William Tyndale to the Reader
Grace, peace, and a growing knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, reader, and with all who call on the name of the Lord sincerely and with a clear conscience. Amen.
Don't let it drive you to despair, dear reader, and don't let it discourage you, that reading the word of your soul's salvation has been forbidden under penalty of death and the loss of everything you own, or that it has been declared a breach of the king's peace, or even treason against his majesty. Instead, take courage in the Lord and let your soul find comfort in this: you have, in that very persecution, a clear and unmistakable sign that what you are reading is the true word of God. That word has always been hated by the world. It has never existed without persecution, as you can see throughout every account in the Bible, both the New Testament and the Old, and it never can exist without persecution, any more than the sun can shine without giving light. By the same token, you can be equally certain that the pope's doctrine does not come from God, precisely because, as you can see for yourself, it fits so comfortably with the world, and the world receives it so warmly. Or rather, it is the pope's doctrine that receives the world, embracing the world's pleasures, seeking nothing but worldly possessions, worldly authority, and worldly power, all while persecuting the word of God, driving people away from it through every cunning means available, and using false and sophistical arguments to frighten them away from it. It curses them, excommunicates them, and convinces them they are damned if they so much as look at it, insisting that it is nothing but a doctrine designed to deceive.
It then stirs up the blind powers of the world to put to death by fire, water, and sword all those who hold fast to it. For the world loves what belongs to it, and hates what has been chosen out of it to serve God in the Spirit, as Christ said to His disciples: "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but I have chosen you out of the world, and therefore the world hateth you" (John 15:19).
Another comfort you have is this: just as the weak powers of this world defend the world's own doctrine, so the mighty power of God defends His own. You will see this clearly if you call to mind the remarkable things God has always done for His word in moments of extreme crisis, from the very beginning of the world, working far beyond the reach of human reason. These things are written, as Paul says, "for our learning, and not for our deceiving, that we through patience and comfort of the scripture might have hope" (Rom 15). The nature of God's word is to stand against hypocrites.
It began with Abel and has continued ever since, and will, I have no doubt, carry on until the last day. The hypocrites have always had the world on their side, as you can see clearly in the time of Christ. They had the elders, meaning the rulers of the Jews, on their side; they had Pilate and the power of the emperor on their side; they had Herod on their side as well. Beyond that, they brought every worldly scheme to bear, exhausting every idea and strategy they could devise to serve their purposes. First, to frighten the people into submission, they excommunicated everyone who believed in Him and barred them from the temple, as you can see in John 9. Second, they found a way to have Him condemned by imperial authority and made it an act of treason against Caesar to believe in Him. Third, they arranged to have Him executed as a common thief or murderer, which, in their worldly thinking, was the most powerful possible reason for people to reject Him entirely.
The Jews regarded being hanged as a sure sign of eternal damnation, since it is written in their law, "Cursed is whoever hangs on a tree" (Deut 21). Moses in that same passage commands that if any man is hanged, his body must be taken down that same day and buried, to avoid polluting the land, meaning to prevent the wrath and curse of God from falling on the people. And so the wicked Jews themselves, who had pursued the destruction of Christ's teaching with such poisonous hatred and heaped every possible shame upon Him, found themselves in a contradiction. They would gladly have left Christ hanging on the cross to rot, as Roman law would have permitted, yet out of fear of defiling their Sabbath and bringing God's wrath and curse down on themselves, they went to Pilate and asked for the body to be taken down (John 19), which worked directly against their own intentions.
Finally, when they had done everything they could, when they believed they had done enough, and when Christ lay in the heart of the earth with spears and axes surrounding Him to keep Him down, and when it was beyond any human power to help, then God acted. When no man could bring Him back, God's faithfulness did. The oath God had sworn to Abraham, to David, and to the other holy fathers and prophets raised Him up again, to bless and save all who believe in Him. And so the wisdom of the hypocrites was exposed as foolishness. This, then, was written for your instruction and comfort.
