TYNDALE

Tyndale, werp. During his peregrinations from one country to another, he suffered shipwreck upon the coast of Holland, and lost all his books and papers. His translations of the Scriptures being in the mean time sent to England, made a great noise there; and, in the opinion of the clergy, did so much mischief, that a royal proclamation was issued out, prohibiting the buying or reading such translation or translations. But the clergy were not satisfied with this, they knew Tyndale capable of doing infinite harm, and therefore thought of nothing less than removing him out of the way. For this purpose one Philips was sent over to Antwerp, who influenced himself into his company, and under the pretext of friendship betrayed him into custody. He was sent to the castle of Tilford, about 18 miles from Antwerp; and though the English merchants at Antwerp did what they could to procure his release, and letters were also sent from lord Cromwell and others out of England, yet Philips besmirched himself so heartily, that he was tried and condemned to die. He was first strangled by the hands of the common hangman, and then burned near Tilford castle, in 1536. While he was tying to the stake, he cried with a fervent and loud voice, "Lord, open the king of England's eyes." TYPE (τύπος), an impression, image, or representation of some model, which is termed the antitype. In this sense the word occurs often in the writings of divines, who employ it to denote that prefiguration of the great events of man's redemption which they have found or fancied in the principal transactions recorded in the Old Testament. That the death of Christ for the sins of men, and his resurrection from the dead for their justification, were prefigured in the ritual worship instituted by Moses, is indeed incontrovertible; but when divines consider as a type every thing mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures, in which an active imagination can discover the slightest resemblance or analogy to any circumstance in the life, or death, or resurrection, of Christ, they expose the whole doctrine of types to the ridicule of unbelievers, and do a real injury to that cause which it is their professed intention to serve. To contend, as some of them have done, that the extraction of Eve from the side of Adam, while he was in a deep sleep, was intended as a type of the Roman soldier's piercing our Saviour's side while he slept the sleep of death; or that the envy of the sons of Jacob to their brother Joseph, was typical of the envy of the Scribes and Pharisees to Jesus the Messiah, is to burlesque the Scriptures, and insult reason. The nature of types seems indeed to be very little understood even by those who pretend to have studied them with care. They are generally compared to prophecies having a double sense, and are thought to have been so contrived as to give information of the future events to which they pointed; but the information which they gave of Christianity must have been exceedingly obscure to those who lived before the coming of Christ, however plain it may appear to us who can now compare the type with the antitype. A different opinion has indeed been maintained, not only by mystical caballists, who will maintain any thing from which common sense revolts, but also by writers who, when treating of other subjects, have shown that they possessed very sound understandings. One of the ablest defenders of revelation, speaking of the purpose for which the passover was instituted, asks, "What is the price and worth of a lamb, whose blood infallibly gives life to those who are tinged with it, and the non-aspiration or neglect of which is sufficient to condemn Jew and Gentile to death without distinction?" Taking it for granted that this question is capable of no answer but one favourable to the conclusion which he wishes to draw from it, he then proceeds in the following words: "Though the Messiah was not already come, who could doubt but that such a mystery typified him, since he was to be the Saviour and Deliverer of his people? and who would not be prepared to believe that he will deliver his people, and save them by the effusion of his blood, when it is obvious that it is to the immolation of a lamb, and the aspersion of its blood, that all Israel owe their lives and liberties?" That the sacrifice of the paschal lamb for the safety of the Israelites was typical of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God for the sins of the world, and that the resemblance or analogy of the type to the antitype was in many respects exceedingly striking, are facts known to every Christian; but they could not possibly be known to the ancient Hebrews before it was revealed to them that Christ was to suffer. At the institution of the passover, nothing was said from which the great body of the people could infer that they were to be redeemed from death and sin by the blood of the Messiah, as their fathers had in Egypt been delivered from the destroying angel by the blood of the immolated lamb. We readily agree with the ingenious writer, that in the blood of a lamb there is no worth to propitiate the eternal God, and from him to purchase life for the man who is sprinkled with it; but the Israelites, at the era of their departure from Egypt, held opinions very different from his and ours. They thought grossly of the Deity, and believed, with their superstitious masters, that he put the highest value on animal sacrifices. In the New Testament Christ is called our Passover, and said to have been sacrificed for us. Christians therefore cannot doubt but that the Jewish sacrifice of the paschal lamb was emblematical of the great sacrifice slain on the cross; but as the majority of the ancient Hebrews were ignorant of all the circumstances of resemblance between the type and antitype, we cannot conceive how they should have dreamed of a future passover of which their own was but an empty figure. Some learned men indeed seem to imagine, that when the rites of the law were instituted, the people were taught to consider them as of no value in themselves, but merely as shadows of good things to come, and that by means of these shadows a distinct and even steady view was given to them of the substance; but this is a supposition which receives no support from Scripture. That Abraham, who rejoiced to see Christ's day, and seeing it was glad; that Moses, who was directed to make all things relating to the tabernacle according to the pattern shewed to him in the mount; and that such other individuals as, like him, could look up to a God invisible, and perform at once a worship purely spiritual; that these men were admonished that the ritual law was only the shadow of a future and more perfect dispensation—cannot, we think, be questioned. Nay, that Abraham, Moses, and a few others, may have had as accurate notions of Christianity as we have at present, is a position which we feel not ourselves inclined to controvert; but that the great body of the Hebrew nation was taught from the beginning to consider their law as imperfect, or as deriving any little value which it had from its being emblematical of a purer worship to be revealed in the fulness of time, is a supposition which cannot be admitted without confounding all the divine dispensations. The law was a schoolmaster given to the posterity of Jacob, to guard them from idolatry, and to train them by degrees for the coming of Christ. That it might answer this purpose the more effectually, prophets were raised up from time to time to point out its secret and spiritual meaning, as the people became able to receive it; and no reason can be assigned for the introduction of so burdensome and carnal a ritual between the fall and the clear revelation of redemption, but because mankind at large were not at that period period capable of a more spiritual and refined worship. See THEOLOGY, Part II. Sect. iv. If this be so, how absurd is it to suppose that the ancient Israelites saw through their sacrifices the future sacrifice of Christ, and the simple, though sublime, worship of the Christian church; that when their law promised temporal rewards to the obedient, they looked for heavenly ones through the Messiah; and that when they were offering a sin-offering for their transgressions, they had their eyes fixed on the cross of Christ, being aware that the blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin? Had the Israelites, at their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, been capable of all this faith, it is not to be supposed that the Father of Mercies would have laid upon them such a yoke of ordinances; for that would have been in effect to say, though you are capable of worshipping me in spirit and in truth, according to the dispensation which shall be revealed to your posterity, yet I command you to observe a multifarious ritual, which you know to be preparatory to that dispensation, and of no real value in itself! The law therefore had only the shadow of good things to come, and not such an image of them, as that merely from beholding the type mankind could acquire an accurate notion of the antitype. It was indeed so contrived as naturally to lead the thinking part of the nation to the hopes of future redemption; but without the illustrations of the prophets it could not of itself have made them comprehend the means by which that redemption was to be effected. Between the types and the antitypes, the shadow and the substance, the resemblance, or, to speak more properly, the analogy, is so striking, that no unprejudiced person can now entertain a doubt but that the law and the gospel are parts of one great scheme of providence, which, commencing with the fall, was completed by the effusion of the Holy Spirit on the day of pentecost. But it would be as equitable to condemn a Bacon or a Newton to spend his time in the amusements of children, as it would have been to place the Jews under the ritual law, had they been capable of acquiring from the shadows of that law adequate notions of the substance of Christianity.