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THE EVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH
BIBLE
A HISTORICAL SKETCH
First Edition, ... February 1901.
Second Edition, - - - March 1902.
First Edition, . . . February 1901.
Second Edition, - - - March 1902.
JOHN VVYCLIFFE.
(Prom an Engraving by C. White.)
[Frontispiece.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE
ENGLISH BIBLE
A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE SUCCESSIVE
VERSIONS FROM 1382 TO 1885
By H. W. ho are
LATE OF
BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
SECOND EDITION
REVISED AND CORRECTED THROUGHOUT
AND INCLUDING A BIBLIOGRAPHY
WITH PORTRAITS AND SPECIMEN-PAGES FROM OLD BIBLES
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, Albemarle Street
1902
GENERAL
TO
THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER AND MOTHER
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I WISH to thank the readers of my " historical sketch,"
both English and American, for a reception which has
been by far more cordial than an unknown author,
writing on a somewhat well-worn theme, could reason-
ably have anticipated.
My acknowledgments are also due to all who,
whether by reviews or otherwise, have enabled me to
correct errors of fact, or type, or grammar.
A critic here and there has laid it to my charge
that I have added nothing to the sum of human know-
ledge. My ambition did not soar so high. What I
tried to do was to give a new presentment to an old
subject, to rearrange familiar material into something
of a fresh pattern, to enlist the interest of a yet wider
public in a tale which could well afford to be told once
again, — ^^proprie," as Horace pithily puts it, " communia
dicer e!'
My treatment of the subject — may I repeat — is in the
main uncontroversial, popular, and historical. It is con-
cerned rather with the external than with the internal
aspect of the successive versions. Its aim is to give
to each version its appropriate historical setting, and
7
viii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
by so doing, to develop, in an unbroken narrative, the
story of our national Bible in close association with the
story of our national life.
The internal history has not been overlooked, but
it occupies only a subordinate place. To deal with it
as it ought to be dealt with, to examine the process of
translation critically at each stage of its progress, to
exhibit, by a detailed collation, the literary interdepend-
ence and independence of the versions, all this is a
task worthy indeed of long and patient labour, but one
quite beyond my own powers. I have not the leisure
which it demands, nor have I the requisite ability and
training.
One point more. I am advised that it is better for
an author to add a bibliography of his subject to a
volume like the present, than to take for granted
that it can be dispensed with. In deference therefore
to those who are in a position to know, I have now
thrown into an appendix a list of the best-known works
in this country on the history of the English Bible. To
this I have added the names of various authorities,
historical and other, to whom, in one way or another,
I am indebted. The literature of the subject, I need
hardly say, is very far too extensive to admit of any-
thing more than a restricted selection.
H. W. H.
London, February, 1902.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
The sketch which has been attempted in the following
pages, a sketch which is drawn on historical rather than
on critical lines, was originally suggested by two articles
which were contributed to the Nineteenth Century Review
in 1898-9, and I am glad to avail myself of this oppor-
tunity of thanking Mr Knowles for allowing me to
make use of them.
No handbook seems hitherto to have been published
which sought to combine, within modest limits, some
general account of the successive versions of our
national Bible with their historical setting.
Accordingly, in designing such a handbook, an
endeavour has been made so to bring the history of
the versions into relation with the main current of
events as to associate the story of the national Bible
with the story of the national life.
No formal list of authorities is appended. It was
felt that such a list might appear a little out of keeping
with the unpretentious and popular character of this
sketch. But at the same time I desire gratefully to
9
X PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
acknowledge my debt to Bishop Westcott and the late
Dr Eadie, among other well-known writers on the subject,
as well as to the custodians of our rich collections of old
Bibles. I have tried to secure accuracy in matters of
fact, but where, as in official life, literary work can only
be done in brief and broken intervals of leisure, mistakes
will be likely to creep in, and it would be a kindness
to me if any such might in due course be pointed out
for future correction. H. W. H.
London, 1901.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
FOR THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE
SIXTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
563. St Columba founds the Monastery of lona.
590-604, Gregory the Great, last of the Latin Fathers — Founder
of the Medieval Papacy,
597. St Augustine's mission in Kent.
626-55. The supremacy of Penda, and of Paganism, in Mercia.
627. Paulinus in Northumbria.
631, Felix in East Anglia.
635, Aidan in Northumbria.
664. Conference at Whitby.
669-90. Archbishop Theodore.
673. The first " Pan-Anglican " Synod, at Hertford.
675. Caedmon.
673-735. Bede of Jarrow. Aldhelm of Malmesbury. Cynewulf.
726. The Iconoclastic controversy in the East.
732. Battle of Tours, and defeat of the Saracens.
750. Alliance of the Franks with the Papacy.
753-4. The Roman forgery called The Donation of Constajititie.
755. Pepin endows the "Holy Roman Republic" with the
Exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis.
787. Appearance of the Northmen.
800. Coronation of Charles the Great.
814. Death of Charles the Great.
828. Egbert, King of all the English.
850. John Scotus Erigena.
The False Decretals (Pseudo- Isidore).
871-.96. King Alfred. The English Chronicle.
955. Dunstan.
970-1006. Abbot ^Ifric. The Durham Gospels.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
563. St Columba founds the Monastery of lona.
590-604. Gregory the Great, last of the Latin Fathers — Founder
of the Medieval Papacy.
597. St Augustine's mission in Kent.
626-55. The supremacy of Penda, and of Paganism, in Mercia.
627. Paulinus in Northumbria.
631. Felix in East Anglia.
635. Aidan in Northumbria.
664. Conference at Whitby.
669-90. Archbishop Theodore.
673. The first " Pan-Anglican " Synod, at Hertford.
675. Caedmon.
673-735. Bede of Jarrow. Aldhelm of Malmesbury. Cynewulf.
726. The Iconoclastic controversy in the East.
732. Battle of Tours, and defeat of the Saracens.
750. Alliance of the Franks with the Papacy.
753-4. The Roman forgery called The Donation of Constantine.
755. Pepin endows the "Holy Roman Republic" with the
Exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis.
787. Appearance of the Northmen.
800. Coronation of Charles the Great.
814. Death of Charles the Great.
828. Egbert, King of all the English.
850. John Scotus Erigena.
The False Decretals (Pseudo- Isidore).
87 1 -,96. King Alfred. The English Chronicle.
955. Dunstan.
970-1006. Abbot ^Ifric. The Durham Gospels.
IS
xiv CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
970-1006. The ;; Exeter "K^^j^g^^^^j^j^^ ^^^j^^^j
The Vercelh"J
1030. The Rushvvorth Gospels.
1066. Battle of Hastings.
1073. Gregory VII. (Hildebrand.)
1090. Anselm.
1 1 16. University of Bologna.
1 150-1250. Miracle and Mystery Plays.
1 1 50. Gratian's Decretum or Corpus Canonici Juris.
1 164. Constitutions of Clarendon.
1 170. Murder of Becket.
1198-1254. Innocent III. Gregory IX. Innocent IV. Culmination
of the Papal power, and development of the Inquisi-
tion.
1200. University of Paris.
1209. The Albigensian Massacres.
12 1 3. Submission of King John. England a Papal fief, and
its King the Pope's " man."
1 21 5. Magna Charta. Stephen Langton.
The " Ormulum " paraphrase written.
1219. The Dominican! -^^ ■ • • -c 1 j
^ > Friars arrive m England.
1224. The Franciscan J
1230-90. Roger Bacon.
1250. " Genesis and Exodus ^^ a poetical paraphrase.
1264. Merton College founded.
1265. The First Parliament of England.
1227-74. Aquinas. 1
1275-1308. Duns Scotus. j-Leading Schoolmen.
1290-1349. Bradwardine. J
1279. Statute of Mortmain.
1294-13. Boniface VIII.
1 300- 1 347. William of Ockham. Marsiglio of Padua.
1305-77. The Popes at Avignon.
1313-22. Conflict between {a) The Empire and the Papacy ; {b)
The Papacy and the " spiritual " Franciscans.
1320. " Cursor Mundi" a religious history in metre, written
in Northumbria.
A Psalter in English prose, doubtfully ascribed to
William of Shoreham.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE xv
A.D.
1322. Conference at Perugia on "Evangelical Poverty."
The Secession of the " Fraticelli," otherwise known as
the " spiritual " Franciscans.
1324. Birth of Wycliffe (approximate date).
1324. The treatise, '^ Defensor Pact's," by Marsiglio of Padua.
1328. Birth of Chaucer.
1338. Wycliffe enters Oxford (approximate date).
1 338-1453. The Hundred Years' War.
1 340. TAe Psalter, in English prose, by Hampole.
1 34 1. Earliest appointment of a layman as Chancellor.
1346. Battle of Crecy.
1347-54- Rienzi at Rome.
1348-9. The Plague, or Black Death, by which not less than
half the population perished.
1350. Clement VI. "Jubilee" pilgrimage to Rome enforced,
in spite of the plague, to raise money through sale
of indulgences.
135 1. First Statute of Provisors against Papal interference
with ecclesiastical patronage.
1352. Statute of Labourers, with a view to keep down the
rate of wages.
1353. First Statute of Prcemunire, against all appeals to
Papal Courts.
1356. Battle of Poictiers.
Sir John Mandeville. [peasantry^
1358-9. The ^^ Jacquerie," or insurrection of the French
1360. John Ball, the mad socialist preacher of Kent.
Peace of Bretigny,
Adrianople becomes the capital of the Turks in Europe.
1361. Wycliffe is elected Master of Balliol.
1362. The Vision of Piers the Ploughman (Langland).
1362. Re-appearance of the Black Death.
Law-pleadings ordered to be in English.
366. Parliament repudiates Pope Urban's demand for arrears
of tribute, and calls on Wycliffe at Oxford for a formal
defence of this resolution.
1369. Third appearance of the Black Death.
The French burn Portsmouth.
Wycliffe accepts the living of Ludgarshall.
xvi CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
1 37 1. The Commons petition against the appointment of
ecclesiastical dignitaries to the great offices of State.
1372. Wycliffe takes his Doctor's degree.
1372. Spaniards destroy English Fleet offRochelle.
1374. Wycliffe appointed to the living of Lutterworth (April).
1374. Bruges Conference (July). Wycliffe one of the Royal
Commissioners.
1376. The Good Parliament meets to reform abuses, but
breaks up in July owing to death of Black Prince.
Wycliffe accused by the Friars, first before the Bishops,
and then before the Pope.
1377. Wycliffe's tract "De Dominio," defending the decision
of the Parliament which refused Urban's renewed
demand in 1374.
1377. (January) Papal Court returns from Avignon to Rome.
(February 19th) Wycliffe cited to appear in St Paul's.
(May) 5 Papal Bulls issued at Rome against Wycliffe,
addressed to the various authorities in Church and
State.
The University of Oxford reports substantially in favour
of the soundness of Wycliffe's opinions.
Wycliffe sets on foot his order of " poor priests."
1377- (June 21) Death of Edward III.
Wycliffe consulted by Parliament as to payment of
Peter's pence.
1378. Wycliffe cited to Lambeth. Death of Gregory XL
Beginning of " The Great Schism " (September).
1379. WycHffe on ^^ The Truth of Scripture.^' He is now
preparing his translation of the Bible, and further
organising his mission-priests.
1380. The obnoxious poll-tax.
1380. Wycliffe's Theses against the logical validity of the
doctrine of Transubstantiation.
1 38 1. (June) Outbreak oi Peasants' War.
1382. The Earthquake-Synod at Black Friars. WycHffe, by
petition to Parliament, appeals against its findings.
English Bible completed.
1384. Death of Wycliffe.
1 390. Final Statute of Provisors.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE xvii
A.D.
1393. Final Statute of Prcemunire.
1401. Statute enacting the burning of heretics.
1408. Archbishop Arundel's Constitutions forbidding {inter
alia) unauthorised Bibles.
1414. Council of Constance.
Lollard Act, extending provisions of the Act of 1401.
1415. Huss burnt at the stake.
1 43 1. Council of Basel.
1438. Pragmatic sanction of Charles VII. of France.
1450. Jack Cade's rebellion, for redress of grievances.
1453. Capture of Constantinople by the Turks.
1455-85. Dynastic Wars of the Roses.
1485. Several accused persons burnt at Coventry as Lollards-
1489. Birth of Thomas Cranmer.
1 49 1. Savonarola in Florence.
1492. Pope Alexander VI.
1 505. Colet Dean of St Paul's.
1 506. Foundation stone laid of the new St Peter's at Rome.
1508. Michael Angelo begins to decorate the Sistine
Chapel.
1509. Henry VIII, comes to throne.
1 5 10- 16. Raphael's cartoons.
1 5 13. Pope Leo X.
1 5 16. First Edition of Erasmus^ New Testament.
More's " Utopia:'
1 5 17. Publication of Luther's Theses against Indulgences.
1520. Cardinal Ximenes' Complutensian Polyglot.
Lutheran books begin to be imported into England.
Luther bums the Pope's Bull.
1521. Henry VIII.'s treatise against Luther.
Lutheran books burnt at St Paul's.
Luther excommunicated.
1522. Luther's New Testament in German.
1522-4. Peasants' War and Nobles' War in Germany.
1525. (February) Emperor defeats France at Battle of Pavia.
Tyndale's New Testament.
1525. Society of the '"'■Christian Brethren" founded (Froude's
History, ii., 26).
1526. Geneva declares her political independence.
b
iii CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
1526. (February n) Recantation of R. Barnes at St Paul's,
and burning of Lutheran books.
(October) The Primate and the Bishop of London
order Tyndale's Testaments, which had begun to
be detected, to be burnt.
1527. Spread of Lutheran opinions in Oxford and Cambridge.
Henry VI IL incHnes to a divorce.
Sack of Rome by forces of Charles V.
1527-9. The German-Swiss or Zurich Bible.
1528. Latin Bible of Pagninus.
1529. Diet of Spires. Lutheran princes and cities adopt the
name of " Protestants."
Summoning of the Anti-Papal seven years' Parliament.
Fall of Wolsey. More made Chancellor.
1530. Tyndale's Pentateuch. Confession of Augsburg. Death
of Wolsey.
1530. Royal Proclamation against heretical books, coupled
with conditional promise of an English Bible.
Great holocaust of heretical books at St Paul's.
Protestant League of Schmalkald.
1531. The "Supremacy" of the King recognised by the
Convocations.
1 532. The subtnission of the clergy.
Macchiavelli's ''''Prince" published.
Death of Archbishop Warham.
1533. (January) Henry VHI. privately married to Anne
Boleyn.
1533. Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury (March 30th).
Act in restraint of appeals to Rome.
1533. Henry's marriage canonically celebrated.
Cromwell "rules everything." (Chapuis.)
1 534. Act embodying the submission of the clergy.
Act of Supremacy.
Fisher and More sent to the Tower.
Cranmer and the Convocations petition for an English
Bible. Tyndale revises his New Testament and
Pentateuch translations.
1534-5. Sebastian Miinster's Latin Version of the Old Testa-
ment.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE xix
A.D.
1534-5- Tyndays final revision of the New Testament (known
asthe"G. H.").
1535. Olivetaris French Bible.
Execution of Fisher and More.
1535. Coverdale's Bible reaches England.
Cromwell made ecclesiastical Vicegerent.
Visitation of the Monasteries.
1535. Conference of Henry's envoys with Lutherans in Saxony.
1536. Death of Catherine (January).
The Pilgrimage of Grace ; being the revolt of the
North of England against Cromwellism.
Execution of Anne Boleyn (May 19th).
The " Ten Articles" marking the highest point of
Protestant influence during Henry's reign.
Calvin's '' InsHtutesP
1536. Suppression of the lesser Monasteries.
Geneva adopts Protestantism under Calvin.
Tyndale burnt at Vilvorde, October 6th.
Convocation renews petition for an English Bible,
being dissatisfied with Coverdale's version.
1537. Matthew's and Coverdal^s Bibles licensed.
The Bishops' Book.
1538. Cromwell's injunctions.
Lutheran delegates sent to England for a conference
as to a possible religious agreement. Tunstall and
Gardiner hostile — failure of negotiations.
1539. Dissolution of the greater Monasteries.
Act of the " Six Articles" indicating the reaction
towards Catholicism.
1539. The Great Bible (Crom-weWs), ist Edition.
1540. Henry VI IL marries Anne of Cleves, January 6th.
Foundation of the Order of Jesuits.
Execution of Cromwell, July 28th.
Burning of Barnes and others for heresy.
Great Bible, 2nd Edition, -with Cranmer's Preface.
Henry marries Catherine Howard, July 28th.
1543. The King's Book.
Restrictions as to the public and private reading of
the Bible.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
1543. The Copernican System published.
1544. The Litany in English.
1545. Council of Trent, first session.
1546. Death of Luther.
Statutory restriction of 1 543 now made to include the
Coverdale Bible (July 8th).
Wholesale destruction of Bibles.
1547. (January) Death of Henry VI I L
Accession of Edward VL
1548. " Order of the Communion" in English.
1548-9. Erasmus' '''' Paraphrase'''' set up in Churches.
1549. First Prayer Book of Edward VI.
Bucer, a moderate Lutheran, made Professor of
Theology at Cambridge.
Peter Martyr, a Calvinist, made Professor of Theology
at Oxford.
1550. John k Lasco, a Calvinist, made director of the
foreign Protestants in London.
1 5 5 1 . Castalids Latin Bible.
John Knox made a royal chaplain.
1552. Second Prayer Book of Edward VI.
1553. Death of Edward VI., July 6th.
(October) Coronation of Mary Tudor.
1554. (July) Mary marries Philip II. of Spain.
1554-5. The troubles at Frankfort.
The Marian persecutions begin in England.
1555. Rehgious compromise of Augsburg — "Cujus regie ejus
religio " — (September 26th).
1555-8. Martyrdom of Cranmer, Hooper, Ridley, Latimer, and
nearly 300 others.
1557. The Genevan New Test, in English^ by Whittingham.
1558. Death of Mary Tudor, and accession of Elizabeth on
November 17th,
1559. (January 12th) Coronation of Elizabeth.
Cecil made the Queen's chief adviser.
Treaty of Cateau Cambresis (April). Secret agreement
between France and Spain for extermination of
heretics.
Acts of Supremacy and of Uniformity.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE xxi
A.D.
1559. (December) Parker made Archbishop.
1560. Protestantism established in Scotland.
TJie Genevan Bible.
1561. Birth of Francis Bacon.
1 562. Religious Wars in France.
1 563. The Thirty-nine Articles settled by Convocation.
Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
1564. Birth of Shakespeare.
1566. Revolt of the Netherlands.
Vestment controversy reaches its height, and the mal-
contents are branded as " Precisians," or Puritans.
1568. The Bishops' Bible.
1570. Excommunication of Elizabeth. Anglo-Roman Schism.
1572. Cartwright's declaration. Presbyterianism announced
to be a divine institution.
Massacre of St Bartholomew (August 24th).
1579. Latin Old Testament by Tremellius. (The New
Testament was completed soon afterwards.)
1580. Cartwright's Book of Discipline.
1 58 1. Jesuit mission to England.
United Provinces declare their independence.
1582. The Rheims {Douai) New Testament.
Hakluyt's Voyages.
1 586. The Babington plot against Elizabeth.
1587. Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (February 8th).
1588. Martin Marprelate libels.
The Armada (July, August).
1590. The "Faerie Queen."
1 594. Hooker's " Ecclesiastical Polity."
1595. Lambeth Articles.
1597. Bacon's "Essays."
1598. Edict of Nantes (April 30th).
1602. " Othello" played at Court.
1603. Death of Elizabeth ; accession of James I. (Mar. 24th).
1604. Hampton Court Conference.
1605. Gunpowder Plot.
Bacon's "Advancement of Learning."
1606. "Macbeth" and "Lear" played at Court.
1608. Birth of Milton.
xii CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
1609-10. Douai Old Testament.
161 1. " Tempest^'' played at Court.
" Authorised Version " published.
161 3. '•^ Henry VHL" played at Court.
Close of Shakespeare's public career, and transition
from the Elizabethan England of the Renaissance to
Puritan England.
1616. Death of Shakespeare.
I. A.D. 597-1382— The Middle Ages-
A TABULAR VIEW OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE
ENGLISH BIBLE.
The Bible before the Invention of Printing.
Metrical Paraphrases, Glosses,
and Translations from the
Latin Vulgate* and from the
so called " Old Latin."
II. A.D. 1382— The Wycliffe-Hereford Bible.
A.D. 1388 — A Revision of the above Bible, by Purvey and others. f
The Printed Bible of the Sixteenth Century.
III. A.D. 1525-Tyndale's New Testament . ] p^^^ ^j^^ ^^j ;„^,
A.D. l53oF>:"'^^^^'^ (P^""^ °f ^h«) ^^'^i Greek and Hebrew.
( Testament . . . .'
^*^' H^^M^overdale's Bible (the first com-JA'o/ from the Greek
A D* I 7 I P^®*® ^^^^^ ^" English) . .| and Hebrew.
i Mainly a compilation
A.D, 1537 — Matthew's Bible . . . .-! from Tyndale and
I Coverdale.
A private revision of
Matthew's, and com-
paratively unimpor-
tant.
JThe first edition of the Great Bible ; the second edition of
■ ' ■* \ which (with Cranmer's Preface), is dated 1540.
A.D. 1 560 — The Genevan Bible.
A.D. 1568— The Bishops' Bible.
A.D. 1582— The Rheims New Testament (from the Vulgate).
The Seventeenth Century.
IV. A.D. 1610 — The Douai Old Testament (from the Vulgate).
A.D. 161 1 — The Authorised Version.
The Nineteenth Century.
V. A.D. 188 1 — The Revised New Testament.
A.D. 1885 — The Revised Old Testament.
A.D, 1895 — The Apocrypha.
* See Appendix A.
t It is to be noted that these Bibles were translations of a translation— namely, of the
Vulgate ; and also, that, by their adoption of a type of language familiar to the common
people, they helped to fix the diction of all subsequent versions long after their own form
of English had become antiquated and out of date,
23
A,D, 1539 — Taverner's Bible
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
PAGE
Point of View is that of the National History. — The
English Bible our Greatest Classic. — Its Influence
upon the National Life. — Division of the Subject . 3-5
CHAPTER n
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
General Subject of the Chapter. — English Bible a Late
Growth. — The Undivided, and also the Eastern,
Church, favoured Native Versions. — The Latin
Church averse to them. — Reasons for this : {a) Her
strong sense of Catholicity : one Church, one Re-
ligious Language ; The Church's Retention of Latin
saved the Classics for Posterity ; {b) Problem of
Western Church not Literary but Practical ; {c)
Nature of the Spiritual Needs of Medievalism. —
Summary of Reasons. — Transition from Latin to
Teutonic Aspect of the Question. — Saxon England
never Romanised. — English Bible born of the De-
velopment of Teutonic Character and Language.
Wyclifife represents this Development. — Conversion
of England was a Gradual Process of Grafting. —
xxvi CONTENTS
Chap, II — Continued. page
Transformation of Heathen Bard into Christian
Poet. — Casdmon. — Cynewulf. — Affinity of Saxon
Temperament for Monastic Christianity. — Popular
Poetry in the South ; Abbot Aldhelm. — The Latin
prevails over the Celtic Rule ; Conference of Whitby.
— Pictorial teaching of Religion ; Benedict Biscop. —
Lord's Prayer and Creed vernacularised for use of
Native Clergy. — Bede's Version of Fourth Gospel. —
Ninth Century Psalter. — King Alfred's Decalogue. —
Early Versions of the Gospels : {a) The Lindisfame
(or St Cuthbert) Gospels ; {b) The Rushworth
Gospels ; {c) Anglo-Saxon Versions of the South. —
Abbot ^Ifric Translations from the Old Testament.
— The Real Value of these early Translations. — They
lead up to Wycliffe ; Significance of his Bible. —
Anglo-Norman Period ; The "Ormulum," etc. — First
English Prose Versions of Scripture are the Psalters ;
(a) Attributed to Shoreham, 1320, {b) of The Hermit
of Hampole, 1340. — Recapitulation . . . 9-43
CHx^PTER III
THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
Position of the Schoolmen in the History of Intellectual
Progress. — Their Mode of handling the Bible.—
Contrast between the Scholastic and Reformation
Spirit.— Rise of the Medieval Schools.— And of the
Schoolmen. — Nature of their teaching. — Theology
and Aristotle.— The Twin Revelations.— Scholasti-
cism and intellectual Casuistry.— Its Material, Dogma:
its Form, the Syllogism.— Theology philosophised.—
A Blend which is neither Philosophy nor Religion. —
Relative insignificance of things mundane at this
Period.— Result of the Labours of the Schoolmen.—
The Quarrel of Faith and Reason.— Permanent Value
of Scholasticism ...... 47-60
CONTENTS xxvii
PAGE
CHAPTER IV
WYCLIFFE AND THE BIBLES OF THE
FOURTEENTH CENTURY
Survivals of Wycliffe Renderings (from the Vulgate). —
Object of the Chapter. — Double Character of Wycliffe.
He represents a new Departure : (a) In Literature ;
{b) In Religion ; Basis of his ReHgious Influence. —
The undermining of Scholasticism and Medievalism.
The Intellectual and Moral Revolt. — The Seculari-
sation of the Papacy. — Its Feud with the Empire is
succeeded by its Feud with France. — Rome aban-
doned for Avignon. — Degradation of the Papacy. —
Its Rapacity and Unpopularity. — Its Clash with the
Teutonic Spirit the key to Wycliffe's Life. — The
Strong and Weak Points in Wycliffe. — Three Stages
in his Career: {a) 1336-1366; {b) 1 366-1 378 ; {c)
1378-1384.— First Stage. — Second Stage. — Third
Stage. — Wycliffe's two Bequests to his Country. — The
Literary and Religious Bearings of his Work of
Translation. — His Originality. — Rapid Spread of
Lollardy. — Wycliffe's Moral Courage. — Grandeur of
the position of the Medieval Church. — The 1382
Version of the Bible. — The 1388 Revision of it. —
Characteristics of the two Versions and Specimens
of the Translation of 1382. — Note on Father Gasquet's
Theory ....... 63-106
CHAPTER V
WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
Summary of preceding Period. — Tyndale and
Wycliffe. — The two Men are separated by the Re-
naissance.— The Bearing of this upon their Relative
Positions. — Tyndale the real Father of the English
Bible. — The Character of his Work. — Its Incomplete-
ness.— Four Periods in his Life: (a) 1510-1521 ; (p)
xxviii CONTENTS
Chap. V — Continued. paob
1521-1523; {c) 1523-1524; id) 1524-1536.— Tyndale,
Colet, Erasmus, and Luther. — Erasmus' New Testa-
ment, and More's Utopia. — Importance of Erasmus'
New Testament and Paraphrases. — Outbreak of the
Reformation in Germany. — Corruption, Ignorance,
and Indolence of the Clergy in England. — Tyndale's
Resolve to Translate the New Testament. — Tyndale
and Bishop Tunstall. — Tyndale and Humphrey Mun-
mouth. — His Qualifications as a Translator. — Goes to
Hamburg. — To Cologne. — Cochlaeus, the Roman
Catholic Spy. — The Quarto and Octavo Editions of
the New Testament, 1525. — What has survived of
them. — Tyndale's Pentateuch. — Tyndale's Jonah. —
Revision of 1 534. — Foundation of the Society of the
Jesuits. — Martyrdom of Tyndale. — Retrospect of his
Career, — Illustrations of his Translation. — Explana-
tion of the Hostility which he encountered. — Nobility
of his Character . ..... 109-158
CHAPTER VI
THE COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
Breach between Henry VIII. and the Pope complete
before Tyndale's death. — Fall of Wolsey and Rise
of Cromwell. — Prospects of English Bible improved
by Henry's Attitude towards Rome. — The King's
Views on a Vernacular Version. — Anne Boleyn,
Hugh Latimer, and Cromwell. — Review of the Events
which led up to the Coverdale Bible. — Early Life of
Miles Coverdale. — His friendly Relations with Crom-
well.— The Bible of 1535. — It circulated without either
Sanction or Prohibition. — And forestalled Cranmer's
Scheme of a Bishops' Bible. — It was our first Com-
plete English Bible. — Tyndale's Enthusiasm con-
trasted with Coverdale's Diffidence. — Coverdale's
Account of the Origin of his Translation. — His ^^ Five
CONTENTS XX
Chap. VI —Continued. pa(
InterP't'eters." — Characteristics of his Style. — Speci-
mens of it. — Origin of the ^^ Matthew" Bible (1537),
compiled by John Rogers. — The Aim and Object of
it. — Description of the Book. — Its Importance in the
Line of Versions. — Cranmer notifies its Arrival to
Cromwell, and he to the King. — Its Authorisation
by Henry, difficult to understand. — Suggested Ex-
planation of his Action in the Matter. — The Origin
of the Great Bible of 1539, edited by Coverdale. —
It becomes the "Authorised Version." — A Misnomer
to call it Cranmer's. — It is ordered to be set up in
Churches. — Its Popular Welcome. — Disorderliness of
the new Protestantism. — Authorisation of this Bible
by the Bishops. — The " Tavcrner Bible" — Influence
of the Great Bible.— The "Catholic Reaction." . i6i-i(
CHAPTER VII
THE GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
Henry VIII. the central Figure of the Reformation in
England. — Nature of that Movement. — Henry's
Political Protestantism. — Cromwell given a free
hand. — Henry startled by the "Pilgrimage of Grace."
Consequent Disgrace and Fall of Cromwell. — The
Royal Pendulum swings towards Gardiner. — Flight of
the advanced Reformers. — Triumph of the Jesuits at
the Council of Trent swings the Pendulum back. —
Death of Henry. — The Bible and the Protectorate. —
The Bigotry of Mary Tudor. — What Protestantism
owes to Smithfield. — Origin of the " Genevan Bible."
— Its great Success. — Coverdale and the Bibles of the
Tudor Period. — Influence of Geneva in the Protestant
World. — Calvin and Geneva. — The Genius of Calvin.
— The Genevan "New Testament" of 1557. — The
complete Bible of 1560. — Its Calvinistic Character
and Significance. — Its Effect on Archbishop Parker.
— Attitude of Elizabeth towards Translations. — Parker /
XXX CONTENTS
Chap. VII — Continued. paob
arranges for a "Bishops' Bible." — Its Publication and
Characteristics. — Character of the Roman Catholic
" Douai Bible." — Cardinal Allen and Douai. — The
Rheims - Douai New Testament — Excitement in
England at its Appearance at this Crisis. — Descrip-
tion of the Book. — Critical Value of its Fidelity to
the Vulgate. — Greatness of the Vulgate . . 201-237
CHAPTER VIII
THE AUTHORISED VERSION
Its Unique Position. — Character of James I. — How this
Version was related to the Millenary Petition. — The
Selection and Organisation of the Revisers. — The
Text on which they worked, and their Authorities. —
Their Code of Instructions. — Publication of the
Authorised Version. — Its Style and Diction. — The
Revisers did not claim Finality. — Causes contributory
to its Success : {a) Personal Qualifications of Re-
visers ; {b) Their Sense of the National Dignity of
their Work ; {c) The Labours of their Predecessors ;
{d) The Sympathetic Temper of the Times ; {e) Their
well-planned Organisation ; (/) The Literary Air
which nourished them. — A Retrospect of the History
of the English Bible ..... 241-270
CHAPTER IX
THE WORK OF REVISION
After 161 1 comes a Natural Pause. — Competing Versions.
— Bibles with Curious Names. — The Long Parlia-
ment and Revision. — Cudworth and Bryan Walton.
— The Belief in Verbal Inspiration. — Rise of Scientific
Method.— Attack of the Deists on the Bible.— Walton's
CONTENTS
Chap. \X— Continued.
Polyglot, Mill's New Testament, Collins and Bentley.
— Specimens of Eighteenth Century Translation. —
The "Revision by Five Clergymen." — Alford's New
Testament. — Studies preparatory to Revision. — Re-
vision, why so long delayed. — Definite Steps towards
a New Version. — The Instructions of the Convoca-
tion of Canterbury. — Position of the Revisers con-
trasted with that of their Predecessors in 1611. —
Different Problem offered by the " Received Text "
in Old Testament and in New.^ — Boldness of the
Westcott-Hort Text. — The "Ancient Authorities" of
the Revisers, and their Treatment of the Margin.—
Summary of the Principal Classes of Defects in the
Authorised Version. — The Twofold Disadvantage
which impeded the Revisers of 161 1. — The over-
refinements of the Revisers of 1870. — Unnecessary
Alterations made by them. — Conspicuous Merits of
their Version. — Concluding Remarks .
273-313
APPENDICES
A,— The Vulgate of Jerome .
B. — Wycliffe's Doctrine of Dominion
C— Some Bibles with Curious Titles
D.— Bibliography ....
Index .....
317-320
321-327
328
329-331
332
LIST OF PORTRAITS AND SPECIMEN
PAGES
John Wycliffe, from an Engraving by C.
White ..... Frontispiece
William Tyndale, from an Engraving by
W. HUMPHRYS .... To fate page 125
Tyndale's New Testament of 1525 . „ 145
Miles Coverdale, from an Engraving by
Thos. Trotter . . . . „ 161
Coverdale's Bible of 1535 . . . „ 173
Holbein Engraving
191
Rheims (Douai) New Testament of 1582 . ,, 233
INTRODUCTORY
Act yap tcrws virorvTrwa-aL TrpwTOV, etd vcrrepov dvaypd\f/ai'
— Arisi. Ethics.
For it is, perhaps, the best way first to draw a sketch in out-
Hne, and then afterwards to fill it in.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
It would be difficult to name a subject more full of
interest for an Englishman than the evolution, through
a long series of revisions, of our national Bible.
Regarded as Scripture, as the message and revela-
tion of God to man, it is to our religious consciousness
and to our moral needs that the Bible, in whatever
language, must always make its primary appeal. But
our English Bible has also its historical side. Regarded
as the greatest of English classics, and the most vener-
able of the national heirlooms, it is as Englishmen that
we have learned to love it. By the bond of a common
literary heritage it unites the whole English-speaking
race. It throws back its ancient roots into a past from
which we now stand removed by an interval of not less
than twelve hundred years. It interweaves itself with
the most momentous crises of the nation's fortunes. It
is sealed with the blood of martyrs. It is hallowed and
endeared to many a heart by memories of the old home
days. It has quickened, moulded, and sustained what
is best and strongest in our individual and corporate life.
Bone of our literary bone, and flesh of our literary flesh,
it has exercised upon English character an influence,
8
4 I NT ROD UCTOR V
moral, social, and political, which it is not possible to
measure. Unique in dignity, unique in grandeur, unique
in stately simplicity, it is the noblest monument that we
possess of the genius of our native tongue.
It is of this national Bible that we now propose to
trace the history. When did we get it ? Whence and
how ? Who were its first sponsors ? What was it that
originally suggested such a work ? Was it born of some
chance literary impulse, or shall we find it coming to
meet us on the crest of some great religious wave ?
In order to find answers to these and to other
kindred questions, which will naturally occur to any one
who approaches the subject as a comparative stranger,
we shall have to pursue a path which at the outset is
neither well-defined nor continuous, but which broadens
out as we advance.
It is not till somewhat late on in English history
that we come upon a complete vernacular version.
Yet in one shape or another the Bible story has been
among us from our national infancy. We need not,
therefore, plead guilty to any spirit of antiquarian
pedantry, nor to a weakness for " beginning the tale of
the Trojan war from Leda's egg" if the chapter which
next follows has been in part devoted to a preliminary
survey of those fragmentary forms in which a native
Bible begins to become dimly visible almost as the
curtain rises on our history.
To this survey of the place occupied by the Bible
in the Middle Ages, there has been added, in Chapter
III., a brief sketch of its relation to Scholasticism in the
university schools.
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT 5
With Wycliffe and the versions which since the end
of the fourteenth century have been associated with his
name, we shall pass from the period of ecclesiastical
tutelage to that of nascent independence ; from the one
Empire, and the one Church, to the many nations and
many Churches, and shall make acquaintance with
the earliest of English Bibles, From Wycliffe we
shall go on to William Tyndale, to Miles Coverdale,
and to the other translators of the Tudor period
with whom begins that long series of Bibles to
which the authorised and revised versions both equally
belong. The next stage will introduce us to our
golden age of creative inspiration, when Scholarship
and Letters came forth to lay their united service at the
feet of Religion, and to dedicate to her that famous book
which has been the pride of England for now nearly
three hundred years. Descending to more prosaic times,
to this silver age of industrious research, it will be
our concluding task to review the causes which led up
to the long and patient labours of our last revisers, who,
without claiming for their work a finality which is
beyond human reach, may none the less prove to have
been laying a firm and lasting foundation for that
national and popular Bible for which we have still to
look. Such an ideal Bible would be based on the purest
attainable text ; would be so printed as to be read with
unmixed delight ; and would have the seventeenth
century translation of the text only so far revised as to
satisfy the legitimate demands of a not too microscopic
scholarship, while perpetuating, with a wise and chas-
tened discretion, the beauties of the Authorised Version.
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
... A man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to Ufe, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.
—Henry IV., Part II., Act iii., Sc. i.
CHAPTER II
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
It is proposed in the present chapter first to consider
the working of certain influences which served to
retard the translation of the Latin Bible of the
Church into English, and next to gain some idea of
the extent to which certain portions of that Bible had
been brought within the reach of our forefathers,
whether lay or clerical, before the last half of the
fourteenth century.
Christianity, let us remember, first reached • these
shores as early as the second century, and its light
was only temporarily eclipsed by the invasions of the
heathen Teutons. Upon its reappearance at the close
of the sixth century there followed an outburst of
literary activity in Northumbria, to which, at that
early date, no parallel can be found in any other
country of the West. It may seem, therefore, at first
sight a little difficult to understand why the Bible,
as a whole, should have remained untranslated until
the time of Wycliffe.
It is true, no doubt, that in this respect England
was no worse off than her neighbours. We may
lo MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
even say, that, with the exception of the Goths, we
can point to no Teutonic people who came earher
into the possession of a vernacular Bible. Nay
more ; for, if we look closely into it, this very excep-
tion will be seen to be more apparent than real, inas-
much as Bishop Ulfilas, who in the fourth century
gave the Goths their native version, in a translation
from the Greek of both Testaments, was a bishop not
of the Western but of the Eastern Church.
But it is one thing to show that England formed
no exception to the general practice of Western
Christianity, and another thing to discover how that
practice had come to be established. On one point, at
any rate, there can be no doubt. Let its origin be what
it may, it was not derived from the primitive Church.
To the early Fathers, to St Chrysostom or Origen,
to Augustine or Jerome, could they have come back
to life, it would have seemed a reproach to Chris-
tianity that a nation of Teutonic speech should remain
restricted to a Latin Bible. We find, accordingly,
that by a very early period the Holy Scriptures
had been translated into Syriac, Armenian, Egyptian,
and into other Oriental tongues, as well as into Greek
and Latin. Nor did the Eastern Church depart
from the principle by which the undivided Church
had been governed. She, too, afforded ample proof
of her desire, that, for every nation within her com-
munion where the Christian faith had made its way,
these Scriptures in the vernacular should be made
accessible to all alike.
Why is it, then, we naturally ask, that between
EASTERN AND WESTERN CHURCH CONTRASTED 1 1
primitive and medieval Christianity, between the
Church of the East and the Church of the West,
so marked a contrast should exist. If Constantinople
made no endeavour to impose a Greek Bible upon
the Slavs, why should Rome have imposed a Latin
Bible upon the English? Why should the Vulgate
have been within its rights at Canterbury, while a
Teutonic Bible would have been a trespasser at
Rome? The problem is worth examination, and will
repay a little attention.
The early introduction into this country of an
English Bible might conceivably have been brought
about in one or other of two ways. On the one
hand, a demand might have asserted itself from
below ; or, on the other hand, the Church might
have felt that in so important a matter it was her
duty, as the one educational institution of the times,
to take a strong initiative herself But a little
consideration will be sufficient to satisfy us, that,
as a matter of fact, it was impossible that there
should have been any demand for a translated
Bible from below. For in Anglo-Saxon days, and
even down to a far later period, there were very
few persons outside the monasteries and chapters
who could read their letters. Manuscripts, too, were
scarce and costly, and it was only by hand that
they could be multiplied. Under such circumstances
an English Bible would have found no reading public
ready to profit by it.
Still, as native converts multiplied, and as numbers
of them passed through the schools connected with
12 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
the monasteries into the ranks of the clergy, the idea
of a native Bible might well, it would seem, have
suggested itself to the scholars and teachers of the
Church. In the golden days of Northumbrian letters
such a work could not have been beyond their powers.
Why was it, then, that the Church held back? How
are we to explain the fact, that, although for at least
a hundred years before the coming of the destroying
Danes, English literature flourished so vigorously in
the North, and although it revived again, in the form
of prose, with King Alfred in the South, yet no English
Bible appeared before Wycliffe, and no English Liturgy
before Cranmer ?
It is evident that whatever the explanation may be,
we cannot ascribe the delay either to any fear of heresy,
of which there was not then so much as a whisper to be
heard, or to any latent feeling of hostility on the part of
the religious houses towards the Anglo-Saxon tongue
itself. It is true, no doubt, that scholarship did not
long remain at the high level which it reached in Bede ;
and true also that the general trend of monastic culture
inclined more and more towards Latin. But, on the
other hand, the home language was never at any time
proscribed, or even kept at a distance. So far, indeed,
was this from being the case, so far was Anglo-Saxon
from being slighted as the uncouth speech of a race
but just emerged from heathenism, that it was under
the shelter of the Church itself that our native literature
was encouraged to put forth its earliest shoots. We
must turn elsewhere, therefore, for a solution.
May not one reason be that we hardly realise the in-
THE VULGATE A SYMBOL OF UNITY 13
tensity of devotion with which the Vulgate was re-
garded? May it not be that a new departure, which
to us seems now so natural and obvious, would have
struck the mind of a medieval monk as a wanton
innovation on an order of things which in his eyes
stood consecrated by immemorial prescription? Does
not the very conception of a national Bible, like that
of a national Liturgy, carry us out of the medieval
period of tutelage and tend to ^associate itself with
the kindred ideas of national individuality and national
independence ?
And if such be the case — if the possession by a
people of the Scriptures in their own mother tongue
involves either a recognition, or at least a prophecy, of
spiritual emancipation and of intellectual adolescence —
we begin to see the matter in a different light. For in the
Middle Ages the principal of ecclesiastical unity was of
all principles the most self-evident and the most axio-
matic* The belief in the one Empire and the one
Church, in the World-Priest and in the World-Monarch,
was the most deeply-seated conviction of the times.
Notwithstanding that discordance between the theo-
retical and the actual which is so striking a character-
istic of the medieval world, it stamps and pervades the
entire period which lies before us throughout the
present chapter. And the dethronement of the official
Latin Bible by a vernacular version would have
seemed to be an insidious attack on the authority
and catholicity of the West.
*See Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, Fourth Edition (1873), p.
106.
14 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
Let us bring to mind for a moment the position
towards which Rome had already begun to aspire, a
position to the consolidation of which the forgery of
the False Decretals in the ninth century was so power-
fully to contribute.
Gregory the Great, from whose side Augustine came,
was no doubt perfectly sincere when he denounced, as
nothing less than flat blasphemy, the claim of his
brother patriarch of Constantinople to the title of
" Universal Bishop." But his sincerity interferes in
no way with the fact that the tide of events was already
running rapidly that way, only that Rome, and not
Constantinople, was marked out as the future seat of
spiritual empire. No sooner had the Roman bishops
been set free from secular control than they began to
see visions and to dream dreams of sovereignty. The
transfer to the East of the imperial throne was an event
by which the ecclesiastical supremacy of the West was
made ultimately inevitable. In part Rome achieved
greatness, and in part she had greatness thrust upon
her. Step by step the Patriarch expanded into the
Pope, and the natural primacy of the chief bishop into
the divinely constituted authority of the representative
and lineal successor of St Peter. Christendom required
a head, and the natural head was Rome. Upon the
shoulders of the Papacy had fallen the mantle of the
dying Empire, and she bore towards the converted the
same relation that Caesarism had borne towards the
conquered. Her traditions, her instincts, her aspira-
tions, her ambitions, had all been cast in a mould
which was neither local nor national, but catholic and
ONE CHURCH, ONE BIBLE 15
universal. It is not difficult to see the bearing of such
an institution as this on the question of a national Bible.
The majestic dignity, the absolute claims, of the
medieval Church could not but be reflected back upon
the character of her sacred books. As there was but
one Church, one Pope, one Faith, so also must it have
seemed part of the universal order that there should be
one consecrated language in which that Faith should rest
enshrined, and in which that Church should offer up- to
God her worship. To break in upon the order, to throw
the hallowed and stately diction of the Vulgate — that
Vulgate which after violent and prolonged opposition
had come to command a reverence not far removed from
actual idolatry — into the rude dialect of a half barbarous
people scarcely yet redeemed from Paganism, may well
have seemed something so intolerable as to savour
strongly of actual profanation.
It is natural that our first feeling should be one of
regret that a different course was not adopted. But
there is at least one ground on which, as Hallam long
since pointed out,* we may feel deeply thankful.
For when the old world fell to pieces, the Church was
the one and only institution which survived the general
wreck. Unless this Church had thrown a halo of
sanctity over the Latin tongue by retaining it as the
language of her Bible and of her worship, as well as
the channel of her diplomatic intercourse, her ecclesi-
astical administration, and her religious study, the
fate of classical learning must inevitably have been
sealed.
*Hallam's Middle Ages, Fifth Edition (1829), vol. iii., pp. 335-8.
1 6 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
These considerations may in some degree serve to
reconcile for us the friendly attitude of the Church
towards the vernacular literature with her accompanying
sense of the sacredness and inviolability of the Latin
scriptures and liturgy. But there were other causes
at work which helped to delay anything beyond frag-
mentary translations, and in order to understand in
what they consisted we must turn to the world of
practical life.
In the mission-field of Latin Christianity the activity
of the representatives of the Church was necessarily
conditioned by the nature of the material with which
they had to deal. In Anglo-Saxon England it was not
until the work of Theodore and of Adrian had been
done, that religion, towards the end of the seventh
century, ceased to be tribal and migratory, and began to
settle slowly down into an organisation which was fixed
and territorial, and into an ecclesiastical unity which
was the foster-nurse of the monarchy. Archbishop
Theodore had found the country a mere loose chain of
scattered monasteries and mission-stations, the Italian
mission having its centre at Canterbury, and the Celtic
mission at lona. At his death, in 690 A.D., there had
been organised a national and episcopal Church, estab-
lished on a parochial basis, and endowed with a staff
of resident pastors. But it was a Church whose
members were as yet anything but ripe for a vernacular
Bible.
The educated clergy were content with their
Vulgate, and neither the Anglo-Saxon kings nor their
lay subjects would, as a rule, have been able to make
GOVERNMENT THE TASK OF THE CHURCH 17
anything of a written manuscript. Nor would a Saxon
Bible have been of much service to the mass-priests, or
country-clergy, who stood between the illiterate popula-
tion and the monks. Even if their education had
been less rudimentary than it was, they could have
had but little leisure for Bible-reading, while expensive
manuscripts would have been quite beyond their means.
It was no literary task which lay before them in
those rough days, but one of a wholly different nature,
and a task, moreover, which was arduous enough to
tax all the energy that they could devote to it. It was
the task of taming the wild beast in the Saxon nature;
the task, in an age of violence and lawlessness, of dis-
ciplining their converts through the power of example,
of sympathy, and of self-sacrifice ; the task, in a word, of
organisation, of authority, and of moral government.
What the Church had to do, writes Bishop Westcott,
"was to subdue new races, to mould a Christian Society, to
vindicate the majesty of Divine Law in the face of barljarous
despotism, to witness to the reality of the eternal and the unseen
in the face of rude passion and brute force." *
There is still one further aspect of the matter which
should not be overlooked. The Bible was not for our
medieval ancestors what it is for us. In any endeavour,
therefore, to understand the influences which may be
conceived to have actuated their Church, we must be
on our guard against anachronisms. For we are apt,
though unconsciously, to carry back ideas and feelings
which belong to our own times into an age when they
were unknown. To men of the present day the Bible
* The Bible in the Church (1889), P- iQi-
1 8 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
comes with a set of certain well-defined historical
associations. We cannot altogether disconnect our
conception of it from the position which properly
belongs to it in Reformation times. By a natural
train of ideas it contrasts itself in our minds with
*' Tradition." It allies itself with an intellectual and
moral disposition, with a way of looking at and
thinking about religious questions, which, since Pro-
testantism is rather a temper than a creed, may
be described as Protestant or individualistic. It
is necessary, therefore, to beware of losing our his-
torical perspective. The Bible, so far as regards
an apprehension of its moral and spiritual value,
was one thing for men of the intellectual stamp of
Wycliffe, or Tyndale, or Cranmer ; and quite another
thing for men of an earlier day, such as Gregory and
Bede. For the wants of the medieval mind lay in a
wholly different plane from the wants of the Reforma-
tion mind. It was not the open Bible towards
which the England of the monks naturally inclined.
Medievalism asked not for a book but for religion
externalised in an institution. The age was one
not of reflection but of faithful and undiscriminating
obedience. It found its full satisfaction in the rule
and guidance of the visible Church. It was this visible
Church which kept the keys of heaven and hell, and
to which the custody of the Holy Scriptures had
been entrusted. In this Church, and in her alone,
the religious ideal of those times found its full realisa-
tion. Too ignorant for doubt, too uncritical and
superstitious for a reasoned faith, inert and torpid
TYPE OF RELIGION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 19
under the numbing influence of an incurious acqui-
escence, men gratefully accepted at the hands of a
nursing mother the spiritual sustenance which was best
adapted to their intellectual childhood.
It may assist us to take an illustration. If we
were to be asked at the present day what we conceived
to be the central fact of the Bible, we should point
at once to the personality of Jesus Christ. But in the
worship of the Middle Ages the figure of the Redeemer
had almost receded out of sight. " Pray first," (so the
worshipper was bidden,)
" Pray first to St Mary, and the Holy Apostles, and the Holy
Martyrs, and to all God's Saints . . . and end by signing yourself,
and by singing your Pater Noster." *
Christ was to be sought and found not in the Bible
but in the mass, and it was only through the sacraments
that the human soul could be permitted to approach
Him.
It was not, then, in a spiritual but in a sensuous,
in a symbolic, and in a materialised form that the
Church in those far-distant days presented her teach-
ing. So low indeed had sunk the general mental level
that men were well-nigh incapable of any abstract
conceptions at all. Religion, accordingly, tended more
and more to resolve itself into a mere piety of ritual,
and into a mechanical system of external observances.
There was a craving for the concrete, the visible, the
pictorial ; for something which the bodily senses could
readily apprehend ; for ideals embodied in institutions ;
* Thorpe's Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (1840),
vol. ii., p. 425.
20 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
for shrines and relics ; for ornate services ; for an
imposing ceremonial. The Virgin and the Saints,
as being in nearer touch with man than the more
awful personalities of the Trinity, were invited to
perform what Holy Scripture had defined to be the
mediatorial work of the Saviour. The Bible, as the
story of the redeeming love of a Father, had more
and more faded out of view, while allegory and legend
had substituted in its place a miscellany of Christianised
mythology. Between the educated and the uneducated,
between the clergy and laity, there stood interposed
the double barrier of a priestly class and of a foreign
tongue. Such, to use the terminology of these modern
scientific days, was the " psychological climate " of the
Middle Ages, and it is plain that it was not of a
character to inspire men with any personal interest in
the question of an open Bible.
We are now, perhaps, more nearly in a position to
understand why the Latin Bible which accompanied the
monks from Rome should have enjoyed so long a reign.
It was maintained, then, in the first place, because
its maintenance was in full harmony with the spirit and
genius of Latin Christianity. It was maintained, in the
second place, because whereas the work of translation is
essentially a literary task, and needs both some adequate
motive to inspire it and a public to give it welcome, the
Church of those early centuries was confronted with the
great practical problem of discipline, while there was as
yet neither any such inspiring motive nor any such read-
ing public. It was maintained, lastly, because that sense
of the value of an open Bible which is so prominent a
THE LATIN TONGUE AND CHURCH SUPREMACY 21
feature in Teutonic Christianity either formed no part
of the medieval consciousness, or, if present to it at
all, was yet dwarfed into relative insignificance by an all
but universal belief in the mediatorial efficacy of the
ordinances of the Church apart from the individual
responsibilities and moral life of her children.
In this jealous retention of the Latin tongue, the
Church, from her own point of view, was amply
justified. Latin was an indispensable link in the
chain by which Christianity, as then understood, was
moored to the contemporary world of thought and
action. It was mainly by the exclusive use of one and
the same ecclesiastical language that the unity of
Christendom, religious, official, and diplomatic, was
kept cemented. Clearly, therefore, it was of vital im-
portance that no new literary pretender should be per-
mitted to endanger a monopoly on whose, preservation
so much was felt to depend.
The apprehension of such a danger was indeed no
empty dream. Looking onward from earlier times to
the developments of the fourteenth century, we find the
centrifugal and self-asserting spirit of nationality busy
in the consolidation of the secular State, and in mould-
ing into literary form the languages of a new world.
And even as we watch, the venerable unity of the
Latin Church is seen slowly dissolving away, while
there falls upon the ear the death-knell of the Middle
Age, and the footfall of the Renaissance.
Thus far we have been mainly occupied with the
influence of the Latin element in the history of the
preparatory period now under consideration. It is
22 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
time to approach the subject from its other side, and
to turn to the Teutonic element in that history.
When, in the person of Augustine, Rome revisited
the country which she had in times past administered
for some four hundred years as a Celtic province, she
found herself among a people who had been in no
degree Romanised. Unlike the Franks and the Goths,
the Saxons had never felt the magic of the Roman
name and influence. They knew nothing of Roman
modes of thought and feeling. Teutons in blood, in
speech, and in religion, they were a loose aggregate of
tribes to whom, under the Anglo-Saxon kings, their
new island home, lying outside the boundaries of the
Roman Empire and hidden away far beyond the con-
fines of the West, had given a position of exceptional
independence. Still their strong instinct of political
liberty was not felt to be irreconcilable with due
loyalty in their ecclesiastical obedience to Rome. As
we unfold the scroll of our history, we may imagine our-
selves to be watching the busy Saxon workshop in which
the raw material necessary for the making of a home
Bible is all the while being steadily fashioned. Such
material lay ready to hand in the development of the
English language and in the independence of the
English character.
It was Wycliffe's Teutonic love of truth and freedom
which moved him to give his countrymen the open
Scriptures as their best safeguard and protection against
the moral corruptions and bondage and obscurantism of
Papal Rome; and it was the growth of the English
language into a literary medium of expression, ripen-
CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM 23
ing for his work of translation as Italian had ripened
for Dante, and as German was presently to grow ripe
for Luther, which first made a people's Bible possible.
Among the many claims which our national Bible
has upon our veneration is the witness which is
borne by its language and by its history to our
imperishable instinct of race. Socially, politically,
and ecclesiastically we owe much to the stimula-
ting shock of successive invasions and conquests. But
it is not by the grace alone of either Roman, Dane, or
Norman that we are what we are to-day. It is mainly
by the effectual working of that sturdy Saxon spirit
which from the first has coursed so strongly in our blood.
The conversion of England to the Latin faith is
sometimes pictured to us under a strange mis-
apprehension of the facts. It is represented as
though it had been of the nature of some sudden and
startling transformation scene, or as if it might best be
compared to the swift sweep of some huge tidal wave,
pouring itself irresistibly over the land, and submerging
at once and for ever the old Teutonic gods, the old
customs, the old beliefs, the old everyday life, of our
Pagan forefathers.
Very different was the actual progress of this new
faith as we catch its reflection in our early annals.
Although the adoption of Christianity by the tribal king
carried with it the nominal acquiescence of the tribe
itself, yet the moral change, at the best, was but of
gradual and tardy growth. There was an intervening
process of action and reaction, of ebb and flow, of success
and failure ; and it was only step by step, and before the
24 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
successive exertions of Roman, Celt, and Greek ; — of
Augustine, of Aidan, and of Theodore — that Woden
gave place to Christ. Not by persecution, but by
gentleness and persuasion, by preaching and teaching,
by the moral power of devoted lives, by the prestige
and splendour of Latin Christianity, the fierce Saxon
warriors were attracted, tamed, and won.
The policy which, through his letters, Gregory was
careful to impress upon his mission, was in the main a
policy of conciliation and compromise. The sturdy
stock of our Teutonic parentage was not recklessly and
suddenly hewn down by foreign axes to make room for
an alien growth. On the contrary, the new was so
gradually grafted upon the old, that, in the more remote
districts, remnants of the ancient Paganism lingered
sullenly on for centuries. The change which little
by little came over the country was effected rather
by tactful adaptation than by revolution. The
old Adam of the Teuton was not all in a moment
washed away by the waters of baptism. Just as the
feasts of Eostre-tide and Yule-tide became, after a
while, the Easter and Christmas of the Church ; just as
while the months of the year preserved the nomenclature
of Rome, the divinities whom Penda worshipped lived
on as the tutelary guardians of the days of the Christian
week ; just as the temple in the grove survived within
bow-shot of the church upon the hill, and the Holy Rood
just alongside of the sacred tree ; so, too, the native
language and the native character of the convert were
welcomed by the monks into their service, and were
made instrumental to the furtherance of their evangelis^
THE STORY OF CAEDMON 25
ing work. Under the encouragement and protection of
the Church a home-born literature grew up during the
seventh and eighth centuries as the lowly handmaid of
religion, and the heathen bard became transformed,
under the inspiration of a nobler creed, into the Christian
poet.
