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From Here to Forever
A learned Catholic in controversy with him exclaimed, “We were
better to be without God’s laws than the pope’s.” Tyndale replied, “1
defy the pope and all his laws; and if God spare my life, ere many
years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to know more of the
Scripture than you do.
Tyndale Translates the English New Testament
Driven from home by persecution, he went to London and there
for a time labored undisturbed. But again the papists forced him
to flee. All England seemed closed against him. In Germany he
began the printing of the English New Testament. When forbidden
to print in one city, he went to another. At last he made his way to
Worms, where, a few years before, Luther had defended the gospel
before the diet. In that city were many friends of the Reformation.
Three thousand copies of the New Testament were soon finished,
and another edition followed.
The Word of God was secretly conveyed to London and circu-
lated throughout the country. The papists attempted to suppress
the truth, but in vain. The bishop of Durham bought a bookseller’s
whole stock of Bibles for the purpose of destroying them, suppos-
ing that this would hinder the work. But the money thus furnished
purchased material for a new and better edition. When Tyndale was
afterward made a prisoner, his liberty was offered him on condition
that he reveal the names of those who helped him meet the expense
of printing his Bibles. He replied that the bishop of Durham had
done more than any other person by paying a large price for the
books left on hand.
Tyndale finally witnessed for his faith by a martyr’s death; but
the weapons he prepared enabled other soldiers to do battle through
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the centuries, even to our time.
Latimer maintained from the pulpit that the Bible ought to be
read in the language of the people. “Let us not take any bywalks,
but let God’s word direct us: let us not walk after ... our forefathers,
nor seek not what they did, but what they should have done.
4
Anderson, Annals of the English Bible (rev. edition, 1862), p. 19.
5
Hugh Latimer, “First Sermon Preached Before King Edward VI.‘