The Obedience of a Christen man, and how Christen rulers ought to govern, wherein also (if thou mark diligently) thou shalt find eyes to perceive the crafty of all . is a 1528 book by the English Protestant author William Tyndale. The spelling of this title is now commonly modernized and abbreviated to The Obedience of a Christian Man. It was first published by Merten de Keyser in Antwerp, and is best known for advocating Caesaropapism: the ideology that the King of a country was the head of that country's church, rather than the Holy See, and to be the first instance, in the English language at any rate, of advocating the divine right of kings, a concept mistakenly attributed to the Catholic Church.
It is believed that the book greatly influenced Henry VIII's decision in declaring the Act of Supremacy, by which he became Supreme Head of the Church of England, in 1534. Tyndale's opposition to Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon earned him the king's enmity, but when Tyndale was arrested by the Roman Catholic authorities in Antwerp in 1535, Henry's chief minister Thomas Cromwell attempted unsuccessfully to intervene on his behalf. Tyndale was executed for heresy the following year.
The text
The Obedience of a Christian Man (from here on abbreviated as Obedience) was first printed in Antwerp on October 2, 1528 (viii). Despite being officially banned, Obedience was still widely read throughout England and, later on, was even mentioned in the works of Shakespeare (xxvii). Anne Boleyn, (later Henry VIII's second wife) owned a copy. As Henry was trying to obtain permission from the Pope to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, Anne asked Henry to read Obedience. Afterward, Henry exclaimed, "This is a book for me and all kings to read" (xxiv).
Obedience is divided into five overall sections. The first two are preliminary introductions: the first introduces Tyndale's central concept of experiencing God through the reading of scripture; the second discusses the church's disobedience (of God) in teaching ecclesiastical law rather than scripture. The book proper contains three overall topics: God's laws of obedience, how one should obey and rule in life (addressed to all of English society), and a discussion on the literal interpretation of scripture. Throughout the text, Tyndale also discusses the intrusion into daily life, on both local and national levels by the church and, especially, the Pope, and how the church actively distorts scripture to fulfill its own needs.
The tone of Obedience is low-key, despite containing radical ideology. For the first time, the concept of the supreme authority of the Bible in church is combined with the supreme authority of the king in state (the latter is what inspired Henry VIII). Although Tyndale complains about the lack of scripture in English life, his text features prose inspired by scripture and is abundant with direct quotes and references from the New Testament. He documents the origin of the direct quotes, but not his references, many of which would not have been recognized by the average person who read an original edition of Obedience, then or now.