Volume 5

Like Practyse and Obedience, the first edition (1528) of The Parable of the Wicked Mammon was printed with a deceptive imprint designed to deceive hostile authorities. Also like both Obedience and Practyse, copies were portable and easily concealable, and were smuggled into England, where this book was officially banned. For many readers, reading Mammon would have constituted their first encounter with New Testament texts in English; its sustained explication of Christ’s Parable of the Shrewd Manager (Luke 16), which Tyndale interprets as a narrative in support of the Protestant doctrine of sola fide (faith alone), thus laid important interpretative foundations. Mammon also gives insight to the ways in which Tyndale negotiated his perceived role as mediator of God’s word. Its preface provides insight into Tyndale’s relationship with his fellow reformers William Roy and Jerome Barlow.