Consider how completely the children of Israel were trapped in Egypt. What suffering, hardship, and misery they endured! The land promised to them was far away, filled with great cities whose walls rose to the sky, and inhabited by powerful giants. Yet God's faithfulness brought them out of Egypt and settled them in the land of those very giants. This too was written for our instruction, because no power can stand against God's power, and no wisdom can stand against God's wisdom. He is stronger and wiser than all His enemies. What good did it do Pharaoh to drown the male children? I have no fear that it will do the pope and his bishops any more good in the end to burn our men who boldly confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that there is no other name given to humanity by which we must be saved, as Peter declares (Acts 4).
Who parted the Red Sea? Who killed Goliath? Who performed all those extraordinary deeds you read about in the Bible? Who delivered the Israelites again and again from slavery and bondage, as soon as they repented and turned back to God? Faith, truly, and God's faithfulness, and the trust placed in the promises He had made. Read Heb 11 for your comfort.
When the children of Israel were on the verge of despair, overwhelmed by the size and number of the giants before them, Moses continually encouraged them, saying: Remember what your Lord God did for you in Egypt, His wonderful plagues, His miracles, His wonders, His mighty hand, His outstretched arm, and everything He has done for you up to this very moment. He will destroy them; He will strip away their courage and make them tremble and flee before you. He will storm them, stir up a tempest among them, scatter them, and bring them to nothing. He has sworn it; He is faithful; He will fulfill every promise He made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This was written for our instruction, because He is truly a faithful God, and He is our God just as much as He was theirs. His promises belong to us as surely as they belonged to them, and He is present with us just as He was present with them. If we ask, we will receive; if we knock, He will open the door; if we seek, we will find; if we thirst, His truth will satisfy our longing.
Christ is with us until the end of the world. Let His little flock take courage, then.
For if God is on our side, what does it matter who stands against us, whether they be bishops, cardinals, popes, or whatever titles they choose to wear?
Take careful note of this as well: if God sends you out to sea and promises to go with you and bring you safely to shore, He will still raise up a storm against you, to test whether you will hold to His word, so that your faith may be proven and His goodness made real to you. For if the weather were always calm and you were never brought into the kind of danger from which only His mercy could deliver you, your faith would be nothing more than presumption, and you would remain perpetually ungrateful to God and unmerciful toward your neighbor.
If God promises riches, the path there runs through poverty. Those He loves, He disciplines. Those He raises up, He first brings low. Those He saves, He first allows to be broken. He brings no one to heaven without first leading them through something that feels like hell. If He promises life, He allows death to come first. When He builds, He tears everything down before He lays a single stone. He is no patcher of old work; He cannot build on another man's foundation.
He will not act until the situation is completely beyond human remedy, until things have reached such a point that everyone can see His hand at work, His power, His mercy, His goodness, and His faithfulness operating together. He will share His praise and glory with no one. His ways are extraordinary, and they run directly against the grain of human logic. Who else but He has ever given up his own son, his only son, his beloved son, to death, and done so for the sake of his enemies? Who else has sought to win over his enemy through love, so that the enemy might finally see love, respond with love, and then go and do the same for others, overcoming them in turn through acts of kindness?
Joseph saw the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowing down to him. Yet before that vision came to pass, God placed him somewhere he could see neither sun nor moon nor any star in the sky, and kept him there for many years, through no fault of his own. The purpose was to shape him, to humble him, to make him gentle, to teach him God's ways, and to prepare him fully for the position and honor that awaited him. When the honor finally came, he would recognize it as God's doing, and he would have the inner strength to carry it faithfully.
He promised the children of Israel a land flowing with rivers of milk and honey, but He first led them for forty years through a land that had none of that, a land where at times there was not even a drop of water. He did this to form them and teach them, as a father teaches his child, so that He might do them lasting good in the end, and so that they would have the spiritual and moral strength to receive His gifts and blessings rightly, using them according to His will.
He promised David a kingdom, and then immediately stirred up King Saul to persecute him, hunting him the way men hunt hares with greyhounds, ferreting him out of every hiding place, and doing so for years on end. The purpose was to humble him, to break his pride, to kill his selfish desires, to make him feel the suffering of other men, to make him merciful, and to make him understand that he had been made king to serve and protect his people, not to think that his subjects existed to satisfy his appetites, and not to imagine that he had the right to take their lives and property whenever he pleased.
