Souls at Stake: Tyndale, the Bible and the 21st Century - Melvyn Bragg & Jane Williams (2017)

good evening and a really really warm welcome to you all to st. Paul's this evening it's great to see so many of you here and fantastic to see a queue the likes of which I only normally see on Christmas Eve are going all the way around the Cathedral welcome my name is Mark Oakley and it is my pleasure this evening to introduce our speakers to you in just a moment but for those of you who've not been to one of our events here before let me just quickly explain how it works in a moment Melvyn Bragg and Jane Williams will explore the work of William Tyndale what fired his soul and what difference he has made to our national and our spiritual lives Melvyn we'll look at how William Tyndall's passion to see everyone able to read the Bible in their own words led to his death and at the same time profoundly changed freedom of thought religion and the church forever Tyndall being also one of the co-creators of modern English language Jane will then respond theologically as to the spiritual significance of being able to read the Bible for ourselves and of course we're meeting in this anniversary year of Luther an influence on Tyndall and of course one of the great translators of the Bible into German if you have a question through the evening please write it on the back of your program and then hold it up to be collected at any point we won't think you need the toilet it's okay please don't be bashful just hold it up and then we collect all the questions in until around 7:40 please keep your questions brief and especially all you GPS and clergy out there please keep them legible we're also taking questions via twitter using the hashtag Tyndale if you would like to send us your question through your mobile or tablet just type in your question and include hashtag Tindall and we will find it your questions are then sent up to me here at the laptop and then I will put them as many as I can to Melvin and Jane through the evening and will end at 8 o'clock and there's a bookstore here where you can buy the speakers books and they've very kindly said that they'll sign copies afterwards tonight also you have a chance to see one of the three surviving copies of Tyndall's New Testament which is on display here under the dome there are of course so few copies left because the Bishop of London sent out a prohibition burning thousands of them in a grand gesture here at st. Paul's on the 27th of October 15:26 and before I get on my high horse about that it was a cannon of this Cathedral who was responsible for planning Tyndale's eventual arrest in Antwerp of course in spite of those efforts to hunt down and destroy the translation this copy survived and a very British orderly queue is going to be needed to see it this evening and we'll need to keep moving but I hope you will take the chance to look at this small Testament small enough of course to be easily hidden a testament you might well have been tortured or executed for if you possessed it it is for me poignant and very moving to have it here next to us as we meet here this evening so now it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you our speakers Melvyn Bragg is of course a writer and broadcaster who sits in the Lord's taken on by the BBC as a trainee shortly after completing a degree in modern history at the University of Oxford he was running his own television arts programs while still in his early twenties he's perhaps best known for the programme the south bank show which he fronted for 33 years it had an enormous sweep covering everything you remember from classical opera to contemporary German art to Iggy Pop and Liza Minnelli it changed arts broadcasting and it brought the arts to new audiences all over the country and my guess is I'm not the only person here who's humming the theme tune in my head right now he now of course hosts radio falls in our time managing academics and subjects of huge diversity and difficulty offering us on a Thursday morning in our own homes a perfect encapsulation of the excitement and oddity of academic life without us having to have an essay crisis he is one of the great and most democratic public service broadcasters of our times and I amongst so many I'm grateful for what he's brought to our cultural life Jane Williams is assistant dean and lecturer in systematic theology st. mellitus College where she brings the wonders of thinking about God and loving God with our minds to clergy in training and so we hope via them to all of us a great great vocation she is the author of numerous academic and popular works of theology including perfect freedom and the rather brilliant and concise why did Jesus have to die she is quite simply a wonderful theologian bringing to her academic life and teaching not only a mind but a breadth and depth of human understanding and again a deep cultural interest all this and also at very close up one might even say Gauri inside a knowledge of the weirdness and wonder of the established Church of England amazing we're really delighted that she's come to talk to us about the importance of us having the Bible in our own hands and language and what that means so as Stephen Fry might say both our speakers this evening our veritable autumn plums in the orchard of delight and excellence or perhaps a little bit more like Boris Johnson but it's a great great privilege to have them both here with us and would you please join me now in welcoming both thank you very much for that very lavish introduction and I hope you can hear at the back I hope you can hear at the front but if any of you can't hear would you let me know because it's I'll pitch my voice up or make something happen to the microphone I'm delighted to be in st. Paul's but full of trepidation who wouldn't be preaching or sorry talking here oh yeah right outside the old st. Paul's on this site in 1526 that's not very long ago if you remember Jesus died at 33 that's say three lives of century that's 500 years that's only 15 lifetimes ago in 1526 3,000 copies of the New Testament in the English language were burned over three days they'd been bought for this biblical inferno by the Bishop of London himself the aim was to censor in his own way the translation of the scriptures into English the translation was by William Tyndale whose words would sweep Protestantism and the English language around the globe over the next five hundred years three or four three or four years after the burning of those 3,000 books they began the burning of people who had bought or read or even spoken about this New Testament in English London under Henry Gates became a foul nest of spies and informers and a furnace of repression a citadel of torture in 1517 Luther in Germany had set off a volcanic revolution he challenged the Pope the entire structure of the dominating Roman Catholic Church and thereby the whole system of ruled at that time with the church and state being different sides of the same coin he challenged the monopoly of Latin as the Word of God he wrote his own Bible in German English was one of the only in fact I think the only great European country which did not have its own language spoken in the Bible William Tyndale became the English champion of the movement the Protestant movement this was to change this country root and branch as England's protestant figurehead he worked he became known as the most dangerous man in England even though he lived almost all his adult life away from this country quite simply quite determinedly and unrelentingly Tyndall wanted the Word of God in the language of the people and he succeeded in that but there was more as an under an unintended consequence of his writing his style and his become vocabulary he had a greater influence on the English language this is said by linguistic historians a greater influence on the English language than anyone including Shakespeare his words and phrases known as words and his thoughts and his phrases phrases not only enrich and remodel our literature but enabled in time the emergence of democracy in the anglo-saxon world and advanced the cause of women and philanthropy particularly in the 19th century Tyndall profoundly believed that once the people of England heard the scriptures in their own tongue then the duty to believe the ancient barnacled duty to believe would be superseded by the Liberty to think and in the iron innocence of his faith he was convinced that all then would be well what more could the people want he was a genius of translation just as Shakespeare was a genius of the imagination on those two we are fortunate to her language built he spent the greater part of his early life in exile he was hunted Tyndall by three separate intelligence networks his friends and followers were murdered he himself was finally dungeon for 16 months and burned to death for his vision of what the Bible could bring to this country in its own language he was born in a while