{■ 
 
 .1 
 
 Zbe lEngltsb SSible 
 
 A SKETCH OF ITS HISTORY 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. GEORGE MILUGAN, B.D. 
 
 CAPUTH 
 
 BS455 
 .M4,5 
 
 NfiW YORK 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 
 
 London : adam and charles black 
 
LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 DR. F.L. PATTON 
 
 
^ -- 
 
 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
tRARY 
 
 
HE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 A SKETCH OF ITS HISTORY 
 
 Rev. GEORGE MILLIGAN, B.D. 
 
 CAPUTH 
 
 NEW YORK 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 
 
 i ( LONDON : ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 Encouraged by the favour with which our series 
 of books has been received not only by those for 
 whom they were in the first instance intended, but 
 also by the general public in Great Britain and 
 America, and in the British Colonies, the Editors re- 
 quested Mr. Milligan to prepare the present volume 
 on a subject of abiding interest and instruction. 
 He has spared no pains to be both accurate and 
 readable ; and we think he has succeeded very 
 well. Inheriting the tastes of his lamented father, 
 he has long been familiar with the subject ; and 
 we commend his work as a compendious narrative 
 of the growth of the English version of the Scrip- 
 tures which has done so much to mould the speech 
 and form the character of the Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 A. H. Charteris. 
 J. A. M'Clymont. 
 
 . August 1895. 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 Previous text-books in this series have supplied 
 introductions to the Old and New Testaments 
 respectively, dealing with such questions as the 
 writers and the contents of the various books. 
 The following pages are an attempt to tell the 
 story of our own Eiiglish version^ and to indicate 
 the many ages and workers that have had a share 
 in perfecting it as a translation of the sacred text. 
 Such an inquiry is naturally connected with much 
 in the general history of our country and of its 
 language and literature which, in the prescribed 
 limits of space, it has been impossible to notice. 
 The author trusts, however, that enough has been 
 said to arouse the interest of those to whom the 
 subject is new, and to stimulate them to further 
 researches on their own behalf To aid them in 
 this he has appended a list of the books which, 
 with others mentioned in the footnotes, he has 
 himself found most useful. But above all he 
 would recommend the consulting, wherever it is 
 at all practicable, of the various editions of the 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Bible itself, as accessible in the British Museum, 
 the Euing collection of Bibles in the University 
 of Glasgow, and other great libraries. " Nowhere 
 else," it has been truly said, "does the maxim 
 ' verify your references ' apply with greater force." 
 The author desires further to express his in- 
 debtedness to the Rev. W. F. Moulton, D.D., 
 Cambridge, for many acts of personal kindness 
 connected with his work, and to the Rev. Pro- 
 fessor Cowan, D.D., of Aberdeen, the Rev. A. 
 Irvine Robertson, B.D., of Clackmannan, and 
 the Editors of the series, for assistance in the 
 revision of the proof-sheets. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 1. The Early Paraphrasts 
 
 2. John Wycliffe 
 
 3. The Wycliffite Versions . 
 
 4. William Tindale — His Life 
 
 5. William Tindale — His Work 
 
 6. William Tindale — His Influence 
 
 7. Miles Coverdale 
 
 8. Matthew's Bible — Taverner's Bible 
 
 9. The Great Bible 
 
 10. The Genevan Versions 
 
 11. The Bishops' Bible 
 
 12. The Rheims and Douai Bible 
 
 13. The Authorised Version — History of the 
 
 Undertaking ..... 
 
 14. The Authorised Version — Character of 
 
 the Text ...... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 13 
 22 
 
 31 
 
 42 
 48 
 
 57 
 66 
 
 n 
 
 88 
 98 
 
 15. The Revised Version 
 
 [08 
 
 117 
 124 
 
"Happy, and thrice happy, hath our English nation 
 bene, since God hath given learned translators to expresse 
 in our mother tongue the heavenly mysteries of His Holy 
 Word, delivered to His Church in the Hebrew and Greeke 
 languages ; who although they have, in some matters of no 
 importance unto salvation, as men bene deceived ; yet have 
 they faithfully delivered the whole substance of the heavenly 
 doctrine conteyned in the Holy Scriptures, without any 
 hereticale translations or wilfuU corruptions." 
 
 FULKE, Defence of Sincere and True 
 Translations. 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EARLY PARAPHRASTS 
 
 I. Anglo-Saxon paraphrasts — Csedmon. 2. Bede. 3. 
 King Alfred. 4. ^^Llfric. 5. Anglo - Norman ver- 
 sions — Rolle. 
 
 /^N the title-page of our English Bible there appears 
 ^-^ frequently the following note : "Translated out of 
 the original tongues, and with the former translations 
 diligently compared and revised by His Majesty's 
 special command. " We shall see the full force of these 
 words when we come to the history of our Authorised 
 Version, but in the meantime they may remind us of a 
 fact too often forgotten, that the English Bible, as we 
 have it to-day, did not spring into existence all at once. 
 It is the result of a long and continuous growth, and to 
 those who know its history bears traces of the many 
 ages and the many hands which have combined in 
 producing it. To sketch that history in what at best 
 must be imperfect outline is the aim of this text-book. 
 
 In commencing to do so the first thing that strikes 
 us is a feeling of wonder that, long though the history 
 of the English Bible has been, it has not been still 
 longer. For it is a remarkable fact that Christianity 
 and Christian ordinances had been introduced into our 
 island for many hundreds of years before the people 
 possessed the sacred Scriptures in a language which 
 they could understand. To all but the priests, and the 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 V 
 
 few learned men of those days, the Vulgate, or Latin ver- 
 sion of the Bible, was necessarily a sealed book ; and not 
 till nearly the close of the fourteenth century do we find 
 any deliberate attempt to give a complete translation of 
 it in English. Previous to this, however, various attempts 
 had been made by means of metrical versions or 
 paraphrases in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman to 
 diffuse the knowledge of parts at least of the sacred 
 writings ; and it may be well now to recall briefly the 
 most important of these as paving the way for future 
 translations. 
 
 § I. Anglo-SaxonParaphrasts— Cadmon.— The 
 
 first of the Anglo-Saxon paraphrasts regarding whom 
 we have any reliable information is Caedmon. Ac- 
 cording to the old historian Bede, about the year 680 
 this Credmon, a poor Saxon cowherd, returned one night 
 sad and dispirited to the abbey at Whitby, because he 
 had been unable to take his part in singing at a banquet. 
 But, as soon alter he fell asleep, there appeared to him a 
 visitant who saluting him said : ' ' Caedmon, sing some song 
 to me." " I cannot sing," was the surprised answer, 
 "for that was the reason why I left the entertainment." 
 "Nevertheless," replied the other, "you shall sing." 
 " What shall I sing? " he asked. " Sing the beginning 
 of created beings," was the rejoinder. And thereupon 
 Ccedmon began to sing well-ordered verses to the praise 
 of God. In the morning he was conducted into the 
 presence of the Abbess Hilda, to whom he repeated the 
 verses ; and no sooner had he done so than all who 
 heard acknowledged that "heavenly grace" had been 
 conferred on him. And the Abbess commanded that he 
 should be taught the whole course of sacred history, 
 which he "converted into most harmonious verse; and 
 sweetly repeating the same, made his masters in their 
 turn his hearers." 
 
 The paraphrases which Csedmon thus made comprised 
 large portions of Old Testament history, and the 
 main facts in the life of our Lord and the preaching of 
 the Apostles, "besides many more about the Divine 
 
THE EARLY PARAPHRASTS 
 
 benefits and judgments, by which he endeavoured to 
 turn away all men from the love of vice, and to excite 
 in them the love of, and application to, good actions." 
 The following lines from the runic inscription on the 
 Ruthwell Cross in Dumfriesshire, which has been identi- 
 fied as a quotation from Ctedmon, may illustrate the 
 nature of his work. The Cross of Christ is supposed to 
 be telling its own story : — 
 
 Beneath Him I quivered, 
 
 But bow me I durst not, 
 
 The Rich King upheaving 
 
 They pierced Him with nails : 
 
 On me see the deep scars, 
 
 The bruises so shameful. 
 
 I bore it all silent. 
 § 2. Bede. — Other Anglo-Saxon versions of portions 
 of Scripture followed. Thus in the eighth centuiy the 
 Psalter was translated by Eadhelm, Bishop of Sher- 
 borne, and by Guthlac, a'Tiermit of Crowland near 
 Peterborough, ana~Th'e Gospels by Egbert, Bishop of 
 Holy Island ; but more important thaiT'any of these was 
 the work of the Venerable Bede (d. 735), the most 
 famous scholar of" his" "diy "in Western Europe. He 
 himself has told us that he translated the Apostles' Creed 
 and the Lord's Prayer into Anglo-Saxon for the use of 
 the less educated priests ; while the last work on which 
 he was engaged was a translation of the Gospel of St. 
 John. Of the completion of this work his disciple 
 Cuthbert has given so striking an account that, 
 though well known, it may in part be repeated. The 
 Tuesday before Ascension Day Bede, though suffering 
 greatly, had spent in dictating, now and then among 
 other things saying : " Go on quickly, I know not how 
 long I shall hold out, and whether my Maker will not 
 soon take me away." On the following day his weak- 
 ness increased, but he was able to take a touching 
 farewell of all his fellows, and passed the day joyfully 
 till the evening. Then the boy who was acting as his 
 scribe said : " Dear master, there is yet one sentence 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 not written." " Write quickly," answered Bede. And 
 when soon after the boy said : " The sentence is now 
 written," he replied, " It is well ; you have said the 
 truth. It is ended." Shortly after, sitting on the 
 pavement of his cell, and singing "Glory be to the 
 Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," he 
 "departed to the heavenly kingdom." Of the trans- 
 lation thus touchingly finished no remains have come 
 down to us ; but among the treasures of the Bodleian 
 Library at Oxford may still be seen the old Graeco-Latin 
 MS. of the Acts of the Apostles which Bede is known 
 to have used. 
 
 § 3- King Alfred. — A royal translator comes next, 
 Alfrecf ^e"Crfeat7 and the spirit that prompted his 
 efforts is well indicated in his own words : "I thought 
 how I saw . . . how the churches were filled with treasures 
 of books, and also with a great multitude of God's 
 servants ; yet they reaped very little fruit of these 
 books, because they could understand nothing of them, 
 as they were not written in their own native tongue." 
 To supply this want the good king translated many 
 notable Latin treatises, and gave further proof of his 
 religious zeal by prefixing to his "Book of Laws" a 
 translation of the Ten Commandments under the heading 
 "Alfred's Dooms." The following translation of these 
 " Dooms" will still be read with interest : — 
 
 The Lord spake these words to Moses, and thus said : 
 I am the Lord thy God. I led thee out of the 
 land of the Egyptians and of their bondage. 
 
 1. Love thou not other strange gods above me. 
 
 2. Utter thou not my name idly, for thou shalt not 
 be guiltless towards me, if thou utter my name idly. 
 
 3. Remember that thou hallow the rest-day. Work 
 for yourselves six days, and on the seventh rest. 
 For in six days Christ wrought the heavens and the 
 earth, the seas, and all creatures that are in them, and 
 rested on the seventh day : and therefore the Lord 
 hallowed it. 
 
THE EARLY PARAPHRASTS 
 
 4. Honour thy father and thy mother, whom the 
 Lord hath given thee, that thou mayest be the longer 
 hving on earth. 
 
 5. Slay thou not. 
 
 6. Commit thou not adulteiy. 
 
 7. Steal thou not. 
 
 8. Say thou not false-witness. 
 
 9. Covet thou not thy neighbour's goods unjustly. 
 10. Make thou not to thyself golden or silver gods. 
 
 Alfred was further engaged, we are told, on a version 
 of the Psalms at the time of his death, and his patriotic 
 wish is often quoted that "all the first-born youth of 
 his kingdom should employ themselves on nothing till 
 they were able to read well the English Scriptures." ^ 
 
 § 4. .^Ifric. — Other versions deserving of special 
 notice are the " Book of Durham," or Gospels of St. 
 Cuthbert, and the " Rushworth GIOSS," interlinear 
 Latin and Anglo-Saxon translations of the four Gospels, 
 and the Heptateuch of .ffilfric (about 1040 a.D.) a free 
 rendering of the five books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, 
 and certain other Old Testament books. ^Ifric's object 
 in translating is clearly expressed in his homily On 
 Reading the Scriptures: "Whoever would be one with 
 God, must often pray, and often read the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. For when we pray, we speak to God ; and when 
 we read the Bible, God speaks to us. . . . Happy is he, 
 then, who reads the Scriptures, if he convert the words 
 into actions. The whole of the Scriptures are written 
 for our salvation, and by them we obtain the knowledge 
 of the truth." 
 
 § 5. Anglo-Norman Versions— RoUe. — The work 
 
 of Bible translation naturally received a check during 
 the confusion accompanying the Danish and Norman 
 invasions. The check was however only temporaiy, 
 and there are still extant MSS. in Anglo-Norman, or 
 Middle-English as it is sometimes called, containing 
 metrical paraphrases of considerable portions of Scrip- 
 
 1 Some scholars however assert that the words in the original do 
 not mean more than "English writing." 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 ture, amongst which the most noteworthy are the 
 Onuuluni, a metrical paraphrase on the Gospels and 
 Acts by one Orm (about 1150 a.d.), and the Sowlehele 
 or Salus Animae (about 1250 A.D.), which along with 
 other religious poetry contains a paraphrase in verse of 
 the leading facts of the Old and New Testaments. 
 Apart from their other associations these MSS. are 
 interesting as showing the change gradually passing over 
 our language. Already we can see the rude but unmis- 
 takable beginnings of our modern English, and the 
 version of the Psalter executed by Richa rd Roller, the 
 hermit of Hampole, who died in 1349, can still be read 
 with comparative ease. Here, for example, is Rolle's 
 version of our Psalm xxiii. We print it exactly as he 
 wrote it. 
 
 Psalm xxii. (xxiii.), Rolle's Version 
 
 Lord gouerns me and nathynge sail me want : in 
 
 sted of pasture thare he me sett. 
 On the watere of rehetynge ^ forth he me broght : my 
 
 saule he turnyd. 
 He led me on the stretis of rightwisnes : for his 
 
 name. 
 fFor whi, if i. had gane in myddis of the shadow of 
 
 ded : i. sail noght dred illes, for thou ert with me. 
 Thi wand and thi staf : thai haf confortyd me. 
 Thou has grayid^ in my syght the bord: agayns thaim 
 
 that angirs me. 
 Thou fattid my heued in oyle : and my chalice 
 
 drunkynand what it is bright. 
 And thi mercy sail folow me : all the dayes of my 
 
 lif. 
 And that i. won ^ in the hows of lord : in lenght 
 
 of dayes. 
 
 Rolle's version is further noteworthy as almost, if not 
 quite, the first attempt at a literal prose translation. 
 His method he has himself described : " In this work I 
 
 1 Refreshing. 2 Prepared. 3 Dwell. 
 
THE EARLY PARAPHRASTS 
 
 seek no strange English but easiest and commonest and 
 such that is most like to the Latin. ... In the transla- 
 tion I follow the letter as much as I may, and where I 
 find no proper English I follow the wit of the words, 
 so that those that shall read it need not dread erring. 
 In expounding I follow holy Doctors, and reason : 
 reproving sin." Praiseworthy as Rolle's aim was, he s 
 was only able to fulfil it with reference to a small por- ^ 
 tion of Scripture, while it must be kept clearly in view ' 
 that in what he did accomplish, he along with his prede- 
 cessors was thinking of the convenience of the clergy 
 rather than of the needs of the common people. 
 The very idea of a people's Bible does not seem yet to 
 have occurred to any one. It is the more striking that 
 within forty years from this time the whole Bible was 
 actually translated into English with the express design 
 of its becoming the common property of the nation. The 
 man to whom this was due, and who in consequence 
 ranks as the first of our Bible translators, was John 
 
 Wycliffe. 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 JOHN WYCLIFFE 
 
 I. Wy cliff e's early years. 2. Embassy to Bruges. 3. 
 Wycliffe's times. 4. Work of translation. 5. Attacks 
 upon Wycliffe. 6. His death. 
 
 § I. Wycliffe's early Years.— John Wycliffe i was 
 
 born about the year 1320 in the vicinity of Richmond in 
 Yorkshire. Of his early years very little is known, but 
 after the year 1356 we find him filling various important 
 offices at the University of Oxford. In 1361 he was 
 appointed by his college to the rectory of Fylingham 
 in Lincolnshire, and a few years later exchanged this 
 for Ludgershall in Buckinghamshire. He did not how- 
 ever abandon his connection with Oxford, but continued 
 to deliver lectures on Philosophy and Logic, and later 
 on Theology, distinguished by a learning and a zeal 
 which led to his being known amongst his con- 
 temporaries by the prophetic title of "the Evangelical 
 Doctor." It was indeed to his intimate knowledge of 
 the Scriptures that Wycliffe owed even then his scholastic 
 fame, though there is no evidence that up to this time 
 he had ever thought of what was to be the crowning glory 
 of his life — his translation of them into English. Nor as 
 yet had he any open quarrel with Rome ; for the state- 
 ment, frequently found in histories of the Bible, that so 
 early as 1360 he had come forward with attacks upon 
 the monastic system, is wholly without foundation. ^ 
 
 1 The name is spelt in nearly thirty different ways. 
 
 2 Cf. Lechler, John Wycliffe and his English Precursors, p. 120 
 (i vol. edition by Lorimer). 
 
JOHN WYCLIFFE 
 
 § 2. Embassy to Bruges.— When however the 
 opportunity for action came, Wycliffe was not found 
 wanting. In 1365 Pope Urban V. had renewed his 
 claim upon England for the payment of a thousand marks, 
 as the feudatory tribute which had been exacted from 
 King John in 1213, but which had fallen into arrear for 
 a period of thirty-three years. This claim King Edward 
 III. and his Parliament unanimously refused to concede, 
 and amongst other publications of the time supporting 
 their action was a tract by Wycliffe, setting forth the 
 rights of Parliament on this question. The part he thus 
 took in a controversy of such national importance, as 
 well as the position which he occupied as one of the 
 King's chaplains, led to Edward's selecting "our be- 
 loved and faithful master John de Wiclif " as one of the 
 royal commissioners sent to Bruges in 1374 to treat with 
 the Papal Nuncio regarding the reservation of benefices. 
 The question was at the time a burning one in England. 
 During a period, dating back again to King John, the 
 Popes of Rome had claimed the right to traffic in English 
 benefices ; and the consequence was that many important 
 livings had been gifted to strangers and absentees, whose 
 sole interest in them consisted in drawing the revenues, 
 as if " God had given His sheep not to be pastured, but 
 to be shaven and shorn." 
 
 The Conference ended, as conferences frequently do, 
 in a compromise ; but upon W'ycliffe's mind the pro- 
 ceedings produced an effect which has been often com- 
 pared with the effect in later days upon Luther of his 
 visit to Rome, and which certainly proved itself to be 
 attended with far-reaching consequences. Hitherto his 
 opposition to Rome had been conducted principally, if 
 not wholly, on national and patriotic grounds ; but from 
 this time he comes before us rather in the light of an 
 ecclesiastical reformer — "the Morning Star of the Re- 
 formation." 
 
 § 3- Wycliffe's Times. — The need of reform, it is 
 certain, must have been daily pressing itself on Wycliffe's 
 mind. The age in which he lived was a very dark age. 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 General social distress existed not only at home, but 
 throughout the Continent ; while in England the Black 
 Death, or Pestilence, swept repeatedly over the country, 
 carrying off on its first outbreak no less than half the 
 population. Meanwhile the church was corrupt, the 
 clergy ignorant, and the people neglected ; and to crown 
 all, in 1378 came the scandal of the Great Schism, two 
 rival Popes at Rome and at Avignon anathematising one 
 another. And yet out of all this evil good was to come. 
 '* The unsettledness of the period," says Dr. Eadie, " with 
 its bitter strifes, the rooted enmity of class against class, 
 the hardheartedness of statesmen, and the ambitious 
 factions of Churchmen with their worldliness and intrigues, 
 impressed Wyclifife with the indelible conviction that all 
 ranks needed to know and study the Divine Word in the 
 tongue intelligible to them."i Many quotations from 
 Wycliffe's own writings might be brought forward to 
 substantiate this ; but a single sentence from his preface 
 to an English translation of a Latin Harmony of the 
 Gospels must suffice : " Christian men ought much to 
 travail night and day about text of Holy Writ, and 
 namely [especially] the Gospel in their mother tongue, 
 since Jesus Christ, very God and very man, taught this 
 Gospel with His own blessed mouth and kept it in His 
 life." 
 
