David Teems > Quotes

“Christianity materialized under intense pressure, under severe persecution and the threat of death. She was exile, outcast, excommunicate.* And she thrived in it.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“the languages of all people, that they might be read and known, not merely by the Scotch and the Irish, but even by the Turks and the Saracens. I wish that the husbandman may sing parts of them at his plough, that the weaver may warble them at his shuttle, that the traveler may with their narratives beguile the weariness of the way.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“Today, in our common English, we speak Tyndale more than we do Shakespeare. And the King James Bible with its high step and its lovely old voice gets the applause that rightfully belongs to William Tyndale. Yet what is dumbfounding to me is how hidden he remains, how misprized, and how thoroughly uncelebrated”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“Without God’s word do nothing. And to his word add nothing, neither pull anything therefrom . . . Serve God in the spirit, and thy neighbor with all outward service.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“The Worms New Testament was printed in octavo, which simply means that a single page was equivalent to one-eighth of a single large sheet. It measured roughly 6¾” by 4¼” (170 mm x 108 mm). It was small, and practical in its smallness. This little brick of paper could easily be tucked in a gown or a sleeve (pockets were not in fashion just yet). Stealth was the wiser fashion for an outlawed book. Concealment was part of the charm of having”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“The true mirror will respond to the one who looks into it. To know God is to ultimately know oneself, to throw off counterfeits. Once God and man are knit together, once the law of God is “written and graved in his heart,” words like obedience and submission hardly apply. God does not have to formally command anything. His command lives in his Word, and rightly governs the heart in a man.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible,”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“And let love interpret the law that thou understand this to be the final end of the law, and the whole cause why the law was given: even to bring thee to the knowledge of God, how that he hath done all things for thee, that thou mightest love him again and with all thine heart and thy neighbor for his sake as thyself and as Christ loved thee. Because thy neighbor is the son of God also and created unto his likeness as thou art, and bought with as dear blood as art thou.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“His life could be required of him any moment. He understood this. It was a condition of life that Tyndale accepted, and he crafted an English masterpiece from it. It wasn’t fear. Death merely provided another muse.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“Today, in our common English, we speak Tyndale more than we do Shakespeare. And the King James Bible with its high step and its lovely old voice gets the applause that rightfully belongs to William Tyndale.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“God worketh with his word, and in his word. And as his word is preached, faith rooteth herself in the hearts of the elect, and as faith entereth, and the word of God is believed, the power of God looseth the heart from the captivity and bondage under sin, and knitteth and coupleth him to God, and to the will of God; altereth him, changeth him clean, fashioneth, and forgeth him anew, giveth him power to love, and to do that which before was impossible for him either to love or do, and turneth him into a new nature, so that he loveth that which he before hated, and hateth that which he before loved; and is clean altered, and changed, and contrary disposed; and is knit and coupled fast to God’s will, and naturally bringeth forth good works, that is to say, that which God commandeth to do, and not things of his own imagination.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“Take me, for example. I opposed indulgences and all papists, but never by force. I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word: otherwise I did nothing. And then, while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my Philip of Amsdorf the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it. I did nothing: the Word did it all. Had I wanted to start trouble . . . I could have started such a little game at Worms that even the emperor wouldn’t have been safe. But what would it have been? A mug’s game. I did nothing: I left it to the Word.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“To William Tyndale, the Word of God is a living thing. It has both warmth and intellect. It has discretion, generosity, subtlety, movement, authority. It has a heart and a pulse. It keeps a beat and has a musical voice that allows it to sing. It enchants and it soothes. It argues and it forgives. It defends and it reasons. It intoxicates and it restores. It weeps and it exults. It thunders but never roars. It calls but never begs. And it always loves. Indeed, for Tyndale, love is the code that unlocks and empowers the Scripture. His inquiry into Scripture is always relational, never analytic.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“Not one to run with the herd, all we can say with any precision is that he is not afraid to walk away from the action.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice

“Buchanan tried to whip the devil out of me. “Find your tongue, lad!” Forgive this regression, but the man hated English. He may have hated everything by then, including me, but he was uncommon prickly when it came to English. You could tell by the way he bullied it. “The bastarde English,” the old man roared. “The verie whoore of a tongue.” We did our best to mimic him note for note, gesture for gesture. He hated that, too. The verie whoore. Old Greek before Breakfast Latin by Noon himself. The point is, what English I had was beaten or twisted into me. We were orphaned and crowned before we could speak or take our first step. No father. No mother. Too many uncles. Hounds for baying. Buchanan was the most religious of my keepers, and the unkindest of spirits among them. We have been told the young queen of Scots was once his student, and that he loved her. Just before giving her over to wreckage, methinks. Pious frauds. Their wicked Jesus. Then occasion smil’d. We were thirteen. The affection of Esme Stuart was one thing, lavished, as it was, so liberally upon us, but the music of his voice was another. We empowered our cousin, gave him name, station, a new sense of gravity, height, and reach, all the toys of privilege. We were told he spoke our mother’s French, the way it flutters about your neck like a small bird. But it was his English that moved us. For the first time, there was kindness in it, charity, heat and light. We didn’t know language could do such things, that could charm with such violence, make such a disturbance in us. Our cousin was our excess, our vice, our great transgression according to some, treason according to others. They came one night and stole him from us, that is, from me. They tore me out of his arms, called me wanton. Better that bairns should weepe, they said. Barking curs. We never saw our cousin again and were never the same after. But the charm was wound up. If we say we can taste words, we are not trying to be clever. And we are an insatiable king. Try now, if you can, to understand the nature of our thoughts touching the translation, its want of a poet. We will consult with Sir Francis. He is closer to the man, some say, than a brother. English is mistress between them. There, Bacon says, is empire. There, a great Britain. Where it is dull, where the glow . . . gleam . . . where the gleam of Majestie is absent or mute . . . When occasion smiles again, we will send for the man, Shakespere. Majestie has left its print on his art. After that hideous Scottish play, his best, darkest, and most complicated characters are . . . us. Lear. Antony. Othello. Fools all. All. The English language must be the best that is in us . . . We are but names, titles, antiquities, forgotten speeches, an accident of blood and historical memory. Aye . . . but this marvelously unexceptional little man. No more of this. By the unfortunate title of this history we must, it seems, prepare ourselves for a tragedy. Some will escape. Some will not. For bully Ben can never suffer a true rival. He killed an actor once for botching his lines. Actors. Southampton waits in our chambers. We will let him. First, to our thoughts. Only then to our Lord of Southampton.”
― David Teems, I Ridde My Soule of Thee at Laste

“the laurel granted to the King James Bible, the high honor it has enjoyed in its four hundred years, rightly belongs to William Tyndale.”
― David Teems, Tyndale: the Man Who Gave God an English Voice