Tyndale was born in a wealthy family in the west country the money came from the war trade then our greatest cash crop he went to more than college school in Oxford when he was 12 many transferred to the University and received an MA when he was 21 in that part of the West Country there was there was great doubt about the truth and strength and purity of the Catholic Church let me give you an example about a little example about how this was expressed at about the time there's a report from Gloucestershire under Bishop Hooper it found indulgence sorry negligence and ungodly behavior of the monasteries of Gloucestershire in hospitable non-resident inefficient jungle drunken and evil living was found in every Deanery furthermore it wouldn't underage alone it was recorded that nine clergy did not know how many Commandments there were 33 did not know where they appeared in the Bible 168 could not is a small town wooden underage isn't it 168 could not repeat them virgin I did not know where a lot where the Lord's Prayer appeared in the Bible 34 didn't know the author I want to able unable to recite it there was much work to be done but people had to hold their counsel we had the great sacred text the 301 381 translation by Jerome of the Bible into Latin became known as the Boggart which was very a sacred text not especially in this country at the time not to be interfered with one syllable he went to school when he went to school in Oxford the work was routine toughen him up for hard work it started at 6:00 a.m. and went on the ledge in the afternoon he complained I was far too much Latin far too much of the classics although he became brilliant in Cicero and Auburn and Virgil and ESOP in the end he knew eight languages remastered eight languages but he wanted there to be more study of the scriptures for Tyndall it was always the scriptures as a boy he'd come across Athelstan one of the Kings English kings in the United century one of the Saxon Kings who set out to translate some of the Bible in English and as a boy he'd been inspired by it and it's remarkable how many people end up with the word genius attached to them with some cause started when they were very young I said who wouldn't wait to get going mutant with his prism at the fair the Bronte is writing their stories in those little books and it was Tyndall's passion for Athelstan this king who wanted to translate the bible and so did he in oxford got a good education then he went to cambridge and encountered the influence of the great rotterdam scholar erasmus the humanists who believed in translating the Bible into English as it was in most of the other European tongues but more importantly more importantly he said that to truly understand the meaning of the Gospels you did not use the baggage you did not use the Latin you had to go back to the Greek in which he was originally written you had if you went back to the original Greek you're in touch with the Syriac on which self and you had the heart of the matter this for Tyndall was completely a Europe a Eureka moment and it changed his life and instantly he set himself to learn Greek which he mastered he as I said he ended up learning many languages one was Greek very important to him in other words to be Hebrew but the major influence in the time as has been mentioned was Luther whose was about volcanic influence very difficult to find a comparison even in Trotsky and Stalin very difficult those 99 theses pinned to the church draw changed church and state in Europe forever more a lasting change Luther set of revolutions and mass uprisings across let's call it Europe which terrified the rulers not least Henry the eighth's and his Chancellor Cardinal Worsley woolsley bought Luther's books and burnt them again outside there in the pine shoe tradition of censorship which is to burn your opposition tingle translated Greek into English and so he was in danger this was against the law if court he would have been at the barely stripped of his priesthood he would perhaps have been tortured very quite likely and even worse so he was in danger from that he was also in danger because he was known as a fiery young preacher we miss that out sometimes we have the sentences that he was a man of unspotted character that he was a very gentle man and that all seems to be true but he went out there in the open air as the Celtic monks had done the John Ball had done and the messages as the Methodists related to do an under what they saw is it directly a direct guide to heaven they preached to the people and he preached down in the West Country and it was a West Country where he went to work after Cambridge to be a tutor to give me some some time and some privacy and some secrecy probably to get on with translating the Bible into Greek there are many incidents reported there one stands out one I think is seminal and it's well recorded a dinner at a dinner given by station one night there are many bishops and Divine's and so on there and they were fed up with Tyndall there was his 23 year old young boy who contradicted all that arguments who kept opening the Bible and saying prove it prove it prove it and Nan knew the scriptures as well as he did so young master Tyndall became wearisome that was the phrase and one evening one of the bishops said we're I to just have to decide between the laws of the Pope and the laws of God I would choose the laws of the Pope and Tyndall went incandescent it is reported and then he retorted ere long I will teach a plough boy to know the Scriptures better than me and that I see is his guiding stare the choice of the plough boy was brilliant first of all the connection we have put the Apostles working on the land people who just did the ordinary work of life but secondly and most vitally the plough boy was illiterate and Tyndall from the beginning wrote the Bible to be read aloud so that everyone could have access to it he cultivated in mono syllables he used local phrases to set the New Testament free from the polysyllabic authoritarian monopoly of Latin but you can also open it up to rhythms which became deeply stratified in English prose and in English poetry it was just the smallest touch seeing the crowd he went up in there he went up went to a mountain seeing the crowd he went up onto the mountain and when he was set his disciples came unto him and he opened his mouth and taught them saying blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven thus began arguably I think the greatest radical oration in Western history he also wrote in his prose seeking out the mono syllables seeking from common speech in such what became a modern style founded on this basic English then he became one of the greatest cultural artifacts of our history but his reputation was tainted after that remark at the dinner he was hauled into court in the West Country he was quoted to quote him treated worse than a dog only his vast knowledge of the scriptures got him off but he was a marked man he left the West Country came to London full of opportunities for clergy his reputation as a translator already known his reputation as a Greek scholar already known he couldn't get a job anywhere Bishop Tunstall Bishop of London was a good decent enough man you wouldn't give him any occupation whatsoever turn him away and turn him away Tyndall preached in various places looked around but it was hopeless in you it was hopeless and he was completing his Greek he was completing his translation and what was he to do with it it could not get printed in this city but overseas on Europe there at least 70 printing presses and so he risked everything he must have got some money from his family he was steadily in small ways supported him he sailed down the Thames accompanied by nothing but his uncomfortable mind and went to Germany looking for a printer but what would be his New Testament and at the same time he rarefied his own thoughts what you bury like those of Luther except he did he push them a little further quite simply if it was not in the Bible it was not Christian the Pope was not in the Bible pilgrimage is not in the Bible penitence was not in the Bible purgatory is not in the Bible on and only when a nasty wealthy church was not in the Bible and so they had to be they had to be ignored they had to be done away with that was not what Jesus was preaching and the only thing that mattered was to get the preaching of Jesus properly translated because the only real thing that mattered was to save souls was to save the souls of people and in that sense they had to understand what what was in what was in before them once their cell was saved their mission on earth was completed and he did this by the translation from the Greek but also in subtle yet radical ways quite brilliantly quiet radical ways for instance in from the Latin Vulgate the word translates butchered charge translated this church in Greek ecclesia Tindall translated as congregation not a church not a place not a building block in an edifice