 § 4- Work of Translation. — Wycliffe began accord- 
 ingly with a translation of the Apocalypse, in whose 
 mingled denunciation of sin and comfort in suffering he 
 must have seen so fitting a message for his own time. 
 The Gospels with a commentary came next, that "with 
 God's grace poor Christian men may some deal [partly] 
 know the text of the Gospel . . . and therein know 
 the meek and pure and charitable living of Christ and 
 His Apostles, to sue [follow] them in virtues and bliss." 
 Other books followed, until probably in 1380 the whole 
 New Testament was completed. To this was shortly 
 added a translation of the Old Testament, principally by 
 one of his friends, Nicolas de Hereford, so that by the 
 1 The English Bible, vol. i. pp. 55-6. 
 
JOHN WYCLIFFE 
 
 middle of the year 1382 Wyclifife had the joy of seeing 
 the whole Scriptures in the hands of the people "in 
 their mother tongue." 
 
 § 5. Attacks upon Wycliffe.— All this, it must 
 
 be remembered, was not accomplished without difficulty 
 and even danger. Hereford was cited before the Synod 
 in London in 1382, and had afterwards to leave the 
 country ; ^ while Wyclifife's own life was one long 
 sti-uggle against the attacks of Rome. Foxe has pre- 
 served a lively account of a meeting of Convocation in 
 1377 from which he only escaped through the inter- 
 vention of the Duke of Lancaster ; while a second 
 attempt against him at Lambeth about a year later was 
 frustrated by the intervention of the widowed Princess of 
 Wales. How bitter indeed was the hostility with which 
 he was regarded is proved by a well-known incident — one 
 of the few glimpses we have into the personal life 
 of the reformer. In 1379 while discharging his annual 
 duty at Oxford as a divinity Professor he was seized with 
 an alarming illness. Four friars, believing that his end 
 was near, contrived to get admission into his sickroom, 
 and called upon him as a dying man to retract all that 
 he had said against their order. But Wycliffe was not 
 to be daunted. With the aid of his servant he raised 
 himself on his pillow, and with all the strength he 
 could command exclaimed : " I shall not die, but live to 
 declare the evil deeds of the friars." And confused and 
 confounded the friars left the room. 
 
 A year or two later the determined hostility of the 
 Church was proved by the public condemnation of 
 Wycliffe's teaching at a synod held at the Dominican 
 Monastery in Blackfriars, London, when however the 
 reformer himself was not present. A terrible earthquake 
 which occurred during the sittings of the Synod, and 
 threatened at one time to break them up, was ingeni- 
 
 1 An interesting proof of this is aflforded by what is believed to be 
 the original MS. of his work preserved in the Bodleian Library 
 at Oxford, and which breaks off suddenly after the second word of 
 Baruch iii. 20 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 ously turned by the President, Archbishop Courtenay, into 
 a good rather than an evil omen, as presaging the 
 purging of the kingdom by the condemnation of heresy, 
 though not without trouble and great agitation. 
 " Pontius Pilate and Herod are made friends to-day," 
 was Wyclifife's own bitter comment on the union against 
 him between the prelates and the monastic orders long 
 at deadly feud; "since they have made a heretic of 
 Christ, it is an easy inference for them to count simple 
 Christians heretics." 
 
 § 6. His Death. — Contrary however to his own ex- 
 pectations, Wycliffe was allowed to die in peace. 
 Retiring to his quiet rectory of Lutterworth, to which 
 he had been presented by the king in the year of the 
 Bruges Conference, he pursued his accustomed work of 
 teaching and preaching. The end came very suddenly. 
 On 28th December 1384, he was suddenly struck with 
 paralysis while hearing mass, and passed quietly away on 
 the last day of the year. "Admirable," says the old 
 Church historian Fuller, ' ' that a hare so often hunted 
 with so many packs of dogs should die at last quietly 
 sitting on his form." 
 
 After his death a petition was presented to the Pope 
 that Wyclifife's bones should be disinterred from their 
 resting-place in Lutterworth Churchyard ; but the Pope 
 to his credit took no action, and it was left to the 
 Council of Constance thirty years later (4th May 141 5) 
 to pronounce Wycliffe " the leader of heresy in that age," 
 and to order his books to be burned and his remains 
 removed from consecrated ground. Not till 1428 how- 
 ever was the order carried out, when the remains having 
 been burned to ashes were cast into the Swift that passes 
 by Lutterworth on its way to the Avon. Thus "this 
 brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into 
 Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the 
 main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wicliffe are the 
 emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the 
 world over." 
 
THE WYCLIFFITE VERSIONS 13 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE WYCLIFFITE VERSIONS 
 
 I. Wycliffe. the first English translator of the Bible. 2. 
 Purvey' s revision. 3. Relation of the Wycliffite ver- 
 sions. 4. Dependence on the Vulgate. 5. Comments 
 and notes. 6. Homely diction. 7. Reception of the 
 versions. 
 
 § I. Wycliffe the first English translator of the 
 
 Bible.— In the preceding chapter we saw how Wycliffe 
 succeeded in giving to the English people the whole 
 Bible in their native tongue. We have now to turn to 
 some particulars regarding his translation and the work 
 of his immediate followers ; and the question at once 
 meets us, Was Wycliffe actually the first to translate 
 the Bible into English? The contrary is sometimes 
 stated. Sir Thomas More, writing about 1530, asserts 
 that "the whole Bible was long before his (Wycliffe's) 
 days by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the 
 English tongue," and adds that he himself had seen 
 " Bibles fair and old written in English" ; but it must 
 be kept in view that at the time More was writing to de- 
 preciate as far as possible Wycliffe's and Tindale's work, 
 and that in all probability the copies which he claims to 
 have seen were actually the work of Wycliffe or his 
 followers. While again, the assertion of King James's 
 translators in their Preface that "much about that time, 
 even in our King Richard the Second's days, John 
 Trevisa translated them (the Scriptures) into English," 
 seems to rest on a veiy slender foundation. Until, 
 then, clearer evidence to the contrary is forthcoming, to 
 
14 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Wycliffe's translation must be awarded the honour of being 
 at the time "not only the one translation of the whole 
 of the Scriptures into English which had ever been made, 
 but actually by a hundred years the first translation into 
 a European language. "^ Nor is it out of place to remark 
 here that Wycliffe may in consequence be regarded as 
 the father of our later English prose. As a hundred 
 and fifty years later Luther's German version of the Bible 
 gave a fresh impetus to all German literature, so to the 
 clear, homely English of Wycliffe's Bible and tracts may 
 be traced the beginning of that native prose literature of 
 which we are justly so proud. 
 
 § 2. Purvey's Revision. — Nor can we doubt, to 
 
 pass to a second point, that, like Luther again, Wycliffe 
 spent much of his leisure after his retirement in revising 
 and correcting his version. Death carried him off, how- 
 ever, in the midst of his labours, and it was left to his 
 friend and assistant, John Purvey, to complete this re- 
 vision. It was issued in the year 1388, with a long and 
 most interesting Prologue. "A simple creature, "so Purvey 
 writes, "hath translated the Bible out of Latin into English. 
 . . . First, this simple creature had much travail, with 
 divers fellows and helpers, to gather many old Bibles, 
 and other doctors, and common glosses, and to make one 
 Latin Bible some deal [partly] true. . . . And I pray, for 
 charity and for common profit of Christian souls, that if 
 any wise man find any default of the truth of translation, 
 let him set in the true sentence and opening of Holy 
 Writ, but look that he examine truly his Latin Bible. . . . 
 Lord God ! since at the beginning of faith so many men 
 translated into Latin, and to great profit of Latin men, 
 let one simple creature of God translate into English, for 
 profit of English men. . . . Therefore a translator 
 hath great need to study well the sentence, both before 
 and after, and look that such equivalent words accord 
 with the sentence, and he hath need to live a clean life, 
 and be full devout in prayers, and have not his wit 
 occupied about worldly things, that the Holy Spirit, 
 1 Burrows, Wicli_fs Place in History, p. 20. 
 
THE WYCLIFFITE VERSIONS 15 
 
 author of wisdom, and knowledge, and truth, direct 
 him in his work, and suffer him not to err. ... By 
 this manner, with good living and great travail, men 
 may come to true and clear translating, and true under- 
 standing of Holy Writ, seem it never so hard at the 
 beginning. God grant to us all grace to know well, and 
 keep well Holy Writ, and suffer joyfully some pain for 
 it at the last ! Amen." 
 
 § 3- Relation of the Wycliffite Versions.— 
 
 Apart from its personal interest this Prologue has proved 
 of great assistance to scholars in enabling them to dis- 
 tinguish between what we may call the eaj-lier version, 
 Wycliffe's own version, and the later, the revision by 
 Purvey. Both these versions were anonymous. The M 
 peril of Bible-translation at that period was too great to 
 admit of translators putting their names to their work, 
 and in consequence there was for long much confusion 
 between the two versions, and in several well-known 
 works, such as Bagster's Hexapla, the later revision is 
 actually printed as Wycliffe's own. But a careful com- 
 parison of this Prologue with Purvey's other writings, 
 and an examination of the later translation on the 
 principles there laid down, prove beyond a doubt that he 
 was the author of it, while the " English Bible late 
 translated " to which he makes reference can only be 
 Wycliffe's version of 1382. It would be interesting, if 
 our space permitted, to print parallel extracts from the 
 two versions as showing the nature of the changes which 
 Purvey introduced ; but in the meantime we must 
 content ourselves with simply giving a short extract from 
 each, printing it exactly as it was first written. Here is 
 how in the earlier version Wycliffe rendered the Lord's 
 Prayer : — 
 
 Matt. vi. 9-13 (Wycliffe, 1382) 
 
 Oure fader that art in heuenes, halwid be thi 
 name ; thi kyngdom cumme to ; be thi wille don as 
 in heuen and in erthe ; 5if to vs this day oure breed 
 ouer other substance ; and for5eue to vs oure dettis. 
 
i6 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 as we for5eue to oure dettours ; and leede vs not in 
 to temptacioun, but delyuere vs fro yuel. Amen. 
 
 From Purvey we may take a few verses from Philip- 
 pians ii : — 
 
 Phil. ii. 5-1 1 (Purvey, 1388) 
 
 And fele 5e this thing in 50U, which also in Crist 
 Jhesu ; that whanne he was in the forme of God, 
 demyde not raueyn,i that hym silf were euene to God ; 
 but he lowide hym silf, takinge the forme of a seruaunt, 
 and was maad in to the licknesse of men, and in 
 abite ^ was foundun as a man. He mekide ^ hym silf, 
 and was maad obedient to the deth, 5he, to the deth 
 of the cross. For which thing God enhaunside* hym, 
 and 5af to hym a name that is aboue al name ; that in 
 the name of Jhesu ech kne be bowid, of heuenli thingis, 
 of ertheli thingis, and of hellis ; and eche tunge 
 knouleche, that the Lord Jhesu Crist is in the glorie 
 of God the fadir. 
 
 In neither case, it will be observed, is there any 
 division into verses, but in the originals reference was 
 facilitated by means of letters of the alphabet inserted at 
 intervals in the margin. 
 
 § 4. Dependence on the Vulgate.— It would 
 
 lie altogether beyond our present aim to attempt any- 
 thing like a critical examination of the two Wycliffite 
 versions ; but one great, though unavoidable, defect 
 which distinguished them may be noted. Both were 
 translations of a translation. Neither Wycliffe nor 
 Purvey translated directly from the original Hebrew and 
 Greek texts, but based their work on the Vulgate or 
 Latin Bible then in general use, or rather, as Purvey 
 tells us, on a Latin text made as accurate as possible by 
 a comparison of " many old Bibles," but still only " some 
 deal [partly] true." All the errors therefore into which 
 the Latin text had fallen are here reproduced ; and 
 further, the translators' anxiety to keep as closely as 
 
 ^ Rapine. 2 Habit. 3 Humbled. 4 Exalted. 
 
THE WYCLIFFITE VERSIONS 17 
 
 possible to the text before them makes many of their 
 renderings unintelligible in English. On the other hand, 
 this dependence on the Vulgate had some compensating 
 advantages. For one thing it enabled the new English 
 version to be recognised as the same as the "common 
 Bible," acknowledged by the whole Western Church ; 
 while in not a few instances, more particularly in the New 
 Testament, the Vulgate is actually nearer the original 
 text than many of the late Greek MSS. which subsequent 
 translators used.i In the Lord's Prayer, for example, as 
 given above, Wycliffe rightly omits the doxology at the 
 end, which, as our R.V. shows, has no place in the 
 best texts ; while in the shortened version of the same 
 prayer in Luke xi. 2-4 he is again in agreement with 
 the R.V. in omitting the third and seventh petitions, 
 "Thy will be done as in heaven, so in earth," and 
 "Deliver us from evil." In Phil. ii. 10 also it is 
 interesting to find Purvey anticipating the correct render- 
 ing, " in the name of Jhesu." 
 
 § 5. Comments and Notes, — A noticeable feature 
 of Purvey's revision is the introduction of short comments 
 in the margin, many of them taken from the writings of 
 a certain Lire or Nicolas de Lyra, a famous scholar of 
 the fourteenth centuiy. One or two examples must 
 suffice : — 
 
 Psalm XV. (xvi.) " f A. glos. This salm is maad of 
 Dauid, to the preysing of the meke and symple Crist. 
 A. et alU:' 
 
 Psalm xcix. (c.) "f A. glos. This salm was 
 maad to be songen in the offring of pesible sacri- 
 fices, that was offrid to God for sum benefice to be 
 geten of him, to wiche the plesing of God is requyred 
 bifore, ether for benefice now geten, to wich the doing 
 of thanking is oweth to seve. Lire here. K. " 
 
 Rom. iv. 14, '■'■ Of the lawe, that is, of the werkis 
 oflawe. Lire here." 
 
 Rom. X. 12 ("iVi? distinction of Jew and of 
 
 1 Moulton, The History of the English Bible, p. 29. 
 
1 8 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Greek'''') — "As to rigtfulnesse, which is by the feith 
 of Crist. Lyre here" 
 
 Rom. xi. 2, " Knew ; that is, bifore ordeynede 
 bi grace to blis. Lyre here.'''' 
 
 2 Cor. V. 21 '-'■ {Siny — "That is, sacrifice for 
 synne. Aiistyn.^' 
 
 Purvey also follows Wycliffe's example by incor- 
 porating in his text occasional explanatory notes, care- 
 fully distinguished from the text by different orthography 
 as — 
 
 Matt. xiv. I, "In that tyme Eroude tetrarke, 
 pry nee of the fourthe party 
 
 Matt. xxii. 23, "No risyng a5en to lijfy 
 I Cor. xvi. I, "But of the gaderyngis of ?7ioneyy 
 Gal. ii. 10, " Oneli that we hadde mynde of pore 
 men of Crist.'''' 
 
 It cannot be pretended that notes such as these do 
 much for the elucidation of the sacred text, but they at 
 least do no harm. There is nothing polemical or con- 
 troversial about them, and in this they differ happily 
 from what we shall find in some other versions. Both 
 Wycliffe and his successor realised that Scripture should 
 in the first instance be allowed to speak for itself, 
 without any of that "docking and clipping" of 
 which the former was wont to accuse the friars. 
 "The Sacred Scriptures," these are his own words, 
 " are the property of the people, and one which no party 
 should be allowed to wrest from them." And in his 
 treatise. The Wicket, — referring to the opposition which 
 his translation had aroused, — he writes : "They say it is 
 heresy to speak of the Holy Scripture in English, and so 
 they would condemn the Holy Ghost, who gave it in 
 tongues to the Apostles of Christ to speak the Word of 
 God in all languages that were ordained of God under 
 heaven. . . . Why, then, should it be taken away from 
 us in this land, that are Christian men ? " 
 
 § 6. Homely Diction. — In accordance with these 
 noble words is the homely diction which characterises 
 
THE WYCLIFFITE VERSIONS 19 
 
 both versions. Writing expressly for the people^ the 
 translators used every effort to make their meaning clear 
 and intelligible, and in consequence many of their render- 
 ings impress us still with their freshness and force. 
 Take these examples selected almost at random from 
 Purvey's revision of St. Matthew : " The lanterne of thi 
 bodi is thin i3e" (vi. 22) ; "A leche ^ is not nedeful to 
 men that faren wel, but to men that ben yuel at ese " 
 (ix. 12) ; "And lo ! a man that hadde a drye hoond " 
 (xii. 10); **Lo! my child, whom Y haue chosun, my 
 derHng" (xii. 18) ; " And the boot in the myddel of the 
 see was schoggid with wawis " (xiv. 24). Or these, 
 some of whose expressions have an unexpectedly familiar 
 sound to Scotch ears: " Twey men metten hym, that 
 hadden deuelis, and camen out of graues, ful woode ^ " 
 (viii. 28) ; " And loo ! in a greet bire-^ al the droue wente 
 heedlyng in to the see" (viii. 32); "And he cometh, 
 and fyndith it voide, and clensid with besyms,** and maad 
 faire" (xii. 44); "But thei dispisiden, and wenten 
 forth, oon in to his toun,^ anothir to his marchaundise " 
 (xxii. 5). 
 
 Other renderings suggested by the peculiar customs 
 of the time are no longer so appropriate, as: "And 
 Jhesus stood bifor the domesman,^ and the iustice axide 
 him, and seide, Art thou King of Jewis?" or " Thanne 
 kny5tis of the iustice token Jhesu in the moot halle,'' and 
 gadriden to hym al the cumpeny of kny5tis " (Matt, 
 xxvii. II, 27) ; while naturally many of the words occur- 
 ring in both versions are now quite obsolete.^ A slight 
 change of spelling gives the version as a whole, however, 
 a wonderfully modern aspect, and it has been stated that 
 when a few years ago the experiment was tried of reading 
 
 1 Physician. 2 Mad. 3 Rush. 4 Brooms. 
 
 5 Farm. 6 Judge. 7 Hall of Assembly. 
 
 8 Thus in the 1382 edition we find "cultre" for "knife" (Prov. 
 xxiii. 2); "walker" as an explanation of "fuller" (Mark ix. 3) ; or 
 in the 1388 edition "alie" for "father-in-law" (Exod. xviii. 5); 
 " catchepoUis " for "serjeants" (Actsxvi. 35). Cf. too "vertu" used 
 in the unfamiliar sense of "strength," in " the vertu of synne is the 
 lawe " (i Cor. xv. 56). 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Wyclifife's translation aloud in Yorkshire, the author's 
 native county, hardly a word or expression seemed 
 peculiar. 
 
 § 7. Reception of the Versions.— The immediate 
 
 reception of the new versions, and more particularly of 
 Purvey's revision, was striking. " Copies passed into the 
 hands of all classes of the people. Even the Sovereign 
 himself and the princes of the blood royal did not dis- 
 dain to possess them." ^ To the Papal party this could 
 not but be very displeasing. One old chronicler goes 
 the length of complaining that "in this way the Gospel 
 pearl is cast abroad, and trodden under foot of swine " ; 
 and in 1391 a Bill was introduced into Parliament to 
 forbid the circulation of the English Scriptures. It was 
 rejected however through the influence of the Duke of 
 Lancaster, who answered "right sharply, we will not 
 be the refuse of all other nations ; for since they have 
 God's law, which is the law of our belief, in their own 
 language, we will have ours in English whoever say nay," 
 What however the Church could not persuade the State 
 to do she did for herself, and in i4o8_a Convocation 
 sitting at Oxford passed a resolution prohibiting the 
 translation of any part of the Holy Scriptures into English 
 by any unauthorised person, or the reading of any 
 translation, made either in Wycliffe's time or since, 
 until it be first formally approved. In the beginning of 
 the next year this decree, generally known as Arundel^ 
 Statute, from the man who mainly prompted it, was 
 confirmed at St. Paul's. But in spite of it the 
 circulation and reading of the Scriptures went steadily 
 on. Copies, notwithstanding their cost, were eagerly 
 sought for by all classes of people ; and the happy 
 possessors of Bible-knowledge became in their turn the 
 eager disseminators of it amongst others. Many touching 
 
 1 Forshall and Madden, The Wycliffite Vers£ons,Pre{a.ce, p. xxxii. 
 In further proof of this statement the editors mention that in the 
 preparation of their work they were able to examine " nearly 150 
 MSS., containing the whole or parts of Purvey's Bible, the majority 
 of which were written within the space of forty years from its being 
 finished." 
 