Such a poet was Caedmon, the Amos of English
literature, a poet probably of mixed Celtic and
Saxon blood, and the earliest of our English singers.
To the music of his native harp the Bible-story, in the
form of a poetic paraphrase, begins to pass out of its
old Latin into its new English dress, out of the dim
seclusion of cell and school to the open sunlight of
the countryside, and from the narrow limits of the
parchment-scroll to the wandering minstrelsy of the
vernacular poetry.
Caedmon's date is the latter part of the seventh
century, and his poetry was in truth the only Bible of
the Anglo-Saxons.* In a sense, therefore, he belongs
almost as much to the history of the English
Bible as to the history of English literature. Little
is known about his personality, and that little we learn
entirely from Bede. An illiterate peasant of North-
umbria, he worked as a farm-labourer in the employ
of the bailiff of the great Abbey of Whitby, known
at that time as " Streane-shalch." The Lady- Abbess
was the Princess Hild, a convert who had received
baptism at the hands of Paulinus, the Apostle of
Northumbria, and one of Augustine's little band.
The ancient abbey stood high up on the cliff just
* English Writers^ by Henry Morley (1888), vol. ii., p. 7i-
26 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
where the abbey church of Whitby stands to-day.
Doubtless there was some underlying basis of fact
for the legendary story which we owe to Bede, and
which reminds us of the call of Hesiod to the service
of the Muses on the slopes of Mount Helicon. The
poetry which had so long lain hidden in the heart of one
of the unlettered dependents of the monastery may well
have been quickened into utterance by the vitalising
breath of Christianity. For Bede, however, who was
but a child when Caedmon died, the wonder-working
spirit of the times has shed the lustre of the super-
natural over a tale which even without its aid would
have been sufficiently remarkable.
Caedmon had passed the term of middle life without
having shown any signs of poetic genius. It had
been his habit, at the festive gatherings in the great
mead-hall, when the harp came round to him and it
was his turn to sing, to rise from his seat and leave the
feast, either because he knew not how to sing, or because
the rough war-songs of the Saxon bards were no longer
to his taste. One night when this had happened, and he
had gone out to look after the horses and the cattle,
he fell asleep in the stable buildings, and as he slept he
hearH a voice saying, " Caedmon, sing to me." And he
said, " I cannot sing, and for that reason I have come
away from the feast." And again the voice was in his
ears, " Caedmon, sing to me ; " and he answered, " What
shall I sing?" "Sing to me the first beginning of
created things." So the words came unbidden to his
lips, and in his dream he sang his hymn of praise to
God the Creator. Whether we have the hymn just
CAEDMOJSrS HYMN 27
as he sang it is not certain, but the sense of the
opening lines is as follows : —
"Now must we praise the Maker of the Celestial Kingdom,
the power and counsel of the Creator, the deeds of the Father
of Glory, how he, since he is the Eternal God, was the beginning
of all wonders, who first. Omnipotent Guardian of the human
kind, made for the sons of men Heaven for their roof, and then
the earth." *
And in the morning he told the wonder to the
bailiff, and the bailiff brought him up to the Lady Hild.
And when sufficient trial had been made of him, it
was found that he had indeed the divine gift. For
no sooner had any portion of the Bible-story been
translated to him out of Latin by the monks, than
he forthwith sang it to the accompaniment of his
harp in the short alliterative lines of Saxon verse.
At the invitation of the abbess he now put off the
secular habit, received a welcome into the company of
the brethren, and became duly instructed in the entire
course of sacred history. " And he turned into sweetest
song," continues Bede, "all that he could learn from
hearing it, and he made his teachers his listeners. His
song was of the creation of the world, of the birth of
man, of the history of Genesis. He sang, too, the
Exodus of Israel from Egypt, and their entrance into
the promised land, and many other of the narratives of
Holy Scripture. Of the incarnation also did he sing,
and of the passion ; of the resurrection and ascension
into heaven ; of the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the
teaching of the apostles . , . ; in all of which he tried to
* Stopford Brooke, History of Early English Literature^ ii., 72.
28 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
draw men from wicked ways to the love of well-doing.
For he was a most religious man."*
Bede's beautiful tale will at once be seen to be
of the greatest interest and significance. The details of
Caedmon's poetry lie outside our limits, but its rise and
spread are closely connected with the subject of the
English Bible. At a time when our rude ancestors
were quite unqualified to receive instruction in a written
form, portions of the Bible-story began to be sung in
their ears in the well-known strains of that old Teutonic
minstrelsy which was their delight, and even in the
very terms of the familiar Saxon warfare. For, in the
poetry of the Caedmonic cycle, the Abraham of Hebrew
history will be found figuring in battle as a genuine
Saxon Atherling, while the Israelites themselves fight
with all the savage fierceness of the hosts of Penda.
Nor was this minstrelsy confined to the monastic
circle, but its songs were sung before the King and his
warriors, and among the peasantry and artisans of the
village and the homestead. Other and later poets,
such as Cynewulf, seem to have caught something of
Caedmon's primitive inspiration, though they sound a
more reflective and self-conscious note than his.
Through his means, and through theirs, the Scripture
narratives circulated for many generations throughout
the North, and the common folk acquired, in a form
which fixed itself in their memories, a rudimentary
Bible-knowledge to which, otherwise, they must for
long have remained strangers.
This cycle of popular poetry was not restricted
* Bede's Ecclesiastical History^ iv., 24.
THE SAXONS AND THE BIBLE 29
either to the Old Testament or to the New, for it is
in the poems attributed to Caedmon, that, for the first
time in England, we meet with the great legend of
Satan, the leader of those rebellious angels who
challenged the power and sovereignty of God, and were
in consequence cast headlong out of heaven. Whence
it was that this legend, made familiar to us all
by Milton, may originally have been derived, it is
not easy to say, nor is the passing allusion to it in the
epistle of Jude of much help to us. Probably it may
have worked its way from the far East through
Alexandria into the West, but the question, full of
interest though it be, is not one which could suitably
be considered here.
The wide and enduring popularity of the religious
vernacular poetry shows clearly the natural attraction
which, especially in its narratives, the Bible must have
had for the Teutonic imagination. Nor is there any-
thing in this to cause surprise. For if on its lower side
the Saxon temperament had its elements of fierceness,
of coarseness, and of sensuality, it was not wanting in
a higher side. Our ancestors brought over with them
many a mental feature which developed itself, as time
went on, and became more marked under the influence
of a higher faith. Among such features we may point
to their deep sense of the divine in nature, their grave
moral earnestness, their loyalty, their practical turn of
mind, their love of poetry and song, their wistful
curiosity about the unseen world. All these combined
together to form a complex consciousness which re-
sponded eagerly to the preaching of the monks, and to
30 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
.the natural influence, upon wild untutored impulses, of
the ordered austerity and self-effacement of the early-
monastic ideal while yet in its untarnished freshness. It
was not long indeed before the monasteries began to
degenerate into mere cities of refuge, within which men
and women sought to escape from a world in which
they had become either too effeminate, or too ascetic,
or too indolent, to work and fight. But at first these
scattered houses were the only local centres of spiritual
life and light, the only fortresses which could give shelter
to those single-hearted pioneers of Christianity who went
forth, as " the chivalry of God," not to escape from, but
to battle bravely with the world, and to redeem it as
best they might from the bondage of ignorance and of sin.
While Caedmon was singing in the North, the
popular poetry was being utilised in the South for the
purpose of religious instruction by Aldhelm,* Abbot of
Malmesbury. Impressed with the sense of how little
the peasantry seemed to care for his English sermons,
the good abbot, who was one of the most skilful
musicians of his day, took up his position in the garb
of a minstrel on a bridge over which they had to pass,
and having first enthralled his audience by the sweet-
ness with which he sang, he presently attuned his song
to a religious note, and so by the magic spell of the
Muses won over to a better life many an uncultured
soul whom a homily would have only sent to sleep, and
whom even the terrors of excommunication would have
left lamentably unmoved.
* Aldhelm made a translation of the Psalter, but whether we
now possess it is uncertain.
THE CONFERENCE AT WHITBY 31
But it was not to the ear alone that the missionaries
made their earliest appeal. The momentous decision
of the Whitby Conference, in A.D. 664, had caused
Northumbria to break with lona and Celtic Christianity,
and to follow the rule of Canterbury and Rome.* By
that decision England lost much, but gained even more
than she lost. She lost the fervour of Celtic enthusiasm,
and the earnest simplicity of the Celtic missionary spirit.
But the Celt was better suited to win converts than to
train and manage them when won. Through Rome
England gained the power of organisation, the power
to develop herself into a national Church, while she
was preserved from the sterility and narrowness which
are born of spiritual isolation. The local centre of
gravity was transferred from the monastery to the
bishop, the unity which was an indispensable condition
of her advancement was made possible, and the infant
Church, now become once for all an integral part of the
religious system of the West, was placed in permanent
touch with what remained of Roman civilisation and
culture. The change soon made itself felt in many ways,
and in none more significantly than in the rich embellish-
ment and beautification of church interiors.
Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth towards the
close of the seventh century, brought over from Rome a
number of religious paintings, which he arranged in his
churches so as to present to the wandering and curious
eyes of those who were unable to read, the chief scenes
in the lives of patriarchs and of apostles, of the Virgin
and of Jesus.
* Green's History of the English People (1877), vol. i., pp. 56-7,
32 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
*' The most illiterate peasant could not enter the church with-
out receiving profitable instruction. He beheld the lovable face of
Christ and His Saints, or learned from looking at them the impor-
tant mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption, or he was
induced by the sight of the Last Judgment to descend into his own
breast and to deprecate the anger of the Almighty." *
In this manner was the story of the Bible gently
yet forcibly brought home to ignorant worshippers from
the countryside through the ministry of poetry and art,
and a kind of rude preparation made for the miracle-
plays, the religious drama, and the Biblia Pauperum
of later centuries. But the peasantry were not the
only class who in these early days were calling for an
interpreter. As converts multiplied, so did the need
increase for parish priests to minister among them
and to teach them, while to the large majority of such
native clergy Latin would naturally be an unknown
tongue. Bede speaks of these native clergy as " Sacer-
dotes idiotce" by which he means priests who knew
only Anglo-Saxon, and he tells us that it was mainly
for their guidance and use that he often busied
himself, and that he encouraged other scholars to busy
themselves, in translating into the vernacular the
Lord's Prayer and the Creed. As bearing on this
point we may quote an injunction to parish priests
which appears in the canons of .^Ifric, Abbot of
Ensham, in the century before the Norman invasion : —
" The mass-priest shall on Sundays and mass days tell to the
people the sense of the Gospel in English^ and so too of the Pater
Noster and the Creed. Blind is the teacher if he know not book-
learning."
* Bede's Life of the Abbot of Weannouth.
DEATH OF BEDE 33
It is to be feared, however, that this not very
exalted standard was often far above the attainment
of the country parson of the tenth century.
Bede also translated into Anglo-Saxon the Gospel of
St John, and perhaps we may infer from his selection of
the fourth gospel for his purpose that the three earlier
ones had been translated already. In him, therefore, we
have the first link in the chain of translators, which,
through Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale, and their succes-
sors in the continuous work of revision, binds the eighth
to the nineteenth century in the history of the English
Bible. Cuthbert, one of Bede's devoted followers, has
told us the story of the completion of his master's labours,
and a very touching story it is.* Through the whole of
the Eve of Ascension Day, 735 A.D., the grand old monk
of Jarrow, the ablest scholar of his time in Europe, had
been dictating, though with waning strength, his ver-
nacular version of St John. Evening came on, and
then the night, but there still remained one chapter
untranslated. " Most dear master," they reminded
him when morning broke, " there is one chapter
yet to do." " Take then your pen," he said, " and write
quickly." The spirit indeed was willing but the flesh
was fast failing, and one by one the brethren came
to his bedside to say their last farewells. Then, as
darkness again began to close in, the little scribe whose
place it was to be near him bent down and whispered,
" Master, even now there is one sentence more," and he
answered him, " Write on fast." And the boy wrote on
and cried, " See, dear master, it is finished now." " Yes,"
* Cuthberfs Letter to Cuthwine.
\ C
\
\
34 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
murmured the dying Saint, " you speak well, it is finished
now. Take therefore my head into your hands and lay
me down opposite my holy place, where it was my wont
to pray." And so, on the pavement of his little cell,
they laid him down, and with the " Gloria " on his
lips the aged monk delivered up his spirit, and
departed hence to the heavenly kingdom.
Nothing has come down to us of Bede's English
work. No doubt it perished together with many other
treasures of the Northumbrian monasteries when the
Danes laid the land waste.
Passing onwards to the latter part of the ninth
century, we have had preserved to us an English
Psalter, now in the Cotton Collection at the British
Museum, not written out in an independent form, but
" interlineated," as it is called, with a seventh century
Latin manuscript of the Psalms, according to the Roman
Psalter, which is believed to have been the identical copy
sent over by Gregory for the use of Augustine soon after
his arrival in Kent.
Religious life was nearly extinct when Alfred the
Great gave all his energies to the revival of a native
literature.
" I thought I saw," says the King in the preface to his translation
of the Pastoral of Pope Gregory, "how, before all was spoiled
and burnt, the churches were filled with treasures of books, yet
but little fruit was reaped of them, for men could understand
nothing of them, as they were not written in their own native
tongue. Few persons south of the H umber could understand
the services in English or translate Latin into English. I think
there were not many who could do so beyond the Humber, and
none to the south of the Thames."
THE LINDISFARNE GOSPELS 35
We must not linger over the version of the Deca-
logue which this splendid King, in his characteristic spirit
of religious reference, places at the head of his Book of
Laws, or on his unfinished version of the Psalms, and
we travel on accordingly to notice certain notable
translations of the Gospels, all of which date from about
this period.
The earliest of them, like the Psalter just referred to,
is in interlinear form, — that is to say, it is a word-for-
word rendering of a Latin original, in which each
English term is as far as possible placed under its
Latin equivalent. The interlineation, as distinguished
from the original document, was made, as experts tell
us, in the tenth century, and is in the dialect of North-
umbria.
A special interest attaches to this version, a
survival of bygone centuries, which may now be
seen in the British Museum.* The Anglo-Saxon trans-
lator describes himself therein as " Aldred," miserrimus
et indignissimus, a priest of Holy Isle, and the date of
his work is considered to be not later than the middle
of the tenth century. The Latin manuscript which he
uses as his basis is the famous volume known under the
various names of " The Lindisfarne Gospels " ; " The
Book of Durham " ; and " The Gospels of St Cuthbert"
The writer of it was Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne ;
and the manuscript belonged at one time to Durham
Cathedral, and is supposed to have been in use by no
less a person than St Cuthbert. It has been inferred
with great probability, from internal evidence, that the
* Cotton MS.^ Nero, D. iv.
36 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
Bishop copied the Gospels, towards the end of the
seventh century, from a Latin version which Adrian,
the friend and companion of Archbishop Theodore, had
brought with him to England in 669 A.D, The present
binding in gilt and precious stones is quite modern,
being the gift in 1853 of the Bishop of Durham.
The Latin, like the Latin from which all these tenth
century interlineations are derived, is not identical
with that which we find in the text of the Vulgate.
It belongs to the far more primitive Latin versions
of the Bible which are known collectively as the " Old
Latin." * Great, therefore, is the interest which lies
in the reflection that these Gospels take us back as
far even as the middle or end of the second century,
a date earlier by many generations than that of our
oldest surviving uncial manuscripts of the New
Testament.
Eadfrith's work was done in honour of St Cuthbert's
memory, and the manuscript itself, exquisitely bound,
was buried at Lindisfarne with the body of the Saint.
Towards the end of the ninth century both book and
body were carried off by the monks to Ireland, to
escape violation at the hands of the marauding Danes.
From Ireland they were shifted hither and thither, until
at last they found their way back to Lindisfarne,
and, when the monastery there was finally dissolved,
these precious Gospels, with Aldred's gloss written
between their lines, were purchased by Sir Robert
Cotton, and are now included in his priceless collection
at the Museum in London.
* See Appendix A.
RUSffWORTH GOSPELS— jELFRIC'S PENTATEUCH 37
A generation or so later in date than the Lindisfarne
Gospels another Anglo-Saxon gloss was made, which was
written by an Irish scribe, MacRegol. This manuscript
has come down to us, under the name of its donor, as the
" Rushw6rth " Gospels, and is now preserved in the Bod-
leian Library at Oxford. Two notes have been appended
to the parchment which inform us of its authorship.
" Farmen the presbyter," we read, " this book thus
glossed," And again, " Let him that makes use of me
pray for Owun, who glossed this for Farmen, priest at
Harewood."
To the tenth and eleventh centuries belong also
several closely-related versions of the Gospels, one of
which was much in use in Wessex. There is a copy
of it in the British Museum, and it is of particular
interest as being an independent version with no
accompanying Latin original. They may all very
possibly be variants of some original which has not
been identified, but neither their authorship nor their
precise date has, so far, been determined.
At the close of the tenth century, or early in the
eleventh, Abbot .^Ifric, the grammarian, from whose
canons we have already quoted, made an Anglo-Saxon
version of the Pentateuch, and also of Joshua, Judges,
Esther, Job, part of the Book of Kings, and the Books
of Judith and Maccabees. In translating the history of
the Maccabean rising, ^Elfric says he was impelled by a
hope of thus kindling among his countrymen a patriotic
war-spirit against the Danes. He tells us, moreover,
that he was able to make some use of earlier versions,
but none such have up to the present time been re-
38 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
covered. It must be remembered, however, in explana-
tion of the gaps in our biblical literature which are so
much to be regretted, that the national records have
sadly suffered from the barbarism of the Dane, as well
as from the contempt of the Norman for all things
Saxon, and from the purblind zeal of Protestant fana-
ticism at the time of the Reformation.
With yElfric ends the story of those isolated and
fitful efforts in the field of poetic paraphrase, gloss,
and translation, of which evidence has come down to us
from ante-Norman times. It is scarcely necessary to
say that the literary form and character of our Bible has
not been in any way affected by them, since Anglo-
Saxon English is no more our English than the Latin
Vulgate is Italian. They derive their importance not
so much from what they are in themselves, as from the
spirit of which they are indications.
It is probable enough that, for the most part, they
were produced with the idea of interpreting those
parts of the Bible which would most constantly be in
use through the Church services. But the Latin Bible
still remained the official Bible of the Church, however
active the zeal of independent scholars in the sphere of
paraphrase or of translation. As being the work of
monks or of bishops, such versions would naturally
call for no challenge on the part of the ecclesiastical
authorities. But the mere fict that these efforts were
made at all must be hailed, whatever may have been
their use and purpose, as a feature of the times which
was full of promise for the future. They bear witness to
us of the high esteem in which the Scriptures were held
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WYCUFFE BIBLE 39
by the native clergy of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and
by the lay friends, too, with whom they may have
shared them. And they serve to stud the somewhat
gloomy centuries of the Middle Ages in England with
literary signposts, beckoning us onward along the track
of the vernacular towards the promised land of a
complete translation.
Not, however, until the developments necessary for
the accomplishment of so great an achievement had
matured, could a complete rendering of the Latin
Vulgate be made. And when, in the fulness of time,
the Wycliffe Bible at length appeared, it appeared not
merely as a book, but as an event of nothing less than
national significance. For we see reflected in that
earliest of our versions the wonderful continuity and
persistence which mark not merely the English
language, but the English character — a character
and a language which neither the harrowing of the
Dane, nor the arrogance of the Norman, nor the
monasticism of the Italian, has ever been able per-
manently to suppress, and in whose invincible buoyancy
is to be found the main secret of English history.
What Horace sang long ago of Rome may well be
applied to England : —
" Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus
Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido,
Per damna, per ccEdes ab ipso,
Ducit opes animumque ferro."
Od. iv., 4.
" So, 'mid the dense-leaved forests of Algidus,
Mark we the hohn-oak, lopped by the heartless axe,
Turn loss to gain, havoc to healing.
Quickened with life by the very iron."
40 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
We have now arrived, in our preliminary survey,
within sight of the Norman Conquest, and the conse-
quent dethronement of Anglo-Saxon, as a literary
language, by Anglo-Norman. Banished from court
and castle, from the statute-book and from the school,
the native tongue found shelter for a while with the
Anglo-Saxon monk, with the parish priest, with the
villager, the minstrel, and the friar. It ceased to be
a written tongue, and began rapidly therefore both
to change in structure and to become restricted in
vocabulary. Yet the succession of paraphrases and
translations, even under these new circumstances, never
wholly ceased.
Early in the thirteenth century a monk of the order
of St Augustine — Ormin, or Orm, by name — produced
a metrical version of the Gospels and of the Acts, which
is known as the Orniulum^ and which has fortunately
been preserved to us in a manuscript of some 20,000
lines, now numbered among the treasures of the Oxford
Bodleian Library. The plan of the work is to para-
phrase the Gospel for the day, and to accompany it with
a short exposition, composed in the allegorical manner
which was then so universally the fashion. The voca-
bulary is purely Teutonic, but in cadence and in
syntax Ormin has evidently been affected by Norman
influences. He gives his own justification of his
version —
" If any one wants to know " (we render his words in modern
English) " why I have done this deed, I have done it so that all
young Christian folk may depend upon the Gospel only, and may
follow with all their might its holy teaching, in thought, and word,
and deed."
EARLY TRANSLATIONS OF THE PSALTER 41
In addition to a translation of the Bible into
Norman-French, which was due to the University of
Paris, and which was in use in Northern France about
1250 A.D., there are many metrical paraphrases and
renderings of Scripture, such, for example, as the
" Cursor Mundi" perhaps the best known of them all,
the '' Salus anifncB" or '' Sowle-helel' and the ''Story
of Genesis and Exodus" which circulated freely in
parts of England during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, but it is not necessary to detain the reader
with them, nor would any mere string of unfamiliar
names be of the faintest interest. Some of them were
composed, it may be added, for the use not of the con-
quered Saxon but of his French-speaking conquerors.
It is important, however, to notice that down to the
middle of the fourteenth century no literal translation
in English prose of any complete book of Scripture had
been produced, except in the case of the Psalter, which
as speaking the universal language of the human soul
has always been the most favourite part of the Bible for
devotional use. Of the Psalter itself there are at least
two such prose translations, the one made in the South
of England, and the other in the North. The former
has somewhat doubtfully been ascribed to William of
Shoreham, a place near Sevenoaks in Kent. There
remain to us some of Shoreham's poems, and their
dialect is Kentish, whereas this Psalter is in the dialect
of the West Midlands. The latter we owe to Richard
Rolle, who wrote " The Pricke of Conscience" and is
more usually known as "The Hermit of Hampole,"
a spot not far from Doncaster in Yorkshire. Their
42 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE BIBLE
approximate dates are 1320 A.D., and 1340 A.D., and
the common original from which both translations
are made is the Latin Vulgate. It will be observed
that these Psalters bring us down to the age of Wycliffe,
who was born in or about the year 1324 A.D. We may
now, therefore, bring this chapter to an end by summing
up the main points which have been engaging our
attention.
We were led, then, in the first place, to inquire why
it was that, side by side with the progress of our verna-
cular literature, the Latin Bible and the Latin Liturgy
so long retained their place unchallenged. We saw that
medieval England was quite unripe for a Bible in the
mother tongue, and that while the illiterate majority
were in no condition to feel the want of such a book, the
educated minority would be averse to the initiation of
so great a change.
In the next place it was pointed out that the open
Bible was not really what the age required ; that the
tendency of the Church-ritual was to throw the written
word into the background ; that religion was presented
mainly in a pictorial and ceremonial form, and that the
moral teaching of the Scriptures lay hidden away under
a strange amalgam of allegory and legend. Further-
more, we found that the work of a missionary church
was primarily concerned with conduct and discipline,
and not with either theology or literature. From these
considerations it seemed necessarily to follow, that, if
the contents of the Bible were to be in any measure
brought home to the artisans and peasantry of Anglo-
Saxon England, it must be by means of agencies other
RECAPITULATION 43
than that of dumb parchments. Such agencies we ob-
served to have been in fact at work in the preaching of
the local priest ; in the song of the wandering minstrel ;
in the educating influence of pictorial art ; and, though
at a later date, in the attractions of the religious drama.
We laid stress on the unbroken continuity of the
Saxon element in our history, and on the conversion of
England to Catholicism as having been no sudden
revolution, but rather a slow grafting process extending
over many generations. We saw that there was no
instantaneous metamorphosis ; no violent substitution
of something foreign for something native ; no great
convulsion, in the throes of which the national identity
was dissolved and lost A momentous change no doubt
there was ; its effect, however, was not to Latinise
England, but rather to impress on a given Teutonic
texture an indelible Christian pattern. The woof of
a nobler creed was woven, thread by thread, upon
the warp of the national character.
And, lastly, in our brief survey of the fragmentary
vernacular renderings of the more familiar portions of
the Latin Bible and Liturgy, we saw that while they
bore witness to that love of the Scriptures which seems
to be ingrained in the English nature, they served at
the same time to keep the native language alive and
vigorous, and to make available for a large and growing
class, to whom Latin was of course an unknown tongue,
that modest minimum of creed and prayer, of psalm and
gospel, without which the simplest religious needs could
not suitably have been met.
THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
" As such who live in London and like populous places, having
but little ground for their foundations to build houses on, may be
said to enlarge the breadth of their houses in height (I mean in-
creasing their room in many storeys one above another) ; so the
Schoolmen, lacking the latitude of general learning and languages,
thought to enlarge their minds by mounting up : so improving their
small bottom with towering speculations, some of things mystical
that might not — more of things difficult that could not — most of
things curious that need not— be known unto us."
{^FulUr.)
'ZKLvSaX.a/j.offipdcrrrjv diirvrdTr)s cro^tTjs"
Splitter of the straws of the deepest philosophy.
{Anth. Pal. xi. 354.)
CHAPTER III
THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
The time has long gone by when the Schoolmen, as
they are called, could be dismissed from consideration
with nothing better than a yawn or a sneer.
It is true that between their modes of thought and
expression and our own there lies an impassable gulf
Their folios are fossils. Their species is almost as
extinct as the Megatherium or the Dodo. But never-
theless it has come to be recognised that we owe them
much more than at first sight would have appeared
probable. For these theologians by profession were,
in truth, the intellectual torch-bearers of the Middle
Ages. It is the mere fact of their thinking, rather than
the intrinsic value of their thoughts, which gives them
their historical importance. It was the schoolmen who
preserved the lamp of mental activity from dying out,
enabled reason once more to lift up its head, and
assisted in preparing the way both for a religious and
for a philosophical reformation.
We have spoken of them as professional theologians,
for the fact that by far the larger period of their
activity was predominantly theological is a common-
47
48 THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
place of history. It might fairly, therefore, have been
expected that when a succession of eminent men — men
who in sheer logical power, in acuteness and subtlety,
have never been surpassed — had for centuries devoted
their energies to the study of the Latin Scriptures,
they would have left behind them, in the field of their
labour, a bequest of permanent value. Yet any such
expectation would be doomed to disappointment. The
conditions under which the Schoolmen thought and
studied were incompatible with any likelihood of a
practically profitable result. For, having regard to
their system as a whole, it cannot be too clearly
understood that to the Bible, in the sense in which the
Reformers began to know it. Scholasticism was almost
entirely a stranger. What these dialecticians looked
for in their Vulgate was something so remote from
that which men sought and found in the Bible of a
later day, that to all intents and purposes we might
be dealing with two totally distinct books. It may
be well to explain this point somewhat more fully.
Broadly speaking, then, the modern view of the
sacred Scriptures is that in them we have the historical
record of a progressive moral revelation, a revelation
of what God is, and of what he has done for men ;
and that this record, which has come down to us
through the writings of Hebraistic and Hellenistic
Jews, is to be interpreted in accordance with the
recognised canons of literary and historical criticism.
But such a view may almost be said to be the
growth of our own century. At any rate it is not to be
discovered in the minds of these learned but uncultured
SCHOOLMEN CONTRASTED WITH REFORMERS 49
doctors. The historical and ethical side of the Bible
is to them as though it did not exist. Moreover,
it is not to grammar, but to tradition and to imagina-
tion that they look for their method of interpretation.
With the letter-worship of a Jewish Rabbi they not
unfrequently combine the extravagances of an allegoris-
ing Gnostic. For them, Revelation, so far from being
made "at sundry times, and in divers manners," was
made all at one time and all in the same manner.
Treating the record on one uniform dead level of verbal
inspiration, they search it up and down, not in order
to trace out the spiritual education of the chosen race,
and through that race of the Gentile world, but for a
technical and abstract philosophy of the Godhead.
They " rack the text and drag it along by the hair,"
that they may make it serve the purposes of an
artificial and arbitrary theological system. It is no
part of their business to teach men how to live, but
only how to define. Theological definitions, however,
are not very helpful for ordinary men and women, and
a diet of them, if too long sustained, is apt to induce a
condition of spiritual anaemia.
In sharp contrast with Scholasticism stands the Refor-
mation. To the more spiritual among the Reformers
the Bible was a principle of life, a book " with wings and
feet." To the Schoolmen it was a repository of dead
texts. To the one it was God speaking to man, to the
other it was a chain of rigid doctrines. The Reformer
appealed to it against the Church. The Schoolman ap-
pealed to it to defend the Church. To the one it was the
source and mainspring of spiritual activity and of truth
D
so THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
under its highest manifestation. To the other it was
only one out of many sources of petrified dogma, and a
kind of logic quarry out of which to hew material for
the premises of a syllogism. The Reformation sought
through it a purified faith. Scholasticism sought to
utilise it in the production of exhaustive theological
manuals like the '^ Summa" of Aquinas,* or the
" Sentences " of Peter the Lombard. If anything were
needed to convince us that the Bible will outlive its
enemies, it might well be found in the fact that the
reverence which it commands to-day has proved able to
survive the tortures which its books received at the
hands of the cloistered students of the Middle Ages.
With the scholastic metaphysics we are not here con-
cerned. Our aim in the present chapter is a historical aim.
It is to indicate the importance of this strange period of
Scholasticism as a preparatory school in the education of
the human mind. These indefatigable doctors had of
course no direct influence on the history of the English
Bible. It does not follow that they had no influence
all in connection with it. As a matter of fact, they are
an important link in a long chain, of which such mighty
movements as the Renaissance and the Reformation
are links as well. The work of translating and popular-
ising the Scriptures was the result of many co-operating
causes. And we should do medievalism an injustice
* The works of Thomas Aquinas, the " Angelic Doctor," make
up no less than seventeen large folio volumes. The '^ Summa"
alone fills a folio containing about 1500 pages of small print in
double columns, and includes, inter alia, 358 articles on the
nature of Angels.
THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION 51
were we to omit from among such causes the pioneer-
ing work of her Schoolmen in the emancipation of
reason.
In the sixth century of our era the secular schools
of the Empire were swept away by the torrent of
barbarism. The Church, the one institution which was
left standing, lost no time in endeavouring to replace
them. She set up cathedral schools in which to train
her priests, and conventual schools in which to train her
monks. During the earlier centuries, the real "dark
ages " of medievalism, there continued to reign over the
mind of Western Europe an all but unbroken night. At
length civilisation began to feel less insecure, and the
intellectual sky to clear and brighten. Through the
agency of the Crusades, and through the influence of
commerce, the culture of the East came to be revealed
to the ignorance of the West. A desire arose to enlarge
the scope of education, and to revise its method.
Schools sprang up in Italy, France, and England, and
served Christendom as local centres of instruction.
By slow degrees the cathedral schools developed
into the medieval universities. Notwithstanding their
invasion by the friars, these places of learning continued
from the first to be more intimately allied with the
seculars and the Kings than with the regulars and the
Pope. A medieval university, it should be clearly under-
stood, was not a collection of colleges.* It was the
* The term " universitas^ in medieval Latin, means an
aggregate not of buildings but of persons ; whether of teachers,
or of scholars, or of both. Probably the nearest equivalent to our
"University" would be the expression '■'' Studiwn generah."
52 ■ THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
outward and visible form in which the Middle Ages
embodied their ideal of knowledge. We may describe
it broadly as a guild of teachers. The name and fame
of the most renowned among these teachers attracted
students from all parts of Europe, birds of passage who
migrated freely from one university to another, wherever
some favourite professor might chance at the time to
be delivering his lectures. Such, in their original char-
acter, were the universities of Paris and of Oxford,
known respectively as the first and the second " schools
of the Church."
These guilds of widely scattered lecturers were
spoken of collectively as " The Schoolmen," or
" Scholastics." Through them it was that the type of
education underwent a change. It had been literary.
It became philosophical ; a strange mixture of Greek
logic with the Christian Scriptures. Its professors
comprised representatives of all the leading nations.
Abelard was from France, Aquinas from Italy, Albert
the Great from Germany, Ockham from England.
If the question is asked why the teaching of the
Schoolmen was so much restricted to theology, and
why it forced theology into a dialectical mould, the
answer is, that in the first place it was in the field of
theology alone that sufficient material was to be found,
and secondly, that the Western mind had recently been
thrown into a ferment of excitement by the new wine
of the Aristotelian logic. Inductive Science was in its
cradle. History was not yet born. Literature and
Moral Philosophy were dead and forgotten. Arith-
metic and Astronomy found themselves chiefly occupied
GROWING INFLUENCE OF ARISTOTLE 53
with the calendar of the Church just as Music was
occupied with her plain song.
The influence of the great Greek philosopher, " the
master," as Dante calls him, " of those that know," had
been growing, at the expense of Plato, since almost the
beginning of the Middle Ages. It originated in the
survival of one small fragment of his various treatises on
Logic. This waif and stray was an introduction, by a
commentator called Porphyry, to the first of the six
disquisitions which make up Aristotle's " Organon" or
" instrument " of Dialectic. The disquisition in question
was known as " The Categories" or, in other words, the
various aspects under which we may regard anything
about which we may be thinking. This brief treatise
(together with a further one which deals with language
as the interpreter of thought, and is known as " The
Interpretation "), was studied, in a Latin translation, by
churchmen and friars in order to train their faculties
to argue logically on behalf of their religion. To this
slender outfit a vast addition was made during the
twelfth century by the famous commentaries of
Averroes. A great influx of Aristotelian lore gradu-
ally found its way from the Arabs of Cordova
through the Jews of Spain into the Christian schools,
and Aristotle thus became the schoolmaster of the
Schoolmen.
In this philosopher's " Organon," — translated out of
the original into Arabic, and out of Arabic into Latin —
and in their own Latin Vulgate, the medieval doctors
conceived that they had two Bibles of equal inspiration.
If the Scriptures were a religious revelation, so was the
54 THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
Logic of Aristotle a logical revelation. What was
wanted was to co-relate and to exhibit the truths of the
one under the logical forms of the other. To an extra-
ordinary degree the Schoolmen became the slaves of
the logic of which they prided themselves on being
masters. The world of medievalism was almost wholly
occupied with endless arguments about words, and
terms, and propositions. The scientific observation of
nature was reserved for a later world. This zeal of
Oxford students for logical study is well described in
Chaucer's Prologue —
" A clerk there was of Oxenford also
That unto logic hadde longe i-go :
For he hadde gotten him no benefice,
Ne was so worldly for to have office.
For him was lever have at his beddes hed
Twenty bookes, clad in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,
Than robes riche, or fidele, or sautrie."
There resulted a period in the mental training of
mankind to which no historical parallel can be found.
The ceaseless and irrepressible activity of the human
spirit, whose deepest problems, however they may
change their form, remain in substance much the same
from age to age, was forced to exercise itself within the
confines of a theological cage, and to find utterance
through the all-powerful ecclesiastical terminology of the
time. It gave birth to what may be described as a kind
of casuistry of the intellect. For just as with the
Casuists the broad principle of duty disappears in a
tangle of more or less sophistical rules for evading it, so
with the Schoolmen the broad principles of religion and
SCHOLASTICISM AND DOGMA 55
reason are lost in an infinite series of disputations for
which nothing is too sacred and nothing too minute.
Thought made no pretence to any independence, or to
any originaHty. It did not seek truth, but assumed it
as something given already from without. Truth, for
these subtle disputants, was simply what the Church had
defined to be such. Given this body of traditional
truths, the aim was to make clear and logically self-
consistent what was '^ ex hypothesV beyond question,
to utilise the store for daily needs, and to adapt the
dogmatic deliverances of the past to the present. A
borrowed subject-matter was to be worked up by the
assistance of a borrowed method. The matter was
Dogma, brought together indifferently from the Latin
Fathers, from lifeless biblical texts, from papal decretals,
from conciliar canons. The method was the method
of Aristotle's syllogistic logic, with its native formulae
stiffened out of all their original elasticity and flexi-
bility by transplantation into a wholly alien soil.
Under the guise of defending the authority of faith,
the Schoolmen unconsciously brought about the gradual
emancipation of reason, and the historical position
which they thus occupy is that of pioneers in a move-
ment which may be broadly described as issuing on its
intellectual side in the Renaissance, and on its religious
side in the Reformation.
Theirs is a system of ecclesiastical education, which,
bridging over the centuries that intervene between the
decay and the revival of letters, may, with equal pro-
priety, be described either as a theological philosophy,
or as a philosophised theology. It belongs in part to
56 THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
reason, and in part to faith ; to the secular world of
sublunary interests it can hardly claim to belong at
all. It begins, with Anselm, in the subordination of
reason to faith. It goes on, in Aquinas, to a harmoni-
ous understanding between the two. It ends, with
the new Nominalists, like Ockham, and Marsiglio of
Padua, in the temporary estrangement of the one from
the other.
As has been said above. Scholasticism marks a
period which is unique in history. For it is neither an
age of intuition and of creative imagination, such as that
to which we are introduced in Homer, nor is it an age
of criticism and reflection, such as we find mirrored in
the Platonic dialogues. We cannot call it a philosophy,
for it makes no attempt to dig down to the founda-
tions of intellectual life, but tacitly assumes beforehand
the authoritative truth of the propositions which make
up its premises. Yet, on the other hand, it is certainly
not a religion. For by religion we must at the least
mean something which has life and soul ; something
that has power to touch the emotions, to kindle the
imagination, arid to mould the will. Scholasticism
can only be described as a cold, dead system of barren
argumentation, from which every trace of sensibility,
and tenderness, and aspiration, has been crushed out
by the relentless despotism of logical forms. We do
not find it characterised by any alertness of scientific
curiosity, while to the old classical sense of the worth
and dignity of human things it is quite a stranger.
As we pass within its portals, this present life appears
as cast into deep shadow by the fierce light of its
REASON THE HANDMAID OF FAITH 57
Final Cause, the life to come. The world of the living
attracts but an inferior and subordinate interest. It
is but the insignificant ante-room to the greater world
of the dead.
To sum up the substance of the matter in a few
sentences, we may picture to ourselves, as forming the
material with which Scholasticism was busy, a tangled
mass of Dogma, or, in other words, of authoritative
utterances originally adapted to meet this or that
question or difficulty, when and where it chanced to
arise. The all-absorbing problem of the Schoolmen
is so to manipulate, to digest, and to codify these dis-
jointed deliverances as to exhibit the inherent reason-
ableness of the body of doctrine held traditionally by
the Church.
Anselm's saying, " Credo ut intelligam," " I believe
in order that I may understand," may be taken as
the representative motto of this logic-ridden theology.
Reason, under this conception of its functions, is neither
something independent of faith, nor is it recognised as
a formative element of the nature which makes man
human. It is merely the handmaid of faith, working
the logical machinery in the interests of its employer.
At the same time it is not to be denied that, in their
treatment of the objects of faith as fit and proper
objects for scientific inquiry ; — in their hypothesis, in
other words, that religion is at bottom rational in its
nature, — the Schoolmen were destined to prove power-
ful stimulators of the spirit of investigation and
criticism.
But the immediate and direct result of their labours
58 THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
was that Christian doctrine and Greek philosophy were
both equally degraded. The deformation of theology
was thus made the antecedent condition of its reforma-
tion. In the early days of the faith religion was rather
a life of spiritual intuition than a carefully articulated
creed. The truth of the doctrine had been safeguarded
by the inner witness of the Christian consciousness.
For, where " love is an unerring light, and joy its own
security," a faithful life rises in its moral enthusiasm
far above all logical difficulties. But this safeguard
had now long been lost. The cold intellectual processes
of Scholasticism lay on the human spirit like a frost.
Its system resembled a passionless brain without a
heart. It manipulated the dead letter of authority
with such remorseless ingenuity, with such an entire
absence of any misgiving, any reverence or veneration,
that, in their recoil from it, the more sensitive minds
were driven into Mysticism, there perchance to dis-
cover, through love, the secrets which seemed to be
sealed to knowledge.
And, if there were some minds which were impelled
towards Mysticism, there were others which moved
rapidly in the direction of Scepticism. The inherited
beliefs of the Church became one by one so honey-
combed by the subtle working of the speculative reck-
lessness to which they had been subjected by the
Nominalists, that the old theological building was
rendered all but hopelessly uninhabitable. Such was
the result, though it was very far from having been
the aim, of the Scholastic Philosophy. The logical
difficulties which it raised continued to live on long
THE PRINCIPLE OF TWO TRUTHS 59
after their suggested dialectical solutions had been for-
gotten, and the working alliance of religion and logic
thus brought about its own dissolution. Unable any-
longer to reconcile reason and dogma, men fell back
upon the fatal principle of the " two truths," namely,
that what was true dogmatically might at the same
time not be true rationally. Speculative reason,
desiring to assert its independence of authority, broke
away from theology, and took refuge in modern
philosophy and modern science. Faith, ill at ease
with the form on which religion was presented to it,
sought a less asphyxiating atmosphere in the Reforma-
tion. With the revival of Nominalism in William of
Ockham, Scholasticism however took a new departure.
Stepping out of the narrow sphere of the study of
" Universals," it began to interest itself in the ecclesi-
astical and political problems of the work-a-day world,
and to breathe an ampler air. But meanwhile the
Schoolmen had not laboured in vain. Almost in spite
of themselves they had achieved an educational work
which has too often been left unappreciated. Although
their labours, at the time, succeeded only in unspiritual-
ising the Church without spiritualising the world, yet
at least they awakened the world out of its long sleep,
and stimulated the new desire for scientific inquiry and
knowledge. If they failed to enlarge the boundaries
of reason they gave a keener edge to its instruments.
It was thus that from Scholasticism, as from a fountain-
head, sprang both the Protestantism of religion and the
Protestantism of thought, and we may apply to its
historical significance the description which Horace
6o THE BIBLE AND SCHOLASTICISM
has left us of his own relation to the art of poetical
composition : —
" Fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quae ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi."
Ars Poetica, 304-5.
" Mine is the whetstone's lot, I sharpen, but
There my part ends, 'tis not for me to cut."
JOHN WYCLIFFE
" Master John Wycliffe was considered by many to be the most
holy of all the men in his age. He was of emaciated frame, spare,
and well-nigh destitute of strength. He was absolutely blameless
in his conduct. Wherefore very many of the chief men of this
kingdom who frequently held counsel with him, were devotedly
attached to him, and kept a record of what he said, and guided
themselves after his manner of life."
{ly. Thorpe^ 1410 A.D., quoted by Bale.)
" In philosophy, Wycliffe came to be reckoned inferior to none
of his time, and incomparable in the performance of School
exercises, a man of profound wit, and very strong in disputations,
and who was by the common sort of divines esteemed little less
than a god."
{Knighton.)
" The devil's instrument, Church's enemy, people's confusion,
heretic's idol, hypocrite's mirror, schism's broacher, hatred's sower,
lies' forger, flatteries' sink, who, stricken by the horrible judgment
of God, breathed forth his soul to the dark mansion of the black
devil."
{Epitaph, written at St Albatis^
"This Master John Wycliffe translated into the Anglic, not
Angelic tongue, the Gospel. Whence it is made vulgar by him,
and more open to the reading of lay men and women, than it usually
is to the knowledge of lettered and intelligent clergy, and thus the
pearl is cast abroad and trodden under feet of swine. The jewel of
the Church is turned into the common sport of the people."
{Knighton^
CHAPTER IV
JOHN WYCLIFFE AND THE BIBLES OF THE
FOURTEENTH CENTURY
The preliminary survey to which the preceding
chapters have been devoted has now brought us
within sight of a border period of great interest and
importance in the religious history of England. It
is a period in which the best known actor is one of
the most illustrious of the sons of Oxford, a man whose
life covers the declining years of the old scholastic
methods and the opening out of a new intellectual
movement, and who has accordingly been appro-
priately described as "the last of the Schoolmen and
the first of the Reformers," John Wycliffe.
Later on in this chapter it is proposed to give
some account of the two versions of that earliest
English Bible which for some five hundred years has
been linked with Wycliffe's name. It will be sufficient
at present to note that the Bible in question is a
translation of a translation, namely of the Latin
Vulgate, and that the dialect in which it is written
and the mode of spelling which it employs, are so
far removed from the literary language and spelling
64 JOHN WYCLIFFE
of the Bible now in use as to place it in a category
of its own, and, from the point of view of an English
reader, to render our interest in it chiefly of an
archaic and philological character.
On the other hand, to make a brief selection, the
following among its phrases remain embedded in our
Authorised Version, and appear also, with but one
exception, in the Revised Version. Such renderings as
" compass sea and land," " first fruits," " strait gate,"
" make whole," " damsel," " peradventure," " son of per-
dition," " savourest not the things of God," " enter thou
into the joy of thy Lord," are as familiar to us as any-
thing in our Bible.
But though much of the language of his translation
had become obsolete even before the Reformation,
Wycliffe himself is so prominent a figure in the
national history that we need offer no excuse for
endeavouring to recall the likeness of a man, who,
whether we look to the uniqueness of his position
and work, to his many-sided life and character, or to
the range and versatility of his mind, must always
rank among the most striking personalities in the
England of the fourteenth century.
The details of his life may be left to his bio-
graphers. It will be enough for the reader of these
pages if he can trace the lines along which the school-
man developed into the translator, and can under-
stand why and how it was that, although Wycliffe
lived and died a beneficed clergyman, he should yet
have come to be regarded by the hierarchy with such
relentless animosity that his very bones were exhumed
THE TWO-SIDEDNESS OF WYCLIFFE 65
and burnt, and his ashes scattered to the four winds of
heaven.
Like the fourteenth century itself, Wycliffe stands
half in and half out of the Middle Ages. He repre-
sents a time of transition from the old order to the
new. In his ideas themselves he is for the most part in
advance of his age, but in the way in which he presents
and clothes, and defends them, he belongs unmistakably
to Medievalism, And the same double character is
illustrated by his mastery of English as well as of Latin,
and by the ease and readiness with which, at the end of
his career, he passes from the academic disputant into
the popular pamphleteer.
As long as he was addressing the learned world
as a university teacher he addressed it in its own
ecclesiastical Latin. No sooner, however, had he given
up all hope of the reformation of the Church from
within ; no sooner had he turned from Oxford and
London to make his memorable appeal to the nation
at large by his pamphlets and tracts, by his roving
preachers, and by the newly translated Bible with which
he had supplied them, than we find him subordinating
his academic Latin to the vernacular, and astonishing
us by his transformation into a master-builder, in his
own dialect and style, of English prose.
And if Wycliffe represents a new movement in our
literature, so too does he represent a new departure in
our religious history. For the rise of Lollardy, in so far
as it was a religious movement, marks the earliest
break in the dogmatic continuity of Latin Christianity
in England. Ever since the coming of the Roman
66 JOHN WYCLIFFE
and Irish missionaries the orthodoxy of the EngHsh
Church had been preserved unblemished ; but, if
WycHfife is to be judged by the standard of medieval
faith, and not by his own standard of the New Testa-
ment and of the early Church, it can hardly be disputed
that our first reformer was also our first conspicuous
heretic.
In judging of Wycliffe's influence among his
contemporaries it is of the first importance to bear in
mind the following consideration. It was his name and
fame as a Schoolman that gave such importance to his
religious opinions. But for the long and close alliance
between the schools and the Church, and the high
esteem in which the scholastic learning of the day
was held, coupled as this was with his own unrivalled
position among the " Doctors " of Oxford, he could
never have become such a power as a spiritual teacher.
Take away from him his university prestige, and
he would soon have been sneered down into insigni-
ficance as a mere "Biblicist," and crushed under the
dead weight of ecclesiastical obscurantism.
" Scholasticism," writes Mr Rashdall,* " amid all differences
between conflicting schools, had been unimpeachably loyal to the
Church system and the theological premises on which it was
based. The importance of the Wycliffite movement consisted in
this, that, now for the first time, the Established Church principles
were assailed, not by some obscure fanatic, not by some mere
revivalist, but by a great scholastic doctor in the ' second school
of the Church.' "t
Not only, however, was it on the side of Scholasti-
♦ Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, II., ii., 539.
t Viz., Oxford.
TRANSITION FROM MEDIEVALISM 67
cism, but on every side, that the venerable fabric of
Medievalism was being undermined. One impor-
tant effect of the Crusades had been to bring the
barbarism of the West into close contact with the
science and culture of the East, and all through the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries the intellectual move-
ment which had thence received its impetus had been
constantly expanding. It resulted that an eager desire
for knowledge was attracting students in tens of
thousands to those newly-founded and central Uni-
versities, which, as the homes of education, were taking
the place of the rival monasteries and cathedrals with
their scattered and antiquated local schools.
This widespread aspiration towards a fuller and
freer life was slowly sapping the foundations of
privilege. New professions were beginning to open
up in medicine, law, and science. Chivalry and
feudalism were already in their decline. The Empire
had shrunk into a mere shadow of its former splendour.
Across the path of the Papacy were planted the
nationalities of France and England, flushed with a
newborn sense of political individuality and independ-
ence.
And if the intellect of the Western world had at last
awakened out of sleep, so too had its conscience. The
lay mind was everywhere in moral revolt, not yet in-
deed against the doctrinal creed of the Church, but
against her worldliness and immorality, her preten-
tiousness, her greed of wealth, and her arrogance.
And while this omnipotent Church was daily grow-
ing richer and more indolent, the treasuries of
68 JOHN WYCLIFFE
Europe, whether national or papal, continued subject
to a severe and constant strain. To meet the pres-
sure of financial exigencies caused by the prodigality
and pageantry of courts and kings ; by the burdens
of incessant war ; by the ravages of plague, and
pestilence, and famine, all classes of the community
were being impartially plundered. A spirit of rest-
lessness and discontent was abroad, and rival claimants
were competing far and wide for intellectual and social
allegiance : Latin Christianity and Teutonic ; tradition
and scripture ; canonists and legists ; realists and nomin-
alists ; authority and conscience ; capital and labour.
But, for our present purpose, it is less with the
general than with the ecclesiastical aspect of the
century that we have to do. As the spiritual umpire
and moderator among the kingdoms of the West, the
medieval Papacy had held a position of unequalled
moral dignity and grandeur. She had rendered
invaluable service, during the political minority of
Europe, as the guardian and protector of the weak
against the strong, and of the claims of equal justice
against the lawlessness of feudalism. She had given
unity to the warring elements of Teutonism, and had
evolved order out of chaos. She had represented the
principle of right against might, and of freedom against
oppression. Lofty in conception and pure in purpose,
men saw in her an institution which might well impress
itself on their imagination as something whose origin
was from heaven.
It became quite another matter, however, when the
Popes stepped down into the political arena, and fought
MORAL DECLINE OF THE PAPACY 69
there for mere temporal sovereignty. After a pro-
tracted and financially exhausting struggle, the Papacy
had proved eventually successful in its duel with the
Empire, and the great house of the Hohenstaufen was
humbled at last to the dust. But the Empire and the
Papacy had for many centuries been most intimately
associated in the medieval mind. In a very real sense
they were twin powers, and the overthrow of the one
shook the prestige of the other to its foundations. So
long as the Empire remained a reality the idea of secular
centralisation reigned supreme. The fall of the Hohen-
staufen opened the way for the new idea of nationality.
With material success, too, there had come a decline in
moral authority, and behind the awful mask of St Peter
men had learnt to detect the features of the ordinary
political adventurer.
Wycli fife's century, it will be remembered, opens
with the momentous quarrel between Boniface VIII.,
with whom ecclesiastical arrogance seems to be touch-
ing its meridian, and Philip IV. of France. And from
this quarrel, with its sequels of the " Babylonian
Captivity" at Avignon, and the great Schism of 1378,
may be dated the downfall of the Papacy as the moral
tribunal of Christendom and the spiritual Delphi of the
Middle Ages. The claim to decide issues of right and
wrong by a divinely delegated authority could not
long continue to be successfully maintained by Popes
whom men saw abdicating the august independence of
the Apostolic See and stooping to enrich themselves by
a shameless traffic in holy things. While holding their
court in the eternal city, the Popes had been clothed
70 JOHN WYCLIFFE
in the universality which was inseparable from the very
idea of Rome. But at Avignon this attribute of uni-
versality necessarily vanished away. An Avignese
Pope was practically a French Pope, and the tacit
renunciation by the Papacy of its autonomy meant
nothing less than its spiritual degradation. It was St
Peter who still spoke, but his words were the words of
the King of France.
To say nothing of the flagrant iniquities of the
palace at Avignon, it was with a feeling akin to disgust
that men saw the representatives of Hildebrand and
of Innocent deserting the religious capital of Chris-
tendom and degrading themselves into the position
of political puppets. Nor is the historical drama
of the time wanting in an element of tragedy. For
nothing surely could be more tragic than the catas-
trophe through which the imposing splendour and
pomp of the Papal Jubilee of A.D. 1300, under Boniface
VIII., came to be succeeded within three short years by
the ignominy of that Pontiff's sudden arrest and down-
fall. Rarely, indeed, has the irony of history found a
more striking illustration than in those two companion
pictures of the suppliant Emperor at Canossa, and of
the captive Pope at Anagni.
In the meantime, however, the Papacy was abating
nothing of the audaciousness of her claims. The aban-
donment of the sacred shrines of St Peter and St Paul
had involved a most serious shrinkage of revenue, but
the expenditure of a corrupt and profligate court still
went on unchecked, and was in fact rather increased
than curtailed. '
WYCLI FEE'S ANTAGONISM TO ROME 71
It had become necessary, therefore, in order to meet
the growing indebtedness of Avignon, that her wide-
spread army of tax-collecting harpies should be stimu-
lated into abnormal activity. Small wonder that the
Papacy, as distinct from the Church of which it was
the head, should have been universally detested as the
ecclesiastical vampire of the West, and not least so in
our own island, which for generations had been, and
which still remained, the favourite among the milch-cows
of Rome.
Hence it is that the administrative aggressions,
extortions, and encroachments, which by a natural
sequence resulted from the financial embarrassment of
the Avignese Popes, are seen, when taken in conjunc-
tion with the moral degradation by which they were
accompanied, to form a dramatic background against
which the ever-increasing hostility of Rome's great
English opponent is thrown into historical relief And
hence, too, it is that the readiest key to Wyclifife's career
is to be found in the conviction, — a conviction which
grew deeper as life went on, — that the Papal claims
were incompatible with what he felt to be the moral
truth of things, incompatible with his conscience, with
his instinct of patriotism, and finally, with the para-
mount authority of the inspired Book which was his
spiritual Great Charter.
The traditional accounts of Wycliffe agree in repre-
senting him as somewhat frail in appearance and con-
stitutionally of indifferent health. He would seem also
to have been wanting in that quality of passionate en-
thusiasm which goes to make the great religious leader.
72 JOHN WYCLIFFE
The secret springs of the influence which he exercised
over his fellows lay, as they lay with Newman, in
the purity, the unworldliness, and the spirituality of his
character ; in a certain personal magnetism and power
of mentally impressing those with whom he was thrown ;
in his intensity of will and purpose ; in the sincerity and
earnestness that was manifest in all that he said and
did ; in his moral courage ; and last, not least, in the
high repute in which he stood as the ablest living
representative in England of the learning and logical
acuteness of the schools,
Wycliffe's career divides itself with sufficient dis-
tinctness into three more or less inter-dependent stages.
The first of these stages comprises his thirty years
or so of training and development as a schoolman at
Oxford (1336- 1 366).
The second stage (i 366-1 378) embraces the poli-
tical period of his life, and his activity both in
publicly opposing the temporal claims of the Papacy,
and in declaiming as well against the exemption of
ecclesiastical persons from lay control as against the
principle of an endowed Church.
The third and last stage of his life (1378- 13 84)
dates from the crisis known as the Papal Schism ; and
it is under the influence of the shock which he received
from the spectacle of the sudden dislocation of Christen-
dom that we shall find Wycliffe declaring war against
Rome and her representatives in England, crossing the
ecclesiastical Rubicon, and standing forward, isolated
and alone, as an open disbeliever in the central principles
of the medieval system of religion.
WYCLIFFE AND OXFORD 73
Born of a good Yorkshire stock, John Wycliffe
entered Oxford soon after the outbreak of the so-called
"Hundred Years War" with France. Of the details
of his university life little is known, but he may
probably have been a scholar of Balliol. The fact that
he belonged to the Northern " nation " among the uni-
versity students indicates that even from the very first
his sympathies must have been anti-Papal. In due
course his exceptional talents and the nobility of his
moral character received their natural reward. Whether
he was ever a Fellow of Merton is not certain, but in
1 36 1 he is known to have been Master of Balliol.
After a brief tenure he exchanged the Mastership
for the College living of Fillingham, a parish distant
some ten miles or so from Lincoln, and henceforward
his time was somewhat unequally divided between the
duties of his benefice and the intellectual attractions of
Oxford.
The lustre of the University of Paris, "the first
school of the Church," had of late been somewhat
obscured, partly owing to the long continuance of war,
and partly to the overshadowing influence of the Papal
Court at Avignon. Thus the Oxford of Wycliffe's prime
had come to occupy the most conspicuous position in the
whole of Europe as a centre of liberal and independent
thought. Even in spite of the friars and the plague it
was crowded with students, fermenting with intellectual
activity, and convulsed with the ceaseless quarrels of
seculars and regulars.