which stretches back to Rome a congregation a number of people assembled together freely to discuss with one another that set his opponents fury to fury and another small example there's a translation word into priest he didn't want that he took the greek word and he translated it into elder there was only one priest there was only one intermediary between those seeking grace and God and that was Jesus Christ priests were redundant you can imagine all that was redundant he was pulling down the wealthiest establishment in the whole of Europe by far the most dug in the most interconnected with armies and the license of always being pulled down in the interests of getting at the world and he mustn't be thought of as a quiet man who buried himself in a printing person got on with doing the translation there was that aspect but there's also something utterly fearless about him that's just not words it's proved again and again when the first English translation was being done in Cologne there was something there's an Englishman making a book of his own in Cologne translating a printing a book of his own he squealed to the local authorities who squealed to Henry the 8th who sent his intelligence back and troops went in to smash the press where Tyndall was printing his New Testament symbol 10 got wind of it somehow or other out which of the people who came in - through the town took enough with him to start again got onto a boat on the Rhine and sailed away from Cologne after Wittenberg after work I took two worms and again at once - he was shipwrecked he lost everything in the shipwreck came back and started again he was a bold and fearless man he would do anything to pull fill what he saw his mission so the books came in 15 25 26 to London they were sent over many books had come from the Netherlands it was not a new thing and at first they were just books and then the first thousand came across without much fuss then a few days later people realized what had hit them Tyndall was the English Luther Tyndall was the enemy among them the fact that he was over the sea made him even more and more and more of a monster Tyndall was the man they had to get and they got him in their usual way first of all they burnt the books they burnt the 3,000 books then they burned other books then they arrested anybody who knew Tyndall who'd been a colony rechannel who admitted to reading Jindal who made a reference to Tyndall that slight was enough that's light enough for them to be arrested and at least tortured and put in the tower and so on public humiliations threats and eventually of course after you burned the books you burned the people and the smell of burning flesh began to pollute the skies city may really AIDS I declared I had been made the defender of the face and he wanted to prove himself the most determined the Catholic defenders across Europe as determined as the Pope and even though Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn wanted to intervene for Tyndall and even though Jindal gave them a chance by a book called on the obedience of Kings he was through that he was through the arguments and put in more subtle arguments it didn't have a chance Henry the eighth's was driving it forward and then what happened in this city and again it's not all that long ago what happened in this city which we like to think happened in other places what happened here was a sort of mass hysteria Charles lamb later called it a malice he'd gripped the city to give an example that might surprise you most unexpectedly one of the leaders for a part of the time was Sir Thomas later st. Thomas More the king ordered him to discredit and destroy Tyndall and he set out to do so his views on Tyndall when nothing sure he'd written utopia this is about the apocalypse this is what he wrote if tendo's Testament be taken up then shall force heresies be preached then shall the sacrament be set at naught then shall Almighty God be displeased then shall he withdraw his grace and let all run to ruin then will rise up rifling and robbery murder and mischief and plain insurrection then all laws be laughed to scorn Tyndall replied to him in a letter exchange of seven hundred and fifty thousand words and on Thomas More signs the level of Scot ology is unbelievable not to be spoken here in this building or frankly anywhere else so that was that was most point of view if gendell's views were taken on board there'll be Armageddon beside the terms it's quite said that end by Fox and in his Chelsea Gardens Thomas More had a tree called the tree of truth to which he lashed people put people who he thought had something to do with Protestantism and him whip them took them to the took them to the tower saw them tortured and lamed and then followed them to smithfield to see them burnt didn't reply to almost charges his essays now took that part of his preaching but there's nothing much he could do he was over there if he came back who'd have been instantly burnt but over there there was still work to do and he started to learn Hebrew which he did learnt in him on his own so that he could translate the Old Testament again from the Hebrew and he said it from a ragtag and bobtail translating translation of the Latin he rejoiced in the compatibility between the Hebrew and Old English he found that Hebrew helped him far more than Latin had ever done he found words and forms of words which slotted straight into Old English into Germanic English 5th century English which other base still the basis of our language and those two plus his determination to bring in commonplace words I think and what gave his later work such power and such crucial ability and such lasting us they were still trying to catch him he wandered around the street he stayed in the war house connections with the wall 5,000 strong wall house they were big it's our biggest industry over there he was hidden in and out of the wall house there was no picture of him nobody knew he looked like he was just another scholar with a long black gown and to a purse full of them and how did you catch him well they didn't he was clever he slipped he changed lodgings it this that and the other diplomatic was sent a man called Stephen borne a very sympathetic man who sought out and found connections with Jindal and persuaded them that he had come from Henry the eighth now Jindal believed in Kings Kings are in the Bible his essay on the disobedience on the obedience of Kings Henry they said this is a book that all Kings should read if he found out where Jindal was and they met in the woods when I went to filmed her we met in this in the similar Ward's as it were nearby and told him the King wanted him back and Tyndall knew what would that would mean he would mean that he was be tried found guilty and murdered so he played his time but he was very and from the they worth reading those letters are born they're brilliantly written a brilliant diplomatic letters and they were trained in memory those people memory was a big muscle that they were brought brought up with and Tyndall's Failte his genuine loss is sorrow and missing his country and his friends and not hearing his language enough but he went by and then born came back again and with an offer from the king you could come back he would put him on the council the king said wildly henry the eyes he just had to get him back there was somebody who wrote a blank Venetian ambassador said the King of England doth want Tyndall in his country before he writes any more harmful material harmful pamphlets anything more harmful about him they were desperate to get him Tyndall glide in a way back into the wards wend into an to her by another gate and was not found the third time born came to him he came to him with an extraordinary letter which is a rejection letter except for 138 word PostScript written by Thomas Cromwell who contradicted everything that Henry the Eighth had said and said please come we want you back I mean the king the king will forgive you he will take you on he believes in you now he is now as the King is beginning to be a Protestant and Tyndall then said it's better to read it but Tyndall said yes he would come back and born was couldn't believe it and then Tyndall said but there's one thing there has to be a translation of the Bible into English he needn't be mine I mean beyond age there's got to be some translation of the Bible into the English language before I come back then I will come back Vaughan took that message back to the court and Tyndall never heard from him again he was finally betrayed he was betrayed by her Nana Oxford manis very much an Oxford story and some of it does Oxford not much credit at all this was a younger man Henry Phillips who came from the West Country like Tyndall who was very papist very aunty Protestant a swindler he cheated his own father again utterly dissolute dreadful person who saw that you could make a fortune which he did if he were the man who got them to Tyndale and he worked through the