Titus — The Tyndale New Testament (1534)

The epistle known today as Titus in Tyndale's revised New Testament of 1534, translated from the Greek and opened, as in the print, by Tyndale's prologue to the epistle. It is printed here from the copy in the British Library as keyed by the Text Creation Partnership, in the spelling of 1534; the margin notes are given as footnotes, and the crosses ✚ and ⊢ mark where the lessons read in church begin and end.

¶ The Prologe vnto the pistle of S. Paule to Titus.

THis is a shorte pistle: wherin yet is contayned all that is nedefull [A] for a Christē to knowe.

In the fyrst Chapter he sheweth what maner a man a bysshope or curat ought to be: that is to wyt / verteous and learned / to preache & defende the Gospell / and to confounde the doctryne of trustynge in workes & mennes tradicions which euer fyght agaynst the fayth and carye awaye the conscience captiue from the fredome that is in Christ into the bondage of their awne ymaginacions and inuencions / as though tho thinges shuld make amā good in the syght of God which are to no proffyt at all.

In ⟨illegible⟩he seconde he teacheth all degrees / olde / younge / men / wemen / masters / and seruauntes how to behaue thē selues as they which Christ hath bought with his bloude / to be his proper or peculyer people / to glorifie God with good workes.

In the thyrde he teacheth to honoure tēporall rulars and to obeye them / and yet bringeth to Christ agayne and to the grace that he hath purchased for vs / that no mā shuld thinke that the obedience of princes lawes or anye other worke shuld iustifie vs before God. And last of all he chargeth to auoyde the companye of the stobourne and of the heretikes.

The text

Chapter 1

¶ The fyrst Chapter.

1 PAul the seruaunt of God / [A] & an Apostle of Iesu Christ / to preache the fayth of goddis electe / & yᵉ knowledge of that trueth / which is after godlynes

2 vpon the hope of eternall lyfe / which lyfe God that cannot lye / hath promised before the worlde begāne:

3 but hath opened his worde at yᵉ tyme apoynted thorow preachynge / which preachynge is committed vnto me / by the commaundement of god oure saveoure.

4 To Titus his naturall sonne in the commen fayth. Grace mercie and peace from God the father / and from the lorde Iesu Christ oure saveoure.

5 For this cause left I y[ᵉ] in Creta / that thou [B]¹ shuldest performe that which was lackynge / and shuldest ordeyne elders in every citie as I apoynted the.

6 Yf eny be faut⟨illegible⟩lesse / the husbande of one wyfe / havynge faythfull childrē / which are not sclandred of royote / nether are disobediēt.

7 For a² bisshoppe must be fautelesse /³ as it becommeth the minister of God: not stubborne / not angrye / no dronkarde / no fyghter / not geven to filthy lucre:

8 but herberous / one that loveth goodnes / sobre mynded righteous / holy / temperat /

9 and suche as cleveth vnto the true worde of doctryne / that he maye be able to exhorte with wholsom learny[n]ge / and to improve them that saye agaynst it.

10 For ther are many disobedient and talkers of vanite and disceavers of myndes / namely [C] they of the circumcisiō /

11 whose mouthes must be stopped / which pervert whole houses teachinge thinges which they ought not / because of filthy lucre.

12 One beynge of thē selves / which was a poyet of their awne / sayde: The Cretayns are all wayes lyars / evyll beastes / and slowe belies.

13 This witnes is true / wherfore rebuke them sharply / that they maye be sounde in the fayth /

14 and not takynge hede to Iewes [D] fables and commaūdmentes of men that turne from the trueth.

15 Unto the pure / are all thynges pure: but vnto them that are defiled⁴ and vnbelevynge / is nothynge pure: but even the very myndes and consciences of them are defiled.

16 They confesse that they knowe god: but with the dedes they denye hym / and are abhominable and disobedient / and vnto all good workes discommendable.

Notes to Chapter 1

Chapter 2

¶ The .ii. Chapter.

1 BUt speake thou that which becōmeth wholsome learninge.

2 That yᵉ elder mē [A]⁵ be sober / honest / discrete / sounde in the fayth in love & in paciēce.

3 And yᵉ elder wemē⁶ lykewyse / that they be in soche rayment as becommeth holynes / not falce accusars / not geven to moche drinkynge / but teachers of honest⁷ thynges /

4 to make the younge wemen so bremynded / to love their husbandes / to love their children /

5 to be discrete / chast / huswyfly / good and obediēt vnto their awne husbandes⁸ that the worde of god be not evyll spoken of.

6 Yonge men lykwyse exhorte that they be sobre mynded.

7 Above all thynges shewe thy silfe an insample [D] of good workes with vncorrupt doctryne / with honestie /

8 and with the wholsome worde which cannot be rebuked / that he which withstondeth / maye be a shamed / havynge nothinge⁹ in you yᵗ he maye disprayse.

9 The servaūtes exhorte to be obediēt vnto their awne masters / and to please in all thynges / not answerynge agayne /

10 nether be pickers / but that they shewe all good faythfulnes / that they maye do worshippe to yᵉ doctryne of oure saveoure God in all thynges.

