The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

II. Tyndale-Centers Emphasis on Pope as Antichrist

WILLIAM TYNDALE (c. 1484-1536), Reformer, first translator of the Bible from Greek into English, and martyr, was born near the border of Wales. Educated at Oxford, where he secretly studied the Scriptures, and at Cambridge, he came under the influence of Erasmus’ classes in Greek, and above all, of his Greek Testament. Tyndale’s conversion through the Scriptures to the doctrines of Wyclif and Luther precipitated numerous disputes with Roman Catholics, in which Tyndale used his Greek Testament effectively. In one of these discussions Tyndale declared that if God would spare his life, ere many years he “would cause a boy that driveth the plow” to know more of the Scripture than did the papal doctor with whom he was disputing. ⁵ PFF2 354.1

This stirred the animosity of the Catholics, and the cry of heresy was raised. How to establish the people in truth without the Bible in their mother tongue, Tyndale could not see. This brought to him the sublime conviction that he must translate the New Testament into English. So he began his task. But he soon declared that not only was there “no room in my lord of London’s palace to translate the New Testament, but also ... there was no place to do it in all England.” ⁶ Tyndale tried to preach in London, where he had come intent on translating, but a storm of persecution arose. PFF2 354.2

Friends urged Tyndale to retire. So he repaired to Ger many, never to see his native land again. Arrived in Hamburg, he unpacked his precious Greek Testament and resumed his task. Later he went on to Cologne, where he began to print his New Testament, the Gospels of Matthew and Mark being sent first to England separately. Interrupted by opposers, he took the sheets and completed the task at Worms and Antwerp. Thou sands of copies were smuggled into England, where they were vigorously combated by the ecclesiastical authorities. PFF2 355.1

In 1526 Cardinal Wolsey had ordered Luther’s books burned. On the occasion St. Paul’s was packed to the doors. During the sermon the great bonfire was kindled outside, and the books burned. But copies of Tyndale’s Testament came into England “thick and fast”; the fifth edition issued from Antwerp in 1529, and the sale was rapid on the Continent. The University of Louvain thirsted for his blood, and there were frequent burnings of Tyndale’s works in London. But in 1534 there was a new and improved edition of his Testament, which was later incorporated in Coverdale’s Bible. PFF2 355.2

In the same year Tyndale, whose writings had previously been denounced by the English Government, was betrayed by an English acquaintance, Henry Philips, an agent of his enemies in England, and was seized at Antwerp by the authorities of Brussels in the name of the emperor. After about seventeen months of protracted imprisonment and trial for heresy he was strangled and burned at the stake near Brussels in Flanders, on October 6, 1536, praying,—“Lord, open the eyes of the King of England.” ⁷ PFF2 355.3

1. STRESSES LITERALISM; REPUDIATES ORIGEN’S ALLEGORISM

In his interpretation of the Scriptures, Tyndale stressed the literal sense, declaring that the blindness of past centuries sprang from the allegorizing of Origen. ⁸ Tyndale believed the first resurrection to be literal, and looked for God’s kingdom to be established by Christ’s second coming, for which lie longed. ⁹ PFF2 355.4

2. CENTERS EMPHASIS ON POPE AS ANTICHRIST

Tyndale himself did not set a sharp pattern of prophetic interpretation that others followed in England. Luther had done that for all Protestantism, influencing not only Germany but Switzerland, England, Scandinavia, and even France. Like all the English Reformers that followed him—Barnes, Joye, Latimer, Ridley, Hooper, Philpot, Bradford, Cranmer, Becon, Bale, Jewel, Sandys, et cetera—Tyndale held that the Roman church was Babylon, the pope the Man of Sin, or Antichrist, seated in the temple of God, i.e., the church, and to be destroyed at the approaching second advent. In these features there is impressive unity and cumulative force among all English Reformers.
The marginal cross references and wood cuts in Tyndale’s illustrated Bible of 1550 were borrowed from Luther’s Bible, which provided the standard Protestant prophetic exposition of the Continent. For instance, the standard Luther woodcut illustration of the ten-horned first beast of Revelation 13 is given, and the marginal references definitely connect this beast-symbol with “Apoc. 17” and “Daniel 7.” And in Apocalypse 17 the cross references are similarly to “Apoc. 13” and “Daniel 7.”
The term Antichrist and its strong equivalent terms_—the Man of Sin, Mystery of Iniquity, Babylon, and Whore of Babylon, applied to the Papacy as the prophetic designation—occur constantly throughout Tyndale’s writings. ¹⁰ One citation will illustrate:
“And [they] have set up that great idol, the whore of Babylon, antichrist of Rome, whom they call pope; and have conspired against all commonwealths, and have made them a several kingdom, wherein it is lawful, unpunished, to work all abomination.” ¹¹ PFF2 356.1

