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BOOK REVIEWS 443 we can credit Louis with little more than not making matters worse, but that is more than we can say for most kings. J. Russell Major Emory University, Emeritus William Tyndale and theLaw. Edited byJohn A. R. Dick and Anne Richardson. [Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, Volume XXV.] (Kirksville, Missouri: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers. 1994. Pp. xii, 135. Í35.00.) This is mostly a helpful collection of essays, worthy of a university library. Given the broad theme of the book, however, it suffers from having too many contributors from departments ofEnglish, and none from law, political science, church history, or theology, though there is a clergyman. Tyndale's purposes were not primarily literary, or even political, but theological and spiritual. There is, however, a theological ignorance which pervades the book. Anne Richardson is anachronistic in seeing Tyndale as a crusader for human rights. His concern is not political but spiritual: persecutions impeded the freedom of the gospel. But to reason from that to a concern for universal individual rights which are blind to all religious, moral, and spiritual distinctions is unjustified. His concern is not for human rights à la the Bill of Rights or the United Nations 1948 Declaration, but the rights of the gospel. Tyndale is hardly a "prophet of modernity" for advocating trial by jury, which was introduced as far back as 1275 (pp. 17—18), and the right against self-incrimination , which dates back to canon law (p. 23). Richardson calls Tyndale's message "the gospel ofmodernity." That is certainly to be found in the writings ofBacon, Hobbes, and Locke, but Tyndale's is the gospel ofthe New Testament, i.e., not of modernity but of Christian antiquity. Donald Dean Smeeton offers a very clear exposition of Tyndale's presentation of the New Testament understanding of the Christian moral life, or the relationship between law and love. Gerald Hammond fills out this thought in his study of Tyndale's Deuteronomy, commendable reading for scholar and saint alike. Peter Auksi usefully distinguishes between Luther's hyperbolic deprecation of reason, i.e., "human stupidity," and Tyndale's advocacy ofwhat Auksi calls "a proper, modest use of reason" (p. 44). James Andrew Clark's essay is an informative look at Tyndale's place in the spectrum of approaches to translation, ranging from narrow or lexical ("verbum pro verbo") to broad or semiotic. "Despite his trust in his mother tongue, however, 1 think that Tyndale knew that as translator he could not offer unmediated access to God's word or avoid linguistic multiplicity" (p. 66). The least worthy inclusion of this collection is Richard Duerden's essay on bridging the division between religion and politics in Tyndale's Obedience. A 444 BOOK REVIEWS professor of English, he is writing on theology and politics apparently without a competent understanding of either one. For example, he refers to God's justice when in fact speaking of God's mercy, confusing the two. This is a grave error. He sees justification by faith alone as something opposed to "an active faith operative through love" (p. 70). He identifies the distinction between religion and politics as that between value and fact, an identification which is anachronistic and, even on its own terms, grossly unfaithful to Tyndale 's thought in particular, and to the Reformation is general. Finally, John Dick's essay on Tyndale's examination of Henry's marriage in Practice ofPrelates is characteristically illuminating. Contributors also include Rudolph Almasy, David Daniell, and John Day. David C. Innes Gordon-Contvell Theological Seminary The Correspondence ofErasmus: Letters 1535 to 1657, January—December 1525. Translated by Alexander Dalzell; annotated by Charles G. Nauert, Jr. [Collected Works of Erasmus, Volume 11.] (Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. 1994. Pp. xxiii, 476. $110.00.) This is Volume 1 1 in the Correspondence series of the Collected Works of Erasmus, the vast project which the University of Toronto Press has been publishing since 1974. It contains 126 letters surviving from the year 1525, 89 of which were written by Erasmus. Their enumeration is that of Allen's ErasmiEpistolae, and they are translated (with one exception) from the Latin text in the first half of Allen's Volume 6...

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