How we wish our kings were shaped by that kind of formation today! Instead, our holy bishops teach them in an entirely different manner, saying: "Your grace shall take your pleasure; yes, take whatever pleasure you like, hold nothing back; we will grant you a dispensation; we have the power, we are God's representatives on earth. Leave the realm to us, we will take the burden from you and make sure nothing is done well. Your grace need only defend the faith."
Let us, then, look carefully at what we are actually called to, so that we don't deceive ourselves. We are not called to debate and dispute, as the pope's disciples do; we are called to die with Christ so that we may live with Him, and to suffer with Him so that we may reign with Him. We are called to a kingdom that can only be won through suffering, in the same way a sick man wins back his health. God is the one who does everything for us and fights on our behalf; our part is simply to endure. Christ says, "As my Father sent me, so I send you" (John 20:21), and, "If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also" (John 15:20). He also says, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves" (Matt 10:16). Sheep do not fight; the shepherd fights for them and cares for them. "Therefore be as harmless as doves," Christ says, "and as wise as serpents" (Matt 10:16). Doves devise no defense and seek no revenge.
The wisdom of the serpent is to protect its head and the parts where its life resides. Christ is our head, and God's word is where our life resides.
Clinging to Christ and to the promises God has made us through Him is, therefore, our greatest wisdom. "Beware of men," He says, "for they will hand you over to their councils and flog you; and you will be brought before rulers and kings for my sake. Brother will betray brother to death, and father will betray son; and children will rise against their parents and have them killed." Listen to what else Christ says: "The disciple is not greater than his master, nor is the servant greater than his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they say the same of his servants!" And in Luke 14, Christ says: "Which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn't first sit down and calculate the cost, to see whether you have enough to finish it? Otherwise, when you've laid the foundation and can't complete it, everyone who sees it will mock you, saying, 'This man started to build and couldn't finish.' In the same way, none of you can be my disciple without giving up everything you have." Anyone who hasn't first reckoned with this reality, thinking, "I must be willing to risk my life, my possessions, my honor, my reputation, and everything I have for Christ's sake," is only deceiving himself and making himself a fool before the godless hypocrites and unbelievers. "No one can serve two masters, God and mammon," that is, corrupt wealth (Matt 6). You must love Christ above all things; but you don't truly love Him if you're not ready to give up everything for His sake. And if you have given up everything for His sake, then you can be certain that you do love Him.
Suffering is our true baptism, and it is what the act of plunging into water signifies. "We who are baptized in the name of Christ," Paul says, "are baptized to die with Him."
The Spirit purifies us through suffering, killing off our fleshly instincts, our worldly reasoning, and our self-serving wisdom, filling us instead with the wisdom of God. Suffering is a blessing that comes from God, as Christ himself declares: "Blessed are they that suffer persecution for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 5:10). Is that not a comforting word? Who wouldn't rather choose to be blessed with Christ through a little suffering than to be cursed forever alongside the world for a little pleasure?
Prosperity, by contrast, is a genuine curse, something God gives to His enemies. "Woe to you who are rich," Christ says, "for you have already received your comfort; woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry; woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep; woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets" (Luke 6:24-26). And indeed, that is exactly how our own ancestors treated the false hypocrites. Those hypocrites, through their worldly preaching, gained not only praise but also property, power, and control over the whole world.
Suffering for righteousness is not merely a blessing; it is also a gift that God gives only to His closest friends. The apostles rejoiced that they were considered worthy to be dishonored for Christ's sake. Paul, writing to Timothy, says plainly: "Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Tim 3:12). And to the Philippians he writes: "It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him" (Phil 1:29).
