The English Reformer: William Tyndale's Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue

Tyndale’s Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, The Supper of the Lord after the True Meaning of John VI and 1 Cor. XI and William Tracy’s Testament Expounded, ed. By Parker Society (Cambridge Press, 1850).

This work is available, free, and downloadable at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=TOLOU6-00yUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=tyndale+parker+society&lr=&as_brr=1&ei=MOtHSqqNKIzayQSB9NRA

Again, the frontispiece to the Parker Society editions gives this purpose:

“For the publication of the works of the fathers and early writers of the Reformed English Church.”

Unabashedly, the term “Reformed” is employed for Anglicanism.

The contents include:

1. Introductory Notice to Answer Sir T. More
2. Preface to the Answer
3. Answer to Sir T. More’s Dialogue—to the Four Books Contained in the Dialogue
4. Introductory Notice to the Supper of the Lord
5. The Testament of W. Tracy, Esq. and the Exposition of it
6. Specimens of Tyndale’s Translations

We have Tyndale's answers to Sir Thomas More, but also Tyndale's view of the Lord's Table, a controverted point between Lutheran and Reformed divines.

In the Introductory Notice, we are told that by 1528 Sir Thomas more was regarded as perhaps the most accomplished scholar in England. He received permission from Bishop Tunstall (some spell it Tonstal) to read the works of the Reformers in order to refute them. Sir Thomas More set to work within the year to craft The Dialogue, a discussion of two friends over the religious opinions of the day.

Here’s the dedicatory by More:

A dialogue of Sir Thomas More, knt. [sic] one of the council of our sovereign lord the king, and chancellor of his duchy of Lancaster. Wherein he treated divers matters, as of the veneration and worship of images and reliques, praying to saints, and going on pilgrimages, with many other things touching the pestilent sect of Luther and Tyndale, by the one begun in Saxony, and by the other labored to be brought into England. Made in the year of our Lord, 1528.” [emphasis added]

The Dialogue consists of four books.

Written in 1528, it was published in the summer of 1529. Tyndale answered the work in 1530, but it came to the press in late 1531. But by that time, More had been promoted from Chancellorship of the Duchy to the Chancellorship of England.

One of the features of More’s work is the constant reference to Martin Luther’s marriage to Katherine von Boren. One had been a priest and the other a nun. Ergo, their marriage on More’s view was illegal. One would hardly expect to find the tweaking of Tyndale and his theology by this issue of Luther’s marriage, let alone the abusiveness of the language. It is an argument of guilt by association. Normally balanced and wise, More betrays another side.

Originally, The Dialogue had nine books. The lengthy and wordy arguments moved from Tyndale to another Lutheran Anglican, Barnes. However, after twenty-five years, no one could find the nine-book set. We are left with four books. In the older version—the longer one—is an allusion to A Disputacyon of purgatorye made by Johan Frith, another English Reformer in More’s cross-hairs.

It is impossible to overlay Anglo-Romanism on the English Reformed Church; to have done so—as has been done—is a testament to the ignorance of the English Reformation.

We will bring you more by way of biography and analysis of this work.