THE WYCLIFFITE VERSIONS 
 
 instances are given by Dr. Eadie. Thus one Alice Colins 
 was commonly sent for to meetings, "to recite unto 
 them the Ten Commandments and the Epistles of Peter 
 and James " ; and in 1429 Marjery Backster was indicted 
 because she asked her maid Joan to " come and hear her 
 husband read the law of Christ, out of a book he was 
 wont to read by night." Copies of the Wycliffite 
 versions seem even to have penetrated into vScotland ; 
 for in telling of the burning of John Resby as an heretic 
 in 1408, the Abbot of Inchcolm laments that the books 
 of Wycliffe were possessed by several Lollards in Scotland, 
 and kept with " devlish " secrecy ; and towards the close 
 of the same century we hear of one Campbell of Cessnock 
 who had a priest at home " who read the Bible to them 
 in their vernacular," 
 
 When we hear of incidents such as these we can 
 understand that it was no fancy picture that Foxe drew 
 when, speaking of the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
 he could write : " Certainly the fervent zeal of those 
 Christian days seemed much superior to these our days 
 and times, as may appear by their sitting up all night in 
 reading and hearing, also by the expenses and charges 
 they incurred in buying books in English, some of whom 
 gave five marks [equal to about £/^o in our money], 
 some more, some less, for a book ; some gave a load of 
 hay for a few chapters of St. James, or of St. Paul in 
 English. ... To see their labours, their earnest seeking, 
 their burning zeals, their readings, their watchings, their 
 sweet assemblies . . . may make us now in these our 
 days of free profession, to blush for shame." ^ 
 
 1 Acts and Momtvients, bk. vii. p. 419 (ed. Seymour). 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 ; CHAPTER IV 
 
 WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS LIFE 
 
 I. A century of preparation. 2. Tindale's early days at 
 Little Sodbury. 3. Visit to London. 4. Exile. 
 5. First printed English New Testaments. 6. Their 
 reception in England. 7. Further work of translation. 
 8. Tindale's last days and death, 
 
 § I. A Century of Preparation. — A period of a 
 
 hundred years intervenes between John Wycliffe and our 
 next great Bible-translator ; but during it two things 
 happened, both of which had an important bearing upon 
 the future history of the Bible in England. 
 
 The first of these was the discovery of printing. 
 
 Up to this time the multiplication of copies of the Holy 
 Scriptures had been by the slow and laborious process of 
 copying ; but about the middle of the fifteenth century, 
 Fust, a goldsmith of Mainz, perfecting Gutenberg's 
 experiments, issued from the press the first printed Latin 
 Bible, generally known as the Mazarin Bible, from a 
 copy found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin. It is 
 believed indeed to have been the earliest book printed 
 from movable type, and hence Hallam can speak of 
 "this venerable and splendid volume leading up the 
 crowded myriads of its followers, and imploring, as it 
 were, a blessing on the new art, by dedicating its first- 
 fruits to the service of Heaven." ^ The discovery soon 
 
 1 Introd. to Lit. of Etirope, vol. i. p. 157. In our own country 
 the first printed book in which any portion of the Scriptures appeared 
 was The Golden Lege?id, a large collection of Romish legends from 
 Latin and French originals, but with which the translator and 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE—HIS LIFE 23 
 
 spread, and of the Latin Bible alone ninety-one editions 
 had been issued before the close of the century. 
 
 The other point was the revival of learning. 
 
 " Greece," in the striking language of an English scholar, 
 "had risen from the grave with the New Testament 
 in her hand," and though England did not at first 
 welcome the "new learning," towards the close of the 
 fifteenth century a noble band of scholars had congregated 
 at Oxford, including such men as William Latimer, 
 Thomas More, and John Colet. To these in 1497 came 
 to be added no less a person than the great Erasmus. 
 
 Twelve years later Erasmus accepted a professorship 
 of divinity at Cambridge, where, in addition to his other 
 work, he diligently prosecuted those studies which in 
 1 5 16 resulted in his issuing at Basle the first Greek New 
 Testament. The importance of this book, especially in 
 its later and amended editions, in the history of Bible- 
 translation can hardly be over-estimated. Instead of 
 being dependent any longer on a Latin translation, x^ 
 scholars had now before them in an accessible and 
 wonderfully correct form the original Greek text ; while 
 as aids to its study various grammars and lexicons 
 had begun to appear. 
 
 Nor meanwhile was the Old Testament forgotten. 
 The entire Hebrew Bible was first printed at Soncino, ^ 
 near Cremona, in 1488; and in 1520 there appeared 
 the great Complutensian Polyglot, which contained 
 not only the original texts of Scripture, but Greek and 
 Hebrew grammars, and a Hebrew vocabulary. Never 
 before had such facilities been offered for an accurate 
 rendering of the Bible into the English tongue, and it 
 falls to us now to sketch the life of the man who was to 
 accomplish this, and "to whom it has been allowed 
 more than to any other man to give its characteristic 
 shape to our English Bible." ^ 
 
 § 2. Tindale's early days at Little Sodbury. 
 
 printer, William Caxton, incorporated many Bible stories. The 
 first edition appeared in 1483. 
 
 1 Westcott, History 0/ the English Bible (2nd edit.), p. 24. 
 
24 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 — William Tindale ^ was born on the borders of Wales, 
 ■v^ probably at Slymbridge in Gloucestershire, about the 
 year 1484. More precise than this we cannot be ; while 
 as regards his early years we have only the testimony of 
 Foxe that he was " brought up even of a child in the 
 University of Oxford, being always of most upright 
 manners and pure life." From Oxford he went to 
 Cambridge, attracted in all probability by the fame of 
 Erasmus's Lectures, and about the end of 1521 returned 
 to his native county as chaplain and tutor in the family 
 of Sir John Walsh of Little Sodbury. There he was in 
 the habit of getting into disputation with " divers doctors 
 and learned men," who frequented the house, confirming 
 his opinions by "open and manifest Scripture," until 
 " those great beneficed doctors waxed weaiy, and bare a 
 secret grudge in their hearts against Master Tyndale. " ^ 
 About that time, too, he translated into English a book 
 by Erasmus entitled The Manual of a Christian Soldier, 
 which, when his master and lady had read, " those great 
 prelates were no more so often called to the house, nor 
 when they came had the cheer nor countenance as they 
 were wont to have." At their instigation accordingly 
 suspicions of heresy began to be raised against Tindale, 
 and he was summoned to appear before the bishop's 
 chancellor. No one could however be found to lay a 
 definite charge against him, and the case was dismissed. 
 Shortly afterwards, it is said, Tindale happening to be in 
 the company of a learned man, pressed him so sorely in 
 argument that the learned man said : "We were better 
 be without God's law than the Pope's." "I defy the 
 4>- Pope and all his laws," exclaimed Tindale in righteous 
 wrath, and then added: "If God spare my life, ere 
 many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough 
 
 1 Like Wycllffe's, Tindale's name is found spelt in many different 
 ways. For purposes of safety the translator also passed at times 
 under the assumed name of William Hychyns. 
 
 2 From Foxe's first account (1563) of Tindale, which is singularly 
 graphic, and appears to have been supplied to the martyrologist by 
 one who had it from Tindale's own lips. Both it and the later 
 account (1570) will be found in the valuable Preface to Arber's 
 Facsimile o/the First Printed New Testament^ pp. 8-12. 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE—HIS LIFE 25 
 
 shall know more of the Scripture than thou doest.''^ 
 And to the same effect, looking back on this period 
 ten years later, he writes — and the words should be 
 carefully noted, as showing how thus early he had 
 clearly set before him what was to be the work of his life 
 — "A thousand books had they (the priests) lever 
 [rather] to be put forth against their abominable doings 
 and doctrine, than that the Scripture should come to 
 light. . . . Which thing only moved me to translate the 
 New Testament. Because I had perceived by experience, 
 how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in 
 any truth, except the Scriptures were plainly laid before 
 their eyes in their mother tongue." 
 
 § 3. Visit to London. — This was a task, however, 
 which Tindale quickly perceived that he could not 
 accomplish at Sodbury. " I was so turmoiled," he tells 
 us, "in the country where I was." And he bethought 
 him of Tunstal, Bishop of London, whom he had heard 
 Erasmus praise for his great learning. He repaired 
 accordingly to London, but only to find that Tunstal was 
 not inclined to do anything for him. "His house was 
 full, he had more than he could well find ; and advised 
 me to seek in London, where he said I could not lack a 
 service." The prediction was fulfilled, for Tindale, 
 while officiating as preacher in St. Dunstan's-in-the 
 West, had made the acquaintance of one Humphrey 
 Monmouth, a wealthy cloth merchant, who now took 
 him into his house. And there for a year he remained, 
 living, according to Monmouth's testimony, " like a good 
 priest as methought. He studied most part of the day 
 and of the night at his book ; and he would eat but 
 sodden meat by his good will, nor drink but small single 
 beer." Gradually, however, the conviction forced itself 
 upon the solitary worker "not only that there was 
 
 1 The form of this determination may have been suggested by 
 some words of his old teacher Erasmus in his Exhortation : " I wish 
 that the husbandman may sing parts of them (the Scriptures) at his 
 plough, that the weaver may warble them at his shuttle, that the 
 traveller may with their narratives beguile the weariness of the 
 way." 
 
26 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 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." 
 
 § 4. Exile. — Voluntarily therefore Tindale deter- 
 mined to exile himself in prosecution of his self- 
 appointed task, and in May 1524 left England — never to 
 return. His movements for a time are very uncertain ; 
 but it is generally believed that he went first to Hamburg, 
 where shortly afterwards he issued translations of the 
 Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark separately. 
 Either, too, in this year or the following, he seems to 
 have visited Wittenberg, where he would doubtless see 
 much of Luther, though we cannot accept the close 
 confederacy of the two men in the work of translation 
 which is sometimes alleged. 
 
 In any case, there can be no doubt that Tindale was 
 in Cologne in 1525 with the view of seeing a complete 
 edition of the New Testament in quarto through the 
 press. Little progress had however been made with 
 the work, when an unfortunate interruption took place. 
 A certain priest, John Cochlceus, managed to extract from 
 the Cologne printers while heated with wine the secret 
 that 3000 copies of an English New Testament were in 
 the press, and that it was the intention of the English 
 merchants, by whom the expenses were being borne, to 
 disperse the work, when finished, widely through all 
 England. Cochlaeus lost no time in communicating his 
 discovery to the authoi-ities, and Tindale and his 
 assistant Roye^ had barely time to "seize the precious 
 sheets and make their escape by the Rhine to Worms, 
 then known for its favour to the reformed doctrines. 
 
 § 5- First printed English New Testaments.— 
 
 1 Of this Roye, Tindale in his Parable of the Wicked Mavimon 
 gives no very favourable account. He was "a man somewhat 
 crafty when he cometh unto new acquaintance, and before he be 
 thorough known. . . . Nevertheless, I suffered all things till that 
 was ended, which I could not do alone without one both to write 
 and to help me to compare the texts together. When that was 
 ended I took my leave, and bade him farewell for our two lives, 
 and, as men say, a day longer." 
 
WILLIAM riNDALE—HIS LIFE 27 
 
 At Worms Tindale set to work once more, and doubtless 
 for the purpose of eluding detection the size of the book 
 was altered, and 3000 copies of an octavo edition were 
 issued. Immediately afterwards — though for this we 
 have to rely on circumstantial evidence only — the larger 
 qitarto edition, whose printing had been interrupted in 
 Cologne, was also completed at Worms. Both editions, t^ 
 like the Wycliffite versions, were at first published 
 anonymously, though for a different reason. For, as 
 Tindale himself tells us, " I followed the counsel of 
 Christ which exhorteth men (Matt, vi.) to do their 
 good deeds secretly, and to be content with the con- 
 science of welldoing." 
 
 § 6. Their Reception in England.— We shall 
 
 return to these New Testaments again, for all particulars 
 regarding the/r^^ Neiv Testamejits printed in English 
 cannot fail to be of interest ; but in the meantime 
 we may notice that probably in the spring of 1526 
 copies of both editions were dispatched to England. 
 Warning of their coming had already been forwarded to 
 King Henry VIII. and Wolsey both by Cochljeus, who 
 describes them as "that most pernicious article of 
 merchandise," and by one Lee, the King's almoner, who 
 had been travelling on the Continent ; but the utmost 
 efforts of the authorities seemed powerless to stop their 
 circulation. Another plan was accordingly tried, and 
 Tunstal, Bishop of London, whom we have met in 
 connection with Tindale before, was called upon to 
 denounce the new version from St. Paul's. This he did 
 with great vehemence, declaring "in his furiousness " 
 that there were above 3000 errors in the translation ; 
 while his condemnation was accompanied by a public 
 burning of the Testaments both in London and Oxford. 
 It was only what Tindale had expected. " In burning 
 the New Testament they did none other thing than that 
 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 doubtful however whether all this violence had 
 any other effect than that of drawing increased atten- 
 
28 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 tion to Tindale's work. Thus in 1528 one Robert 
 Necton confessed to carrying on a regular work of 
 colportage, selling the New Testaments at 2s. or 2s. 6d. 
 bound, or according to the present value of money 
 ^i : los. or ;^i : 17 :6 each. And the very condem- 
 nation which in 1530 an Assembly convened by Arch- 
 bishop Warham pronounced against the new version is 
 in itself a proof of the widespread feeling in the trans- 
 lator's favour. 
 
 § 7- Further Work of Translation.— Meanwhile 
 
 Tindale was quietly continuing his work abroad. In 
 addition to other writings "no less delectable than 
 also most fruitful to be read," a translation of The 
 Five Books of Moses was published at Marburg in 
 1530, followed by The Book of Jonah with an in- 
 teresting Prologue in 1531. In the same year an 
 attempt was made through the Royal Envoy to decoy 
 Tindale back to England, but he would not venture. 
 Whatever promises of safety might be made, he said, the 
 King would never be able to protect him from the 
 clergy, who affirmed that promises made with heretics 
 ought not to be kept. In a subsequent interview with 
 the same Envoy he made an eloquent and pathetic 
 appeal on behalf of the work to which he had devoted 
 himself. "If it would stand," he pleaded, "with the 
 King's most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text 
 of the Scripture to be put forth among his people . . . 
 I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write 
 more, nor abide two days in these parts after the same ; 
 but immediately to repair into his realm, and there most 
 humbly submit myself at the feet of His Royal Majesty, 
 offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, 
 what death His Grace will, so that this be obtained." 
 The plea was unsuccessful, and Tindale again resumed 
 his wandering life. In 1533 he sustained one of his 
 severest personal losses in the martyrdom of his "son 
 in the faith," John Fryth ; but with undaunted spirit he 
 continued his work. An edition of the Book of Genesis, 
 "newly corrected and amended," and of the New 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS LIFE 29 
 
 Testament were both published at Antwerp in 1534 ; 
 to the latter of which were now added certain " Epistles," 
 or extracts, out of the Old Testament for church use. One 
 copy of this edition presei-ved in the British Museum is of 
 great interest, as believed to be the identical copy sent 
 by Tindale himself to Ann Boleyn. The Queen had 
 interested herself on behalf of a certain English merchant, 
 Richard Harman, who, in her own words to Cromwell, 
 ** did, both with his goods and policy, to his great hurt 
 and hindrance in this world, help to the setting forth of 
 the New Testament in English " ; and in grateful 
 recognition the translator had this copy specially printed 
 on vellum for her acceptance. The Queen's influence 
 however, even if exerted, was powerless to help Tindale 
 himself; and in 1535 he was betrayed into the hands of 
 his enemies by an unprincipled Englishman named 
 Phillips. 
 
 § 8. Tindale's last Days and Death.— Tindale's 
 
 place of imprisonment was the Castle of Vilvorde, near 
 Brussels, and we find him writing from there to the 
 Governor in a letter still preserved — the only document 
 in his handwriting known to exist ^ — "I entreat your 
 Lordship, and that by the Lord Jesus, that if I am to 
 remain here (in Vilvorde) during the winter, you will 
 request the Procureur to be kind enough to send me, 
 from my goods which he has in his possession, a warmer 
 cap, for I suffer extremely from cold in the head " ; and 
 then after mentioning several other articles : "I also 
 wish his permission to have a candle in the evening, 
 for it is wearisome to sit alone in the dark. But above 
 all I entreat and beseech your clemency to be urgent 
 with the Procureur, that he may kindly permit me to 
 have my Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Grammar, and Hebrew 
 Dictionary, that I may spend my time with that study." 
 Whether this wish was granted we do not know ; 
 nor can we tell what part he had, if any, in a folio 
 edition of his New Testament which appeared about this 
 
 1 A facsimile copy is given in Demaus' valuable work William 
 Tyndale, a Biography (new edition by Lovett), p. 437. 
 
30 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 time in England — the first portion of the sacred volume 
 printed on English soil. It has sometimes been traced 
 to the influence of Ann Boleyn, whom we have already 
 found on the side of Bible-circulation ; and in any case 
 one would like to think that Tind ale's closing days 
 were cheered with the tidings of its appearance. It 
 would be a fitting rounding -off of the work to which 
 he had devoted himself during these twelve years of what 
 he elsewhere pathetically describes as "mine exile out 
 of mine natural country, and bitter absence from my 
 friends " ; the first dawn of that brighter day for which 
 in his last words he prayed, " Lord, open the King of 
 England's eyes." On Friday 6th October 1536 this 
 "true servant and Martyr of God . . . who for his 
 notable pains and travail may well be called the Apostle 
 of England in this our latter age," was strangled, and his 
 body burned at the stake. 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS WORK 31 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS WORK 
 
 I. The New Testament of 1525. 2. The Pentateuch of 
 1530. 3. The New Testament of 1534. 4. The 
 New Testaments of 1535-36. 
 
 In speaking of Tindale's life we noticed his principal 
 Bible-translations in the order in which they appeared. 
 We have now to return, and bring together a few facts 
 regarding each of these. 
 
 § I. The New Testament of 1525.— Of this we 
 
 have seen that two editions were issued, one in octavo 
 and another in quarto, each consisting of three thousand 
 copies ; but so vigorous were the steps taken for their , 
 destruction that now only the scantiest remains survive. 
 The quarto, indeed, was believed to be wholly lost until i 
 in 1836 a London bookseller discovered a portion of it 
 containing the Prologue and the first twenty-one chapters 
 of St. Matthew. This precious fragment is now pre- 
 served in the Grenville Room of the British Museum. 
 Of the octavo two copies are extant : one, wanting only 
 the title-page, in the Baptist College at Bristol ; the 
 other, more defective, in the Libraiy of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. 
 
 On comparison the two editions prove in the matter 
 of text to be substantially the same ; in other particulars 
 there are considerable differences between them. Thus 
 while the octavo has at the end only a brief address 
 To the Reader, and is without notes or comments of any 
 kind, the quarto is prefaced by a lengthy Prologue ^ 
 1 The opening sentences may be given in a note : " I have here 
 
32 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 and contains many marginal notes. Both Prologue 
 and notes bear unmistakable traces of the influence of 
 Luther's New Testament, which was published in 1522 ; 
 and the list appended of "The bokes conteyned in the 
 newe Testament " follows exactly his order. That order 
 is in some respects noteworthy. As far as the Epistle to 
 Philemon it is the same as in our present New Testament, 
 the books being numbered from i. to xviii. Then, still 
 numbered, come ist and 2nd Peter and the three Epistles 
 of St. John ; but here the numbering ceases, and after a 
 slight gap, marking them off", as it were, from the rest, 
 we have the Epistles to the Hebrews, of St. James, and 
 St. Jude, and the Revelation of St. John. In his revision, 
 however, of 1534, it may here be mentioned, Tindale 
 expressly claims for the Epistle of St. James that " me- 
 thinketh it ought of right to be taken for Holy Scripture" ; 
 and again, after examining Luther's argument against the 
 apostolic authority of the Hebrews, without pronouncing 
 definitely on the authorship, he comes to the conclusion 
 that the Epistle "ought no more to be refused for a 
 holy, godly, and catholic than the other authentic 
 Scriptures." 
 