court of the Holy Roman Emperor and he got the procurer General on his side there was a big bounty on Tyndall's head and a big bounty of money for the procuring Journal if he found him Phillips ingratiated himself somehow got into the wall house and he he pointed he was the Judas I don't really like to speak about Phillips he says disgusting dreadful trivial second-rate person just think about what happened if Tinsley lived you've got to the Psalms did it translate to the sons just think what that would it be anyway the there was a tunnel outside the wall house Phillips's tall Tyndale was short Philip sent Tindall ahead of him I've been a nut but it's in the end of him and as they came out Phillips and this is the word fingered Tindall maybe that's where they would came from the Swiss Guards came out and took him and one of them said we pitted him in his simplicity they took him to a medieval castle which had a deep dungeon billboard near Brussels and he was there for the last 16 months of his life in 1536 he was degraded that is to say he's his priests robes were taken off the chalice was given to him and taken away from him he was no longer a priest and then a few days later he was taken to the stake but before then he sent a letter to the men who imprisoned him I need some marvelous letter I'm only time to say a few words from it he was obviously in rags nikoline rags he hadn't no hat he was cold and dodging three or four fun it is Northern Europe in winter he wanted a seraph you could have a candle from his own possessions kind of have a canoe geek send me another shirt and so on and then this is how I ended it but first of all I beg and beseech your clemency this is a man is writing to that he will kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible Hebrew grammar and Hebrew dictionary so that I may pass the time in study in return may you obtain what you most desire so only that you'd be the salvation of your soul there was no reply he's taken out the crowds were there he was by that time but it had been for a while then enormous celebrity who was this man this Tindall this wigwam was built loose gunpowder was thrown on it to make it burn faster he's put on supposedly strangled just before he was burned and his last words were Lord open the king of England's eyes he said how can the King be so unkind as to stop his people reading the work of God before Kendall's death Henry had become a Protestant before Tyndall's death Henry had started publishing asked for books in the English Bible in the English language he never asked indle he would never listen to Tyndall half Tyndall's name spoken again Tyndall published his work anonymously and so his existence Coverdale and in Matthew 7 Paul's name Matthew others copied plagiarized ripped off him for Bible after Bible after Bible in the 16th century right up to st. James Bible and people said when he came in the 19th century Kendall who is this Tyndall nobody knew who he was he'd been erupted out of history until some scholars got to work and looked at it and his most important contribution vital contribution I think for all sorts of if you're a Protestant absolutely vital if you're interested in a language vital if you're interested in democracy because vital the most important thing was in the King James Bible his contribution is unbelievable in the New Testament of the King James Bible supposedly put together by these fifty scholars chosen by James oh when 93% is by William Tyndale and in the first five books of the Old Testament the Pentateuch which he just had time to do before he was before he was captured and there over 85% we now know that through the century through others he work influence for instance Shakespeare and from Shakespeare to done and and writer it influenced literature right up to turn a Morrison these day influenced Shakespeare al Rao says he quotes from 42 books in in Tyndall Shakespeare does here's a couple of specific instances are not two sparrows sold for a farthing and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your father that's in Matthew in Hamlet there is a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow have you been now which is not to come if you've been not to come it will be now and yes fun with Midsummer Night's Dream in Corinthians I have not seen nor ear heard neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love him and in a midsummer night's dream the I am man hath not heard the ear of man hath not seen man's hand is not able to taste he's done to conceive nor his heart to report what my dream was and on it goes I think it's worthwhile ending with a few of his words there are hundreds of them and I bet I'm not in a church I can't bet the cathedral can't bet at all but I would guess today most of you abused or thought of some even of this small selection words invented for the English language were taken from the country are taken from the community by Tyndall cast the first stone the salt of the earth fight the good fight mono syllable mono syllable mauna sol sick unto death brokenhearted clear-eyed the powers-that-be the fat of the land let there be light and on we go and I know there's a Bible here a Tyndale Bible here but it's interesting that there there's only one totally complete Bible anywhere and I went to see it it's in Stuttgart in the Bible in a Bible cask in Stuttgart which is enormous biomas Bibles Bibles Bibles and they brought it to me and he's not big and there was a sort of sense of disappointment you mean it's only that big and it's not plain and then you realize that once again the quiet genius is struck because that doesn't mean can be slipped into any pocket hidden in the folds of any clothes passed from person to person doesn't have to be publicly put on a pedestal or whatever it is or election it can go the rounds through to the people through the people and from there through everything that accrue to our language one of the words he invented was beautiful and he's a beautiful thing I think here in st. Pauls so near the site where a powerful and cruel state tried to rub out his language our language which he heightened and deepened and to which he'd given such a long life and as such a fruitful life but above all what mattered to him was that he found words so that everyone could equally share truly in the faith and that's what we're celebrating this great modest transforming genius who gave those words to us to everyone and sacrifice his own life for it so that we could hear and read in our own tongue the words that he truly believed came from God thank you thank you very much from the country Thank You Melvin it's a fascinating story isn't it and there's something incredibly powerful about the fact that one of those Bibles is sitting in the corner can almost feel the reverberations coming from it the history that it's holding I want just very briefly to pick up on two areas and reflect on them the first obviously is the Bible and the second is this question of dying for your faith the Bible is part of what stops us from making God in our own image the Bible faces us with the reality that we're part of something much bigger than our individual story also we get that sense when we're reading the Bible that is not exactly our own idea how do we get this particular collection of books rather than the many other books that were around during the process in which the Bible comes into a consolidated Canon if you read the Hebrew Scriptures you know that it speaks they speak of other collections of prophecies and histories that are now lost to us and in the first couple of Christian centuries there were other sources that were write widely read but for some reason don't make it into what we think of as the Bible one of the major reformed theologians of the last century speaks of the Bible having imposed itself on us not exactly our choice but imposed on us and I think the theology of this is that importantly we do not pick and choose what will be constitutive of our faith instead our faith constitutes us making us part of this much bigger narrative the one that starts with the creation of the world and ends with its fulfillment Genesis to Revelation and in the meantime draws us into the company of people from all times and all places I can't help noticing that I could be describing either the church or the Bible in sentence and I want to say something about how those two interact these two great gifts that keep us truthful one of the things that comes so powerfully out of Melvin's telling of Tyndale's story is that Tyndale and all other translators of the Bible show us something of the sheer attention and love called out by faith now that I think you mentioned that we don't even know how to endure learnt Hebrew just seems to have taught it himself Hebrew as he sort of roll around Europe with never a penny to rub together but somehow learnt enough Hebrew to start translating the Old Testament that kind of love and attention mean that it matters that the