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TIBOR FABINY
1he allegorizers, or, the followers of Origen "forgot the order and the process
of the text"? when they imposed allegories on the text. False interpreters, says
Tyndale, in his Preface to Genesis:
“... darken the right way with the mist of their sophistry... with worldly similitudes
and apparent reasons of natural wisdom, ... clean contrary unto the process, or¬
der, and meaning of the text; ...Which thing only moved me to translate the new
Testament... that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text...”
For Tyndale the “process of the text” is entirely Christological for “The scrip¬
tures spring out of God, and flow unto Christ, and were given to lead us to
Christ. Thou must therefore go along by the scripture as by a line, until thou
come at Christ, which is the way’ s end and resting-place.”'’
William Tyndale’s younger colleague John Frith (1503-1533) who is said
to have assisted him in translating the Bible and probably in answering Sir
Thomas More’s allegations in his Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529), uses the
expressions “the process of the texts”, or, “the process of Scripture” also with
conspicuous frequency in his A Book... Answering Unto M. More’s Letter, which
he wrote Against the First, Little Treatise that John Frith Made Concerning The
Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ", written in the Tower within a few
months of his martyrdom. When More charged that with his figurative inter¬
pretation of the words of the Last Supper Frith contradicted Luther, who had
affirmed the real presence, Friths reply was "Luther is not the prick that I run at,
but the Scripture of God. I do neither affirm nor deny anything because Luther
so saith, but because the Scripture of God doth so conclude and determine.”””
The Swiss reformers, Frith says, “... more purely expond Scripture, and
that the process of the text doth more favour their sentence.’!* For Frith both
common sense and the authority of St Augustine dictate that Jesus’ words
133 TYNDALE, Obedience, p.160.
DANIELL, David, (ed.), Tyndale’s Old Testament, In a modern spelling edition, New Haven,Yale
University Press, 1992, 4.
15 TYNDALE, Obedience, 169-70.
FRITH, John, A boke made by Iohn Frith prisoner in the tower of London answeringe vnto M.
Mores lettur which he wrote agenst the first litle treatyse that Iohn Frith made concerninge the
sacramente of the body and bloude of, christ vnto which boke are added in the ende the articles of
his examinacion before the bishoppes ... for which Iohn Frith was condempned a[n]d after bur[n]
et... the fourth daye of luli. Anno. 1533., Imprinted at Monster [i.e. Antwerp], Anno 1533 (really
London, 1533). A modern version edition is by N. T. Wright (ed.), The Work of John Frith, Oxford,
Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978. 318-455.
7 WRIGHT, The Work of John Frith, 341.
18 WRIGHT, The Work of John Frith, 342.