsequent volume, published in 1541, called Dyvers holy instructions and teachings, Whitford again complains of this device of the teachers of the new doctrines. In the preface he gives the exact titles of the four little tracts which go to make up the volume, in order, as he says, “to give you warning to search well and surely that no other works are put amongst them that might deceive you. For, of a certainty, I found now but very lately a work joined and bound with my poor labours and under the contents of the same volume, and one of my works which was named in the same contents left out. Instead of this, was put this other work that was not mine. For the title of mine was this, ‘A daily exercise and experience of death,’ and the other work has no name of any author. And all such works in this time are ever to be suspected, for so the heretics are used to send forth their poison among the people covered with sugar. For they seem to be good and devout workers, and are in very deed stark heresies.”230

Even the smallest points were not deemed too insignificant for the teaching of novel doctrines destructive of the old Catholic spirit. To take an example: John Standish, writing in Mary’s reign about the vernacular Scripture, complains of the translation which had been made in the time of Henry VIII. “Who is able,” he writes, “to tell at first sight how many hundred faults are even in their best translation (if there is any good). Shall they be suffered still to continue? Shall they still poison more like as they do in a thousand damnable English books set forth within the last twenty-two years? Lord deliver us from them all, and that with all speed! I take God to record (if I may speak only of one fault in the translation and touch no more) my heart did ever abhor to hear this word Dominus … translated the Lord, whereas it ought to be translated our Lord, the very Latin phrase so declaring. Is not St. John saying to Peter (John, xxi.), Dominus est, ‘it is our Lord’? whereas they have falsely translated it as in many other places ‘the Lord.’ And likewise in the salutation of our Lady, ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace, dominus tecum,’ does not this word dominus here include noster, and so ought to be translated ‘our Lord is with thee’? Would you make the Archangel like a devil call him the Lord? He is the Lord to every evil spirit, but to us He is our most merciful Lord and ought to be called so. If, perchance, you ask of a husbandman whose ground that is, he will answer, ‘the lord’s,’ who is perhaps no better than a collier. Well, I speak this, not now so much for the translation, seeing that it swarms as full of faults as leaves (I will not say lines) as I do, because I wish that the common speech among people sprung from this fond translation, ‘I thank the Lord’; ‘the Lord be praised’; ‘the Lord knoweth’; with all such-like phrases might be given up, and that the people might be taught to call Him ‘our Lord,’ saying, ‘I thank our Lord’; ‘our Lord be praised,’231 &c., &c.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRINTED ENGLISH BIBLE

It is very commonly believed that until the influence of Cranmer had made itself felt, the ecclesiastical authorities continued to maintain the traditionally hostile attitude of the English Church towards the English Bible. In proof of this, writers point to the condemnation of the translations issued by Tyndale, and the wholesale destruction of all copies of this, the first printed edition of the English New Testament. It is consequently of importance to examine into the extent of the supposed clerical hostility to the vernacular Scriptures, and into the reasons assigned by those having the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs at that period for the prohibition of Tyndale’s Testament.

It may not be without utility to point out that the existence of any determination on the part of the Church to prevent the circulation of vernacular Bibles in the fifteenth century has been hitherto too hastily assumed. Those who were living during that period may be fairly considered the most fitting interpreters of the prohibition of Archbishop Arundel, which has been so frequently adduced as sufficient evidence of this supposed uncompromising hostility to what is now called “the open Bible.” The terms of the archbishop’s monition do not, on examination, bear the meaning usually put upon it; and should the language be considered by some obscure, there is absolute evidence of the possession of vernacular Bibles by Catholics of undoubted orthodoxy with, at the very least, the tacit consent of the ecclesiastical authorities. When to this is added the fact that texts from the then known English Scriptures were painted on the walls of churches, and portions of the various books were used in authorised manuals of prayer, it is impossible to doubt that the hostility of the English Church to the vernacular Bible has been greatly exaggerated, if indeed its attitude has not altogether been misunderstood. This much may, and indeed must, be conceded, wholly apart from the further question whether the particular version now known as the Wycliffite Scriptures is, or is not, the version used in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century by Catholic Englishmen. That a Catholic version, or some version viewed as Catholic and orthodox by those who lived in the sixteenth century, really existed does not admit of any doubt at all on the distinct testimony of Sir Thomas More. It will be readily admitted that he was no ordinary witness. As one eminent in legal matters, he must be supposed to know the value of evidence, and his uncompromising attitude towards all innovators in matters of religion is a sufficient guarantee that he would be no party to the propagation of any unorthodox or unauthorised translations.