words are right but I think it also shows us something of the Christian theology of human and divine interaction the Bible is gift it comes to us but it's also ours to work at for example it can be translated that's the whole story that we're looking at it can be translated into all the different languages in the world without fear of losing its reality because it's a witness to the reality of God rather than being that reality itself if you go into a theological library there are shelves and shelves and shelves of commentaries if you go to any Christian Church anywhere around the world on any Sunday there will be sermons after sermons after sermons probably with an element of repetition in some of them dare we say but also this element of constant newness as an expository amazed that you can open the same text week after week and find something that I were pretty sure words wasn't there last time you looked there's something new that comes out as each person brings something of themselves to the task of reading and interpreting the Bible and said the Bible story gets richer and richer and richer as more and more people are come come to be part of that story we become part of the story that may it's like a kind of regular feeding of the 5,000 where one passage of Scripture can be taken and blessed and feed hearts and minds over and over but it does have obvious dangers and they were the kind of dangers that worried some of Tyndale's opponents notably Thomas Moore as Melvin's been describing to us this gift of Scripture put into every person's hands is a glorious gift but it is dangerous it enables each person to interact and begin to form their own faith it's an unusual attitude to Authority and begins definitely to change the understanding of how Authority operates in church and in state but I'm not entirely sure that that's quite what Tyndale and other early translators intended and Tyndale as Melvin has highlighted for us puts an enormous amount of emphasis on the congregation he trusts the authority of the congregation and Tyndale and those early translators who worked so hard to get the Bible into all of our hands probably couldn't imagine the way that we use it now when we sit on our own reading the bits that we like best and deciding for ourselves what it all means remember in Ted Dale's day very few people could read fluently printing was it when it was in its infancy and haven't yet spawned the literate world that is part of the legacy of bible translating and printing bible and printing grow a reading world so Tyndale may well have been imagining and faithful people reading scripture but he was almost certainly envisaging them doing that together God's people and God's book in connection not the plowboy out in the field on his own but the authority of the congregation certainly Cranmer the Great Architect of English Christianity assumes that most people would gain access to the life-giving word through liturgy through hearing it read and expounded in the congregation the congregation of the faithful it's easy to romanticize the Bible as the great tool in the hands of the laity freeing them from dependence on the clergy to mediate their relationship with God I certainly as a layperson myself have found that an important part of my faith to be able to access scripture directly even when you can't join with the congregation you can open your Bible and be part of the company of the faithful but I think that's part of the point that the Bible like the church pulls you into this company of people that are not your own choice not necessarily your own mindset the Bible refuses to allow faith to become a club or an individual pastime perhaps those of us who are regular Bible users need to ensure that we use it responsibly honoring those like Tyndale who sacrificed so much to put it into our hands and that sacrifice is the other thing that I want very briefly to touch on was it worth it are there things worth dying for is being prepared to die for something on a kind of continuous line that might end in being prepared to kill for something it's hard to overestimate the impact of having the Bible in our own language but history suggests that it would have happened even if Tyndale had given up when it got dangerous but the problem is that Tyndale lived that side of history not this he had no way of knowing when he started that others would pick up his work and that even as he went to his death for his endeavors the Bible in English was becoming acceptable he could hardly have imagined our world where the Bible is so readily available in every language and format that mostly we take no notice of it at all there surely must be things of such value to us and to our world that we can't afford to leave it to chance and hope that all will be well if we don't pay too higher price ourselves Tyndale believed and I want to say rightly that the Bible is too important to be in the hands of only a few and he was prepared to die for that truth would he have killed others to impose it I don't think he would Melvin will know better having spent so much longer in Tyndale's company I think that dying for what you believe and killing for what you believe are not much of a muchness and I think that on the basis of the of the way of Jesus Christ Christians have sadly and painfully often not made the connection with the fact that Jews that Jesus chose to die but did not choose to impose his will by force we all know the sorry history of Christian tyranny but there is also that profound saying the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church and that's a statement of Christology it's a statement about Jesus Christ the truth revealed whereas the statement might is right is not Christology that's not about Jesus Christ God revealed there must be some things worth dying for some things so constitutive of what we are and what we long for the world to be that if we forswear them we force we're all that makes life worth living Tyndale's belief that we all need to be able to access the bible made Tyndale who he was without that belief there is no Tyndale we would not be telling his story hundreds of years later so i suppose another part of Tyndale's challenge to is what would we die for and then the most basic challenge this book that he died for does it matter enough I'll let you ask those questions and hope that mark will answer [Applause] so now's your chance if you haven't already in you're bursting with a question please do hold it up and it will get collected and then it will pop up in front of me and I hope that I'll be able to get through quite a lot of your questions thank you to those of you who've started already because there are quite a few questions here I just want to to start with one of them which I think's a nice way to launch I was struck at the end when when you were talking about his death because accounts Melvyn don't they they say that although they strangled Tyndale before they burned him actually they didn't complete the job and he sort of came to as the flames got near but that actually he remained completely silent through the actual death is slightly haunting that somebody who'd spent his whole life focused around words and language and Proclamation actually when it came to suffering for them stopped them all the question here is Tyndale's translation of the Bible you said replaced the duty to believe with the liberty to think have we forgotten this asks the questioner would you like to start training on them it's a very interesting question I mean I would like to answer no I don't think we have forgotten that and I think that what I'm suggesting this great endeavor of reading the Bible together in the congregation is part of helping us go on thinking thinking is a very much a corporate exercise we need to do it together I mean sometimes those somebody like Brian McLaren would say that too often at the moment you either have what he calls ignorant on fire or intelligence on ice and actually you're looking for people who are passionate about the commitment but not to about the questioning and that Liberty to think sometimes is seen as an enemy within the church I mean it's very uncomfortable clearly and I think it's obviously most people who run churches would prefer people just to do as they were told I imagine it does make life so much simpler but the Liberty to think is also the Liberty to pray the Liberty to engage the Liberty to serve and it's the Liberty to form ourselves as increasingly christ-like people in company I don't think there's any getting around that Liberty to think I think as I'm sure Melvin we want to come on you know this but I mean I think there is always a strand in any institutional setting not just in faith settings of people who would rather be told what to do than have to take responsibility and think for themselves and we see that in Christianity but as I say we see it in politics we see it all over the place and so maybe Tyndall is one of the great