William Tyndale's Last Prayer

In October 1536, outside the walls of Vilvoorde Castle in Belgium, William Tyndale was led to a stake. His crime was translating the Bible into English so that, as he once told a clergyman, "the boy that driveth the plough" could know Scripture. The religious authorities of England had burned his books in public bonfires at St. Paul's Cross. Bishop Tunstall called his translation heretical. Thomas More wrote thousands of pages condemning him. Tyndale was a stone the builders examined and threw away.

As the executioner tightened the chain, Tyndale cried out his final words: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes."

Within two years, Henry VIII authorized the Great Bible to be placed in every parish church in England. Its text was overwhelmingly Tyndale's. When the King James translators sat down seventy years later, scholars estimate they kept nearly eighty percent of Tyndale's phrasing. Sentences millions now carry in their hearts — "Let there be light," "the salt of the earth," "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" — these are Tyndale's words.

The stone the builders rejected became the cornerstone.