Though we are not entitled to claim for him a place
in the first rank either of metaphysical or of literary
74 JOHN WYC.TJEFE
genius, WycHffe was undoubtedly the foremost figure
in his university, as well as the master-spirit in the
ethical and religious revivalism of his age. It is easier
to under-estimate than to exaggerate the influence
which he exercised upon his contemporaries. Sur-
rounded as we are to-day with books, journals, and
periodicals without number, it requires no incon-
siderable effort to realise the force and power which
in bygone years, when no printing-press had been in-
vented, when books were few and readers fewer still,
belonged to the living voice of eloquence and learning.
And it was just such a living voice which was embodied
in Wycliffe. It was notorious that, whether in the
lecture-hall or in the pulpit, no other Schoolman could
hope to rival him, while his wonderful skill of intellectual
fence must have made him a formidable foe even among
the logical swordsmen of the time.
Yet, strange as it may appear, it was not either to
logic or to philosophy that Wycliffe was eventually to
owe the distinguishing title by which he has come down
to posterity. To every eminent doctor it was the custom
of the day to attach some descriptive blazon or surname.
Duns Scotus (to take an example from the philological
ancestor of the noble company of " dunces ") was called
the " subtle " ; Bradwardine the " profound " ; Ockham
the " invincible." In the case of Wycliffe his admirers
must have been hard put to it, when in contact
with a mind so richly gifted, to point to any one
notably predominant trait.
In a society where the theologians of the day were
all but unanimous in awarding precedence to the
THE EVANGELICAL DOCTOR 75
doctrines of famous Schoolmen basing themselves
on the Fathers, — whether to the reasoned opinions,
(or so-called Sentences), of Peter the Lombard, or
to the Summa of Aquinas, — it was WycHfife's excep-
tional and strenuous vindication of the Scriptures, as the
one paramount rule of human life and conduct, which
seems to have won for him his surname of the
" evangelical " doctor. That he should bring to his
interpretation of the Vulgate trains of thought that
were scholastic and feudal in their colouring was only
natural. The remarkable fact was, that, in days when
Bible-reading was not the common practice, the lead-
ing English thinker of his age should have deemed
no pains too great to make himself intimately familiar
with the moral teaching of a book which the large
majority of his fellow theologians were disposed to value
chiefly as a treasure-house of dead dogma.
Accordingly it was by the standard of the Bible and
of the early Fathers that Wycliffe persistently desired
that his orthodoxy or his unorthodoxy might be tried.
And not his own alone, but the orthodoxy even of the
supreme Pontiff himself, and of all the rulers of the
Church. The attitude therefore which he held towards
the only organised religious body which was then
in existence, was at first neither that of a sectarian
nor of a schismatic, but that of a moral reformer.
His quarrel, to put the same thing in other words, was
not with the foundations of the ecclesiastical edifice of
Medievalism, but only with a superstructure which was
out of keeping with the original design, and which was,
moreover, of comparatively recent date. Yet, had his
76 JOHN WYCLIFFE
supporters in England been less powerful, or had Rome
been more herself, it is hardly possible that he would
have been permitted to die, as he had all along lived, in
unbroken communion with a Church which it was
his first aim to purify and to spiritualise.
For it is evident from his writings that between
Wycliffe and the mediatorial system of medieval
Christianity no middle term of reconciliation can really
be found. Deep down at the root of his hostility to
the formalism and materialism that he saw every-
where reflected in the religious ordinances of his age,
we find his overmastering conviction of the individual
and personal responsibility of man to God. Religion
was for Wycliffe something the credentials of which were
to be sought in the very constitution of that spiritual
principle whose life develops only from within ; some-
thing which refused to be swallowed up by any secular-
ising influences ; something which belonged essentially
to the heart and conscience, and concerned itself only in
a subordinate degree with ancillary forms and symbols.
It may be remarked that the first of the three stages
in Wycliffe's life coincides in a general way with that
flood-tide of patriotic elation which we find sweeping
through the central years of the long reign of Edward
III. And probably we shall not be far from the truth if
we picture him, at the close of this first stage, as on the
one hand a schoolman renowned for his eccentricities no
less than for his mastery of logic ; and on the other hand
as a reformer of devout moral earnestness, with a cast
of mind which, while finding but comparatively little
value in mere externals, was in the best sense deeply
PERSONALITY OF WYCLIFFE 77
religious. Pure in life and lofty in character, a great
university teacher and preacher, an Augustinian in his
strong sense of the inherent frailty and sinfulness of
human nature, and of the irresistible power of divine
grace, Wycliffe held views on the current ecclesiastical
problems of his day which were not likely to be popular.
His temperament was intellectual rather than emotional ;
a temperament which radiated more of dry light than
of genial warmth. He was of grave and ascetic habit ;
a bom fighter, and a man of war even from his youth ;
an eager champion of his country against the foreigner ;
of seculars against regulars ; of the spiritual against
the worldly ideal ; of a voluntary ministry against an
endowed hierarchy ; of the Christianity of the ante-
Papal Church against the Christianity of the later
Middle Ages ; of the supremacy of Scripture over
tradition, and of personal worth and merit over the
claims of any merely official dignity. Vigorous in will,
unflinching in courage, tenacious in purpose, he would
nevertheless appear to have been lacking in constructive
genius, and lacking also in that magic power of love
and sympathy which had inspired Aidan and the
Celtic missionaries, and which characterises great
leaders like St Francis, St Bernard, and Savonarola.
Finally, Wycliffe was an iconoclastic reformer with
keenly democratic instincts, whose inmost soul was
stirred to its depth by the spectacle of the social
wretchedness which was rife in the England of his day
owing to the joint operation of pestilence and war.
Nor in this respect did he stand alone. Already the
miseries of the down-trodden peasantry had found a
78 JOHN WYCLIFFE
voice in John Ball, the mad preacher of Kent ; and
still more in the famous poem of Langland, the Bunyan
of the fourteenth century, a poem in which Caedmon
himself seemed to have come back to life, and which
was rapidly becoming the best known book in England,
" The Vision Concerning Piers the Ploughman!^ *
The second, or political, stage in Wyclifife's career
extends from 1366 to 1378. It is this period which
embraces the years of his patronage by John of Gaunt,
whose keen eye saw in the upright and popular Doctor
of theology an invaluable ally in the political attack,
which, under the Duke's powerful leadership, was being
developed against Church endowments whether in lands
or in money, as giving the holders of them too danger-
ous a predominance. Speaking generally, this second
stage is commensurate with the gloomy period of
national humiliation and depression which darkened
the close of the long reign of Edward III., and which
made men forget the glories of Crecy and Poictiers. To
these years, too, belongs the publication of Wyclifife's
Latin treatises on his famous theory of Dominion.^ In
them he explains, among other matters, his views
on the nature of property ; on the relation of the
spiritual and temporal powers ; and on the invalidity
of the feudal claims of the Papacy over England ;
subjects which were exercising the minds of the fore-
most thinkers of his day, and to which he had already
devoted a large part of his university lectures.
In the year 1366, soon after he had been honoured
* Green's Hist, of the English People {1S77), vol. i., pp. 439-43.
t See Appendix B.
POPE URBAN' S CLAIM TO TRIBUTE 79
by the marked compliment of an appointment as
King's chaplain in London, where he was soon to
become famous as a preacher, he is said * to have been
selected to defend by his pen the decision at which
Parliament had unanimously arrived against Pope
Urban's claim to exercise temporal authority in
England. Great indignation had been aroused by the
Pope's inopportune demand for the unpaid arrears of
the tribute originally imposed, as a symbol of bondage,
on the feebleness of King John. And, from the fact
that he was invited on so important an occasion to
champion the rising spirit of national independence,
it is evident that the Oxford divine must have become
known as a strong anti-Roman even beyond and out-
side his own academic circle. For a mere theologian,
however prominent, would scarcely have been singled
out to give his support to the State at such a juncture,
unless upon the subject referred to him he could
speak with an authority which commanded general
respect.
Nor need we feel any surprise that Wycliffe's dialec-
tical fame should thus have spread abroad. Oxford
was the intellectual capital of England, and in and
out of her gates there kept flowing a ceaseless stream
of students from every part, who in their migrations
to other universities would be constantly conveying the
sayings of her lecture-rooms, or the teachings of her
pulpits, to the various continental centres.
In the year 1374 Wyclifife was appointed by the Crown
* It is uncertain whether this event is to be referred to the year
1366 or to the year 1374, when Urban's demand was renewed.
8o JOHN WYCLIFFE
to act as one of the Royal Commissioners at the ill-timed
and abortive Conference which met at Bruges. At that
Conference the English Commissioners had to discuss
with the representatives of the Pope the delicate subject
of his incessant interference with ecclesiastical patronage
in England. It was hardly likely that any Conference
would achieve the settlement of a question, which, in
spite of the statute law, was deliberately kept open by
the connivance of Popes and Kings for their mutual
convenience and advantage. In 1377 the " Babylonian
Captivity" came to an end, and the Papal court
returned from Avignon to Rome. The change was
one of far more than sentimental importance, inasmuch
as, by setting the Papacy free from the direct control
of France, it went some way towards abating the strong
political hostility which had been excited and maintained
in England by the long alliance of the Roman curia
with the hereditary enemy of the nation. In the same
year there occurred that * historic scene in St Paul's which
marked the opening of the Church's campaign against
Wyclifife as the ally of her unprincipled despoiler, John
of Gaunt, and further as the promulgator of doctrines
tending to subvert the existing ecclesiastical order.
There are two points in regard to these years to
which we must invite particular attention. The first
is, that whatever hopes Wyclifife may at one time have
legitimately cherished on the subject of Church-reform
by the aid of the Crown and of Parliament, these were
now shattered by an unforeseen combination of adverse
influences. Among them may be mentioned the death
* Milman's Annals of St PauVs Cathedral (1868), p. 76.
WANING PROSPECTS OF RELIGIOUS REFORM 8i
of the Black Prince, who had been the idol of the
people, and who was well disposed towards Wycliffe;
the demise of the Crown ; the growing unpopularity of
the all-powerful John of Gaunt ; the general darkening
of the political sky ; and lastly, the apprehension of social
disturbance, a dread which after the third visitation of
the Black Death in 1366 was deepening year by year.
The prospect of a religious in addition to an agrarian
revolution would naturally under such circumstances
be even more than ordinarily unwelcome.
The second point is, that the fifty days which
Wycliffe spent in conclave with the Pope's ambassadors
at Bruges, must, as in the analogous case of Luther's
visit to Rome, have afforded him a close insight into
the inner working of the administrative machinery of
Papal aggression, and must also have made it more
evident than ever in high quarters, that, in the fearless
author of the '' De Dofuinio" the Papacy had to deal
with a powerfully-supported and determined foe in a
controversy which admitted of no compromise. For
if Wycliffe was right, the days of ecclesiastical supremacy
were numbered, and the fatal writing was already upon
the wall.
In passing from Wycliffe the Oxford divine, to
Wycliffe the ecclesiastical politician and reformer, there
is one question which will most probably have already
suggested itself In what way, it may naturally have
been asked, was the Scholasticism of Oxford connected
in those days with politics ? What had the inner and
lesser world of the University got to do with the
outer and greater world of Emperors, and Popes, and
F
82 JOHN WYCLIFFE
Kings? What was there in common between the
metaphysical controversies of Nominalists and Realists,
and the quarrels of Edward III. and Urban V.?
How could the training of an Oxford theologian
serve to qualify him for the exceptional position of a
guardian of the public conscience in such matters as
the relations between England and Rome?
The reader may perhaps be assisted in the solution
of such questions if he will remind himself, that, by the
last half of the fourteenth century, Scholasticism had
changed in character, and had taken a new departure.
The leading minds of the university schools formed the
intellectual link between the dying world of Medievalism
and the new world which was struggling to be born.
Great University thinkers, like Marsiglio of Padua and
William of Ockham,* were no longer shut up in the
subtleties of logic and theology. They had become
political philosophers, and in that capacity had aroused
general attention. In their published writings they
treated fearlessly of issues in which lay involved the
very existence of ecclesiastical and civil society as then
constituted. It was as natural therefore that Wycliffe,
the philosopher of the schools, should be consulted on
a political issue by Edward III., as that Marsiglio and
Ockham should have been consulted, half a century
earlier, by the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria in his
political fight with Pope John XXII.
The maxims and principles of these continental
Publicists had become common property, and were
doubtless familiar to such an eager student as Wycliffe.
* Wycliffe and Movements for Reform, R. L. Poole, 1889.
WYCLIFFE AND CONTINENTAL OPINION 83
Indeed their very manuscripts would be readily
accessible to him, whether in the libraries of Balliol
and Merton, or in the unique collection which Richard
de Bury, the most, enthusiastic book collector of the
Middle Ages, had just bequeathed to the college of
Durham, a college the original site of which stood
where Trinity stands to-day.
Now both Marsiglio and Ockham had argued with
great strenuousness in support of the civil power against
the temporal jurisdiction of the Papacy. They had
further contended that the principle of sovereignty, in
Church and State alike, must be held ultimately to repose
on a popular and not upon either a monarchical or an
oligarchical basis. The State, they held, meant the
whole body of citizens. The Church, in like manner,
meant the whole body of Christian people. And we
must recollect that it is to this very Ockham that
Wycliffe has confessed himself to have been largely
indebted in forming his views upon ecclesiastical
problems. On metaphysical questions the two doctors
were fundamentally disagreed, for while Wycliffe was
a moderate Realist, and inclined therefore to Platonism,
Ockham was the great re-discoverer of Nominalism, and
was in many respects an Aristotelian.
Their agreement, however, extended to the views
which they held on the vexed subject of " evangelical
poverty," a subject which had already given rise to
much angry controversy, and this too within the Church
itself, by bringing to the front the embarrassing problem
of religious and moral ideals.
The political and religious world into which Wycliffe
84 JOHN WYCLIFFE
had been born may be described as a world more
prodigal of great questions than of their solutions. In
the sphere of the religious life it reflected two strongly
contrasted principles which had recently come into
violent collision, the ascetic principle and the mundane.
This collision had brought about a mutiny in the
ranks of one out of the two great wings of the Papal
army, namely, the Franciscan friars. At the Conference
which met during the year 1322 at Perugia, the
"spiritual" Franciscans had broken away from the
main body, and during the fourteenth century the
breach between them remained unrepaired. To the
one side therefore belonged the mundane or political
ideal which stood embodied in the hierarchical Church ;
the ideal of men like Hildebrand, Innocent, and
Boniface VIII. ; with a strict celibacy for its foundation,
with its crown of pomp, and wealth, and splendour,
having tithes for its taxes, and prelates for its nobles.
On the other side, the side which attracted Wyclifife's
sympathies, there was the religious and ascetic ideal
of saintly philanthropists like St Bernard, St Francis
of Assisi, and Peter Waldo ; the " Imitation of
Christ," the going about doing good, the glorification
of poverty as the note of a genuine Church, and
the consequent condemnation of great possessions in
that they let and hindered true spirituality of life, as
exemplified and inculcated in the Gospel history.
Pope John XXII. had found it expedient, in self-
defence, to brand the doctrine of the "spirituals" as
heretical, but, whether heretical or orthodox, it not
unnaturally was welcome to reflective and pious minds as
THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS 85
a refreshing contrast to what was obtruding itself upon
the world as the accepted ideal of Avignon. For just as
the political aspirations of the Papacy had received at
the opening of the century a deadly blow when King
Philip burnt the famous Bull, " Ausculta Fili," in the
streets of Paris, so, by the secession of the " Fraticelli "
from their brother Franciscans, a corresponding blow
was levelled at the spiritual claims of the Avignese
Court to be regarded as the divinely-appointed ensample
of Christian living.
Thus on two of the great questions of his day, —
the question of the right relation of the temporal to
the spiritual power, and the question of Church endow-
ments,— Wyclifife held opinions which on their political
side attached him to the continental and anti-Papal
school of Ockham and Marsiglio, and on their re-
ligious side to the schismatic spiritual Franciscans, or
" Fraticelli," of whom Ockham was one of the chief
leaders. In theology proper Wycliffe resembled Luther
in being a Predestinarian, and a devoted follower of St
Augustine, the Father whose works were looked up to
throughout the Middle Ages with a reverence resembling
that which was paid to the Institutions of Calvin at the
*time of the Reformation. In this respect he adopted
the principles of his famous predecessor at Oxford,
Bradwardine, whose treatise against the prevalent
Pelagianism of the period was for many years a
much-used and valued text-book.
The year 1377 has been selected as marking the
ulterior limit of the second stage in Wycliffe's career,
because during the following year there occurred an
86 JOHN WYCLIFFE
event which, both for the reformer himself and for the
world at large, was to have the most momentous con-
sequences. The Papal Schism of 1378 is the greatest
religious crisis of the fourteenth century, and with it
we enter upon the last of our three stages, and upon the
final act in the drama of Wycliffe's life. Up to this
point his outward and admitted antagonism to Rome,
and to the national Church of his own country, had
been directed, first against the increasing claims of the
Popes and of the hierarchy to temporal jurisdiction and
power in England ; next against ecclesiastical endow-
ments ; and finally against the worldliness and moral
decadence and lax discipline of the clergy.
But it was an essential feature in the idea of the
Papacy that the Vicar of Christ in his sacred office was
the representative of the indivisibility of truth. In the
See of Rome the world had been taught to find the
symbol and the guarantee of religious unity. Suddenly
therefore to exhibit the seamless vesture of Latin Chris-
tianity as rent in twain, and the Papacy as the open
battlefield of rival claimants each professing to be the
true Pope, was to give religious faith a shock such as
nowadays we are scarcely able to realise. Spiritual
obedience, torn rudely from its old moorings, drifted
away into a divided allegiance with no better bond of
cohesion than the mere accident of country. In prin-
ciple the Schism was a political struggle between Italy
and France for the spoils of the Papacy, and while
the rival Popes were denouncing each other as Anti-
Christ, Christendom was plunged in blood and left
denuded of spiritual leadership.
THE GREAT SCHISM 87
So tremendous a catastrophe could not leave
a man of Wycliffe's temperament unaffected. It
occurred, moreover, at a period of his life when a
long and profound study of the Bible had made him
feel surer than ever of his own religious ground ; when
nearly twenty years' experience as a country clergy-
man had rendered him familiar with the spiritual needs
of the poor, and with the unspiritual wares of the
ubiquitous friars ; and, lastly, when the citations of
the bishops, and the bulls of the Pope, had shown
him that his days of free speech, and perhaps, too,
his days of personal safety, were speedily drawing to
an end.
Accordingly, from the year 1378 onwards, Wycliffe's
enmity to Rome will be found to broaden and deepen,
and to separate him more and more from his old
supporters. It is not now the Oxford Schoolman
whom we see, nor yet the ecclesiastical reformer, but
rather a solitary figure somewhat after the likeness of
one of the old Jewish prophets, abandoned by his old
allies, and yet girding himself for a single-handed
attack on the central citadel of the Catholic faith.
For Wycliffe now no longer limits his hostility to
the undue range of the Pope's authority, but directs it
against the institution of the Papacy itself, against the
monarchical element in Catholicism. He declaims
against the Holy See in terms of the most pungent
bitterness, and even calls it the "poison" of the
whole ecclesiastical system. It is not the wealth only,
nor yet the mere conduct and mode of life of the
clergy, that he now challenges, but the very principle
88 JOHN WYCLIFFE
of sacerdotalism, and the metaphysical doctrine of tran-
substantiation, — the miraculous " making of the body
of Christ," — as its most concentrated form of expres-
sion. He even goes so far as to compare the rival
pontiffs to "two dogs snarling bver a bone," and
suggests that the quickest way to end the fight would
be to take the bone away. Evidently his mind had
developed apace between his earlier Oxford days
and the date of this great turning point of his
career.
Accordingly it was very possibly under the stress
of the present juncture that his mind was made up
to bring forth what he believed to be the great
antidote to the "poison" of Rome, and that the
design of making a complete translation of the Bible,
a task which he so often advocates in his writings,
and which was long held, as it were, in solution in his
thoughts, was now precipitated by the course of events.
At any rate he seems at this time to have been busy
in further developing the organisation of his institution
of "poor preachers," or bible-clerks not holding any
episcopal license, to act as missionary agents for
bringing the Gospel home to the artisans and yeomen
and peasantry of England. Probably they may
have been intended to serve both as a counter-weight
to the officious and predatory friars, "the spoilt
children of the Papacy," and as a corrective to the
lethargy and ignorance of the half-starved parochial
clergy. Religious leaflets, and sheets of the New Testa-
ment, were distributed among these missioners as fast
as the translation could be carried on. Explanatory
TRANSUBSTANTIA TION A TTA CKED 89
tracts and papers, written in idiomatic and pithy
English, were poured out as supplementary aids to
the work of teaching and preaching, for which they
had been trained at Oxford and Leicester and else-
where, and with which, like the itinerant preachers
whom Wesley sent out broadcast some four centuries
later, they were entrusted.
In 1379 appeared Wycliffe's treatise " On the Truth
of Holy Scripture" By the spring of 1381, just before
the outbreak of what he terms the "lamentable con-
flict " of the Peasants' War, he had recovered from his
dangerous illness of 1379, and was lecturing at Oxford
against a belief nearly twenty generations old, the belief,
namely, that, by virtue of the words of consecration
in the Eucharist, an actual change of "substance," to
use the Latin equivalent for an idea imported from
Greek philosophy, was miraculously worked by every
priest in the elements of bread and wine.
Early in 1382 he was cited by Archbishop Courtenay
to appear before a Synod * at the priory of the Black
Friars in London, the site of which is now occupied
by the printing offices of the Times. His attack
on the doctrine of transubstantiation, though it was
rather a logical than a religious attack, for he was
himself what is termed a consubstantiationist, had put
the finishing touch to his increasing isolation. Notwith-
standing that he neither expressed nor felt any doubt
that spiritually and sacramentally there was a Real
Presence in the Eucharist which defied definition, he
was under no illusions as to the danger of his position.
* Fasc. Zi.^ 272, 277 ; Wilkin's Concilia^ iii., 157.
90 JOHN WYCLIFFE
In his " Truth of Holy Scripture" to which reference has
been made above, he admits that he is expecting that he
will either be burnt, or else put out of the way by some
other form of death,* As was said above, it is incredible
that, if Wycliffe had not had such powerful protectors, if
Rome had not been so organically weakened by the
" Babylonian Captivity," and still more by the Schism,
and if the national Church had not been so divided
against herself, the authorities would have rested satisfied
with bulls and synodical condemnations, or would ever
have stopped short of the direst penalties in dealing
with so audacious and dangerous an assailant.
It was to no purpose that John of Gaunt, who had
no mind to add to his unpopularity by embarking in a
doctrinal quarrel with the hierarchy, hurried down to
Oxford in the vain hope of persuading Wycliffe to be
silent on the subject of the Eucharist, Forced to decide
between principle and expediency, the reformer had no
hesitation in sacrificing the Lancastrian alliance to the
cause of what he thought to be true, " / am confidentl''
he said, " tJiat in tlie end the truth must prevail^ Even
his beloved University of Oxford, where his supporters
were now powerless against the united authority of the
Church and the Crown, was compelled to discard him,
and he retired unmolested to Lutterworth, never to leave
it again. On July i, 1382, Hereford and some others
of his party were excommunicated, though Wycliffe
himself, probably from considerations of practical pru-
dence, was still left severely alone.
Towards the close of the year the mental strain,
* Ut sim combustions^ vel alid morte extinctus.
WYCLIFFES PLACE IN LITERATURE 91
under which he had long gone on working with all his
indefatigable industry and courage, brought on a stroke
of paralysis. Two years later came the end. While
celebrating mass in Lutterworth Church he was struck
for the second time, and on the 31st of December he
died. " Admirable," says Fuller in his quaint style,
" admirable that a hare so often hunted with so many
packs of dogs should die at last quietly sitting in his form."
Wycliffe's great bequests to his country were his
translation and his personal character. He cannot be
said to have organised any scheme of religious reform,
and his followers, the Lollards, gravitated into a
political faction holding opinions so extreme as to
alarm the world around them, and to occasion a strong
reaction.
The Wycliffe Bible was spoken of in the preceding
chapter as being not merely a book but an event.
There attaches to it, in other words, a historical as
well as a literary importance. For while it announces
that a new stage has been reached in the evolution of
our native tongue, it marks also, as we have now seen,
a momentous epoch in our religious development.
Chaucer, the herald of the Renaissance, is a far
greater literary name in our annals than Wycliffe, the
herald of the Reformation. It was Chaucer, no doubt,
who by his genius impressed the literary stamp on our
language ; but it was Wycliffe who, in his own field, and
addressing his own audience, made ready and prepared
the way.
The rivalry between Norman-French and English
had come at length to an end. Largely owing to the
92 JOHN WYCLIFFE
loss of Normandy in the reign of King John, and to the
loss of Aquitaine in the reign of Edward III., the con-
tinental invader had been gradually turning into an
Englishman. In the twelfth century English had been
to the dominant race nothing else but a foreign
language. As the vernacular of everyday life it had
naturally remained the spoken language of the subject
population ; but no Norman magnate of the twelfth
century would have used English except under circum-
stances where his native tongue promised to be un-
intelligible to those whom he was addressing. With
the fourteenth century there had come a great change.
The conquered Saxon had at length completed the
assimilation of his conqueror, and the Norman had
become finally naturalised. While French still kept
up its social position as the language of polite society,
it had come to be the general practice for every gentle-
man to know the native English, inasmuch as the
foreign settlers now felt themselves to be no longer
Normans but Englishmen. The feeling of patriotism
had, moreover, been intensified by the prolonged wars
with France. The victories of Crecy and Poictiers could
not but throw into relative disfavour the language of
the defeated foe, and the national speech had been
quick to feel the reaction.
Accordingly we find that from the literary point of
view there is a very marked contrast between the first
and second half of the century, Higden, a monk who
lived during the earlier half of it, tells us that —
" Children in school be compelled for to leave their own language
and for to construe their lessons in French"
ENGLISH SUPERSEDES FRENCH 93
John of Trevisa, writing in the reign of Richard II.,
shows us the progress of the literary revolution. With
reference to French he says —
"This manner is somewhat changed. For John Cornwall, a
master of grammar, changed the lore in grammar school and con-
struing of French into English. So that now (1385), in all the
grammar schools of England, children leaveth FretKh and con-
strueth and leameth in English"
In 1 362 all pleadings in the courts of law were ordered
to be drawn in English, " because the French tongue is
much unknown," and in the following year, Parliament,
a word be it observed of French lineage, was opened for
the first time in an English speech.
The Wycliffe Bible is accordingly no isolated literary
phenomenon. Its appearance coincides with a general
movement towards the expression in a national lan-
guage of the rapidly developing sense of nationality,
and of this movement it is the greatest monument in
prose that remains to us.
The position which this version occupies in our
religious history is as notable as is its place in our
literature. From the former point of view it represents
the appeal of a man of spiritual mind — a man whose life
had been devoted to battling against what he deemed
to be corruption and superstition — to the consciences
and to the unsophisticated instincts of the mass of his
fellow-countrymen. It was born of Wycliffe's desire to
provide a medicine for the sickness of the times, and to
bring about a revival of the moral and personal element
in religion. It represented his conviction that men are
more than mere units in an ecclesiastical system. And,
94 JOHN WYCLIFFE
lastly, it was his indignant protest against that divorce of
creed from conduct, and of profession from practice,
which was the abiding disgrace and scandal of regular
and secular alike. It may be worth while to glance at
the component elements of the ecclesiastical society of
a century whose moral tone was as dissolute as it was
sordid.
Monk and abbot and prior lived, all of them, in
luxurious indolence ; the bishops were in no sense
spiritual overseers, but merely ambitious politicians and
statesmen ; the higher cathedral dignitaries were largely
represented by Italian absentees who had been ap-
pointed to their deaneries and canonries by the Pope ;
the friars, who retained the old habits of mendicancy,
but who had long since dispensed with asceticism, had
become proverbial for their effrontery, their cupidity,
and their capacity for unblushing imposture. They
heard confessions, they preached, they administered the
sacraments, they hawked about their cheap indulgences
just as a strolling pedlar might hawk his wares. They
abused the widespread influence which education and
wealth, as well as the support of the monasteries and of
the Pope, conferred upon them, in order to make their
fortunes out of the ruin of the parochial priests whose
tithes had been annexed by the regulars, and who, like
the still lower order of chantry priests, were usually too
ignorant to teach, and often almost too poor to live.
Wycliffe, so far as we know, was the first of our
countrymen to conceive the idea of translating the
whole of the Latin Bible into English. And not
only did he conceive the idea, but he put it into
ORIGINALITY OF WYCLIFFE 95
practical shape. Of like originality was his scheme
for organising what was in effect a new religious order,
an order of poor though not mendicant preachers,
unfettered by any strict conventual vows, and yet with
something of the culture and spirit of the Franciscan,
and labouring by friendly intercourse with the people
to bring the Scriptures within their apprehension. In
these two respects our first reformer must be admitted
to have been earliest in the field. Let us now see
what it was that he may justly claim to have done for
England and for the English Bible.
It is hardly possible without the aid of the historic
imagination to realise fully all that the first appearance
and the wide distribution of this translation really
meant. "// n'y a que le premier pas qui coute" runs the
old French saying, and the first definite step towards
any systematic evangelisation of the farmers and traders
and peasantry of this country, by opening up to them
the Scriptures, is due entirely to Wycliffe.
He has often been called an idealist and a visionary,
and it must be confessed that the charge is not without
foundation. But surely nothing could be less visionary
than the carefully devised plan by which the long-
forgotten teaching of Jesus Himself, and of His
immediate disciples, was brought home to the minds
of men and women whose religious experience had
so far been practically confined to the services of the
medieval Church and to the rhetorical preaching of the
" Pardoners " of the day.
" Look here upon this picture, and on this," we
almost seem to overhear John Wycliflfe saying, "and
96 JOHN WYCLIFFE
make your choice between the Founder of your faith
and the friars, between the wordiness of the men who
shrive and shear you, and the unadulterated word of
God." The new teaching seems to have spread with
wonderful rapidity. " You cannot travel anywhere in
England',' wrote one of his bitterest opponents, ^^ but
of every two men you meet one will be a Lollard^
The educated portion of the clergy had of course their
own Latin manuscript Bibles, and we have evidence that
among them were to be found men who had acquired
a sound Scriptural knowledge. But such men were the
exception not the rule, for it was not Bible-teaching
which in those ages formed the real staple of ecclesi-
astical work. The upper classes of the laity had also
their own form of Bible for devotional use, seeing that
a translation of the Vulgate had been made in the
thirteenth century into Norman- French. 'Mj lords in
England have the Bible in French" writes* Wycliffe,
about the date of the great Schism, "so it were not
against reason that they hadden the same in English^
In addition to the written Scriptures there were
the dramatic scenes of the miracle-plays, and the rude
pictures of the ^^Biblia Pauperum." Poetical paraphrases,
too, as we have seen, were in local circulation, such,
for example, as " Genesis and Exodus" and " Cursor
Mundi" and doubtless Wycliffe would be familiar with
such works, but a poetical paraphrase is not a transla-
tion, nor is the educational effect of a roving manuscript
in the least degree to be compared with the effect of
well organised teaching by means of a trained missionary
* In his De officio PastorcUi.
GREATNESS OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 97
clergy. The thirteenth century was one of remarkable
activity in the diffusion of the Scriptures, and the books
of the New Testament had all, or almost all of them,
been anonymously translated, by various hands working
in various centres, before the central decade of the four-
teenth century. No scholar, however, before Wycliffe
had produced an English rendering of the entire Vul-
gate, nor had any man had the invincible courage to
embark on what must have seemed the all but hopeless
task of setting up, as the guide to daily life, a New
Testament which spoke to each man in his own native
tongue, and which was rendered plain and clear to him
by the living voice of an interpreter making itself
heard within the quiet precincts of his home.
Courage indeed was needed, for, whatever its
intrinsic merits or demerits, Catholicism had created
for itself a position of immeasurable authority
and strength. During long centuries it had presided
over the greater portion of human life, and had
occupied the field unchallenged. It was in genuine
sympathy with some of the deepest cravings of the
human soul. It was clothed with tremendous sanctions
both for time and for eternity. It was supported by
vast resources of wealth and organisation. It exer-
cised over the imaginations of men an almost bound-
less power. Through its vast army of monks and
friars and clergy it monopolised almost all the craft
and learning of the age. It was supported by a
material backing of rich churches and abbeys and
monasteries, by the fellowship of art and of letters,
by the command of all educational and charitable
G
98 JOHN WYCLIFFE
institutions. If such a Church as this had only been
willing to set its own house in order, it is not easy to
see how the great events of the sixteenth century
would ever have come about. But Rome decided
otherwise, and though during the fifteenth century
Lollardy, in a religious sense, seemed to have
been temporarily stamped out, yet the influences
which Wycliffe had been able to set in motion were
working their invisible and subterraneous work, so
that, here a little and there a little, the soil was
being secretly prepared for the advent of the Refor-
mation.
Although the Wycliffe Bible is held to date (as has
been already stated) from 1382, it found no expression in
a printed form for nearly five hundred years. It was not
until 1 850 that the sumptuous edition, in four large quarto
volumes, for which we are indebted to the industry of
Forshall and Madden, was issued by the Clarendon
Press with the following title, " The Holy Bible, contain-
ing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal
Books, in the earliest English Versions made from the
Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his followers,
edited by tJie Rev. J. Forshall and Sir F. Madden!^
This admirable edition cost its authors some twenty
years of labour, and involved the examination of not less
than 170 manuscript copies. It will not have escaped
notice that the title speaks of " versions " in the plural,
and it is now an admitted fact that before the four-
teenth century had run out two entirely separate versions
of the Wycliffe Bible were in existence. Of these two
the original version is attributed in part to Wycliffe
THE TWO WYCLIFFITE VERSIONS 99
himself, and in part to his devoted friend and
disciple, Nicholas of Hereford. {See note at end of
this chapter^
It is not possible to say at what precise date this
original translation began to be made, but it was probably
finished by the year 1382. The later version of 1388,
which is often wrongly quoted as the Wyclifife Bible, is
really a revision of the edition of 1382 by John Purvey,
Wycliffe's curate at Lutterworth, and by others whose
names are not known. It is significant of the times
that both the earlier and the later version should
have been anonymous. Without an episcopal license
it was only at a man's own personal peril that
he ventured to translate Scripture into the verna-
cular. It is true that until the year 1408 we can point
to no direct ordinance of prohibition in England, for the
authorities had seen no cause for alarm, but the mere
fact that an episcopal license should at this time have
become indispensable is sufficient evidence as to the
changed attitude of the Church.* Indeed, the very
existence of the Dominican friars, the Pope's watch-
dogs of orthodoxy, could not fail to point men back
to the relentless trampling out of the Albigensian •
heresy, and to the statute of the Council of Toulouse
which was passed in A.D. 1229, and which enacts that
no layman should be allowed to have any book either
of the Old Testament or of the New, especially in a
* Foxe refers to numerous cases of prosecution for owning
or reading the Scriptures in English, iii., 595-7 ; iv., 178, 221-3, ^tc.
In 1414 a law was made enacting that all persons who read the
Scriptures in the mother tongue should ^''forfeit land, cately lif^
and goods from their heyres for ever" (Eadie, vol. i., 89).
loo JOHN WYCLIFFE
translation, " unless perhaps the Psalter, a Breviary,
or the Hours of the Virgin."
In 1 40 1 the statute book was disgraced by the
monstrous Act " concerning the burning of heretics."
In 1408 Archbishop Arundel made certain constitutions,
one of which rendered it penal to read any of Wycliffe's
writings or translations within the province of Canter-
bury, " until the said translation be allowed by the
ordinary of the place, or, if the case so require, by the
council provincial (Wilkin's Concilia, iii., 317).
Detected copies of the Bible, or of any of its com-
ponent books, would consequently be destroyed, and
when we bear in mind how difficult it must have been
to escape detection, and how the multiplication of copies
would necessarily be limited by the cost of parchment
and by the expense of transcription, the survival for
5CXD years of as many as 170 manuscripts makes it
clear that the Wycliffite translation must have been
both widely distributed and carefully treasured.
Of these surviving copies it is interesting to know
that not more than thirty belong to the original version
of 1382, and that of the remainder, which reproduce
the revision of 1388, the greater part were most likely
written between the years 1420 and 1450, and at a
time therefore when the veto of Archbishop Arundel
would have become generally notorious. The only
explanation can be, that in this matter of an English
Bible men were quite ready to run the risk. Moreover,
the nature of the manuscripts indicates that it was
not merely the rich or the powerful who were thus
willing to encounter what to them, perhaps, would have
INDICATIONS OF THE POPULAR DEMAND loi
been a merely nominal danger, but that it was also the
comparatively obscure. Only a few of the copies which
have come down to us are on a scale suited either for
exalted dignitaries or for great libraries.* The large
majority of extant specimens are of pocket size, and
were obviously intended for ordinary folk and for
daily use.
The testimony of Foxe, if we could rely on it,
is in a similar direction. Considerable sums, he says,
were paid even for detached sheets, and as much as
a load of hay for the loan of a whole Testament for
an hour a day. With regard to cost, it has been
estimated that early in the fifteenth century a complete
copy of the Bible would have been worth more than
;^30 of our money. We may add that specimens of
the more ornate copies of the WycHffe Bible have been
traced up to the possession of Henry VI. ; Richard
III.; Henry VII.; Richard Duke of Gloucester;
Edward VI. ; and Elizabeth.
With respect to the version of 1382, while it is certain
that the translation of the Gospels which it adopts is
by WycHffe, the internal evidence of style makes it
more likely than not that the whole of the New
Testament may be ascribed to him, though at present
we have no direct proof that it was his personal work.
If we turn to the Old Testament we are on surer
ground. Among the treasures of the Bodleian Library
there is a MS. which fortunately can tell its own tale.
The translation is carried on continuously up to the
book of Baruch. At this point it abruptly breaks off in
* Eadie, vol. i., 80.
I02 JOHN WYCLIFFE
the very middle of a verse (iii. 20), and a note has been
added to call attention to the fact that Hereford's version
here comes prematurely to an end. It would appear,
therefore, that, while Wycliffe was busy at Lutterworth
with the New Testament, his friend Hereford was at
work in Oxford on the Old, but that he was suddenly
interrupted by a citation to London as an ecclesiastical
offender.
It is at any rate an ascertained fact that in July 1382
Hereford was excommunicated. Who it was that may
have been responsible for completing the translation of
the Old Testament it is not now possible to determine.
Probably it may have been Wycliffe himself, or perhaps
a group of his Oxford friends working under his general
supervision.
Between Wycliffe and Hereford there is a sharp
contrast of style, and a contrast of dialect as well.
Wycliffe's work indicates wider practice as a translator,
while Hereford is timid, cramped, and slavishly literal.
Both use a dialect, but while Hereford inclines to the
dialect of the South, Wycliffe (like Purvey) inclines to
the dialects of the East-Midlands and of the North.
No sooner was this original version completed
than its defects became evident. In point of style,
being by different hands, it naturally lacked uniformity,
and it was often awkward and stiff". Many of its
renderings were inaccurate. The text which it trans-
lated was one that in the course of centuries, during
which printing was unknown, had become exceedingly
corrupt.
A revision was accordingly taken in hand at once,
THE REVISION OF J 388 103
with a view both to remedy these defects and to
make the translation more idiomatic and less Latin
in character ; but Wyclifife did not live to see this
revision completed. The details of the work do not
come within the scope of a sketch whose design is of
a historical rather than of a critical kind. Yet none
the less it may interest the reader to have before
him the author's own description of the plan on
which the work was conducted.
To this Bible of 1388 there was prefixed a Prologue,
and this Prologue is very generally supposed to have
been written by Purvey.
The writer of it, whoever he may have been,
explains his purpose and method as follows : —
"Though covetous Clerks are mad through simony, heresy,
and many other sins, and despise and impede Holy Writ as
much as they can, yet the unlearned cry after Holy Writ to
know it, with great cost and peril of their lives. For those
reasons, and others, a simple creature hath translated the Bible
out of Latin into English. First, this simple creature had much
labour, with divers companions and helpers, to gather many old
Bibles, and other doctors and common glosses, and to make a
Latin Bible somewhat true (i.e., textually correct), and then to
study it anew, the text with the gloss, and other doctors, especially
Lire (/.<?., Nicholas de Lyra) on the Old Testament, who gave
him great help in this work. The third time to counsel with
old grammarians and divines, of hard words and sentences,
how they might best be translated ; the fourth time to translate
as clearly as he could to the sense, and to have many good
fellows and cunning at the correcting of the translation, for the
common Latin Bibles have more need to be corrected than hath
the English Bible* late translated."
We may conclude our notice of these fourteenth
* Wy cliffy s Translation of 1382,
I04 JOHN WYCLIFFE
century Bibles by giving some specimens from the
original version of 1382.
The first shall be from Genesis i. i, with the spell-
ing more or less modernised :
" In the first made God of nought heaven and earth. The
earth, forsooth, was vain within and void, and darknessis
weren upon the face of the see. And the spirit of God was
born upon the waters. And God said Be made light and made
is light. And God saw light that it was good and divided light
fro darkness, and clepide light day and darkness night. And
made is even and morn one day."
Here, again, is Wyclifife's translation of the Lord's
Prayer (St Matthew, chap, vi.) :
"Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halwid be thi name, thi
kingdom comme to, be thi wille done as in heuen so in erthe ;
gif to us this day oure breed ouer other substance ; and forgeue
to us our dettis as we forgeue to oure dettours, and leede us
not in to temptacioun but delyuere us fro yuel."
The Magnificat (Luke i.) is thus rendered :
" And Mary seyde : My soul magnifieth the Lord, and my
spiryt hath gladid in God myn helthe. For he hath beholden
the mekenesse of his handmayde ; Loo ! forsooth of this alle
generatiouns schulen seye me blessid. For he that is mighti
hath done grete thingis to me, and his name is holy. And his
mercy is fro kyndrede in to kyndredis to men dredinge him.
He made myght in his ann, he scatteride proude men with
mynde of his herte. He puttide down myghty men fro seete,
and enhaunside meke. He hath fillid hungry men with goode
thingis, and he hath left riche men voide."
Very characteristic in their directness are the words
placed in the mouth of the blind man at the pool of
Siloam (John ix, 11):
" I wente, and waischid, and sai."
SPECIMENS OF TRANSLATION 105
The translation of Rom. xvi. 12 strikes a note
of true tenderness :
" Persida, most dere worthe womman."
So again in Rom. i. 7 :
*' AUe that ben at Rome, derlyngis of God and clepid holy."
In I Cor. vi. 12 we have a good specimen of
Wydiffe's use of assonance :
" All thingis ben nedeful to me but not alle thingis ben spedeful."
Finally, the translation of Matt, xxvii. 27 takes
us back at a bound to the England of the middle
ages :
"... token Jhesu in the moot hall."
While in that of 2 Tim. ii. 4 {nemo, militans Deo,
implicat se negotiis secularibus), there is a fine feudal
ring:
*' No man that holdeth knighthood to God Inwlappith silfe
with wordli redis."
Note. — A question has been recently raised which challenges
the authenticity of the Wycliffe Bible. Dr Gasquet — whose title to
be respectfully heard no one can for a moment dispute — has con-
tended with great ingenuity, that the versions which have hitherto
passed as embodying Wycliffe's work are not his at all, but are
translations made by his lifelong opponents the Bishops. So
far are they from being " Lollard," that they are versions
approved by the medieval Church, and circulated with her
sanction, just as were the fragmentary translations of earlier
centuries. The Lollard Bible, if ever there was one, has, it
is suggested, been lost.
It does not come within the sphere of this historical sketch
io6 FATHER GASQUET AND THE WYCLIFFE BIBLE
to pursue controversial topics, but the balance of opinion
among students is, I think, unfavourable to Dr Gasquet's
theory, persuasively as he presents it in " The Old English
Bible." Ranged against him, for example, are historical
authorities of the calibre of Matthew, Trevelyan, and Kenyon.
The connection of Wycliffe's friends, Hereford and others,
with the translations which we possess, is undisputed, and we
know that, among their contemporaries, they were charged
as being pernicious innovators. If they were nothing of the
kind, why did they not make the obvious retort of pointing
to this {supposed) pre-existent orthodox version ? And why should
Wycliffe go out of his way to argue from the existence of a
French version to the propriety of making an English one, if an
English one had long since been brought out by the Church?
What, too, would there have been to prevent the ecclesiastical
heirs of this 14th century version from printing it in Tyndale's
day, and from thus taking the wind out of his sails? An
interesting review of the whole controversy will be found in
the Church Quarterly Review^ January 1901. See also English
Hist, Review., 1895, x- 9i-
WILLIAM TYNDALE
"The rulers of the Church be all agreed to keep the world
in darkness, to the intent that they may sit in the consciences of
the people ... to satisfy . . . their proud ambition and unsatiable
covetousness . . . which thing only moved me to translate the
New Testament.
{Preface to Translation of the Pentateuch^
" If it would stand with the King's most gracious pleasure to
grant only a bare text of the Scripture to be put forth among his
people, like as is put forth among the subjects of the Emperor in
these parts, be it the translation of what person soever shall please
his Majesty, I shall immediately . . . repair into his realm and
there most humbly submit myself, offering my body to suffer what
pain or torture, yea, what death, his Grace wills, so that this be
obtained."
{Vaughan to Henry VIII.^ quoting from his second
interview with Tyndale at Bergen in 1531.)
" I call God to record that I never altered one syllable of His
word against my conscience, nor would this day, if all that is in
the earth, whether it be pleasure, honour, or riches, might be
given me."
{Tyndale' s letter to Frith, 1532.)
" How happy is he bom and taught
That serveth not another's will ;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill.
Whose passions not his masters are,
WTiose soul is still prepared for death.
Untied unto the world by care
Of public fame or private breath.
Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to lend,
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend.
This man is free from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall,
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And, having nothing, yet hath all."
— H. WOTTON.
CHAPTER V
WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
At the stage in the evolution of the English Bible
which has now been reached it becomes necessary to
break our journey ; for the history of the manuscript
Bible ends with Purvey's revision of 1388, while be-
tween that date and the appearance of Tyndale's New
Testament there is a gap of nearly 140 years.
A convenient opportunity thus arises for a glance
backward along the path by which we have been
travelling, in order that its main features may become
firmly imprinted on our memories before we resume
our route.
It was, then, in the England of the Middle Ages
that the earliest germs were discovered of a vernacular
Bible. The idea of a complete translation of the
Vulgate had not yet been conceived, and such versions
as were already in existence had, for the most part,
been made with the aim of bringing within the com-
prehension of the numerous clergy, who knew but
little of Latin, those portions of the Scriptures which
were in constant liturgical use.
The prevailing type of religion was ceremonial and
100
no WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
ritualistic, and the Latin Bible, as forming part of the
Church's ritual, enjoyed as a rule a subordinate and
complementary position rather than any substantial
independence of its own. It was a book not for the
uninstructed laity, whose minds and consciences were
as yet in the keeping of their ecclesiastical guardians,
but for the Church, who held it in trust for the edifica-
tion of her people. It lay, in short, in the background.
With the fourteenth century there came a change.
We found ourselves passing into a period during which
the relative position of the Bible became sensibly
affected. The mediatorial conceptions of the medieval
system were no longer left unchallenged. The ecclesias-
tical and monastic type of social order was slowly
making way for the civil and political type, and the
State was preparing to take the place of the Church as
a source of moral discipline. The centralising spirit of
Catholic Christianity had come into conflict with the
centrifugal spirit of nationality, and the ecclesiastical
language of the Church had begun to feel the rivalry
of the secular and independent tongues of modern
Europe.
In his recoil from the spiritual apathy and moral
degeneracy of the clergy, Wycliffe, who in the field of
religion is the representative figure in the collision of the
old order with the new, was more and more thrown into
a one-sided and exaggerated antagonism to that principle
of corporate life and social activity which lies at the
very root of the Christian Church. Convinced in his
own heart that the time had arrived when, in the cause
of religious honesty and truth, it was essential that the
WHAT WYCLIFFE'S AIM HAD BEEN in
contrast between the principles of primitive Christianity
and the principles of the spiritual teachers of his day
should be effectually exposed, he determined that, as
far as in him lay, the nation should have an opportunity
of making the comparison. It was certain that the
bishops and friars had no intention of bringing the
common people to the Bible. At his own cost, there-
fore, and even at the risk of his life, the Bible should be
brought to the people. Hitherto it had been the per-
quisite and the talisman of the Church. Henceforth it
should be the common heritage and daily guide of the
people at large. Hitherto it had spoken in a foreign
tongue. Henceforth it should speak in English. The
stone should be rolled away from the mouth of the
spring. The medicine which had been ordained for
the healing of the nations should no longer be prevented
from ministering to the deep-seated and many-sided
sickness of the age. Now that England had come to
realise her political independence, it should be his
endeavour to place in her hands the book which best
could nerve her for the struggle through which her
spiritual independence had still to be won.
Such, as we understand it, was Wycliffe's ideal, and
thus in the fourteenth century the position occupied by
the Bible may be described as undergoing a threefold
change. In the place of a fragmentary English Bible
there was to be a complete one. In addition to a Bible
in a dead language for the private study of the clergy
and for the ritual of public worship, there was to be a
vernacular Bible brought by the agency of trained itin-
erant preachers to the home door. In the place of a
112 WILUAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
mystical Bible, interpreted only by ecclesiastical autho-
rity, there was to be an open Bible accessible to laity
and clergy alike.
In two respects, however, the Wycliffite versions must
be said to belong still to the Middle Ages. They had
no printing-press behind them to spread abroad, to
multiply, and, what was equally important, to cheapen
them. Furthermore, they were but translations of a
translation, done into the half-formed and transitional
dialect of the day, and not translations from the original
Hebrew and Greek done into the English of all time.
For this great development we have to look across
the intervening years which separate Wyclifife from
Tyndale.
It is easy to see how far these two fellow-labourers
in the field of religious reform are separated the
one from the other. It is at first sight less easy to
discover the link by which they are connected. But
from a historical point of view perhaps we may find
such a link in Lollardy. " Lollard " was the nickname
given to Wyclifife's followers, but the origin of the name
is uncertain.* It has been somewhat fancifully derived
from "lolium," the Latin word for tares, as denoting
the tares among the spiritual wheat, but more probably
* It may be that two different words became confused both in
form and sense. " Lollardus," in medieval Latin, is used of one
who mumbles hymns and prayers ; while " loller," in Middle
English, means a vagabond, or an idler. {'^ Piers the Ploughman,'^
C text X. 213-18). With regard to the punning derivation from
"lolium," see Political Poenis, "Against the Lollards":
" Lollardi sunt zisania,
SpiruE, vepres, ac lollia,
Quce vastant hortum vinece."
LOLLARD V A MIXED MO VEMENT 1 1 3
it is akin to " lullen," or " lollen," to sing, and has refer-
ence to the singing among the Lollards of psalms or
hymns. If this be the correct derivation the nickname
would correspond to our modern "cant."
This Lollardy had two sides, the one religious, the-
other social and political, and it seems never to have
quite succeeded in keeping these two sides separate and
distinct. It was both as a traitor and as a heretic that
Sir John Oldcastle, for example, who suffered death
as a Lollard in 1417, was burnt on the gallows in St
Giles' Fields, while the career of Wycliffe himself has
a strongly political colouring.
So far as Lollardy in England was a religious move-
ment its progress after Wycliffe's death was soon
arrested, partly by its lack of organisation and of in-
fluential leaders, partly by the withdrawal from it of the
proprietary classes who were naturally alarmed at its
association with agrarian revolution, and who were not
slow to see that an attack on Church property might
readily develop into an attack on property as a whole ;
and lastly, by the combined efforts of Church and Crown,
under Archbishop Arundel, to burn it out at the stake.*
The social and political side of Lollardy does not in
any way concern us here, but what does closely concern
us is the fact that, though Church and State were so far
successful that they frightened the movement out of
sight, they did not ever succeed in wholly rooting it out.
It happened, moreover, that, through the marriage of
Richard II. with Anne of Bohemia, the teaching of
Wycliffe, transmitted over the seas to Huss and Jerome,
* The Act " De haeretico comburendo" was passed in 1401 a.d.
n
114 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
and surviving their martyrdom, re-appeared in due
course in the person of Luther, and was instilled through
Luther's influence into Tyndale.
We have already seen how strong the indications are
of the wide diffusion in England of the Wycliffite Bible.
It may now be added that incontrovertible evidence
of the survival of Lollard tracts and pamphlets, such as
Wycliffe's tract against Transubstantiation, called the
Ostiolum, or Wicket, is afforded by their being found
included among the heretical books whose owners
were prosecuted in the reign of Henry VIII. Richard
Hun, for instance, who died in the Lollard's Tower, was
accused in 15 14 of having in his possession "the damn-
able works of Wycliffe," and Foxe mentions another
prosecution where the specified book was the Wicket
above-mentioned. Further, we have the evidence of
Erasmus, who writes in 1523 to Adrian VI., that the
Wycliffite party ** was not extinguished, but only over-
come " ; and of Tunstall, Bishop of London, who in the
same year writes to Erasmus, "It is no question of some
pernicious novelty, it is that new arms are being added to
the great band of Wycliffite heretics" Thus it would
seem that while doctrinal Lollardy ,did not ever, even
in the lifetime of Wycliffe, attain to the dimensions
of a national movement, and that while after his death
it lost whatever solidarity his own personal influence
had lent to it, still it cannot be said to have died
entirely away. If the flames were extinguished the
embers smouldered on, so that when, in 1529, a royal
proclamation appeared against unorthodox writings, it
is in no way surprising to find that no particular
WYCLIFFE WAS BEFORE HIS DAY 115
distinction is drawn between " Lollardies " and other
"heresies and errors,"
This survival of Lollardy as the continuing protest
of religious discontent is sufficient proof that the
Wycliffite attack upon the medieval Church system had
failed to achieve its object. Its leader, it may be re-
marked, belonged to the less popular and influential
party among the Schoolmen, namely, to the moderate
Realists or liberal - conservatives, as opposed to the
Nominalists or philosophical radicals whose star was
at that time largely in the ascendant on the Con-
tinent. Having regard to the intellectual backwardness
of the age it had been delivered prematurely. It lacked
system and was too negative in character. It had
depended too much on one man. It had been with-
out the glow of religious enthusiasm, and without any
central principle to serve its supporters as a rallying
cry. Something on the other hand had been done in
the preparation of the soil, and something too in the
actual sowing of the seed, but the time of harvest was
not yet come. The colour and texture of the fifteenth
century in England is not religious but political. It is
a century mainly taken up with foreign and civil war,
the wars with France, and the wars of the Roses. Mid-
way through it the voice of reason and common sense
in dealing with Lollardy makes itself heard for a
moment in a man who has been called the Arnold of his
day, Bishop Pecock, but only to be instantly suppressed.
Before its close the Bishops had more than recovered
from their scare ; religious reform seemed to have been
relegated to the Greek Calends ; and the clergy, lulled
Ii6 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
into fancied security through their close alliance with
the Crown, had fallen torpidly back into the old groove
of indifference and obscurantism.
Tyndale therefore had the same aim and the same
incentive in his work as Wycliffe, though he was born
into a very different age. It was from the breakdown
of the Church as a moral and educational agency, and
from her gross and persistent neglect of the spiritual
trusts committed to her charge, that both reformers alike
derived their determination that the Gospel should be
opened out through the medium of an English Bible to
the people. Accordingly, in his preface to " TJi£ Obedience of
a Christian Man " ( 1 528), we find Tyndale writing thus : —
" Alas ! the curates themselves, for the most part, wot no more
what the New or Old Testament meaneth than do the Turks —
neither care they but to mumble so much every day as the pie and
popinjay speak, they wot not what, to fill their bellies withal. If
they will not let layman have the word of God in his mother
tongue, yet let the priests have it, which for the great part of them
do understand no Latin at all, but sing and patter all day with the
lips only that which the heart understandeth not."
To Tyndale's evidence let us add a quotation from
Cardinal Bellarmine, which points in a like direction : —
" Some years before the rise of the Lutheran heresy there was
almost an entire abandonment of equity in the ecclesiastical
judgments ; in morals no discipline, in sacred literature no erudi-
tion, in divine things no reverence : religion was almost extinct."
But if as a religious reformer Tyndale does but
catch the torch from Wycliffe's hand, we must not allow
ourselves to forget that the two men are chrono-
logically separated by the whole interval of an intel-
lectual revolution. It is impossible to pass from the
fourteenth to the sixteenth century and not to take
PERIOD BETWEEN WYCLIFFE AND TYNDALE 117
account of the greatest upheaval of the human mind
that the world had seen since the introduction of
Christianity. To that wonderful regeneration of
the West, which we call the Renaissance, or the
" new birth," no one date can be assigned, nor can its
all-pervading spirit be taken captive and imprisoned in
any verbal definition. For its earliest harbingers we
must go far back into the Middle Ages. In its effects
it remains in active operation among us at this very
day. Its rays light up the intellectual transition to the
modern world, a world which was no longer to see every-
thing through theological glasses. Expressed in terms
of literature, we call it the Revival of Letters. Expressed
in terms of religion, it is the Reformation. Contrasted
with medievalism, the Renaissance is like a bright
fresh morning after a close and sultry night. It repre-
sents the change in men's view of life from asceticism
to freedom and humanism ; from the monastery to the
college ; from a civilisation based on Feudalism and
educated by the Latin Church, to a civilisation
educated by Science and based, within the restrictions
of nationahty, on a spiritual inter-community of ideas
and interests.