Some quotations from Sir Thomas More’s works will illustrate his belief better than any lengthy exposition. It is unnecessary, he says, to defend the law prohibiting any English version of the Bible, “for there is none such, indeed. There is of truth a Constitution which speaks of this matter, but nothing of such fashion. For you shall understand that the great arch-heretic Wycliffe, whereas the whole Bible was long before his days by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people and with devotion and soberness well and reverently read, took upon himself to translate it anew. In this translation he purposely corrupted the holy text, maliciously planting in it such words, as might in the readers’ ears serve to prove such heresies as he ‘went about’ to sow. These he not only set forth with his own translation of the Bible, but also with certain prologues and glosses he made upon it, and he so managed this matter, assigning probable and likely reasons suitable for lay and unlearned people, that he corrupted in his time many folk in this realm…

“After it was seen what harm the people took from the translation, prologues, and glosses of Wycliffe and also of some others, who after him helped to set forth his sect for that cause, and also for as much as it is dangerous to translate the text of Scripture out of one tongue into another, as St. Jerome testifieth, since in translating it is hard to keep the same sentence whole (i.e. the exact meaning): it was, I say, for these causes at a Council held at Oxford, ordered under great penalties that no one might thenceforth translate (the Scripture) into English, or any other language, on his own authority, in a book, booklet, or tract, and that no one might read openly or secretly any such book, booklet, or treatise newly made in the time of the said John Wycliffe, or since, or should be made any time after, till the same translation had been approved by the diocesan, or, if need should require, by a Provincial Council.

“This is the law that so many have so long spoken about, and so few have all this time sought to look whether they say the truth or not. For I hope you see in this law nothing unreasonable, since it neither forbids good translations to be read that were already made of old before Wycliffe’s time, nor condemns his because it was new, but because it was ‘naught.’ Neither does it prohibit new translations to be made, but provides that if they are badly made they shall not be read till they are thoroughly examined and corrected, unless indeed they are such translations as Wycliffe and Tyndale made, which the malicious mind of the translator has handled in such a way that it were labour lost to try and correct them.”

The “objector,” whom Sir Thomas More was engaged in instructing in the Dialogue, could hardly believe that the formal Provincial Constitution meant nothing more than this, and thereupon, as Sir Thomas says: “I set before him the Constitutions Provincial, with Lyndwood upon it, and directed him to the place under the title De magistris. When he himself had read this, he said he marvelled greatly how it happened that in so plain a matter men were so deceived.” But he thought that even if the law was not as he had supposed, nevertheless the clergy acted as if it were, and always “took all translations out of every man’s hand whether the translation was good or bad, old or new.” To this More replied that to his knowledge this was not correct. “I myself,” he says, “have seen and can show you Bibles, fair and old, written in English, which have been known and seen by the bishop of the diocese, and left in the hands of laymen and women, whom he knew to be good and Catholic people who used the books with devotion and soberness.” He admitted indeed that all Bibles found in the hands of heretics were taken away from them, but none of these, so far as he had ever heard, were burnt, except such as were found to be garbled and false. Such were the Bibles issued with evil prologues or glosses, maliciously made by Wycliffe and other heretics. “Further,” he declared, “no good man would be so mad as to burn a Bible in which they found no fault.” Nor was there any law whatever that prohibited the possession, examination, or reading of the Holy Scripture in English.232