examples of making us realize that if we don't take responsibility for our world we can't complain when it's not the way we want it the duty to believe in the Liberty to think that's quite please you that really I think that was our duty to believe and there is in most religions for most of the time your duty is to believe what we are told by those in charge and that still goes on throughout the world as we all know one of the things that the Reformation did in Europe and through Tyndall in this country was to basically put that to one side and say it was more important to understand and in that understanding be able to make up your own mind and obviously Tyndall thought that this would mean that your own mind would be made up to worship God James quite right you've let the genie out of the bottle and I want the genie to be let out of the bottle and there's mostly good come from it I can't think of much bad that's come for me because from the time of Tyndall's translation in this country and loose in Germany and so on particularly in this country the Bible turned into a political book people saw in the Bible gave them examples of I can do that because it has been done I can rebel here because it has been done I can think these thoughts because they're in the Bible it was a huge enabling document for people to change the way they lived to think in terms of being be blessed other poor instead of blessing other rich it was in terms of thinking in the curbs of congregations democracy rather than living in or in an autocracy and so I think it was a major major change and so sure I measure was the Roman Catholic Church soon contant onto it with the Counter Reformation and they accepted it too because the Protestants raced ahead so far in so many ways so I do think it's a distinction and I think I think it's useful one of course other people can think differently that's that's fine and they may be right there but I don't think so we see around the world now where the duty to believe is taken people the absolute duty to believe if you do not believe you will be destroyed if you do not believe you will be exiled from this state you will be debilitated and when we have a Liberty well of course it comes with a thousand confusions that those confusions can be fruitful as we've seen can breed all sorts of interesting and extensions to to the mind and thought can liberate us it is a Liberty and I think the Bible was not in his first stages it was a very great liberating book for many people and it was for that reason that he was welcomed and as for not being the Bible not being not really being for the plowboy people it's reported that when the book came people would stay a church and read the Bible to scores and hundreds people they would read it aloud they would do exactly what Tyndall intended them to do read it aloud to the people who could not read for themselves and soon in this country was full of people who knew up chunks of the Bible by heart although they couldn't read or would read only only battle only poorly as it were so it was I I am we haven't explored well because he's in time it's just a chance of the power of that you could call it a document you could call it a book of faith which it is it's these things and many others but I do think the distinction is worth making that people were released were released from the bondage of having to believe or else the or else took on a life of its own and of course that would believe of course can be used in two ways and the Christian community you can believe that no I believe that God exists or you can I believe in God like I trust in God like I I believe in my GP I think it had been different from the GP and you well but that sense that it's not about I believe that X but I trust in and over the centuries that word belief has been used in various different ways yes but I think that the Liberty to think is the Liberty to think for yourself is it liberty to think against other people's thoughts yeah that's the the Liberty to argue the Liberty to say was what did you just run of course that's too easy was Judas trying to argue about things Henry they said some things which in his rage were true one of the reasons he didn't want the Bible translated in English he said every pot boy in the country will come to know it as well as us well he was right they did and that worried him and and of course Tyndale actually wrote I've been reading as you can imagine in preparation that I just to back you up here the spiritual he wrote never leave Earth searching till we come at the bottom the pit the quick the marrow and very cause why and judgeth all things the sin a sort of generous exploration into into everything but I think the temptation is to turn this into a story about individual heroic self-discovery mm-hmm and I don't think that's what Tyndale and the Reformers thought I don't think they thought that everybody was going to set out and make up their own faith I think they thought this the Bible is a richer way of working out how to think and what to believe and that's that lovely picture that you just painted there Melvin of people in their hundreds coming to hear the Bible read aloud they came together to hear it read aloud they probably talked about it they didn't go away and think okay that means I can make up my mind about anything and I think that that's part of the issue is it's turned into a different kind of story about the individual which is not where it started that doesn't mean of course where it starts and has to have to be where it ends but I just like to explore where it started so you think it's a bit of a sort of post enlightenment take on tinder a bit that's my suspicion yes let's get on with another question talking about being coerced into belief there's a lot of questions coming in about Sir Thomas More because it's accurate if you read your Peter Ackroyd if you go to see a man for all seasons you might have a rather strong view in favor of Thomas More but there are questions here should history review and should history's judgment on Sir Thomas More change in his response to Tyndale shouldn't Hindle be made the saint and not more says somebody tell me about your your reading of more in all this well Thomas Moore was on the most extraordinary man of his age he wrote utopia in 1516 which was that's called a doer European success and drew him to the attention of great scholars like Erasmus of Rotterdam and he became part of that enchanted pre-enlightenment enlightenment circle he was a brilliant man a very ambitious man and he went up he went up the ladder and he seems proved without much contested argument that when he took over the job through her mission that Henry the fifth gave him to eradicate Tyndall he had a sort of I mean to be kind he went mad or he saw his true in a reasonable way which led him to do the most extraordinary malicious Charles longsword and terrible things now he would have thought we have to say that look he's got this man who's read Tyndall's books who is therefore a Protestant who is therefore against the king who is therefore against the state who will therefore bring down the state and therefore it's my duty to get the truth out of him and when I get the truth out of him I can sentence him to death in the tower because we here will have spoken the truth you can repent his sins and I'll have saved his soul in a way there's that form of argument the other is that it was a massive massive deterrent the show trials the burnings the laymen in the tower with torture this was a massive return and this this descendant eschatology I think that everybody in this Cathedral would be astounded if I were to read four sentences another Gator no I'm not but it's extraordinary that the way that that he used that language to carry to carry the reasons to carry his thought what did he need it for it was a beautiful linguist what did he want to do that for I thought he wanted to do it because he's in the kind of frenzy and then he's tormented because of course he held to his principles at the end and it's curious that he and Tyndall were executed as it were quite near in time to each other he's a complicated man but I think this the exploration of Jindal has seen him as a far less attractive man than most of us had seen him up to that day similarly because what his reaction to Jindal simply not been taken into account at all and now it has to be James are you the president I probably was until reading Wolf Hall which is where the UM the anti Thomas More movement sort of began for me I certainly grew up with this with the what we've all been told all through history this wonderfully witty wise charming intelligent man with a lovely father and he the family life his daughters obviously idolized him and and so trying to sort of blank out as it were that killing for the faith which I as a theologian want to say is never acceptable it's never going to serve the purpose of a of a God who chooses when he becomes human to die on