In the wake of the literary revival by which this
great movement was ushered in, there arose that
wonder-working spirit of adventure and of maritime
discovery, under whose influence the boundaries of the
earth were pushed back, and the edifice of patristic geo-
graphy was shattered to pieces. In 1492, Columbus with
the aid of the mariner's compass discovered the New
World. In 1497, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of
ii8 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
Good Hope. In 1520, Magellan circumnavigated the
globe. The year 1543 is the date of the death of Coperni-
cus, whose reading of the riddle of the sky was soon to
revolutionise the whole science of astronomy, and with
it man's ideas of his physical position in the universe.
For our immediate purpose, however, the primary
points of interest are : first, the revival of letters ; and
next, the invention of printing, coupled as that inven-
tion was with the introduction into Europe of the
manufacture of cheap paper.
Dates, as we are all but too well aware, are but dry
things at the best, but in a period such as that which
we have now reached they are almost indispensable.
It was the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in
1453 which drove Greek scholars westward, just at the
time when the appetite for the re-discovered classics
was growing keen. The necessary literary apparatus
for opening out a knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek
Scriptures soon began to be brought into the field.
The public teaching of Greek was introduced into
the University of Paris in 1458. The earliest Greek
grammar was published in 1476, and the earliest
Hebrew grammar in 1503. Among the first products
of the printing press was the Gutenberg (or Mazarin)
Bible in or about the year 1455. In 1470 Caxton
introduced printing into England. The first Hebrew
Lexicon dates from 1506, the first Greek Lexicon from
1480. Grocyn, who had learnt Greek in Italy, was
its earliest teacher in Oxford in 1492. In 1488
appeared the first printed Hebrew Bible, and in 15 16
the first printed New Testament by Erasmus. 1520
THE FATHER OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE 119
is the date of the famous Complutensian Polyglot*
Before the end of the fifteenth century some eighty
editions of the Latin Bible had been published in
Europe, and national versions of the entire Bible were
circulating in German, Italian, French, Danish, Dutch,
Russian, Slavonic, Bohemian, and Spanish. But an
English printed Bible had yet to come.
For that great gift, bought for his country at the
price of his blood, England has to thank Tyndale, a
man who, if he had "the defect of his qualities," is
surely one of the noblest figures in the whole annals
of the Reformation. If Luther represents for us the
splendid enthusiasm of the tim.e, Erasmus its scholar-
ship and wit, and Rabelais its joyousness of humour,
there is no one who more worthily embodies the
intensity of its religious seriousness than he who
shares with Aidan the title of the "Apostle of
England," William Tyndale.
Tyndale is the true father of our present English
Bible. He is so notwithstanding the fact that he
neither originated the idea of a popular version, nor
was the first to make one. In these respects the glory
rests with his predecessor, Wycliffe. But the English
of the fourteenth century is not our English, and
Wycliffe's Bible is not a translation at first hand, but
only a translation of the Latin Bible.
* This Polyglot Bible derives its name from Compiutum, the
ancient name of Alcala, where a university was founded in 1 500 by
Cardinal Ximenes. It was in six folio volumes, and contained
the Hebrew and Greek texts, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and the
Chaldee paraphrase of the Pentateuch, with a Latin translation ;
Greek and Hebrew grammars, and a Hebrew dictionary.
I20 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
For felicity of diction, and for dignity of rhythm,
Tyndale never has been and never can be surpassed.
The conception of the Bible as essentially the people's
book came down to him as we have seen from Wycliffe,
but his splendid embodiment of that conception in the
popular English of his own day is the work of his indivi-
dual genius. Far from vulgarising the Bible by lowering
his standard of language down to the popular level (as
though a man should descend to render Shakespeare's
Comedies into the dialect of the modern farce), he lifted
the common language, in a true nobility of homeliness, up
to the sublime level of the Bible. He worked, like a sane
and sound scholar, on the principles of grammar and
philology. He endeavoured, in a spirit of unpedantic
sincerity and conscientiousness, to find out what it
was that each sacred writer had meant to say, and
then to say it in plain and vigorous Saxon-English
with all the idiomatic simplicity, and grace, and stateli-
ness which characterise the Authorised Version, and
which our latest revisers might with advantage have been
more zealous than they have been to emulate and to pre-
serve. For in the tone of our English revisions there
is abundant evidence of how much we owe to the
spell and charm of the literary type presented to suc-
cessive workers from the very beginning as their model,
and of the truth of the old Horatian maxim : —
" Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem
Testa diu." {Epist I. ii., 70.)
" The perfume that was given it when new
Clings to the earthen vessel long years through."
Tyndale did not live to translate the entire Bible.
TYN DALE'S WORK INCOMPLETE 121
If we include the MS. which he left in the hands of
his literary executor, John Rogers, we have from his
pen : —
I. The Old Testament as far as 2 Chronicles,
inclusive.
II. The Book of Jonah.
III. "The Epistles out of the Old Testament which
are read in the Church after the use of Salisbury ; "
comprising various passages from the Prophetical Books
and from the Apocrypha,
IV. The New Testament.
It has been estimated that, of Tyndale's work as
above specified, our Bibles retain at the present day
something like eighty per cent, in the Old Testament,
and ninety per cent, in the New. If this estimate
may be accepted no grander tribute could be paid to
the industry, scholarship, and genius of the pioneer
whose indomitable resolution enabled him to per-
severe in labours prolonged through twelve long years
of exile from the land that in his own words he so
"loved and longed for," with the practical certainty
of a violent death staring him all the while in the
face.
The life of this gifted translator may be divided
into the four following periods : —
First, his period of training at Oxford and Cam-
bridge. Tyndale's university life must at least have
occupied the eleven years between 15 10 and 1521, and
very possibly it may have been of still longer duration,
seeing that he may have gone up to Oxford even
earlier than 15 10.
122 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
Secondly, his residence in Gloucestershire as private
chaplain to Sir John Walsh from 1521 to 1523.
Thirdly, his London life of nearly a year in the
house of Humphrey Munmouth of Allhallows, Barking.
Lastly, his life and work on the Continent, between
1524 and 1536, both as a translator and also as the
most prominent and powerful controversial English
writer, next to More, of his day.
With his controversial writings, though they are
of the first importance for the understanding of Tyn-
dale's doctrinal views, we are here only so far concerned
as they served to intensify the hostility that was excited
by the appearance of his New Testament, considered
as it was to bear the taint of heresy.
Speaking generally, it may be said that up to the
year 1523 Tyndale remained more or less the disciple
of his earliest instructors, John Colet and Erasmus.
Thenceforward he felt very strongly the influence of
Luther, and we need hardly remind our readers that
between Erasmus, the unimpassioned man of letters,
the ironical critic and " candid friend " of the Church,
and Luther, the impulsive and passionate dogmatist,
there lies the deep chasm of the Augustinian, or, as
we now call it, the Calvinistic, theology.
It is a strange thought that, in the venerable and
apparently interminable controversy which for so many
ages has torn the thinking world asunder, — the contro-
versy between free-will and necessity, — it should have
been from the ranks not of the vindicators of man's
spiritual initiative, but from the ranks of the rigid
Predestinarians, that the great religious reformers are
FOUR PERIODS IN HIS LIFE 123
seen emerging. That they mighj: gain the spiritual
force and vigour which were indispensable for the task
to which they had set their hands, they had first of all
to be inspired with a conviction of the mysterious and
irresistible inner working of the grace of God. To take
but one illustration, Luther, whose name suggested
this brief digression ; Luther, — the Arminius of modem
Germany, the man to whom no small part of Europe
owes its moral freedom, — Luther himself was a
thorough-going theological fatalist.
William Tyndale was of Gloucestershire birth, but
at what place he was born, and in what year, is not
certainly known. Probably it may have been at
Slymbridge, near Berkeley, and not later than 1490.
His comparatively brief span of life comprises a
period rich in great events. Within it are included
" the tragedy of Luther " ; the career of the brilliant and
cosmopolitan Erasmus ; the rise and fall of Wolsey ; the
sack of Rome by the forces of Charles V. ; the ecclesias-
tical breach between England and Rome ; the submission
of the clergy to the Crown ; the " reign of terror " under
Thomas Cromwell ; the dissolution of the monasteries ;
the endeavours of Fisher, Colet, More, and Erasmus,
to bring about a peaceful reform of abuses without
breaking up the religious u'tiity of Christendom ; the
publication of Calvin's " Institutes " ; the adoption of
the Reformation by Geneva ; and the first appearance
of an English New Testament, which, notwithstanding
every attempt made to suppress it, was soon to be
followed by a complete Bible circulating with the
express sanction of the King himself
124 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
For Tyndale's early history our only authority is
Foxe. From him we learn that —
"William Tyndale was . . . brought up from a child in the
University of Oxford, where he grew and increased as well in the
knowledge of tongues and other liberal arts, as especially in the
knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singularly
addicted, insomuch that he, lying then at Magdalen Hall, read
privily to certain students and fellows of Magdalen College some
parcel of divinity, instructing them in the knowledge and truth of
the Scriptures."
The expression " from a child " is hardly what we
should have expected, and it is moreover far too in-
definite to be of service. There is nothing improbable,
however, in supposing that Tyndale's early teachers
thought him a lad of promise, and that his exceptional
turn for languages had already begun to discover itself.
If so, he may well have gone up to Oxford before the
average age, and perhaps such a conjecture gains
additional plausibility from the fact that Magdalen Hall
was a place so conspicuous for classical study under the
auspices of Grocyn, Linacre, and William Latimer, that
it went by the suggestive name of " Grammar Hall."
The authorities give 1 5 1 5 as the date of Tyndale's
M.A. degree, after obtaining which he left Oxford for the
sister University of Cambridge, though for what reason
Foxe does not say. The usual explanation is that he
was attracted thither by his desire to hear Erasmus, who
was the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and also
Greek Reader, but this explanation is at issue with the
known dates in the case, for Erasmus left Cambridge
before 1514. And this same troublesome chronology
must be suffered, we fear, to deprive us of the pleasure
WILLIAM TYNDALE.
{From an Engraving by W. HrMPHRYS.
[Face p. 125.
TYNDALE AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 125
of picturing the young Bible-student listening while at
Oxford to Colet's famous lectures on St Paul's Epistles,
inasmuch as Colet was back in London in 1505, and
may probably have left Oxford during 1504.
It is probable that Tyndale was driven from Oxford
by the " Trojan " party, who were labouring with so much
diligence to suppress the " Greeks " of the New Learn-
ing, and it may also be that the Bible readings to which
Foxe markedly refers had got him into trouble with the
University doctors. But whether our future translator
did or did not actually listen to Colet's lectures at
Oxford, or to those of Erasmus at Cambridge, is a
matter of no great practical importance. It will suffice
us if we can picture in our minds the formative influ-
ences under which his mind was maturing during the
eleven critical years when the youth was growing mto
the man.
We know that he had a gift for languages ; we know
also that, as is shown by the Bible readings which he
organised at his Hall, he was a diligent student of
Scripture. Even if he may have missed the privilege
of hearing Colet's actual voice, he must in any case
have been breathing for several years an intellectual
atmosphere charged with the spirit of that remarkable
man's teaching. What, then, was that spirit ?
Towards the end of the fifteenth century Grocyn
and Linacre, just returned from Italy, had begun to
teach Greek in Oxford. It was Colet who carried on
their work. He represented the influence of the
" New Learning " as reflected in a naturally religious
mind. If tradition may be trusted, he had while in
126 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
Florence come under the magic spell of Savonarola. He
delivered at Oxford a course of lectures on St Paul,
by means of which he sought to revive once more the
historical and devotional study of the Bible, a study
which, since the great days of Bishop Grosseteste of
Lincoln, in the thirteenth century, had become all
but obsolete. He wished to make the Christian faith
a practical thing, a working principle quickening the
spiritual life. He threw his whole soul into the
endeavour to give reality and freshness to the
apostolic letters by placing his listeners as far as
possible in the position of those whom St Paul was
addressing. It can hardly be doubted that Tyndale's
receptive mind must have felt the full force of this
novel departure from the old scholastic methods of
interpretation.
From Oxford Tyndale carried with him to Cambridge
a sound knowledge of Greek and Latin, together with
an interest in the study of the Scriptures, intensified
by a sense of that quality of unaging truth and nearness
which the teaching of Colet had revealed in them.
The great Erasmus would at this time just have left
Cambridge, where he had found the atmosphere, both
physical and intellectual, too thoroughly uncongenial for
a prolonged stay. Of the New Learning in its intellectual
aspect Erasmus was the very incarnation. He brought
the dry dispassionate light of a highly educated common
sense to bear on the problems of the life around him.
Both Colet and More were his intimate friends. Unlike
Colet in many ways, Erasmus was heartily at one with
him in the desire to redeem men from the curse of
COLET AND ERASMUS 127
ignorance. He was at one with him also in the con-
viction that the Bible should be faithfully translated
and made generally accessible. In the " Exhortation "
with which he prefaced his New Testament he writes
as follows : —
" I totally dissent from those who are unwilling that the sacred
Scriptures, translated in the vulgar tongue, should be read by
private individuals. I would wish even all women to read the
Gospel, and the Epistles of St Paul. I wish they were translated
into all languages of the people. I wish that the husbandman
might sing parts of them at his plough, and the weaver at his
shuttle, and that the traveller might beguile with their narration
the weariness of his way."
He saw — no man saw it more clearly — that the
densest ignorance prevailed as to what the Bible
really was, as to what Christianity was meant to
teach, as to what the greatest of the early Fathers
had written, and as to all that we had to learn from the
wisdom of Greece and Rome.
During his residence at Queen's he was hard at
work, day after day, up in his rooms in the old tower,
in preparing for the Press a volume which was to
prove of immeasurable importance in fertilising the
parched fields of scholastic theology. That work
reached the University of Cambridge in 15 16, which was
probably Tyndale's second year of residence. It is not
often that two intimate friends have enjoyed the dis-
tinction of each producing in the self-same year a book
which is destined to achieve literary immortality.
Such, however, was the case with Erasmus and More.
Erasmus' New Testament and More's " Utopia " * both
* See Brewer's //enry VIII, (1884), vol. i., p. 285 ; and See-
bohm's Oxford Reformers^ p. 321.
128 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
saw the light together, and each in its own way these
two works mark the new and Hberal spirit in which
the foremost men of the day were endeavouring to deal
with its changed conditions.
In the same year also, copies would have been
circulating, in the common rooms of the Universities,
of that notable proclamation of Indulgences by Pope
Leo, the main object of which was to raise money for
the building fund of St Peter's. In 1516, too, was
published Erasmus' great edition of Jerome, the author
of the Latin Vulgate.
The circulation of a New Testament in Greek would
naturally be hailed as giving speedy promise of a version
in English, and it was Erasmus' Greco-Latin edition
which would thus have afforded the main subject for
discussion among such men as Richard Barnes, Thomas
Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, Miles Coverdale, Thomas
Bilney, and William Tyndale, who were all probably in
residence when it first appeared. The volume included
the Greek text and a new Latin translation by Erasmus
in parallel columns. It comprised also a series of clear
annotations explaining various changes of reading as
compared with the Vulgate, and a preparatory " Exhor-
tation," as earnest as it was powerful, in which Erasmus
challenged both the neo-Paganism of the Italian school
and the fossilised pedantry of the monkish divines.
It would be a grave misconception to measure the
importance of this earliest Greek New Testament by
its merely textual or critical value. To such value
it has but little claim.* The few manuscripts which
* Erasmus himself describes his first edition as " precipitatum
THE NEW TESTAMENT OF ERASMUS 129
Erasmus professed to collate were neither ancient nor of
high authority. But though he did nothing to solve the
critical problem, he did much in that he brought it
forward for solution. The extraordinary effect of this
book, followed as it soon was by his famous " Para-
phrases" of most of the New Testament Scriptures,
was due to other causes.
Hitherto the verbal inspiration and sanctity of the
Latin Vulgate had been accepted without question.
Now, for the first time, it was deliberately challenged
and impugned. The challenge, moreover, was not from
some obscure innovator who might with safety be
ignored. It came from the most brilliant man of
letters of the century. It came from the author of the
''Adages:' of the ''Praise of Folly" of "The Pocket
Dagger of a Christian Man" books which were already
household words all over Europe. It announced a new
mode of Biblical interpretation which installed history
and philology in the place of tradition and dogma,
and which claimed for the sacred writings, as Tyndale
on his side claimed for them a few years later, that
their meaning was what they really said, and not
what they might, allegorically or mystically, have been
supposed to say. In our own time, perhaps, men might
have experienced something of the same sort of flutter
of excitement if in the fulness of his intellectual powers
Mr Gladstone had come before the world as the author
of " Ecce Homo."
verius quam editum." The truth is that he hurried the work
on with unscholarly haste so as to forestall the New Testament
which was in course of printing for the Polyglot Bible of Cardinal
Ximenes.
I
igo WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
Erasmus was a man of peace, and to the day of his
death he beheved himself to be a loyal Catholic. It was
therefore in no spirit of irony that he dedicated his New
Testament, by permission, to the Pope. Like the
English reformers of the school of the New Learn-
ing he pinned his faith to the advancement of know-
ledge, and of liberty of thought, as sufficient in
themselves for the working out of the peaceful regenera-
tion of a Church to whose abuses no one was more
alive than himself But it was not to be. In the
autumn of 15 17 there suddenly leaped out the spark
which fired the smouldering discontent of Germany.
When, on All Saints' Eve, October 31st, Luther
affixed his famous Theses against Indulgences to the
gates of the parish church of Wittenberg, the religious
destiny of Western Europe hung for the moment
upon a thread. What might have happened, if Charles
V. and the Papal Curia had been minded to meet the
Reformation half way, who is there that can tell ? It is
no part of our present task to follow Luther's fortunes,
but, if we wish to understand the opposition which we
shall find Tyndale encountering by-and-by, we must
neither lose sight of his early relation to Erasmus on
the one hand, nor of his admiration for Luther on the
other.
Before he left Cambridge at the end of 1521 the
Pope's bull, " Exsurge Domine," had been tossed into
the fire, the English seaports had begun to receive what
was soon to become a continuous stream of Lutheran
literature, and the bright visions of those who had been
looking forward to the self- reformation of a united
TYNDALE AS PRIVATE TUTOR 131
Catholic Church faded sorrowfully away. It would be
an injustice to the party of Sir Thomas More not to
remember that, after the Diet of Worms, they stood in
the shadow of a great fear, namely, the fear which they
not unnaturally entertained that the spread of Luther-
anism in England would involve anarchy and schism,
the dislocation of religious unity, and the dislocation
of social order.
But it is time for us to return to Tyndale himself.
If we are ignorant of the reasons which took him to
Cambridge, we are no better off with respect to the
reasons which took him away. Perhaps he was too
poor to stay up without a fellowship. Perhaps he felt a
call towards a wider career than the University could
well afford him. We cannot say.
At any rate, from the end of the year 1521 till 1523,
we find him acting as private chaplain to Sir John
Walsh, in Gloucestershire, and as the nominal tutor of
his boys, of whom the eldest was not yet six years old.
Their home was in the Manor House of Little Sodbury,
some twelve miles north-east of Bristol, and they were
people of recognised position in the county. They kept
open house, and their hospitable table was not without
its attractions for the abbots and divinity- doctors of the
neighbourhood.
It so happens that we have good evidence of the
condition into which the local representatives of the
"ecclesia docens," or "teaching church," had allowed
themselves to fall. A generation later than the time
with which we are dealing, Hooper, then Bishop of
Gloucester, made a visitation in his diocese. He
132 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
examined, so he reports to Cecil, 3 1 1 clergy. Of these
he found no less than 168 unable to repeat the Ten
Commandments, 31 ignorant of whence the said Deca-
logue came, 40 who could not repeat the Lord's Prayer,
and about the same number who did not even know to
whom it should be ascribed.
Nor was mere ignorance the only or the worst
charge which could be brought against the clergy : —
" What man of real piety,'' cries Erasmus, in the preface to his
new edition of the '"'' Enchindion,^'' " does not perceive, with sighs, that
this is far the most corrupt of all ages ? When did ever tyranny
or avarice prevail more widely or with greater impunity ? When
was more importance ever attached to mere ceremonies .'' When
did iniquity abound with more licentiousness ? When was charity
so cold ? What is read, what is said, what is heard, what is de-
creed, except that which savours of ambition and gain ? "
Or let us listen to Hugh Latimer, preaching to an
assembly of bishops at Paul's Cross : —
" Who is the most diligent prelate in all England ? I will tell
you — it is the devil. Of all the pack of them that have cure, the
devil shall go for my money, for he ordereth his business. Where-
fore, you unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil diligence. If you
will not learn of God, for shame learn of the devil."
Religion and morality seemed to have parted
company. Rites and ceremonies were not treated as
mere adjuncts and aids to religion, they had practically
become substitutes for it. The man who went regularly
to confession and mass, and who occasionally made a
pilgrimage to some venerated shrine and left a sub-
stantial offering behind him, had done all that was
required of him. The Church, in fact, was organised
less as an institution for spreading the teaching and
HIS CONTROVERSIES WITH THE CLERGY 133
inculcating the spirit of its Founder, than as a vast
system of insurance against the material penalties of
sin.
At Little Sodbury, as elsewhere, the "crisis in the
Church" was the leading topic of the day, and it
appears that in the argumentative discussions which
from time to time enlivened Sir John's table, the
ecclesiastical magnates who were dining with him
found the resident chaplain an extremely objection-
able person. " As these men," we are told, " and
Master Tyndale did vary in opinions and judgments,
Master Tyndale would show them on the book the places
by open and manifest Scripture." That must have
been a procedure which was felt to be in the highest
degree inconvenient.
One day, when these theological tiltings had been
going on for some time. Lady Walsh asked her chaplain
to explain why he thought that she ought to attach
more weight to his views than to those of the notables
who came to her house, and who were presumably men
of some local reputation. To which artless inquiry
Tyndale made no immediate reply, though for all that
he had a reply in his mind.
Obviously it was not meet for an insignificant
chaplain to measure himself with a great county lady.
Yet perhaps he might overawe her if he could only
bring up some heavy theological artillery to bear on
her position. It would be no disgrace for her to
lower her colours to Erasmus.
So he set quietly to work to translate the " Enchiri-
dion " or "Pocket Dagger of a Christian Soldier" for
134 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
her ladyship's personal benefit. Erasmus had just re-
published this tract with a new preface, from which we
have already quoted, in which the clergy of all ranks
were vigorously chastised for their many delinquencies.
" I wrote," he says, " to display neither genius nor eloquence,
but simply to counteract the vulgar error of those who think that
religion consists in ceremonies, and in worse than Jewish observ-
ances, while they neglect what really pertains to piety."
This may be accepted as a very fair description of a
little work which, unless Erasmus had been its author,
would scarcely have excited the universal attention
that it did. For the aim of it is simply to make
religion of practical use in the living of life, and to catch
the inner spirit of Christianity, a spirit of devotion not
so much to a creed as to a Person.
"Then did Tyndale put into English a book called, as I re-
member, '•'■Enchiridion Militis Chrisiiani" the which he delivered
to his master and lady. And after they had read that book those
great prelates were no more so often called to the house, nor, when
they came, had they the cheer nor countenance as they were wont
to have ; the which they did well perceive, and that it was by the
means of Master Tyndale, and at last came no more there." *
By employing his leisure in preaching to crowded
audiences in Bristol, it was not long before Tyndale
provoked a summons before the diocesan Chancellor,
a man of violent temper, who " reviled and rated him
as if he had been a dog," and though no immediately
serious consequences followed, still our chaplain was set
a-thinking.
How had it come about that the Church was on one
* Quoted in Foxe's Acts and Monuments.
RESOLVE TO TRANSLATE NEW TESTAMENT 135
side and the Bible on the other ? — Revolving the matter
in his mind, he went to take counsel of "a certain
doctor that had been an old chancellor to a bishop,"
and who, it has been plausibly conjectured, was the
Oxford scholar, William Latimer. This ex-chancellor,
who was a votary of the New Learning, was frankness
itself " Do you not know," he said, " that the Pope
is very antichrist? I have been an officer of his, but
I have given it up and defy him and all his works."
It is probably to this conversation that Tyndale's
final determination to translate the New Testament
may be referred. It was through reading the Bible that
he himself had come to his present mind. If the same
means were laid open for the benefit of others, and
if, instead of "expositions clean contrary unto the
meaning," the Scripture were oncq " plainly laid before
their eyes in their mother tongue," they too might be
turned from the service of " antichrist " to a higher and
better service. Tyndale did not keep his design secret,
but, while communing and disputing with a certain
learned man he drove him to that issue that he said,
*' We were better without God's laws than without the
Pope's " — Master Tyndale, hearing that, answered him,
" I defy the Pope and all his laws." And then follows
the passage which has been so often quoted :
" If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that
driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou
dost."
Now that his contraband design had been divulged
he had become more than ever a marked man, and it
136 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
was impossible for him, even under the protection of
Sir John Walsh, to keep a whole skin in Gloucester-
shire. He resolved, therefore, to throw up his position
at Little Sodbury and to try what could be done with
friendly assistance in London.
About July or August 1523, in the middle of the
excitement caused by the angry dissolution of a Parlia-
ment that had made so bold as to object to an arbitrary
property-tax of four shillings in the pound, he arrived
in the capital, armed with a letter of introduction from
his patron. Sir John, to Sir Harry Guildford, Controller
of the Household, a man of considerable learning, who
was on terms of friendship with Erasmus and a personal
favourite withal of the King. It was not, however, to
the Controller that Tyndale would have to look for the
patronage that he needed. It was to the Lord Bishop
of London. If the New Testament was, as he then
intended, to be translated in England, he must begin
by obtaining episcopal sanction. Without this protec-
tion no printer would venture to undertake the risk of
passing his sheets through the press. In addition he
needed a shelter over his head, a quiet room to work in,
and food ; modest and simple requirements, it is true, but
necessaries which a friendless priest in a great capital
might yet find some difficulty in procuring.
The See of London in 1523 was held by Cuthbert
Tunstall, who had studied as an undergraduate both
at Oxford and Cambridge, and had taken his degree
in Italy. He was known as a sound scholar in Greek
and Hebrew, and as a friend of the New Learning, but
he was strongly anti-Lutheran. Now it was in 1520
TYNDALE AND THE BISHOP OF LONDON 137
that Luther had been excommunicated, and during
the winter of 15 20-1 Tunstall, not yet a bishop, was
living at Worms, a city which was soon to be the scene
of the great Diet. While there he wrote urging Eras-
mus to exert his influence in arresting, or at least
retarding, the Reformation movement. In 1521 Luther,
already condemned by the Pope, was placed under the
ban of the Empire. In that year also Henry VIII. won
his proud title of " Defender of the Faith " by his reply,
in defence of the seven sacraments, to Luther's " Baby-
lonian Captivity of the Church^' a reply in which we
read that the King has determined that " untrue trans-
lations shall be burnt y with sharp correction and punish-
ment against keepers and readers of the same"
Meanwhile Wolsey had been actively employed in
hunting down the heretical books which were fast pouring
into England from over the seas, and in burning them
at St Paul's. In 1522 Luther had published his German
New Testament Whether or not, therefore, by the
date of Tyndale's visit Tunstall had got wind of his
Gloucestershire addresses, the auspices were in any
case anything but favourable for a private and un-
authorised translator. But probably little or nothing
of all this would have been present in Tyndale's unso-
phisticated mind.
By Sir Harry Guildford's advice he wrote to the
Bishop and asked for an interview, leaving his letter
at Old London House in St Paul's churchyard. In
order to support himself in London he appears to
have got temporary employment as a preacher in
St Dunstan's-in-the-West, a few paces eastward of the
138 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
present juncture of the Strand with Fleet Street. His
preaching brought him a most welcome and unex-
pected friend in Humphrey Munmouth, a rich London
merchant. Munmouth was a travelled man, who had
visited cities so distant as Rome and Jerusalem, and
who, as it chanced, had business relations with certain
members of the Tyndale family then engaged in the
Gloucestershire cloth trade. " I heard the foresaid
preach two or three sermons," writes Alderman Mun-
mouth in 1528 to Wolsey, while in prison for protecting
Tyndale, " and after that I chanced to meet him and
examined what living he had. He said he had none
at all."
When in due course Tyndale was summoned to
London House, his interview with Bishop Tunstall came
as a bitter disappointment and humiliation to him. As
evidence of his knowledge of Greek, and of his qualifi-
cations as a translator, he had brought up to London
with him a version which he had made of one of the
orations of Isocrates. It availed him nothing. Whether
it was that the uncouthness of his personal appearance
and address was against him, or for some less unworthy
reason, the polished and cautious prelate gave him
the cold shoulder. " My lord answered me his house
was full — he had more than he could well find (feed) —
and advised me to seek in London." And now for
the sequel.
" The priest came to me again " (so Munmouth goes on to say)
" and besought me to help him, and so I took him into my house
half a year, and there he lived like a good priest, as methought.
He studied most part of the day and of the night at his book. I
HUMPHRE V MUNMO UTH 1 39
did promise him ten pounds sterling to pray for my father and
mother, their souls, and all Christian souls. I did pay it him
when he made exchange to Hamburg. Afterwards he got off
some other men ten pounds more, the which he left with me."
Humphrey Munmouth lived at Allhallows,* Barking,
close to the Tower, and within a stone's throw of the
parish Church ; one of the very few medieval city
churches which were spared by the great fire of 1666,
and one, moreover, which will richly repay a visit at
the present day.
Thus happily it chanced that Tyndale found board
and lodging, and a rich well-wisher withal, at whose
table he met London traders and merchants from
the country towns, and from Germany, France, and
Switzerland, listened eagerly to the talk of the day,
and heard how the new Lutheranism was fast making
way on the Continent, and how this violent uprising
of Teutonic against Latin Christianity was revolu-
tionising the attitude of English Catholics towards
Church reform.
Looking to what are known to have been Mun-
mouth's personal sympathies in religious matters, it is
more than probable that some of the current Lutheran
literature was to be found in his house, and that
Tyndale there made acquaintance with it. Small wonder
was it that as he came to learn more of the Catholic
hierarchy in London, he should have been forced to
realise that no English printer would dare to bring out
* Its vicar in the early years of the seventeenth century, Dr
Robert Tyghe, was one of the revisers selected for the production
of our Authorised Version, and three of his fellow-labourers were
also Barking men.
I40 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
his Bible, and that he must either abandon altogether
the great hope of his life, or else face the risks and
sorrows and hardships of exile.
" I understood," he says, " that not only was there no room in
my lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament, but
also that there was no place to do it in all England."
And there was another important matter which
through Munmouth's friends he would come to under-
stand as well. He would have had it explained to him
that, whatever might be the case at home, there were
ample facilities for printing on the Continent, that his
labours would not be allowed to be frustrated for lack
of money, and that, when the New Testament was
actually out of the printer's hands, mercantile shrewd-
ness would find some way of successfully smuggling it
into England in spite of all the bishops on the
bench.
Tyndale was a man of exceptional determination
and pertinacity of purpose. His mind was soon made
up. He felt that a work of incalculable importance had
been given him to do, and that no sacrifice could be
too great if only he might be enabled to carry the
matter through. About the month of May 1524 he
left London for Hamburg. How he was occupied
between May 1524 and April 1525 is a point on
which there is much difference of opinion. The
unanimous evidence of his contemporaries supports
the view that he was at Wittenberg with Luther,
and that he worked there at his translation. His
modern biographers, on the other hand, keep him in
Hamburg for the whole interval. The question is
TYNDALE LEAVES LONDON FOR HAMBURG 141
perhaps of no great moment, and as the discussion of
it would take up too much space we prefer to leave it
open. In 1525 we are again on sure ground.
It is not known how far the work of translation
had advanced before Tyndale left England, but at
any rate the New Testament seems to have been
ready for the printers by the early summer of 1525.
It is natural, at the present stage in his history,
to ask what special qualifications Tyndale had for his
task, and on this subject there is fortunately abund-
ant evidence. Sir Thomas More, a sufficiently hostile
witness, writes of him that " before he went over the
sea, he was well known for a man of right good living,
studious, and well learned in Scripture." George Joye,
also a hostile witness, speaks (in his ^'■Apology'') of
Tyndale's " high learning in his Hebrew, Greek, Latin,
etc." Spalatin, the confidential secretary and librarian
of the Elector of Saxony, quotes one of the foremost of
continental scholars, Herman Buschius,* as having said
of Tyndale, whom he had come across at Worms in
1526, that "he was so skilled in seven languages,
Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and
English, that whichever he spoke you would suppose
it his native tongue."
It is worth noticing that in this enumeration
German is not included, so that Tyndale may probably
have acquired that language during his residence
abroad, unless, indeed, Buschius is to be taken as not
* Herman Buschius was one of the joint authors of the cele-
brated '"'' Letters of Obscure Men" and a friend both of Erasmus
and of ReuchUn.
142 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
thinking it necessary to particularise a fact of general
notoriety.
Thus the testimony of his contemporaries bears out
the conclusion to which even the most superficial
acquaintance with his New Testament must conduct us.
Out of the several qualifications which are indispens-
able to a translator of the Bible, Tyndale was certainly
possessed of three. He had a pure and reverential
heart, he was a sound scholar, and he was endowed
with a delicate sense of language. With these quali-
fications he worked on Erasmus' second and third
editions of the Greek text with untiring industry, and
with a keen sense of responsibility, having as his
constant helpmates the Vulgate, the German of Luther,
and, as above indicated, the Latin of Erasmus. These
helps he used only as an independent scholar would
use them, and never as a slave. As a translator he
toiled alone, for his great friend Frith did not join him
on the Continent till the year 1526, while the queer
companion of his exile, William Roye, was never any-
thing more to him than an amanuensis.
In the spring of 1525, having received from
Munmouth the ten pounds which had been deposited
with him, and which was now wanted for the printers,
Tyndale moved to a city already famous for its presses,
the city of Cologne. At Cologne 3060 copies were to
be printed by Peter Quentel in a small quarto * edition,
* It may be well to explain that the designations "folio,"
" quarto," etc., do not mark the size of a book. The size depends,
in each case, on the size of the original sheets on which the book
is printed. If the sheets are folded but once, the book is a folio,
COCHL^US THE SPY 143
with a prologue, references, marginal notes, and divi-
sions into chapters, but not into verses ; and the printing
had gone as far as " K " in the signature of the sheets,
as far perhaps as St Mark, when the work was
suddenly interrupted, and Tyndale and Roye had to
pack up the completed sheets and make good a hasty
escape.
There had been a spy in the camp, a certain John
Cochlaeus, a man known among his Roman Catholic
friends as "the scourge of Luther," who had been
driven from Frankfort in 1525 by the peasant insurrec-
tion, and who was living at this time in temporary
exile at Cologne. Having a book of his own in their
press, he chanced to hear Tyndale's printers boasting
over their cups that before long all England would
become Lutheran. Under the genial influence of
Bacchus he elicited from these worthies full details as
to a certain New Testament which they were printing.
No time was lost in laying his information before the
Senate of Cologne, who immediately took action upon it,
and also in giving warning to Henry VHL, to Wolsey,
and to Fisher. These events took place some time in
September 1525.*
In addition to the foregoing there has been pre-
served a letter •!* to Henry from his almoner, Lee, after-
whatever its height and breadth may be. If folded four times it
is a quarto ; if eight times an octavo, and so on. In folios and
octavos the wire-lines of the water-mark run perpendicularly, in
quartos horizontally.
* Cochlaeus' Commentary on the Acts and Writings of Luther.
t Ellis' Original Letters^ Series 3, vol. ii.
144 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
wards Archbishop of York, dated December 2, 1525, in
which he warns the King of the " danger and infection "
which will ensue if this pernicious book be not " with-
standed " to the uttermost. " This is the next way," he
continues, " to fulfil your realm with Lutherans. . . . All
our forefathers^ governors of the Church of England^
hath with all diligence forbid and eschewed publication
of English Bibles^ as appeareth in Constitutions Pro-
vincial of the Church of England" etc.
In October Tyndale and Roye arrived safely with
the rescued sheets at Worms, a town which had by that
time become strongly Lutheran. Here they soon found
a printer, P. Schoeffer, who was willing to undertake
their business, and at his press a new edition was pre-
pared (with the view of out-manoeuvring the enemy)
not in quarto but in octavo, and with neither prologue or
notes, but only a short " Address to the reader " inserted
quite at the end. Like the quarto edition, it was, of
course, anonymous,* and bore no dedication.
It seems probable that, in addition to yx)0 copies of
the octavo edition, which was finished first, 3000 copies
of the quarto edition were also published. In spite of
the watchfulness of the ecclesiastical authorities both
issues were hidden away among bales of various mer-
chandise, and clandestinely smuggled into England as
soon as navigation was open. Most likely, therefore,
they arrived in London, and at other ports, during the
spring of 1526, shortly after the historical scene, on
* The secret, however, was soon out, the clue being probably
given by Roye's satirical " Dialoge," which he directed against
Wolsey in 1526.
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TYNDALE'S NEW TESTAMENT OF 1525. [Face p. 145.
/"■ Of THE \
UNIVrp^JTY 5
BURNING OF HERETICAL BOOA'SKj- ,^5
Shrove Sunday, February ii, of the solemn burning
of heretical books before the gate of St Paul's under
the great crucifix called the Rood of Northen.* " No
burnt offering," so Campeggio had written off to Wolsey
after this holocaust, " could be better pleasing to
God."
The zeal of Wolsey's spies must indeed have been
untiring, for notwithstanding that between 1525 and
1528 no less than six editions of Tyndale's New Testa-
ment (comprising probably some 18,000 copies) were
published, yet out of all these only a mutilated fragment
of one copy of the quarto issue is now in existence, and
of the octavo edition only two copies.
The quarto fragment consists of thirty-one leaves, or
sixty-two pages, containing a Prologue, a list of the
Books of the New Testament, a woodcut of an angel
holding up an inkstand into which St Matthew is
dipping his pen, and a translation of his Gospel up to
chapter xxii. 12. It is known as the Grenville Frag-
menty and is now in the Library of the British Museum.
It was accidentally found by a London bookseller nearly
seventy years ago, bound up with a treatise by .^colam-
padius, the Swiss reformer, and was purchased by
Thomas Grenville and bequeathed by him to the
Museum. It will be seen that in this unique fragment
we still possess eight of the actual sheets printed by
Peter Quentel in Cologne before 1526, and preserved
by Tyndale in his flight from Cologne to Worms. As
the only surviving remnant of the first English New
* See Froude's History, vol. ii., pp. 42-3, who gives the year as
1527.
K
146 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
Testament that was ever printed, it is, of course, quite
priceless.
Of the octavo edition, the one surviving complete
copy (except that the title-page is wanting) is in the
library of the Baptist College, Bristol, and the only other
copy, which contains some six-sevenths of the New
Testament, is in the library of St Paul's Cathedral.
The relation of Tyndale's quarto edition to the
German New Testament of Luther is very close. The
order of the books, the planning of the printed page,
the way in which the text is arranged, the use of
the outer margin for the " pestilent glosses," and of the
inner margin for references to parallel passages, are all
derived from Luther. Nor does the likeness end here.
While many of the longer glosses or annotations are
Tyndale's own, many others are either translations or
abridgments, or expansions of Luther's. The "Pro-
logue to the Epistle to the Romans," which came out
in 1526, is also practically a paraphrase of the Preface
which Luther had recently written to the same Epistle.
These facts do not in the slightest degree reflect on the
originality and independence of Tyndale as a translator
at first hand of the Greek text ; nor can any unpre-
judiced person who may take the trouble to compare
his work with its source, and also with the versions to
which (like a conscientious scholar) he constantly re-
ferred, feel any doubt whatever on the subject. But
the resemblance to which attention has been directed
throws light on the great influence which, after 1523,
Luther exerted on his English fellow-labourer in the
cause of the Reformation, and, when taken together
TYNDALE AND LUTHER 147
with the bitter hostility which had been excited by his
controversial writings, and with the alarm that was
created by the social incendiaries of Germany, it goes
far to explain the feeling which a " Lutheran " New
Testament, appearing in England, would naturally
arouse among the loyalists of the old Church.
Such a feeling caused Tyndale no surprise.
"In burning the New Testament," he wrote in
1527, "they did none other thing than I looked for;
no more shall they do if they burn me also, if it be
God's will it shall so be."
It is only just to Tyndale to add, that, in his own
estimation, he was neither a Lutheran nor indeed a
sectarian of any kind. In the *' Protestation" printed
in his New Testament of 1534, he vows that he never
wrote
' Either to stir up any false doctrine or opinion in the Church,
3r to be the author of any sect, or to draw disciples after me, or
:hat I would be esteemed above the least child that is born, but
jnly out of pity and compassion which I had, and yet have, on
:he darkness of my brethren, and to bring them to the knowledge
)f Christ."
The reader may be amused at this point in our
narrative with a story connected with the crusade
igainst Tyndale's Testament, for which we are indebted
:o the old English Chronicler, Hall.
In August 1529, Sir Thomas More and Tunstall,
Bishop of London, were at Cambray, watching over
;he interests of England in the treaty then being
legotiated with Germany, one provision of which was
0 forbid the printing and circulation of heretical books.
148 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
Tunstall came home viA Antwerp, where he made a
bargain with one Augustine Packington, a merchant
in a large way of business, with a view to a grand
seizure of New Testaments, "The Bishop," writes
Hall, " thinking he had God by the toe, when, indeed,
as he after thought, he had the Devil by the fist,
said, ' Gentle Mr Packington, do your diligence and
get them, and with all my heart I will pay whatsoever
they cost you, for the books are erroneous and nought,
and I intend surely to burn them at Paul's Cross.'
So Packington came to William Tyndale and said,
'William, I know thou art a poor man, and I have
gotten thee a merchant.' ' Who ? ' said Tyndale. * The
Bishop of London.' ' He will burn them,' said Tyndale.
* Yea, marry,' quoth Packington. And so forward went
the bargain ; the Bishop had the books, Packington
the thanks, and Tyndale the money."
Tyndale appears to have laid out some of this
money in buying from a certain Vorstermann of
Antwerp the blocks for the rude woodcuts in his
'■'' Exodus I' of which he made use to illustrate the
Jewish Tabernacle and its furniture.
Such, then, in outline is the history of our earliest
edition in English of the New Testament. But Tyn-
dale had no intention of resting content with what he
had achieved. He was soon busily engaged on the
Old Testament. In 1530 there accordingly appeared
a new volume containing a translation of the Penta-
teuch from the original Hebrew. In 1531 was published
the Book of Jonah with a lengthy Prologue in which
the then condition of things ecclesiastical in England
THE GREAT REVISION OF 158 Jf 149
is ably surveyed.* How and when Tyndale may
have contrived to acquire his knowledge of Hebrew
is not known, but that he had by this date acquired it
_ is certain. Most probably he had made the most of
the assistance of the friends whom he had formed
among those learned Jews who were to be found
scattered abroad in every considerable city of the
Netherlands.
We come next upon what is a most remarkable
feature in Tyndale's work. It is very rare to find a
man who can throw into the labour of revision the
same amount of power and genius which he may
instinctively and readily have devoted to his first
love in translation. Now in 1534 there came out a
revised edition •!■ both of the Pentateuch of 1530 and
of the New Testament of 1525, and this latter has
always taken rank as its author's masterpiece. The
corrections in this revised Testament amount to some
thousands. Prefaces are added to each Book, except
to the Acts and the Book of Revelation ; the original
glosses are all re-written and carefully toned down, so
as to be more explanatory and less polemical ; a trans-
lation is added of the " Sarum " Epistles, and in short
the edition is almost transformed into a service book,
with the Church lessons clearly marked off.
* Only one copy of this book appears to be now in existence.
It was discovered in 1861 by Lord Arthur Hervey, Bishop of Bath
and Wells, in the library at Ickworth, bound up with a book which
had been there for many generations.
t In this edition the title-page has Tyndale's name, and the
Preface is headed, "William Tindale yet once more to the
Christen reader."
ISO WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
But it is not merely that this great edition bears
witness to the immense pains which Tyndale had de-
voted to improving it in the Hght of his own remarkable
advance in scholarship. It is that we find in it the
same quality of literary inspiration which gave its
character to the earlier book, and are made to feel
that, high as this wonderful man stands as a translator,
he may yet claim to stand quite as high as a reviser.
These matters, however, belong rather to a critical
than to a historical review, and it would be out of
place to go into detail in illustration of them in these
pages.
It was a copy, we may mention, of this noble edition
which Tyndale caused to be presented to Anne Boleyn,
out of gratitude for her intervention on behalf of an
Antwerp merchant, Richard Herman, who had got him-
self into trouble by helping in " the setting forth of the
New Testament in English." This copy, beautifully
ornamented and printed, but not in its original bind-
ing, and still faintly bearing on its edges the words,
"Anna Angliae Regina," is now in the British
Museum.
It may be not without historical interest to recall the
fact that, in the self-same year in which Tyndale made
this notable contribution to the cause of translation,
there had met in the crypt of St Denis, Montmartre,
during the early dawn of the Feast of the Assumption,
August 15, 1534, a little company of seven, including
Peter Faber, Francis Xavier, and Ignatius Loyola, who
took before the high altar that solemn vow of severance
from the world, and of devotion to the Church, from
BETRAYAL AND MARTYRDOM 151
which sprang the Society of Jesus, the sheet-anchor
of the Counter-Reformation.
In the spring of the next year, during the month of
May 1535, Tyndale was treacherously betrayed to his
ever watchful enemies. Enticed out of the house of his
friend, Thomas Poyntz, in Antwerp, he was seized and
carried off to the prisons of Vilvorde Castle, not far from
Brussels. The agent of this plot was one Henry Philips,
a rabid Roman Catholic, but who his principals may
have been is not known. There is no evidence what-
ever that the English bishops were concerned with the
matter, and it appears certain that neither Henry VHI.
nor Cromwell was personally privy to it. At Vilvorde,
Tyndale was kept in confinement from May 1535 to
October 6, 1536, when he was put to death by stran-
gling and his body burnt at the stake. Foxe gives but
one solitary detail of his martyrdom. He cried with a
fervent zeal and a loud voice, " Lord, open the King of
England's eyes," a cry which was speedily to be answered
in the Royal recognition (1537) of the Coverdale and the
Matthew Bibles.
In the Archives of the Council of Brabant there has
been preserved a pathetic letter, addressed by Tyndale
in Latin to the Governor of Vilvorde Castle, in which,
after begging that he may be allowed some warmer
clothing, he writes as follows :
" I wish also for permission to have a candle in the
evening, for it is weary work to sit alone in the dark.
But, above all things, I entreat and beseech your
clemency to be urgent with the Procureur, that he
may kindly suffer me to have my Hebrew Bible,
152 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
Grammar, and Dictionary, that I may spend my time
with that study."
Apparently his prayer was granted, for it is now
considered certain that it is partly to his labours in this
foreign dungeon that we owe the translation of that
portion of the Old Testament (Joshua to 2 Chronicles
inclusive), which he left in the charge of his intimate
friend and literary executor, the martyr that was to be,
John Rogers.
We have now followed Tyndale through his years
of training in Oxford and Cambridge, and have taken
note of his natural bent for Bible study, encouraged as
it was by the spirit of the New Learning as embodied
in men like Colet and Erasmus. We have marked how
his experience of the arrogance and ignorance of the
official teachers of religion had so disgusted him with
the emptiness and unreality of the current theology, as
to give birth to his resolution to translate the Bible.*
We have accompanied him, full of sanguine anticipations,
to the Bishop of London's door, and have overheard
the unsympathising words which put an end to all his
cherished hopes of publishing his New Testament, by
authority, in the capital. We have watched him at work
in the house of his heaven-sent friend, Humphrey
Munmouth, and have learnt why it was that he became
an exile from a country to which he was always
most devotedly attached. We have been with him at
Cologne and at Worms, while he prepared his first
edition for the Press, and have made ourselves
* See Preface to the Pentateuch : Tytidale's Works^ vol. i.,
p. 393 (quoted at the head of this chapter).
SUMMARY OF TYNDALE'S CAREER 153
acquHinted with the stirring circumstances under
which its despatch to England was successfully
effected. We have seen how right he had been in
his anticipation of the reception which awaited it from
the supporters of the old Church, how Wolsey tried to
stamp and burn it out, and how the Bishop of London,
in his zeal for its suppression, became an unintentional
contributor towards the woodcut illustrations which
presently appeared in the English version of the
Pentateuch, And lastly, we have seen Tyndale's
enemies closing in upon him, shortly after he had
completed a thorough revision of his literary labours,
and burning the body of the man whose spirit they had
been powerless to quell. We may now fitly bring this
chapter to a conclusion, first, by placing before our
readers some specimens of Tyndale's translation, so
that it may be easy for them to realise to how great an
extent our present Bible is his personal work, and then
by suggesting some explanation of the bitterness of the
attack which so highly cultured and so gentle-hearted
an opponent as Sir Thomas More thought it his duty to
make on a man who was as upright and honest as
himself, and who certainly returned him a Roland for
his Oliver.
In the selections which follow the spelling has for
convenience been modernised. The first extract is
from the Book of Numbers, xvi. 28-30 :
" And Moses said : Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath
sent me to do all these works, and that I have not done them of
mine own mind. If these men die the common death of all men,
or if they be visited after the visitation of all men, then the Lord
hath not sent me. But and if the Lord make a new thing, and
154 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
the earth open her mouth and swallow them and all that pertain
unto them, so that they go down quick into Hell, then ye shall
understand that these men have railed upon the Lord."
The next is from St Luke, xv. 1 1 :
" A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said
to his father, Father give me my part of the goods that to me
belongeth. And he divided unto them his substance. And not
long after the younger son gathered all that he had together, and
took his journey into a far country, and there he wasted his goods
with riotous living. . . . Then he remembered himself, and said,
How many hired servants of my Father's have bread enough and
I die for hunger. I will arise and go to my Father and will say
unto him, Father I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,
nor am I worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired
servants. And he arose and came to his father."
The last is from Phil., ii. 5 :
"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
which being in the shape of God, thought it not robbery to be
equal with God. Nevertheless he made himself of no reputation,
and took on him the shape of a servant, and became like unto
men, and was found in his apparel as a man. He humbled himself,
and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God hath exalted him, and given him a name above
all names, that in the name of Jesus should every knee bow, both
of things in Heaven, and things in earth, and things under earth,
and that all tongues should confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord
unto the praise of God the father."
These illustrations will, it is hoped, amply suffice
to justify the eloquent tribute which Froude* in his
History has so deservedly paid to the memory of
the man whose great services we have endeavoured
to depict.
«■
" Of the translation itself," he writes, " though since that time it
has been many times revised and altered, we may say that it is sub-
* History of England^ vol. iii., p. 84.
ILLUSTRATIVE SPECIMENS 155
stantially the Bible with which we are familiar. The peculiar
genius — if such a word may be permitted — which breathes through
it, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the
preternatural grandeur, unequalled, unapproached, in the attempted
improvements of modern scholars — all are here, and bear the
impress of the mind of one man, William Tyndale."
Before we leave this portion of our subject, it may
interest the reader to have before him specimens
of some of Tyndale's peculiar renderings and of
his famous " marginal notes." In Gen. xxxix. 2,
we have, " And the Lord was with Joseph, and he
was a lucky fellow." In Matt. vi. 7, "When ye pray,
babble not much." In Matt xv. 27, " The whelps eat
of the crumbs." In Rev. i. 10, " I was in the sprete
on a Sondaye." The gloss on Exod. xxxii. 35, is,
" The Pope's bull slayeth more than Aaran's calf,"
and on Exod. xxxvi. 6, where the Israelites are told
to bring no more offerings for the furnishing of the
Sanctuary, "When will the Pope say Hoo! (hold) and
forbid to offer for the building of St Peter's? And
when will our spirituality say Hoo ! and forbid to
give them more land and to make more foundations?
Never, until they have all."
With regard to the hostility which More and the
heads of the Church in England showed to Tyndale's
translation, one explanation has already been offered,
namely, that it was associated in their minds with
Lutheranism, as Lutheranism itself was associated with
schism and anarchy ; but this is not the only explanation.
The plain fact is that Tyndale and More were irrecon-
cilably at issue on first principles in religious matters,
and that the former's published works moved More to an
156 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
indignation which knew no bounds. Still in his long
controversy* with Tyndale, More expressly says that
he himself is not in principle opposed to a vernacular
Bible, though he objects to private, incorrect, and
unauthorised translations. But such a Bible, in his
opinion, should be taken in hand only by men of
Catholic minds, and only in times less rife with religious
dissension. Moreover, it should have the approval
of the ecclesiastical authorities. To which the reply
suggests itself, that, if Tyndale had waited for this
conjunction of favourable circumstances, he would have
had to wait a very long time. The bishops were
full of zeal in condemning unauthorised versions,
but they did not succeed in producing any superior
version of their own. Cranmer, in 1535, planned an
episcopal translation, but the scheme was not carried
out, and when, at a later date {i.e. in 1568), the
bishops did at last enter the field, they met with
no very conspicuous success. More's real substantial
grievance against Tyndale was that he had abandoned
the venerable ecclesiastical words, words endeared to
Catholics by their old associations, and words, moreover,
to which long usage had given a prescriptive sanctity.
Instead of " grace," " charity," " confess," " penance,"
" priest," " church," " salvation," Tyndale's version had
given "favour," "love," "acknowledge," "repentance,"
"elder," "congregation," "health," — a new departure
* The bitterness of both controversialists is excessive even for
those days. The usually gentle More writes of Tyndale (in the
Confutation^ pp. 446, 681) as "a beast" as one of the ^^hell-
hounds that the devil hath in his kennel" and as discharging a
''^ filthy foam of blaspJtemies out of his brutish beastly mouth."
THE OLD CHURCH TERMINOLOGY 157
which, however much it might incense More, offered
a perfectly fair subject for argument, as there was much
to be said on both sides.
Not that the issue turned on a mere matter of words.
Behind the change in vocabulary there undeniably lay
an implied change in doctrine, just as behind the
vestment controversy there lay the deeper controversy
respecting the nature of the sacraments. And there
was yet one fault more with which Tyndale was charged.
Those who had any real acquaintance with the Bible
had naturally become familiar with it through the
Vulgate. A translation which was based independently
on the Hebrew and Greek originals, and which only
used the Vulgate as a valuable help, must necessarily
contain changes which would jar on minds for whom
this Vulgate was practically an inspired book. It was
this violent repugnance which found vent in the descrip-
tion of the Vulgate, when printed in juxtaposition
with its two ancient sources, as having been " crucified
between two thieves." *
If Tyndale could come back to life he would
indeed rejoice to see how his work has stood both
the fiery trial of theological vindictiveness, and the yet
more searching test of time. Surely, when we look at
that life as a whole, when we trace through its checkered
scenes his unwavering persistency of purpose, his un-
affected humility and self-effacement, the indomitable
spirit that neither exile, nor disappointment, nor perse-
cution could quench, the strong courage that no plots,
* " Tanquam duos hinc et inde latrones "—say the editors of
the Coviplutensian Polyglot— '"'■ medium autem Jesum."
158 WILLIAM TYNDALE AND HIS WORK
no intrigues, no prospect of martyrdom could deflect
by one hair's-breadth from the path of dwty, his trans-
parent honesty and integrity, the conscientiousness and
truthfulness that distinguish him as a scholar and a
translator, and his faithfulness even unto death to the
task which he had set himself to do, the name of the
" Apostle of England " can never be displaced from
the proud position which it has long occupied on the
roll of our great national benefactors.
BISHOP COVERDALE.
" Not myself but the truth that in life I have spoken :
Not myself but the seed that in life I have sown :
Shall pass on to ages, all about me forgotten,
Save the words I have written, the deeds I have done,"
At 8e real ^<aova-Lv drjSove'S.
{Call. Ep. 47).
Thy notes live still.
MILB8 COVEKDALE.
(From an Engraving by Thos. Trotter.)
[Foce p. 161.
CHAPTER VI
THE COVERDALE, "MATTHEW," AND GREAT BIBLES
[The Chronological Table on pp. xviii.-xix., etc., will be found of
service for the purposes of this chapter.]
Between the year in which Tyndale brought out the
first edition of his English New Testament and the
year towards the close of which, after some sixteen
months of imprisonment in Belgium, he was strangled
and burnt at the stake, not far short of fifty thousand
copies* of his translation had issued from the Press.
And by this time Henry VHI. had been driven, partly
by his matrimonial difficulties, and partly also by the
tempting prospect of replenishing his purse at the
expense of the Church, into the adoption of that high-
handed policy of ecclesiastical autocracy with which our
readers may be assumed to be more or less familiar.
By a series of statutory enactments the old links
which attached England to the Roman jurisdiction were
one by one snapped asunder, and a legal path was paved
for effecting the royal divorce. In the spiritual no less
than in the temporal sphere, the King was declared to
* These Testaments measured for the most part only five or six
inches by four, and were therefore comparatively easy to conceal.
161 ^
i62 CO VERB ALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
be within his dominions supreme, and his marriage
with Anne Boleyn made the rupture with the Pope
complete and irrevocable. And yet it was but a few
years back that Henry had entered the lists as the
champion of the Latin Church against Luther, a heretic
who, in his opinion, deserved to be burnt alive, and his
books with him. While the Diet of Worms was in
session Henry had written a treatise in defence of the
seven sacraments, which won for him from the Vatican
a title of which his vaingloriousness never ceased to be
undisguisedly proud, the title, namely, of " Defender of
the Faith."
In that book he had dwelt with so much stress on
the divine authority of the Pope, that even Sir Thomas
More, when invited to look it through, ventured to
question the wisdom of elaborating a point of such
obvious delicacy and danger. Henry, however, had
remained unmoved. " His Highness," says More,
"answered me that he would in no wise anything
minish of that matter." As yet probably the King
entertained no doubt that on it hinged the .legality of
his marriage.