3. APPLIES PROPHESIED NAMES TO PAPACY

The prophetic basis for such epithets is likewise repeatedly stressed. Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 2, is cited again and again—the apostasy coming and destroying faith, and sitting in the temple of God, demanding the obedience and worship of men. ¹² With this was connected the predicted false teachers of 2 Peter 2 and the false prophets foretold in Matthew 24. ¹³ Of the specifications of Paul, in 1 Timothy 4, Tyndale says:
“The pope’s forbidding matrimony, and to eat of meats created of God for man’s use, which is devilish doctrine by Paul’s prophecy, ... are tokens good enough that he is the right antichrist, and his doctrine sprung of the devil.” ¹⁴ PFF2 356.2

4. DECLARES CHRIST AND ANTICHRIST TO BE CONTRARIES

In discussing John’s declaration concerning Antichrist (1 John 2:18), upon connecting it with Paul’s and Peter’s prophecies, and declaring “antichrist and Christ are two contraries,” Tyndale makes this clear statement of the historical development:
“The apostles were clear-eyed, and espied antichrist at once, and put him to flight, and weeded out his doctrine quickly. But when charity waxed cold, and the preachers began to seek themselves, and to admit glory and honour of riches, then antichrist disguised himself after the fashion of a true apostle, and preached Christ wilily, bringing in now this tradition, and now that, to darken the doctrine of Christ; and set up innumerable ceremonies, and sacraments, and imagery, giving them significations at the first; but at the last, the significations laid apart, preached the work as an holy deed, to justify and to put away sin, and to save the soul, that men should put their trust in works, and in whatsoever was unto his glory and profit; and under the name of Christ ministered Christ out of all together, and became head of the congregation himself.
“The bishop of Rome made a law of his own, to rule his church by, and put Christ’s out of the way. All the bishops swear unto the bishop of Rome, and all curates unto the bishops; but all forswear Christ and his doctrine.
“But seeing John took a sign of the last day, that he saw antichrist begin, how nigh ought we to think that it is, which, after eight hundred years reigning in prosperity, see it decay again, and his falsehood to be disclosed, and him to be slain with the spirit of the mouth of Christ.” ¹⁵ PFF2 357.1

Then this conclusion is reached:
“Now though the bishop of Rome and his sects give Christ these names,
yet in that they rob him of the effect, and take the significations of his names unto themselves, and make of him but an hypocrite, as they them selves be, they be the right antichrists, and deny both the Father and Son.” ¹⁶ PFF2 357.2

5. GIVES HISTORICAL TRACEMENT OF PAPAL PRIMACY

In Tyndale’s The Practice of Prelates (1530), the historical development of the ultimate primacy of the bishop of Rome is given in accurate detail-the earlier great bishoprics; then “those decaying, Constantinople and Rome waxed great, and strove who should be greater.” ¹⁷ PFF2 358.1

continued struggle for supremacy is pictured, and “at the last there came an emperor called Phocas,” at the time that the ambitious Boniface III was bishop of Rome, and to whom he gave the coveted title of “chiefest of all bishops.” ¹⁸ Then it was that the pope “exalted his throne above his fellows.” Passing the episodes of Pepin and Charlemagne, which further extended the pope’s power century by century, Tyndale presents the startling conclusion that “the pope, after he had received the kingdom of the world of the devil, and was become the devil’s vicar,” had indeed fallen down to worship him, after Lucifer had showed and offered him all the kingdoms of the world. ¹⁹ PFF2 358.2