“Lord! Open the King of Eng- land’s eyes!” exclaimed Wil- liam Tyndale, as he was trangled and burned at the
stake. What was Tyndale’s crime? “
Heresy and treason,” according to the Holy
Roman Emperor. Betrayed by a supposed
friend, Henry Phillips, Tyndale was arrested in Belgium under the authority
of the Holy Roman Empire. After 450
long days of torture in a prison, he was
tried—in effect, for being a Lutheran. Because he disagreed with the Holy Roman
Emperor, after an extremely unbalanced
trial, Tyndale was convicted.
John Foxe says, “At last, after much rea-
soning, when no reason would serve, al-
though he deserved no death, he was con-
demned by virtue of the emperor’s decree
... and, upon the same, brought forth to
the place of execution, was there tied to the
stake, and then strangled first by the hang-
man, and afterwards, with fire consumed,
in the morning at the town of Vilcorde,
A.D. 1536: crying thus at the stake with a
fervent zeal, and a loud voice, ‘Lord! Open
the King of England’s eyes!” 1
Again, God heard the pleas from His
servants as they were brutally set on
fire for translating His Holy Word. Just
as the cry of John Huss to, “raise up a
swan whose singing you shall not be able
to silence,” was answered by God, so was
Tyndale’s plea for the King’s eyes to be
opened. Just three years after Tyndale’s
martyrdom, King Henry VIII assigned
Thomas Cromwell to hire Myles Cover-
dale to print the first English Bibles to
be published for public use. This trans-
lation was called the “Great Bible” be-
cause of its great size that measured
over 14 inches in height. These Bibles
were issued to every church, chained
to the pulpits, and even had a reader
assigned in order that the common
man would hear the Bible in his own
language.
Now, before we praise the King’s deci-
sion, we should remember the Biblical
account of Joseph first. In Genesis 50: 20,
we read, “But as for you, ye thought evil
against me; but God meant it unto good,
to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save
much people alive.” The intentions of Jo-
seph’s brothers were not good, yet God,
in His supreme sovereignty, used the
situation for the good of many people, as
www.TheOldSchoolhouse.com
by Dave Glander
The Geneva Bible was created to help even the most
unscholarly readers understand God’s Word for themselves.
HisStory
How the English Bible Made
it to America – Part 4