 As regards the translation of the various books it will 
 be best to defer our remarks until we come to the later 
 revisions which represent Tindale's most finished work ; 
 but as a specimen of the parent edition of our English 
 New Testament, " the veritable origin of all those 
 millions of English Scriptures now reading in so many 
 
 translated (brethren and sisters, most dear and tenderly beloved in 
 Christ) the New Testament for your spiritual edifying, consolation, 
 and solace : exhorting instantly and beseeching those that are better 
 seen in the tongues than I, and that have higher gifts of grace to 
 interpret the sense of the Scripture and meaning of the Spirit than 
 I, to consider and ponder my labours, and that with the spirit of 
 meekness. And if they perceive in any places that I have not 
 attained the verjf sense of the tongue, or meaning of the Scripture, 
 or have not given the right English word, that they put to their 
 hands to amend it, remembering that so is their duty to do. For we 
 have not received the gifts of God for ourselves only, or for to hide 
 them ; but for to bestow them unto the honouring of God and 
 Christ, and edifying of the Congregation which is the body of 
 Christ. ' 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS WORK 33 
 
 different and distant parts of the globe," 1 the following 
 verses reproduced as closely as possible from the original 
 quarto will be of interest. 
 
 Matt. v. 13-18 (Tindale, 1525, quarto) 
 Ye are 1^" the salt of the erthe, but aii yf the salte 
 be once unsavery what can be salted there with : it 
 is thence forthe good for nothynge but to be cast out 
 at the dores, and that men treade it under fete. Ye 
 are the light of the worlde. A cite that is sett on an 
 hill cannot be hyd, nether do men light a cadle and 
 put it under a busshell but on a candlesticke, and it 
 lighteth all those which are in the housse. Se that 
 youre light so schyne before men that they maye se 
 youre good werks and gloryfie youre father which is in 
 heven. 
 
 Ye shall not thynke that y am come to disanull 
 the lawe other the prophetts : no y am not come to 
 dysanull them but to fulfyll them. For truely y say 
 vnto you tyll heven and erthe peiysshe one "^^jott 
 or one tytle of the lawe shall not scape tyll all be 
 fulfylled. 
 
 S^ Salte. Whe the pachers ceasse too preache godds 
 worde the muste they nedes be oppressed and trod vnder 
 fote with mannes tradicions. 
 
 * Jott. Is as moche too saie as the leest letter. For 
 so is the leest letter that the grekes or the hebrues haue 
 called. 
 
 The Notes here appended are the marginal notes or 
 comments already referred to as distinguishing the quarto 
 edition. One or two other examples may be given in 
 modernised spelling : — 
 
 Matt. iii. 9, "Put your trust in God's word only, 
 
 and not in Abraham. Let saints be an example unto 
 
 you, and not your trust and confidence, for then ye 
 
 make Christ of them." 
 
 1 Anderson, The Annals 0/ the English Bible, p. 46 (1 vol 
 revised edition, 1862). 
 
34 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Matt. xi. 30, *'My yoke. The cross is an easy 
 
 thing to them that perceive the gospel." 
 
 Matt. XV. 13, "Traditions of men must fail at 
 
 the last : God's word abideth ever." 
 
 § 2. The Pentateuch of 1530. — From the differences 
 of size and type in the separate books of Tindale's Penta- 
 teuch it is often believed that they were at first published 
 separately and afterwards collected into a single volume. 
 As further bearing this out it may be noted that each 
 book has its own Prologue. That to Genesis is headed 
 "A prologe shewing the vse of the scripture," and 
 immediately follows the Preface " W. T. to the Reader." 
 Tindale's initials are again found at the head of each 
 page of the remaining four Prologues. As in the case 
 of the quarto New Testament the translation is accom- 
 panied by a number of marginal notes. 
 
 The translation itself is marvellously accurate, and 
 while largely influenced both by the Vulgate and by 
 Luther, bears unmistakable traces of an independent 
 study of the original Hebrew. We cannot attempt to 
 prove this in detail here, and must content ourselves by 
 showing rather the close relation of Tindale to our own 
 A. V. In the following passage for the purpose of better 
 comparison the spelling is modernised, and all differences 
 from the A.V. distinguished by italics. 
 
 Deut. vi. 4-9 (Tindale, 1530) 
 Hear, Israel, The Lord thy God is Lord 07ily, and 
 thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, 
 with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these 
 words, which I command thee this day, shall be in 
 thine heart : and thou shalt whet them on thy children, 
 and shalt talk of them when thou art at ho??ie in thine 
 house and as thou walkest by the way, and when thou 
 liest down, and when thou risest up ; and thou shalt 
 bind them for a sign upon thine hand. And they 
 shall he. papers of remejnbrance between thine eyes, and 
 shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and 
 upon thy gates, 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS WORK 35 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that out of 1 12 words Tindale 
 has only 1 2 which differ from the version now in use ; all, 
 with two exceptions, being changes of slight moment. 
 The two exceptions, ^'■papers of remembrance''^ and '■'■whet 
 (?;/," prove on examination to be renderings due to Luther's 
 influence, though in neither case does Tindale slavishly 
 copy. In the first instance the German has only "a 
 remembratice,'''' and in the second the verb employed 
 denotes "w//^/" or '■'■sharpen'''' rather than '■^ 7vhet on,''^ 
 as in our own A. V. margin. In a marginal note Tindale 
 further explains "whet on" as equivalent to "sharpen, 
 discipline, stimulate " ;• and in a second note he remarks 
 on the whole passage : " It is heresy with us for a lay- 
 man to look of God's word, or to read it." 
 
 It must not however be imagined, to pass to the 
 Notes generally, that all are of the same tone as these. 
 Very many, unfortunately, are of a bitterly controversial 
 character, and how trenchant his criticisms could be the 
 following examples will show : — 
 
 Gen. xxiv. 60 {"And they blessed Rebecca""). — 
 "To bless a man's neighbour is to pray for him, and 
 to wish him good : and not to wag two fingers over 
 him " (with allusion to the episcopal benediction in 
 the Church of Rome). 
 
 Exod. xxxii. 32 {'■'■If not, wipe me out of thy 
 book"). — "O pitiful Moses, and likewise O merciful 
 Paul, Rom. ix. And O abominable Pope with all 
 his merciless idols." 
 
 Numb. xvi. 15 {'^ I have not taken so much as ati 
 ass from them "). — " Can our prelates so say ? " 
 
 Numb, xxiii. 8 {'■'How shall I curse''). — "The 
 Pope can tell how." 
 
 Deut. xi. 19 (" Talk of them when thou sittest "), — 
 "Talk of Robin Hood, say our prelates." 
 
 Notes such as these cannot be admired, though in 
 judging them regard must be had to the peculiar cir- 
 cumstances in which Tindale was placed. That, too, he 
 himself regretted them is proved by the fact that an 
 
36 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 entirely new set of notes, wholly of a hortatory and ex- 
 planatory character, are substituted in the revised edition 
 of Genesis published in 1534. Had Tindale succeeded 
 in revising the other Books of the Pentateuch, he would 
 in all probability have banished the polemical notes from 
 them also. 
 
 But if we cannot admire the majority of Tindale's 
 notes in their present form, nothing but unqualified praise 
 attaches to his Prologues. They are amongst the most 
 characteristic specimens of his writings, and are full of 
 beautiful and suggestive passages. Detached sentences 
 do them scant justice, but may give an idea of their 
 character. This, for example, is how the Prologue to 
 Genesis begins : "Though a man had a precious jewel 
 and a rich, yet if he wist not the value thereof nor where- 
 fore it served, he were neither the better nor richer of a 
 straw. Even so though we read the Scripture and babble 
 of it never so much, yet if we know not the use of it, and 
 wherefore it was given, and what is therein to be sought, 
 it profiteth us nothing at all." How again could the 
 right use of the Jewish ceremonies be better described 
 than in these words from the Prologue to Exodus : "Of 
 the ceremonies, sacrifices, and tabernacle with all its 
 glory and pomp understand that they were not permitted 
 only, but also commanded of God ; to lead the people in 
 the shadows of Moses and night of the Old Testament ; 
 until the light of Christ and day of the New Testament 
 were come : as children are led in the phantasies of 
 youth, until the discretion of man's age become upon 
 them." While once more the Book of Deuteronomy is 
 pronounced to be " the most excellent of all the books of 
 Moses. It is easy also and light and a very pure 
 gospel, that is, to wit, a preaching of faith and love : 
 deducing the love to God out of faith, and the love of a 
 man's neighbour out of the love of God." 
 
 § 3. The New Testament of 1534.— In the ^ 
 
 Address attached to his first edition (octavo) of 1525, ' 
 Tindale acknowledged that the translation was by no 
 means so perfect as he would have liked. " Count it," 
 
IVILLIAM TINDALE — HIS WORK 37 
 
 so he humbly says, " as a thing not having his full shape, 
 but as it were born afore his time, even as a thing begun 
 rather than finished." And it had accordingly been his 
 fixed aim to "give it its full shape," and to "seek in 
 certain places more proper English. " Circumstances for 
 a time prevented the carrying out of his wish, until in 
 the autumn of 1534 he was roused to immediate action. 
 The cause was the issue by one George Joye of an 
 edition of the New Testament which claimed to be < 
 "diligently ouersene and corrected"; but which in 
 reality was nothing but Tindale's translation with 
 various changes — they cannot be called improvements — 
 introduced from the Vulgate. Indignant at Joye who, 
 he felt, "had not used the office of an honest man," 
 Tindale immediately completed his own revision, and 
 issued it a few months later from the press of Martin 
 Lempereur in Antwerp. The title runs : — 
 
 " The Newe Testament dylygently corrected and 
 
 compared with the Greek by Willyam Tindale, and 
 
 fyneshed in the yere of our Lorde God md and 
 
 xxxiiij. in the moneth of November." 
 
 Then we have, " W. T. to the Christen reader," 
 seventeen pages. "A prologe into the iiii. Evan- 
 gelystes," four pages. "Willyam Tindale, yet once 
 more, to the Christen reader," nine pages. At the end 
 are the Epistles taken out of the Old Testament, and a 
 Table of Epistles and Gospels for Sundays, with " some 
 things added" to fill up the blank pages at the end. 
 There are woodcuts in the Book of Revelation, and 
 some small ones at the beginning of the Gospels and 
 several of the Epistles. 
 
 The book was thus in some respects more like a 
 modern Church Service Book than an ordinary Testa- 
 ment, and everything about it bears evidence to the 
 extreme care with which it was prepared, while the 
 improvements introduced into the text fully justify the 
 translator's own claim, that he had "weeded out of it 
 many faults which lack of help at the beginning, and 
 oversight, did sow therein." 
 
38 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 This can only be shown by the help of an example ; 
 and for convenience we may take the same passage of 
 which we have already given the 1525 version (p. 33). 
 
 Matt. v. 13-18 (Tindale, 1534) 
 
 Ye are the salt of the erthe : but an yf the salt 
 have lost hir saltnes what can be salted therwith ? 
 It is thence forthe good for nothinge but to be cast oute, 
 and to be troaden vnder fote of men. Ye are the light of 
 the worlde. A cite that is set on an hill cannot be hid. 
 Nether do men lyght a candell and put it vnder a 
 bushell but on a candelstick, and it lighteth all that 
 are in the house. Let your light so shyne before 
 men, that they maye se your good workes, and glorify 
 youre father which is in heven. 
 
 Thinke not that I am come to destroye the lawe or 
 the Prophets : no I am nott come to destroye them, 
 but to fulfill them. For truely I saye vnto you, till 
 heven and erthe perisshe, one iott or one tytle of the 
 lawe shall not scape, tyll all be fulfilled. 
 
 If now the two versions are compared, it will be seen 
 that in the later version Tindale has substituted the more 
 exact "have lost hir saltnes" for "be once unsavery " ; 
 has omitted " at the dores " for which there is no warrant 
 in the original ; has adopted the more literal renderings 
 "to be troaden" and "let your light so shyne" for 
 " that men treade " and " se that youre light so schyne " ; 
 and finally has corrected "ye shall not thynke that y 
 am come to disanull" into "thinke not that I am 
 come to destroye." Or, in all, he has introduced five 
 distinct improvements in as many sentences. It must 
 not be thought however that the changes throughout are 
 on an average so numerous as this ; and indeed their 
 comparative fewness on the whole has been fairly claimed 
 as proving the excellence of Tindale's_;frj^ attempt. 
 
 But interesting though it is, we must not dwell on this 
 comparison of the two editions any longer, but proceed 
 rather to present Tindale's amended rendering of a 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS WORK 39 
 
 difficult passage from the Epistles, in order to illustrate 
 further his skill as a translator. 
 
 Phil. ii. 5-1 1 (Tindale, 1534) 
 
 Let the same mynde be in you that was in Christ 
 lesu : which beynge in the shape of God, and 
 thought it not robbery to be equall with God. 
 Nevertheless he made him silfe of no reputacioun, 
 and toke on him the shape of a servaunte, and became 
 lyke vnto men, and was founde in his aparell as a 
 man. He humbled him silfe and became obedient 
 vnto the deeth, even the deeth of the crosse. Wher- 
 fore God hath exalted him, and geven him a name 
 above all names : that in the name of lesus shuld 
 every knee bowe, bothe of thinges in heven and thinges 
 in erth and thinges vnder erth, and that all tonges 
 shuld confesse that lesus Christ is the lorde vnto 
 the prayse of God the father. 
 
 The student who compares this passage for himself 
 with Purvey's rendering on p. 16 will at once remark 
 the advance that has been made, while on the other 
 hand he cannot fail to be struck with the number of 
 Tindale's renderings which have kept their place in the 
 A. V. In one important passage, " in the name of Jesus " 
 for "at the name of Jesus," the R.V. agrees both with 
 Purvey and Tindale as against the A.V. 
 
 To his revised Testament Tindale added also a 
 number of marginal NoteS, which are happily free from 
 the controversial spirit which marked those on the Penta- 
 teuch. Thus on St, John vii. 17 he remarks, " He that 
 loveth the will of God to keep His law ; the same under- 
 standeth the doctrine " ; on Rom. iii. 31, " Faith main- 
 taineth the law, because thereby we obtain power to love 
 it and to keep it"; and on i Cor. xiv. 20, "All deeds 
 must be sauced with the doctrine of God, and not with 
 good meaning only " ; while with his comment on St. 
 Paul's admission in Phil. iii. 13, letting us into his own 
 inmost heart, we may fittingly take leave of the book 
 
40 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 which Bishop Westcott has described as Tindale's 
 " noblest monument " — " I look not upon the works that 
 I have done, but what I lack of the perfectness of 
 Christ." 
 
 § 4. The New Testaments of 1535-36.— In 
 
 1535 there appeared what is often known as the 
 G.H. Testament from the publisher's initials which are 
 attached, and which reproduces the 1534 text, "yet 
 once agayne corrected by Willyam Tindale." The 
 corrections now introduced are not so numerous as 
 between the texts of 1534 and 1525, but their very 
 minuteness affords striking proof of the translator's 
 continued industry and zeal. 
 
 A New Testament bearing the same date is very remark- 
 able for its peculiar orthography, " faether " for father, 
 " hoeme "or " hoome " for home, " yought " for youth. 
 Various explanations of these misspellings have been 
 offered, such as that they were purposely adapted " to the 
 pronunciation of the peasantry" in fulfilment of Tindale's 
 early determination ; but in all probability they are due 
 simply to the mistakes of some Flemish printer in setting 
 up a foreign language. In this edition for the first time 
 headings are prefixed to the chapters in the Gospels and 
 the Acts ; but the marginal notes, which had found their 
 way into the 1534 edition, are wholly dropped. What- 
 ever the cause,! we may be thankful that Tindale's last 
 work, like his first, contained nothing but the ' ' bare text 
 of the Scripture," which, as he had repeatedly declared, 
 was in itself enough for all the people's needs. 
 
 As proving the rapid spread of Tindale's translations 
 it may be mentioned that in the following year, 1536, 
 seven if not eight editions of his New Testament 
 appeared, one of which is believed to have been the first 
 portion of the Holy Scriptures printed in England ; ^ 
 
 1 It may be due to some words of Joye's, whose force Tindale 
 could not but feel. " I would," writes Joye, " the Scriptures were 
 so purely and plainly translated that it needed neither note, gloss, 
 nor scholia, so that the reader might once swim without a cork." 
 
 2 These and many other interesting particulars will be found in 
 A Bibliographical Description of the Editions of The New Testa- 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS WORK 41 
 
 while it is further noteworthy that John Rogers printed 
 the 1535 G.H. text almost verbatim in his Bible of 
 I537> through which Tindale's work has passed into our 
 own Authorised Version. 
 
 ment, Tyndales Version, in English, by Francis Fry, London, 
 1878. 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 I. Tindale's independence as a translator, 2. Influence on 
 subsequent versions. 3. General estimate of Tindale. 
 
 In following the story of Tindale's life and work we 
 cannot fail to have been struck with the clearness with 
 which from the first he saw what was wanted, and the 
 marvellous steadfastness of purpose with which he sought 
 to carry that out. The resolution formed so far back 
 as the days at Little Sodbury, to bring the knowledge of 
 Scripture within the reach of even the " boy that driveth 
 the plough," was never for a moment lost sight of, 
 and unlike many martyrs and reformers he had the 
 satisfaction in the hour of death of knowing that his 
 wish was in a fair way of being realised. Over the 
 outward details of Tindale's career we can however no 
 longer linger, but before we part from him there are one 
 or two general points bearing on his work which must 
 be noted, if we would estimate aright his character and 
 influence as a translator. 
 
 § I. Tindale's Independence as a Translator. 
 
 — Foremost amongst these is the question, How far in 
 his work of translation Tindale was influenced by other 
 workers in the same field, and more particularly by the 
 German Testament of Luther? Sir Thomas More, for 
 example, who during Tindale's lifetime had been 
 specially commissioned to attack his translation, asserts 
 that "at the time of his translation of the New Testa- 
 ment Tindale was with Luther at Wittenberg, and the 
 confederacy between him and Luther was well known " ; 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE—HIS INFLUENCE 43 
 
 an assertion which Tindale meets wth the direct denial, 
 " When he (More) saith Tindale was confederate with 
 Luther, that is not truth." 
 
 A careful comparison moreover of the respective 
 texts amply confirms this denial. For though it is 
 clear that Tindale had Luther's Testament before him 
 as he worked, and borrowed freely from his Prefaces 
 and marginal notes, it is equally clear that in the matter 
 of the text he took up a wholly independent attitude, 
 and used Luther and all other aids within his reach * ' as 
 a master, and not as a disciple." That he had a 
 right to do so, all that we can gather regarding his 
 personal scholarship abundantly proves. His bitter 
 opponent Cochlieus speaks both of him and his associate 
 at Cologne as "learned, skilful in languages, and 
 eloquent " ; George Joye, against whom he had such 
 just cause of complaint, admits his "high learning in 
 his Hebrew, Greek, Latin," etc. : while an eminent 
 German scholar, Herman Buschius, describes him as 
 "so skilled in seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, 
 Italian, Spanish, English, French, that whichever he 
 spoke you would suppose it his native tongue." 
 
 We have no difficulty therefore in accepting the con- 
 clusion that to Tindale belongs the undoubted honour of 
 being the first in England at any rate (with the possible 
 exception of Bede) of going straight to the Hebrew and 
 Greek originals ; while his subsequent alterations and 
 revisions all bear witness to his anxiety to bring his 
 translation into ever closer approximation to these. ^ 
 
 How far in so translating, his language was influenced 
 by previous English versions, it is more difficult to say 
 
 1 Tindale's Hebrew scholarship has sometimes been strangely 
 called in question ; but even granting that he may not have had 
 much acquaintance with the language when he left England, he 
 must verj- soon have acquired it. The testimonies just cited alone 
 prove this, and are supported by his own notes in his Pentateuch on 
 peculiar Hebrew words, and by the clear way in which he elsewhere 
 remarks on the properties of the Hebrew tongue. Nor in his 
 . I «j:<rr to More could he have spoken in the way that he does of 
 the Hebrew text as "most of need to be known" imless he had 
 himself been familiar with it. 
 
