William Tyndale was born about 1495 at Slymbridge near the Welsh border. He received his degrees from Magdalen College, Oxford, and also studied at Cambridge. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1521, and soon began to speak of his desire, which eventually became his life's obsession, to translate the Scriptures into English. It is reported that, in the course of a dispute with a prominent clergyman who disparaged this proposal, he said, "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost." The remainder of his life was devoted to keeping that vow. Finding that the King, Henry VIII, was firmly set against any English version of the Scriptures, he fled to Germany (visiting Martin Luther in 1525), and there traveled from city to city, in exile, poverty, persecution, and constant danger. The commonly received doctrine of his time implied that men earn their salvation by good behavior and by penance. He wrote eloquently that salvation is a gift of God, freely bestowed, and not a response to any good act on the part of the receiver. He completed his translation of the New Testament in 1525, and it was printed at Worms and smuggled into England. Of 18,000 copies, only two survive. In 1534, he produced a revised version, and began work on the Old Testament. In the next two years he completed and published the Pentateuch and Jonah, and translated the books from Joshua through Second Chronicles, but then he was captured (betrayed by one he had befriended), tried for heresy, and put to death. He was burned at the stake, but, as was occassionally done, the officer strangled him before lighting the fire. His last words were, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes." A letter from Prison ...
-- W. Tindalus
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"But
above all, I entreat and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the Procurer
that he may kindly permit me to have my Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Grammar, and
Hebrew Dictionary, that I may spend my time with that study. And in return,
may you obtain your dearest wish, provided always it be consistent with
the salvation of your soul. But if any other resolutions have been come
to concerning me, before the conclusion of the winter, I shall be patient,
abiding the will of God to the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ,
whose spirit, I pray, may ever direct your heart. Amen."