the cross I don't see how you can serve the purposes of that God by killing people for faith and and and there you see the real problem of that Moore had of putting together a certain kind of authority that needed to be defended in that kind of way with his faith and that's a very modern perspective to be able to bring what it felt like to be more with all that wisdom and charm and and yet certainty that you do need to kill heresy I know it's hard to imagine isn't it there's about three questions that have come in that are in the same area and they're quite personal questions they're wanting to know really why you got interested in this in this man and what effect he's had on your own lives I mean why should we gather here and and remember him but also a little bit closer to home what got you first drawn to this you know what was the magnet well I realized when the anniversary worthy and the 1611 Bible can you decide 2011 I didn't realize that there be either very few books or they'll be dismissive of the Bible and although I distance myself from a very strong Christian upbringing I still have great sympathies with the great deal of it the what I think the things that matter to it are strong with me the things that I don't understand or comment credit the resignation the resurrection miracles not there just have to be to one side and I thought that this would be very unfair and thought I wonder if I could track through the impact that the Bible had had on life around the world I read the book about the book to change the world what she did and I found more and more and more ways in which to change the world change society's changed education change this change that the democracy and it really did not time to go into it but it was an astonishing an astonishing impact it had more impact in any war astonishing impact so I'd therefore get interested in the Bible and I therefore but interested in kindling which I didn't realize their general hood contributed so much to the Bible and then I got fascinated by Tyndall and he was I did a history of the English language and he was in that and semesters in that then I did a film with him with a very good television producer called Anna Cox we did a film of Tyndall and went in the places he'd been to in other countries and that was exciting and then it was s vck who asked me to do one of these brief lives I wanted to write about Tyndall but there was a magnificent book my onion which um I couldn't match and I didn't have the intellectual resources or oh well any power to do it but twenty-five to thirty thousand words I thought I could manage and that's why I very much wanted to do it and the more I studied him because writing a short books just his hard work is right there long book I tell you I just there was so much in him that was fine on the cemetery that was plaited he wasn't just a contract holy person nothing wrong with being a contract holy person but he was this dynamic who gon went from printer to printer he was determined to do things she changed things he took risks he he knew that his friends were being burnt and that and he was being he wanted to come back and help them but they were telling him don't because you'll just be burned you'll be no help the better president that but that's what was going on I became fascinated by him then gradually when people began to say look this man had greater influence on the language and Shakespeare and we can prove it so they went on from there and I thought that we have been we have been in as it were in our mythology of our island we've missed this man who might well be the greatest man person man in our in our story so I was fascinated for historical reasons for tribute to my pastor religious reasons for reasons of language and reasons of the power of the book the power of thought and the cleverness of radicalism inside inside the camouflage of something else but use of the word ecclesia to mean congregation and not Church was dynamic and they didn't like it they didn't like the fact that they've got Church back as soon as they could they didn't like it because they knew and he meant I mean all this wasn't didn't matter very much what mattered was the individual direct relationship with God justification through faith and faith alone so I we became increasingly fascinated with him for those reasons and will continue to be so I did the best I could in with this book and Jane can I ask you about your response as a person of faith what how important he's been and what draws you to him I suspect I'm one of the people that Melvin has been converting and I didn't know much about Tyndale I knew him as part of the history of translation of scripture I grew up in a missionary family and and so it's part of my DNA that the the Bible in all languages is part of how faith grows all over the world I'm a passionate lover of the Bible I find it just endlessly draws me into something that reminds me I'm not the center of the universe and that's not a bad thing but Tyndale himself I mean it's a fascinating fascinating story which I did not know enough about so thank you relevant he was a bit of a sort of 16th century James Bond in many ways I mean he he was very good at hiding we still don't know where he was for a number of occasions brilliant actually we don't know what it looked like yeah now there are small questions here and thank you for they're all coming in quite a gaggle of questions about what we can apply from our knowledge of Tyndale to the present church and to the and if we focus that bunch of questions around the whole idea here of he talked about the Word of God this was this was important this was passionate for him because it was the Word of God but of course all these centuries later for many people talk of the Bible or the Word of God let's take more of the Orkney poet who says you know for him God is just three angry letters in a little black book how some people are asking how can we almost D familiarize people and refresh a new understanding of what word of God might mean today because frankly this Bible has been abused as well as loved and its words have been weaponized as well as proclaimed in in charity so how can we call people back to the Word of God today except for me I think it is so kind thank you um answers please on a postcard anybody else I I want to start with the point that I made earlier which is that the Word of God is Jesus Jesus Christ the son that is the words that God speaks and and then the word of God the Bible bears witness to that ongoing presence and action of God in our world and so any divorce of the Bible from the lived word Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit who's constantly this and he divorced between what we read and how we live suggests we're not reading carefully and that's again one of the things that is so clear in Tyndale he expected it to be important enough to shape his whole life it's not just something that he did in his study and that he thought okay well it's getting a bit dangerous I'm gonna put it away it was so important that he had to live it and I think that bring that back into connection that the Bible is a it's a book that draws us into a way of living in the world as though God were real as though God were here as though we are going to be held to account for what we do to each other into our world I think that might be a good tribute to Tyndale and as a sympathetic observer to the church what lessons if any would you say the current situation could learn from him well there's an immense amount in Tyndall which is quite wonderful about the way we should behave what we should aspire to about wisdom about life and thoughtfulness and there's an overall idea inside the Sermon on the man which is not replicated anywhere really so all that is fine I think the great difficulty that a lot of people meet is connecting this with somebody or something called God it's that connection and that's very some people do it and want to miss them good but some people can't or won't and for them that's the problem the problem isn't what's in the book the problem is that the book comes from some personal source in which they to which they can't give authority or credibility hmm and can I just ask then because I'm just trying to get for as many of these as I can can I just ask Jane the problem of here's the Bible it's in our hands it's in my language it's now you know the the pot boy or the plow boy has got it but then you know that's that's only the beginning of the problem isn't it because you know if you study scriptures you know that there's you need to understand quite a lot of though of the background in order to understand what's in front of you and you know a lot of people would say that a text without context can easily become a pretext did Tyndale cause a lot of headaches by what he did is what I'm saying is it are we over simplifying this over simplifying well you've used the word romance yes but from the church point of view there