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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, order, 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 scriptures 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 interpretation 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.