44 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 precisely. We have on the one hand his own statement 
 that he "had no man to counterfeit, neither was holpen 
 with English of any that had interpreted the same or 
 such like thing in the Scripture beforetime " ; while 
 on the other hand the most cursory comparison of his 
 renderings with Purvey's revision reveals an identity of 
 language and expression which it is difficult to reconcile 
 with total independence. Dr. Moulton has however 
 pointed out that in many cases the Vulgate supplies the 
 connecting link, and that in others the explanation 
 probably is that the earlier Wycliffite renderings had 
 passed into general currency, and become almost pro- 
 verbial phrases. 1 In using these in his translation 
 Tindale may therefore have been more indebted to 
 Wyclifife and his successor than he was himself aware of ; 
 and in the same general sense we may at once accept the 
 words of the editors of The Wycliffite Versions, that at 
 the period of the Reformation these versions " supplied 
 an example and a model to those excellent men, who in 
 like manner devoted themselves at the hazard of their 
 lives to the translation of Scripture, and to its pubHcation 
 among the people of the land." 
 
 § 2. Influence on subsequent Versions. — If 
 
 however Tindale was thus in the main independent of 
 previous translators, his influence on all who succeeded 
 him is direct and unmistakable. Indeed we are probably 
 not overstating the case when we say that all future trans- 
 lations of the English Bible are in the main little else 
 than revisions of his work so far as it had gone. We 
 shall meet with frequent examples of this in the chapters 
 that follow ; but in the meantime it may not be out of 
 place to indicate briefly one or two of the sources of his 
 power. 
 
 Thus it is he who has given us our religions vocabu- 
 lary. In the whole of Tindale's New Testament it has 
 been estimated that the number of strange words, that 
 
 1 Obvious examples are the use of " mote " and " beam " in both 
 versions in Matt. vii. 3, and their common description of the 
 " strait gate," and the " narrow " way, a few verses farther on. 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE — HIS INFLUENCE 45 
 
 is, words which are not found in our Authorised Version, 
 is probably below 350, and many of these occur only 
 once or twice. What is more important, in the general 
 character of the Bible diction, its union of stateliness 
 and homeliness, of majesty and sweetness, we may 
 still see "a reflection of the high purpose which evoked 
 the effort. Our Bible translation actually generated a 
 new dialect in the English language ; it produced the 
 happiest type of diction that ever grew upon the prolific 
 stock of our mother tongue." ^ 
 
 But Tindale did more than give his successors words 
 in which to translate ; he showed them also the spiy-it in 
 which alone the work ought to be entered on. His 
 singleness of aim, his noble self-forgetfulness, his honesty 
 of purpose, stand revealed on every page of his work. 
 "I call God to record," so he writes to his friend 
 Fryth in 1532, "against the day we shall appear before 
 our Lord Jesus, to give a reckoning of our doings, that I 
 never altered one syllable of God's 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." And in the last words which we have from him 
 regarding his work he says : "As concerning all I have 
 translated or otherwise written, I beseech all men to read 
 it for that purpose I wrote it, even to bring them to the 
 knowledge of the Scripture. And as far as the Scrip- 
 ture approveth it, so far to allow it, and if in any place 
 the word of God disallow it, there to refuse it, as I do 
 before our Saviour Christ and His Congregation." 
 
 Bishop Westcott is therefore not doing more than 
 giving Tindale his due when he writes : " He toiled 
 faithfully himself, and where he failed he left to those 
 who should come after the secret of success. The 
 achievement was not for one but for many ; but he fixed 
 the type according to which the later labourers worked. 
 His influence decided that our Bible should be popular 
 and not literary, speaking in a simple dialect, and that 
 so by its simplicity it should be endowed with permanence." 
 1 Earle, The Psalter 0/ the Great Bible of 1539, Introd. p. xlvii. 
 
46 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 § 3. Estimate of Tindale as a Translator.— In 
 
 view of a testimony such as that, it is an ungracious task 
 to point out wherein Tindale's translations failed, and 
 yet it would be idle, of course, to pretend that he fell into 
 no mistakes. Many of his renderings are incorrect, 
 others are uncouth, others are paraphrases rather than 
 translations. Serious faults too are his constant dis- 
 regard of connecting particles ("and," "for,'' etc.), his 
 neglect of the Greek article, and his habit of translating 
 the same Greek word in different ways in the same sen- 
 tence — a habit in which the translators of the Authorised 
 Version unfortunately followed him. Thus, to illustrate 
 this last point only, all must feel how inferior in force is 
 his rendering of Matt. xxi. 41 in the 1534 Testament, 
 " He will cruelly destroy those evil persons," to our 
 revised " He will miserably destroy those miserable 
 men"; or of i Cor. iii. 17, "If any man defile the 
 temple of God, him shall God destroy," to "If any man 
 destroy eth the temple of God, him shall God destroy ^ 
 On the other hand, in not a few instances where the 
 Authorised Version has introduced an unnecessary change, 
 Tindale has kept up the connection of the Greek, as 
 " Our ableness cometh of God, which hath made us able 
 to minister the new testament" {'■^ siifficiency^'''' "rt^/(?," 
 Authorised Version), 2 Cor. iii. 5, 6; and "About the 
 seat were xxiiii seats'' ("throne" "seats," Authorised 
 Version), Rev. iv. 4. 
 
 No more convincing proof indeed of Tindale's mar- 
 vellous care and exactness on the whole can be given 
 than the number of places in which the revisers of 1881 
 have gone back to his renderings in preference to those 
 adopted in the Authorised Version ; while it must not 
 be forgotten that in many places where they differ, the 
 fault lay not with Tindale, but with the inferior Greek 
 text with which he had to work. 
 
 Take it all in all, his translation is a noble one, and 
 Fuller's eulogy is not exaggerated: "What he under- 
 took was to be admired as glorious ; what he performed, 
 to be commended as profitable ; wherein he failed, is to 
 
WILLIAM TINDALE—HIS INFLUENCE 47 
 
 be excused as pardonable, and to be scored on the 
 account rather of that age, than of the author himself." 
 Or in the eloquent words of Mr. Froude : " 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 — un- 
 equalled, unapproached, in the attempted improvements 
 of modern scholars — all are here, and bear the impress 
 of the mind of one man, William Tyndal." 
 
48 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MILES COVERDALE 
 
 I. Early years. 2. Description of Bible of 1535. 3. 
 Coverdale as a translator. 4. Specimens of transla- 
 tion. 5. New editions. 6. Closing years and death. 
 
 When in 1530 Warham's Assembly formally condemned 
 the use of Tindale's New Testament,^ all hope of an 
 authorised vernacular translation was not thereby de- 
 stroyed. On the contrary, it was at the same time 
 distinctly stated that the King had been led to take 
 this step lest "the divulging of this Scripture at this 
 time in the English tongue " should tend rather to the 
 people's " further confusion and destruction than the 
 edification of their souls " ; but that he himself would 
 have the New Testament "by learned men faithfully 
 and purely translated," and so ready to be given forth 
 at a more convenient season. It may be questioned 
 whether Henry ever really contemplated the fulfilment 
 of his promise ; but in any case it was. not forgotten by 
 others. Towards the close of the same year a singularly 
 noble letter was addressed to him by Hugh Latimer, in 
 which the bold reformer called upon the King to im- 
 plement his promise "even to-day before to-morrow." 
 " And take heed," so he continued, " whose counsels 
 your Grace doth take in this matter, that you may do 
 that God commandeth, and not that seemeth good in 
 your own sight without the Word of God ; that your 
 Grace may be found acceptable in His sight, and one of 
 the members of His Church ; and, according to the office 
 1 See above, p. 28 
 
MILES COVERDALE 49 
 
 that he hath called your Grace unto, you may be found 
 a faithful minister of His gifts, and not a defender of His 
 faith ; for He will not have it defended by man or man's 
 power, but by His Word only, by the which He hath 
 evermore defended it, and that by a way far above man's 
 power, or reason, as all the stories of the Bible make 
 mention." 
 
 To the same end, a few years later, a Convocation 
 presided over by Cranmer, the recently-appointed Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, petitioned that " His Majesty 
 would vouchsafe to decree that the Sacred Scriptures 
 should be translated into the English tongue by certain 
 honest and learned men, named for that purpose by His 
 Majesty, and should be delivered to the people according 
 to their learning." We are not told the result of this 
 petition — possibly, in the then heated and divided state of 
 public opinion, it may never have been presented to the 
 King at all ; but, emboldened by its tone, Cranmer set 
 about the work of translation himself, dividing the Bible 
 into different parts, and soliciting the aid of the most 
 learned bishops and others. His project came to nothing ; 
 but meanwhile there had been quietly working away on 
 the Continent a scholar whose labours were to have a 
 marked influence on the whole future of Bible-translation. 
 His name was Miles Coverdale, and his story, so far 
 as bearing upon the subject before us, is quickly told. 
 
 § I. Early Years. — Miles Coverdale was born in 
 the year 1488 in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and is 
 described as ' ' from his childhood given to learning, 
 wherein he profited much." At a fitting age he was 
 attached to the Augustine Monastery at Cambridge, from 
 which we find him writing, probably in 1527, to Crom- 
 well, into whose good graces he had got : " For now I 
 begin to taste of Holy Scriptures ; now, honour be to 
 God ! I am set to the most sweet smell of holy letters." 
 
 Shortly afterwards Coverdale united himself with the 
 reforming party, and in consequence, in 1529, had to 
 cross the Channel for safety. According to Foxe, he 
 joined Tindale at Hamburg, "and helped him in the 
 
50 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 translating of the whole five books of Moses." Opinions 
 vary as to how far this statement is to be literally under- 
 stood ; there can, however, be little doubt that about 
 this time the two scholars did meet, and that Coverdale's 
 zeal in the work of translation received a fresh impulse. 
 The result was seen when in 1534, acting apparently on 
 the advice of Cromwell, who saw the turn that things 
 were taking, he was ready " to set forth " his translation, 
 and on 4th October 1535 the Jirst complete printed 
 English Bible was issued. For it will be kept in view 
 that Wycliffe's Bible, though complete, was only in MS. ; 
 and that Tindale's, though printed, was complete only 
 so far as the New Testament was concerned. All that we 
 can learn therefore regarding this volume cannot fail to be 
 of interest. The astonishing thing is that so much of its 
 history is still, to a great extent, matter of conjecture. 
 
 § 2. Description of Bible of 1535.— In size 
 
 Coverdale's Bible was a small folio, printed, probably 
 at Zurich, in angular black type, fifty-seven lines going 
 to each page. The original title ran as follows : — 
 
 "Biblia, The Bible: that is, the Holy Scripture 
 of the Olde and New Testament, faithfully and truly 
 translated out of Douche and Latyn into Enghshe, 
 
 MDXXXV." 
 
 The English printer, however, into whose hands the 
 sheets had passed, for some reason substituted a new 
 title-page of his own in which all reference to " Douche 
 and Latyn" was omitted. He also added several 
 extra pages of preliminary matter, including a Dedication 
 to the King, couched, according to the custom of the 
 times, in terms of most fulsome flattery, and a Prologue 
 to the Christian Reader. Both Dedication and Prologue 
 were signed by Coverdale. 
 
 The body of the book was divided into six parts. 
 I. Genesis to Deuteronomy. 2. Joshua to Esther. 
 
 3. Job to Solomon's Ballads (the Song of Solomon). 
 
 4. Isaiah to Malachi including the apocryphal book of 
 Baruch. 5. The Apocrypha omitting the Prayer of 
 
MILES CO VERB ALE 51 
 
 Manasseh. 6. The New Testament. Each book was 
 accompanied by a summary of its contents arranged 
 according to chapters,^ while a short Preface was 
 attached to the Apocrypha, in which the following 
 noteworthy words occur : " But whosoever thou be 
 that readest Scripture, let the Holy Ghost be thy 
 teacher, and let one text expound another unto thee. 
 As for such dreams, visions, and dark sentences as be 
 hid from thy understanding, commit them unto God, 
 and make no articles of them ; but let the plain text be 
 thy guide, and the Spirit of God (which is the author 
 thereof) shall lead thee in all truth." 
 
 § 3- Coverdale as a Translator.— When we 
 
 pass to the internal character of the version, the fii'st 
 point that meets us is the position of Coverdale as a 
 translator. Did he, like Tindale, as is sometimes 
 asserted, go direct to the original texts, or was his work 
 founded on the translations of others ? His own words 
 leave no doubt as to the answer. For not only have we 
 his statement on the original title-page that he translated 
 "out of Douche [German] and Latyn " ; but in his 
 Dedication to the King he speaks of having "with a 
 clear conscience purely and faithfully translated this out 
 of five sundry interpreters " — now generally identified 
 with Luther, the Zurich Bible, the Vulgate, a Latin 
 version by Pagninus, and in all probability Tindale. 
 It would lie altogether beyond our present purpose to 
 attempt to indicate Coverdale's special obligation to each 
 of these. But he himself has thrown an interesting side- 
 light on his relative dependence which deserves notice. 
 In his Prologue to the Christian Reader, after referring 
 to the Latin translations from which he had received 
 help, he goes on to speak of "the Dutch interpreters, 
 
 1 The summary for example of Matt. v. ran : " In this chapter 
 and in the two next following is contained the most excellent and 
 loving Sermon of Christ on the Mount : Which sermon is the very 
 key that openeth the understanding into the law. In this fifth 
 chapter specially He preacheth of the viii. beatitudes or blessings, 
 of manslaughter, wrath and anger : of adultery, of swearing, of 
 suffering wrong, and of love even towards a man's enemies." 
 
52 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 whom (because of their singular gifts and special diligence 
 in the Bible) I have been the more glad to follow for the 
 most part ^ according as I was required." The German 
 translations of Luther and the Zurich Bible may thus, 
 according to his own admission, be taken as the basis 
 of Coverdale's work — a conclusion which the independent 
 examination of his text amply supports. To show this 
 in any detail could hardly be of interest to the ordinary 
 reader ; but we may cite one or two short passages, 
 which will at least give a general idea of the character of 
 Coverdale's translation. 
 
 § 4- Specimens of Translation.— We begin 
 
 with one, of which Tindale's rendering has already been 
 given on p. 34, marking the principal differences from 
 it by means of italics. 
 
 DeUT. vi. 4-9 (COVERDALE, 1 535) 
 Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord only. 
 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And 
 these words, which I command thee this day, shalt 
 thou take to heart, and shalt whet them upon thy 
 children, and shalt talk of them, when thou sittest in 
 thine house, and when thou walkest by the way : 
 when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And 
 thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and 
 they shall be a token of remembrance befoj-e thine 
 eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of 
 thine house, and upon thy gates. 
 Our second passage is chosen simply for its famili- 
 arity. The italics again indicate the principal variations 
 from Tindale (New Testament, 1534). 
 
 Matt. xiii. 3-8 (Coverdale, 1535) 
 And He spake many things tmto them in simili- 
 tudes, saying : Behold, The sower went forth to sow : 
 and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside : Theti 
 came the fowls, and ate it up. Some fell upon stony 
 1 The italics are ours. 
 
MILES COVERDALE 53 
 
 ground, and anon it sprung up, because it had no 
 depth of earth : But when the Sun arose, it caught 
 heat : andy^r so much as it had no root, it withered 
 away. Some fell among the thorns, and the thorns 
 grew up, and choked it. Some fell upon good ground, 
 and gave fruit : some an hundred-fold, some sixty- 
 fold, some thirty-fold. 
 
 In both these passages, it will be noticed, the varia- 
 tions from Tindale are fairly numerous, on an average 
 about two variations a verse, while, in support of what 
 has already been stated, it is important to notice that in 
 almost every one of these Coverdale is found to be in 
 agreement with Luther. Such a rendering, however, as 
 " gave " in the last verse is due, not to the German, but 
 the Latin. It is necessary to add that other passages 
 would bring out a much closer relation to Tindale than is 
 here indicated. ^ 
 
 For our third and last specimen of Coverdale's transla- 
 tion we may turn to the Prophetical Books, in which he 
 had not the benefit of Tindale's guidance. The influence 
 of the German translators, more particularly of the 
 Zurich Bible, is again unmistakable. 
 
 Isaiah liii. 1-5 (Coverdale, 1535) 
 
 But who giveth credence unto our preaching ? Or 
 to whom is the arm of the Lord known ? He shall 
 grow before the Lord like as a branch, and as a root 
 in a dry ground. He shall have neither beauty nor 
 favour. When we look upon Him, there shall be no 
 fairness : we shall have no lust unto Him. He shall 
 be the most simple and despised of all, which yet 
 hath good experience of sorrows and infirmities. We 
 shall reckon Him so simple and so vile, that we shall 
 hide our faces from Him. Howbeit (of a truth) He 
 only taketh away our infirmity, and beareth our pain : 
 
 1 Thus in the Epistle of St. James containing 108 verses, Dr. 
 Moulton, to whom belongs the honour of being the first to point 
 out this var^'ing relation between the two versions, finds that the 
 difference amounts to three words only {^History, p. m). 
 
54 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Yet we shall judge Him, as though He were plagued 
 and cast down of God : whereas He (notwithstanding) 
 shall be wounded for our offences, and smitten for our 
 wickedness. For the pain of our punishment shall be 
 laid upon Him, and with His stripes shall we be healed. 
 
 Many other interesting particulars regarding Cover- 
 dale's translation might be brought forward if space per- 
 mitted, but enough has been said to show that, while 
 not an independent translator, he was certainly not a 
 mere "proof reader or corrector" of the first English 
 Bible. His relation, we have seen, was on the whole 
 distinctly closer to the German versions than to Tindale ; 
 but it is obvious that he made careful and discriminating 
 use of the different aids within his reach, and that his 
 work, if only for the happy turn which he gives to many 
 phrases and sentences, and which is often so slight as at 
 first sight to be hardly noticeable, possesses undoubted 
 original value. "The gentle flow of its English," says 
 Dr. Eadie, "is idiomatic and fresh, though many words 
 and phrases are now antiquated, ^ and it may still be read 
 with pleasure in the Psalms of the English Book of 
 Common Prayer, of which it is the basis. . . . No little 
 of that indefinable quality that gives popular charm to 
 our English Bible, and has endeared it to so many 
 generations, is owing to Coverdale. . . . Tyndale gave 
 us the first great outline distinctly and wonderfully 
 etched, but Coverdale added those minuter touches which 
 soften and harmonize it." 
 
 § 5. New Editions. — Special mention is here made 
 of Coverdale's Psalter, but it may be well to delay 
 consideration of it, until we meet it in its revised form 
 in the Great Bible, and in the meantime to notice one 
 or two new editions of his Bible as a whole. Thus in 
 
 1 From one of these, " There is no more Triacle at Galaad " (Jer. 
 viii. 22) Coverdale's translation is sometimes called "The Treacle 
 Bible." Other examples are : " Bare it in hir nebb " (Gen. viii. 11) ; 
 " Brake his brane panne" (Judg. ix. 53) ; " The foolish bodyes saye 
 in their hertes : Tush, there is no God " (Psa. xiv. i) ; " Because their 
 wyddowes were not loked vpon in the daylie handreachinge " (Acts 
 vi. 1). 
 
MILES CO VERB ALE 55 
 
 1537 a second edition appeared, " imprynted in Sowth- 
 warke for James Nycolson," and claiming to have been 
 "newly ouersene and corrected." The variations are 
 said to be slight and unimportant, and the chief interest 
 of the edition for us lies in the fact that it was the first 
 complete Bible printed in England. It contained the 
 same Dedication to Henry VIII. as its predecessor had 
 done, but " Quene Jane" now takes the place of the 
 "dearest just wyfe and most vertuous Pryncesse Queen 
 Anne." In the same year Nycolson issued a quarto 
 edition, which bore on its title-page the significant 
 words, now introduced for the first time, " Set forth 
 with the Kynges most gracious licence." 
 
 The following year, 1538, found Coverdale engaged 
 in biblical work in Paris, and the fruit was seen in a 
 Latin-English Testament, of which in the one year three 
 editions were called for. A copy of this Testament, 
 preserved in the British Museum, is of interest as having 
 been the property of Queen Elizabeth. It contains the 
 following entry in the Queen's own hand: — 
 
 " Amonge good thinges 
 I prove and finde, the quiet 
 life doth muche abounde, 
 and sure to the contentid 
 mynde, ther is no riches 
 may be founde. 
 