This literary enterprise would appear to have been
of Wolsey's planning. The rapid dissemination in the
towns, and in the universities, of Lutheran opinions
and literature was filling him with alarm, and nothing
would better serve his political purposes than to have
his royal master pledged openly before Europe to the
anti-Lutheran party. But even Wolsey could not
foresee the future. He had calculated without Anne
Boleyn. It was in the year 1522 that the young girl
FALL OF WOLSEY. THOMAS CROMWELL 163
who was destined to prove his ruin came over from
France to be a maid of honour in the English Court.
At this time the foreign diplomacy of England followed
the line indicated by the close relationship between
Catherine and Charles V. But after the defeat and
capture of King Francis at the battle of Pavia, in 1525,
Charles had become so dangerously strong that the old
policy of alliance with him was abandoned in favour of
a close understanding with France, and Wolsey even
looked forward to the eventual replacement of Catherine
by a French bride, and for an anti-imperial league
between his master and Francis. Accordingly when,
in 1527, the imperial forces proceeded to storm Rome,
and to make the Pope a prisoner in his own castle of
St Angelo, Henry's mind was once for all determined
as to what course he must pursue.
It is quite possible that the old feeling of uneasiness
about the validity of his marriage, as affecting the
succession, had of late years grown upon him. In any
case he had now fallen violently in love. He was
consequently all the more firmly resolved on getting
rid of Catherine, either through Papal sanction or in
spite of it, and on marrying — not a French princess but
— his new flame.
In 1529 Wolsey, whose failure to bring the Pope
round to the King's side in the divorce business
involved his downfall, was dismissed by his fickle
employer, and Thomas Cromwell began to feel his way
to power, and to dream his dream of crushing Charles
V. by means of a political and religious league of princes,
of which Henry was to be the head.
r64 CO VERB ALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
He pictured to himself the King, enriched with the
spoils of a plundered Church, supreme and absolute in
power, and with Anne Boleyn for his Queen ; while the
King's vizier enjoyed a position second only, if second
at all, to that of the great dictator.
With regard to Henry's matrimonial problem Crom-
well and Cranmer each had their own solution. In
Cromwell's view all that Henry had to do was to
arrange that Parliament should declare him ecclesiasti-
cally supreme. With this sword of " Supremacy " he
-might safely proceed to cut the knot which the captive
Pope was afraid to assist him to untie. Cranmer, who
was more of a lawyer than of a theologian, and more of
a timid courtier than either, advised that reference should
be made to a select body of canonists, in England and
abroad, to decide whether the Papacy had ever been in
a position to give validity to a union, which, on the
assumption that Catherine had been the wife of Henry's
brother, contravened the law of God as laid down in
Scripture.
Though the Pope of the day could scarcely be
expected to stultify himself by deciding that a prede-
cessor of equal infallibility had exceeded his legitimate
powers, still if a strong body of expert opinion could be
procured in favour of Cranmer's contention, then the
marriage with Catherine was no marriage, the Roman
dispensation must give way before the plain law of
Scripture, and Henry was a free man. "This man,"
was the King's joyful exclamation when the suggestion
was first conveyed to him, " This man has got the right
sow by the ear 1 "
HENRY VIII. AND THE ENGLISH BIBLE 165
Warham was now dead, and the docile and not too
scrupulous Cranmer had become Primate. By his
ecclesiastical pronouncement, and by that of the
canonists who had been consulted at his suggestion,
the marriage with Catherine was held to have been
void from the beginning, and Henry and Anne, who
had already been privately married, were declared by
the Archbishop to be man and wife.
The prospects of an English Bible had thus sud-
denly become brighter than they had ever been before.
In the first place the King's open repudiation of the
authority of the Pope left him inferentially pledged to
the paramount authority of Scripture. He was not
unwilling, moreover, as will presently appear, that his
subjects should on certain reasonable conditions possess
a translation in their own tongue. He was of this
mind because such a translation had all along been con-
templated by the New Learning, with whose objects he
had from the first been in strong sympathy, and also
because he was shrewd enough to see that whatever he
could do to encourage the national language would tend in
like measure towards the cementing of the national unity.
And this was an immense step gained ; for, what with
the prodigious force of his own personality, and with
the centralisation at this time of all real power in the
Crown, Henry VHI. might for all practical purposes be
considered as identical with England. At any rate the
Supreme Head could now, when his humour should
permit, be approached on a subject which Cranmer
had deeply at heart, namely, the subject of an author-
ised vernacular version.
i66 COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
By the King's side stood Wolsey's lay successor, a
man of great ability and of even greater ambition,
trained abroad in the principles of Macchiavelli, but
with his fortunes staked on the success of the Reforma-
tion, and in that sense therefore a zealous political Pro-
testant— Thomas Cromwell. The young Queen, too,
whose brief spell of influence was now at its height,
was well disposed towards the cause of the Reformers,
while in Cranmer, and in Hugh Latimer the King's
chaplain, the promoters of an English Bible had two
eager friends, who both of them stood high in the royal
favour, and the former of whom had been advanced to
the Primacy under circumstances which involved the
open recognition of the Scriptures as the final court
of appeal.
In order to follow the train of events which under
the above conditions led up to the publication of the
Coverdale Bible, we must now for a moment retrace
our steps.
The reader will not have forgotten that, immediately
on its appearance, Tyndale's New Testament, whether
with glosses or without them, had at the King's
command been denounced, proscribed, and condemned
to the flames both by Archbishop Warham, and by
Tunstall, Bishop of London. No books could be more
formally censured and forbidden. Still, none the less,
they continued in secret but very real existence ; they
had that indescribable attraction which attaches to all
forbidden things ; they could not be wholly extermi-
nated, and it was impossible that they should be recalled.
In the year 1530, when these volumes had already
THE KINGS CONDITIONAL PROMISE 167
been some four years in clandestine circulation, there
was published a royal proclamation, covering what was
termed a " Bill in English to be published by the
preachers," or, in plain language, a direction for the
proper tuning of the provincial pulpits. This important
proclamation had been preceded by a Synod of learned
divines, whose deliberations were largely occupied with
the question of a vernacular Bible, and were continued
for no less than twelve days. Strangely enough Hugh
Latimer was among the members of this conference.
By the resolutions which it adopted, but which Latimer
subsequently repudiated, certain " great errors and
pestilent heresies " were unanimously condemned, such
for example as " the translation of Scripture corrupted
by William Tyndale as well in the Old Testament as
in the New" together with a long list of specified
enormities in books like " TJie Wicked Mafnmon" and
" TJie Obedience of a Christian Man" both of Tyndale's
composition, and in the scurrilous ''Book of Beggars" by
Simon Fish.
The Bill is made to say that "whereas diverse of
his subjects think it the King's duty to cause the
Bible to be translated into English," and that the King
and his prelates "doo wronge in denying or letting of
the same," the Conference has decided that " the having
of the hole Scripture in Englisshe is not necessarye to
Christen men, and at this tyme not expedient. The
King, however, was to be understood as promising
that, when quieter times came back, he would cause the
New Testament to " be by learned men faithfully and
purely translated " and given to the people.
1 68 COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
It is evident, then, that, even before 1530, the
demand which was springing up for an English Bible
had obtained official recognition. As to the extent
and urgency of the demand it is not easy to speak with
confidence. On the one hand we have to remember
that the entire population can scarcely have exceeded
some three million souls ; and that the majority of this
population were unable to read, and were, moreover,
strongly attached to the Catholic services and general
mode of life to which they and their fathers had been
accustomed from time immemorial. On the other
hand English was now the established national lan-
guage ; and the rising tide of Lutheranism, sweeping all
that remained of the Lollardy of the fourteenth century
into its current, had laid a strong hold upon the middle
classes in the town.*
These classes formed a mercantile body which
proved itself the more willing to welcome the Re-
formation, because their commercial interests better
harmonised with the active energies of Protestantism
than with the inertness and torpor with which
the wealth, the luxury, and the conservative policy
of the Latin Church had caused its leaders to rest
content. At any rate we may feel tolerably confident
that printers and publishers, whether here or abroad,
would not have embarked their capital in issue after
issue of the New Testament, and indeed of the entire
Bible, unless they had seen good reason for expecting
to make a fair profit out of the venture.
Foxe is not a witness to whom we can ever con-
* Brewer's Henry VHL, ii., 470.
THE MERCANTILE MIDDLE CLASS 169
fidently pin our faith, but, after making every allowance
for his Protestant bias, it is impossible to doubt that
he had satisfied himself that, among a considerable
proportion of the community, there was an increasing
anxiety to have the Scriptures made accessible. The
party of reform preferred English to Latin ; they were
tired of being kept intellectually in the dark ; they
were alienated by the moral corruption which had so
largely honeycombed the Church and disgusted thought-
ful minds. By help of the Bible the conscience of Eng-
land was finding a new King, In his newly-opened
Word men heard him speaking to them face to face.
A few years more and they were making answer to him
in an English Liturgy.
It is in no way, therefore, surprising that the Con-
vocation over which Cranmer presided in 1534 should
have carried a resolution against Gardiner, and peti-
tioned Henry VIII. for an English translation. There
is, however, no evidence to show that their petition was
ever actually laid before him in person ; at any rate,
it was repeated in 1536, a fact which is worth recalling
as incidental evidence that the Coverdale translation
of 1535 was not considered to be altogether satis-
factory. This petition would, however, in any case
have been placed before Cromwell, and it is Cromwell's
shrewd perception of the position at which affairs had
arrived which calls for our attention. But we must
first introduce our readers to the future Bishop of
Exeter, Miles Coverdale, who now makes his appear-
ance on the stage.
Coverdale was born in 1488, and, like Wyclifife before
I70 CO VERB ALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
him, was a Yorkshireman. As a young man he was
attached to the monastery of the Augustine Friars at
Cambridge, of which Dr Robert Barnes, a prominent
reformer, became in due course the Prior. Coverdale was
a member of the " Germany " club of Lutherans in the
University, and was accustomed to attend their meetings
at the " White Horse," near St John's. Of the details
of his early years very little is known, but he seems
to have been an occasional visitor at Sir Thomas More's
house in Chelsea, and either there or elsewhere to
have made Cromwell's intimate acquaintance. About
the year 1526 he became a secular priest, and when
Prior Barnes was summoned to London to make a
formal recantation of his heresies, Coverdale accom-
panied him thither and assisted him in preparing his
defence. In or about 1527 we find him writing to
Cromwell for assistance in his Biblical studies : —
" Nothing in the world I desire but books ; they once had, I
do not doubt but Ahnighty God shall perform that in me which
He of His most plentiful favour and grace hath begun."
In 1528 he was at work in the county of Suffolk
preaching against the mass, compulsory confession, and
the worship of images. Probably, therefore, it may soon
have become perilous for him to remain in England.
In 1529 he is said by Foxe to have met Tyndale
at Hamburg, and to have helped him in translating
the Pentateuch ; but the story in its dates and details
is by no means free from doubt, besides which, it must
be remembered that Coverdale was never at any time
much of a Hebrew scholar. At any rate, from 1529
to 1535 we practically lose sight of him, and all that
CO VERB ALE'S EARL V LIFE 1 7 1
is known is that for the greater part of that time he
was living on the Continent. It is at least a permis-
sible conjecture that, when Cromwell became aware, as
Secretary of State, of the turn which things were taking,
he determined to be ready with a new Bible. He would
have been quick to realise that the chief obstacle to the
introduction into England of a licensed Bible lay now
in the association of the partial translation already made
with the name and with the controversial writings of
Tyndale, whom Henry heartily detested, both as being
in his opinion a Lutheran, or Zwinglian, heretic, and
also as a public denouncer of the divorce. And he may
well therefore have placed himself in communication
with his old friend Coverdale, encouraging him to be
prepared with a complete version of his own, and to
get it printed in his own name and published in
England, the necessary expenses being guaranteed to
him.
Be this how it may, it is certain that rather less
than a year before Tyndale's martyrdom, and while
he still lay in Vilvorde prison, a Bible, which had been
originally promoted by Jacob van Meteren, and had
been printed either at Zurich or at Antwerp, stole
unobserved into England. This Bible, which was in
black letter, and of small folio size, measuring some
12 inches by 8, bore the date of October 4, 1535. It
contained an elaborate and somewhat obsequious and
cringing dedication to Henry VIII., a dedication which
was probably no part of the original book, but was
added in the hope of winning a free circulation in
England, and was signed by his " humble subjecte and
172 CO VERB ALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
dayle oratour, Myles Coverdale." For obvious reasons
neither the printer's name nor the place of pubHcation
was given. The printed sheets reached London, un-
bound, either in the winter of 1535 or early in 1536, and
were there bound up and re-published, by James Nicol-
son, with certain alterations, including an amended title-
page. The original title-page had faithfully described
this Bible as having been " translated out of Douche and
Latyn into Englishe." The amended title-page read
more briefly as follows, " faithfully translated into
Englyshe."
It has been suggested that Nicolson, the famous
Southwark publisher, who had purchased this Coverdale
Bible from Van Meteren, may have feared that the
allusion in the foreign title-page to German Bibles
would do more harm than the allusion to Latin Bibles,
including the Vulgate, would do good ; and may have
hoped that his customers would imagine that they
were buying a translation from the Greek and Hebrew.
Perhaps the simpler explanation may be that Nicolson
was pressed for space, and had in some way to find
room for two extra lines to complete a mutilated quota-
tion from Joshua i. 8.
We cannot, however, call him up for cross-examina-
tion, and this question must be left undecided. Un-
decided, too, must rest the equally tantalising problem
of why it was that Cromwell did not promptly seize
some opportunity of getting Henry's authority for the
issue of the first edition of 1535, an issue which, though
not actually and in terms sanctioned, was on the other
hand never formally prohibited, while the second edition.
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COVERDALB'S BIBLE OF 1536.
[Face p. 173.
TYNDALE AND CO VERB ALE CONTRASTED 173
published by Nicolson in 1537, was able to announce
itself, in like manner with the Matthew's Bible of that
same year, as appearing " with the King's most gracious
license."
One effect of the introduction of this Coverdale
Bible was completely to take the wind out of the sails
of Cranmer's abortive attempt, — on which he had
embarked after the Convocation of 1534, — to anticipate
the Bishops' Bible of Elizabeth's reign by an official
version from the hands of his brother prelates.
Coverdale's work was in strong contrast with Tyn-
dale's in several noteworthy respects.
It was in the first place a complete Bible — our
earliest complete Bible — whereas Tyndale's was in-
complete, comprising as it did only about one-quarter
of the Old Testament. Next, it was not the result
of any independent study of the Hebrew and Greek,
but a secondary translation based on pre-existing
German and Latin versions. Further, it was not
hampered with any contentious matter, and it
restored all but one of the old ecclesiastical words
which Tyndale had discarded, the exception being
the retention by Coverdale of the term " congregation,"
instead of " church." And lastly, it was a task imposed
upon a willing labourer from without, not a labour of
love originating in a strong impulse from within.
To give his countrymen a native Bible was felt
by Tyndale to be the mission of his life, and the
overmastering desire to fulfil it took possession of
him with all the power of a passion. Coverdale, on
the other hand, never expressed himself as feeling con-
174 CO VERB ALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
scious of any mission at all. He could rely on at least
one powerful patron, and was content to accept, with
modest diffidence, and even with reluctance, the charge
that had been entrusted to him.
The history of the English Bible presents us with
many surprises, but with few perhaps so strange as
that the right to use a book which is generally
recognised as the badge and symbol of religious free-
dom, should for the first time have been conceded to the
English people under circumstances such as those of the
" great terror," when men felt " as though a scorpion
lay sleeping under every stone." Strangest of all
that this privilege should have come from the hands
of an autocrat who in ritual and doctrine was from
first to last a strong Catholic, and should have come,
moreover, with the eager co-operation of a minister
of the type of Thomas Cromwell. For Cromwell
was an adventurer without a spark of religious prin-
ciple, and one whose conduct appears to have been
consistently regulated by his ambition so to manipulate
and manage his master as to secure for himself both
fame and fortune by playing Protestantism as the win-
ning political card.
As an introduction to his Bible it will be of interest
to our readers to have before them, in Coverdale's own
words, a description of the circumstances under which
he became a translator ; of the view which he took of
his work ; and of the authorities to whom his version
is indebted. The transparent simplicity and sincerity
of the writer's character make it impossible to doubt
that he is giving us the exact truth of the matter.
CO VERB ALE'S PROLOGUE 175
In his "Prologue unto the Christian Reader" he
expresses himself as follows : —
" Considering how excellent knowledge and learning an inter-
preter of Scripture ought to have in the tongues, and pondering
also my own insufficiency therein, and how weak I am to perform
the office of a translator, I was the more loath to meddle with this
work.
" Notwithstanding, when I considered how great pity it was
that we should want it so long, and called to my remembrance
the adversity of them which were not only of ripe knowledge,
but would also with all their hearts have performed that they
began if they had not had impediment ;* considering, I say,
that by reason of their adversity it could not so soon have
been brought to an end as our most prosperous nation would
fain have had it ; these and other reasonable causes considered,
I was the more bold to take it in hand.
"And to help me herein I have had sundry translations not
only in Latin but also of the Dutch interpreters, whom because
of their singiilar gifts and special diligence in the Bible I have
been the more glad to follow for the most part, according as I
was required.
" But, to say the truth before God, it was neither my labour
nor desire to have this work put in my hand ; nevertheless it
grieved me that other nations should be more plenteously provided
for with the Scripture in their mother tongue than we ; therefore,
when I was instantly required, though I could not do so well
as I would, I thought it yet my duty to do my best and that
with a good will
". . . . It was never better with the congregation of God
than when every church almost had the Bible of a sundry trans-
lation. . . . Sure I afn thai there cotneth more knowledge and
understanding of the Scripture by sundry translations than by
all the glosses of our sophistical doctors. Be not thou offisnded,
therefore, good reader, though one call a scribe that another
calleth a lawyer; or elders that another c^tXh father and mother;
or repentance that another calleth penance or amendment. For if
thou be not deceived by men's traditions, thou shalt find no more
* The reference is of course to Tyndale, who was in prison, but
who might possibly obtain his release.
1 76 CO VERDALE, MA TTHE W, AND GREA T BIBLES
diversity between these terms than between fourpence and a groat.
And this manner have I used, calling it in some place penance that
in another I call repentance .... that the adversaries of the truth
may see how that we abhor not this word penance^ as they un-
truly report of us."
And in his Dedication he writes with equal candour
and directness :
" I have with a clear conscience purely and faithfully translated
out olfive sundry interpreters"
Who these interpreters were will appear presently,
but in the meantime let us learn something of Cover-
dale's style by taking two specimens of his version
selected from familiar passages in the prophetical books.
" Be of good cheer my people, be of good cheer (saith your
God). Comfort Jerusalem and tell her that her travail is at an
ende, that her offence is pardoned, that she hath received of the
Lord's hand sufficient correction for all her sinnes."
Isaiah xl. i.
" Behold I will send my messenger which shall prepare the
way before me, and the Lorde whom ye would have shall soon
come to his temple, and the messenger of the Covenant whom
ye longe for. Beholde he cometh saithe the Lorde of hostes.
But who may abide the daye of his coming, who shall be able
to endure when he appeareth ? For he is like a goldsmith's fire
and like a washer's soap. He shall set him down to try and to
cleanse the silver ; he shall purge the children of Levi, and
purify them like as gold and silver."
Malachi iii. i, 2, 3.
Scholars who have been at the pains of collating
this Bible with the Latin and German versions
to which Coverdale would have access, are generally
agreed in specifying his " five sundry interpreters " to
have been as follows : —
COVERDALE'S FIVE INTERPRETERS 177
1. The Swiss-German (or Zurich) Bible, by Zwingli
and Leo Juda, which was completed in 1529, and
which is characterised rather by smoothness, grace,
and rhythmic flow of phrase, than by any very
rigorous fidelity to the original.
2. Luther's German Bible.
3. The Vulgate.
4. The Latin Bible of 1 528 by Pagninus, a Dominican
monk, a pupil of Savonarola, and a teacher of Oriental
literature at Rome under Leo X.
5. Either Tyndale's translation, or else some addi-
tional Latin, or perhaps German, version.
In that part of the Old Testament which Coverdale
was the first to render into English, namely, the historical,
poetical, and prophetical books, he closely follows the
above-named Zurich Bible in preference to any other
interpreter. In the New Testament his two chief
guides are Tyndale's latest * revision and Luther. In
the Apocrypha, where like the Zurich translators he
leaves out the " Prayer of Manasses," he allows himself
a wider range than in any other part of his work, and
displays throughout his rendering a relatively stronger
individuality.
The influence of Coverdale upon the Authorised
Version, whether exerted through his own or through
Matthew's Bible (of which latter compilation his contribu-
tion makes up about one-third), or, lastly, through the
Great Bible — in whose successive editions we find him
revising and re-revising both his own work and that
of Tyndale — has been great and enduring.
* Known as the " G. H." revision of 1534-5.
M
178 CO VERB ALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
Not that we can lay our hand on many passages
of any considerable length in which his renderings
have remained up till now untouched. It is rather that,
for page after page, in some subtle way, in a cadence
here, and a happy rendering there, the spirit and
genius of this gifted literary artist make themselves
continuously felt. He was of a delicate and susceptible
temperament, endowed in an exceptional degree with
the feeling for rhythm, and with an instinct for whatever
is tender and beautiful in language. His relation to
other translators may be said somewhat to resemble
that in which, to take an illustration from the domain
of music, Spohr stands to his brother composers. It is
to the melodiousness of his phrasing, to his mastery
over what may be described as the literary semi-tone,
to his innumerable dexterities and felicitous turns of
expression, that we owe more probably than we most
of us recognise of that strangely moving influence
which seems ever to be welling up from the perennial
springs of the English Bible, and from the Prayer
Book version of the Psalms.
No two men could well be more different than
Coverdale and Tyndale. It is only necessary to glance
at their respective portraits, in the prints which have
come down to our times, in order to appreciate the
moral and intellectual contrast which we can see
reflected in their physical features. The character of
the one stands out as cast in a heroic mould, full of
originality and creative power, massive, rugged, self-
reliant, afraid of no one, seeking no one's patronage.
That of the other is of a man made to follow, but not
TYNDALE AND CO VERB ALE 179
to lead, gentle and sympathetic in nature, eager to be
of service to the cause of the Bible, but with nothing of
the heroic or creative about him, modest, retiring, self-
depreciating, leaning on his patrons almost even to
the point of obsequiousness, diffident and timorous.
Yet each of them is the literary complement of the
other, and most assuredly our Bible could spare neither
the strong virility and scholarship of Tyndale, nor
the gentle tenderness and resourcefulness of Cover-
dale.
If our limits permitted we might quote sentence
after sentence from the Authorised Version, and more
especially from its Psalter, as well as from Isaiah, the
golden coinage of which is from the Coverdale mint,
but the following must suffice : —
" Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he
is nigh."
" My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my
heart and my portion for ever."
" Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the
earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall
perish but thou shalt endure ; they all shall wax old, as doth a
garment, and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall
be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail."
And if Coverdale is thus pre-eminent in the qualities
of melody, distinction, and beauty, he has also his own
occasional quaintnesses of expression.
"Then God opened a gome tooth in the cheke bone so the
water went out." — Judges xv. 19.
" Make me a syppynge or two." — 2 Samuel xiii. 6.
" Shott the King of Israel between the mawe and the lunges." —
I Kings xxii. 34.
"No one faynte noe feble among them, no not a slogish nor
slepery parsone." — Isaiah v. 27.
i8o COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
We must now turn our attention to a Bible which
followed close upon the heels of the version from which
we have quoted, and which was destined to fulfil Cover-
dale's modest hope that his own work might before long
be displaced by that of some other labourer in the
same field. The compiler of this new Bible was John
Rogers. Published on grounds of prudence under an
assumed name, and purporting to be "Matthew's" Bible,
it was the edition which enjoyed the most brisk circula-
tion in the short reign of Edward VI.
John Rogers took his B.A. degree at Cambridge in
1525. About nine or ten years later he left England to
take up the post of chaplain to the Merchant Adven-
turers of the "English House" in Antwerp in which
Tyndale was then living, and with which Cromwell was
for some years in close relation. There a close friend-
ship sprang up between him and Tyndale, a friendship
which, if Foxe is correct, was extended also to Miles
Coverdale. Prominent among the reformers during
the brief life of Edward VI., Rogers was the first to
fall a victim to the Marian persecutions, and was burned
at Smithfield in 1555.
Before Tyndale was martyred he had appointed
Rogers to be his literary executor, and had committed
to his care the unfinished MS. of his translation
of the Old Testament from the Book of Joshua to 2
Chronicles inclusive. Rogers himself, it is supposed,
was anxious that, in addition to the Coverdale Bible,
which, as we have seen, was only a secondary version,
there should be produced a Bible in which a reader
should find incorporated all the original, but uncom-
THE AIM OF THE ''MATTHEW BIBLE i8i
pleted, work which had been done by the dear friend
whom he had just lost. But Tyndale, as we have seen,
had left a large portion of the Old Testament untrans-
lated ; and the literary gap which was thus occasioned
could most conveniently be filled up in the new Bible
by making use therein of some part of the translation
with which Coverdale had recently been occupied.
Future revisers would thus, through the joint ver-
sions of Tyndale and Coverdale, have the best available
basis on which to work. But in carrying out this
idea Rogers was confronted with two preliminary
obstacles which had in some way to be surmounted.
One difficulty was that of funds. The other was that
no publisher would risk his capital in a book with the
fatal name of William Tyndale upon the title-page.
Who the mysterious " Matthew " may have been
is not known. Probably he may have been a mer-
chant who was willing to place sufficient capital at
Roger's disposal to start the press-work, and who also
allowed his name to be used as a convenient blind.
The printing seems to have been begun at Antwerp,
where Rogers was living at the time, and to have gone
on successfully as far as the Book of Isaiah, when, as
no more money was forthcoming, the enterprise came
temporarily to a deadlock.
At this juncture two London publishers came to
the rescue ; Richard Grafton, a member of the Grocers'
Company, and Edward Whitchurch, a fellow-merchant,
the former of whom is known to have staked a large
sum in the undertaking. To print the Bible in English
1 82 CO VERB ALE, MA TTHE IV, AND GREA T BIBLES
was now evidently considered to be a fair commercial
speculation.
In this respect the " Matthew " Bible tells its own
tale. The Book of Isaiah has a blank leaf in front
of it, and the pagination begins afresh from there.
At that point, moreover, we find a second title, in
red and black letters, " The Prophetes in Englysh " ;
and on the upper corners of the reverse-page are the
initials R, G., and on the lower corners E. W.
At the end of Malachi are the letters W. T. in large
ornamented capitals, standing of course for William
Tyndale.
The Bible is of folio size, but rather larger than
the Coverdale edition, which, as has been said above,
measures 12 inches by 8. It is printed in black letter,
and is dedicated to " The moost noble and gracyous
Prynce Kyng Henry the Eyght," the dedication being
signed by " Thomas Matthew." There is an " Exhor-
tation to study of Scripture " signed J. R. ; some twenty
pages or more of preliminary matter, such as a calendar,
almanac, etc. ; and a really valuable concordance
of texts on " Principal Matters," strongly Protestant
in its composition, which Rogers has apparently
taken directly from the French Bible of Olivetan.
From that Bible also is derived his introduction to the
Apocrypha, and his translation of the brief " Prayer
of Manasses," a book which, as we saw, Coverdale had
omitted altogether. Curiously enough, the translation
of the prophecy of Jonah is not taken from Tyndale's
version but from Coverdale's. Coverdale, however, had
based his work on Tyndale, while Tyndale's " Jonah " had
PERMANENT INTEREST OF ROGERS' WORK 183
become so scarce that Rogers was probably unable to lay
his hand on a copy. Perhaps its lengthy " Prologue "
made it as popular among the reformers (who relished
the sauce quite as much as the meat) as it would be
obnoxious to the ecclesiastical authorities. At any
rate Tyndale's own contribution exceeds that of the
prophet in the proportion of nearly eight pages to
one.
No utilisation can be traced in this Bible of
the " Sarum Epistles " from the Old Testament, to
which reference was made when describing Tyndale's
labours as a translator. There are Prologues to
almost all the Books, including the notorious Prologue
to the Epistle to the Romans, taken from Tyndale's
New Testament ; and there are notes at the end of each
chapter, some few of which are highly controversial,
and even for those hard-hitting days somewhat offensive,
though the majority of them are either purely explana-
tory or practical.
The permanent interest of the " Matthew " Bible
lies in the fact that it forms the real basis of all later
revisions, and that through the line of the Great Bible,
and of the Bishops' Bible, our Authorised Version is
descended from it as from a direct ancestor.
Such, then, is the historj' of Rogers' composite work.
His Bible reached England about the end of July 1537,
and in one of a series of letters, all of which have been
preserved, Cranmer, who seems almost to have been
expecting it, at once notified its arrival to Cromwell.
He informs the Vicegerent that so far as he had read
(which, by the way, could not have been very far), he
1 84 COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
thought it the best translation he had yet seen, and begs
that Henry might be persuaded to license its circulation
"until such time that we bishops shall set forth a
better, which I think will not be till a day after
doomsday^
It would indeed be interesting to know exactly what
passed in the royal audience chamber, and how it was
that Cromwell contrived, within the short space of a
week or ten days, to obtain the King's authorisation.
We should be curious, too, to learn whether, finding his
royal master in a favourable mood, Cromwell seized
the opportunity of getting its forerunner, the Coverdale
Bible, licensed at the same time. Except for Fulke's
statement that Matthew's edition was the first " author-
ised " English Bible, there is nothing to indicate that it
was any earlier in circulation than the Coverdale Edition
of I537> which was "set forth with the King's most
gracious license."
The point of chronological priority, however, is one
of no practical importance. What most excites our
astonishment is that a transaction which, if regard be
had to Henry's varying moods, and to the fury of his
anger when once aroused, must surely have risked the
heads of all concerned, should, as regards its details,
have left no trace whatever in the records of the
time.
For here was a Bible two-thirds of which were
actually the arch-heretic's own work. Tyndale's very
initials stood printed in conspicuous capitals at the end
of the Old Testament. The most ultra-Protestant of all
his Prologues, the introduction to the Epistle to the
//OPV CAME HENRY TO SANCTION IT? 185
Romans, was given in full. Some, though not many, of
the added notes were as ecclesiastically offensive as
anything which even the exile himself, whose pen did
not lack pungency, had ever written.
Grafton, who was a shrewd man of business, and
who had ventured some six or seven thousand pounds
of our money in the book, must himself have known
quite well what was inside it. Yet we find him handing
it to Cranmer with child-like confidence, and the Primate
contenting himself with what could only have been the
most cursory glance at the contents, and then warmly
recommending it to Cromwell for Henry's approval.
Cromwell on his side submits it, without delay or hesita-
tion, to the Supreme Head, just as if it had been the
most innocent book in the world.
It is impossible not to feel somewhat at a loss as to
what the reasons could have been which decided " The
Defender of the Faith" to license this Bible offhand.
Unfortunately we have no sufficient materials to enable
us to solve the problem. It is as difficult to suppose that
Cromwell took the chance that the King would not think
it necessary to look closely into it, as it is to assume that
he had made practically certain beforehand that he would
be running no real risk in thus placing his head within
the lion's jaws. Henry was certainly not a man to be
trifled with, nor was he a person lacking either in dis-
cernment or in decision. He was actuated all along
by the instinctive feeling that the nation, as a whole,
was with him in upholding both its internal religious
unity, and its external ecclesiastical independence. He
believed the Lutherans to be an obstacle to unity, and
1 86 COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
accordingly, as in Lambert's case, he burnt them as
heretics. The Papalists endangered England's indepen-
dence, and he therefore cut off their heads as traitors
to the supremacy. If, when Cromwell asked him
to license the " Matthew " Bible, he had chanced to
open it at Tyndale's '■^Prologue to the Epistle to the
Romans^' or if the odour of some of the unorthodox
notes had reached the royal nostrils, it would surely
have been a stirring day both for that venturesome
vizier and for all who stood behind him.
" All's well," the proverb says, " that ends well," and
whatever the considerations which on this eventful occa-
sion may have weighed with Henry, Cromwell's tactful
courage had at any rate its due reward. Within twelve
months of the martyrdom of its author at Vilvorde, the
translation which " either with glosses or without " had
been denounced, abused, and burnt at St Paul's, was
now, under its assumed name, formally approved by the
King's grace, and published, together with Coverdale's
Bible, under the shelter of a royal proclamation and
license.
Perhaps the simplest explanation of what seems to
us now so puzzling is that Henry, who at this period may
be held to have reached the high-water mark of such
sympathy as he ever came to feel with the reformers,
altogether failed to realise the vastness of the issues with
which his ecclesiastical policy was confronting the world.*
So far was he from treating the question of an English
Bible with any real religious earnestness that he appears
to have viewed it almost exclusively in its bearing on
* Green's History of the English People {1877), ii., pp. 218-19.
HENRY'S BLINDNESS TO ISSUES INVOLVED 187
problems of state, and in the light therefore of a political
shuttle-cock. Even within a year or so of his death, and
in his last address to Parliament, he shows this same in-
capacity of appreciation, and speaks as if the breaking up
of Christendom under his very eyes was nothing but a
quarrel, of " opinions and of names devised for the con-
tinuance of the same" such as Lutheran, and Papist, and
Anabaptist ; a matter indeed for regret, but one which a
little charity and a little good sense could easily adjust.
As with the war of the bees in Virgil's Georgics, so was
it in the King's sight with the angry hives of religious
combatants :
" Hi motus animorum, atque haec certamina tanta,
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt."
Gear. iv. 85.
" Yet all these dreadful deeds, this deadly fray,
A cast of scattered dust will soon allay."
— Dryden.
Whether, had we lived in his reign, we should have
been more far-sighted than this Tudor of the Tudors
who will dare to say ? To be wise after the event is so
easy. It was with a light heart that Henry raised the
sluices, but the torrent that presently ran through them
proved to be as much beyond his control as it is at this
very hour beyond our own.
We come now to one of the best known of our
English versions, namely, the Great Bible, or " Bible of
the largest volume," and with a sketch of this edition we
shall bring the present chapter to an end.
After the year 1537 there were, as we have seen,
1 88 COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
two quite different and distinct Bibles in licensed
circulation side by side. One of these, Coverdale's
own Bible, was neither accurate nor from originals.
The other, or the joint Tyndale-Coverdale Bible, might
at any time be getting its promoters into trouble if
Gardiner and his friends should succeed in unmasking
the pseudo-Matthew, and in fixing the attention of
the vacillating King on the doctrinal leanings of this
particular edition. Under these circumstances Crom-
well applied once more to Coverdale, the indefatigable
reviser, who, in the " Dedication " prefixed to his Bible,
had already expressed his readiness to return to the
work of which he was then only presenting the first
fruits. " I am always willing and ready," he had
written, " to do my best as well in one translation as
in another"
Coverdale was accordingly entrusted with the pre-
paration of yet a third and revised Bible, which was
to be based on the text of the " Matthew " edition, and
which was designed, among other things, to be a very
prodigy of typography. As a translation it was to be
brought, as far as possible, into a more faithful relation
to the Hebrew and Latin texts by the help of the
Complutensian Polyglot. Though Coverdale was but
an indifferent Hebrew scholar, he was still quite able
to avail himself of the labours of others, and, as re-
vising editor of the seven successive versions of the
Great Bible, this is what in point of fact he appears
to have done.
In respect of the Old Testament the Great Bible is
practically Roger's compilation {i.e., " Matthew's " Bible)
PREPARATION OF THE GREAT BIBLE 189
corrected by aid of the Latin translation of Sebastian
Munster, which had come out while Coverdale's Bible
of 1535 was in the Press, and which was far more literal
and trustworthy than the Zurich version. In respect of
the New Testament it is Tyndale's version revised by
reference to the Latin of Erasmus, and by aid of the
Vulgate. It is owing, we may observe, to the Vulgate
that the Great Bible made a very considerable number
of slight additions to the text,* and for that reason was
never popular with the reformers. It is worth remark-
ing that in this Bible one serious mistranslation is intro-
duced which Tyndale had avoided and which was left
undisturbed till 1881, viz., the rendering ''Jcld" in lieu
oi'' flock" in John x. 16.
In the early spring of 1538, Coverdale, and Richard
Grafton, whom Cromwell had associated with him, went
over to Paris to join the great French printer, Regnault,
who, under a special license from King Francis, had
undertaken to supervise the necessary printing arrange-
ments, which had been designed on a scale to which the
English press of that day would have been altogether
unequal.
In spite of the French King's authorisation the
party seem from the very outset to have worked in
daily dread of the Inquisition, for there was an
ominous clause in the license which prohibited '' ullas
privatas aiit illegitimas opinionesy As a precautionary
measure they made use of the good offices of Bonner,
* E.g.^ the supplementary clauses in Matt. xxvi. 53 ; Luke xxiv.
36; Acts XV. 34-41; Rom. 1-32; James v. 3; II. Peter i-io;
I. Tim. iv. 13.
I90 COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
then Bishop-elect of Hereford, and Ambassador at
Paris. As Ambassador he had the invaluable privilege
of travelling without having his luggage overhauled.
Accordingly a little before Christmas, when the new
Bible was far advanced, Coverdale, in order to be on
the safe side, packed off his finished sheets from Paris
through Bonner to Cromwell. Scarcely had he done so,
when on the 17th December an order of confiscation
from the Inquisitor General burst like a bomb-shell
upon the little company, and Regnault was promptly
cited. The officer who had been charged with the
prompt destruction of the printed leaves was most
probably bribed to contravene his orders. "Four
great dry vats" of printed matter were sold as waste
paper to a haberdasher, and, having been re-sold by
him to Cromwell's agents, were sent over to London,
whither Grafton and Coverdale had already fled.
Cromwell then bought up the type and the presses
from Regnault, and had them conveyed, together with
Regnault's staff of compositors, across the Channel, and
in April 1539 the first edition of this magnificent speci-
men of the art of printing was ready for publication.
The Great Bible is a large folio, in black letter,
without notes, and without any dedication. Its title-
page reads as follows : " The Byble in Englyshe, that
is to saye the content of all the holy scripture, bothe
of the old and newe testament, truly translated after
the veryte of the Hebrue and Greke textes by the
dylygent studye of dyuerse excellent learned men,
expert in the forsayde tongues. Prynted by Rychard
Grafton & Edward Whitchurch. Cum privilegio ad
HOLBEIN ENGRAVING.
[Face p. 191.
C 'ERDALE DISAPPOINTED OF HIS NOTES 191
uiiprrendum solum, 1539." It at once took rank as
the uthorised version " of its time.
\i.o may have been intended by the "diverse
leamd men " to whom the title refers cannot now be
asceriined. If the reference had been not to the
trans.tors of various versions, but to living scholars
workig under the supervision of Coverdale, it is
reasoable to suppose that some allusion to them
woul* be found in his letters. But such is not the case.
Te compulsory omission of all notes was a sore
troub to the translator. His annotations were ready,
and, s the brief preface tells us, they had even been
place before " the King's most honourable Council for
overs,^ht and correction." Not only so, but there was
an eloorate apparatus of " pointing hands," etc., speci-
ally csigned to direct attention to them, and Cover-
dale ad even offered to submit them all for Bishop
Bonnr's examination before publication. But annota-
tions nd glosses were in this time in very bad repute ;
Henr himself had a horror of them, and " the most
honorable Council" would have nothing to say to
them so that the Great Bible had to be printed with
Coveiale's "hands" pointing as it were in vacuo, and
bearii^ their silent and sorrowful witness to his dis-
appoited hopes, and to a scheme which was destined
neverto be carried out.
Oe great feature of this Bible is the frontispiece,
whicMs said to have been designed for it by "Hans
Holbm, to which we shall return again.* It is a large
* ?e Froude's History, vol. ii., p. 82, where, however, the Hol-
bein esfraving is referred in error to the Coverdale Bible.
1 92 CO VERB ALE, MA TTHE JV, AND GREA T BIBLES
engraving, measuring about fourteen inches by nine,
and throws a remarkably clear light on the ab-
solute authority which The Throne was conceived
to wield.
In the upper part The Saviour is represented as
looking down on the King from the clouds. Two Latin
scrolls are coming from his lips, the one from Isaiah Iv.
II, the other from Acts xiii. 22. This latter is directed
towards Henry, who in the upper right hand corner
of the engraving is kneeling with his crown laid on
the ground, and making answer, " Thy word is a lamp
unto my feet" Immediately below the figure of Christ
the King is shown sitting on his throne with the royal
arms and motto underneath it. This is the dominant
subject of the picture. Henry is seen handing the
Bible on the one side to Cranmer, who is without his
mitre, and behind whom stand the clergy, and on the
other side to Cromwell, also bare-headed, behind whom
stand the nobles. Somewhat lower down the figures
of Cranmer and Cromwell are repeated, and we see
them handing the scriptures to the bishops and laity.
In the lower part of the engraving there appears a
preacher in a pulpit addressing an enthusiastic congre-
gation, some of whom are shouting " Vivat Rex!"
and some " God save the Kynge ! " In the corner we
see a group of political prisoners looking on through
their window bars, apparently in grim disgust at the
loyalty of the crowd.
The Great Bible is often spoken of as " Cranmer's
Bible," but this title is a misnomer. The promoter of
the revision was Cromwell ; the editor was Coverdale ;
THE GREAT BIBLE NOT CRANMEWS 193
the printers were Regnault, the famous French typo-
graphist, and Grafton; and with the edition of 1539
Cranmer had personally little or nothing to do.
The misnomer has very naturally grown out of the
fact that the Primate composed an elaborate preface,
in excellent English of the Tudor type, which was
printed in 1 540 as an introduction to the second edition,
and which was reproduced in all the five later editions.
With regard to this preface, which though very practical
is somewhat lengthy, it is curious that on the same
day (November 14, 1539) on which the Archbishop
wrote to Cromwell to ask whether he had obtained
Henry's approval of it, Cromwell had received from the
King a patent, ''per ipsum regefii" " by the authority
of the King himself" (ignoring Parliament, Council,
and Convocation alike), which conferred on the ecclesi-
astical Vicegerent direct and absolute authority to
control the licensing of English Bibles for the next
five years.
Not anticipating the interruption which was caused
by the volcanic zeal of the Inquisition, Cromwell had
prepared the way for the Great Bible by an injunction
framed as early as 1536, but not issued until September
1538, in virtue of which all clergy were ordered to
provide before a specified day "one boke of the whole
Bible, in the largest volume^ in Englyshe, sett up in summe
convenyent place within the churche that ye have cure
of, whereat your parishioners may most commodiously
resort to the same and rede yt." This injunction had
all the authority of a royal proclamation, and thus,
within thirteen years of the burning of Tyndale's New
N
1 94 CO VERB ALE, MA TTHE JV, AND GREA T BIBLES
Testaments at St Paul's, the battle of the English Bible
had been finally won. First forbidden ; then silently-
tolerated; and next licensed, it was now commanded
by the King's Highness to be set up for the benefit of
each one of the eleven thousand parishes in the land-
In the rapidly growing spirit of the age the newly-
opened Scriptures found an ally far too powerful for
the forces of reaction.
The impression which we drive from the Holbein
engraving is confirmed by Strype* in his life of
Cranmer.
" It was wonderful," we there read, " to see with what joy this
book of God was received, not only among the learned sort, but
generally, all England over, among all the vulgar and common
people, and with what greediness God's Word was read. Every-
body that could bought the book, or busily read it, or got others to
read it to them."
Collier, the ecclesiastical historian, prints a paper
found in the public archives and relating to the year
1539, which points to the effect of the open Bible on
literary tastes. " Englishmen have now in hand, in
every church and place, the Holy Bible in their mother
tongue, instead of the old fabulous atid fantastical books of
the Table Round, Lancelot du Lake, Bevis of Hampton,
Guy of Warwick, etc., and such other, whose impure
* Strype is invaluable as a collector of historical materials, but
the power of sifting evidence is not one of his gifts, and he borrows
freely from Foxe. It is unfortunate, for the interests of history,
that our ideas of what happened at the Reformation should
have come to us through such highly prejudiced sources as Foxe
and Bale, zealots in whose eyes Protestantism could apparently
do no wrong and speak no guile.
DISORDERLINESS OF NEW PROTESTANTISM 195
filth and vain fabulosity the light of God has abolished
utterly." *
But the picture has its reverse side. Henry had
accompanied his concession with a condition which
many of his humbler subjects were by far too much
excited, and far too unscrupulous, to observe. He had
directed every preacher to charge his congregation to
use the new translation " humbly and reverently," " not
having thereof any open reasoning in your taverns or
alehouses," but reading it " quietly and charitably every
of you to the edifying of himself, his wife and family."
(Strype's Cramner, ii., 735.)
Bonner's experience in old St Paul's was but too
probably the experience of many another Cathedral as
well. The bishop had bought six copies of this
splendid folio, had located them so as to be readily
accessible to the public, and had hung up over each
copy directions as to the orderly use of the book, drawn
up in the same spirit as the King's. The new Pro-
testantism, however, was disorderly in the extreme, and
there was in consequence a wanton and reckless dis-
regard of restrictions whose very reasonable aim it was
to secure decency and reverence in the use of the open
Bible.
The Reformation spirit was too strong for men who
had no mental balance. They were drunk with the new
wine, and liberty degenerated with them into disreput-
able and offensive license. The preacher in the pulpit
often found his exhortations completely drowned in a
tumult of voices shouting verses of the Bible out aloud in
* Ecclesiastical History, '\ii.^ 162. London, 1852.
196 COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
various parts of the church, and occasionally adding to
them certain improvised expositions. So great was the
resulting chaos that the bishop was obliged to threaten
the removal of the books, unless the rules laid down
concerning their use were better observed.
The Great Bible went through no less than seven
editions in about two years, and between the issue of
the third and fourth of these editions, Cromwell, to
whose enterprise we saw this version to have been
originally due, had been abandoned by his master to
the vindictiveness of his countless enemies, and sent
savagely to the block. His heraldic arms, which figure
in the first three editions, are accordingly absent from
the last four. The specially illuminated copy on vellum
which was prepared in his personal honour, and duly
presented to him in 1539, is among the chief treasures
of the library of St John's College, Cambridge.
This Bible " of largest volume " had a reign of some
thirty years, and remains up to this very day the only
formally "authorised" English version. It embodies
Coverdale's maturest work as a revising editor. Our
Prayer-Book, in whose services the extracts from Scrip-
ture are for the most part derived from King James's
Bible, has a note announcing that it takes its Psalter
from this Bible ; but the offertory sentences in the
Communion Service, and the " Comfortable words," to
which a like derivation has sometimes been ascribed,
are not borrowed verbatim from any known version, but
are, in all probability, Cranmer's own personal work.
The fourth edition of the Great Bible, issued in
November 1540, recites in its title that it has been
THE TA VERNER BIBLE 197
" oversene and perused by the ryghte reverende fathers
in God, Cuthbert bisshop of Duresme, and Nicolar
bisshop of Rochester."
This episcopal authorisation was by the King's
command. The reason which rendered it expedient
was, that the Great Bible being Cromwell's child, the
taint of his disgrace, and the suspicion of heresy under
which he had fallen, had affected its reputation as an
orthodox version. This Cuthbert of Duresme was
no other than the Cuthbert Tunstall who had refused
the hospitality of his palace to Tyndale, and who had
subsequently burnt the book on which, under its changed
garb, he now pronounced his official and literary
blessing.
ft has not been thought necessary to include the
Taverner Bible of 1539 in this historical sketch, for
it is little more than the revision by a private
scholar of " Matthew's " edition, and has not exerted
any influence upon the literary succession. Nevertheless
some of Taverner's happiest renderings yet survive in
our current version, such for example as " parable " for
" similitude " ; " the love of many shall wax cold " ; " the
Israel of God."
It is from the setting up of the Great Bible in parish
churches that the ever-widening influence of the Gospel
teaching on English life may be said both officially and
practically to date.*
Hard upon the latest issue of this revision in 1 541
there followed the so-called Catholic reaction which
marked the last years of Henry's life, and the temporary
* Green's History.^ iii., pp. 10-13,
198 COVERDALE, MATTHEW, AND GREAT BIBLES
ascendency of Bishop Gardiner. The English Bible was
not suppressed, for such a thing was no longer possible ;
but, so far as legal enactments could influence practice,
the liberty of reading it was sensibly restricted in 1 543,
and no fresh translation of the Holy Scriptures was
made until the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In the period
that intervened Rogers and Cranmer both suffered
martyrdom at the stake, and even Coverdale's life was
with difficulty saved by his flight into foreign climes.
THE GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
" We must not imagine that in the primitive Church, either every
one that understood the learned tongues, might without reprehen-
sion, read, reason, dispute, turn and toss the Scriptures ; or that our
forefathers suffered every schoohnaster, scholar, or grammarian
that had a little Greek or Latin, straight to take in hand the
holy Testament : or that the translated Bibles were in the hands
of every husbandman, artificer, prentice, boys, girls, mistress, maid,
man : that they were sung, played, alleged, of every tinker,
tavemer, rimer, minstrel : that they were for table-talk, for ale-
benches, for boats and barges, and for every profane person and
company."
"The poor ploughman could then, in labouring the ground,
sing the hymns and psalms either in known or unknown languages,
as they heard them in the holy Church, though they could neither
read nor know the sense, meaning and mysteries of the same. . . .
Then the Virgins did meditate upon the places and examples
of chastity, modesty, and demureness : the married on conjugal
faith and continency : the parents how to bring up their children
in the faith and fear of God : the prince how to rule : the subject
how to obey : the priest how to teach : the people how to learn.
Then the scholar taught not his master, the sheep controlled not
the pastor, the young student set not the doctor to school, nor
reproved their fathers of error and ignorance."
{Prejace to the Rheims New Testament^
CHAPTER VII
THE GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
As was seen in the last chapter the position of the
Great Bible, fortified as it had come to be by episcopal
supervision and approval, proved to be but little
affected by the sudden downfall of Cromwell, to whose
initiative it was due.
But with Cromwell fell his Protestant policy, and
the period of reaction which dates from his death has
caused the year 1540 to be something of a landmark
in the history of our subject.
We propose, therefore, briefly to recall the circum-
stances under which the career of the all-powerful
minister to whom, as Henry's Vicegerent, we owe
our ecclesiastical independence, was brought with such
tragic abruptness to an end.
Let us revert then for a moment to the Holbein
engraving, to which reference has already been made
as forming the frontispiece of the Great Bible. It is
impossible to mistake its significance.
If it means anything it means that, in the eyes of
those around him, Henry VIII. was himself the English
Reformation. For he is the centre and the soul of the
20\
202 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
picture. Not Parliament, not Convocation, not the
Council, neither Cromwell himself nor Cranmer, bui
the King's Grace it is, that, under the guidance o
Providence, presents the Bible to Cranmer and Crom
well, as representing respectively the clergy and lait)
of his realm. And this Bible was then, and is now
and always will be, the sheet-anchor of English Pro
testantism.
To express our meaning in other words, the Refor
mation of Cromwell's day, for the results of which w<
may be thankful without thinking too highly of it;
methods, was from above, not from below ; royal no
popular ; political not doctrinal ; gradual not revolu
tionary. With all Henry's faults, and they were manj
and great, we at least owe to him this, that Englanc
managed to weather a tremendous crisis in her histor)
without any Thirty Years War. He packed Parliament
he terrorised Convocation ; he made judges and juriei
accomplices in his unrighteous deeds ; but he neithei
ignored nor suppressed any one of these bodies, anc
by thus draping his despotic powers in the old con
stitutional forms, he unconsciously safeguarded, unti
the coming of more settled days, the liberties of th(
land.
It is true that we can point to no individua
reformer in England who stands out so prominently a:
either Luther, or Zwingli, or Calvin ; but neither car
the Continent point to any actor in the drama whc
surpasses Henry in his prodigious force of character
and in his capacity for dealing vigorously with grea
issues. The times called for a strong personality, anc
HENRY VITl. AND THE REFORMATION 203
not even his enemies will venture to deny that the
old lion was at least possessed of immense strength.
But we must proceed with our more immediate
subject.
Henry was politically a Protestant, because he could
not avoid it. So long as he was occupied in the final
emancipation of his country from the Roman juris-
diction ; In sweeping into the State coffers the spoils of
those monasteries, and abbeys, and chantries, in which
there lay enshrined the innermost spirit of the old
society ; in dragooning the catholic clergy ; and in keep-
ing a watchful eye on Charles V., who might at any time
be invading England in order to avenge the injuries
of the Papacy, it was plainly inevitable that he should
wear the colours of a party for whose religious doctrines
he all along entertained an honest personal dislike. If
it be permissible to parody a well-known saying, we
might fairly put into his mouth the words, ^^ Arnica
Ecclesia, sed inagis amicus rex."
It was, indeed, no light matter for him that his
quarrel with the head of the Catholic Church involved
the risk of war either with the champion of
Catholicism, the most powerful monarch of the age,
or else with Francis, or possibly with both. The jealous
rivalry between France and Spain might make it
practicable for diplomacy to play the one off against
the other, but it still remained desirable to make
temporary use of the Lutheran Princes as a make-
weight in the political balance.
For a while, therefore, Cromwell was given a free
hand, and for a while, too, and in so far forth as appeal
204 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAl BIBLES
could be made to the Scriptures as rebutting the claims
of Rome to supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the
cause of the English Bible was safe under the royal
aegis. But in the nature of things a reaction was
inevitable. Despotic as was the Tudor rule, it may
be questioned whether at any time in our annals more
anxious pains have been taken by those in power to
keep in touch with national feeling, and to govern in
accordance with the ascertained wishes and interests
of the people at large. Accordingly, when in 1536
there broke out that sudden insurrection in the North,
which is known to history as the Pilgrimage of
Grace — a movement which, for brevity's sake, may be
described as a revolt against the aims and methods of
Cromwell — the King received a severe shock. So un-
mistakable an ebullition of popular feeling served to
open his eyes and to give him pause.
Already the Protestants among his subjects had
sorely vexed and irritated him by their disorderly use
or abuse of the Great Bible, the sacred words of which,
as he bitterly complained, " were disputed, 7'imed, sung,
and jangled in every alehouse^ They had incensed
him still further by their ribald plays and ballads, in
mockery of the old religion, and by the gross irrever-
ence and profanity with which, in the intoxication of
their religious zeal, they treated the sacraments and
venerable customs of the Church. At a glance Henry
took in the position. Whatever the towns might be
thinking, the country conservatives were becoming
seriously disaffected. It was one thing for them to
be well quit of an Italian over-lord, but a wholly
THE FALL OF CROMWELL 205
different thing to see friendly monks and abbots forcibly
dispossessed and insulted ; shrines and images pulled
down ; pilgrimages and holy-days suppressed ; sacred
and beautiful buildings wrecked ; and all the old religious
life which the country folk still loved and cherished,
torn brutally up by the roots.
The ecclesiastical Vicegerent must be made the
scapegoat. Cromwell had been travelling too fast. He
was now seriously endangering the popularity which
was to Henry as the very breath of his life. He had
drawn the orthodox " Defender of the Faith " into the
semblance of too close an alliance with the detested
continental reformers. He was alienating the loyal
Catholic population, and imperilling the authority of
the King-Pope over his divided religious house-
hold.
There must be a change. The foreign Lutherans
were no longer an essential factor in the political situa-
tion, and they might go their own way. The danger
which had been imminent, so long as Catherine remained
alive to remind Charles V. of the insult that had been
levelled both at his own family and at the cause of
Catholicism, was now passed. Doubtless Cranmer was
a useful tool, but he was not the only able ecclesiastic
in the Council. There was his equally zealous counter-
weight, Stephen Gardiner. If the new Protestantism
could not behave itself, and if it was dissatisfied with
the comparatively Lutheran tone of the Confession of
the " Ten Articles," it must be made to hear the crack
of the Tudor whip in the Confession of the " Six
Articles" with all its terrible sanctions. And as for
2o6 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAl BIBLES
Cromwell he was no longer needed. His work was
done. He had replenished the royal exchequer with the
proceeds of the plundered monasteries, and had eased
matters for Henry's political indolence by taking the
whole burden of administration on his shoulders. His
foreign diplomacy was now said to be open to grave
suspicion. He had begun to forget who was the real
master of the house. Very possibly, too, he was a
heretic. In any case he was only in the way. The
ecclesiastical vessel required trimming, and it could best
be trimmed by pitching him overboard. Doubtless his
many enemies were watching eagerly for the withdrawal
of the royal favour, and for an opportunity of vengeance.
But loyalty to old and faithful servants was never
Henry's strong point. When he had finished with them
the hungry sharks were welcome to them. They could
be replaced, or if they could not, he was ready enough
to govern without any ministers at all.
Thus, then, it happened that during the last years
of this eventful reign, the cause of Protestantism, as
understood by some of the more aggressive among the
reformers, passed under a cloud. Cromwell was exe-
cuted under a bill of attainder in July 1540, and one
effect of his removal was that Coverdale's "pointing
hands" ceased to appear in the Great Bible, since
all hope of introducing annotations was now finally
extinguished.
Two years later a proposal was brought before
Convocation for a new version by the bishops, but
difficulties arose, through Gardiner, about the rendering
of a long list of ecclesiastical terms to which the Vulgate
THE KING'S CHANGE OF MOOD 207
had for centuries given traditional sanctity, and eventu-
ally the project came to nothing. In 1543 all Tyndale
Bibles were prohibited, and it was ordered that the
annotations and controversial matter in "Matthew's"
Bible should be effaced and made illegible. Before
long this prohibition was extended even to Coverdale,
and the extension was accompanied in 1546 by a
perfect holocaust of English Bibles and Testaments.