11 ✚ For the grace of god / that bryngeth saluacion vnto all men / hath appered

12 and teacheth vs that we shuld denye [C] vngodlynes and wordly lustes / and that we shuld live sobre mynded / righteously & godly in this present worlde /

13 lokinge for that blessed hope and glorious apperenge of y[ᵉ] myghty god / & of oure savioure Iesu Christ

14 which gave him silfe for vs / to redeme vs from all vnrightewesnes / and to pourge vs a peculiar people vnto him silfe / fervently geven vnto good workes.

15 These thinges speake / and exhorte / ✚ and rebuke / with all commaundynge Se that no man despise the.

Notes to Chapter 2

Chapter 3

The .iii. Chapter.

1 VVarne thē that they submitte them¹⁰ selves to rule and power / to obey the officers / that they be readie vnto all good workes /

2 that they speake evyll of no mā that they be no fyghters / but softe / shewynge all meknes vnto all men.

3 For we oure selves also were in tymes past / vnwyse / disobedient / deceaved / in daunger to lustes / & to diuers maners of volupteousnes / livynge in maliciousnes & envie / full of hate / hatinge one another.

4 ✚ But after that the kyndnes and love of¹¹ oure saveoure God to māwarde appered /

5 not of y[ᵉ] dede of rightewesnes which we wrought but of his mercie he saved vs / by yᵉ foūtayne¹² of the newe birth / and with the renuynge of the holy goost /

6 which he shed on vs oboundantly / thorow Iesus Christ oure saveoure /

7 that we once instified by his grace / shuld be heyres of eternall lyfe / thorowe hope

8 ✚ This is a true sayinge. Of these thinges I wolde thou shuldest certifie / that [C] they which beleve God / myght be diligent to go forwarde in good workes. The¹³ se thinges are good & proffitable vnto mē.

9 Folisshe questions / and genealogies / and braulinges and stryfe aboute the lawe / avoyde / for they are vnprosfitable and superfluous.

10 A mā that is geuē to heresie / after the fyrst and the seconde admonicion / avoyde /

11 remembrynge that he that is soche / is perverted / and synneth even damned by his awne iudgement.

12 When I shall sende Artemas vnto the or [D] Tichicus / be diligēt to come to me vnto Nichopolis. For I have determined ther to wynter.

13 Brynge zenas y[ᵉ] lawear & Apollos on their iorney diligently / that nothynge be lackynge vnto them.

14 And let oures olso learne to excell in good workes as farforth / as nede requyreth / that they be not vnfrutefull.

15 All that are with me / salute the. Grete them that love vs in the fayth. Grace be with you all / Amen.

Written from Nichopolis a citie of Macedonia.

Notes to Chapter 3

Colophon

Transcribed from The newe Testament dylygently corrected and compared with the Greke by Willyam Tindale (Antwerp: Marten Emperowr, November 1534; STC 2826), British Library copy, as keyed by the Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP Phase I, text A68940): keyed by Apex CoVantage from the ProQuest page images in 2005, then sampled and proofread by Judith Siefring. The TCP transcription was released into the public domain under CC0 1.0. The printed text is in the public domain.

Spelling, capitals, punctuation (including the virgule /), abbreviation marks (the macron, as in thē, and ꝭ) and the signs ¶ ✚ ⊢ ❧ are kept as printed. The only changes are these: long s (ſ) is set as s; superscript letters are set as ᵉ ᵗ ᵒ (yᵉ = the, yᵗ = that); ▪ marks a stop the transcribers could not identify; a word divided at the end of a line, with or without a printed hyphen, is joined into one word; a letter supplied from another text, as explained below, is set in square brackets; page breaks and catchwords are removed. Woodcuts and decorated initials are not reproduced, but woodcut captions are given. The margin notes are given as numbered footnotes. Printed headings are kept, including their misprints, as italic lines under the library's chapter headings. The letters [A] to [G] are the section letters printed in the margin, by which the 1534 margin references (for example "Esaie vij. c.") and the table of lessons find a passage.

The 1534 print has no verse numbers. They are supplied here from the eBible.org Tyndale New Testament (1534), a public-domain, verse-numbered electronic text of the same edition. A word-by-word alignment showed that about 97 per cent of the two texts' words are identical across the New Testament, and the remainder differ in spelling and abbreviation, with a few slips of keying in one text or the other. The paragraphs of the print give way to one paragraph per verse.

Words that the transcribers could not read are marked ⟨illegible⟩ (6 places on this page, 4 of them in the margin notes).

In the verse text of this book, 5 places that the transcribers could not read in the printed book have been supplied from the eBible.org Tyndale New Testament (1534), a later electronic transcription of Tyndale's New Testament whose transcriber is not named. Each supplied letter is set in square brackets, as in y[ᵉ] or fal[c]e, so that it can be told from a letter the transcribers read in the print. A place was supplied only where the verse alignment was exact on both sides, the eBible reading agreed letter for letter with every legible letter, and no macron could have stood in the gap. Where the small superscript letter after y was supplied, the eBible text is the only evidence for that letter.

This is an archival transcription of Tyndale's printed English, not a Good Works Translation: nothing here has been translated or modernised by the library.

🌲