William Tyndale on Spiritual warfare

Through the usual means of the Christian life: Scripture, prayer, faith and watchfulness, including asking God to deliver the afflicted

THE POSITION

Spirits are driven off by faith, not by the church's consecrated objects. He puts the objection in his reader's mouth, "Do not such things bring the Holy Ghost and put away sin and drive away spirits?", and answers that faith in Christ's promises brings the Holy Ghost, and faith is the rock hell's gates cannot prevail against. Elsewhere he tests the conjured holy water by its fruits and finds no one healed in body or soul. What he rejects is the sacramental exorcism of holy water, candles and blessings; he does not address commanding a spirit to leave in Christ's name, so the state is a lean.

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ABOUT THIS FIGURE

English translator of the New Testament from Greek and of the Pentateuch from Hebrew, working in exile in the Low Countries, whose wording runs through the King James Version. He was strangled and burned at Vilvoorde in 1536. He was also the first English Protestant theologian of weight, defending justification by faith, the authority of Scripture over the church, and the obedience owed to kings. This entry rests on the Obedience of a Christian Man, the Answer to Sir Thomas More, the Brief Declaration of the Sacraments, the exposition of 1 John and his biblical prologues, all in the Parker Society edition (1848–1850).