The Great Bible was thus left to reign in solitary
grandeur, while the use of it was by statute forbidden
to the great bulk of the people, and was restricted to the
upper classes. In the meantime, terrified at the omin-
ous change in Henry's mood, many of the advanced
reformers were flying for safety to Frankfort, Strasburg,
Munich, and to other friendly towns upon the Continent.
Under Edward VI. they were welcomed back in crowds
by Cranmer and by the Protectorate, and exercised so
powerful an influence that, if the young King's brief life
had been prolonged, England might soon have become
a very hotbed of Calvinism. The Marian persecutions
drove them once more headlong into exile. With the
accession of the resolute " Guardian of the middle way "
they again took courage and recrossed the sea. During
the reign of Elizabeth they strove their uttermost to
find favour in the royal sight, and to have the Anglican
Church, which stood midway between the two extremes
of Romanism and ultra-Protestantism, remodelled in
accordance with the principles which they had imbibed
abroad. It is of the utmost importance to bear in
mind the existence, and the untiring activity, of this
extreme left wing of the Reformation. We shall make
2o8 GENEVAN, BIS HOP S\ AND DOUAI BIBLES
closer acquaintance with it by-and-by, in connection
with the Genevan Bible ; but first we must complete
our brief review of the twenty years that separate the
last English version of Henry's reign from that memor-
able revision which made its first appearance soon after
the accession of Elizabeth.
In 1545 there occurred an event which had no slight
effect in modifying the vacillating temper of the King.
Many a hopeful heart had looked forward to a general
Council of the Church as the best available means of
securing its peaceful regeneration. Much therefore was
expected from the first meeting of the Council of Trent.
But it soon became apparent that the Jesuits, then as
always the most dangerous enemies of truth and freedom,
would carry the day, and that Rome would emerge both
narrower and more uncompromising than ever, and
also infinitely more in earnest. Henry appears to have
been seriously alarmed. In his dread of the Counter-
Reformation he felt disposed to revert to the policy of
the minister whom, only five years before, he had so
cynically allowed to be beheaded. He even directed
Cranmer to *'/^« a form for the alteration of the mass
into a communion^ But Henry's days were now
numbered, and in January 1547 he died. There suc-
ceeded to the vacant throne his son by the Protestant
Jane Seymour, a precocious boy of only nine years old.
In defiance of the late King's will the direction of affairs
was assumed by Jane's brother, Edward Seymour, under
the title of the Duke of Somerset, and the ecclesiastical
engines were at once reversed.
It is happily no part of the business of a historian of
THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN MARY "" 209
the English Bible to record the doings of that clique of
greedy nobles who formed the Council of the Regency.
With the solitary exception of the invertebrate but
amiable Cranmer, it would be difficult to name a single
disinterested, or unselfish, or even ordinarily honest man
among them all.
No Jesuit could wish the Protestant cause a worse
fate than its exploitation by this band of sordid adven-
turers, who, under the mask of piety, made such frenzied
haste to fill their pockets at the expense of the Church.
Their works were like unto them ; and Somerset House,
built with the stones of St Mary-le-Strand and of the
Church of the Knights of St John, formed a suitable
monument of the plundering proclivities of this in-
glorious Protectorate.
With Cranmer's beautiful compilation, the Book of
Common Prayer, we are not here concerned ; nor yet
with the general liturgical history of the reign ; and we
rejoice to be able to turn our backs on an interval of
vindictive vandalism and whitewash which has not
unjustly been described as " a harvest time for thieves,
and a high holiday for the profane."
No new version of the English Bible was attempted
under Edward VI., but all restrictions on the printing
and reading of the current versions were removed. It
was again ordered that every parish should have a copy
of the Great Bible set up in church, and also a copy
of the paraphrase by Erasmus of the four gospels.
Taverner's private translation was re-issued, and seven
editions of the Great Bible, three of Matthew's, two
of Coverdale's, and thirty-five of the New Testament,
O
2IO GENEVAN, BIS HOP S\ AND DOUAI BIBLES
most of them by Tyndale, were published between the
years 1547 and 1553 inclusive.
With the accession of Mary Tudor all the privileges
which from time to time had been conceded to the
study of the Bible naturally suffered eclipse, and
England found itself once more Roman Catholic.
Nevertheless, the open arms with which the Queen was
received by the nation at large supply the best possible
comment on the lamentable exhibition which had
recently been made by the truculent Protestantism of
the Protectorate.
But if the great mass of the population had deeply
resented the violence of the political raiders under the
rule of Somerset and of Northumberland, they had no
desire to be handed over to the tender mercies either of
Rome or Spain. Unfortunately the Queen never came
into any real touch with her subjects. She failed to
understand either their Saxon love of independence or
their love of England. Their feeling was in favour of
the old Catholicism rather than the new Protestantism,
but it was in favour also of ecclesiastical autocracy.
The religion which they desired for themselves was the
religion of the old Church without the Pope ; a religion
of reverent services conducted in a language which
they could understand, and framed so as to maintain
as far as possible intact their liturgical continuity with
the past.
But Mary, who, if ill-advised was at least more
sincerely conscientious than either Henry or Elizabeth,
and who if she shocks us by her anti-Protestant fervour,
yet honestly believed that Protestantism and damnation
MA R VS BL UNDERS z\ \
were convertible terms, was speedily guilty of three
initial diplomatic blunders. First, she renounced the
national independence, and placed herself at the feet of
the foreign potentate from whose yoke her father had
shaken England free ; next she married a Spaniard, and
a fanatical champion of the Inquisition ; while lastly, by
her moody and half insane barbarity in kindling the
awful fires of Smithfield, she showed the whole world
that there were among the Protestants brave earnest
men quite as ready to die for their religion as others of
baser metal were to live upon it.
Nothing could have been better calculated than such
a course as this to render impossible for England a
creed which relied upon such means for its support, and
to burn out of men's memories the low estimate of the
reformed faith which their bitter experience of the late
carnival of masquerading Calvinists had burnt into
them. The martyrdom of Archbishop Cranmer, to take
only the most conspicuous example, did far more to
further the cause of the Reformation than all the
Queen's violence could do to retard it.
The Genevan, or, as it is popularly called, the
" Breeches Bible," * was the offspring of the Marian
terror. Among the many Protestant strongholds on
the Continent which offered hospitality and protection
to English exiles, was the Lutheran city of Frankfort.
* In Genesis iii. 7, where the Authorised Version has "made
themselves aprons," the Genevan Bible reads "breeches." The
rendering, however, is not peculiar to this Bible ; it is to be found
both in the WyclifFe Bible and in Caxton's " Golden Legend" where
we read " took figge leuis and sewed them togyder in maner of
brechis."
212 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAl BIBLES
No sooner, however, had the safety of the fugitives
been well secured within its walls, than there broke
out a stormy controversy among their leaders with
reference to the ritual system of the revised English
Prayer Book of 1552. The more moderate or conform-
ing party, under the guidance of Richard Cox, after-
wards Bishop of Ely, were prepared to abide by the
ceremonial requirements of the book as it then stood.
The Nonconformists, represented by John Knox, who
had been chaplain to Edward VI., scented popery and
superstition in every page, and declined to accept it at
all, except as a convenient point of departure for further
and fundamental changes. Hotter and hotter waxed
the quarrel, until in 1555 the Knox faction came to
an open rupture with their opponents, and, shaking off
the dust of their feet upon Frankfort, betook themselves
to the more congenial atmosphere of Geneva, " the
holy city of the Alps," the Mecca of the reformed faith.
It is to these seceding Calvinists, the source and
fountainhead of that anti-sacramental movement which
as years went on gradually broadened and deepened
into Puritanism, that we owe the Genevan Bible.
This new version had a wonderful success. Between
1560 and the Civil War, no fewer than 160 editions of it
passed into circulation, sixty of them during the reign
of Elizabeth alone. Though it naturally found but little
favour at the Court, or with Convocation, its scholarship
cast the Great Bible completely into the shade, and
after 1569 no fresh issue of that version was made.
For many years it proved no unworthy rival even of
the King's standard edition, and competed with it
ORIGIN OF THE GENEVAN BIBLE 213
almost on equal terms for popularity. Throughout
Scotland it speedily established itself as the household
Bible. In England it was eagerly welcomed by that
new middle class * from which, after the importation of
Calvinism from the Continent, that faith derived its
main supporters ; a class which, while it cannot be said
to have been created, was at least largely reinforced,
both by the rapid expansion of trade and commerce
and by the transfer of the abbey-lands.
It is not without interest to observe that during part
of the years 1558-9, Miles Coverdale, then seventy years
of age, was a resident in Geneva. In I539> 3-t the
invitation of Cromwell, we found him acting as editor
of the Great Bible. In 1551 he was promoted to be
Bishop of Exeter, only to be deprived of his See under
Queen Mary and to be obliged to fly for his life. Thus
the main thread of his history serves to connect the
most melodious of our translators, and the most inde-
fatigable of our revisers, with three of the best known
Bibles of the Tudor period, namely, his own version of
1535 ; the Great Bible of 1539; and the Genevan Bible
of 1560, whose designation at once associates it with
that famous city which in the sixteenth century was the
sheet-anchor of the Reformation.
The book cannot be properly appreciated apart from
its local parentage, and in order fully to understand
the great popularity and prestige of the Genevan Bible,
it is necessary to realise the veneration in which the
name of Geneva had come to be held throughout the
Protestant world. Let us briefly recall the main events
* Brewer's Henry VIII., ii., p. 470.
214 GENEVAN, BIS HOP S\ AND DOUAl BIBLES
in her religious history a generation or so before the
year 1560.
In 1526, nine years after the publication by Luther
of his famous Theses, and six years after he had publicly
burnt the Pope's bull at the Elster gate of Wittenberg,
Geneva had thrown off her foreign yoke and shaken
herself free from the control of the Dukes of Savoy. A
little later, and as a natural consequence of her political
emancipation, she had adopted the principles of the
Reformation, and had crowned her newly won inde-
pendence by repudiating the spiritual authority of the
Roman Bishop.
But, in adopting the Reformation, Geneva had by no
means put off the old Adam of her turbulent civic life
with all its jealousies, feuds, and factions. William
Farel, the leading spirit of the Genevan Church, was
not a man of sufficient force of character to cope with
so difficult a situation. He was quick, therefore, to
seize upon the happy accident of Calvin's presence in
the town, and to adjure him as the chosen instrument
of God's providence to remain in Geneva, and to take
upon himself the lay directorship of that somewhat
volcanic community.
Under Calvin's iron rule and discipline it was not
long before Geneva came to rank as the Wittenberg of
the Reformed Churches. Through her Academy she
provided a centre for both classical and theological
learning. From Italy, France, England, Germany,
young students flocked freely to her schools. Refugees
from every quarter found an asylum within her walls.
First resentfully expelled, and then again recalled as
CALVIN AND THE REFORMATION 215
indispensable, Calvin gave up a life which it had been
his intention to dedicate to study, to the task for the
accomplishment of which he had been so unexpectedly
summoned.
Imperious, arrogant, dictatorial, and autocratic in
temperament, he was one of those powerful person-
alities who both know exactly what it is they wish
to do, and have the resolution and ability to do it.
To the accomplishment of his mission the new Pope
of Geneva brought an inflexible will and a keenly
penetrative judgment. When to these characteristics
we add his inexhaustible energy, his French-born love
of system, his genius for organisation, his great learning,
and the tenacity of his moral grip, we have a combina-
tion of qualities in which men recognise their natural
lord and master.
In the circumstances of the time such a vigorous
personality was sorely needed. Continental Pro-
testantism had reached a very critical stage in its
progress. The initial impulse which had been given
to it by the creative energy of Luther was dying down.
As a profession of faith it was everywhere beginning
to reveal its inherent weakness. Strong to pull down,
it seemed incapable of building up. It was a principle
of disintegration, not a principle of unity. It lacked
coherence, it lacked stability, it lacked organic vitality.
It was, moreover, suffering from internal quarrels of
the utmost bitterness, for it seems to be one of the mis-
fortunes of the human intellect that no questions are
ever so furiously debated as those which are incapable
of solution. There was therefore a real and even an
2i6 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
imminent danger that the Reformation movement,
frittering away its early vigour in a ceaseless and
barren rivalry of definitions and disputations, might
either perish of moral and spiritual inanition, or else
evaporate and disappear in a hazy mist of controversial
speculation.
That events did, in fact, turn out otherwise, is in a
large measure due to Calvin, and to his disciples in
doctrine, the Puritans. His eagle eye took in the
essential features of the religious crisis. To the
practical intensity of his nature it was manifest that
no spiritual enthusiasm could long maintain itself on
the dry husks of theological dogmas. While others
were arguing he was acting. Enforcing his rigorous
principles upon the citizens of the little state of Geneva,
he set himself to show the world what religion could do,
as a vitalising power, in the political and social sphere.
Self-control as the basis of moral life, self-sacrifice as the
secret of the common weal, the subordination of rights
to duties as the foundation stone of political ethics,
these were his fundamental axioms of administration.
Compared with the ''Republic" of Plato, or with the
large-hearted " Utopia " of Sir Thomas More, most of us
instinctively shudder at the narrowness, the one-sided-
ness, the doctrinaire austerity, the joyless acerbity, of
the Calvinistic discipline. But we have to remind our-
selves that it is an easier thing, as the annals of More's
public life may serve to show, to construct abstract
political constitutions than it is to govern men, and it
would be unjust to allow our natural antipathies to blind
us to the plain evidence of historical fact. Calvin was
CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF CALVIN 217
the saviour of Geneva, and Geneva was the saviour of
the Reformation.
By insisting upon the paramount importance of
conduct, he once more compelled attention to an ideal
which had been too long discarded — the ideal of
character. Under the stress of a new sense of respon-
sibility and moral obligation the little municipality of
Geneva became, all but in name, a church. To Calvin
she owed it that her theology acquired system, and
her discipline organisation. Throughout the sixteenth
century we can hardly over-estimate her influence.
Standing midway between the giant systems of Spain
and of Rome, she confronted, with her mere handful of
amateur soldiery, a secular imperialism that was im-
patient to crush her on the one side, and a hierarchical
absolutism, against which she was a living protest, on
the other. To Pope Pius V., Geneva was doubtless
"a nest of devils and apostates," as to Henry II. of
France she was a "swarm of vermin." But to the
supporters of the Reformation she was a fortress too
strong for the enemy to carry and too dangerous for
him to ignore ; a glad beacon of hope whose cheering
rays helped to light up the dark places of spiritual and
temporal confusion. For in that small city-state men
saw the visible and active embodiment of a conviction
which lay deep down in many a thoughtful mind ; the
conviction that there might subsist a political com-
munity without the Empire, and a Church of Christ
without the Papacy.
The forerunner of the Genevan Bible was an English
New Testament which came out in 1557. Like its
2i8 GENEVAN, BIS HOP S\ AND DOUAl BIBLES
successor, this version was published at Geneva, but it
bore no name. Practically, however, there is no doubt
that it may be attributed to William Whittingham, who
was Dean of Durham under Elizabeth, a Fellow of All
Souls, and connected with Calvin by marriage. He was
a man of large learning, and one of the ablest of
that company of scholars whose joint labours, between
January 1558 and the spring of 1560, produced the
complete Genevan Bible.
Of this New Testament our space precludes more
than a mere passing notice, but there are two points
with regard to it which deserve attention. It is, in the
first place, the earliest translation to adopt that division
of the text into verses,* which was made, during a ride
between Paris and Lyons, by Robert Stephens in his
Greek Testament of 155 1, and which reappears in the
Genevan Bible of 1 560. In the second place, it forms
the groundwork of the revision, by some other and un-
known hand, which we find printed as the New Testa-
ment portion of the complete Bible which shortly
followed it.
Knox, Coverdale, and several others among the
revisers, who had been at work under the supervision
of Calvin and Beza, left Geneva before their task was
* The division of the Bible into chapters, or sections, was
adopted to facilitate its use for reading aloud in synagogues or in
churches, and belongs to the history of the manuscript Bible. The
division into verses belongs to the history of the printed Bible, and
was made for purposes of reference and citation. Our Bible was
divided into chapters in the thirteenth century : either by Langton,
Archbishop of Canterbury, or by Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro,
a Dominican monk. As above stated, the division into verses is due
to R. Stephens, who in 1556-7 extended it to his Latin Bible.
THE GENEVAN TRANSLATION 219
complete ; but we learn from Anthony A. Wood that
" Whittingham, with one or two more, being resolved to
go through with the work, did tarry a year and a half
after Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown." The
"one or two more" appear to have been Anthony
Gilby, of Christ's College, Cambridge, and Thomas
Sampson, Dean of Chichester, and subsequently Dean
of Christ Church in the early year of the reign of
Elizabeth.*
The book is entitled " The Bible and Holy Scriptures
conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament translated
according to the Ebrue and Greke, and conferred with
the best translations in diver's languages. With moste
profitable annotations upon all the hard places, and
other things of great importance^
The dedication, expressed in terms of admiration
and respect, but exceptionally free from offensive adula-
tion, is to that illustrious sovereign, daughter of the
Protestant Anne Boleyn, upon whom the hopes of the
Reformation were then centred. On the very day of
her coronation, Elizabeth had been presented, as the
royal procession was making its way along Cheapside,
with a copy of the Holy Scriptures, the Verbum
veritatis, from the hands of a venerable old man
representing Time, with Truth standing beside him as
his child, had reverently kissed it and had pledged her-
self " diligently to read therein." After the dedication,
which characteristically enough comprises an exhorta-
* The cost of the undertaking was borne by the Genevan con-
gregation. Prominent among them was John Bodley, father of the
founder of the Bodleian Library.
220 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAl BIBLES
tion to put all Papists to the sword, there follows an
epistle addressed " To our Beloved in the Lord, the
Brethren* of England, Scotland, and Ireland," this being
the name by which the Calvinists were commonly known
before the term Puritan had become attached to them.
Based, as regards the Old Testament, mainly on the
Great Bible, and, as regards the New Testament, on
Whittingham's version of 1557, which was itself a re-
vision of Tyndale, the Genevan Bible was the result of
a careful collation with the Hebrew and Greek originals,
and of a free use of the best recent Latin versions,
especially Beza's, as well as of the standard French and
German translations. It is essentially a revision, and
not a new translation ; though perhaps we ought
partially to except from this statement the prophetical
and poetical books, in which the changes introduced are
very numerous.
In many ways this edition formed a new departure,
and offered new attractions. Especially was this the
case with regard to bulk. The Great Bible was a huge
unwieldy folio, suited only for liturgical use. Its rival
was for the most part issued as a quarto of comfortable
size, and at a moderate price. In place of the heavy
black letter to which readers had been accustomed,
there appeared the clear Roman type with which our
modern press has made us familiar. The division of
the chapters into verses, however we may condemn it
as a literary device, has undeniable advantages, both for
* A Society of Christian Brethren was founded in London in
1525 for the distribution of Bibles, Testaments, and Protestant
literature, and had local branches in many of the seaport towns.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GENEVAN BIBLE 221
the preacher and for private reference and study, to say-
nothing of its effect in facilitating the prominence that
soon began to attach to particular favourite texts. The
employment, too, of italics, to mark words not repre-
sented in the original Hebrew and Greek, had an
exceptional value for readers who believed every
syllable of the Bible to have been directly inspired.
The running commentary of illustrative and explana-
tory notes was a further boon of no little importance.
For the harsh measures of the Queen against
" Prophesying " had emptied half the city pulpits, and
had made qualified ministers of the Word most incon-
veniently scarce. Prophesying was one of the most
highly valued of Puritan institutions, and was the term
applied to the periodical clerical meetings, or local
gatherings, of the Protestant clergy for mutual instruc-
tion and training as preachers, gatherings in which
Elizabeth fancied that she could detect the cloven hoof
of faction and disloyalty. But not merely was the
book thus made self-interpreting. -- Its usefulness was
yet further enhanced by maps, and woodcuts, and
elaborate tables, by an appendix of metrical psalms,
and finally, by an interpolation, in all editions after
1579) of ^ catechism so pronounced in its Calvinism
as to suggest a design among the " Brethren " of
superseding, through its instrumentality, the authorita-
tive catechism of the Church.
Neither cumbersome nor costly ; terse, and vigorous
in style ; literal, and yet boldly idiomatic, the Genevan
version was at once a conspicuous advance on all the
Biblical labours that had preceded it, and an edition
222 GENEVAN, BIS HOP S\ AND DOUAl BIBLES
which could fairly claim to be well abreast of the
soundest contemporary scholarship.
Apart, however, from its intrinsic merits, and from
its incidental attractions, _the introduction of the Bible
into England, from the point of view of its authors,
was singularly opportune. Secular literature was at
this time all but unknown. Shakespeare was not
yet born. Spencer was but six years old, and Bacon
in his cradle. With the exception of the Bible, the
Prayer Book, Foxe's '^ Book of Martyrs',' and Calvin's
^^ Institutes^' it is difficult to recall a book which had
any considerable circulation. Meanwhile the habit of
Bible-reading had been steadily gaining a firm hold
upon that large and increasing section of the com-
munity to which the Genevan Bible would most forcibly
appeal.
Launched into publicity upon a flood-tide of Pro-
testant elation, it at once arrested attention and
secured respect by the prestige of its parent city,
by the renown of its sponsors, Calvin, Beza, and Knox,
the two former of whom were the best Biblical scholars
of the day, and by the known character and attainments
of those responsible for it as a revision. " In many a
house, too, it must vividly have recalled to recent exiles
the hospitalities and kindnesses which, in the dark days
of their adversity, had been extended to them on a
foreign soil.
Such, then, was the famous Genevan Bible, and there
attaches to it a twofold interest. Not only does it
constitute an important link in the chain of English
versions, but it strikes a new historical note. Con-
ITS CALVIN ISTIC COLOURING 223
sidered as a fresh rendering of the Scriptures it stands
creditably free from ecclesiastical bias. Considered as
a literary whole it has about it the character of a
Calvinist manifesto. Of the notes, those famous
"spectacles for weak eyes," probably not more than a
twentieth part could fairly be called sectarian, but their
general tone and savour are not to be mistaken. - The
contrast of " elect " and " reprobate," which is met with
throughout ; the marked omission of all the saints' days
from the calendar ; the list of Old Testament names,
selected in order to mark, in the holders of them, a
special dedication to God ; the table that directs the
reader to those passages in the Bible which seemed to
bear with most weight on the cardinal points in the
Calvinistic creed ; the characteristic distaste for all forms
of recreation and amusement, which comes out so
curiously in the heading above St Mark's account of the
murder of the Baptist, "'the inconvenience of dauncing" ;
these are a few among the many indications which
abound to show that this publication is a book with
a special purpose, a book undertaken at the instance
of a Calvinist congregation, by Calvinist scholars, for
Calvinist readers. ^
We are thus brought within sight of a new phase
in the English Reformation, and are enabled to recog-
nise the gradual approach of that internecine struggle
between Genevan and Anglican, Presbyterian and
Episcopalian, Congregationalist and Churchman, which,
if it was for a while kept in the background by the
pressure of an overmastering anxiety as to England's
very existence as an independent nation, was yet
224 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
never for one moment abandoned through the whole
reign of Elizabeth, and was destined to usher in,
under her successors, when authority had ripened into
oppression and contumacy into rebellion, the yet more
momentous conflict between political liberty and divine
right.
In Germany it had not been possible to keep
political and religious issues apart. But in England
the case was different. While all parties were practi-
cally agreed that some reformation of the abuses of the
Church was indispensable, the large majority were for
a purified Catholicism without the Pope, and a rela-
tively small minority for a reconstruction of the old
creed, and even for a new form of Church government.
The wide popularity which was so rapidly won
by the Genevan Bible had two important results. It
undermined the titular authority of the Great Bible,
which beyond all doubt was inferior to it as a transla-
tion ; and it forced Archbishop Parker into the endeavour
to supersede it by a Bible whose excellence might
deserve to be stamped with the hall-mark of Church
and State. To acquiesce in the free circulation of the
Genevan Bible, side by side not only with the Great
Bible, but with the Bibles of Coverdale and Matthew,
would have been to condone a medley of authorities
almost equivalent to spiritual chaos.
It must be borne in mind that our great Tudor
Queen, whose sagacity was always alert to discern
and recognise
" The limits of resistance, and the bounds
Determining concession,"
ELIZABETH AND THE ENGLISH BIBLE 225
differed greatly from Henry VIII. in her attitude,
during the first period of her reign, towards the current
English versions of the Scriptures. She had begun
very cautiously. Crowned according to the Romish
ritual, she daily attended mass, she is said to have
formally announced her accession to the Pope (though
this is denied by good authorities), and she listened with
affected coyness to a proposal for her hand by Philip
of Spain. A daughter rather of the Renaissance than
of the Reformation, firmly opposed to whatever she
considered dangerous to the cause of order, or to the
supremacy of the Crown, but with no strong religious
convictions of her own, Elizabeth would have no version
^^ either ahled or disabled!' She would favour neither
Papist nor Gospeller. She would be the leader of no
one section of her subjects, but, first and last, the
Queen of England.
Left to itself it was inevitable that the Genevan
should, on its merits, dethrone the Great Bible ; yet
it was plainly impossible for Convocation to erect
the Puritan book into a standard version, or to obtain
the Queen's authorisation of an annotated Bible so
undisguisedly associated with the names of Calvin,
whom she detested, and Knox, whose "^ First Blast
against the Monstrous Regiment of Women " rankled in
her mind, and whom she detested still more. Elizabeth
could not openly favour the Protestants without giving
offence to Rome, and Spain, and France. The essence
of her policy was to do her utmost to avoid war, and
in the meantime to build up a strong and united
England in the shadow of peace ; to bring about a
P
226 GENEVAN, BISHOPS\ AND DOUAI BIBLES
religious compromise under which all might fairly be
made to live, to preserve order through her bishops
and through her Court of High Commission, and to be
tolerant of anything that fell short of political faction.
With regard to Parker, his own love of uniformity,
if nothing else, would sooner or later have caused him
to address himself to a task which, if there was to be
any finality in the interpretation of and the appeal
to Scripture, must inevitably be undertaken without
delay. Accordingly, about the year 1 563-4, the Arch-
bishop set himself to organise a select revision
committee, and the version for which they became
responsible is historically known as the Bishops' Bible.
The instructions laid down for their guidance were
substantially as follows. They were to keep to the
Great Bible except where " it varieth manifestly " from
the originals. They were to set great store by the
Latin versions of Munster and Pagninus, of which the
former is often wanting in accuracy. They were to
avoid "bitter notes," and "determination in places
of controversy." Passages containing matter that
did not tend to edification, as, for example, " Gene-
alogies," were to be marked off, so that a reader
might leave them out. Words that offended good
taste were to be "expressed with more convenient
terms and phrases."
The time occupied by the work was about four
years. In October 1568 it was published, as a stately
and imposing folio, with the plain title, " The Holie
Bible, containing the Old Testament and the New''
There was no dedication, but on the title-page was a
THE BISHOPS' BIBLE 227
portrait of the Queen, in front of the Book of Joshua an
engraving of Lord Leicester in his armour, and in front
of the Psalms one of Cecil, Lord Burleigh. The division
into verses was adopted from the Genevan Bible. A
considerable space was given to tables, calendars,
almanacs, woodcuts, and maps. Parker contributed
a preface, and Cranmer's preface to the Great Bible
was reprinted. On the 5th October 1568, the Arch-
bishop, being in weak health, wrote to Cecil asking him
to present a copy to the Queen. Enclosed with it was
a private letter of dedication to her, in which reference
is made to translations ^^ which have not been laboured
in your realm, having inspersed diverse prejudicial
notes which might have been well spared" an allusion,
not too obscurely veiled, to the Genevan Bible. But
whatever she may have said in private, Elizabeth took
no public notice of the Bishops' Bible, nor did she ever
offer to give it her formal sanction and authority.
The distinguishing method of the Genevan Com-
mittee had been a system of careful and methodical
collaboration, as contrasted with the isolated labours
of the pioneers of translation. It was the Archbishop's
intention to proceed upon similar lines. He does not,
however, appear to have succeeded in providing any
adequate machinery for attuning and harmonising the
idiosyncrasies of independent contributors working in
separate fields. The consequence is that the Bishops'
Bible is a work of very uneven merit. Parker, who was
an excellent scholar himself, no doubt exercised some
general supervision as editor. But much more than
mer€ central control was needed if a cento of unrelated
228 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
parts was ever to be successfully moulded into an
organic literary whole. It would probably be unjust
to take the Bishop of Rochester, to whom -the revision
of the Psalter was in the first instance allotted, as a fair
sample of colleagues who held much stricter views of
their responsibilities ; but the principle on which he, at
any rate, avowed himself to be acting is plainly incom-
patible with honest work. " When part of a Psalm is
quoted in the New Testament," he says, " I translate
the Hebrew according to the translation thereof in the
New Testament, for the avoiding of the offence that may
rise upon divers translations."
The revisers of the Old Testament seem to have
adhered too closely to the renderings of the Great
Bible to achieve for their version any very conspicuous
independent value. Their rendering of the Apocrypha
is practically the same as that of the Great Bible,
which was based on the Latin text. But the New
Testament, as re-edited in 1572 after the pungent and
incisive criticisms of Lawrence, headmaster of Shrews-
bury, attains a much higher level, and is as remarkable
for the advance in scholarship which it exhibits, more
especially in the treatment of the Greek particles and
prepositions, as for its courageous independence. It is
the originator of many felicitous phrases which have
been perpetuated by their adoption into our Authorised
Version, such as " the middle wall of partition," " less
than the least of all saints." It surprises the reader
with an occasional quaint literalism, as in St Mark vii.
27 : " Cast it unto the little dogges " ; and again, in
I Corinthians xii. 7 : "A pricke of the fleshe," or with
INFERIORITY OF BISHOPS' BIBLE 229
an archaism such as, " He that killeth a sheep for me
knatcheth a dog," Isaiah Ixvi. 3. (Margin, " cutteth off
a dogge's necke.")
With regard to the commentary which accompanies
this Bible not much need be said. Many of the notes
are taken, and taken without acknowledgment, from the
Genevan Bible ; but the annotators have been so con-
scientiously mindful of their instructions to avoid
bitterness and controversy, that they have not un-
frequently fallen into a colourless feebleness which
scarcely rises above the level of ^^ toierabiles inepticB."
On the whole it must be admitted that the Bishops'
Bible, though strongly supported by Convocation, and
though it superseded the Great Bible in liturgical use,
has been justly ranked among the least successful of
our English versions. Its imposing appearance did
not atone for its defects. It was costly. It was
cumbersome. It did not satisfy scholars. It was ill-
suited to the general public. The editing, it must be
added, left much to be desired. The illustrations with
which the printer has been allowed to ornament some
of the initial letters belong rather to the Renaissance
than to the Reformation, and suggest a keener relish
for the Metamorphoses of Ovid than for St Paul. It is
difficult, for example, to reconcile what might fairly
be expected from due episcopal supervision with that
startling woodcut of " Leda and the Swan " which
caused the second edition of this version to be nick-
named the " Leda " Bible, and which has so unaccount-
ably been permitted to decorate the initial letter of the
Epistle to the Hebrews. After a life of some forty
230 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAl BIBLES
years, and after passing through nineteen editions, the
Bishops' Bible ceased to be printed. There is no copy
bearing a later date than 1606.
The direct descendant of the Bishops' Bible in the
line of our English versions is the King's Bible, but
there is also an English translation, largely drawn
upon by the revisers of that great work, and belonging
(at any rate, in part) to the Tudor period, which we
must now go on to describe. We refer to what is
known as the Douai Bible, the work of certain Oxford
scholars in exile from England, and having their
headquarters at one time in Flanders and at another
time in France.
The New Testament of this version has a niche of
its own in our national history. It was upon a copy
of it that Mary, Queen of Scots, on the evening before
her execution, swore a last solemn oath of innocence.
Rudely interrupted by the Earl of Kent, as swearing
a valueless oath on a false book, Mary retorted with
quiet dignity, " Does your lordship think that my oath
would be better if I swore on your translation, in
which I do not believe ? "
The Douai Bible may be described as a Roman
Catholic pendant to the Genevan Bible, Both were
produced on foreign soil. Both were from the hands
of men living in exile on account of their creed. In
both might be detected an ulterior aim beyond the
mere faithful rendering of the text. With the one is
indelibly associated the persistent endeavour of the
extreme Protestants to remodel the English Church
on the lines of Continental Calvinism ; while with the
WILLI AM ALLEN AND THE DOUAI BIBLE 231
other is historically linked the combined effort of Spain
and Rome to crush Elizabeth into subjection to the
Pope. Let us glance briefly at the circumstances
under which this Roman Catholic version was made.
On the very date of the publication of the Bishops'
Bible, the year 1568, there was founded at Douai — then
a city of Flanders, and one of the chief Continental
centres for Roman Catholic refugees from Great Britain,
— an English College. Its founder, William Allen,
belonged to an old Lancashire family, and had been
a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and a Canon of
York under Queen Mary. His fervent and untiring
zeal as an agitator against the Elizabethan settlement
of religion was rewarded in 1587 with a Cardinal's
hat, and he was even then marked out as the future
Cardinal of England, and Archbishop of Canterbury.
Allen's College was affiliated to the University of
Douai, an institution which had been established a
few years earlier by Philip the Second of Spain, with-
in whose vast dominions the city itself lay. Open to
any English Roman Catholic students who might be
seeking a college education, it was primarily designed
for the training of a disciplined body of priests, as the
possible successors in England of the moribund Marian
clergy, and as ready instruments, when opportunity
should offer, of the restoration of the wandering sheep
to the Roman fold.
Of the Jesuit missions and seminary priests of
whom we read so much during the last years of
Elizabeth's reign,* Douai was a fertile source. The
'^ Green's History^ ii., pp. 406-7.
232 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
Douai Bible, promoted by Allen himself, but actually-
translated under the superintendence of Gregory
Martin, once a fellow of St John's College, Oxford,
was published in two parts, and at an interval of
nearly thirty years. For this delay the editors were
in no respect to blame, for both Testaments had been
completed before 1582. It was occasioned, as the trans-
lators expressly state, only by the want of adequate
funds. The first volume to appear was the New
Testament, printed at Rheims in 1582,* the year as
it may be remembered which followed the execution
in London, on a charge of treason, of Campion, one
of the Jesuit emissaries either from Douai or from
Rome. The migration of Allen's College to Rheims
between the years of 1578 and 1593 was the result of
political disturbances. It was at Douai that the Old
Testament was printed in 1609-10, and it is from
Douai that the complete Bible has taken its name.
When the Rheims Testament made its appearance
in England, in 1582, the nation was passing through a
period of intense excitement. Times had indeed
changed since Elizabeth could with equanimity forbid
that any version of the Scriptures should be "■either
abled or disabled^ Twelve years had gone by since
the Vatican had declared war upon her by a bull of
* Great prominence was given to this edition owing to W.
Fulke's refutations of its Roman Catholic commentary, published
in 1589. Fulke printed the Rheims Testament and the 1572
edition of the Bishops' Bible in parallel columns, adding to each
chapter a vigorous polemic on the Rheims notes. His very
able and learned Defence of English Bible Translations is among
the Parker Society's publications. It appeared in 1583.
Cha. III.
TO THl irniSIAMS.
Chap. III.
5'7
rtrvv,tntJ!p,ilbtv»<t*,m$fthtGen,it,, utanitkt^ftJtUtfihiCariti, hthS,
fnfm : it Wbtrm tht CmtUi thtrfcrthtut «»/» M rtiina,'Tubtr thai u
Jhrmke. Sahifmith, ,t *ni alf, fruah to Cti (Viiht n almithtu^ tt <tm-
frmetbariMWardmaM, ibcu^h theniwtri btmfrwudijptrfceiUumi.
I ^e^bTRS'^^ ^^ '^" caufc, I Paul the prifoner of
i >yW^^^X^^ lEsvsChrift, foryouGcntHcs: t if
yctyouhauc heard the difpenfatjon of
the grace of God , which isgiucn me
toward you, t bccaufe according to
rcuclation the facramcnt was made
kno wen to me,as 1 hauc vvritte before
inbreifc: 7 according as you reading
may vndcrftand my vvifcdom in the rayftcric of Chrift,
J t which vnto other generations was not knovven tojhc
fonnes of men, as now it is rcuealed ro his holy Apoftles &
6 Prophets in the Spirit, t The Gentils robe coheires& con-
corporat and compaiiicipant of his promis in Chrift I e « v s
7 by thc'Gofpel : t whereof I am made a minifter according
to the gift of the grace of God.vph ich is giucn me according
8 to the operation of his power, t Tomc*theleaftof althc
faindlesisgiuenthis gracc,amongthc Genrils to cuangclizc
9 the vnfearcheablc riches of Chrift, t and to illuminate al
men what is the difpenfatio of the facramcnt hidden ^ from ^^'^' '/"
10 worldcs in God.'vvho created al things: t that the mani-
fold vvifcdom of God, may be notified to the Princes and
II Poteftats in the cclcftials by the Church, t according to the ^ ^^ ^^.^^^
'prefiniti6ofNrorldes,vvhichhema4cinChriftlESVSOur Tpon the i«
11 Lord, t In whom vvchaue affiance and acceiTe in confi- ^^;;,tV^"'
13 dencc, by the faith of him. t ''For the which caufe I defire :=chriad*'fi-
thatyou faint not in my tribulations for you, which is your [VsRift J.',Sj
plorie *^* '^ '"'* '■''
14 t For this caufc I bovvc my knees to the Father of our ^^"^A';;!'^^^^^
ij Lord I B s V s Chf ift, t of vvh om al patcrnitic in the heauens ;'«J/« '"^;?;
16 and in earth is named, t that he due you according to the „„ p,„^„ .^
riches of his gloricpo wcr 10 be fortified by his Spirit m the f^^^r^^
17 inner man. t Chrift « to dwcl by faith in yoor hartes, ,ffi ,
18 rooted nnd founded* in charitic. t thatyonmay bcableto c^Notj«th^
comprehend withal the fainftcs, vvh«iSthebredth,and v. b«cMH.
19 lenglh.and hcight.and deptb.t tokDOVV alfo the chant»c of "'^-Jj,-;:;,*-
i
BHBIMS (DOUAI) NEW TESTAMENT OF 1582.
[Face p. 233.
ITS RECEPTION IN ENGLAND 233
excommunication, and had pronounced her to be no
longer Queen. Men's minds were full to overflowing
with the awful memories of St Bartholomew, with the
butcheries of Alva, with the iniquities of the Inquisition,
with the revolt of the Netherlands. Not in England
alone, but also in Ireland and Scotland, the Jesuit
agents of Rome were hard at work in undermining
the Queen's throne. Elizabeth herself went in daily
terror of her life. Even the extreme Puritans were
held temporarily in check by the consciousness that
the fortunes of their cause were dependent on her
escape from the malignity of their common foe. From
every side the feeling was borne in upon the nation
at large that England was nearing the crisis of her
fate, and under the pressure of political peril Protest-
antism became identified with patriotism.
It is not difficult to realise the reception with which
at such a time the Rheims Testament, with its aggres-
sively Roman notes, was likely to meet. The book was
but one more addition to the signs, much too numerous
already, of the sleepless activity of the common enemy.
To harbour it was declared high treason, while through
the spies and searchers of the Government not a few
who were suspected of promoting its circulation were
brought to the torture of the rack.
Such being the circumstances under which the first
instalment of the Douai Bible made its appearance in
England, it now remains to say a few words on the
version itself
In an elaborate preface of more than twenty pages
the Roman reader receives a kind of apologetic explana-
234 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
tion of what might naturally strike him as a departure
from the principles of his Church. For the promiscuous
distribution of vernacular versions had never been in
favour with Rome, nor did she at all approve of any
private and unauthorised interpretation of the Scriptures.
It may be pointed out that even as late as the year 1844
the then Pope, Gregory XVI., true to the policy of the
Councils of Toulouse and of Trent, enjoined his " vener-
able brethren" to remove from the hands of the
faithful all " Bibles translated into the vulgar tongue."
To Protestants must the odium be left of casting,
as these Douai editors so quaintly phrase it, "the
holy to dogges and pearles to hogges." But, seeing
that false and heretical versions were being scattered
broadcast, it might not be inexpedient to reassure the
faithful by presenting them with a semi-Anglicised
Bible, well protected with a bulwark of anti-Protestant
annotations. By so doing, its editors might hope for
ever to wipe away the long standing reproach of Rome,
that, while she persistently condemned the work of
scholars outside her pale, she took no steps herself to
render their critical labours superfluous.
There are two distinguishing features in the Douai
Testament which bring it into no fanciful relation with
the Protestant versions. It is a translation, by country-
men of our own, directly from the Vulgate, though
reference is continuously made to the Greek original, as
well as to the Geneva and Bishops' Bibles ; and it is in the
highest degree intolerant and controversial in its notes.
Geddes, himself a Roman Catholic, speaks of them as
virulent, and manifestly calculated to support a
ITS UNINTELLIGIBLE RENDERINGS 235
system, not of genuine Catholicity but of Transalpine
Popery."
Under the first of these aspects we may group it with
the Wyclifife versions and with the Bible of Coverdale,
whose originals were, as he tells us, "the Douche and
the Latine," while, under its second aspect, it recalls
the methods of Tyndale and Rogers, and all of those
polemically annotated Bibles whose doctrinal sting is
mainly in their supplemental matter.
To the Latin of the Vulgate the Douai translators
were even slavishly deferential. Their translation has
accordingly one fatal, though perhaps not unintentional,
fault. Considered as a whole, it is not English, Almost
any chapter from the unmodernised editions will supply
instances of this defect. " Purge the old leaven that you
may be a new paste, as you are azyines" (i Cor. v. 7).
** He exinanited himself " (Phil. ii. 7). " Thou hast fatted my
head with oil, and my chalice inebriating how goodie it is I'
(Psalm xxiii. 5). ^^ Before your thorns did understand the
old briar : as living so in wrath he swalloweth them "
(Psalm Ivii. 10). " The Syrach owls shall answer, and
mermaids in the temples of pleasure'^ (Isaiah xiii. 22).
No man could be better aware than a scholarly
Englishman like Gregory Martin that such renderings
as these were simply barbarous. Perhaps, then, his
prevailing motive must be sought elsewhere than in
any sympathy with the wants of the average Bible-
reader. On the other hand, the Douai version has one
great merit which is wanting in our Authorised Version,
namely, that it holds fast to the principle of uniformity
in its renderings whenever this principle is not pre-
236 GENEVAN, BISHOPS', AND DOUAI BIBLES
judicial to the sense. Moreover, for serious students,
it is just the uncompromising fidelity of the translators
to their Vulgate, — which, in its New Testament, carries
us back to the old Latin rendering of Greek manu-
scripts current in the middle of the second century, —
that gives to this Rheims edition so considerable a value
for the purposes of textual criticism. But were we
under no other obligation to the editors than that they
helped to encourage a better acquaintance with Jerome's
Vulgate,* our debt to them would still be great.
For the Vulgate, though a composite work, will
always rank among the most remarkable books of the
world.f It is astonishing enough that a monk of the
West should have been able, in his cell at Bethlehem,
to carry through an undertaking of such magnitude as
a translation of the Old Testament direct from the
Hebrew, and a revision, by the aid of Greek manuscripts,
of the pre-existing Latin versions of the New Testament.
But the Vulgate has more in it than its nobility as a
translation. It is the venerable source from which the
Church has drawn the largest part of its ecclesiastical
vocabulary. Terms now so familiar as to arouse no
curiosity as to their origin, "scripture," "spirit,"
" penance," " sacrament," " communion," " salvation,"
" propitiation," " elements," " grace," " glory," " conver-
sion," "discipline," " sanctification," "congregation,"
"election," "eternity," "justification," all come from
Jerome's Bible. It is an imperishable record of that
commanding genius that could so manipulate and
* See Appendix A.
+ See Westcott, The Bible in the Church, pp. 130, 181, 191.
GRANDEUR OF THE LATIN VULGATE 237
mould the majestic but inflexible language of Rome as
to make it a fit and pliant instrument for the expression
of modes of thought, of sentiments and images, con-
ceived originally among Eastern associations and
breathed upon by an Eastern spirit. And, yet again,
while these Latin scriptures of the fourth century
provide us with a link which we could ill afford to lose,
between the Latin of classical times and the Romance
languages which are its descendants, they at the same
time serve to kindle the imagination with the memory
of those thousand years during which the Vulgate
reigned supreme, the one and only Bible of the West,
the pride and pillar of that Latin Church to which,
under the providence of God, Europe stands for ever
indebted for the preservation of her spiritual and
intellectual inheritance from the blind deluge of
Northern barbarism.
THE KING'S BIBLE
" Felix opportunitate."
" At the time when that odious style which deforms the writ-
ings of Hall and of Lord Bacon was almost universal, appeared
that stupendous work, the English Bible, a book which, if every-
thing else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to
show the whole extent of its beauty and power."
{Macaulafs Essay on Dtyden.)
"Never was a great enterprise, like the production of our
Authorised Version, carried out with less knowledge handed down
to posterity of the labourers, their method and order of working."
{Scrivener.)
" The translation of King James's time took an excellent way.
That part of the Bible was given to him who was most excellent
in such a tongue, and then they met together, and one read the
translation, the rest holding in their hands some Bible, either of
the learned tongues, or French, Spanish, Italian, etc. ; if they
found any fault, they spoke ; if not, he read on."
{Seldefis Table Talk.)
CHAPTER VIII
THE AUTHORISED VERSION
Elizabeth died in March 1603, and with the accession
of James I. we arrive at length within sight of that
monumental work which was destined not merely to
eclipse but absolutely to efface all rivals, and to enter
upon a reign which has endured unbroken for now nearly
three hundred years, and in the undimmed lustre of
which we yet live.
We need waste no words in praise of the Authorised
Version. Being but a human work, it has its own
defects, but none the less it is universally accepted as a
literary masterpiece, as the noblest and most beautiful
book in the world. All the more strange, therefore, is
it to realise that a revision which has exercised so in-
calculable an influence upon religion, upon manners,
upon literature, and upon character, should have had
its origin in something very like an accident.
The Conference of 1604 which met by the royal com-
mand on the 14th, i6th, and i8th of January at Hampton
Court, and in the very palace which had once belonged
to Wolsey, had not been called with any view to the
production of a new translation of the Bible, The sole
241 Q
242 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
object of the meeting was to consider what is known
as the "Millenary Petition." This was a petition to
the throne by the Puritan section of the national
Church. And, in presenting to the King their
statement of grievances, that which the Puritan clergy
had in mind was not the Bible, but the Prayer Book.
They asked that some alteration might be made in the
Church se/vices, so as to purify them from what they
deemed to be superstitious rites and ceremonies, such
as the sign of the cross in baptism, the use of the ring
in marriage, and the use of the surplice in church. They
further petitioned for the provision of a well-trained
ministry of preachers, and for a greater strictness in
ecclesiastical discipline.
During the latter part of Elizabeth's reign this left
wing of the English clergy had endeavoured to assert
its claims with greater and greater pertinacity. But the
endeavour had not been successful. The Queen had
looked to her bishops to keep order, and if they showed
themselves reluctant to face opposition, they soon dis-
covered that they had a Tudor sovereign to reckon
with. Grindal, for example, who was Parker's successor,
was vindictively forced into retirement from his office,
because he approved of the Puritan " prophesy ings,"*
while his Mistress did not. No pressure of events,
not even the ominous gathering of the storm-
clouds which were before long to burst over England
in the Spanish Armada, had power to move the
Guardian of the middle way from her settled
policy of solidarity. In 1583 she made Whitgift
* Page 221.
KING JAMES AND PURITANISM 243
Primate, Puritan though he was in creed, in the
belief that he would prove himself to be a strong
Churchman in government. In 1593 the non-conform-
ing Puritans followed their consciences into banishment,
and Whitgift was left free to devote his energies to the
advancement of learning among the clergy, and to the
reform of the ecclesiastical Courts.
When Presbyterian Scotland sent her King to
occupy the vacant throne of England, the baffled hopes
of Calvinism revived once more. The recent course of
events in Europe had made the Puritans profoundly
anxious. The Reformation had received a very serious
check, and so far from carrying all before them its
upholders were with difficulty even holding their own.
Unless England herself stood firm to the cause of Pro-
testantism, there was a very imminent danger that the
Counter- Reformation would win the day, and that the
blood of the Marian martyrs might prove after all to
have been shed in vain. The accession of James thus
found this Calvinist branch of the Church of England
in a gloomy and despondent mood. Yet it seemed to
them not impossible that with the new King the tide
might be about to turn. If the Roman Catholics might
fairly hope for something at the hands of the son of
the late Queen of Scots, their religious opponents were
not likely to forget the Northern Solomon's speech
to the General Assembly in 1 590. " As for our neigh-
bour kirk in England," James had protested, "zV is an
evil-said Mass in English^ wanting nothing but the lift-
ings."
But if James had thus seemed to befriend the
244 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
Kirk in 1 590, he had written his " Basilikon Ddron " in
support of the divine right of Kings only a few years
later, and in that royal composition Presbyterianism
had been very roughly handled,
Elizabeth's mind was secular and political, so that
religious questions had in themselves little or no
interest for her, but James was a born theologian.
From his childhood he had been devoted to the study
of the Bible. He had written a paraphrase of the
Book of Revelation. He had translated parts of the
Psalter. His conversation savoured always of scriptural
allusions and scriptural phrases. If Calvinism had not
had Presbyterianism standing close behind it, he would
have welcomed it with open arms. But he had seen far
too much of Presbyterianism in Scotland, and its iron
had entered too deeply into his soul, for him to be at
all eager to renew acquaintance with it. A thorough-
going Stuart in character, his belief in kingcraft and
in divine right was as fervent as his belief in him-
self. He had all the Tudor wilfulness without any of
the Tudor sagacity. He would not have forgotten that
it was not very long ago that Andrew Melvil had dared
to call him " God's silly vassal " to his face. An obse-
quious prelate was far more to his liking than a blunt
kirk-minister, and absolutism than popular government.
Now that he was no longer weak and helpless, he hailed
the opportunity of trampling on his old tormentors and
of inhaling the sweet-smelling incense of episcopal
adulation. A wiser and a more far-seeing King
would have made the most of the opportunity now
oflfered him of throwing oil on the ecclesiastical waters
THE HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE 245
of discord, but unfortunately James was as short-sighted
as he was foolish.
Such was the character of the man who summoned
the Hampton Court Conference. The Petition of the
malcontents, as has been remarked above, was silent on
the subject of the English Bible. In point of fact the
Calvinists would have been sufficiently content with the
Genevan and the Anglicans with the Bishops' Bible.
And it is a fact not without some significance that Dr
Reynolds, the learned President of Corpus College,
Oxford, and the spokesman of the moderate Puritans, did
not even improvise his request for a fresh revision until
well on in the second day of the meeting, by which time
it had become obvious, if indeed any real doubt could
have existed on the subject from the very beginning,
that the Puritan representations would receive very scanty
consideration. A useful sidelight is thrown upon the
matter by the Preface to the Authorised Version. The
translators there write as follows : —
"The very historical truth is, that upon the importunate
petitions of the Puritans, the Conference at Hampton Court
having been appointed for hearing their complaints, when by
force of reason they were put from all other grounds, they had
recourse at the last to this shift, that they could not with good
conscience subscribe to the Communion Book {i.e., the Prayer
Book), since it maintained the Bible as it was there translated,
which was, as they said, a most corrupted translation. And
although this was judged to be but a very poor and empty shift,
yet even hereupon did His Majesty begin to bethink himself of
the good that might ensue by a new translation, and presently
after gave orders for this translation which is now presented unto
thee."
The instances of mis-translation which Reynolds
246 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
quoted were taken from the Great Bible and from the
Bishops' Bible. In the current Genevan version the
passages were correctly rendered. Presumably, there-
fore, the point which Reynolds wished to make was
that either the maligned Genevan Bible, which was
correct, ought to be given precedence over the official
Bibles, which were incorrect, or else that there should
be one more effort made in the field of translation.
James is reported to have "professed that he could
never yet see a Bible well translated in English, but
the worst of all his majesty thought the Geneva to be"
Now the Dean of Chester, Dr Barlow, is our chief
authority for what passed between the King and the
Conference, and his account may probably be accepted
as substantially correct. After a grumble from the
Bishop of London that " if every man's humour should
be followed there would be no end of translating," the
Dean's narrative goes on in these words : —
"Whereupon his highness wished that some especial pains
should be taken for one uniform translation, professing that he
could never yet see a Bible well translated in English, but the
worst of all his Majesty thought the Geneva to be, and this to
be done by the best learned in both the universities, after them
to be reviewed by the bishops and the chief learned of the church :
from them to be presented to the Privy Council ; and lastly to
be ratified by his royal authority, and so this whole church to be
bound unto it and none other. Marry withal he gave this caveat,
upon a word cast out by my Lord of London, that no marginal
notes should be added, having found in them which are annexed
to the Geneva translation, which he saw in a Bible given him by
an English lady^ some notes very partial, untrue, seditious, and
savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits, support-
ing his opinion by Exod. i. 19, where the marginal note alloweth
disobedience unto the King, and 2 Chron. xv. 16, where the note
taxeth Asa for deposing his mother only and not killing her."
JAMES AND THE GENEVAN BIBLE 247
James's own idea of a Conference at which he was
by way of playing the part of an impartial arbitrator,
may fairly be gathered from the expression which he
used in describing it to a friend in Scotland, and which
is in full harmony with his favourite maxim of "no
Bishop no King," " / have kept a revel with the Puritans"
he writes, " and have peppered them soundly" An un-
guarded sentence which fell from one of the speakers,
as to " district meetings " for the purpose of discussing
ecclesiastical questions, seemed so suggestive of Presby-
terian methods that it threw the royal president into a
fury. " No," he cried, " for then Jack and Tom and
Will and Dick shall meet and censure me and my
Government. Stay, I pray you, Dr Reynolds, for one
seven years before you ask that of me, and if then you
find me pursy, and fat, and my windpipes stuffed,
perhaps I will hearken unto you, for let that Govern-
ment be once up I am sure I shall be kept in breath.
Scottish Presbytery agreeth as well with monarchy as
God and the Devil."
No wonder that the bishops were in ecstasies, and
that Bancroft gave thanks to heaven upon his knees
for "the singular mercy of such a King as, since
Christ, the like had not been seen." But it is difficult
to believe that, in one particular, James can have been
rightly reported, for the really astonishing mendacious-
ness involved in the reference which is said to have
been made by him to the Genevan Bible is such as
to cause "credulity to hesitate, and fancy to stare
aghast." Even for the King it must have required
a strong effort to affect a merely incidental acquaint-
248 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
ance with a Bible with which, in point of fact, he had
been only too painfully familiar ever since he was a
boy, which had been preached into him every day for
years and years, the text of which he had used for his
own erudite expositions, a Bible, moreover, which had
been printed in Scotland, and expressly dedicated to
him not thirty years before. Indeed it was just be-
cause he knew this Genevan version so well that he
had so strong a political aversion to it, and he can
hardly have expected even the most servile of his
courtiers to believe in his little story of the kind lady's
present. Still we cannot but feel thankful for the
happy chance through which the request put forward
by Reynolds, possibly as a forlorn hope, was left to
the decision not of the bishops but of the King, and
of a King such as was James I. Had the Puritan
been a past-master of diplomacy he could not have
made a more skilful move. Except for the theolo-
gical richness of the soil on which his Bible-seed
happened by good fortune to fall, it seems more
than likely that the last suggestion of the brow-beaten
minority would have shared the fate of the Millenary
Petition as a whole. And what that fate was appears
plainly enough from the character of the Book of
Canons of 1604, which embodied the practical reply of
Church and Crown to the petitioners. Had so great
a misfortune befallen our ancestors of the seventeenth
century, England might have remained up to this very
day distracted by the conflicting claims of rival ver-
sions of the Scriptures, and we might even now be
calling out, in the spirit of the Corinthian converts of
COMMITTEE OF TRANSLATORS 249
St Paul, " I am of Tyndale," " I am of Coverdale," " I
am of Geneva."
When the Conference was dismissed, no one could
have had any idea that James intended to adopt a
proposal which seems rather to have been extemporised
as a happy thought than deliberately formulated as one
of the articles of the Petition. But Reynold's request
had fallen on no unwilling ear, and it laid hold at once
upon the King's imagination. He well knew that
in the last thirty or forty years substantial progress had
been made in Greek and Hebrew scholarship. The
notion of directing in his own royal person a great
national enterprise such as the production of a trans-
lation, which, while surpassing all its predecessors in
fidelity and in literary excellence, should also be
freed from the disfigurement of undesirable anno-
tations, was as gratifying both to his self-confi-
dence and to his vanity as it was thoroughly con-
genial to his tastes. The business was not allowed to
sleep. By the 22nd of July 1604, which is the date
of his letter to Bancroft on the subject, all the main
preliminaries appear to have been settled, and the
scheme was fairly launched.
The first practical step had naturally been to select
a competent committee of revisers. Most probably
the King, whose whole heart was in the matter, con-
sulted both Bancroft and the Universities, but to whom
the ultimate decision was entrusted is uncertain. It
is evident, from what is known of the names on the list
which has come down to us, that all possible pains were
taken to secure the services of the best available men.