 Your lovinge 
 maistres 
 
 Elizabeth."! 
 
 § 6. Closing Years and Death.— We shall return 
 
 to Coverdale again as a translator in connection with the 
 story of the Great Bible, but may briefly summarise here 
 the closing incidents of his life. He was in England 
 apparently in 1539, but, after the death of Cromwell 
 on the scaffold in July 1540, returned to Germany, 
 living first at TUbingen and afterwards at Bergzabern, 
 where he is spoken of as " of very great service in pro- 
 
 1 Dore, Old Bibles, pp. 95-6. 
 
56 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 noting the Scriptural benefit of those persons in the lower 
 ranks of life who are anxious for the truth, and inflamed 
 with zeal and desire of obeying the will of God." i 
 
 In 1548 he came back to England, and three years 
 later was made Bishop of Exeter during Edward VI. 's 
 reign ; but on Mary's accession was deprived of his see. 
 He had again to go into exile, visiting among other places 
 Geneva. After his return he held the living of St. 
 Magnus the Martyr in London ; but lost this in the 
 beginning of Elizabeth's reign, apparently because he 
 would not obey the Act of Uniformity. He still preached 
 however occasionally, and evidently with great accept- 
 ance, for, according to the chronicler, "many people 
 ran after Father Coverdale," coming even " to his house 
 to ask where he would preach the next Lord's Day," 
 when he tried to keep it secret. He died in February 
 1569 at the age of eighty-one years. 
 
 Coverdale's character differed in many respects from 
 that of his great predecessor Tindale. He had not the 
 latter's sturdy independence, nor was the work of trans- 
 lation with him, as with Tindale, a consuming passion 
 that had to be obeyed. On the contrary, as he tells us 
 himself in his Prologue, "it was neither my labour nor 
 desire, to have this work put in my hand," but "when 
 I was instantly required, though I could not do so well 
 as I would, 1 thought it yet my duty to do my best, 
 and that with a good will." 
 
 He has been described as "an honest and well-mean- 
 ing, but a very ordinary plodding sort of man, like whom 
 there can be ten thousand found any day in London, 
 with no remarkable ability for either good or evil." 
 " But," as Dr. Eadie, who quotes this testimony, remarks, 
 " whatever his ability, Coverdale did his own work when 
 none of the ' ten thousand ' thought of attempting it ; 
 and though his talent was certainly not transcendent, it 
 qualified him to be the first to give a whole Bible to the 
 English people, and to edit the Great Bible, which for 
 so many years occupied a high place." 
 
 1 Quoted in Mombert, English Versions of the Bible, p. 160. 
 
MATTHEW S AND TAVERN ER S BIBLES 57 
 
 CHAPTER Vm 
 
 Matthew's bible — taverner's bible 
 
 I. "John Rogers alias Matthew." 2. Matthew's Bible. 
 3. Notes and Concordance. 4. The first Authorised 
 Version. 5. Martyrdom of Rogers. 6. Taverner's 
 Bible. 
 
 The English people had waited long before a complete 
 copy of the Scriptures in English was placed in their 
 hands ; but now, thanks to the noble example of Tin- 
 dale and Coverdale, translation was to follow translation 
 in rapid succession. It may not be out of place there- 
 fore to refer here to some words of the latter on the ad- 
 vantage of many versions. " Divers translations," so he 
 writes, "understand one another and that in the head 
 articles and ground of our most blessed faith, though they 
 use sundry words. Therefore methink we have great 
 occasion to give thanks imto God, that He hath opened 
 unto His church the gift of interpretation and of printing, 
 and that there are now at this time so many which with 
 such diligence and faithfulness interpret the Scripture to 
 the honour of God and edifying of His people." And 
 then after referring to his own translation he continues : 
 "If thou (reader) hast knowledge therefore to judge 
 where any fault is made, I doubt not but thou wilt help 
 to amend it, if love be joined with thy knowledge. How- 
 beit whereinsoever I can perceive by myself or by the 
 information of other that I have failed (as it is no wonder) 
 I shall now by the help of God overlook it better and 
 amend it." 
 
 We have seen already something of Coverdale's own 
 
58 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 efforts in the work of revision. Another worker in the 
 same field now appears. 
 
 § I. "John Rogers alias Matthew." in 1537, 
 
 the very year of Coverdale's own second edition, a Bible 
 was issued with the title : — 
 
 " The Byble, which is all the holy Scripture : In 
 whych are contained the Olde and Newe Testament 
 truly and purely translated into Englysh by Thomas 
 Matthew." 
 
 This is followed by a verse from Isaiah i. : " Hearcken 
 to ye heauens and thou earth geaue eare : for the Lorde 
 speaketh," and the note, "M,D,xxxvii, Set forth with 
 the Kinges most gracyous lycece." The place of 
 printing is not mentioned, though it is now believed to 
 have been Antwerp, and the whole question of author- 
 ship is still to a certain extent uncertain. For while 
 the Dedication to Henry VIII. again bears the signature 
 of Thomas Matthew, this is followed by a brief " Ex- 
 hortacyon to the studye of the holy Scripture," signed 
 with the initials I. R., generally supposed to stand for 
 John Rogers, the proto-martyr in the Marian persecutions. 
 Opinions differ as to whether in Matthew and Rogers 
 we are to see one person or two ; but on the whole, in 
 our otherwise complete ignorance regarding Matthew, 
 and looking to the fact that in the official sentence pro- 
 nounced against him, Rogers is distinctly referred to as 
 "John Rogers, otherwise called Matthew," we are war- 
 ranted in concluding that we have here two different 
 designations of the same person. The alias may, as Foxe 
 suggests, have been adopted by Rogers for prudential 
 motives to hide his connection with Tindale. 
 
 § 2. Matthew's Bible. — The circumstances attend- 
 ing this connection we owe to the same authority. Rogers, 
 so Foxe tells us, who had been educated at Cambridge, 
 where "he was profitably exercised in learning," after 
 filling various posts in this country, was in 15 34 
 appointed Chaplain to the Merchant Adventurers at 
 Antwerp. Both Tindale and Coverdale happened to 
 
Matthew's and taverner's bibles 59 
 
 be there at the same time, and "in conferring with them 
 on the Scriptures, he came to a great knowledge in the 
 gospel of God . . . and joined himself with them in 
 that painful [difficult] and most profitable labour of 
 translating the Bible into the English tongue." If 
 we are to take these words literally, we must think of 
 the three men as all engaged together in the one work 
 of translation and revision, the results of which Rogers 
 afterwards gave to the world. But possibly Foxe's 
 words are not more than a loose way of indicating the 
 extent to which Rogers availed himself of the labours of 
 his two predecessors. For the slightest examination of 
 his version proves that in the Pentateuch he has almost 
 literally followed Tindale's published translation, and in 
 the New Testament the same writer's Testament of 1535 ; 
 while the Old Testament books from Ezra to Malachi 
 are equally closely taken from Coverdale. 
 
 There remains only the section from Joshua to 
 Chronicles, which is evidently not Coverdale's, and the 
 question may be asked. Have we here then Rogers' own 
 work, or can we again trace the hand of Tindale? The 
 latter alternative is now generally accepted. It will be 
 remembered that when Tindale was in prison he made 
 a special request for his Hebrew Bible and Dictionary 
 for the purpose, there is good reason to believe, of 
 completing his translation of the Old Testament. He 
 was not able to accomplish that ; but the coincidences in 
 matter and manner of translation between this section of 
 Matthew's Bible and Tindale's Pentateuch are such as 
 to render it more than probable that we have here 
 Tindale's unfinished work. What more natural than 
 that the translator, seeing his own death approaching, 
 should have handed over all he had been able to 
 accomplish to his friend Rogers to make what use of 
 it he could ? We may thus accept almost literally the 
 statement quoted by Lewis regarding this edition that 
 " to the end of the Book of Chronicles it is Tyndal's 
 translation, and from thence to the end of the Apocrypha, 
 Coverdale's, and that the whole New Testament is 
 
6o THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Tyndal's."! Or, roughly speaking, two -thirds of 
 Matthew's Bible are Tindale's, and one-third Cover- 
 dale's. 
 
 It is right, however, to add that if Rogers is thus 
 reduced to the position simply of an editor, he did his 
 work carefully and well. Thus in the Psalter he introduced 
 various readings in the margin, besides accommodating 
 the numbering of the Psalms to the Hebrew division. 
 In Psalm xiv. he omitted certain spurious verses 
 introduced by Coverdale, and in Psalm cxix. headed 
 the different sections by the letters of the Hebrew 
 alphabet ; while his scholarship was further proved by 
 the explanation of various technical terms. This, for 
 example, is what he has to say regarding the word Selah 
 which so often puzzles readers of the Psalms: "This 
 word, after Rabbi Kimchi, was a sign or token of lifting 
 up the voice, and also a monition and advertisement to 
 enforce the thought and mind earnestly to give heed to 
 the meaning of the verse unto which it is added. Some 
 will that it signify perpetually or verily." 
 
 § 3. Notes and Concordance. — It is in his Notes 
 
 indeed that the most characteristic feature of Rogers' 
 work is found. They are very numerous, and of all 
 kinds, as the following notes on Deut. i. will show. 
 
 Deut. i. 6, " Horeb and Sinai are both one." 
 
 Deut. i. 21 {''Before 7^^^^").— " That is, at Thy 
 Commandment." 
 
 Deut. i. 26 {'•'■ Btit were disobedient"). — "The 
 people, being unfaithful, would not go unto the 
 land promised." 
 
 Deut. i. 27 {''■ Hateth us"). — "God is said to hate 
 a man when He putteth him forth of His heart, and 
 giveth him not of His grace. Psal. v. b and xxx. 
 b." 
 
 Deut. i. 43 ("K? would not hear "). — " Here thou 
 
 1 History of the English Translations of the Bible, p. 107. The 
 one exception is the Prayer of JManasseh in the Apocrj^pha which 
 Coverdale had not translated, and which may therefore be set down 
 to Rogers himself. 
 
MATTHE W S AND TA VERNER S BIBLES 6i 
 
 seest the very image of us that live in this most peril- 
 ous time, for even we likewise, where God's word is, 
 there believe we not ; and where it is not, there be 
 we bold." 
 
 Or to select one or two examples from the New 
 Testament. 
 
 Matt.i. i8 (" C/^rzV/"). — "In Hebr. Messiah: It 
 signifieth anointed. Jesus Christ, then, is the earnest 
 and pledge of God's promise, by whom the grace and 
 favour of God is promised to us with the Holy 
 Ghost, which illumineth, lighteth, reneweth our 
 hearts to fulfil the law." 
 
 Johnv. 2 {^'' Slatig/ifer koicse ''''). — "The Greek hath 
 sheep house, a place where they killed the beasts that 
 were offered." 
 
 Jas. ii. 24 {^'- Justified''^). — "You see then that 
 of deeds a man is justified, that is, is declared just, 
 is openly known to be righteous, like as by the fruits 
 the good tree is known for good. Otherwise may not 
 this sentence be interpreted. . . ." 
 
 Rogers' Protestantism is still more clearly seen in 
 other places, as when he declares that reward. Matt. v. 
 12, "is given to men for their work, but it is not due to 
 the work," or describes faith, Matt. ix. 2, as " the 
 righteousness of a Christian man, which setteth at peace 
 the conscience, and receiveth the heritage everlasting. " 1 
 
 Along with his notes, Rogers adds to the usefulness 
 of his work by generally prefixing a heading to each 
 chapter. The Apocryphal books are introduced by a 
 Preface translated from Olivetan's French Bible ; and in 
 the New Testament Tindale's Prologue to the Epistle to 
 the Romans is reprinted. Amongst the preliminary 
 matter there is also, again from Olivetan, a "Table of 
 
 1 An interestmg proof of the animosity which such-like annota- 
 tions aroused in the papal party is afforded by a copy of Rogers' 
 original edition preserved in the library of the British and Foreign 
 Bible Society. For not only is the sacred volume itself in a sadly 
 torn and mutilated condition, but the objectionable notes have as 
 far as possible been effaced by a strong red pigment. 
 
62 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 the principal matters contained in the Bible." For ex- 
 ample, under the word "Advocate " the remark is made : 
 " Note that I find not in all the Bible this word advocate, 
 but only in i John ii. a, in the which place is said that 
 Christ is our advocate toward the Father." The Table 
 thus formed a kind of Concordance, and in any case it is 
 interesting to know that from the study of Matthew's 
 Bible the first English Concordance sprang. 
 
 It was the work of Marbeck, one of the organists of 
 St. George's, Windsor. Too poor to buy a copy of the 
 new version for himself, he borrowed one from amongst 
 his friends, and began to copy it out "on fair great 
 paper." He had got as far as the beginning of Joshua 
 when, according to his own account, " my friend. Master 
 Turner, chanced to steal upon me unawares, and seeing 
 me writing out the Bible, asked me what I meant 
 thereby. And when I told him the cause : ' Tush ! ' 
 said he, 'thou goest about a vain and tedious labour. 
 But this were a profitable work for thee, to set out a 
 Concordance in English.' 'A Concordance,' said I, 
 ' what is that ? ' Then he told me it was a book to find 
 out any word in the whole Bible by the letter, and 
 that there was such an one in Latin already." Marbeck 
 accordingly borrowed a Latin Concordance and set to 
 work, and, though he narrowly escaped martyrdom for 
 his pains, he was able to bring out the completed work 
 in 1550 with the title: "A Concordance, that is to sale, 
 a Worke wherein, by the ordre of the letters A, B, C, 
 ye male redely find any word conteigned in the whole 
 Bible, so often as it is there expressed or mentioned." 
 
 § 4- The first Authorised Version.— Apart from 
 
 other interesting associations, Matthew's Bible has one 
 special claim upon our attention. On its title-page, it 
 will be remembered, it bore the words, " Set forth with 
 the Kinges most gracyous lycece," and may thus be re- 
 garded as the first authorised version of the sacred 
 Scriptures.! This came about as follows. No sooner 
 
 1 In this same year of 1537 the royal license was obtained for the 
 second edition of Coverdale's Bible. See above, p. 55. 
 
MATTHEW S AND TAVERNER S BIBLES 63 
 
 had it been published than Cranmer forwarded a copy to 
 Cromwell with a letter in which he spoke of the book as 
 "very well done," and that as far as the translation went 
 he liked it "better than any other translation heretofore 
 made." He then urged Cromwell to show the book to 
 the King and obtain from him a "license that the same 
 may be sold and read of every person, without danger of 
 any act, proclamation, or ordinance heretofore granted 
 to the contrary, until such time that we, the Bishops, 
 shall set forth a better translation — which I think will 
 not be till a day after Doomsday," That Henry should 
 grant this request was almost more than Cranmer could 
 have dared to hope ; for the King could not but know X^ 
 that a large part of the Bible was that very version 
 of Tindale's he had already condemned more than 
 once. But, whatever the reason, Henry yielded, and so 
 it came about that "by Cranmer's petition, by Crumwell's 
 influence, and by Henry's authority, without any formal 
 ecclesiastical decision, the book was given to the English 
 people, which is the foundation of the text of our present 
 Bible. From Matthew's Bible — itself a combination of 
 the labours of Tyndale and Coverdale — all later revisions 
 have been successively formed. "^ We shall see this 
 more clearly in the pages that follow. In the meantime 
 we have to notice the fate of the man by whom the 
 Bible was produced. 
 
 § 5- Martyrdom of Rogers. — In the troublous 
 
 times of Queen Mary's reign, so prominent a Protestant 
 leader as Rogers could hardly expect to escape, and 
 accordingly in August 1553 he was ordered by the 
 Council to remain in his own house as a prisoner. 
 Later, through the intervention^ of Bonner, he was re- 
 moved to Newgate, where he was detained among thieves 
 and murderers for nearly eighteen months, when he was 
 brought up for examination before Lord Chancellor 
 Gardiner. No direct mention of his publication of the 
 Scriptures seems to have occurred in the charge against 
 him ; but the care with which Gardiner in passing 
 1 Westcott, History, p. 73. 
 
64 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 sentence no less than three times named " Rogers other- 
 wise called Matthew " may have been intended to point 
 to the version called by his name. In any case his 
 doom was fixed. On the morning of Monday 4th 
 February 1555 he was suddenly awakened and told to 
 prepare himself for the fire. He received the news 
 with perfect calmness, and, after being "degraded" by 
 Bonner, proceeded towards Smithfield, repeating the 51st 
 Psalm by the way, "all the people wonderfully rejoicing 
 at his constancy, with great praises and thanks to God 
 for it." His last words, as the flames enveloped him, 
 were, " Lord, receive my spirit. " " He was," says Foxe, 
 " the first martyr of all the blessed company that suffered 
 in Queen Mary's time at the fire " and " constantly and 
 cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience in the 
 defence of Christ's gospel." 
 
 § 6. Taverner'S Bible. — Before parting from 
 Rogers it may be well to notice here another Bible, 
 which was closely connected with his version. It was 
 the work of one Richard Taverner, and bears traces 
 throughout of his original and somewhat quaint per- 
 sonality. In his early years Taverner was connected 
 with Cardinal College, Oxford, and along with certain 
 other young men was imprisoned in the College 
 cellar for reading Tindale's New Testament. He owed 
 his release, it is said, to his skill in music. He after- 
 wards went to the Inner Temple in London, " where 
 his humour was to quote the law in Greek when he 
 read anything thereof." In 1534 he was taken into the 
 attendance of Cromwell, by whom he was promoted 
 a few years later to be Clerk of the Signet to Henry 
 VIII. During the reign of Henry's successor, Taverner, 
 though a layman, received a license to preach, and a 
 curious description has been preserved of his appearing 
 in the pulpit of St. Mary's, Oxford, with a gold chain 
 about his neck, and a sword by his side. His sermon, 
 if we may judge from its opening words, can hardly 
 have tended greatly to edification : " Arriving at the 
 Mount of St. Maiy's, in the stony stage where I now 
 
MA TTHE W S AND TA VERNE RS BIBLES 65 
 
 stand, I have brought you some fine biscuits, baked in 
 the oven of charity, and carefully conserved for the 
 chickens of the church, the sparrows of the Spirit, and 
 the sweet swallows of salvation. " 
 
 Taverner's translation, undertaken apparently at the 
 instigation of Cromwell, was published in 1539, and bore 
 to be " newly recognised with great diligence after most 
 faythful exemplars." The preliminary matter was practi- 
 cally the same as in Matthew's Bible, but there was a new 
 Dedication to the King in much better taste. " This one 
 thing," he says, " I dare full well affirm, that among all 
 your Majesty's deservings . . . your Highness never did 
 anything more acceptable unto God, more profitable unto 
 the advancement of true Christianity, more displeasant to 
 the enemies of the same, and also to your Grace's enemies, 
 than when your Majesty licensed and willed the most 
 sacred Bible, containing the unspotted and lively word of 
 God, to be in the English tongue set forth to your High- 
 ness's subjects." 
 
 The changes which Taverner introduces in the Old 
 Testament, mostly from the Vulgate, call for no special 
 remark ; others in the New Testament are significant, as 
 when he gives its full force to the definite article in John 
 i. 9, 21, "That was the true light," "Art thou the 
 prophet?" (" a true light," "a prophet," Ti?ici. 1534). 
 As a rule, however, Taverner's corrections are due not so 
 much to textual considerations, as to the desire to give 
 more pointed forcible renderings. Thus in Matt. xiii. 41 
 he substitutes " griefs " for " things that offend " ; in xxi. 
 17 "lodged" for "had his abiding"; and in xxii. 12 
 "had never a word to say," for "was even speechless." 
 In these last two chapters Dr. Moulton finds in all about 
 forty variations, of which one -third are retained in 
 the Authorised Version ; but the general influence of 
 Taverner's Bible on subsequent versions cannot be said 
 to have been great, and we must pass on to the Great 
 Bible, which was to succeed Matthew's as the author- 
 ised version for a period of nearly thirty years. 
 
66 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE GREAT BIBLE 
 
 I. Origin of the Great Bible. 2. Title and Title-page. 
 3. Translation and text. 4. The Psalter. 5. New 
 editions. 6. Reception in England. 7. Instances 
 of intolerance. 
 
