Reformers You Might Not Know: Wycliffe, Hus, Tyndale

Born in 1369, John Hus was ordained as a priest in 1401 and spent much of his career teaching at the Charles University in Prague, Bohemia. He was also the preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. Thousands sat under his teaching and preaching and were blessed by his faithfulness to God’s Word.

As Roman Catholicism continued to dominate the religious landscape of the world with its teachings of justified living by works and papal/church authority, Hus determined the writings of John Wycliffe to be of great significance.  Wycliffe taught personal piety and purity based on the Bible as the authority for the church. He denounced the extravagant lifestyles of the clergy and taught that no pope or bishop could establish doctrine contrary to the Bible.

Born in 1494, William Tyndale was known to be called “God’s Outlaw.” Sir Thomas More, one of Tyndale’s most bitter opponents, said of Tyndale, “. . . a man of right good living, studious, and well learned in Scripture, and in diverse places in England was very well liked, and did great good and preaching . . . [he was] taken for a man of sober and honest living, and looked, and preached holily.”  

Regardless of his glowing endorsement of Tyndale, Sir Thomas More, along with the King of England and many others, hunted Tyndale and sought to have him destroyed. Why? Because William Tyndale had a consuming passion to translate the Holy Scriptures into English. Tyndale wanted an English Bible so even a common plowman could read it.

 Tyndale’s passion to have the Scriptures available to every common man defied the Roman Church. Having a Bible in English was illegal based on a 1408 law, the “Constitutions of Oxford,” which forbade anyone translating or reading any part of the Bible in the language of the people without permission of the ecclesiastical authorities. Whoever read the Scriptures in English could forfeit their lands, goods, and life. They were considered heretics to God, enemies to the Crown, and traitors to the kingdom. Tyndale knew all of this, yet never let it deter him from his work.  His words to a Catholic critic were, “If God spare me life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do.”

Going underground, Tyndale labored to have the Bible translated in English. He was relentlessly hunted by all manner of enemies, but in 1525 his New Testament was printed and smuggled back into England. It was the first English translation of the Bible from the original Greek.  Continuing his work, Tyndale was betrayed by a false friend near Brussels, arrested by imperial forces, and thrown into prison. He was accused of maintaining that faith alone justifies and was found guilty. In 1536 he was strangled and burned at the stake.  Tyndale had realized his dream of translating the Bible into English, but just as Wycliffe and Hus who had proceeded him, he was martyred for his faithfulness to Jesus.