Here you can see that it is God's gift to suffer for Christ's sake. Peter writes in his first letter: "Happy are you if you suffer for the name of Christ, for the glorious Spirit of God rests on you" (1 Pet 4). Isn't it a remarkable thing to know with certainty that you are sealed by God's Spirit for eternal life? And you can be certain of exactly that if you suffer patiently for His sake. Through suffering, you gain assurance; through persecution, you can never have it. As Paul writes, "Tribulation produces experience" (Rom 5), meaning it causes us to feel God's goodness, His help, and the work of His Spirit. And in his second letter to the Corinthians, the Lord said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect through weakness" (2 Cor 12). Notice that Christ is never strong in us until we are weak. As our own strength fades, the strength of Christ grows within us. When we are completely emptied of our own strength, we are filled with Christ's strength. And whatever measure of our own strength remains in us, that is precisely how much of Christ's strength we are lacking. "Therefore," Paul says in that same passage, "I will gladly boast in my weakness, so that the strength of Christ may dwell in me" (2 Cor 12).
"For this reason," Paul continues, "I take pleasure in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, and in difficulties for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12). His point is that the weakness of the flesh is the strength of the Spirit. By "flesh," understand human intelligence, worldly wisdom, and everything that exists within a person before the Spirit of God arrives, along with whatever does not spring from the Spirit of God and from God's word. Scripture is filled, from beginning to end, with testimonies that say exactly the same thing.
Behold, God sets before us both a blessing and a curse: a glorious and everlasting blessing if we endure tribulation and adversity alongside our Lord and Savior Christ, and an everlasting curse if, for the sake of a little fleeting pleasure, we pull away from the discipline and instruction of God. Through that discipline, He shapes all His sons according to His holy will, perfects them as He perfected Christ, and makes them fit and ready vessels to receive His grace and His Spirit, so that they might truly perceive and feel the extraordinary mercy we have in Christ, along with the countless blessings and the unspeakable inheritance to which we are called, chosen, and sealed in our Savior Jesus Christ, to whom be praise forever. Amen.
Finally, those whom God chooses to reign eternally with Christ are sealed by His mighty Spirit, and He pours strength into their hearts so they can endure suffering alongside Christ as witnesses to the truth. This is the essential difference between the children of God and salvation on one side, and the children of the devil and damnation on the other: the children of God have the inner strength to suffer for God's word, which is their life and salvation, their hope and confidence, and the very thing by which they live before God in soul and spirit. The children of the devil, however, flee from Christ when adversity comes. They had followed Him insincerely, their hearts never sealed by His holy and mighty Spirit, and so they run back to the banner of their true father the devil and collect his wages: the pleasures of this world, which are a down payment on everlasting damnation. This conclusion is confirmed well by Heb 12, which says, "My son, do not despise the discipline of the Lord, nor lose heart when He rebukes you, for the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes every son He receives." Notice this clearly: persecution and adversity for the sake of truth are God's scourge and God's rod, and they belong equally to all His children. When the text says He punishes every son, it makes no exceptions whatsoever.
The passage goes on to say: "If you endure discipline, God is treating you as sons. What son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are without discipline, in which all sons share, then you are illegitimate children and not true sons."
Since we must be baptized in tribulations, and must pass through the Red Sea, through a vast and terrifying wilderness, and through a land of cruel giants before we reach our true home, it is abundantly clear that there is no other path into the kingdom of life except through persecution, suffering, and death itself, following the example of Christ. Therefore, let us arm our souls with the comfort of Scripture: God is always near, ready to help us in our time of need, and the tyrants and persecutors who come against us are nothing more than His rod and scourge, instruments He uses to discipline us.
Just as a father, when he corrects his child, keeps the rod firmly in his own hand so that it moves only as he directs it, so God holds all tyrants in His hand and does not permit them to do whatever they wish. He allows them only as much as He has appointed, and only as far as is necessary for our good. And just as the rod is put away when a child submits to his father's correction, humbling himself entirely to his father's will, so too, when we come to know the right path, when we have surrendered our own will and offered ourselves wholly to God's will, ready to walk wherever He leads, He turns the tyrants aside. Or if they press on and try to persecute us further, He removes them from our path entirely, just as the encouraging examples of Scripture consistently show.
