Weigle, Luther A. “The Church and the English Vernacular.” In The English New Testament: From Tyndale to the Revised Standard Version, pp. 28-54. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1949.

In the excerpt below, Weigle examines sixteenth-century concerns regarding the propriety and practicality of translating the Bible into English.

The movement for a vernacular English Bible, from Tyndale to the King James Version, was part of the general movement that took the Church of England from the control of the Papacy. The Bible of the Roman church was the Latin Vulgate, and the language of its worship was Latin. Generally speaking the Roman Catholics in sixteenth-century England and those of the Church of England who were anxious to retain as much as possible of Catholic faith and practice either opposed the use of the Bible in the English vernacular or viewed it with misgiving; while those in sympathy with the Protestant...