 § I. Origin of the Great Bible.— Although Henry 
 
 VHI. had permitted both Matthew's and Coverdale's 
 Bibles of 1537 to be set forth with his "most gracious 
 license," we must not therefore regard the King as an 
 ardent advocate on their behalf. Any credit in this direc- 
 tion must rather be given to his great minister Thomas 
 Cromwell, who, since his patronage of Coverdale in the 
 early days of his career, had proved himself the steady 
 friend of Bible-translation. But with neither of these ver- 
 sions was Cromwell yet satisfied. Matthew's w^as disfigured 
 by its objectionable notes ; while Coverdale's transla- 
 tion had been proved in many respects unsatisfactory. 
 Accordingly early in 1538 he applied to Coverdale to 
 undertake a wholly new revision, using Matthew's Bible 
 as his basis. It says much for the nobility of Coverdale's 
 spirit that he showed no signs of resentment at his own 
 previous work being thus set aside, but at once along 
 wath one Grafton proceeded to Paris, where it had been 
 determined that the new edition should be brought out. 
 By means of a letter from Henry, a special license for 
 the printing was obtained from the King of France, and 
 on 23rd June 1538 the two editors were able to write to 
 Cromwell : " We be entered into your work of the Bible, 
 whereof (according to our most bounden duty) we have 
 
THE GREAT BIBLE 67 
 
 here sent unto your lordship two ensamples, one in 
 parchment, wherein we intend to print one for the King's 
 grace, and another for your lordship, and the second in 
 paper, whereof all the rest shall be made." From time 
 to time similar notices showing the progress of the work 
 were sent, and in view of the opposition with which it 
 was "daily threatened" notwithstanding the King's 
 license, care was taken to dispatch the sheets as fast 
 as possible, when ready, to England. The prudence of 
 this step was justified, for just as the whole work was 
 approaching completion the Inquisitor-General stepped 
 in, forbade the printing, and seized the remaining sheets. 
 Coverdale and Grafton escaped to England, but shortly 
 afterwards, encouraged by Cromwell, made bold to 
 return and convey the presses, types, and workmen to 
 London. And as "four great dry vats -full" of the 
 precious sheets were also recovered from a haberdasher to 
 whom, instead of being burned, they had been sold "to lap 
 his caps in," the work was soon finished, and in April \ 
 1539 the Bible — hereafter to be known as the Great |/ 
 Bible — was issued from the press. O 
 
 § 2. Title and Title-page. — The volume was a 
 
 large folio — hence its name — and the title of the first '^ 
 edition ran as follows : — 
 
 " The Byble in Englyshe, that is to saye the con- 
 tent of all the holy scripture, bothe of ye olde and 
 newe testament truly translated after the veryte of the 
 Hebrue and Greke textes, by ye dylygent studye of 
 dyuerse excellent learned men expert in the forsayde 
 tonges." 
 
 Surrounding this title was an elaborate and curious 
 design, said to have been the work of Holbein. At 
 the top of the page Christ is depicted in the clouds 
 of heaven. His arms are outstretched, and two scrolls 
 proceed out of His mouth. On one appears the in- 
 scription in Latin: "The word which goeth forth 
 from Me shall not return to Me empty, but shall 
 accomplish whatsoever I will have done." The other 
 is addressed to Henry who is represented as kneel- 
 
68 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 ing bare-headed, and runs : "I have found Me a man 
 after Mine own heart, who shall fulfil all My will." 
 To this Henry makes answer : " Thy word is a lantern 
 unto my feet." The King, now seated on his throne, is 
 himself the central figure in the next part of the page. 
 He is engaged in handing "the Word of God" to 
 Cranmer and other clergy on his right hand, and to 
 Cromwell ^ and other lay-peers on his left. To the 
 former his address is : " These things command and 
 teach " ; to the latter : "Judge righteously ; ye shall hear 
 the small as well as the great." While a third scroll 
 bears the words: "I make a decree that in all my 
 Empire and Kingdom men should tremble and fear 
 before the living God. Dan. vi." Below this again 
 Cranmer and Cromwell are distributing the Bible, and at 
 the bottom of the page a preacher harangues a crowd 
 from a pulpit in the open air, beginning: "I exhort 
 therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, thanks- 
 givings be made for all men, for Kings." At the mention 
 of kings all shout in Latin, the children who know no 
 Latin in English, "God save the King." 
 
 From an historical point of view, it will be seen, this 
 page is most interesting. It represents in the clearest 
 manner what was believed to be Henry's attitude to the 
 new undertaking ; while the contents of the top compart- 
 ment, and the Latin imprint at the end of the volume, 
 "This is the Lord's doing," alike testify to the truly 
 devout and grateful spirit of its promoters. The other 
 preliminary matter calls for no special remark ; but it 
 may be noted that, like Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible 
 is divided into five parts, and that the fourth part, con- 
 taining the Apocrypha, is strangely described as "The 
 Bookes of Hagiographa," a name usually applied to a 
 wholly different set of books, those namely in the Old 
 Testament which are not comprehended under " the 
 Law" or "the Prophets," such as Job, the Psalms, etc. 
 
 1 After Cromwell's fall, the shield at his feet on which his coat of 
 arms had been emblazoned was left blank ; but the figure remained 
 untouched. 
 
THE GREAT BIBLE 69 
 
 § 3. Translation and Text. — The translation of the 
 Great Bible was based on Matthew's Bible of 1537 ; but the ^^ 
 whole was subjected by Coverdale to a careful revision, 
 with the aid principally of MUnster's Hebrew -Latin 
 version in the Old Testament, and of the Vulgate and 
 Erasmus in the New. Thus it is to MUnster's influ- 
 ence that we owe such changes in Psa. xxiii. as "paths 
 of righteousness " for " way of righteousness " ; " through 
 the valley of the shadow" for "in the valley of the 
 shadow " ; and " I will dwell in the house " for " that I 
 may dwell in the house " ; all of which have kept their 
 place in the Authorised Version. In the New Testament 
 the authority of Erasmus has clearly made itself felt in 
 "born from above" for "born anew " in John iii. 3, 
 and, unfortunately, in "one fold" for "one flock" in 
 John X. 16, as the following short extract will show. 
 The original spelling is preserved, and the differences 
 from Tindale (1534) indicated by italics. 
 
 John x. 14-16 (Great Bible, 1539) 
 
 I am the good shepeheerd and knowe tny shepe^ 
 and am knowen of myne. As my father knoweth 
 me, euen so know I also my father. And I geue my 
 lyfe for the shepe ; and other shepe I haue, which are 
 not of this fold. Them also must I bring, and they 
 shall heare my voyce, and ther shall be ontfolde and 
 one shepeherde. 
 
 If, however, the translation of the Great Bible 
 presents few important variations, its text exhibits one 
 very characteristic feature. In preparing the work 
 Coverdale had carefully noted such diversities of readings 
 as he came across, and many of them, particularly from 
 the Vulgate, he afterwards incorporated in the text, dis- 
 tinguishing them, however, from the original by paren- 
 theses and difference of type. The following are ex- 
 amples : — 
 
 Josh. ii. II, "As we heard these things (we were 
 sore afraid and) our hearts did faint." 
 
X 
 
 70 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Job xiv. 6, "He may rest (a little) until his day 
 come." 
 
 Isaiah xl. i, "Comfort my people (O ye prophets)." 
 Luke xvii. 36 ("Two in the field, the one shall be re- 
 ceived, and the other forsaken "). 
 
 Luke xxiv. 36, "Peace be unto you (It is I, fear 
 not)." 
 
 Gal. V. 13, "But by love (of the Spirit) serve one 
 another." 
 
 Col. iii. 25, " Neither is there any respect of 
 persons (with God)." 
 
 Coverdale had also intended to insert " certain godly 
 annotations" at the end to explain "the dark places of 
 the text " ; but for want of sufficient leisure the Bible 
 had to be published without them, and they were never 
 afterwards added. 
 
 § 4- The Psalter. — Attention has already been 
 drawn to the fact that the version of the Psalms which 
 appears in the English Prayer-Book is different from that 
 in our ordinary Bibles, and the explanation, according 
 to a note in the former, is that its Psalter follows "the 
 Translation of the great English Bible, set forth and 
 used in the time of King Henry the Eighth, and Edward 
 the Sixth." As a matter of fact, when in 1662 the rest 
 of the Scriptural passages in the Prayer-Book were 
 altered according to the A.V. it was found impossible to 
 make any change in the Psalter. The familiarity that 
 had grown up round a part of the Bible so much in use 
 had doubtless much to do with this, and in addition it 
 was urged that its language was " more smooth and fit 
 for song." 
 
 As to the melodiousness and rhythmical beauty of the 
 Great Bible Psalter, there cannot indeed be two opinions, 
 as any one by means of the Prayer-Book may easily verify 
 for himself. ^ Beside its smoothly-flowing sentences so 
 high an authority as Dr. Scrivener pronounces our 
 
 lit will be kept in view, however, that a number of slight varia- 
 tions from the Great Bible have crept into the Prayer-Book version. 
 
THE GREAT BIBLE 71 
 
 present version "prosaic" and "spiritless"; while in 
 its "incomparable tenderness and sweetness" Bishop 
 Westcott claims to find the translator's own gentle spirit 
 reflected, " full of humility and love . . . and therefore 
 best in harmony with the tenor of our own daily lives." 
 Apart, however, from its devotional use, the inferiority 
 of Coverdale's version as a translation must at once be 
 conceded. For not only are its renderings often inac- 
 curate, but there is frequently a redundancy about them 
 which deprives them of much of their force. The follow- 
 ing examples of the two versions may be submitted for 
 comparison in this respect. 
 
 The Great Bible, 1539 The A.V. 161 i 
 
 Psa. xlv. 5, "Good luck have "And in thy majesty ride 
 
 thou with thine honour, ride on prosperously because of truth 
 
 because of the word of truth, of and meekness and righteous- 
 
 mefekness and righteousness." ness." 
 
 Psa. Ixviii. 6, "He is the God "God setteth the solitary in 
 
 that maketh men to be of one mind families." 
 in a house." 
 
 Psa. cxxvii. 3, "It is but lost " /^ /j vain for you to rise up 
 
 labour that ye rise up early, and early, to sit up late, to eat the 
 
 take no rest, but eat the bread of bread of sorrows : for so He 
 
 carefulness: for look to whom it giveth His beloved sleep." 
 pleaseth Him, He giveth it in 
 sleep." 
 
 The additions to the text, to which reference has 
 already been made, are specially numerous in the Psalms, 
 and some of them are very interesting. Thus in Psa. 
 xiv. three whole new verses are introduced after what 
 is ver. 3 in our A.V., with the view apparently of 
 bringing it into harmony with the quotation in Rom. iii. 
 10-18, which St. Paul has evidently brought together 
 from different sources. In Psa. xxix. after the opening 
 words there is inserted the clause, "Bring young rams 
 unto the Lord " ; and in Psa. cxxxii. 4 we have the ad- 
 ditional particular, "neither the temples of my head to 
 take any rest." 
 
 7k 
 
72 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 § 5. New Editions.— On 14th November 1539 
 Cromwell received from the King a patent conferring 
 on him the sole power of licensing the printing and pub- 
 lication of English Bibles for the next five years ; and 
 on the same day, by a strange coincidence, he had a 
 letter from Cranmer asking whether the royal approval 
 had been obtained for a Preface which he, the Arch- 
 bishop, had written for a new edition of the Great Bible. 
 Early in the following year this new edition, which from 
 the Preface is often called Cranmer's Bible/ was pub- 
 lished, and to it the story told by FulTceTs in all prob- 
 ability to be referred. The Bible had been committed by 
 the King to "divers bishops of that time to peruse," 
 and on their being asked what was their judgment of the 
 translation, they answered that there were many faults 
 therein. "Well," said the King, "but are there any 
 heresies maintained thereby ? "' They replied that there 
 were none that they could find. " If there be no 
 heresies," said the King, "then, in God's name, let it 
 go abroad among our people." 
 
 Cranmer's Pi^eface is a vigorous piece of writing, in 
 which the Archbishop speaks of "the largeness and 
 utility of the Scripture, how it containeth fruitful instruc- 
 tion and erudition for every man," and how in consequence 
 "it is convenient and good for the Scriptures to be read 
 of all sorts and kinds of people, and in the vulgar tongue." 
 Only, he continues, let men see to it how they read. 
 " Every man that cometh to the reading of This Holy 
 Book ought to bring with him first and foremost this fear 
 of Almighty God ; and then, next, a firm and stable pur- 
 pose to reform his own self according thereunto ; and so to 
 continue, proceed, and prosper, from time to time ; show- 
 ing himself to be a sober and fruitful hearer and learner." 
 
 As regards text, Cranmer's edition was a revision of 
 the Great Bible of 1539, as it had been of Matthew's 
 Bible of 1537 ; but it is unnecessary here to define further 
 the changes introduced either in it, or in the five sub- 
 
 1 The 1539 edition is also sometimes called Cranmer's Bible, but 
 with it the Archbishop had nothing special to do. 
 
THE GREA T BIBLE 73 
 
 sequent editions which followed rapidly within the next 
 eighteen months. ^ It is more important for our present 
 purpose to notice what an impetus must have been given 
 to Bible study by the appearance of ihese seven splendid 
 folios, commended as they were by the King's direct sanc- 
 tion, and vigorously supported by the most influential 
 men in the land. 
 
 § 6. Reception in England.— The statement just 
 
 made admits of easy proof. No sooner had the first 
 edition of the Great Bible been issued in 1539 than 
 Cromwell, as the King's vicegerent, issued certain in- 
 junctions to the clergy requiring them to provide without 
 delay " one boke of the whole Bible of the largest vol- 
 ume in Englyshe," to be set up in the churches, the cost 
 to be divided between themselves and their parishioners ; 
 and enjoining them to " expresslye provoke, stere [stir], 
 and exhorte every parsone [person] to rede the same, as 
 that whyche ys the verye lively worde of God." What- 
 ever the clergy may have thought, 2 the opportunity thus 
 afforded was gladly taken advantage of by the people, 
 and it must have been a pleasing sight in the aisle of 
 some country church to see the little group gathered 
 round the Great Bible, from which some one more edu- 
 cated than the rest read aloud. Even Bonner, who 
 under Queen Mary was to gain such unenviable notoriety 
 as a persecutor, actually set up six Bibles for the common 
 good in Old St. Paul's. 3 
 
 1 Strange to say, one of these bears to be " ouersene " by no less 
 a person than Tindale's untiring foe Cuthbert Tunstal, now Bishop 
 of Durham. 
 
 - With reference to this or a similar proclamation in the pre- 
 vious year, Strype tells us : " The parsons, vicars, and curates did 
 read confusedly the Word of God and the King's injunction, lately 
 set forth, and commanded by them to be read : humming and hawk- 
 ing thereat, that almost no man could understand the meaning of the 
 injunction." But they could not keep the people in ignorance. 
 "Every one that could,' says the same writer, "bought the book, 
 or busily read it ; or got others to read it to them if they could not 
 themselves ; and divers more elderly people learned to read on pur- 
 pose. And even little boys flocked among the rest to hear portions 
 of the holy Scriptures read." See Historical Account prefixed to 
 Bagster's Hcxapla, p. 60. 
 
 3 The reading of one of these Bibles by John Porter, "a fresh 
 
74 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 § 7- Instances of Intolerance. — We must not, 
 
 however, imagine that this open reading of the Bible was 
 everywhere viewed with favour. Thus, as an instance 
 of domestic intolerance, Strype relates an affecting story 
 of one William Maiden, of Chelmsford, a lad of fifteen, 
 who was accustomed to join a few poor men in the read- 
 ing of the New Testament "at the lower end of the 
 church " on Sundays. His father, a zealous Romanist, 
 fetched him away again and again, but the boy, undaunted 
 and determmed to become acquainted with the Word of 
 God, procured a Testament for himself and to "conceal 
 it, laid it under the bed-straw, and read it at convenient 
 times." One night in a conversation with his mother he 
 declared that kneeling before the crucifix was a breach 
 of the commandment, "Thou shalt not make any graven 
 image, nor bow down to it, nor worship it," which, com- 
 ing to the ears of his father, he dragged his son from the 
 bed, and whipped him unmercifully. "And when the 
 young man bore this beating, as he related, with a kind 
 of joy, considering it was for Christ's sake, and shed not 
 a tear, his father, seeing that was more enraged, and ran 
 down and fetched a halter, and put it about his neck, 
 saying he would hang him." 
 
 Many more interesting particulars of the time might 
 be given, but we have space only to mention one or two 
 in connection with our own Scottish history. They will 
 be found at length in Dr. Eadie's valuable work. The 
 English Bible. Thus he tells us that the enmity of the 
 popish ecclesiastics in the north against the English 
 Scriptures was very strong, and that Cardinal Beaton 
 had a list of intended victims, to the number of more 
 than a hundred of the nobility and gentry, because, in 
 the words of the English ambassador, they were "gentle- 
 men all well-minded to God's Word." The King could 
 not stand even the sight of the list ; but through the 
 influence of Beaton five persons were burned on the 
 
 young man, and of a big stature, who could read well, and had an 
 audible voice," furnished Sir George Harvey with the subject of a 
 well-known picture. 
 
THE GREAT BIBLE 75 
 
 Castle Hill of Edinburgh on the ist March 1539, for 
 apparently no other crime than that they "did not 
 hesitate to study the books both of the Old and New 
 Testament." At the trial of one of them, Dean Thomas 
 Forrest, Vicar of Dollar, it was brought forward against 
 him — as apparently a dangerous innovation ! — that he 
 preached out of the Scripture, and committed every day 
 three chapters to memory ; and further, that he taught 
 his parishioners to say the Paternoster, the Creed, and 
 the Ten Commandments in English, " which is contrary 
 to our Acts, that they should know what they say." 
 When in vindication Forrest quoted the declaration of 
 the Apostle that " he would rather speak five words with 
 the understanding, than ten thousand in an unknown 
 tongue," he was challenged by his interrogators, "Where 
 foundest thou that?" "In my book here, in my 
 sleeve," was his reply. Immediately it was plucked 
 out, and his accuser exclaimed : "Behold, sirs, he has 
 the book of heresy in his sleeve that has made all the 
 din and play in our Kirk." It was at this trial that the 
 Bishop of Dunkeld merrily exclaimed : " I thank God 
 that I never knew what the Old or New Testament 
 was." 
 
 This deplorable state of matters was not, however, 
 long allowed to continue. On the 12th of March 1543 
 it was proposed in the Parliament meeting at Edinburgh, 
 that "all the lieges in this realm may read the Scriptures 
 in our native tongue." All efforts at opposition or 
 compromise were in vain — though the Dean of Restalrig 
 "long repugned," and certain "old bosses along with 
 him " — and proclamation was made at the Market Cross 
 of Edinburgh, that every man was free to read "the 
 Scriptures in his own or the English tongue." That the 
 nation as a whole gladly availed itself of this liberty is 
 clear from John Knox's words, twenty-five years later, 
 describing the effects of the Act : " This was no small 
 victory of Christ Jesus, fighting against the conjured 
 enemies of His verity : not small comfort to such as 
 before were holden in such bondage that they durst not 
 
76 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 have read the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, 
 nor Articles of their faith in the EngHsh tongue, but 
 they should have been accused of heresy. There might 
 have been seen the Bible lying almost upon eveiy gentle- 
 man's table. The New^ Testament was borne about in 
 many men's hands." 
 
THE GENEVAN VERSIONS 77 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE GENEVAN VERSIONS 
 
 I. Events from 1 541-1557. 2. Whittingham's Testament 
 of 1557- 3- The Genevan Bible of 1560. 4. Mar- 
 ginal Notes. 5. Popularity of the Genevan Bible. 
 6. The Bassandyne Bible. 
 
 § I. Events from 1541-1557. — For some years after 
 the publication of the Great Bible there was a time of 
 suspense in the external history of our English Bible. 
 No new versions appeared, a proposed revision by the 
 Bishops falling through, owing to Gardiner's pressing the 
 retention of so many Latin words in the text that it 
 would have been practically unintelligible. Nor, which 
 is far more serious, were the older versions left undis- 
 turbed. In 1543 Parliament passed an Act for the a 
 "Advancement of True Religion," in which all books 
 of Tindale's translation were "clearly and utterly 
 abolished and extinguished, and forbidden to be kept 
 or used " ; and no one belonging to the class of ap- 
 prentices, servants, husbandmen, or labourers was per- 
 mitted to read the Old or New Testament at all either 
 in public or in private. The reason for such an absurd 
 enactment it is difficult now to understand, but it doubt- 
 less arose out of Heniy's complaint that the book was 
 "disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse 
 and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine 
 of the same." Three years later the proscription was 
 extended in still more rigorous terms to the writings of * 
 Wycliffe, Coverdale, and many others, so that practi- 
 cally only the Great Bible was left. And such was the 
 
78 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 state of the times that even its use must have been 
 attended with a certain amount of danger. 
 