In reply to the case of Richard Hunn, who, according to the story set about by the religious innovators, had been condemned and his dead body burnt “only because they found English Bibles in his house, in which they never found other fault than because they were in English,” Sir Thomas More, professedly, and with full knowledge of the circumstances, absolutely denies, as he says, “from top to toe,” the truth of this story.233 He shows at great length that the whole tale of Hunn’s death was carefully examined into by the king’s officials, and declares that at many of the examinations he himself had been present and heard the witnesses, and that in the end it had been fully shown that Hunn was in reality a heretic and a teacher of heresy. “But,” urged his objector, “though Hunn were himself a heretic, yet might the book (of the English Bible) be good enough; and there is no good reason why a good book should be burnt.” The copy of this Bible, replied More, was of great use in showing the kind of man Hunn really was, “for at the time he was denounced as a heretic, there lay his English Bible open, and some other English books of his, so that every one could see the places noted with his own hand, such words and in such a way that no wise and good man could, after seeing them, doubt what ‘naughty minds’ the men had, both he that so noted them and he that so made them. I do not remember the particulars,” he continued, “nor the formal words as they were written, but this I do remember well, that besides other things found to support divers other heresies, there were in the prologue of that Bible such words touching the Blessed Sacrament as good Christian men did much abhor to hear, and which gave the readers undoubted occasion to think that the book was written after Wycliffe’s copy, and by him translated into our tongue.”234

More then goes on to state his own mind as to the utility of vernacular Scriptures. And, in the first place, he utterly denies again that the Church, or any ecclesiastical authority, ever kept the Bible in English from the people, except “such translations as were either not approved as good translations, or such as had already been condemned as false, such as Wycliffe’s and Tyndale’s were. For, as for other old ones that were before Wycliffe’s days, they remain lawful, and are in the possession of some people, and are read.” To this assertion of a plain fact Sir Thomas More’s opponent did not dissent, but frankly admitted that this was certainly the case,235 although he still thought that the English Bible might be in greater circulation than it was.236 Sir Thomas More considered that the clergy really had good grounds not to encourage the spread of the vernacular Scriptures at that time, inasmuch as those who were most urgent in the matter were precisely those whose orthodoxy was reasonably suspected. It made men fear, he says, “that seditious people would do more harm with it than good and honest folk would derive benefit.” This, however, he declared was not his own personal view.237 “I would not,” he writes, “for my part, withhold the profit that one good, devout, unlearned man might get by the reading, for fear of the harm a hundred heretics might take by their own wilful abuse… Finally, I think that the Provincial Constitution (already spoken of) has long ago determined the question. For when the clergy in that synod agreed that the English Bibles should remain which were translated before Wycliffe’s days, they, as a necessary consequence, agreed that it was no harm to have the Bible in English. And when they forbade any new translation to be read till it were approved by the bishops, it appears clearly that they intended that the bishop should approve it, if he found it to be faultless, and also to amend it where it was found faulty, unless the man who made it was a heretic, or the faults were so many and of such a character that it would be easier to retranslate it than to mend it.”238

This absolute denial of any attitude of hostility on the part of the Church to the translated Bible is reiterated in many parts of Sir Thomas More’s English works. When, upon the condemnation of Tyndale’s Testament, the author pointed to this fact as proof of the determination of the clergy to keep the Word of God from the people, More replied at considerable length. He showed how the ground of the condemnation had nothing whatever to do with any anxiety upon the part of ecclesiastics to keep the Scriptures from lay people, but was entirely based upon the complete falsity of Tyndale’s translation itself. “He pretends,” says Sir Thomas More, “that the Church makes some (statutes) openly and directly against the Word of God, as in that statute whereby they have condemned the New Testament. Now, in truth, there is no such statute made. For as for the New Testament, if he mean the Testament of Christ, it is not condemned nor forbidden. But there is forbidden a false English translation of the New Testament newly forged by Tyndale, altered and changed in matters of great weight, in order maliciously to set forth against Christ’s true doctrine Tyndale’s anti-Christian heresies. Therefore that book is condemned, as it is well worthy to be, and the condemnation thereof is neither openly nor privily, directly nor indirectly, against the word of God.”239

Again, in another place, More replies to what he calls Tyndale’s “railing” against the clergy, and in particular his saying that they keep the Scripture from lay people in order that they may not see how they “juggle with it.” “I have,” he says, “in the book of my Dyalogue proved already that Tyndale in this point falsely belies the clergy, and that in truth Wycliffe, and Tyndale, and Friar Barnes, and such others, have been the original cause why the Scripture has been of necessity kept out of lay people’s hands. And of late, specially, by the politic provision and ordinance of our most excellent sovereign the king’s noble grace, not without great and urgent causes manifestly rising from the false malicious means of Wycliffe and Tyndale,” this has been prevented. “For this (attempt of Tyndale) all the lay people of this realm, both the evil folk who take harm from him, and the good folk that lose their profit by him, have great cause to lament that ever the man was born.”240

The same view is taken by Roger Edgworth, a popular preacher in the reign of Henry VIII. After describing what he considered to be the evils which had resulted from the spread of Lutheran literature in England, he says: “By this effect you may judge the cause. The effect was evil, therefore there must needs be some fault in the cause. But what sayest thou? Is not the study of Scripture good? Is not the knowledge of the Gospels and of the New Testament godly, good, and profitable for a Christian man or woman? I shall tell you what I think in this matter. I have ever been in this mind, that I have thought it no harm, but rather good and profitable, that Holy Scripture should be had in the mother tongue, and withheld from no man that was apt and meet to take it in hand, specially if we could get it well and truly translated, which will be very hard to be had.”241

There is, it is true, no doubt, that the destruction of Tyndale’s Testaments and the increasing number of those who favoured the new religious opinions, caused people to spread all manner of stories abroad as to the attitude of the Church authorities in England towards the vernacular Scriptures. Probably the declaration of the friend, against whom Sir Thomas More, then Chancellor, in 1530, wrote his Dyalogue, “that great murmurs were heard against the clergy on this score,” is not far from the truth. Ecclesiastics, he said, in the opinion of the common people, would not tolerate criticism of their lives or words, and desired to keep laymen ignorant. “And they” (the people) “think,” he adds, “that for no other cause was there burned at St. Paul’s Cross the New Testament, late translated by Master William Huchin, otherwise called Tyndale, who was (as men say) well known, before he went over the sea, as a man of right good life, studious and well learned in the Scriptures. And men mutter among themselves that the book was not only faultless, but also very well translated, and was ordered to be burned, because men should not be able to prove that such faults (as were at Paul’s Cross declared to have been found in it) were never in fact found there at all; but untruly surmised, in order to have some just cause to burn it, and that for no other reason than to keep out of the people’s hands all knowledge of Christ’s Gospel and of God’s law, except so much as the clergy themselves please now and then to tell them. Further, that little as this is, it is seldom expounded. And, as it is feared, even this is not well and truly told; but watered with false glosses and altered from the truth of the words and meaning of Scripture, only to maintain the clerical authority. And the fear lest this should appear evident to the people, if they were suffered to read the Scripture themselves in their own tongue, was (it is thought) the very cause, not only for which the New Testament translated by Tyndale was burned, but also why the clergy of this realm have before this time, by a Constitution Provincial, prohibited any book of Scripture to be translated into the English tongue, and threaten with fire men who should presume to keep them, as heretics; as though it were heresy for a Christian man to read Christ’s Gospel.”242

It has been already pointed out how Sir Thomas More completely disposed of this assertion as to the hostility of the clergy to “the open Bible.” In his position of Chancellor of England, More could hardly have been able to speak with so much certainty about the real attitude of the Church, had not the true facts been at the same time well understood and commonly acknowledged. The words of the “objector,” however, not only express the murmurs of those who were at that period discontented with the ecclesiastical system; but they voice the accusations which have been so frequently made from that day to this, by those who do not as a fact look at the other side. Sir Thomas More’s testimony proves absolutely that no such hostility to the English Bible as is so generally assumed of the pre-Reformation Church did, in fact, exist. Most certainly there never was any ecclesiastical prohibition against vernacular versions as such, and the most orthodox sons of the Church did in fact possess copies of the English Scriptures, which they read openly and devoutly. This much seems certain.