Commandments; 31 who did not even know where they could be found; 40 who could not repeat the Lord's Prayer; and nearly as many who did not know where it originated; yet they were all in regular standing as clergy in the diocese of Gloucester. The need was keen enough.

[1] Obedience of a Christian Man.

About 1523 Tindale began to cast the Scriptures into the current English. He set out to London fully expecting to find support and encouragement there, but he found neither. He found, as he once said, that there was no room in the palace of the Bishop of London to translate the New Testament; indeed, that there was no place to do it in all England. A wealthy London merchant subsidized him with the munificent gift of ten pounds, with which he went across the Channel to Hamburg; and there and elsewhere on the Continent, where he could be hid, he brought his translation to completion. Printing facilities were greater on the Continent than in England; but there was such opposition to his work that very few copies of the several editions of which we know can still be found. Tindale was compelled to flee at one time with a few printed sheets and complete his work on another press. Several times copies of his books were solemnly burned, and his own life was frequently in danger.

There is one amusing story which tells how money came to free Tindale from heavy debt and prepare the way for more Bibles. The Bishop of London, Tunstall, was set on destroying copies of the English New Testament. He therefore made a bargain with a merchant of Antwerp, Packington, to secure them for him. Packington was a friend of Tindale, and went to him forthwith, saying: "William, I know thou art a poor man, and I have gotten thee a merchant for thy books." "Who?" asked Tindale. "The Bishop of London." "Ah, but he will burn them." "So he will, but you will have the money." And it all came out as it was planned; the Bishop of London had the books, Packington had the thanks, Tindale had the money, the debt was paid, and the new edition was soon ready. The old document, from which I am quoting, adds that the Bishop thought he had God by the toe when, indeed, he found afterward that he had the devil by the fist.[1]

[1] Pollard, Records of the English Bible, p. 151.

The final revision of the Tindale translations was published in 1534, and that becomes the notable year of his life. In two years he was put to death by strangling, and his body was burned. When we remember that this was done with the joint power of Church and State, we realize some of the odds against which he worked.

Spite of his odds, however, Tindale is the real father of our King James version. About eighty per cent. of his Old Testament and ninety per cent. of his New Testament have been transferred to our version. In the Beatitudes, for example, five are word for word in the two versions, while the other three are only slightly changed.[1] Dr. Davidson has calculated that nine-tenths of the words in the shorter New Testament epistles are Tindale's, and in the longer epistles like the Hebrews five-sixths are his. Froude's estimate is fair: "Of the translation itself, though since that time it has been many times revised and altered, we may say that it is substantially the Bible with which we are familiar. The peculiar genius which breathes through it, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur, unequaled, unapproached, in the attempted improvements of modern scholars, all are here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man, William Tindale."[2]

[1] The fourth reads in his version, "Blessed are they which hunger and thirst for righteousness"; the seventh, "Blessed are the maintainers of peace"; the eighth, "Blessed are they which suffer persecution for righteousness' sake."

[2] History of England, end of chap. xii.

We said a moment ago that Wiclif's translation was the standard of Middle English. It is time to add that Tindale's version "fixed our standard English once for all, and brought it finally into every English home." The revisers of 1881 declared that while the authorized version was the work of many hands, the foundation of it was laid by Tindale, and that the versions that followed it were substantially reproductions of Tindale's, or revisions of versions which were themselves almost entirely based on it.

There was every reason why it should be a worthy version. For one thing, it was the first translation into English from the original Hebrew and Greek. Wiclif's had been from the Latin. For Tindale there were available two new and critical Greek Testaments, that of Erasmus and the so-called Complutensian, though he used that of Erasmus chiefly. There was also available a carefully prepared Hebrew Old Testament. For another thing, it was the first version which could be printed, and so be subject to easy and immediate correction and revision. Then also, Tindale himself was a great scholar in the languages. He was "so skilled in the seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, and French, that, whichever he spoke, you would suppose it was his native tongue."[1] Nor was his spirit in the work controversial. I say his "spirit in the work" with care. They were controversial times, and Tindale took his share in the verbal warfare. When, for example, there was objection to making any English version because "the language was so rude that the Bible could not be intelligently translated into it," Tindale replied: "It is not so rude as they are false liars. For the Greek tongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin, a thousand parts better may it be translated into the English than into the Latin."[2] And when a high church dignitary protested to Tindale against making the Bible so common, he replied: "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth a plow shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost." And while that was not saying much for the plowboy, it was saying a good deal to the dignitary. In language, Tindale was controversial enough, but in his spirit, in making his version, there was no element of controversy. For such reasons as these we might expect the version to be valuable.

[1] Herman Buschius.

[2] This will mean the more to us when we realize that the literary men of the day despised the English tongue. Sir Thomas More wrote his Utopia in Latin, because otherwise educated men would not deign to read it. Years later Roger Ascham apologized for writing one of his works in English. Putting the Bible into current English impressed these literary men very much as we would be impressed by putting the Bible into current slang.

All this while, and especially between the time when Tindale first published his New Testament and the time they burned him for doing so, an interesting change was going on in England. The King was Henry VIII., who was by no means a willing Protestant. As Luther's work appeared, it was this same Henry who wrote the pamphlet against him during the Diet of Worms, and on the ground of this pamphlet, with its loyal support of the Church against Luther, he received from the Roman pontiff the title "Defender of the Faith," which the kings of England still wear. And yet under this king this strange succession of dates can be given. Notice them closely. In 1526 Tindale's New Testament was burned at St. Paul's by the Bishop of London; ten years later, 1536, Tindale himself was burned with the knowledge and connivance of the English government; and yet, one year later, 1537, two versions of the Bible in English, three-quarters of which were the work of Tindale, were licensed for public use by the King of England, and were