The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 247

the eagles to find their prey? Well, that same God teaches His hungry
children to find their Father in His word. Far from having given us the
Scriptures, it is you who have hidden them from us; it is you who burn
those who teach them, and if you could, you would burn the Scriptures
themselves.”—D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth
Century, b. 18, ch. 4.
Tyndale’s preaching excited great interest; many accepted the truth.
But the priests were on the alert, and no sooner had he left the field than
they by their threats and misrepresentations endeavored to destroy his
work. Too often they succeeded. “What is to be done?” he exclaimed.
“While I am sowing in one place, the enemy ravages the field I have
just left. I cannot be everywhere. Oh! if Christians possessed the Holy
Scriptures in their own tongue, they could of themselves withstand these
sophists. Without the Bible it is impossible to establish the laity in the
truth.”—Ibid., b. 18, ch. 4.
A new purpose now took possession of his mind. “It was in the
language of Israel,” said he, “that the psalms were sung in the temple of
Jehovah; and shall not the gospel speak the language of England among
us? ... Ought the church to have less light at noonday than at the dawn?
... Christians must read the New Testament in their mother tongue.” The
doctors and teachers of the church disagreed among themselves. Only
by the Bible could men arrive at the truth. “One holdeth this doctor,
another that.... Now each of these authors contradicts the other. How
then can we distinguish him who says right from him who says wrong?
... How? ... Verily by God’s word.”—Ibid., b. 18, ch. 4.
It was not long after that a learned Catholic doctor, engaging in
controversy with him, exclaimed: “We were better to be without God’s
laws than the pope’s.” Tyndale replied: “I defy the pope and all his laws;
and if God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth
the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do.”—Anderson,
Annals of the English Bible, page 19.
The purpose which he had begun to cherish, of giving to

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