25© THE AUTHORISED VERSION
The only qualification which was held to be indispens-
able was that the revisers should be Biblical students
of proved capacity, Puritan Churchmen and Anglican
Churchmen, linguists and theologians, laymen and
divines, worked harmoniously side by side. Fifty-four
of the most prominent scholars appear to have been
originally selected to constitute the committee, but the
lists that have come down to us include the names of
only forty-seven. Why this was so we have no informa-
tion, nor has any satisfactory explanation of the dis-
crepancy been hitherto offered. What, however, is of
more importance is that the appointments were in no
case lightly made, but that the utmost care and catho-
licity of mind was exercised in the matter. To this
statement there is, it must be admitted, one conspicuous
exception. Hugh Broughton was probably the greatest
Hebraist of the time, but he was a man of such un-
governable temper, and one so impossible to work with,
that his co-operation was not invited.
The revisers were organised in six companies. Two
of these held their meetings at Oxford, two at Cam-
bridge, two at Westminster. The representative of the
Puritans at Hampton Court, Dr Reynolds, one of the
foremost scholars of the day, was on the Oxford
committee, and among his colleagues was Dr Miles
Smith, who "had Hebrew at his finger ends," and
was, moreover, one of the final supervisors and the
author of the very interesting and instructive pre-
face which, though there is no room for it in our over-
crowded Bibles, was prefixed to the completed work
in 1611.
ALLOTMENT OF THE WORK 251
To each of the six companies a certain portion of
the Bible was allotted to work upon. Their common
basis was the Bishops' version of 1568. In respect of
text, the revisers were practically no better off than the
bishops. What is usually called the " Received " text,
is, technically speaking, of later date, for in the case of
the Old Testament that text is the edition of Van
der Hooght, published in Amsterdam in 1705, and in
the case of the New Testament the Elzevir edition of
1625. Still, to all intents and purposes, a text nearly
identical with this " Received " text forms the basis of
the Bishops' Bible.
In the absence of a standard edition of the Scrip-
tures of the Old Testament there were at least
three Hebrew Bibles to which reference could be made,
without including either the great Rabbinical Bible of
1 5 19 and 1525, or the Complutensian and Antwerp
Polyglots. With regard to the New Testament, the
companies appear not to have confined themselves
exclusively to any one existing text, but to have made
use of much the same materials as were accessible to
Tyndale, and to have attached also great weight to the
modifications which had been introduced by Beza into
the texts of Erasmus and of Henry Stephens. In
fact they consulted every version, whether English,
Latin, French, Italian, German, or Spanish, which they
found in circulation at the time, and were largely in-
debted to the Genevan Bible, to the Rheims New
Testament, to Pagninus, Miinster, and to the Tre-
nellius-Junius translation of a somewhat later date.
The necessary preliminaries once arranged, the
252 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
next step was to provide for such expenses as were
involved in the cost of travelling and of maintenance,
and also for the remuneration of those serving on the
committee. A code of instructions was at the same
time drawn up for their guidance, explaining the
main principles on which the revision was to be con-
ducted. The raising of the money which was needed
proved to be a task of considerable difficulty, and a
source accordingly of vexatious delay. Gold was of
much account in the palace of the English Solomon,
and the demand for it persistently exceeded the supply.
James was without doubt greatly interested in bring-
ing to a successful issue the enterprise which he had
initiated, but contributions towards it in cash were
beyond him, and the response to his invitations for
pecuniary support was unfortunately by no means
cordial. Eventually the universities were directed to
supply board and lodging for the committees located
with them, private donations did something for those
at Westminster, and for the most part the revisers
found their ultimate reward in ecclesiastical prefer-
ment.
The instructions to which reference has been made
appear on the whole to have been admirably conceived,
and a copy of them was presented to each of the six
companies. They ran as follows : —
1. The ordinary Bible read in the Church, commonly called the
Bishops' Bible, to be followed, and as little altered as the truth of
the original will admit.
2. The names of the prophets and the holy writers with the other
names of the text, to be retained as nigh as may be, accordingly as
they were vulgarly used.
INSTRUCTIONS TO THE COMPANIES 253
3. The old ecclesiastical words to be kept, viz., the word church
not to be translated congregation, etc.
4. When a word hath divers significations, that to be kept
which hath been most commonly used by the most ancient fathers,
being agreeable to the propriety of the place and the analogy of
the faith.
5. The division of the chapters to be altered either not at all or
as little as may be, if necessity so require.
6. No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the
explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words which cannot, with-
out some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the
text.
7. Such quotations of places to be marginally set down as shall
serve for the fit reference of one Scripture to another.
8. Every particular man of each company to take the same
chapter or chapters : and having translated or amended them
severally by himself where he thinketh good, all to meet together,
confer what they have done, and agree for their parts what shall
stand.
g. As any one company hath dispatched any one book in this
manner, they shall send it to the rest to be considered of
seriously and judiciously, for his Majesty is very careful in this
point.
10. If any company, upon the review of the book so sent, doubt
or diflfer upon any place, to send them word thereof, note the
place, and withall send the reasons : to which if they consent not,
the difference to be compounded at the general meeting, which
is to be of the chief persons of each company at the end of the
work.
11. When any place of special obscurity is doubted of, letters
to be directed by authority to be sent to any learned man in the land
for his judgment.
12. Letters to be sent from every bishop to the rest of his
clergy, admonishing them of this translation in hand, and to move
and charge as many as being skilful in the tongues, and having
taken pains in that kind, to send his particular observations to the
company either at Westminster, Cambridge, or Oxford.
13. The directors in each company to be the Deans of West-
minster and Chester for that place, and the King's professors in
Hebrew or Greek in either University.
14. These translations to be used when they agree better with
254 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
the text than the Bishops' Bible : Tindale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's,
Whitchurch's,* Geneva.
15. Three or four of the most ancient and grave divines in
either of the universities, not employed in translating, to be assigned
by the Vice- Chancellor upon conference with the rest of the Heads
to be overseers of the translations, as well Hebrew as Greek, for
the better observation of the fourth rule above specified.
Thus each company, so soon as they had collectively
completed their version of any one book out of the
number of those for which they were responsible, would
send a transcript of it to each of the other five companies
for their independent criticism, so that every part of the
work would go through the hands of the whole body of
the revisers. Under this arrangement each individual
translator would, to begin with, have made his own
translation, and this translation would have been con-
sidered by the entire company to which he belonged.
Having reached this stage, that particular company's
suggested version would be passed on for the separate
judgment of each of the other five companies, and the
version, as thus amended, would come finally before the
select committee of revision, for which provision was
made in Rule 10.
How far the above rules were adhered to as a
matter of fact we cannot tell. Almost all that is
known as to the procedure in detail is confined to the
statements made in the Preface,-f- a document which,
but for its length, might well be printed in our Bibles
with far greater edification for the reader than he is
* I.e., the 1 549 Folio reprint of the Great Bible,
t A reprint of this Preface can be procured for a nominal price
from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
IMPORTANCE OF ORGANISED CO-OPERATION 255
likely to derive from the servile " Dedication " which
has been so carefully reproduced for his benefit.
It is evident from the code of instructions that
the central principle of the undertaking, as in the
case of the Genevan Bible, was the principle of organised
co-operation. Only by such a method, combined with
an interchange of completed work, can harmony, even-
ness, and unity of tone be even hoped for, and the
special gifts of individual revisers be made to sub-
serve the general purpose of the collective body. It
is supposed that some three years were spent in
arranging for the payment of expenses, in the individual
study of the text, and in labours of an anticipatory
character, three more in organised and joint work,
and a brief nine months in a final revision in London
by the representative committee of six, each of whom
received as his remuneration thirty pounds from the
Company of Stationers.
In 161 1 the Authorised Version, a folio volume in
black-letter type, was issued to the public. It had no
notes, and the interpretation of it was therefore left
perfectly free. The title-page speaks of the version as
a " translation," and it bears the familiar words " ap-
pointed to be read in churches." But in point of fact
the King's Bible is one of a long chain of revisions,
and no evidence is forthcoming to show that any
formal appointment as to its liturgical use was ever
made whether by the King or by Parliament,
by Convocation or the Privy Council. In any case
none was necessary. Not by any means all at once,
but gradually and slowly, this grand work took up
256 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
the position to which it was entitled by its intrinsic
merits, a position from which, as the Bible of the
people, it does not seem as yet likely to be dislodged*
Including what are called "portions" it has already
been translated into something like four hundred
different languages and dialects, and not less than
three million copies of it are now year by year poured
out from the English Press. In sober earnest may we
say that " its sound has gone forth into all lands, and
its words unto the ends of the world."
The revisers had indeed good reason to rejoice in
the result of their labours. They had devised for the
jewel entrusted to them a suitable setting, and had
succeeded in giving to their Bible an excellence of form
that was worthy of its substance. Avoiding both the
euphuisms of the age before them, and the affected
mannerisms of the age that was just beginning, they
had now once and for ever rendered permanent that
consecrated diction and phraseology, vigorous, popular,
and idiomatic, which had come down to them by a
long tradition, which had been in process of formation
from Wycliffe onwards, and which Tyndale and Cover-
dale had adopted, cherished, and brought well nigh to
perfection. They had clothed the sacred Scriptures in
a language as appropriately distinctive to them as are
the languages of philosophy, of medicine, and of law,
and had made them to be an abiding anthology of what-
* The University Presses still sell, year by year, fully ten times
as many copies of the Authorised as of the Revised Version. In
1899 Convocation authorised the use of the Revised Version in
churches, and a folip edition has been published for the purpose.
CAUSES FAVOURING THE TRANSLATORS 257
ever is most beautiful in that Saxon inheritance of
which we are all proud.
But this goodly company of scholars were at the
same time well aware that though much had been
done much would yet remain to do. They were the
last men to claim finality for their work. The world
does not stand still, nor did knowledge complete its
course in the seventeenth century of our era. In
point of sheer literary excellence it is indeed hardly con-
ceivable that the Bible of 161 1 will ever be surpassed,
and it was accordingly on other lines that prospects of
improvement were at a later date to open out. But to
this aspect of the subject we shall return by-and-by in
our next and concluding chapter. The description
which has been given of the evolution of our Authorised
Version may now perhaps best be completed by a
consideration of the happy conjunction of circumstances
to which its unique greatness is in part at any rate to
be ascribed.
(i) In the first place, then, the King's Bible was in-
debted for its success to the personal qualifications of the
revisers. They were the picked scholars and linguists
of their day. They were also men of profound and
unaffected piety. Let them speak for themselves.
" In what sort did these assemble .-* In the trust of their own
knowledge, or of their sharpness of wit, or deepness of judgment ?
At no hand. They trusted in Him that hath the key of David,
opening and no man shutting ; they prayed to the Lord, O let Thy
Scriptures be my pure delight ; let me not be deceived in them,
neither let me deceive by them. In this confidence and with this
devotion did they assemble together." *
* The quotations are from the Preface to the Authorised
Version.
258 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
They spared no pains to make their work as perfect
as they could.
" Neither did we think (it) much to consult the translators or
commentators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek or Latin ; no, nor
the Spanish, French, ItaHan, or Dutch ; neither did we disdain to
revise that which we had done, and to bring back to the anvil that
which we had hammered^
They were not the slaves but the masters of the
rules which had been framed for their guidance.
"Is the kingdom of God become words and syllables? Why
should we be in bondage to them if we may be free ? "
They never for a moment lost sight of the all-
important fact that the English Bible must be a book
not for an inner circle of trained scholars or theologians,
but for the common people, and for ordinary men
and ordinary women.
"We have, on the one side, avoided the scrupulosity of the
Puritanes who leave the old ecclesiastical words, as when they
put washing iox baptism^ and congregation instead of church; as
also on the other side we have shunned the obscurity of the
Papists, that since they must needs translate the Bible, yet by
the language thereof it may be kept from being understood. But
we desire that the Scripture may be understood even of the very
vulgar."
From this point of view the predominance of Saxon
words in this verson is very remarkable. As compared
with Latin words they actually constitute some nine-
tenths of it. In Shakespeare the proportion is approxi-
mately eighty-five per cent, in Swift ninety, in Johnsor
seventy-five, in Gibbon seventy. In the Lord's Prayei
no less than fifty-nine words out of sixty-five are o
Saxon origin.
HEIRS TO A CENTURY OF LABOUR 259
(2) Secondly, James's revisers felt themselves occu-
pied in a great national undertaking, promoted with the
utmost eagerness by the King himself, and supported
by the full concurrence and approval of Church and
State. It is scarcely necessary to invite attention to
the contrast of such a position with the uphill struggles
of a pioneer such as Tyndale, working in isolation as
a lonely exile under the ban of the authorities, and in
almost daily expectation of martyrdom.
(3) Thirdly, they had ready to hand the rich results
of nearly a century of diligent and unintermittent
labour in the field of Biblical study. The great lines
which were to be followed had long since been marked
out by Wycliffe, Tyndale, and Coverdale, while useful
sidelights could be derived from the Latin and modern
translations above enumerated. It is very essential to
bear this consideration in mind if we are to take a
just view of the literary style of our Authorised Version.
For its diction goes back at least as far as Henry VIII.
Those to whom it was entrusted were appointed not to
translate " de novo " but to revise. And for this purpose
they had before them the text of the Bishops' Bible,
itself a revison of the Great Bible, which again, through
" Matthew's " Bible, had been a revision of Tyndale and
Coverdale.
" Truly we never thought to make a new translation, nor yet to
make of a bad one a good one, but to make a good one better, or
out of many good ones one principal good one."
If any one still feels a doubt on this matter we
would invite him to do two things. Let him compare
26o THE AUTHORISED VERSION
the style of the Preface with the style of the Authorised
Version, and then let him compare the latter with
Tyndale's translation, say of the Gospels. He will
probably be sufficiently satisfied that our Biblical
phraseology was, in the main, the inheritance of the
revisers and not their creation, and he will be ready
to adopt their own explicit declaration when they
affirm that the end at which they aimed was, that,
out of the plenteous store of translations into various
tongues, and out of the greatly enriched vocabulary
at their command, they might ''make the good
better^
(4) We pass on now to endeavour to indicate one
further advantage which was enjoyed by the scholars
and divines whose relation to their time it is so desirable
that we should adequately appreciate, and which we may
perhaps describe as a certain congeniality of religious
climate. Their own sympathies were in perfect touch
with the new-born religious enthusiasm that surrounded
them. There is perhaps no better way of realising this
subtle influence than through a mental comparison of
our own age with theirs. Why is it, for example, that
the great architects of the Middle Ages could design
and build a Gothic Cathedral, while our latter-day
architects cannot? Why is it that the faces which
looked down on Fra Angelico have now withdrawn
themselves from our sight ? Why is it that we derive
from the prayers and collects of Cranmer's translation
an impression so totally different from that which is
made upon our minds by the laboured and self-con-
scious efforts of our nineteenth century divines in their
THEY BREATHED A RELIGIOUS AIR 261
cx:casional excursions into the field of devotional com-
position? If only we could formulate some adequate
solution of these problems, we should have taken a
long step towards the comprehension of the suggested
contrast.
It is in any case a fact of history that the main
interest of King James's age was as predominantly
theological as the main interest of our age is
predominantly scientific. "Theology rules there,"
Grotius wrote of England in 161 3, and a like impres-
sion was recorded by the great scholar Casaubon
after a brief visit to "the wisest fool in Christendom."
The change was due to the extraordinary moral effect
produced by the popularisation of the Bible, an effect
which we see taking literary shape both in Milton and
in Bunyan. Nor can it have escaped the observation
of any one who takes an interest in his times that a
corresponding change has long been developing itself
with us owing to the popularisation of physical science.
Then the civilisation of England was saturated with
religion. Now it is saturated with evolution. Then it
was, so to speak, face to face with the Creator. Now
it is immersed in the study of His creation. Then
every one talked and thought theology. Now every
one talks and thinks science. We wear, for general
purposes, the conventional garb of Christianity, and
in our sympathetic instincts and humanitarian morals
there breathes a true Christian spirit ; but we take
our dogmas, so far as we take any at all, rather from
the pulpits of science than from those of theology;
while between our everyday modes of thought, belief,
i62 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
and expression, and those of an orthodox text-book,
there would appear to be no inconsiderable a contrast.
The reflex influences of this difference of intellectual
habit must not be ignored even though they may defy
any verbal definition. Revisers are as human as their
fellow men, and consciously or unconsciously they
become affected by the spirit of their age.
The religious movement to which we are inviting
attention, as bearing upon the general mental tempera-
mer^t of the early seventeenth century, was soon to
come into conflict with general culture through the
development of a narrowing Puritanism. But the con-
flict had not yet begun. Far from being estranged the
one from the other, religion and culture were as yet firm
friends, and their friendship is well illustrated by the
life and poetry of Milton. The movement dates back
from the time when the Great Bible was first ordered
to be set up in Churches.
"The whole moral effect," writes Green,* "which is produced
nowadays by the religious newspaper, the tract, the essay, the
lecture, the missionary report, the sermon, was then produced by
the Bible alone . . . Sunday after Sunday, day after day, the crowds
that gathered round Bonner's Bibles in the nave of St Paul's or the
family group that hung on the words of the Geneva Bible in the
devotional exercises at home, were leavened with a new literature.
Legends and annals, war-song and psalm, state-rolls and bio-
graphies, the mighty voices of prophets, the parables of evangelists,
stories of mission journeys, of perils by the sea and among the
heathen, philosophic arguments, apocalyptic visions, all were flung
broadcast over minds unoccupied by any rival learning."
Thus much, then, in explanation of the " religious
* A Short History of the English People, p. 449.
CO-OPERATIVE METHOD OF WORK 263
climate " whose sunshine streamed down on the King's
translators, and made them to feel of good cheer.
(5) Full weight must also be given to the benefit
which, as we have seen already, their enterprise derived
from that organised system of co-operative work which
had borne such good fruit in the Genevan Bible of 1560.
The organisation no doubt fell short of perfection. It
was a mistake, for instance, to divide the Books of the
New Testament between the Oxford and Westminster
Committees, and to reserve so short a time for the task
of final revision. But all things considered, the plan
was well conceived, and although the machinery
might have been improved upon, it could never have
completely eliminated the personal equation, the in-
herent inequality of men's mental endowments. While
on the whole, therefore, our Bible is characterised
above all preceding versions by unity of tone, it is not
by any means an entirely homogeneous work, nor
would any competent judge attempt to claim for the
translation of the Epistles the same high standard
of excellence which marks the translation of the
Pentateuch, the Psalter, or the Prophets.
(6) There still remains one last consideration, last
in sequence, but most assuredly not last in importance,
to which we desire to devote a few words.
Regard has been had above both to the great
intellectual eminence, and also to the devout earnest-
ness and absorption in their task, which characterised
the King's Committee ; to their grasp of the full national
significance of the work entrusted to them ; to the rich-
ness of material and tradition which they inherited ; to
264 THE A UTHORISED VERSION
the sympathetic religious temper of the times ; and to
the well-planned arrangements under which every part
of the revision was executed, interchanged, and super-
vised. But above and around all this we have to
remember the wonderfully stimulating power of the
literary atmosphere which it was the great good
fortune of our translators to breathe, an atmosphere
which helped to nourish and to foster in them their
lofty sense of style, and to inspire them with their
marvellous sureness of artistic touch.
The last decade of the sixteenth century had
witnessed an outburst of genius, whether in poetry, in
the drama, or in prose, to which it would indeed be
difficult to find a parallel. The names of Shakespeare,
Marlowe, Spenser, Hooker, Chapman, Bacon, Jonson,
Sidney, and, may we not add, of the author of a work
which Froude has called " the prose epic of the modern
English nation," Richard Hakluyt, form a galaxy of
greatness before which we can only bow our heads.
There had been long years of preparation. Beneath
the surface of the entire Tudor period may be felt the
pulsations of a widespread intellectual restlessness
and fermentation which heralded the advent of an out-
pouring of creative inspiration that fairly takes away
our breath. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth vast
spiritual forces had been ceaselessly at work refashion-
ing, transforming, fertilising the minds of men. For a
while the black clouds of national peril overshadowed
and shrouded their activity. But for a while only.
Their hidden influence was not abated, and their
agency continued operative. The intellectual force
THE INSPIRATION OF A GREAT PERIOD 265
of the Renaissance, the moral and religious force of the
Reformation, the social and political force of a newly-
realised and an ever-increasing sense of national unity
and greatness, the economic force of rapidly expanding
wealth, all these vitalising powers had been silently
transfiguring the old England of Catholicism and
Feudalism into the England that was to be. With
the execution of Mary Stuart and the repulse of the
Armada, the darkness rolled away. A terrible danger,
nerving and bracing the whole community into strenuous
effort, gave place all at once to an indescribable sense of
relief As it had been in Greece after Marathon, Platasa,
and Salamis, so was it in this land of ours when the
Spaniard spread his sails and fled away. Suddenly,
almost as if by magic, the world of literature was seen
bursting into loveliest blossom, and the national lan-
guage clothing itself in strength, in richness, and in
power. Not in one department of mental activity alone,
but in every quarter, there arose a consciousness of
quickened life and of boundless possibilities. The
excitement, the hope, the buoyancy, the aspiration, the
intensity of a nation renewing its youth, roused every
faculty into a varied and many-sided alertness. It
was in some such air as this that the translators
of the King's Bible lived and moved and had their
being.
And as the glory of those great years passed into
their souls, so too did the inspiration of their originals
distil itself into their pens, so that they were enabled
to build up for their successors an English Bible, which,
with all the imperfections which were inseparable from
266 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
the incompleteness of their critical resources and from
the limitations of human nature, will always be held in
veneration as our noblest literary memorial of a splendid
and heroic age.
In the next and concluding chapter we shall proceed
to consider the causes which made it necessary once
more to return to the old work of revision, and we shall
endeavour to render intelligible to ordinary readers the
main features in the problem with which our revisers
were confronted.
But before entering upon this last stage in our
journey, it may be of advantage to cast a farewell
glance over the thousand years which lie stretched
between the crowning work of King James's reign and
the first landing of the Italian mission on the shores
of Kent.
Once again, then, let us lay stress upon the fact
that the dominant feature in the external history of the
English Bible is its essential nationality. It is because
we are Englishmen that we feel the full power of its
appeal. It is the close touch which its evolution has
maintained with the national development and growth
which gives to its annals their peculiarly distinctive
character. Our conversion to Christianity we largely
owe to the religious enthusiasm and the single-hearted
self-devotion of the Celt. Where Rome had tried and
failed, there lona and Lindisfarne tried again and suc-
ceeded, so that while the mission of Augustine can
only point to the permanent conversion of Kent, it
is the glory of Aidan that he may claim to have
converted England. Our ecclesiastical organisation,
A RECAPITULATION 267
discipline, and unity, we owe to the imperial genius
of Rome.
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento :
Hse tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.
" Thine, O Roman, remember, to reign over every race ;
These be thine arts, thy glories, the ways of peace to proclaim,
Mercy to show to the fallen, the proud with battle to tame."
{jEneid, vi. 850. Bowen's Translation.)
But it is neither to Celt nor to Roman that we owe
our national Bible. That is a gift which England
received at the hands of her own children. Differing
in this respect from the vernacular versions of the
Continent, the English Bible is not the exclusive work
of any one man, as the German Bible is the work of
Luther, but the continuous growth of generations.
Great as he is, Tyndale is but the foremost figure
among a succession of men whose Biblical labours
extend over nearly a hundred years, men whom the
irresistible spell of the " Divine Library " has con-
strained into its loving service, men who were ready
to lay down their life to give the Scriptures in their
integrity to their fellow-countrymen. And, as one
generation has handed on the torch to another, our
Bible has continued to assimilate the intellectual
progress of the nation. Its record is interwoven with
our native instincts of independence, of freedom, of
personal religion. It is the true child of our ancestral
Teutonism, a genuine home growth, stamped on every
page of its history with our indelible Saxon character.
268 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
Moreover, as we have endeavoured to show, this
Bible carries us back, in its earliest origins, far beyond
Tyndale and the Reformation era, since it was in
Anglo-Saxon soil that it first took permanent root.
If the Anglo-Saxon period is more fertile in fragmen-
tary versions and paraphrases than the period of the
Papal Supremacy, may it not be because the English
Church then enjoyed a temporary spontaneity of develop-
ment, a power of living her own life as the religious
expression of the nation, which was lost to her when she
had exchanged her liberty for tutelage, and had passed
under the centralising and imperial influence of Rome ?
And as with the Saxon period so is it with the faint
foreshadowings of a Saxon Bible. While Northumbria
was the eye of England and her one centre of intel-
lectual light, the saintly Abbess of Whitby, so happily
named " Beacon Bay," made her religious house to be
not merely a school of theology but the cradle of
English literature. Here it was that, under the gentle
guidance of the royal " Mother," as Hilda was affection-
ately called, the earliest of our poets was transformed
from a cowherd into a prophet, and became the minstrel-
herald of the Bible story. A few years later, and we
find that the four Gospels and the Psalter have been
rendered, by various hands, into the native language.
The father of English History and of English Scholar-
ship, the venerable Bede, is at the same time the oldest
of our long line of Biblical translators. Under the leaven-
ing influence of Roman culture, Art steps in to pictorial-
ise on the walls of the churches the great scenes of which
Caedmon had sung to the homesteads of the hillside,
THE PRE-REFORMATION PERIOD 269
just as, at a later date, she was to dramatise them in
Miracle-Plays for the enjoyment of the more centralised
population of the towns. The most national of our
English Kings, Alfred the Great, follows eagerly in the
track of Bede and of Aldhelm. With the Norman
Conquest there comes not merely a political but a
religious change. Partly on account of the humilia-
tion of the Saxon tongue, the popularisation of the
Bible receives a sudden and prolonged check. The
energies of the Latin Church concentrate themselves
upon the necessary task of organisation and discipline,
and the Scriptures seem hidden away behind the high
altar of medieval sacerdotalism. Like the sea -god
Glaucus in Plato's Republic^ they become overlaid and
incrusted with an accretion of tradition and legend that
faithfully reflects the wonder-loving and superstitious
temper of the times. The sacred Book, even in its
Latin dress, only emerges to be stretched, like a
prisoner condemned to the torture, on the pitiless
rack of the scholastic logic. In the fourteenth century
the instinct of nationality puts forth its strength,
the long-repressed vitality of the native character and
of the native tongue revives in Wyclifife, and for the
first time in our history, the Latin Vulgate of the Church
is confronted with an English Bible for the people.
But Wycliffe was born before his time, and in the next
century the returning wave all but submerges the pre-
mature religious revival, while, amid the clash of civil
war, the chime of the church bells is drowned by the
noise of drum and trumpet. At last there breaks upon the
Western world the spring morning of the Renaissance,
270 THE AUTHORISED VERSION
and following close upon the steps of the " Humanists "
the study of the Hebrew and Greek originals marks
a new departure in the field of Scripture.
Then comes the Reformation, when, launched by
Tyndale upon that angry sea, the English Bible and its
fortunes are caught up at once into the eddying and
shifting currents, and for a while all seems uncertainty.
But, with the unforbidden circulation of the Coverdale
version of 1535, the cause in whose support Tyndale
was awaiting his death in Vilvorde prison is seen to be
practically won. The martyr's dying prayer that the
King of England's eyes might be opened now so far
receives an answer that Henry's political Protestantism
carries with it the authorisation, in 1537, of a people's
Bible in the people's language. Version now follows
version in quick succession, each taking its special colour-
ing from the circumstances which gave it birth, until
the great series is closed for many generations by that
"monument more durable than brass," which, though
we owe it to the idiosyncrasies of a Stuart King,
reflects for us the full lustre of our Elizabethan
literature.
After all, however, the Authorised Version was but
the best of many revisions, and now, once more, after a
reign of nearly nine generations, its capacity of assimi-
lation has come to be tested afresh, and yet another
version has appeared to link the Victorian era with the
far-off centuries of Bede and of Alfred through the
continuity of our national Bible.
" Nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the
later thoughts are thought to be the wiser."
" Zeal to promote the common good, whether it be by devising
anything ourselves, or revising that which hath been laboured by
others, deserveth certainly much respect and esteem, but yet findeth
but cold entertainment in the world . . . and if there be any hole
left for cavil to enter (and cavil if it do not find a hole will make
one), it is sure to be misconstrued and in danger to be con-
demned."
{Pref. to Authorised Version^
"The real text of the sacred writers does not lie in any
manuscript or edition, but is dispersed in them all. 'Tis com-
petently exact in the worst MS. now extant, nor is one article of
faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in them, choose as
awkwardly as you will. . . . Make your 30,000 variations as many
more . . . even put them into the hands of a knave or a fool, and
yet with the most sinistrous and absurd choice he shall not so
disguise Christianity but that every feature of it will still be the
same."
Richard Bentley^
1713 A.D.
"In vitium ducit culpae fuga si caret arte."
"The zeal to shun mistakes may, if unchecked
By love of art, beget a new defect."
Horace — Ars Poet.
CHAPTER IX
THE WORK OF REVISION
It was pointed out* in the course of the last chapter
that in the selection of scholars to serve on the King's
Committee of Revision there had been one notable
omission. The well-known name of Hugh Broughton
had found no place in the list. In his resentment at
what he considered a personal affront Broughton lost
no time in attacking the new version with all the
petulance of wounded vanity. " Tell His Majesty," he
wrote, "that I had rather be rent in pieces with wild
horses than any such translation, by my consent, should
be urged on poor churches." Having thus passed
summary sentence on the work of the Committee, he
turned his anger on Archbishop Bancroft. In that
pungent and would-be witty style which distinguished
him, Broughton branded the Primate as the arch-
offender among the whole company ; and not obscurely
intimated that, when his mortal race was run, this
" bane of the banned croft "(!) would be found else-
where than in heaven. The world, however, passed
on its way undismayed ; Broughton's consent was dis-
♦ Page 250.
273 o
374 THE WORK OF REVISION
pensed with; and the "poor churches" faced their
biblical ordeal.
With the appearance of the King's Bible it was only
natural that there should come a pause in the work
which had been inaugurated by Tyndale in the pre-
ceding century. Scholarship had for a time spoken its
last word. The strife of parties was rapidly being
transferred from the religious to the political arena
and the Stuarts, by their fatuous attempt, under
changed circumstances, to maintain the Tudor des-
potism without the Tudor tactfulness, were hurrying
England along a path that could lead only to civil
war. But though it is not in the ferment of the
seventeenth century that we can expect to find any-
thing like a continuous history of the English Bible,
still even at this period its annals are not by any means
a blank.
The Authorised Version, let us remember, had to
begin by making its reputation against two keen com-
petitors. On the one hand there was the Bishops'
Bible, of which it was the revision, but which was
not reprinted after 1606 ; and on the other hand
there was the Genevan Bible, the Bible of home life,
which was by far the more formidable rival of the
two. Before a new translation could secure popularity
on its own intrinsic merits, it was necessary that it
should first win its way into circulation by attracting
purchasers. With this view the last comer among the
competing versions was made to appropriate and adopt
something of the external appearance of the Bibles
already familiar to the market. The figure, for ex-
QUAINT NAMES OF BIBLES 27$
ample, of Neptune with his trident and horses, was
borrowed from the Bishops' Bible, while the general
ornamentation of the title-page was borrowed from the
Genevan Bible. Thus attractively equipped, the King's
Bible started on its task of rivalry, but from the very
first it was hampered by the deplorable carelessness of
its printers, and it was only through its own excellence
that, after a sharp struggle, it came out so completely
victorious. Even the two earliest issues, namely, those
of 16 1 1, proved to be incorrect, and the so-called "he"
and " she " Bibles derive their name from the fact that,
in Ruth iii. 15, one edition reads, " and ^e went into the
city," while the other has the variant " s/ie." Passing
to better-known examples, we may instance such un-
fortunate reprints as the " Wicked" Bible of King
Charles' day, in which the seventh commandment
stands bereft of its negative ; a slip, by the way, for
which Laud inflicted on the printers a fine of ;^300 ; the
** Vinegar" Bible of 17 17, where the heading to Luke,
chap. XX., is given as " the parable of the Vinegar " ; the
" Standing Fishes " Bible ; the " Murderers " Bible ; and
the "Ears to Ear" Bible.
The King's Bible had been some forty years in
circulation when, in 1653, the Long Parliament brought
in a bill for a fresh revision. Various considerations
had combined to induce the authorities to take this
step. In part they were influenced by the fact that
many blunders had already come to light in the print-
ing, and that the new edition was accused in certain
quarters both of numerous mistranslations, and also
of ^'speaking the prelatical language!' The proposal
276 THE WORK OF REVISION
aroused considerable interest, and in 1657 a sub-
committee was appointed to take the matter practically
in hand. Several meetings were held at the house of
Lord Commissioner Whitelocke, the holder of the Great
Seal, but the dissolution of the Parliament put an end
to the matter before the committee had been able to
report.
Among the members of this committee were
Cudworth, the philosopher and theologian ; and Bryan
Walton, who was made Bishop of Chester at the
Restoration. Walton's name is well known in the
history of biblical criticism as having been the editor
of a sumptuous Polyglot Bible, to the promotion of
which Oliver Cromwell gave his cordial support. He
was also, as we believe, the earliest among English
scholars to call attention to the many discrepancies,
originating in the oversights and blunders of copyists,
which occur in the numerous MSS. of the Greek Scrip-
tures.* The study of these " various readings," as they
are usually called, belongs to the science of textual criti-
cism, and it is the development of this branch of biblical
study, whether through the discovery of fresh manu-
scripts, or through a] more searching examination of the
material already in existence, which has been mainly
instrumental in bringing about a revision of the
Authorised Version.
At the point which we have now reached it may be
* The arrival in England of the great Alexandrine Manuscript
of the fifth century, which is now in the British Museum, and which
was a present to Charles I. from the Patriarch of Constantinople,
must doubtless have given a great impulse to textual study.
THE REFORMATION AND THE BIBLE 277
well to endeavour to picture to ourselves the general
idea of the Bible which was in men's minds on the
eve of the eighteenth century, and which had to be
dislodged before philologists and critics could get a
patient hearing.
The Reformation had placed in the hands of Protes-
tants an English version of the Scriptures, based, as
regards both testaments alike, on the traditional or
"received" text. Having accomplished this it had
stopped short. Calvin, it is true, had made himself
responsible for the doctrine that these Scriptures
"shone by their own light," and in this belief the
Protestant world unhesitatingly acquiesced. To every
Puritan his Bible was the immediate utterance of God.
The modern conception of the sacred volume as a
collection of books, the majority of which have a long
literary history of editing and re-editing behind them ;
the idea that the characters and circumstances of the
inspired penman should have been permitted to mingle
with and to colour their several compositions ; — would
have been all but universally repudiated. From Genesis
to Revelation the Bible was accepted as the miraculously
preserved record of an inspiration whose operation
extended to every word, and even to every letter,
of the printed page. In the Hebrew original it was
spoken of accordingly as the Hebrew " Verity," and in
the Greek as the Greek " Verity."
In a sense, therefore, the Protestant had but ex-
changed one external authority for another. In the
place of the medieval Church he had the Scriptures ;
in the place of an infallible institution an infallible
278 THE WORK OF REVISION
document ; in the place of a tradition a printed book.
The Puritan iconoclast had himself become a biblio-
later ; and on his self-interpreting book he now leaned
with the whole weight of his religious nature.
But the scheme of compulsory godliness, for which
Cromwell's Independents were responsible, had broken
down in practice, and Puritanism, or rather its cari-
cature, was being laughed out of court by Sir Hudibras.
The world that surrounded those who accepted the
theology of the Reformers was passing more and more
under the sway of the intellectual influences set in motion
by the regeneration of scientific method through the
labours of Descartes, Bacon, and, after them, of Spinoza.
For, what the Renaissance was to letters and to art ;
and what the Reformation was to religion ; that the
abandonment of tradition for experience was to the
growth of science and to the development of knowledge.
The Great Rebellion had its true counterpart in philo-
sophy ; and the revolt of the individual citizen against
the divine right of kings found its analogue in the
revolt of the individual reason against the divine right
of authority. From this point of view, the foundation
of the Royal Society in 1660, which may be said to
have sprung from the " Novum Organon " of Bacon, was
an event of no less significance, in its own field, than
was the Petition of Right in the field of practical
politics.
Under such circumstances it was inevitable that the
spirit which, for want of a better name, we may call the
spirit of Puritanism (though it was not confined to the
Puritans), should sooner or later come into collision
VERBAL INSPIRATION AND THE DEISTS 279
with the spirit of criticism and science. At the Re-
formation there had been a moral and political in-
surrection against the Church of the Middle Ages.
The eighteenth century was to see an insurrection
against the authority of the book which had been put
in its place, and of which, in the first days of a printed
text, the earliest editions were held in almost super-
stitious veneration. Viewed under one of its aspects,
Deism, which was so prominent a feature of the
century in question, was a reaction against the narrow-
ness of the creed with which the early Reformers rested
satisfied. Admitting that Revelation had been recorded
in a documentary form, what information, the Deists
asked, could history and research give about the
record ? And what, too, had philology to say to it ? The
claims of the document should at least be presented at
the bar of reason, so that it might be seen whether the
historical foundations were strong enough to support
the theological superstructure. It was by this line of
attack that the prevalent rationalism of the age was
brought to bear on the Protestant belief in the abso-
lute self-sufficiency of the Bible, and that it served to
stimulate in various quarters the philological study of
literary origins.
We can now, perhaps, better appreciate the con-
sternation that was caused in orthodox circles by the
appearance of Bryan Walton's .Polyglot, with its dis-
quieting collection of "various readings," which the
great Puritan Divine of his day, Dr John Owen, made
the subject of his attack. To the Roman and to the
Deist the new discovery was far from unwelcome.
28o THE WORK OF REVISION
For, to the Roman, these variants were only so much
additional evidence that the Protestant book, speaking
with a voice so indistinct and so uncertain, was in no
position to make good its claim to independent authority,
but required the Church to interpret it To the Deist,
on the other hand, they were a phenomenon to which
he could triumphantly point as to something hopelessly
inconsistent with the traditional and generally accepted
belief in verbal inspiration. How, he asked, could it
any longer be reasonably maintained that the record
of Revelation, ever since the days of the original auto-
graphs, had been protected by Providence from the
vicissitudes to which the history and tradition of other
ancient manuscripts was known to have been universally
subject ?
Such being the effect produced, in opposite direc-
tions, by the publication of Walton's critical researches,
it was not very long before matters came to a crisis.
The appearance in the year 1707 of a new folio edition
of the Greek Testament, by Dr John Mill, redoubled the
alarm which had been excited by the Walton Polyglot
a few years earlier. Mill had been at work upon
this edition for fully thirty years, and the number of
various readings which it exhibited mounted up to a
total of not less than thirty thousand. The rationalists
rose at once to the bait, and Anthony Collins, one of
the deistical writers of the day, was not slow to avail
himself of what seemed to be so favourable an oppor-
tunity for scoring an advantage over the orthodox party.
In his " Discourse of Free Thinking" he accordingly
made marked reference to this parade of discrepancies
BENTLEY ON TEXTUAL CRITICISM 281
in the manuscripts, as largely fortifying the position
which, in common with his fellow controversialists,
he himself was concerned to maintain. With no
sufficient title of his own to fame, Collins would
hardly have escaped oblivion had he not succeeded in
bringing upon the field of controversy the greatest of
English scholars, and the founder amongst us of that
school of Hellenists to which Dawes and Porson sub-
sequently belonged, Richard Bentley.
In his reply to the " Discourse," Bentley made it clear
that the problem which was involved in textual criticism
was not really a theological but a literary problem. He
showed that, if the variants caused by the mistakes of
scribes and copyists, who, after all, were but flesh and
blood, were analysed as well as counted, by far the
greater part of them would be seen to be wholly in-
significant in their nature, and would leave the sub-
stantial correctness of the text of Holy Scripture
practically unaffected.* Neither faith nor morals were
in any danger, nor could a single doctrine or precept be
proved to have been in any degree jeopardised or in-
validated. So far, indeed, it may here be added, is a
high total of various readings from forming any argu-
ment against the substantial purity of the parent text,
that, the higher grows the total of variants, the more
MSS. are thereby proved to have been collated, and
* In the Introduction to the Revised Text of the New Testa-
ment by Westcott and Hort (1881), it is estimated that "the
amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation
can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire
text." This would mean less than 200 words in the entire New
Testament.
282 THE WORK OF REVISION
the broader, therefore, the inductive basis on which
the general integrity of the record stands secured
This is not the place to dwell on the great services
which Bentley rendered to this branch of philology, or
on those proposals for recovering a fourth century
text of the New Testament which have added an
additional lustre to his fame, though unfortunately he
was never able to carry them out. It is enough for our
immediate purpose to have recalled the name of the
illustrious critic who did so much to pave the way for
his successors in the field of textual research as applied
to the Bible, and whose judgment on the merits of the
contention raised by the *' Discourse " has been already
recorded on the page prefixed to the present chapter.
Others have entered into his labours ; and it is to
Bengel, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf,
Hort, Scrivener, and the late Bishop of Durham,
that we are mainly indebted for such progress as has
been made towards a purer text than it was in the
power of Erasmus and Beza, of Stephens and the
Elzevirs, to arrive at.
We have been tempted to make this brief excursion
into the long-forgotten controversies of an age "too
proud to worship and too wise to feel," in order that we
might thereby be enabled to indicate one of the main
lines, namely, the line of textual criticism, along which
biblical students have been steadily advancing during
the long years that lie between us and the Reformation.
Textual criticism, it should be said once for all, is an
inductive science whose business it is to compare and
weigh the evidence of ancient manuscripts, in order to
MACE AND HARWOOD 283
arrive at a text as nearly resembling that of the
vanished autographs as may be possible.
We pass on now to a second department of biblical
scholarship ; the department, namely, of translations.
Next in importance to a pure text is a good transla-
tion of it. Different ages, however, have had different
ideas as to the qualities in which excellence of this kind
may be held to reside, and though opinions vary as to
the merits of our latest revision, we may all unite in
profound thankfulness that our English Bible has not
been cast in any of the degenerate moulds which were
at times designed for it during the last century.
Numerous attempts were then made to improve the
Authorised Version by modernising it in a variety of
ways ; but whether they were successful or otherwise the
reader shall now have an opportunity of judging. Two
specimens will probably be amply sufficient to satisfy
any curiosity that we may have aroused, and we will
select them in part from a *^ New Testament" published
by Daniel Mace in 1729, and in part from a ^^ Literal
Translation" by Dr Harwood of Bristol in 1768. Let
us first hear Mace :
"When ye fast don't put on a dismal air as the hypocrites do"
(Matt. vi. 16).
" And the domestics slapt him on the cheeks " (Mark xiv. 65).
*' If you should respectfully say to the suit of fine clothes, Sit
you there, that's for quality ..." (James ii. 3).
" The tongue is but a small part of the body, yet how grand are
its pretentions ! A spark of fire ! What quantities of timber will
it blow into a flame" (James iii. 5, 6).
This is bad, indeed, but there is yet worse behind.
Dr Harwood may be described as a sort of Beau
284 THE WORK OF REVISION
Brummel among translators, and he works on an
ambitious plan. It is his aim, he explains, "to diffuse
over the sacred page the elegance of modern English " ;
and with this aim he has perpetrated the following
version of part of the " Magnificat " :
" My soul with reverence adores my Creator, and all my faculties
with transport join in celebrating the goodness of God, my Saviour,
who hath in so signal a manner condescended to regard my poor
and humble station."
Now that he has once yielded to the fascination of
Harwood's scriptural style the reader may appreciate a
few supplementary gems. They shall be taken from
passages which we may assume to be universally
familiar.
"A gentleman of splendid family and opulent fortune had two
sons."
" We shall not all pay the common debt of nature, but we shall
by a soft transition be changed from mortahty to immortality."
"The daughter of Herodias ... a young lady who danced
with inimitable grace and elegance."
The late Bishop of Exeter, if our memory serves
us rightly, once told a story of a certain sprightly young
deacon, who, in preaching against the advocates of
revision, startled his hearers by the contention that if
the Authorised Version was good enough for St Paul it
was good enough for him. If that deacon still lives we
should like to present him with a copy of Dr Harwood's
" Magnificat!'
It would be unjust to infer that all the attempts of
the eighteenth century in the field of translation were
on the same low level, but at the same time it would
THE RE VISION B V FIVE CLERG YMEN 285
serve no good purpose to transfer any additional
examples of them to these pages. If, however, any one
should wish to see what measure of success can be attained
in combining substantial accuracy with the charm of the
old familiar diction, we would invite him to refer to a
pioneer volume, entitled a " Revision of the Gospel of St
fohn, by Five Clergymen" the first part of which came
out in March 1857. The five contributors were Dr
Barrow, Dr Moberly, Dean Alford, Mr Humphry, and
Dr EUicott. This volume was quickly followed up
by a revision of the Pauline Epistles from the same
able hands, and in 1869 by a complete revision of
the New Testament, for which Dean Alford was alone
responsible.
But, although no authoritative revision, whether of
text or of translation, was put forward before the
present century, individual scholars had not been idle, for
private study is never seriously or permanently affected
by the shifting course of political or religious events.
While the Rationalist attacked the Puritan, and the
Evangelical the Rationalist, and the Tractarian the
Evangelical, much sound work was being done. No
small part of such work was the bringing together and
tabulation of critical material ; the examination of
many hundred Hebrew MSS. by Kennicott, De Rossi,
Davidson, and others ; and the publication of notes and
commentaries on difficult passages. It is one thing, of
course, to submit the conjectural emendations of an
individual student to the judgment of contemporary
scholars, and another thing to provide a substitute for
the Authorised Version. It is one thing, in the seclusion
286 THE WORK OF REVISION
of the study, to clear up the meaning of a sacred writer,
and another thing to convey that meaning to the
general reader in terms that skilfully conceal from him
the fact that he is being presented with a new Bible.
But nevertheless such private enterprise is of real and
lasting value. Not to go further back than two genera-
tions, the critical labours of men like Lightfoot and
Alford ; Conybeare and Howson ; Jowett and Stanley ;
Trench and the various contributors to the Speaker's
Commentary y have done not a little to render smoother
the path of the translators of a later day.
This much, then, by way of what has necessarily
been confined to a rough sketch of the three principal
fields in which the pioneers of revision had been more
or less active since the reign of James I. ; the fields,
namely, of textual criticism, of translation, and of
commentary.
Before we pass on to place before our readers the
special circumstances under which revision, so long in
the air, took a practical shape among us thirty years
ago, it is desirable to point out that, in minor details,
there had been a kind of unofficial revision going on
with respect to the Authorised Version for many
generations. The old passion for explanatory notes,
for example, found vent in an edition printed in 1649,
which revived the glosses of the Genevan Bible.
The first edition to incorporate the chronology of Arch-
bishop Ussher, and to fix the year 4004 B.C. as the date
of the Creation, was Bishop Lloyd's Bible of 1701
(London). Again, the Cambridge Bible of 1762, by
Dr Paris, and the Oxford Bible of 1769, by Dr Blayney,
ANTICIPATORY WORK 287
made very considerable changes. The chief modifica-
tions which they introduced were in the use of italics,
in punctuation, in the number of marginal references,
and, above all, in the number of marginal notes, of
which latter Dr Paris added 383 and Dr Blayney ^6,
including many on weights and measures, and on coins.
When we reflect on this process of unnoticed and
irresponsible revision, and also on the conspicuous
advance, during the last three generations, in almost
every branch of knowledge which could throw light
upon questions of biblical scholarship, it may seem
surprising that an authoritative revision should have
been delayed so late as 1870. The interval between
161 1 and 1870 is of course undeniably long if we take
it as a whole ; but directly we break it up and analyse
it the matter begins to assume a different aspect.
Let us bear in mind, then, that to the troublous years
of the Commonwealth there succeeded the conserva-
tive times of the Restoration. And if the first half of
the eighteenth century was largely occupied with con-
troversies such as that between Collins and Bentley, in
the second half of it we can see that the centre of
interest had shifted from religion to politics and econo-
mics. The great names that meet us, for example,
after those of Hume and Butler, are the names of
Burke and Adam Smith. A little later on the progres-
sive spirit again received a sudden check through the
intellectual reaction which followed the excesses of the
French Revolution. Thus it was not until the nine-
teenth century was well on its way that England began
to throw off her religious drowsiness, and that biblical
288 THE WORK OF REVISION
criticism was once more encouraged to raise its head.
From that time onward, however, there has been no
considerable relapse,* and our sluggish insular conscious-
ness has shown increasing symptoms of the literary
and scientific influences which found their way from
Germany into our midst through the philosophy of
Coleridge, and through the preaching of Carlyle.
But be this how it may, there is no question that a
powerful impulse was given to the cause of revision by
the appearance, about the middle of the present century,
of the critical texts of the New Testament published by
Tischendorf, and by our own countryman, Tregelles ;
and, again, by the startling discovery of yet another
very ancient manuscript of the entire Scriptures. This
manuscript, now known as the Codex Sinaiticus, is a
splendid Uncial of the fourth century, and was found
in the monastery of St Catherine, on Mount Sinai.
Forty-three leaves of the Old Testament were rescued
from the wastepaper basket by the keen eyes of Tischen-
dorf in 1844, and were presented by him to King
Frederick of Saxony, who deposited them in the Court
Library at Leipzig. But the monks in the meantime
had taken alarm, and it was not until 1859 that the
steward of the monastery produced, out of his private
room, a mass of loose leaves wrapped in a cloth, which
turned out to include the whole of the New Testament,
and 156 additional pages of the Old.
The Church authorities in England now began to
* In 1858 appeared '"'•The Authorised Version of the Bible ^^
(Trench) ; and in 1876 " On a Fresh Revision of the English New
Testament" (Lightfoot).
REVISION COMMITTEE 289
bestir themselves in sober earnest ; and, shortly after
the publication of Dean Alford's New Testament, the
then Bishop of Winchester, Samuel Wilberforce, sounded
the Prime Minister, Mr Gladstone, as to the appointment
of a Royal Commission, with a view to a complete
revision of the Authorised Version. The political diffi-
culties to be surmounted were, however, found to be
too great, and accordingly in February 1870 Bishop
Wilberforce brought the subject under the notice of the
Convocation of Canterbury. A Committee of both
houses of the Southern Province was consequently
formed, and directed to make a report, which they
did in the following May. The Convocation of York
was of opinion that the proposed revision was still
premature, and accordingly the Northern Province con-
tinued to stand aloof
The report of the joint Committee having been
adopted, it was next resolved that two companies should
be formed, each consisting of twenty-seven members,
the one to undertake the revision in respect of the Old
Testament, and the other in respect of the New. It was
decided also that the invitations to the leading scholars of
the United Kingdom should include Nonconformists as
well as members of the Established Church. Further-
more, the Convocation sought to obtain the co-operation
of the churches of America, and in due course two
companies, corresponding to those in England, were
organised across the water, and both sets of revisers
remained in close touch with each other throughout the
course of their labours.
The resolution passed by the Convocation of Canter-
T
290 THE WORK OF REVISION
bury, in February 1870, limited the forthcoming altera-
tions, whether in the Hebrew and Greek texts, or in the
translation of them, to ''passages where plain and clear
errors should, on due investigation, be found to exist"
The Committee also agreed to the following rules
among others :
(i) As few alterations to be made in the text as
should be found consistent with faithfulness.
(2) The expression of such alterations to be con-
fined, as far as possible, to the language of the
Authorised and earlier English Versions.
(3) The text adopted to be that for which the
evidence decidedly preponderated, and all alterations of
the traditional text to be indicated in the margin.
(This last rule, however, it was found impossible to
carry out, for reasons explained by the revisers in their
Preface.)
(4) Each Company to go over their work twice.
The decision in the first, or provisional, revision to be
by simple majorities; and in the final revision by a
majority of not less than two-thirds of those present.
Since a good deal of stress has been laid on this
rule of a two-thirds majority, as practically safe-guarding
the text from ill-considered changes, we shall venture
a few words on the subject. It may be questioned
whether the rule is quite so sound as it looks. It
would undoubtedly be so if there were as many good
textual critics present, at any given sitting, as there
were good scholars. But any one who has served on
committees is aware of the predominating influence ol
the expert, and we are all familiar with the maxim.
A MINIMUM OF ALTERATION PRESCRIBED 291
" Cuique in sud arte credendum." Take such a case,
for example, as that of a library committee, debating
as to the purchase of some special and technical book
which may recently have been published. It is very
possible that the final vote of the committee will be
unanimous, but the decision will really have rested all
the while with its expert members. Those who are
conscious of knowing less will gladly have been guided
by those who are admitted to know more. Whether
this was so among the revisers we cannot say. But
that it may have been so is far from unlikely.
Inasmuch as the Prefaces to the Revised Versions are
readily accessible to all, it is unnecessary here to go into
further detail as to the rules laid down by Convocation
and by its committee. Substantially they come to this,
that the revisers were not to alter the Authorised
Version more than was really essential in order to bring
it into harmony with admitted facts. A few incidental
points of general interest may, however, be briefly
touched upon. The expenses of the undertaking were
duly provided for in the sale of the copyright to the
Universities. The marginal references of the Authorised
Version temporarily disappeared ; but they were sub-
jected to a careful examination, and a new edition of
the Revised Version has quite recently been published
both in England and in America in which these
references, duly revised, again form a conspicuous feature.
The Old Testament Company spent fourteen years, and
the New Testament Company ten years, over their work,
the former having held nearly 800 sittings, and the
latter nearly 400. Two editions of the Greek Testa-
292 THE WORK OF REVISION
ment have been published by the Universities in order
to show what changes have been adopted in the text
The Oxford edition places the changes in the body
of the text, and the discarded readings in the foot-
notes ; while in the Cambridge edition this process is
reversed.
If we now proceed to compare the position occupied
by the revisers of 1870, sitting in the Jerusalem Chamber
at Westminster, with that of their predecessors in the
seventeenth century, the contrast will be found interest-
ing and instructive.
The committee appointed by King James were
instructed to work on the text of a Bible which was
not yet forty years old, namely, the Bishops' Version
of 1568.
Our revisers, on the other hand, were called upon to
work on a text which had been current for a period
actually longer than the entire interval which divides
Wyclifife from the first of the Stuarts.
Again, while the Bishops' Bible had never been a
success, the Authorised Version had for more than two
centuries been almost a household word.
To complete the contrast, the Bishops' Bible had
circulated side by side with its rivals, and among a
comparatively small public, of whom the majority were
unable to read. King James' Bible had circulated,
supreme and peerless, among an educated public dis-
persed all over the English-speaking world. As years
went by it had taken deeper and wider root in English
literature. Week by week it had been preached and
read aloud in the ears of millions and tens of millions.
GRAVE DIFFICULTIES OF REVISION 293
The Prayer Book, by adopting its renderings, had
re-echoed it in the Gospels, Epistles, and occasional
services of our Liturgy. Private study and private
devotion had for generations known no other Bible.
From the English press more than three million copies
had long been pouring out year after year. Since its
foundation in 1804 the British and Foreign Society
has up to the present time distributed an aggregate
(of complete Bibles and of portions) which mounts
up to the astonishing total of close upon seventy
millions.
In the face of such facts as these it is sufficiently
apparent that a reviser of yesterday finds himself con-
fronted with a task far graver than that which lay
before the reviser of three centuries ago. The responsi-
bility and difficulty of retouching so unique a master-
piece, of drawing the line between essentials and non-
essentials, and of making corresponding changes in a
book which has long since taken a whole people captive
by its beauty, can hardly be exaggerated.
Whatever, therefore, may be the ultimate verdict of
a later generation upon labours which are even now
too recent to be fairly judged, the barest honesty makes
it only fitting that these difficulties and these responsi-
bilities should, in the meantime, be freely and frankly
recognised.
The work entrusted to the revisers of 1870 falls
into two natural divisions, namely, the revision of the
text from which the Bible of 161 1 had been translated,
and the revision of the translation itself It is plain,
that, before there can be an agreement as to what
294 THE WORK OF REVISION
English words best represent the Hebrew and Greek
texts, there must be a prior agreement as to what those
Hebrew and Greek texts themselves are. But at this
point a difficulty at once arises. A critical knowledge
of manuscripts is one thing, and a gift for translation is
another thing. It is probably an understatement of the
case to say that, where twenty scholars could be named
capable of giving us a trustworthy translation, it would
be hard to name two out of the number who would
also be capable of giving us a trustworthy text.
Textual criticism is a science which can hardly be
mastered in less than a lifetime, and the number of
those in England who, in 1870, had more or less
exhausted all that it had to teach might be counted
on the fingers of one hand.
The conditions of the problem, let us add, were not
by any means the same for the Old Testament as for
the New. In the case of the Old Testament, the
revisers had practically no choice left to them.
Adequate materials for revising, with any confidence,
the traditional, or Massoretic, text are not yet in
existence. This can only be done by the help of the
ancient Versions, and the text of these Versions them-
selves leaves very much to be desired. Although no
Hebrew manuscripts have survived that are of earlier
date than the ninth century, still this traditional text
can be traced back as far as the first century. That it
has been preserved with the most scrupulous care since
the destruction of Jerusalem is not, we believe, open
to serious question. But before that time, from the
eighth century B.C. onwards, the history of the
THE OLD TESTAMENT TEXT 295
consonantal text, which in the early centuries of
the Christian era was vocalised by the Rabbis for
reading aloud in the Synagogue, is involved in much
obscurity. It appears certain, however, that the MSS.
which were before the translators of the Hebrew
Scriptures into the Greek Septuagint, for the use of the
Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria in the third century
B.C., were not in anything like complete agreement with
the MSS. from which the Scribes of the first century
A.D. made their selection out of the Temple archives
with the view of permanently fixing a standard text.
" The age and authorship of the books of the Old
Testament," writes Professor Driver, "can be deter-
mined (so far as this is possible) only upon the basis
of the internal evidence supplied by the books them-
selves ; no external evidence worthy of credit exists." *
"The state of knowledge on the subject," say the
revisers in the Preface to their Revision, "is not at
present such as to justify any attempt at an entire
reconstruction of the text, on the authority of the
Versions." This being so, and there being no other
authority available, but one course was left to them.