was a lot of resistance of course the that's it was only three years later that Henry the eighth was putting the great Bible in English in all the churches murdered yes right yes so nevertheless it's caused problems and do we forget that sometimes can we be a bit romantic about the Bible oh I'm sure you can be romantic but anything if we try hard enough but I mean that it is nonetheless a necessary headache I think it's just hard to imagine how faith could go on growing and spreading all over the world in lots lots of different forms of the Christian Church without this glorious Bible and I think I think again we're terrified it seems to me of variety and and sort of feel there should be just one right way of reading everything whereas actually if it's a way of reading that it makes us live differently think about for example the groups of women reading the Bible for the first time and realizing the trust that Jesus put in women and realizing that actually they are called to be not just wives and mothers but disciples in the scriptures that's that's a life transforming insight that goes on and causes other kinds of headaches and but but probably necessary once so I think one of the things that I find important about the Bible is a very fear denying book it sort of says step into this big dangerous exciting world in which you take for granted that God is that it is God's world and see what it's like it isn't doesn't promise to be a simple way of living or a simple solution to things or to offer just one answer to each person and spiritually courti could be more important than we first realized not only spirit I mean in every walk of life difficulty is opportunity isn't it yes and potential change yes I mean wanting to beast wanting everything to be simple is as it's the coward's way there's a question here for you Melvin would the Tyndale translation ever have happened with Erasmus and Luther so was Tyndale a project of his time or was time a product of Tyndall he was part of his context yes I mean he I think then can I just go back to God for a second finish Alfre I do think that there is still a first cause that's perhaps because I've been brought up in with a causal education I do think that there was a start to things just like Newton did Bob not mentioned mentioned being a brains than I ever had I do think there's a cause to think now whether we're going to find out over the next five or six hundred years or to two thousand years if that causes a particular intelligence it would be fascinating but those alive to follow it and it may well be on what we call intelligence because in many ways it is a very intelligent universe at the same time it's doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense on certain on the ground so there's a first cause so the idea of going for the mystery of the first cause is something I'm completely I am fascinated by and it's happened again and again since people worship the nearest mountain the nearest tree to people talking about the Big Bang which I think as every could be just at the end of something as much as the beginning of something and nobody knows Martin Rees agrees with that say I'm standing on a reasonably firm well totally firm ground there so I've been even that but whether that can emanate what we think emanates from God in this extraordinary way that Christians have had in in different ways people have in different religions I can't I can't go along with that now I've forgotten the question you are well up I'll remind you or but as you speak I'm reminded that though at the end of the 20th century I think in the sixth a French worker priest was once asked why nurse did you get ordained in the late 20th century what a bizarre perplexing thing to do what nurse did you do it for and he said I got ordained in order to stop the rumor of God disappearing from the face of this earth and as you talk I hear somebody who approves of the rumor of God being around I tend to think it's true you are unsure I think people like us can often agree however that that rumor of God that the world is probably better with that rumor than without it it's not true there's a dark side of the Moon we haven't talked about but the question by the Erasmus Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched that was a thought wasn't it and knew fellating the timbrel hatched so let's take the three of them and name certainly made a brilliant and successful attempt to completely disrupt revolutionize and turn on its head all that was theologically and philosophically happening in the West at that time so they were connected and Jindal was very excited that he might meet Erasmus when he went to Cambridge but he didn't very excited by Erasmus please go for the Greek and everybody at that time was rocked and impressed by Luther this is quite extraordinary impact impact he had and so and so yes the whether it's chicken egg egg chicken I have no idea but people tend to come out of their time and then they showed their time we all come out of our times and I'm this thing going to shape it and Tyndall came out of that all night saying not against that but as a back to square one thing is he did for me if we are to believe him and I would never not believe tendril and when he was a boy he was fascinated by the idea of the Bible in English because the Saxon King had translated the Bible into English and it struck him and he wanted to do that just like when he went to the fair Newton got the prison at the Country Fair and he saw the light and let's try him and the way he went into optics so final question that's come in for for you Jane should Tindall be made a saint what does that mean Frank Muir once said the definition of a saint is a dead sinner who's been dug up and edited Shindell be remembered admired emulated yes in all kinds of ways I think should we pray to Him or have I mean it depends what you mean by a saint mm-hmm but let's put it another way he ought to be reclaimed more I mean Melvin has said culturally he's been forgotten others took his place even when the great Bible came out he's his name and his portraits completely missing and in a sense that's emblematic perhaps of what's happened that he has become gendell's coming home he's coming home now do to you scholars started in the mid nineteen century and there's been a steady bill from scholars here and in America and in Holland and so on it is because there's not a flash about it isn't easy to bring forth I think he doesn't need to be a saint I think he's good as he is yes and you thought he would have liked to be a saint what he'd given his I think he'd rather we read the Bible than made him a saint yes yes I think we should teach Tyndall's English as a second language in our schools it is 8 o'clock and I want to I want to end if I may with something I just found a couple of days ago by chance it was in the poetry island review of five years ago and it's written by a poet called Neil curry who happened to go to the castle where you were talking about you filmed his imprisonment bill vorder and he wrote this he just caught it to William Tyndale in the beginning was the word but the words variously were Latin Greek and Hebrew not to mention Aramaic and that as you saw it was the problem why you wanted to know should not the husbandman who drive if his plow sing them out loud in the fields or the weaver wall bull them as he works at his shuttle as I write this to you in late September 2010 I wonder how often next year it will be acknowledged the Great's waves of the authorized version had been crimped directly from you in one of his more frosty seasons Thomas More described your work as the most pestiferous and pernicious poison and I suspect that Lancelot Andrews and his committee men will get all the credit for the apple of his eye for a land flowing with milk and honey and the salt of the earth arrested in Antwerp and found guilty of heresy you were sentenced to be burned at the stake and only at the last minute did the hangman as an act of mercy step up to tighten the cord and garrote you before he lit the fire oh yes blessed are the merciful for they show how did you put it I forget we have been immersed in an expiration of a quite truly remarkable man with two remarkable people and I want to thank on your behalf both Melvyn Bragg and Jane Williams for bringing both their learning their passion and their insight - a wonderful evening thank you so much indeed [Applause]

Channel: St Paul's Cathedral

Views: 7,246

Rating: 4.8241758 out of 5

Keywords: William Tyndale, Reformation 500, Melvyn Bragg, Jane Williams, Mark Oakley, St Paul's Cathedral, Adult Learning, Bible, Bible translation, New Testament, Tyndale, Tyndall, Tindall

Id: _j_2RMMKVus

Length: 88min 34sec (5314 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2017

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God's Outlaw - William Tyndale Story full movie (1986) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVOrQg8Wq0M