I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue.

Meaning of the quote

William Tyndale believed that ordinary people could only understand religious truth if the Bible was written in their own language. He thought it was impossible for them to truly know the truth of the Bible unless they could read it for themselves in their native tongue.

About William Tyndale

William Tyndale was a prominent English Bible translator and linguist who played a key role in the Protestant Reformation. His pioneering translations of the Bible into English helped spread Reformation ideas and influenced later versions, including the King James Bible.

More about the author

More quotes from William Tyndale

No more doth it hurt to say that the body and blood are not in the sacrament.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

I know divers, and divers men know me, which love me as I do them: yet if I should pray them, when I meet them in the street openly, they would abhor me; but if I pray them where they be appointed to meet me secretly, they will hear me and accept my request.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

In the old covenants the people were sprinkled with blood of calves without, in their bodies, to bind them to keep the law; else we were bound to just damnation, for the breaking of it.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

My overcoat is worn out; my shirts also are worn out. And I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening; it is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

And as the circumcised in the flesh, and not in the heart, have no part in God’s good promises; even so they that be baptized in the flesh, and not in heart, have no part in Christ’s blood.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

Many things there be in the scripture, which have a carnal fulfilling, even there where they be spoken or done; and yet have another spiritual signification, to be fulfilled long after in Christ and his kingdom, and yet never known till the thing be done.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

Here is also to be noted, that the cause of the institution was to be a memorial, to testify that Christ’s body was given, and his blood shed for us.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

Christ made the bread the sacrament of his body only: wherefore as the bread is no similitude of his blood, so am I not bound or ought to affirm, that his blood is there present.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

To see how Christ was prophesied and described therein, consider and mark, how that the kid or lamb must be with out spot or blemish; and so was Christ only of all mankind, in the sight of God and of his law.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer

Neither was there any heresy, or diversity of opinion, or disputing about the matter, till the pope had gathered a council to confirm this transubstantiation: wherefore it is most likely that this opinion came up by them of latter days.

William Tyndale

English Bible translator and reformer