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The Soon Coming Judgment Of God Upon America and How To Escape It 433
the Catholic Church in England in regard to Tyndale and his translations and clear her
absolutely from the slightest shadow or suspicion of hostility to God’s written word (emphasis
added).
1389
Of Tyndale’s abilities Graham writes:
…he was utterly unfit for such a great work…. He had no special
qualifications for the task of translation. He was a mediocre scholar and could not
boast of anything above the average intellect.
1390
In contrast, William P. Grady writes of Tyndale in Final Authority that “A man so skilled
in the seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English and French, that which
ever he spake, you would suppose it his native tongue.” He further writes:
Before Tyndale's day the English versions of the Bible had been
translations of a translation, being derived from the Vulgate or older Latin
versions. Tyndale, for the first time, went back to the original Hebrew and Greek.
And not only did he go back to the original languages seeking for the truth, but he
embodied that truth when found in so noble a translation that it has ever since
been deemed wise by scholars and revisers to make but a few changes in it;
consequently every succeeding version is in reality little more than a revision of
Tyndale's. It has been truly said that 'the peculiar genius which breathes through
the English Bible, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the
grandeur - unequalled, unapproached in the attempted improvements of modern
scholars - all are here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man, and that man
is William Tyndale.
1391
While Graham insists that the burning of this great man Tyndale and his Bibles was
justified, he seeks to make the case that the Catholic Church has never sought to keep the Bible
from the people. This is a poor effort because he repeatedly makes statement to the effect that the
Catholic Church exclusively has the right to print, publish and interpret the Bible. He also makes
it clear that, if the Catholic Church could, it would resume the persecution of the Dark Ages all
over again. He writes:
Rome claims that the Bible is her book, that she has preserved it and
perpetuated it, that she alone knows what it means, that nobody else has the right
to it whatsoever or any authority to declare what the true meaning of it is. She
therefore has declared that the work of translating it from the original languages,
of explaining it, and of printing it and publishing it, belongs strictly to her alone
and that, if she cannot nowadays prevent those outside of her alone and that, if she
can not nowdays prevent those outside her fold from tampering with it and
misusing it, at least she will take care that none of her own children abuse it or
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