Love Quote by William Tyndale

Tyndale sketches a society where public virtue is theater and private belief is the real currency. He’s not lamenting hurt feelings; he’s mapping the pressure system of early Reformation England, when friendship, conscience, and survival all had to be negotiated in whispers. The pivot from “openly” to “secretly” is the whole argument: the same “divers men” who “love me” can’t risk being seen loving him. In daylight, they “abhor” him because the performance of orthodoxy protects reputations, jobs, and bodies. In a back room, they “accept my request” because the private self still has room to agree.

The phrasing is intentionally plain, almost legalistic: “pray them” as in ask, petition, plead. That modest verb choice matters. Tyndale isn’t describing a revolutionary mob; he’s describing ordinary people who would rather not be brave. He also implicates them gently. “Which love me as I do them” insists on mutuality, making their public rejection look less like sincere conviction and more like cowardice enforced by institutions.

Context sharpens the stakes. Tyndale, a clergyman pushing vernacular scripture, lived under a regime that treated unauthorized translation as sedition. The street becomes a stage patrolled by rumor and law; secrecy becomes the only honest forum left. The subtext is a critique of a church-and-state order that forces believers into double lives, turning community into complicity and making truth something you can only handle under cover.