While translating the Holy Scriptures, Rogers experienced his conversion to Protestantism. “I have found the true light in the gospel,” he remarked one day to Tyndale; “I now see the filthiness of Rome, and I cast from my shoulders the heavy yoke it has imposed upon me.” From that moment Tyndale received from Rogers the help which formerly had been given him by Frith.
But this association did not last long; Tyndale was soon arrested, and then was executed near Vilvorde Castle, in 1536.
Upon Tyndale’s arrest Rogers saved the manuscript of the Old
Testament, and immediately set to work to print the translation, possibly on a press owned by the Merchants of Antwerp. Because of his apparent submissiveness to Romish practices, suspicion did not attach itself to him at this time. Consequently he was able to bring Tyndale’s work to
fruition. And this, his biographer, Chester, remarked,
“was no schoolboy’s task. Apart from the actual labor of placing the text in a complete state, and probably comparing every verse with the original there was a vast amount of mental effort to be bestowed upon the marginal illustrations which he added, as well as upon the various prefaces and other articles, prefixed to the whole work, and to individual portions of it. The marginal notes alone would fill a volume of considerable magnitude.”
Furthermore, Rogers
“sat in judgment on every page,”
and
“the mere labor of thus examining and revising. . . must have been nearly, if not quite, equivalent to a first translation.” — Joseph L.
Chester, John Rogers, pages 47,33.
Perhaps even more so, for it is usually easier to make a new garment than to remodel an old one.
Coverdale’s part in this Bible is much less than some have supposed it to be. Rogers doubtless referred to his translation among others, but the Coverdale portions are said to be “not very numerous.”
Since Coverdale’s translation of the Bible in 1535 failed to gain official approval, Grafton and Whitchurch, English printers, came to Antwerp to see what terms they could make with Rogers. They were prompted primarily by business motives. Grafton especially was so pleased with what he found that he staked nearly his whole fortune in the printing of the new Bible. When they assumed the job it seems certain that the translation and printing of all the books preceding that of Isaiah had already been completed.
These sheets Grafton and Whitchurch purchased from whatever printer had done the work, and hired Rogers to translate and edit the remainder as fast as he could. Tyndale had supposedly translated all of the New Testament and all of the Old from Genesis through 1 Chronicles, and perhaps also the book of Jonah. It is even possible that he had translated all. But it may be taken for granted that some partially completed
manuscripts and numerous notes, probably in a state of confusion because of Tyndale’s sudden arrest, were left for Rogers’s editing.
By July, 1537, the entire volume, under the pen name of Thomas Matthew, was printed and delivered in England, a little more than two years after Rogers began helping Tyndale work on it.
Cranmer liked the new translation, and the king granted a royal license for its publication and distribution. Soon the king proclaimed that every parish church in England should possess a copy of this Bible, that the people should have unrestricted access to reading it, provided they did not argue about its merits or doctrines but took their questions to their
ministers and instructors. Within four years and four months 24,000 copies of the whole Bible were sold in London.
The question may be asked, Why did not Rogers sign his own name to the Bible, rather than that of Thomas Matthew? Chester explains that to have done so would not have been honest, for the work was not all his. Tyndale was dead and his name in disrepute among the papists; Frith, likewise, was dead and his name odious. Coverdale’s name was out of the question, for his Bible had failed to win approval. This new Bible needed an
author’s name to throw the papists off their guard, and it may be that Rogers selected the names of his two favorite Scripture characters,
Thomas and Matthew, to serve as the nora de plume for this whole Bible,
“the greatest enemy. . the papacy had yet encountered in England,” and by which it ultimately received its deathblow.
About 1537 Rogers married Adriana de Weyden, a Protestant, in
Antwerp. Soon afterward he departed for Wittenberg, where he learned the German language well enough to take charge of a German congregation. For ten years he preached in that city, and there most of his children were born. But at heart Rogers always remained an Englishman. When he was permitted to return to the land of his birth during the reign of Edward VI, his wife, and those of his children who were born in Germany were naturalized as British citizens by an act of Parliament.
Rogers probably returned to England in 1548, living at first in the house of his friend Whitchurch, where he translated Melanchthon’s A Weighing and Considering of the Interim and thereby helped quell the rumor that the German Reformer had renounced Protestantism and returned to the Catholic Church. In 1550 Rogers became simultaneously the rector of St.
Margaret Moyses and the vicar of St. Sepulchre, both in London.
In 1551 Nicholas Ridley, then bishop of London, made him a prebendary at St. Paul’s. It is said that his duties were “severe and important.” Two years later Ridley had him appointed as divinity lecturer or reader in the same cathedral, a position of prominence which was to catch the eye of the papist Mary as she ascended the throne soon after.
From the beginning of his Protestant ministry in England Rogers was a nonconformist, wearing only a little round cap rather than a priest’s coat and square cap; and he would not wear the gown and the tippet, as was the custom of the regular clergy. He also lashed out against the Protestants in high places who enriched themselves from the spoils of the Catholic Church, criticism which did not tend to make him popular with the chief courtiers during the time of Edward VI.
Mary came to the throne August 3, 1553. On the Sunday after, on August 6, Rogers was asked to preach at Paul’s Cross. It was not his turn to do so, and it is thought that his selection at that time was a contrivance of the papists to hasten his downfall.
It would have been expedient from an opportunist’s point of view had Rogers preached a noncommittal, temporizing sermon, one filled with
platitudes and overtures, but he never was one to conform his faith to the demands of his enemies. And he chose rather to give his message a “certain sound” at that crucial hour. He denounced the papacy and cautioned the people “to beware of all pestilent popery, idolatry, and superstition,” and urged them to remain steadfast to the Protestant faith as taught during the reign of Edward VI.
Luther had the assurance of a safe conduct at Worms, but Rogers knew he was facing death when he preached as he did that Sunday at Paul’s Cross.
And what a pity it would have been had he preached other than he did, for at that particular moment the whole Protestant movement in England depended upon his words.
“What a crushing blow would he have inflicted upon the cause of the Reformation, and how his example would have deterred others from maintaining their steadfastness when it should come their turns to be in peril, had he temporized with the ruling powers, or compromised himself. There never was any position in the whole history of the Reformation, all things considered, where the responsibilities thrown upon a single man were greater and the results more important, or where they were more nobly sustained.
Surely, his conduct was more than noble — it was magnificent.” — Ibid., pp. 104,105.
He was brought before Mary’s council to answer for his doctrines of marriage of the clergy, the supremacy of Jesus Christ instead of that of the pope, and the abolition of the mass. He was imprisoned six months in his own home, from which he made no attempt to escape; and then Bonner, bishop of London, transferred him to Newgate prison, January 27, 1554, where he was confined among thieves and criminals and all kinds of low- class prisoners.
In January, 1555, he was examined before Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.
Rogers stated his desire to be heard in writing, but this request was denied him. Nonetheless, there is preserved a minute account of his trial as he wrote it daily in prison.
On the doctrine of the eucharist he stated, “For I cannot understand ‘really and substantially’ to signify other than corporally, but corporally Christ is
in heaven, and so cannot Christ be corporally also in your sacrament.” He denied having preached against the Queen, even though he had stated that neither she nor Henry VIII was the head of the Church. He also denied ever having dissented from the Catholic Church; to him “catholic”
signified, not the Roman Catholic Church, but
“the consent of all true teaching churches of all times and all ages.”
— John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, vol. 6, p. 595. <LINK>
On January 29, 1555, he was condemned to be burned at Smithfield. While awaiting execution he remained cheerful to the end, even drinking a toast to Hooper’s health the day before he died. Hooper had been imprisoned in another apartment, and since his trial had been held the day before Rogers’s, Rogers supposed they would be sentenced together.
Rogers also asked permission to talk to his wife that he might advise her what to do with the children, but this Bonner refused him on the basis that he had no wife, that his marriage to her was contrary to the teachings of the Romish Church. Rogers replied to the bishop,
“Ye make yourself highly displeased with the matrimony of priests, but ye maintain their open whoredoms; as in Wales, where every priest hath his whore openly dwelling with him, and lying with him: even as your holy father suffereth all the priests in Dutchland and in France to do the like.” — Ibid., p. 603. <LINK>
As the sheriffs led him to Smithfield, he encouraged the large crowd lining the path to remain steadfast in the faith of Jesus Christ. His wife and eleven children, including one infant, met him on the way. The temptation to renounce heresy, to remain among the living to provide for and enjoy his family, must have been even greater than all previous temptations; but Rogers withstood this test also. And he likewise resisted all attempts of the papists to get him to recant just before the execution. One cannot help standing in awe at such steadfastness.
As the flames kindled about him, “he, as one feeling no smart, washed his hands in the flame, as though it had been cold water,” and then held them up to heaven until the fire consumed them.
The French ambassador at London, a loyal Roman Catholic and an eyewitness of the execution, wrote to Montmorency, chief minister to Francis I, immediately following the execution:
“This day was performed the confirmation of the alliance between the pope and this kingdom, by a public and solemn sacrifice of a preaching doctor named Roger, who has been burned alive for being a Lutheran; but he died persisting in his opinion. At this conduct, the greatest part of the people took such pleasure, that they were not afraid to make him many exclamations to strengthen his courage. Even his children assisted in such a manner that it seemed as if he had been led to a wedding.” — Chester, op. cit., p. 202.
But those who rejoiced most that Rogers had remained true to his faith were the other doomed prisoners, among them Bradford, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. To them Rogers was the bellwether who had trodden the path ahead and marked it well. He had not failed them, and they were glad.
“I thank our Lord God and heavenly father by Christ,” Ridley wrote to Bradford, “that, since I heard of our clear brother Rogers’ departing and stout confession of Christ and His truth even unto the death, my heart, blessed be God! so rejoiced of it, that, since that time, I say I never felt any lumpish heaviness in my heart, as I grant I have felt sometimes before.” And four clays after Rogers’s execution Bradford wrote to Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, expressing his happiness that their
“dear brother” had “broken the ice valiantly.”
|— Ibid. pp. 213,214.
Something more needs to be said about Rogers’s writings. While in prison he wrote not only the account of his trial, but also a treatise entitled Admonitions, Sayings, and Prophesyings, which contained much
instruction for the Protestant church. Among other things, he had a burden that well-qualified ministers be placed in the churches to shepherd the flocks. The manuscript of his writings Rogers had left behind him in prison as “a black thing” lying under the stairs in a dark corner. There his wife and son Daniel found it when they returned from witnessing his death. Others had searched the room but had found nothing.
Rogers wrote two more treatises, either one of which considered alone would place him in the front ranks of the heroes of the Reformation. One is a general English commentary upon the Bible, the first of its kind, which in turn led the way for many others to imitate. His other claim to fame is his preparation of the first concordance, A Table of the Principal Matters Contained in the Bible, in Which the Reader May Find and Practice Many Common Places. This was written for the purpose of directing attention to those parts of the Scriptures which opposed the Romish doctrines, with stress upon marriage, mass, and the eucharist, which were doubtless the most disputed subjects of the time between the Reformers and the Catholic Church.