With here and there a few exceptions, they were
compelled to adopt the Massoretic text.
But the conditions in respect of the New Testament
are altogether different. In spite of the imposing total
to which variants of greater or less importance have
mounted up, the substantial integrity of the text is here
supported by a mass of evidence which is absolutely
♦ Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament : Second
Edition, p. xxxv.
296 THE WORK OF REVISION
overwhelming,* and of this evidence the greater portion
has been brought into existence since the date of the
Authorised Version. No Greek or Roman classic can
boast of anything at all approaching so secure a literary
foundation as the Bible, and the same remark applies
with even greater emphasis to the text of Shakespeare,
which is full of doubts and difficulties. But there is at
least one feature that is common to the Old and New
Testaments alike, and that is, that in both cases the
original autographs have long since vanished. For those
who do not believe in any providential government of the
world this loss will have no more significance than would
be admitted in the case of any other like literary mishap.
It is otherwise, however, for those who do so believe.
To speculate upon what Providence might have done
is doubtless a mere waste of time, but it is instructive
to reflect upon the facts of history. If the survival of
the ?^ctual words of the sacred writers had been essential
to the cause of religion, it is reasonable to suppose that
they would have survived. If they have been permitted
to perish, it would seem that what is really essential
* The MSS. of the New Testament, including Uncials and
Cursives, number about two thousand. The most valuable Uncials
are : —
(i) The Codex Sinaiticus, 4th century, in the Library of St
Petersburg.
(2) The Codex Vaticanus, 4th century, in the Vatican Library.
(3) The Codex Alexandrinus, 5th century, in the British Museum.
(4) The Pahmpsest of Ephraem Syrus, 5th century, in the
Biblioth^que Nationale, Paris.
(5) Codex Bezse, 6th century, at Cambridge.
The most important Versions are : —
(i) The Latin. (2) The Syriac. (3) The Egyptian.
TASK OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM 297
is not the earthen vessel, but the treasure that it con-
tained ; not the form, but the matter ; not the letter, but
the spirit and the substance. Textual critics have still
much work before them. The collation of all important
manuscripts has to be completed ; the Versions have to
be critically edited, and their languages to become the
common property of scholars ; the works of the Fathers
need both correctly printing and adequately indexing ;
the evidence of the Lectionaries has still to be exhausted,
and the Synoptical problem yet awaits solution. And
even then the most, we presume, that research can hope
to do, is to get back to within something like a distance
of two or three generations from the originals, either
through a harmony between the Old Latin and the Old
Syriac Versions, which are some two centuries older
than the most ancient of our uncial manuscripts, or by
some other means. But, assuming that this desirable
stage of progress may eventually be reached, all variants
will not even then have been eliminated, seeing that as
soon as the original manuscripts began to be copied, a
variety in the readings, whether conscious or unconscious,
unintentional or deliberate, began to occur. And in
addition to this there is the admitted fact that critics
are not yet agreed as to whether our Gospels in their
present shape can, in the strict sense of the term, be
said to have had autograph originals at all, or whether,
again, there was not more than one genuine edition of the
book of " Acts " during the lifetime of its author. These
being the general circumstances of the case, the course
which our revisers thought it wisest to adopt was prac-
tically to pin their faith to a provisional and tentative
298 THE WORK OF REVISION
text which had been supplied to them in advance. This
text, as is well known, was the outcome of the labours
of two of the highest authorities of the day, namely, the
late Dr Hort and the late Bishop of Durham, though
it had not secured the unreserved support of a fellow-
student of equal or even of higher critical attainments,
Dr Scrivener.
For the casual layman to pose as a competent judge
of the merits or demerits of this text would be trans-
parently ridiculous. It is necessary, however, to refer to
its existence because a very large proportion of the
opposition with which the RevisedjNew Testament has
been met is due to the official endorsement of the text
in question by the revisers, in their collective capacity,
without any previous and experimental circulation of it
for general criticism. To a mind which has no prejudices
on the subject, either in one direction or in another, it
seems clear that in thus accepting a text which introduces
some six thousand new readings, and which certainly
therefore cannot be accused of erring on the side of
timidity, the Committee would appear to have lost sight
of the instructions given to them by Convocation, viz.,
" to introduce as few alterations as possible " into the
text of the Authorised Version. And not only so, but
they can hardly have taken into sufficient account the
fact that their Revision was intended to take the place
of the Authorised Version as the people's Bible, and
was not intended merely for scholars who had the
means of judging more or less for themselves, and who
at any rate were cognisant of the general nature of the
problems underlying the Revision. Under such con-
THE REVISION AS A PEOPLES BIBLE 299
ditions they would perhaps better have served their
purpose if, in all cases where the traditional reading
could give a respectable account of itself, though
some reasonable doubt existed, they had offered to
the innate conservatism of the English temperament
in respect of the Authorised Version the temporary
benefit of that doubt, and had, accordingly, made not
the maxhnum but the minimum of change. Every
one, for example, would have been glad of the dis-
appearance from I John v. of the spurious text about
the three witnesses ; or of such improvements as the
substitution in Rev.* xxii. 14 of "they that wash their
robes" for "they that do His commandments " ; while,
on the other hand, of certain violent changes in the
first three Gospels, the necessity for which is not beyond
dispute, it is not every one who will be glad.
Closely connected with the subject of the text is the
subject of the margin. And here again it is desirable
to bear in mind that we are not dealing with a book
written by scholars for scholars, but with the English
Bible revised for the use of all English-speaking people.
From this homely point of view it is impossible to praise
the practice which has been adopted of bewildering
ordinary folk by leaving them to infer that they are at
liberty to make their choice between two or three or
four "ancient authorities," — authorities about which
they know just nothing whatever. Frankness and
conscientiousness are very admirable qualities, and if a
reading is in fact uncertain, no one would contend that
readers should be presented with a suggestio falsi, or
that the text should be vouched for as if it were certain.
300 THE WORK OF REVISION
But what should we think, if, when we consulted our
experts — our lawyer, let us say, or our doctor — the
one were to leave us staring at a variety of prescriptions,
each of which, as he informed us, had at some time been
known to heal some one somewhere of his sickness ; or
if the other, in his anxiety to brace us with his profes-
sional advice, were to add, as an audible aside, that
many ancient solicitors held quite a different opinion,
and that he was not prepared to contradict them ?
Mere literary laymen, and still more, the unlettered
men and women who, for various reasons, are in the
habit of reading what they can understand, and feel
thankful for, and enjoy, in their Bibles, desire to look
up to their reviser as to an expert. Such persons do
not, of course, expect infallibility. That is a gift which,
as we are all by this time aware, is not to be found
outside the Vatican. But they do wish to know what
those who have thoroughly studied the matter think
to be most probable, and with this they are prepared to
rest content. To throw three or four different readings
at their heads, and to bid them go away and choose
for themselves, is to cause them unnecessary irrita-
tion, and where they asked for bread to give them a
stone.
We pass now from the text which forms the basis
of the Revised Version, and from the unsuitability, for
the purposes of a popular Bible, of a margin one
function of which seems to be to register the con-
jectures of critics, briefly to notice and illustrate the
several classes of defects, other than wrong readings,
which were admitted on all hands to exist whether
DEFECTS IN THE AUTHORISED VERSION 301
in the Old or in the New Testament of the Bible of
1611.
As our readers are aware, it is no part of the plan
of this book to go into any detail on points of criticism,
but we may make a rough classification of these defects
under the following heads, which we will take in
sequence.
1. Mis-translations.
2. Ambiguous, inexact, or inadequate, renderings.
3. The use of terms now become obsolete.
4. Obscurities of phrase.
5. Gratuitously inconsistent renderings of the same
Greek word to the detriment of the force and meaning
of the original.
6. Renderings which are offensive to modern taste,
and which, whether in the family circle or elsewhere,
are a practical hindrance to the reading of certain
portions of the Bible aloud. On these, however, it is
unnecessary to dwell further.
(i) Mis-translations.
As an example of wrong translation we may
instance the First Lesson appointed to be read on
Christmas day, which is taken from Isaiah, chap. ix.
The prophet, it will be remembered, is contrasting the
future of those who walk according to the law with
the future of those who despise it, and who "shall
look unto the earth, and behold distress and dark-
ness, the gloom of anguish." Nevertheless, he pro-
ceeds : —
302
THE WORK OF REVISION
Authorised Version.
1. Nevertheless the dimness
shall not be such as was in her
vexation, when at the first he
lightly afflicted the land of
Zebulon and the land of
Naphtali, and afterward did
more grievously afflict her by
the way of the sea, beyond
Jordan, in Galilee of the
nations.
2. The people that walked in
darkness have seen a great
light: they that dwell in the
land of the shadow of death,
upon them hath the light
shined.
3. Thou hast multiplied the
nation and not increased the
joy : they joy before thee
according to the joy of harvest,
and as men rejoice when they
divide the spoil.
4. For thou hast broken the
yoke of his burden, and the
staff of his shoulder, the rod
of his oppressor, as in the day
of Midian.
5. For every battle of the
warrior is with confused noise,
and garments rolled in blood ;
but this shall be with burning
and fuel of fire.
Revised Version.
But there shall be no gloom
to her that was in anguish.
In the former time he brought
into contempt the land of
Zebulon and the land of
Naphtali, but in the latter
time hath he made it glorious,
by the way of the sea, beyond
Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
The people that walked in
darkness have seen a great
light : they that dwelt in the
land of the shadow of death
upon them hath the light
shined.
Thou hast multiplied the
nation, thou hast increased
their joy : they joy before thee
according to the joy in harvest,
as men rejoice when they
divide the spoil. For the yoke
of his burden, and the staff of
his shoulder, the rod of his
oppressor, thou hast broken as
in the day of Midian. For all
the annour of the armed man
in the tumult, and the garments
rolled in blood shall even be
for burning, for fuel of fire.
" Before your pots can feel
the thorns, he shall take them
away as with a whirlwind, both
living, and in his wrath." —
Psalm Iviii. 9.
"Before your pots can feel
the thorns he shall take them
away with a whirlwind, the
green and the burning alike."
COMPARISON OF RENDERINGS 303
Authorised Version. Revised Version.
"And other sheep I have, "And other sheep I have,
which are not of this fold : which are not of this fold :
them also I must bring, and them also I must bring, and
they shall hear my voice, and they shall hear my voice ; and
there shall be one fold and one they shall become one flock, one
shepherd." — John x. 16. shepherd."
"Then Paul stood in the "And Paul stood in the
midst of Mars' hill, and said, midst of the Areopagus, and
Ye men of Athens, I perceive said. Ye men of Athens in all
that in all things ye are too things I perceive that ye are
superstitious." — Acts xvii. 22. somewhat superstitious" (mar-
gin, or, religious).
With regard to the last quotation the revisers do
not appear to have much improved upon their
predecessors. We always supposed the point to be
that the earlier translators had, unnecessarily, caused
St Paul, among whose characteristics were his courtesy
and his delicacy of feeling, to begin an important
address, — and an address, moreover, delivered to an
audience, not deficient in self-esteem, — with a breach of
good manners ; so that the better sense would perhaps
be neither " too superstitious," nor yet " somewhat
superstitious," but " more than ordinarily devout." *
* The term in the original Greek means " fearing the gods."
Xenophon frequently uses it, in the good sense, as equivalent to
"religious," and it is found, too, several times so used in
Josephus.
304
THE WORK OF REVISION
(2) Ambiguous, inexact, or inadequate
renderings —
Authorised Version.
"Make to yourselves friends
of the mammon of unrighteous-
ness."— Luke xvi. 9.
"And Jesus himself began
to be about thirty years of
age." — Luke iii. 23.
"And when they had taken
up the anchors they committed
themselves unto the sea, and
loosed the rudder bands." —
Acts xxvii. 40.
" He hardened Pharaoh's
heart." — Exod. vii. 13.
" I know nothing by myself."
— Cor. iv. 4.
Revised Version.
"Make to yourselves friends
by means of the mammon of
unrighteousness."
" And Jesus himself, when he
began to teach^ was about thirty
years of age."
" And casting off the anchors,
they left them in the sea, at the
same time loosing the bands of
the rudders."
"Pharaoh's heart was har-
dened."
" I know nothing against
myself."
(3) The use of terms now become obsolete.
Under this head come such words as " habergeon,"
" wimples," " artillery " [i.e. arrows), " knops," " ouches,"
"taches," "bosses," "ambassage," " boiled,"^ " lewd " {i.e.
unlearned), " worship " {i.e. honour), and many others.
The foregoing will, however, suffice as illustrations, and
it is easy for any one to fill up the list for himself
(4) Obscurities of phrase.
In this class may properly be included such
Hebraisms as "« covenant of salt" (a friendly agree-
OBSOLETE OR OBSCURE PHRASES 305
ment), " cleanness of teeth^'' (a famine), ^^ branch and
rush " (highest and lowest), " rising early " (acting with
energy) ; or such Latinisms as ^^ prevent " (go in front
in order to assist), "rtTrt/ww^/Zt?/?" (judgment), "/«^/zVd:«"
(tax-gatherer), '^ creature^^ (any created thing, whether
animate or not).
(5) Gratuitously inconsistent renderings
of the same greek word.
In this class of defective renderings we come face to
face with a deliberate conflict of principle. The trans-
lators of 1611 admonish the reader in their Preface
that " we have not tyed ourselves to an uniformity
of phrasing, or to an identity of words." But a too
rigid uniformity is one thing and a capricious love of
variety is another, and it is difficult to understand why
when the same Greek term is repeated in the original it
should not, as a rule, be repeated in the translation ; why,
for example, that which is a " letter" in Acts xxiii., xxv.,
should become an " epistle " eight verses later, or why
what is the good old Saxon "truth" in i Tim. ii. 7,
should become the Latin " verity " later on in the self-
same verse. It is needless to say more under this head,
for the improvements introduced by the revisers pervade
their whole work and meet us at every turn.
Such, then, we believe to be fairly representative
instances of the imperfections which experience had
long since brought to light in the Authorised Version,
and we ought to add to them certain grammatical
inaccuracies in the rendering of the Greek article, tenses,
U
3o6 THE WORK OF REVISION
cases, particles, prepositions, and the like, which are too
general to need illustration.
These flaws were mainly due to two unavoidable
disadvantages which attached to the revision of the
seventeenth century. The first of these disadvantages
was that King James's scholars learnt their Greek
through grammars and lexicons which expressed them-
selves not in English but in Latin. They were accus-
tomed, in other words, to a language which lacks the
richness and the inflexions of the Greek, and which
can boast of neither a definite article nor an aorist.
Their second disadvantage was that the Greek with
which they were most familiar was classical and not
Hellenistic Greek. There is, we need hardly say, all
the difference in the world between the Greek of
Sophocles and Plato, and the Greek of the New
Testament, or of the Septuagint. The one is a native
growth ; the natural speech of the wonderful people who
brought their language to such perfection. The other is
that " common dialect " of everyday life, which was in use,
with many local varieties, throughout the kingdoms which
sprang up out of Alexander's conquests ; a dialect which
ministered to the literary needs of the many-coloured
civilisation for whose external history the Roman
Empire had prepared the framework. Greek it is, but
a degenerate Greek, standing midway between the
Greek of the LXX. and the Greek of the early Fathers ;
and largely moulded by the Hebrew genius on the one
side, and by Christian ideas and thoughts on the other.
The only fragment of the New Testament which can be
said to recall the Greek of the classical age is the brief
PURER ENGLISH OF AUTHORISED VERSION 307
introduction to the third Gospel which has been given us
by St Luke. The Jew of the first century thought in
Hebrew though he wrote in Greek ; and the whole cast
of his mind was as different from that of a Greek of
the days of Pericles as Asia Minor and Palestine were
themselves different from Greece. If due weight be
given to this twofold drawback under which the trans-
lators of 161 1 were forced by circumstances to work,
it will not excite any surprise that their successors of
1870 should have felt it no unimportant part of their
duty to bring the grammar of the new version more
into harmony with the lights and shades of their
Hellenistic original than would have been possible two
or three centuries ago.
No one, we imagine, will quarrel with them for
thus endeavouring to strengthen what was one of the
weakest points in the armour of their predecessors. And
in order to judge what measure of success they have
obtained, the fairest way is to read several chapters con-
secutively, side by side both with the Authorised Version
and with the Greek. Tried by this test the impression
left upon our own mind is that our revisers have
attempted far too much. It may readily be admitted that
they know Greek, and more especially Hellenistic Greek,
better than it was known by King James's Committee ;
but that Committee were most assuredly their masters in
Scriptural English, and were very jealous withal of the
native idiom.
Our old English Bible has come down to us redolent,
as it were, of the springtime of our language. Our new
one has hanging about it a suspicion of the midnight
3o8 THE WORK OF REVISION
lamp. Why should it not be enough if a translation
can be made to convey the meaning of the original
framed in the idiomatic manner and usage of the
translator's own tongue ? Neither Chapman's " Homer"
nor Frere's " A ristophanes" nor Worsley's " Odyssey I'
nor Jowett's '^ Plato" are literal translations, but they
recall their originals much more vividly than if they
were. Why force English into a mechanical imita-
tion of Greek instead of leaving it in all the
attractiveness of its native colouring? We shall be
slow to believe that either this or any future
Revision will take the place of the Authorised
Version, as the popular and home Bible, so long
as it concentrates so much of its strength in the
aim at what strikes us as an over-refined accuracy,
and forgets that one great secret of the success of
its forerunner was the music of its cadences and the
magic of its literary charm.
It was intended not for scholars only, but for every
one who could read, and it was intended, moreover, to
bear reading aloud. It may have failed, it doubtless
has failed, in exactly reproducing the niceties of Greek
grammar and syntax, but for all that it won, and it
has maintained, a permanent place in England's heart
as the greatest of her classics. And are we really the
losers by its lesser grammatical blemishes? The
Founder of our religion left no writings behind Him,
and even His reported sayings have come to us not
in their original Aramaic but in Greek. But, passing
downwards from Jesus Christ, is there any indication in
either the prophets, or the evangelists, or the apostles,
GRAMMATICAL PURISM MA Y BE OVERDONE 309
that they attached a vital importance, not merely to the
turn of their every phrase, but to every mood, and to
every tense, and to every particle ? It is not, surely, the
impression which is given us by St Paul, whose amanu-
ensis must often have been sore put to it to keep pace
with the surging torrent of the Apostle's eloquence
when under the stress of strong emotion. Nor is it
what we gather from the story of Jeremiah's roll of
prophecies, which, after some twenty or thirty years from
their delivery, he had committed to writing, and which
King Jehoiakim in his anger cut up into shreds and
burnt. For so far was the prophet from regarding the
loss as irreparable, or the precise wording of his message
from having any mystical value attaching to it, that he
dictated a fresh version to Baruch, his scribe, or private
secretary, and added to his new edition "many like
words."
It must be freely admitted that the exact degree
of faithfulness which best befits a translation of the
Bible is a subject on which there is much to be said,
and to be said, moreover, from more than one point
of view. Our revisers, therefore, are at least as fully
entitled to their own convictions on the matter as are
the less erudite readers of their version. For our
own part, however, we cannot help wishing that they
had adhered more conscientiously to the unambiguous
instructions of Convocation as to the avoidance of all
" unnecessary " changes.
For there seems to be a very widespread feeling
abroad that many changes have been made by them
which were not really necessary at all. Let us
3IO ' THE WORK OF REVISION
justify this feeling by a few out of a whole multitude of
available examples. Was it necessary in Gen. ii. 2
to read '* finished " for " ended " ; or " rule " for " reign "
in Judges ix. 2 ; or " unto " for " to " ; or " Isaiah the
prophet," for " the prophet Esaias " ; or " He findeth
first," for " He first findeth " ; or to make the war-horse
in the Book of Job snort "Aha" instead of " Ha ha,"
Job xxxix. 25? For what reason is "thrown down"
better than " cast down " in Luke iv. 29 ; or " fastening
their eyes," than " looking steadfastly " in Acts vi. 15;
or ''the lust," ''the sin," than "lust," "sin," in James
i. 15; or " love " than " charity " in the famous passage in
St Paul?
But it is easy enough for any one to make extracts
to suit his own arguments and his own views. The
fairer way, as was before remarked, is to read out loud
some considerable portion of the Revision as a continuous
whole, and to compare it carefully with the Authorised
Version, bearing always in mind the rule laid down
by Convocation that nothing was to be altered un-
necessarily. If the result of this experiment be to satisfy
the reader that the rule has been conscientiously observed
we shall be much surprised.
Thus much we have ventured to say, respecting the
claim of the Revised Version to take the place of King
James's Edition as a Bible for the people. But our
remarks have little or no application to it as a new
critical work for a certain class of readers. As a com-
panion Bible to the one to which we are accustomed ; —
as a scholar's Bible ; — as a helpful book of reference, —
it deserves, as it seems to us, almost all the praise that
GREAT DEBT DUE TO THE REVISERS 311
can be given to it. To what extent the new readings
in the text will be recognised as good and sound fifty
years hence, we have not the technical knowledge on
which to base a judgment. But it requires no technical
knowledge to appreciate so long-deferred a boon, to take
the first modification which occurs to us, as the division
of the text into paragraphs. For the old division into
chapters and verses,* however useful the one may be for
liturgical purposes, or the other as a way of notching the
printed matter so as to square with this or that concor-
dance, often involves a grave interference with the logical
order of the original. A great improvement, too, is the
distinguishing of poetry from prose, and of quotations
from the actual words of the sacred writers. An addi-
tional benefit is the newly devised symmetry which
groups together, for example, the six " woes " in Isaiah
v., and the seven epistles in the Book of Revelation,
chaps, ii.-iii. Further, a large debt of gratitude is
due to the revisers for many mis-translations corrected ;
for faulty or obscure renderings made fuller or clearer ;
for capricious inconsistencies replaced by a uniformity
which, especially in St Paul's Epistles, is of great
assistance in following the argument or the thought ;
for obsolete terms and phrases superseded by terms and
phrases that can be understood. From all these points
of view the value of the work done will best be
appreciated by those who will take the trouble to test it
as a whole ; to compare, for example, the Book of Job,
or of Isaiah, or of Ecclesiastes, or the Apocryphal
* See note p. 218.
312 THE WORK OF REVISION
books, or St Paul's Epistles, in our Old Version and
in our New.
Our readers, however, will now be getting anxious
that these concluding remarks should not be incon-
siderately prolonged, and their anxiety is entitled to
be set at rest. We will add, therefore, but a few words
more.
Perhaps the "Authorised" will always remain the
popular Bible. In any event we do not anticipate that
its place will ever be filled by the " Revised." And if,
in conclusion, we may make bold to formulate a wish
for the success of any future Committee of Revisers, it
shall be the wish that no microbe of the Morbus Gram-
maticus shall ever infect them ; nor any epidemic of
literary fidgets harass and disquiet them ; and, lastly,
that they shall never be persuaded to devote so dis-
proportionate an amount of their sympathies to our
scholarship as to leave little or nothing over for our
literary sensibilities. Many of us have long since for-
gotten the details of our grammars. Still more of us
never knew them. But there are few indeed, whether
high or low, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, who
have not at some time or another come under the
religious and literary spell of the grand old English
Bible of the Reformation. It may be that the sensi-
bility, whose cause we plead above, should be counted
as but a pitiable weakness, and that a reviser should
look mainly to his Lexicon and his Grammar. But,
seeing how pardonable a weakness it is, we submit this
brief sketch to our readers in the pious hope that, when
next the Jerusalem Chamber is tenanted by a fresh
CONCLUSION
313
body of revisers, they may never be haunted — as we
half fear their forerunners may have been haunted — by
the ghost of the man who regretted with his last breath
that he had not consecrated his whole life to the study
of the dative case.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
THE VULGATE OF JEROME
By the term Vulgate is meant " the current edition for
the time being." It is the Latin equivalent for the
name given by the Greek Fathers to the Septuagint
Version. The earliest Latin Vulgate was what is
known as the "Old Latin" translation of the Bible,
made in the second century. As now used, the word
denotes Jerome's revision of this primitive Latin version
with regard to the books of the New Testament,
together with his original Latin translation of the
Hebrew books of the Old Testament. Jerome's work
was therefore a revision of the pre-existent Latin
version of the New Testament coupled with his own
version of the Old Testament directly from the
Hebrew.
The Vulgate in the above sense, namely, Jerome's
revision, is the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church
as pronounced " authentic " at the Council of Trent.
The following is, in outline, the history of this
composite work.
Between the middle and end of the second century
the entire Bible was translated by unknown persons
31T
3i8 THE VULGATE OF JEROME
into Latin for the benefit not of the Roman Church,
which in the first two centuries was more Greek than
Latin, but partly in order to make the Scriptures
intelligible to the Latin-speaking Church of North
Africa, and partly for the benefit of the Churches of
Spain, Gaul, and Italy. The Latin translation of the
Old Testament was from the Septuagint, The New
Testament, on the other hand, was translated from
the original Greek.
This earliest Latin translation, which is the Western
counterpart of the " Peshito," or Syriac version of the
East, goes by the name of the " Old Latin," in contrast
with Jerome's later Latin work, and it had at least
two forms or types. The one was a translation in a
rough dialect of a provincial cast, and this type
circulated in North Africa. The other was in a more
refined dialect, and circulated in Spain, Gaul, and Italy.
In the form known as the " Italic," the translation
may have been made by the Italian bishops for
home use.
The basis of the "Old Latin" was, as has been
already said, in the Old Testament the Alexandrine
edition of the Septuagint — including the Apocryphal
books which were excluded from the Hebrew Canon —
and in the New Testament such Greek manuscripts as
were accessible to the anonymous translators. These
Old Latin versions passed in their various forms of
dialect from hand to hand, but not as one complete
volume. More usually they circulated in portions, as,
for example, a roll of the Prophets, of the Psalter, or
of some one among the Epistles of St Paul.
ROMAN AND GALLICAN PSALTERS 319
By the fourth century the text of this Old Latin
version, whether in its African or in its European form,
had become exceedingly corrupt, and especially so in
those books which were in most constant demand,
namely, the Gospels. Such corruption of a text is
obviously unavoidable when copies can only be multi-
plied by hand, and when, to say the least, every copy
is thus at the mercy of those constantly recurring
mistakes, whether of eye or of ear, to which even the
most careful scribe is liable. A further source of
error was the assumption by copyists of the functions
of editors, and their consequent endeavours to improve
the text which they were copying instead of rigidly
following it.
Under these circumstances Jerome was invited by
Pope Damasus, in or about the year 382 A.D., to make
a revision of the " current edition."
Jerome began his work with the Italian type of
the Old Latin version of the New Testament. He
revised the Gospels with great care, bringing to his
assistance the best Greek MSS. that he could find, but
making only such alterations as seemed to him to be
absolutely necessary. Of the rest of the New Testa-
ment books he made a more hurried revision. These
books remained, therefore, in an inferior condition as
compared with the Gospels. He next turned to that
book of the Old Testament which has always enjoyed
the widest popularity, namely, the Psalms. His first
revision was made by collating the Old Latin with
the Septuagint. This revision became known as the
"Roman Psalter." His next revision was made with
320 THE VULGATE OF JEROME
the aid not only of the Septuagint but also of the
Hexapla of Origen. This re-revision was called the
" Galilean Psalter," and it is this version which is
printed in all Roman Catholic Bibles.
In or about the year 387 Jerome began his greatest
work, the translation from the Original Hebrew of the
entire Old Testament, and he finished it in 405. For
the reason above given, viz., that the Hebrew Canon
excludes it, this translation did not include the
Apocrypha.
Thus the Vulgate, as we know it, is far from being
a homogeneous work. It contains : —
(i) The Old Latin altogether unrevised (Apocrypha),
(2) The Old Latin cursorily revised (Acts to Revela-
tion).
(3) The Old Latin carefully revised (The Gospels),
(4) The Old Testament rendered directly from the
original Hebrew.
It is worth observing that our Prayer Book comprises
two relicts of renderings from this venerable Old Latin,
namely : —
{a) The " Benedicite," or "Song of the Three
Children," which is an apocryphal addition to Daniel
iii. 23.
{U) The Psalter, which is Coverdale's revised trans-
lation of Jerome's Galilean Psalter.
Jerome's Vulgate, it may be added, was in circulation
in England, side by side with the Old Latin, until at
least as late as the ninth century.
APPENDIX B.
wycliffe's doctrine of "dominion"*
As there is nothing more characteristic of Wycliffe
than his doctrine of divine and civil dominion, and
nothing which more embittered his ecclesiastical
opponents, some readers may be interested in a brief
sketch of a theory which lies outside the subject of
this book.
It is necessary at the outset to lay stress on three
points. First, that although Wycliffe remained in name
a Catholic to the end — there being as yet no recognised
religious standing outside the Latin Church — yet there
was always in him a strong admixture of the Predesti-
narian and of the spirit of the modern Quaker. Secondly,
that in propounding his doctrine he does not even
pretend to be making any contribution to practical
politics. And lastly, that while the doctrine logically
applies just as much to secular barons as to monks and
bishops, still, as a matter of fact, Wycliffe's eyes remain
fixed almost exclusively upon the hierarchy.
Looking round, then, on the world in which he
* This doctrine embraces the author's views on the relations
of man to God, and of the temporal to the spiritual power. It
includes, moreover, Wycliffe's theory of ecclesiastical endowments.
321 X
322 WYCLIFFE'S DOCTRINE OF '"DOMINION"
lived, Wyclifife saw certain established powers in
authority. The temporal sphere was governed by the
Emperor, the local Kings, and the barons. The
ecclesiastical sphere was controlled by the Pope, the
Papal legates, and the hierarchy.
Now the history of the Middle Ages is very largely
taken up with the inter-collision of these parallel but
jealous powers. The Empire wrestles with the Papacy,
the Papacy with the local Kings, the monks and bishops
with the barons. This rivalry for supremacy between
the temporal and spiritual powers gave rise to a
question which seems fairly to have haunted the
medieval mind, viz.," Who was the greatest?'' With
whom was it that sovereignty, or dominion, could
rightly be said to rest? In the scale of nature
who came first, the Emperor, the local King, or the
Pope? Which held the highest rank, the spiritual
order or the temporal order, the Church or the
State ?
It is to this question that Wycliffe was in part
addressing himself, but in framing his solution he
makes room in it for a justification, by the aid of
Scripture, of his instinctive antagonism to the aggres-
sions of Rome and to the exercise of extra-spiritual
powers by an endowed clergy.
Wyclifife's conception of " dominion," as of something
feudal in form and Christian in spirit, was borrowed,
like the term itself, from his predecessor at Oxford,
Richard Fitzralph, Chancellor of the University in 1333,
and subsequently Archbishop of Armagh. As defined
by Fitzralph, dominion is "lordship conditioned by
DOMINION IS CONFINED TO GOD 323
service."* But in Wycliffe's ecclesiastical laboratory so
many other ingredients are fused up with the borrowed
matter that it emerges from the crucible with an
inherent freshness and originality of its own. Among
these ingredients must be included the author's
Augustinian sense of sin and of grace, the Franciscan
ideal of "evangelical poverty," and a strong personal
conviction that the note of a true Church is the
" Imitatio Christi" simplicity of life, and the persuasive
power of pastoral earnestness.
The method by which Wycliffe proceeds is to select
a convenient text here, and a convenient text there,
taken in an isolated way and in a literal sense. This
scriptural material thus prepared is then stretched upon
the rack of the Aristotelian logic, and tortured into
compliance with the requirements of a theory whose
practical validity was probably never in any doubt in
its author's mind.
The theory itself may be abridged as follows : —
Dominion, in the strict sense of the term, belongs
not to man, but to God, Who is the Lord Paramount.
God has made no special or privileged delegation of it
either to Emperors, or to Popes, or to Kings, or to any
human authority whatever. But he has made and
does make offer of it, on certain conditions, to all His
servants alike, whether lay or clerical. An Emperor
and a King are as truly vicars of their heavenly
Sovereign in things temporal as the Pope is His vicar
in things spiritual. The condition on which the offer
is, in every case, dependent, is a due reciprocity of
* De Pauperie Salvatoris. 1354 (?)
324 WYCLIFFE'S DOCTRINE OF ''DOMINION"
service. Charity, or Love, " seeketh not her own."
The truest greatness, then, the highest human dominion,
whether for Churches or States or individuals, is to
love and serve God and man faithfully. Each man's
" dominion " is a kind of distinct spiritual fief And
between a feudal fief and a spiritual fief there is
one all-important difference. In the latter there are
no intermediary over-lords. In the ideal world of
spirit and conscience man holds directly from God.
God and man are there face to face.
But man is a fallen being. Were he sinless he would
be enabled, by a perfect life of moral obedience, to
satisfy the strict covenant of his holding. But, as
things are, he cannot of himself do this. Hence
dominion is not to be claimed by him as a matter of
right. All dominion, temporal as well as spiritual, is
founded on grace. That man, in Wycliffe's view, and
that man only, has true dominion, who, by God's grace
working in him, is enabled to live according to His
law.
Like the sage of the Stoics, Wycliffe's saint, or
perfectly righteous man, is obviously an imaginary and
ideal character. For him all things work together for
good. In his poverty he is rich, and having nothing he
yet possesses all things. In this world he may have
tribulation, but in the world of the spirit, in the sight
of God, however naked he may be of earthly advantages,
he has dominion, he is a king.
The ordinary man, on the other hand, can only have
a kind of bastard dominion, inasmuch as unrepented
sin must be held to forfeit dominion.
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL 325
In the kingdom of grace, since each man has all,
it follows necessarily that all things must be held in
common.
Outside this kingdom of grace there is no such
thing as real dominion, for it is only by a sort of moral
fiction that a man can be said to possess that of which
he does not make a proper use. Still, material posses-
sion is a practical matter of fact, and Wycliffe accord-
ingly marks it off by the distinguishing name of power.
With respect to this spurious dominion, or power.
Church and State are co-ordinate authorities. Each
within its own sphere is supreme, but the authority of
the former, which includes laity as well as clergy, is
purely spiritual, while that of the latter is coercive.
At this point of his theory Wycliffe is at much pains
to guard himself against misapprehension. Though
power is not dominion, yet it is de facto in possession,
and its claims must on no account be disregarded on
the ground that, ideally, its title is defective. The
existing social order is what it is by the sanction of
God, while force and violence can boast of no such
sanction. It follows, therefore, that all legal proprietors,
good and bad alike, ought in this world to have their
possessory title upheld. To constituted authority there
must be dutiful submission ; the ideal must bow to
the real ; or, in Wycliffe's extravagant phrase, " God
must obey the devil." But if the clerical portion of
the Church neglect their spiritual duties, or trespass
upon the province of the temporal ruler, the lay portion
— for Wycliffe is a strong defender of the priesthood of
the laity — should use the strong arm of the State to
326 WYCLIFFE'S DOCTRINE OF ''DOMINION"
reform and to disendow them, as having culpably
abused their trust.
Whatever may have been said or done by this or
that individual among the medley of political, religious,
and social malcontents who for years continued to drift
into the central current of Lollardy, no student of
Wyclifife will lay it to his charge either that he deliber-
ately closed his eyes to the practical side of things, or
that he himself felt any personal sympathy with anarchy.
Indeed, on divesting Wycliffe's doctrine of the feudal
technicalities in which he has clothed it, we find nothing
either alarming or unfamiliar about it.
The principle that all property has duties attaching
to it, as well as rights, has not a very revolutionary
ring ; nor would most men cavil at the metaphor of
stewardship as applied to the relation in which indi-
viduals stand to the gifts, whether of mind, or body,
or fortune, with which they have been endowed by
Providence. The idea is, at any rate, as old as
Lucretius, who writes of our earthly pilgrimage :
" Vitaque mancipio nuUi datur, omnibus usu."
" The fee simple of life is given to none, its usufruct to all."
(Book III., 971.)
The chief novelty and the chief danger of the theory,
in Wycliffe's presentment of it, was its extension from
the spiritual into the temporal sphere. To hold that
all men are equal in God's sight is but a commonplace
of Christianity. But it was assuredly no commonplace,
in an age which was torn asunder with rivalries and
jealousies, to maintain that, in the proprietary world
of Society and politics, no man's title to his holding
EASILY TWISTED INTO SOCIALISM 327
was sound save through the invisible operation of a
mysterious Grace. Grace is not anything which can
be apprehended by courts of law ; and a doctrine
which may be harmless enough for men who are
under the restraint of a sane and sober leader, is apt
to become highly dangerous in turbulent times when
communism is in the air. At such times what respect
was ever paid to a philosopher's safeguards and limita-
tions? If the worldliness of a well-endowed bishop
so forfeited his property that it might justly be taken
from him, and transferred, let us say, to the coffers of
his rival the baron, was the baron's own title any
better against a hungry and down-trodden peasantry?
It is the misfortune of all idealism that its cause
may be made to suffer through an untimely and in-
convenient literalism. So far as regards temporal
matters Wycliffe laboured to confine his theory to a
realm of abstractions, to a "city of God," an ideal
world whose pattern, as Plato would say, was "laid
up in heaven." As thus limited, and as thus under-
stood, it is but a harmless dream of perfection. But
it must be remembered that his poor preachers were
daily moving among an uneducated parochial clergy,
barely able to keep the wolf from the door, and
among a starving and insurgent peasantry. The
agrarian insurrection of the fourteenth century had,
as we know well, ample causes of its own ; but it
is not difficult to imagine that the local versions of
this academical and abstract theory, that all property
was held subject to " grace," may have acted here and
there as a spark to powder, and as fuel to flames.
APPENDIX C.
Some Bibles with Curious Titles
The Bug Bible. — Coverdale's translation of Psalm xci., 5, reads
thus : " Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by
night."
[The word bug, in this sense, is found in Purvey's revision
of Wycliife, Baruch vi., 69 ; in the Matthews Bible of 1551 ;
and in Shakspeare's 3 Henry VI., v., "Warwicke was a
bugge that feared us all." Compare bogy, bugaboo, bug-
bear.]
The Treacle Bible. — Jer. viii., 22 : " There is no more triacle
at Galaad." (Coverdale, 1535 ; Bishops', 1568).
The Breeches Bible. — (The Genevan. See note to page 211,
supra. The London Edition of the Genevan Bible, dated 1775,
has " aprons.")
The Place-makers Bible. — The Genevan of 1562, which in
Matt, v., 9, reads : " Blessed are the place-makers."
The Goose Bible. — The Dort Editions of the Genevan. The
Dort Press had a goose as its emblem.
The Leda Bible. — (See supra, page 229), Second Edition of
Bishops' Bible.
The He and She Bibles. — (See page 275).
The Vinegar Bible. — (See page 275).
The Murderers Bible. — So called from a misprint of
"murderers" for " murmurers " in Jude, verse 16.
The Standing Fishes Bible, 1806, where Ezek. xlvii., 10 (the
fishers shall stand beside the river) runs, " the fishes will stand
upon it."
APPENDIX D.
Bibliography
" History of Translations of the Bible and New Testament into
English.'"' J. Lewis ^ I73i> I739j 1818.
"Annals of the English Bible." C. Anderson^ 1845.
"History of the English Bible." B. T. Westcoti, 1868.
[This most valuable work is now out of print.]
"A History of the Various English Translations." /. Eadie, 1876.
" Our English Bible : Its Translations and Translators."
/, Sioughion, 1878.
"Old Bibles." Dore, 1888.
" The Bibles of England : A Plain Account for Plain People."
Edgar, 1889.
"English Versions of the Bible." /. /. Mombert, 2nd Ed., 1890.
" History of the English Bible." T. H. Paitison, 1894.
"The Old English Bible, and other Essays." Gasguei, 1897.
" Our Bible and the Ancient MSS." Kenyan, 3rd Ed., 1898.
" History of the English Bible." Moulton.
Catalogue of the John Rylands Library (in Manchester) G. Lovett.
[A grand piece of work, but not easily accessible.]
" How we got our Bible." Paterson Smith.
Baxter's " Hexapla" (with a historical introduction).
Article, " English Bible." Encyclopedia Britannica.
Bede's " Works."
"History of England during the Early and Middle Ages."
Pearson.
" History of the Middle Ages." Hallam.
" English Writers " : an attempt towards a History of English
Literature." H. Morley, 1887.
329 .
330 BIBLIOGRAPHY
' Biograph. Brit. Literaria " (Anglo-Saxon period). T. Wright.
' History of Early English Literature." Stopford Brooke, 1892.
* Dictionary of National Biography."
' Dictionary of Christian Biography."
' Scholastic Philosophy and Christian Theology." Hampden.
' Historie de la Philosophic Scholastique." Haureau, 1872-80.
' Lecture on Scholasticism." W. Shirley.
' History of England." Lingard.
' Norman Conquest." Freeman.
' History of the Papacy during the Reformation." Creighton.
' History of the Popes." Pastor.
' History of Latin Christianity." Milman.
' History of the English People," 4 vols. Green.
'Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought,
R. L. Poole, 1894.
'Medieval Church History." Trench, 1886.
' Documents Illustrative of English Church History."
Gee and Hardy, 1896.
' Versions from the Vulgate," by T. Wycliffe and his followers, 4
vols 4to. Forshall and Madden, iZ'^o.
' Fasciculi Zizaniorum." W. Shirley, 1858.
' Chronicon Anglian." 1874.
' Chronicon of H. Knighton." Books 1-4.
[Book 5 is by another hand.]
'John Wycliffe and his English Precursors." Lechler.
Translated by P. Lorimer. 2 vols. 1878.
'Wycliffe and Movements for Reform." R. L. Poole, 1889.
' Wiclif's Place in History." M. Burrows, 1882.
'Ecclesiastical Biographies." Wordsworth, 1839.
' The New English " : a sketch of the development of our language.
Oliphant.
' Age of Wycliffe." Trevelyan.
'The English Church in the 14th and 15th Centuries."
Capes, 1898.
' The Holy Roman Empire." Bryce.
' Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages." H. Rashdall, 1 895.
' Wyclif's Select English Works. T. Arnold, 1869.
'English Works of Wyclif" (with a valuable introduction).
F. D. Matthew, 1880.
" Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History."
Stubbs, 1886.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
331
Sargeant, 1893.
Parker Society.
Deniaus.
Tulloch., 1883.
Parker Society.
Foxe.
Hall.
Fuller.
Fuller.
Seebohm.
Le Clerc.
J. A. Symonds.
Froude.
Dixon.
Hook.
Parker Society.
"JohnWyclif."
" Tyndale's Works."
" Tyndale's Life."
" Luther and Other Leaders of the Reformation."
" Coverdale's Works."
" Acts and Monuments."
Wilkin's " Concilia."
" English Chronicle."
" Church History."
" English Worthies."
" Oxford Reformers."
Erasmus' "Works."
" The Renaissance."
" History of England."
" History of the Church of England."
" Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury."
" Bale's Select Works."
" Strype's Works."
" The Age of Elizabeth." Creighion.
" Fulke's Defence of English Translations."
" History of England during the 1 7th Century." Ranke {translated).
"Henry VII L" Brewer.
'' Letters and Papers of Henry VIII."
Brewer and Gairdner, 1862.
Ellis' " Original Letters." 1825-46.
" Life of Calvin." Dyer.
" History of England." Gardiner.
"The Era of the Protestant Revolution." Seebok/n, 1874.
"English Thought in the i8th Century." Leslie Stephen.
" The Authorised Version." Trench, 1858.
" On a Fresh Revision of the English New Testament."
Light/oot, 1876.
" Considerations on Revision." Ellicott.
" Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament."
Scrivener, 1874.
INDEX
^LFRIC (Abbot), translations by, 37
AlDAN, Apostle of England, 24, 119
Aldhelm (Abbot), 30
Allen (Cardinal), the Douai Bible,
231-2
Anglo - Norman, metrical para-
phrases in, 40 ; rivalry of, with
English tongue, 91
Apocrypha excluded from Hebrew
Canon, 318
Aristotle, influence of his logic in
Middle Ages, 53-4
Arundel (Archbishop), his Con-
stitutions, 100 ; persecution of
Lollards by, 113
AUGUSTINIAN Mission, the, 22
Authorised Version, account of,
241-70
Barnes, Dr Robert, an early
Reformer and Martyr, 170
Bede, the Venerable, 32-3
Bentley, Richard, controversy of,
with Collins, 281
Beza and the Genevan Bible, 222 ;
and the Authorised V^ersion, 251
Bible (see also under Coverdale,
Tyndale, etc.), English Versions
of, (a) by Wycliffe and Hereford
(1382), 98; (4) by John Purvey and
others (1388), 103 ; (c) by Wm.
Tyndale (1525-15 34, etc.), 140-50 ;
(rf) by Miles Coverdale (1535), 170-
9 ; {e) by John Rogers (Matthew)
(1537), 180-4; (/) by Taverner
(1539), 197 ; {g) by Coverdale and
others (The Great Bible, 1539),
188-97; iji) by Genevan Com-
mittee (1560), 211-25 ; (;■) by The
English Bishops (1568), 225-30;
(y) by Roman Catholic translators
(1582-1610), 230-5 ; {k) by King
James's Committee (1611), 249-
64 ; (/) by the Revisers of 1870
(1881, 1885, 1895), 288-313;
position of, in Middle Ages, 48-9,
no ; improved prospect of, under
Cranmer, 165 ; demand for an
English Version of, 167-8 ; enthu-
siastic reception of Great Bible,
196 ; curious names of certain mis-
printed editions of, 275 and
Appendix C
BISCOP, Benedict, places pictures in
English churches, 31-2
Bonner, good offices of Bishop,
with Great Bible, 189-90; at old
St Paul's. 195
Broughton, Hugh, a learned
Hebraist, 250
C^DMON, Bede's tale of, 25-9
Calvin, organising genius of,
215-16
INDEX
333
CALVINISTS.the.underHenryVIIL,
207 ; under Edward VI., 209 ;
under Elizabeth, 223 ; under
James I., 243-4
Chapters and Verses, division into,
218 {footnote)
Church, the Medieval, saved the
classics, 15 ; mission of, in Eng-
land, 16-17 ; tutelary function of,
18 ; materialistic side of, 19, 42 ;
grandeur of, 97
COCHL/EUS, the Roman spy, 143
CoLET, University lectures of, 125-6
CoMPLUTENSIAN Polyglot, the, 119
COVERDALE, Miles, early life of,
169-70 ; friendship of, with Crom-
well, 170; comparison of, with
Tyndale, 173-7; style of, 178
specimens of translation by, 179
as editor of the Great Bible, 188
flight of, to the Continent, 198
connection of, with Genevan
Bible, 213
Cranmer, Thomas, Primate, 165 ;
and the Convocation of 1534, 169 ;
and the "Matthew" Bible, 183;
and the Great Bible, 192 ; and
the Prayer Book, 196, 209 ; and
the Continental Calvinists, 207 ;
directed by Henry VIII. to alter
the Mass into a Communion, 208 ;
his martyrdom a blow to the
Marian cause, 21 1
Cromwell, Thomas, rise of, 163 ;
patron of Coverdale, 170 ; his
character, 174 ; supports the
"Matthew" Bible, 184 ; initiates
the Great Bible, 188 ; illuminated
copy presented to him, 196 ; our
ecclesiastical debt to, 201 ; and
Henry VIII., 203-6
Decalogue, King Alfred's version
of, 35
Dominion, Wycliffe's theory of,
Appendix B
DouAi, College of, 231 ; Bible,
230-6
Durham, Book of, 35
Eadfrith, Bishop, and the
Lindisfarne Gospels, 35
Edward VI., reign of, 207
Eighteenth Century, Specimens
of Biblical Translation during,
283-4
Elizabeth, Genevan Bible
dedicated to, 219 ; harshness of,
against Puritan meetings, 221 ;
ecclesiastical policy of, 224-6 ;
Roman Catholic plots against,
233
England never Romanised, 22
English language and Norman-
French, 91-2
Engraving, the Holbein, in the
Great Bible, 191-2, 201-2
Erasmus, character of, 126; his
New Testament, 127-8 ; his
" Pocket Dagger " translated by
Tyndale, 133
FORSHALL and Madden, edition of
Wycliffe Bible by, 98
Fourteenth Century, ecclesiastics
in the, 94
Gardiner, Bishop, opposed to
vernacular translation, 169 ; leads
the reaction, 197-8
Gasquet, Father, and the Wycliffe
Bible, 105 (note)
Geneva, city of, in sixteenth
century, 214-17
German philosophy and literature,
influence of, in England, 288
Gospels, early Anglo-Saxon :
Lindisfarne, 35 ; Rushworth, 37 ;
Southern, 37
334
INDEX
Gothic Bible of Ulfilas, lo
Greek, early study of, Il8;
Hellenistic contrasted with
classic, 306
Gregory the Great, and the
advance of Rome, 14
Hampton Court, Conference of,
241
Hebrew, early study of, 118;
text of Old Testament, 294-5
Henry VHI., quarrel of, with
Pope, 161-3 ; vacillating attitude
of, towards English Bible, 186-7 ;
Protestantism of, 202-3
Holbein, his engraving, 191-2,
201-2
Inquisition and the Great Bible,
189-90
Jerome and the Vulgate, 236
and Appendix A
Latimer, Hugh, 132 ; King's
Chaplain, 166; William, 135
Latin, preservation of, by the
Church, 15 ; old Latin versions
of Bible 35-6 and Appendix A
Lindisfarne Gospels, 35
Lollard, derivation of word, 112,
7iiX\A footnote
LOLLARDY, survival of, II3-15
London, Tunstall, Bishop of, 136,
147-8, 197
Luther, Theses of, 130; and
Henry VHL, 137 ; influence of, on
Tyndale, 122 ; a predestinarian,
123
LUTHERANISM, fear of, in England,
131, 146-7, 162
Marsiglio of Padua, Anti-Papalist
Schoolman and Nominalist, 82-3
Mary Tudor, reign of, 210-11
Massoretic, or traditional, text of
Old Testament, 294
Matthew, pseudonym for John
Rogers, 180
Middle Ages, central principle of
belief in, 13
Mill, Dr John (1707), his Greek
Testament, 280
Millenary Petition, the, 242
More, Sir Thomas, party of, 131 ;
his controversy with Tyndale,
155-6
Munmouth, Humphrey, and Tyn-
dale, 138-40
Nationality, centrifugal spirit of,
21 ; seeks expression in a national
language, 92
NORTHUMBRIA, the intellectual
focus of Bede's England, 9, 12 ;
breaks with Celtic Christianity,
31
Notes, marginal, in Bibles, 155,
221, 226, 229
OCKHAM, William of, 82-3
Olivetan, French Bible of, 182
Ormulum, the, 40
Oxford, University of, in Middle
Ages, 73
Paganism and Christianity in
England, 23
Papacy, growth of medieval, 14 ;
revolt against the, 67-9 ; seculari-
sation of the, 68-9 ; schism in the,
86
Parker, Archbishop, 226
Pentateuch, Tyndale's, 148-9
Pilgrimage of Grace, 204
Polyglot, (a) Complutensian, 119 ;
{h) Walton's, 279-80
Protectorate, Protestantism of
the, 209
Psalters, early, 34-41
INDEX
335
Received Text, the, 251
Renaissance, influence of the, 117
Revised Version, the, 288-313
Reynolds, Dr, proposes to James
I. a new Bible, 245
Rheims (Douai) New Testament,
232
Rogers the Martyr, Bible of, 180-3
Rome, spirit of ancient, 14 ;
abandoned by Pope for Avignon,
69
Satan, Miltonic legend of, 29
Schism, the great Papal, 86
Scholasticism and the School-
men, 47-60
Scientific method, rise of, 278-80
Septuagint, the, 10, 295, 317
Taverner, English Bible by, 197
Teutonic character, mental
features of, 29
Textual criticism, the aim of,
282, 296
Textus Receptus, the, 251
Theodore (Archbishop), organis-
ing work of, 16
Tunstall, Bishop of London, 136,
147-8, 197
Tvndale {see also under Bible),
his relation to Wycliffe, 1 1 2-1 5 ;
indignation of, at indifference of
the Church, 116; separated from
WyclifFe by the Renaissance, 117 ;
the real father of our present
English Bible, 119; character
of his work, 120; great events
comprised in his life, 123; at
Oxford, 124 ; at Cambridge,
126; at Little Sodbury, 131 ; in
London, 136; at Hamburg, 140;
at Cologne, 142 ; at Worms, 144 ;
New Testament of, smuggled
into England, 144 ; Pentateuch
translated by, 148 ; Jonah
translated by, 148 ; Martyrdom
of, at Vilvorde, 151 ; summary
of his career, 152 ; specimens of
his translation, 154; nobility of
his character, 157-8
Ulfilas, Gothic version by Bishop,
10
Various readings : meaning of
term, 276, 281
Verses and Chapters : division
into, 218 {footnote')
Versions, the three chief, 296
(^footnote)
Versions {see under Bible)
Vulgate, origin of, see Appendix
A ; medieval reverence for, 15
and 129 ; Tyndale's use of, 142 ;
Coverdale's use of, 177 ; nobility
of, 236-7 ; use of, by revisers of
1611, 251
Walton, Bishop, his Polyglot,
279-80
Whitby, Conference of, 31
Whittingham, Wm., Genevan
New Testament of, 218
WoLSEY, endeavour of, to suppress
Lutheran books, 137 ; letter of
Cochlaeus the spy to, 143 ;
prompts Henry VI I L to write
against Luther, 162 ; failure and
fall of, 163
Wycliffe {see also under Bible),
half Schoolman half modem, 63 ;
relation of, to religion and to
literature, 65 ; eminent position
of, at Oxford, 66 ; key to life of,
72 ; explanation of his influence,
72-4 ; the three stages in career
of, 72 ; early life of, 73 ; his
title of "Evangelical Doctor,"
336
INDEX
75 ; his attitude towards religion,
76, 85 ; sketch of, as the Uni-
versity Schoolman, 76 ; Latin
treatises of, on " Dominion," 78
and Appendix B ; appointed
King's Chaplain in London, 79 ;
Royal Commissioner at Bruges,
80 ; original designs of, why
frustrated, 80-2 ; effect on, of
Great Papal Schism, 86 ; in-
stitution of the Papacy attacked
by, 87 ; his denial of tran sub-
stantiation, 88 ; Bible translated
by, 88 ; expulsion of, from
Oxford, 90 ; death of, 91 ;
foundation of " Poor Preachers "
by, 94-5
XlMENES, Cardinal, and the Com-
plutensian Polyglot, ii<) {footttote)
Zurich, or Swiss-German Bible,
177
ZwiNGLI the Reformer, 202
^ OF THE
UNIVERSITY
PR1>T1U> BT OLIVER AND BOYS, KDIMBDROH
The Evolution of
the English Bible
A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE VERSIONS
By H. W. HOARE
pteee ^pmiona
THE TIMES:
" Mr Hoare . . . has read well and widely, . . . We
" cordially recommend this book for what it professes to be — an amateur
" guide to amateur students and lovers of ' the greatest of English
" ' classics and the most venerable of national heirlooms.' "
MORNING POST:
" Mr Hoare tells the story of its literary evolution in a novel as
" well as a fascinating fashion. . . . He has a deft literary touch; his
" book is brilliantly written, and will be widely read."
DAILY NEWS:
" The volume, furnished as it is with portraits and facsimiles, deserves
" to find a place in every English historical library as a sound and
" interesting piece of work."
GLASGOW HERALD:
"No work that we know of treats the subject at once with the
" same fulness of detail and the same breadth of historical outlook.
" To ministers in search of suggestions for a useful course of Bible class
" lessons or Sunday evening lectures, it ought to be specially valuable."
CHURCH TIMES:
" Carefully and sympathetically written ; its compilation has evidently
" been a labour of love. ... Mr Hoare's very full accoimt of
" Tyndale's labours is admirably written."
ROCK:
"A really engrossing volume. . . . The style is scholarly
" and lucid, and the matter well chosen and well handled."
SCOTSMAN :
" Scarcely a mere handbook. ... Mr Hoare has given us
" a book which, while overstepping the limits modestly claimed for it
" in the preface, is on this account all the more valuable as a guide."
NORTH BRITISH DAILY MAIL:
"An interesting book on what is always an interesting subject."
PRESS OPINIONS— Centinued
OUTLOOK (New York):
" Mr Hoare's treatment of the subject is felicitous from a literary
" as well as a philosophical point of view. . . . The best book on
" the subject."
OUTLOOK (London) :
"An admirable summary; should prove of abiding use to Bible
"students."
THE RECORD:
"A timely and welcome attempt to fill up what is undoubtedly a
"gap in our Biblical literature. . . . The subject matter would,
" of course, by itself appeal to our s)Tnpathy, but Mr Hoare's treatment
"of it adds, if possible, to its attractiveness. His literary style is
" bright and clear, and possesses an unusual charm ; he writes with
" scholarly finish and taste ; he has an intimate knowledge of his subject.
"... The volume is imdoubtedly a remarkable one."
DAILY CHRONICLE:
" The book is delightful. It is well conceived and well done, and
" full of good things."
ST JAMES'S GAZETTE:
"Mr Hoare has carried out with admirable thoroughness a much-
" needed undertaking."
THE CHRISTIAN WORLD:
" A most fascinating book."
THE LITERARY WORLD:
"We anticipate for The Evolution of the English Bible a hearty
" welcome in cultured homes. It is well worth reading."
ATHENiEUM :
" This interesting and spirited work."
Dr MuiR tH the EMPIRE REVIEW:
" The sacred story is told in an able and convincing manner
" fascinates the reader."
CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW:
" A model of what such a popular handbook should be."
BOOKLOVERS' LIBRARY (Philadelphia):
" Presents an excellent general survey of the development of the
" (English) Bible."
Mr W. R. Harper and Professor J. F. Genung have selected this book
as the basis of a course of reading, arranged by the Director, for 1902.
Yc roo 1 42
JUi;j8: