5 October: Boreham on William Tyndale

A Hurricane of Thrills
The fact that we mark today the anniversary of the death of William Tyndale suggests an interesting question.[1] Have we ever adequately appreciated the really momentous character of the early years of the sixteenth century? The air tingled with sensation and romance. It was an age of thrills. Civilisation was being overhauled and recast. The very planet was assuming a fresh shape. For it was the age of Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama, the age of John Cabot and Christopher Columbus, the age of Balboa and Magellan, the age of Cortes and Pizarro.

The voyage of Diaz added Africa to the map of the world; the voyage of Columbus added America, and the voyage of Vasco da Gama unveiled India to the eyes of Europe. Continents were springing up like mushrooms of a misty morning.

Moreover, fresh continents produced fresh oceans. It was only 21 years from the time when Columbus sailed on his momentous voyage to that scarcely less notable hour when Nunez de Balboa—

With eagle eye
First stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each
other with a wild surmise
Silent upon a peak in Darien.

Navigation was the fever of the hour. The vast oceans, so long a waste of loneliness, became a snowstorm of white sails. It is really amazing, when we take into consideration the crazy little vessels that were then the latest words in nautical science, that the intrepid spirits of that stirring period were able to make history so swiftly.

Every few days bronzed explorers seemed to be stepping from the decks of battered and weather-beaten ships to tell of new and surprising discoveries in the Atlantic, in the Pacific, in the Indian Ocean—everywhere!

The Transformation Of A Planet
Nor was the land less sensational than the sea. For one thing, William Caxton was busy setting up his magic presses. Macaulay says that the invention of printing was the most notable event that took place during a thousand years of human history. It took the world by storm.

Learned men, fashionable ladies and great nobles thronged Caxton's little printing house to see how the miracle was performed; whilst less intelligent people declined to go near it, declaring that such results could only be achieved by witchery, necromancy, and illicit commerce with evil spirits. And to add to the wonder of it all, the printing press came into the world at the very moment when the world had something well worth printing.

Whilst Columbus was opening up a new world in the West, Copernicus was discovering a new universe in the skies, and science was awakening to the glory of a grander day. Astronomy was being born. Culture of all kinds was exciting boundless enthusiasm. It was the Age of the Renaissance. Men were eager to think. In the realms of Philosophy, Music, Art, and, indeed, in every department of learning, illustrious adventurers whose names will live for ever, appeared like bright stars that twinkle suddenly out of the age-long dark. An infinite horizon was opening to the simplest minds. Men fell in love with the world—with this world and with every other. People who had lived in an age became citizens of all the ages. Those who had lived in a tiny village found themselves exploring mighty continents.

Lecky declares that the enlightenment and civilisation of ancient times was restricted almost entirely to great centres like Athens and Rome; it never penetrated rural districts. In the awakening that took place in England in the early years of the sixteenth century, it was quite otherwise. Mysteries that had for centuries baffled the minds of sages became the gossip of every chimney corner and the talk of every taproom.

A Work That Can Never Die
In those days, as Sid Sidney Lee avers, Englishmen were breathing a new atmosphere. They came under a fresh stimulus, compounded of many elements, each of them sensational and inspiring. It was a new birth of the intellect, a passion for extending the limits of human knowledge. Curiosity became universal. Men were fired by a firm resolve to make the best of life.

In such circumstances, it is by no means surprising that there awoke in the minds of the people an insatiable desire to possess the Scriptures in the English tongue. On their literary merits alone the demand was eminently reasonable. An age that was insisting on the choicest productions of ancient Greece could scarcely be denied the princeliest classic of all.

To William Tyndale the gratitude of the nation is due. He was a private tutor down in Gloucestershire when, moved by the temper of the time, he first conceived his historic design. Impressed by the fact that many famous scholars who came as guests to his master's table knew little or nothing of the sacred writings, he resolved to resign his position and devote himself to the task of translation. "I will never rest," he told his young charges as he took farewell of them, "I will never rest until every ploughboy in England knows the Scriptures better than the greatest scholars know them now!" He translated the New Testament in such a masterly way that, although many subsequent revisions have been made, the amendments have affected only matters of detail.

When, a few years ago, the Revised Edition was published, the revisers generously acknowledged that it is practically impossible to improve, to any considerable extent, on Tyndale's majestic rendition. For more than 20 years he laboured ceaselessly at his prodigious undertaking, counting no expenditure of time or energy too great if, by making the effort, he could enhance the value of his work.

His statue stands in a place of honour on the Victoria Embankment in London, and, as long as the world lasts, he will be regarded as one of the outstanding men of a singularly memorable time.

F W Boreham

Image: William Tyndale

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on October 4, 1952.