Let us also arm our souls with the promises of both help and the glorious reward that follows. "Great is your reward in heaven," says Christ (Matt 5). "Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven." "Call on me in times of trouble, and I will deliver you" (Ps 50). "The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His mercy, to deliver their souls from death and to sustain them in times of famine" (Ps 33). David writes in Ps 34: "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and He saves those who are crushed in spirit. The righteous face many troubles, but the Lord delivers them from every one. He protects all their bones, so that not one of them is broken. The Lord redeems the souls of His servants." Consolations like these fill the psalms from beginning to end. Would to God that when you read them, you truly understood them! And in Matt 10: "When they hand you over, don't worry about what you will say; you will be given the right words at that very moment, because it is not you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you." "Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered," Christ also says (Matt 10). If God cares about our hair, how much more does He care for our souls, which He has sealed with His Holy Spirit. Peter therefore says, "Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you" (1 Pet 5). And Paul writes: "God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear" (1 Cor 10).
"Cast your burden on the Lord" (Ps 55).
Focus your whole energy on preparing yourself to walk whatever path He has chosen for you, and trust that He will walk beside you, strengthen you against every tyrant, and bring you through every trial. As for how or by what means He will do this, leave that entirely to Him, to His wisdom and His good pleasure. Cast that burden on Him.
And however unlikely it may seem, however impossible it may appear to human reason, hold firmly to the belief that He will act. When He does, He will (as He has always done) overturn the course of the world in an instant, coming suddenly upon our giants like a thief in the night, catching them in their own schemes and worldly cleverness. "When they cry, 'Peace, all is well,' that is when their suffering will begin, like the labor pains of a woman giving birth" (1 Thess 5:3); and then He will destroy them and deliver you, to the glorious praise of His mercy and faithfulness. Amen.
Now consider those who despise God's word, dismissing it as fantasy or delusion, and those who abandon it at the first sign of persecution. Hold this truth before your eyes: since the beginning of the world, before every great judgment, God has always sent His true prophets and preachers to warn the people and give them time to repent. But most of them hardened their hearts and persecuted the very word that had been sent to save them. God then destroyed them completely and swept them from the earth. You can see what followed Noah's preaching in the ancient world, what followed Lot's preaching among the Sodomites, and what followed the preaching of Moses and Aaron among the Egyptians: swift, total judgment, against every expectation of human reason.
Furthermore, every time the children of Israel turned from God to worship idols, He sent His prophets to them. They persecuted those prophets and grew harder in their rebellion, and so He scattered them as captives across every corner of the world.
Last of all, God sent His own Son to them, and they grew harder in heart than ever before. Consider what a fearful display of His wrath and terrible vengeance He has made of them before the entire world, for nearly fifteen hundred years now.
Gildas also preached to the ancient Britons, who once inhabited the land our nation now occupies. He rebuked them for their wickedness and prophesied to both the clergy (as they insist on being called) and the laypeople alike, warning them of the judgment that would follow if they did not repent. But they only hardened their hearts further, and so God sent His plagues and pestilences among them, unleashed their enemies against them from every side, and destroyed them utterly.
Consider also how Christ warns those who abandon Him, for whatever reason it may be: whether out of fear, shame, loss of honor, loss of friends, loss of life, or loss of possessions. "He that denieth me before men, him will I deny before my Father that is in heaven. He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." He says all of this in Matt 10. And in Mark 8 He says: "Whosoever is ashamed of me, or my words, among this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his Father with his holy angels."
And in Luke 9 as well: "None that layeth his hand to the plough, and looketh back, is meet for the kingdom of heaven."
Nevertheless, if anyone has resisted out of ignorance, as Paul once did, let him look to the truth that Paul wrote after he came to knowledge. Likewise, if any man has denied the faith against his own conscience, overcome by the weakness of the flesh and the fear of persecution, as Peter did, or has handed over his book or quietly hidden it away, let him, if he truly repents, come back and take a firmer hold, and not despair or take it as a sign that God has abandoned him. For God often withdraws His strength even from His chosen people, when they either trust in their own abilities or grow careless about calling on Him for help. He does this to teach them, and to make them feel in their bones, that in the fire of tribulation endured for the sake of His word, nothing can survive and stand except His own work and the strength He alone has promised. And for that strength, He calls us to pray to Him night and day, with every urgency we can muster.