 By Henry's death on 28th January 1547, and the 
 accession of Edward VI. to the throne, all this was 
 changed. According to a well-known story, the English 
 Bible was then for the first time used at a royal 
 coronation, for when three swords were brought, signs 
 of his being king of three kingdoms, Edward said there 
 was yet one wanting. " And when the nobles about him 
 asked what that was, he answered. The Bible. ' That 
 book,' added he, 'is the Sword of the Spirit, and to be 
 preferred before these swords.' . . . And when the pious 
 young King had said this, and some other like words, 
 he commanded the Bible with the greatest reverence to 
 be brought and carried before him." One of Edward's 
 first acts, moreover, was to issue an order requiring 
 that all beneficed persons "shall provide within three 
 months next after this visitation, one book of the whole 
 Bible of the largest volume in English " ; and that, so 
 far from discouraging its use, they " shall rather conform 
 and exhort every person to read the same, as the very 
 lively word of God, and the special food of man's soul." 
 That these enactments proved no dead letter is evidenced 
 by the fact that during Edward's short reign at least 
 thirteen editions of the Bible and thirty-five editions of 
 the New Testament were printed. The same reign saw 
 also the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer, 
 which, with slight alterations, is still used in the Church 
 of England, and of the Forty-two, afterwards reduced 
 to Thirty -nine. Articles of Religion, which form that 
 Church's doctrinal standard. 
 
 Amidst such signs of religious zeal, we may be sure 
 that the work of Bible-translation was not lost sight of; 
 but still no new version appeared. A revision contem- 
 plated by Cranmer came to nothing, because the two 
 scholars whom he had secured for the purpose "fell sick, 
 which gave a very unhappy stop to their studies " ; while 
 a translation of the New Testament by Sir John Cheke 
 did not get farther than the middle of the first chapter of 
 
THE GENEVAN VERSIONS 79 
 
 St. Mark.^ It is not even certain that his version was ever 
 intended for publication ; but in any case the death of 
 Edward VI. and the accession of "Bloody " Mary gave a 
 new turn to the ever- varying fortunes of our Bible's history. 
 Cranmer soon followed Rogers to the stake, and the 
 public, though apparently not the private, use of the 
 Scriptures was strictly forbidden. Foreseeing what was 
 coming, a number of leading Reformers had already con- 
 trived to escape to the Continent ; and of these a small 
 band eventually settled at Geneva, attracted doubtless by 
 the fame of Calvin. There, as they themselves tell us, 
 *' we thought we could bestow our labours and study in 
 nothing which could be more acceptable to God, and 
 comfortable to His Church, than in the translating of 
 the Scriptures into our native tongue." 
 
 § 2. Whittingham's Testament of 1557.— We 
 
 shall see the result of their combined labours directly, but 
 in the meantime we have to notice that in 1557 there 
 appeared a translation of the New Testament alone, ap- 
 parently the unaided work of one of their number, William 
 Whittingham.2 In his Address to the Reader, Whitting- 
 ham describes his work as specially intended for the 
 "simple lambs which partly are already in the fold of 
 Christ, and partly wandering, through ignorance." And 
 it was doubtless the thought of the same readers that led 
 to the numerous annotations, in which he claims to have 
 left "nothing unexpounded, whereby he that is anything 
 exercised in the Scriptures of God might justly complain 
 of hardness. -'3 The text, according to the title-page, 
 had been "conferred diligently with the Greek, and 
 
 1 The most interesting feature of this fragment is the translator's 
 evident desire to introduce home -born terms. Thus with him 
 parable is biword ; regeneration, ,s:ai7ibirth ; and crucified, crossed. 
 To the same striving after simplicity we owe such quaint renderings 
 as " Happy be the beggars in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is 
 theirs" (Matt. v. 3); and "They have winked hard with their own 
 eyes, lest they should see with their eyes " (xiii. 15). 
 
 2 Whittingham was married to Calvin's sister-in-law, not sister 
 as is often stated, and in 1559 succeeded Knox in the pastorate of 
 the English congregation. He contributed several Psalms to the 
 Stemhold and Hopkins' Collection. 
 
 3 An Epistle by John Calvin declaring that "Christ is the end of 
 
8o THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 best approved translations," and was for the first time 
 . in an English translation divided into verses. In pre- 
 vious translations no other sub-division had ever been 
 attempted than into paragraphs of various lengths, but 
 Whittingham now " for the profit of the reader " 
 adopted the shorter sections prepared by R. Stephens 
 for one of his editions of the Greek Testament. ^ These 
 verse-divisions were afterwards applied to the whole 
 Bible in 1560, from which they have passed into our 
 own Authorised Version. They can however only be 
 defended on the ground of convenience of reference, for 
 their whole tendency is to destroy the connection, and 
 so to obscure the sense of the original. 
 
 Another innovation which Whittingham introduced, 
 and which has also come down to us, was the use of 
 different type to indicate words that had no place in the 
 I original, but which were added to make the meaning 
 clear; for example : Luke vi. 40, "The disciple is not 
 above his master : but whosoever will be a perfect disciple 
 shall be as his master is " ; 2 Cor. v. 13, "For whether 
 we be fools, we are fools to God ; or whether we be 
 in our right mind, we are in our right mind for your 
 commodity J"^ 
 
 Of the translation itself, it is not necessary to say 
 more just now than that it is founded not so much on 
 the Great Bible as on Tindale. A few verses from the 
 Epistle to the Philippians will make this clear, as well 
 as illustrate the general character of the translation. 
 
 Phil. ii. 5- 11 (Whittingham, 1557) 
 
 5. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
 the law " was also prefixed to the Testament, and doubtless further 
 helped its popularity. 
 
 1 Stephens worked out his scheme hurriedly on a journey from 
 Paris to Lyons in 1551. " I think," sa^'s an old commentator, "it 
 had been better done on his knees in the closet " (quoted by Smyth, 
 Hoiv ive got our Bible, p. 67, note). In the Old Testament the ^ 
 division into verses was already in existence in the Hebrew Bible. 
 
THE GENEVAN VERSIONS 8r 
 
 6. Who being in the shape of God, thought it no 
 robbery to be equal with God. 
 
 7. But He made Himself of no reputation, and 
 took on Him the shape of a servant, and was made 
 like unto men, and was found in appearance as a 
 man, 
 
 8. He humbled Himself, and became obedient 
 unto the death, even the death of the cross. 
 
 9. Wherefore, God hath highly exalted Him, and 
 given Him a Name above all names. 
 
 10. That at the Name of Jesus should every knee 
 bow, both of things in heaven, and things in earth, 
 and things under earth. 
 
 1 1. And that every tongue should confess that Jesus 
 Christ is the Lord, unto the praise of God the Father. 
 
 In these verses, Whittingham agrees with the Great 
 Bible as against Tindale (1534) in only one place, but 
 with Tindale as against the Great Bible in no fewer than 
 seven places. He ditfers from both moreover in other seven 
 places, of which the most important are : " was made " 
 for "became," "in appearance" for "in his apparell," 
 "at the Name of Jesus" for "in the Name of Jesus," 
 and "every tongue" for "all tongues." W^ith one ex- 
 ception ("in appearance") these changes have all found 
 their way into the A.V. , and it is curious to think that by 
 the erroneous substitution of " at the Name" for "in the 
 Name of Jesus should every knee bow," this version has 
 actually been the means of establishing one of those out- 
 ward ceremonies against which the Genevan Reformers 
 so strongly set themselves. ^ 
 
 § 3- The Genevan Bible of 1560.— Three years 
 
 after the appearance of Whittingham's Testament, a new 
 translation of the whole Bible was issued at Geneva, 
 which in one important particular differed from all pre- 
 ceding versions. It was the work of no single scholar, 
 but of a small body of men banded together for the pur- 
 
 1 The custom of bowing in English churches when the name of 
 Jesus is mentioned is traced to this verse. 
 
82 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 pose, amongst whom we may specially mention William 
 Whittingham, Thomas Sampson, and Anthony Gilby. 
 Others of the exiles, such as the veteran translator Miles 
 Coverdale, and John Knox, may have taken part in the 
 work for a time, but they did not remain at Geneva to 
 see its completion. The translators had also the benefit 
 of the advice of Calvin and Beza. 
 
 The title of this Bible, which in more ways than one 
 was to exercise a marked influence on our own A.V,, 
 ran as follows : — 
 
 " 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 diuers languages. With moste profit- 
 able annotations vpon all the hard places, and other 
 thinges of great importance, as may appeare in the 
 Epistle to the Reader." 
 
 In size, the volume was a moderate quarto, unlike the 
 huge folio editions of the Great Bible, and the cost of 
 its production was met by members of the congregation 
 at Geneva. 1 
 
 In their introductory epistle, as we have already seen 
 in similar instances, the translators give us a clear 
 glimpse into their spirit and aims. After speaking of 
 previous translations as requiring greatly "to be perused 
 and reformed," they go on to speak of the advantages 
 that they enjoy for this task "by reason of so many 
 godly and learned men, and such diversities of transla- 
 tions in divers tongues." "And this," they continue, 
 "we may with good conscience protest, that we have in 
 every point and word, according to the measure of that 
 knowledge which it pleased Almighty God to give us, 
 faithfully rendered the text, and in all hard places most 
 sincerely expounded the same. For God is our witness, 
 that we have by all means endeavoured to set forth the 
 
 1 Amongst these was John Bodley, father of the founder of the 
 famous Bodleian Library at Oxford, who afterwards received from 
 Elizabeth the exclusive right of printing the new version in England 
 for seven years. 
 
THE GENEVAN VERSIONS 83 
 
 purity of the word and right sense of the Holy Ghost, 
 for the edifying of the brethren in faith and charity." 
 
 That the Genevan translators are entitled to make this 
 claim, scholars who have critically examined their work 
 are fully agreed. Every page proves that no efforts 
 were spared to follow as correct a text as possible, and 
 that the best available aids were freely consulted. Thus 
 to confine ourselves to the New Testament, which started 
 naturally from Whittingham's Testament as a basis, the 
 student will do well to compare the following verses 
 with the earlier version given above. The differences 
 between the two versions are again indicated by italics. 
 
 Phil. ii. 5-1 1 (Genevan, 1560) 
 
 5. Let the same mind be in you that was even in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 6. Who being in the for})i of God, thought it no 
 robbery to be equal with God : 
 
 7. But He made Himself of no reputation, and 
 took on Him the fortn of a servant, and was made 
 like unto men, and was found in shape as a man. 
 
 8. He humbled Himself, and became obedient 
 unto the death, even the death of the Cross. 
 
 9. Wherefore God hath also highly exalted Him, 
 and given Him a name above every name. 
 
 10. That at the Name of Jesus should every knee 
 bow, both of things in heaven, and things in earth, 
 and things under the earth. 
 
 11. And that every tongue should confess that 
 Jesus Christ is the Lord, unto the glory of God the 
 Father. 
 
 The changes here may not at first appear of great 
 importance ; but their very minuteness is in itself a 
 striking proof of the care bestowed upon the work, and 
 of the way in which step by step our English version 
 has been perfected. 
 
 Indeed, the accuracy of both versions is veiy remark- 
 able, and, if space permitted, many examples might be 
 brought forward of passages in which they showed 
 
84 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 themselves the first of all the English translators to seize 
 the exact meaning of the original ; as Matt, xxviii. 14, 
 where Whittingham's Testament renders rightly, "And 
 if this come befo7'e the Governor, we will pacify him," 
 with reference to a judicial hearing, and not merely, as 
 in Tindale and the Great Bible, " /t? the ruler'' s ears^'' 
 which might be the result of chance hearsay ; or again, 
 Jas. i. 13, where both versions correctly translate 
 "God cannot be tempted with evil," instead of "God 
 tempteth not unto evil " (Wycliffe and Tindale). In this 
 same chapter the Genevan have caught the full sense 
 of the figure, which is missed by all English versions 
 except the R.V. of 1881, "with whom is no variable- 
 ness, neither shadowing by turning'''' (ver. 17). 
 
 Apart too from the exact scholarship which these ren- 
 derings display, we owe to the Genevan translators many 
 happy terms of expression, as the following selection 
 from Dr. Edgar's table of comparison will prove. ^ 
 
 Great Bible, 1540 Genevan Bible, 1560 
 
 Deut. xxxii. 7, " Remember the "Remember the days of 
 
 days of the world that is past, old, consider the years of so 
 consider the years from time to many generations." 
 time." 
 
 Eccles. xii. i, "Remember thy " Remember now thy 
 
 Maker the sooner in thy youth, or Creator in the days of thy 
 ever the daj^s of adversity come." youth, whiles the evil days 
 
 come not." 
 
 Isa. xi. 3, "He shall not give "He shall not judge after 
 
 sentence after the thing that shall the sight of his eyes." 
 be brought before his eyes." 
 
 Isa. xxxii. 2, "The shadow of "The shadow of a great 
 
 a great rock in a Ary land." rock in a weary land." 
 
 Other renderings are interesting rather for their 
 quaintness, as when in Gen. iii. 7 we read, "They 
 sewed fig-tree leaves together, and made themselves 
 breeches " — the translation which has given the Genevan 
 Bible the common name of the Breeches Bible. ^ 
 
 1 Bibles of England, p. 172. 
 
 2 The rendering, however, is not peculiar to the Genevan, but is 
 
THE GENEVAN VERSIONS 85 
 
 § 4- Marginal Notes. — The same scholarship and 
 care which distinguish the text reappear in the marginal 
 notes with which it is provided. Some of them, indeed, 
 as might be expected in the circumstances, display a 
 strongly Calvinistic bias, and others are bitterly anti- 
 papal ; but the great majority are simply explanatory 
 or hortatory. The following are specimens : — 
 
 Exod. i. 19, "Their disobedience herein was 
 lawful, but their dissembling evil." 
 
 Psa. Ixxxix. 12, "Tabor is a mountain westward 
 from Jerusalem, and Hermon eastward : so the pro- 
 phet signifieth that all parts and places of the world 
 shall obey God's power for the deliverance of His 
 Church." 
 
 Rom. vi. 5, "The Greek word meaneth, that we 
 grow up together with Christ, as we see moss, ivy, 
 mistletoe, or such like grow up by a tree, and are 
 nourished with the juice thereof." 
 
 Rom. ix. 15, "As the only will and purpose of 
 God is the chief cause of election and reprobation : 
 so His free mercy in Christ is an inferior cause of 
 salvation, and the hardening of the heart an inferior 
 cause of damnation. " 
 
 Rev. ix. 3, " Locusts are false teachers, heretics, 
 and worldly subtil prelates, with monks, friars, 
 cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, doctors, 
 bachelors, and masters, which forsake Christ, to main- 
 tain false doctrine." 
 
 § 5- Popularity of the Genevan Bible.— 
 
 These notes, as well as the convenient form in which it 
 was issued, tended as much as anything else to the warm 
 welcome which was at once given to the new version on 
 its arrival in England. Though never sanctioned for 
 public use, it quickly established its place as the hotise- % 
 hold copy of the Scriptures amongst Bible students, 
 
 found both in Caxton's Golden Legend and in Wycliffe. Common 
 also to Wycliffe and the Genevan is the word "cretche" or cradle 
 for "manger" in Luke ii. 7 
 
86 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 passing in all through more than 130 editions, several of 
 which appeared even after the publication of the A.V. 
 in 161 1. 1 
 
 The Genevan was, indeed, peculiarly the Puritan's 
 Bible, one interesting proof of which need alone be 
 mentioned. It has for long been a tradition that each 
 of the soldiers in the Commonwealth army was pro- 
 vided with a pocket-bible, and there have been various 
 conjectures as to which edition was used. Recent 
 investigations have however established that this Bible 
 consisted simply of appropriate quotations from the 
 Scriptures, printed in pocket form, and that these quo- 
 tations were taken from the Genevan Version. The first 
 two will show their character. 2 
 
 A SOULDIER MUST NOT DOE WICKEDLY 
 
 Deut. 23. 9, "When thou goest out with the host 
 against thine enemies, keepe thee then from all 
 wickednesse." 
 
 Luke 3. 14, "The souldiers likewise demanded of 
 him, saying, and what shall we do ? And he said 
 unto them, doe violence to no man, neither accuse 
 any falsely, and be content with your wages." 
 
 § 6. The Bassandyne Bible. — The Genevan 
 
 Bible was the tirst edition of the Bible printed in 
 Scotland. This was in 1579 — the New Testament alone 
 had already appeared in 1576 — and it is usually described 
 as the Bassandyne Bible^ from the printer's name, Thomas 
 Bassandyne. He, however, died before the publication, 
 and his name in consequence does not appear on the 
 completed work. The cost of this Bible, as fixed by the 
 General Assembly, was £\ : 1 3 : 4 pennies Scottis ; and 
 
 ^ In 1649 an edition of the A.V. itself was actually brought out 
 with the Genevan notes, evidently for the purpose of commending 
 it to public favour. When the notes were finally withdrawn, the 
 people, according to Fuller, complained that " they could not see 
 into the sense of the Scriptures for lack of the spectacles of the 
 Genevan annotations." 
 
 ^ From a facsimile reprint of Crom^velT s Soldiers Bible just 
 published by Mr. Elliot Stock. 
 
THE GENEVAN VERSIONS 87 
 
 by an Act of Parliament every householder possessed of a 
 certain sum was bound to have a copy. 
 
 Nor was this a mere idle letter; for in June 1580 
 one John Williamson was commissioned to visit and 
 search every house in the realm, "and to require the 
 sicht of their Bible and Psalm-buke, gif they ony have, 
 to be marked with their awn name, for eschewing of 
 fraudful dealing in that behalf." And about the same 
 time the Magistrates of Edinburgh issued a proclamation 
 on their own behalf, commanding all citizens to have 
 Bibles in terms of the Act of Parliament, and announcing 
 that copies are to be " sauld in the merchant buith of 
 Andrew Williamson, on the north side of this burgh, 
 besyde the Meill Mercat."! 
 
 We can only further notice that the text of the 
 Genevan version, unlike the text of most previous 
 versions, was never subjected to a complete revision ; 
 though in 1576 one Laurence Tomson brought out an 
 amended edition of the New Testament in which the 
 influence of Beza is so marked, that it may be taken as 
 explaining the misleading statement on the title-page, 
 "translated out of Greek by Theodore Beza." After 
 1587, Tomson's Testament generally took the place of 
 the earlier version in fresh issues of the Bible.- 
 
 1 For these and many other interesting particulars see History of 
 the Bassandyne Bible, by William T. Dobson, Edinburgh, 1887. 
 What is believed to be a perfect copy of the Bassandyne Bible was 
 acquired a few years ago for the Edinburgh Public Library. 
 
 - The order of books in the Genevan Bible is the same as that in 
 our modern Bibles, except that the Prayer of Manasseh from the 
 Apocrypha was inserted after Second Chronicles. The name of St. 
 Paul is omitted from the title of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in a 
 prefatory argument the authorship is left an open question : " For 
 seeing the Spirit of God is the author thereof, it diminisheth nothing 
 the authority although we know not with what pen He wrote it." 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE bishops' bible 
 
 I. Origin of the Bishops' Bible. 2. Archbishop Parker 
 and the Bishops. 3. Description of the Bishops' 
 Bible. 4. Character of the translation, 5. Marginal 
 notes. 6. General estimate. 
 
 § I. Origin of the Bishops' Bible.— Amongst the 
 
 symbolic greetings with which Queen Elizabeth was 
 welcomed as she passed through the streets of London 
 on the occasion of her accession was one which has an 
 interesting bearing on the subject before us. At the 
 " Little Conduit in Cheape" an old man appeared with 
 scythe and wings, representing Father Time, leading his 
 daughter Truth. In her hand Truth held a copy of the 
 Bible in English, bearing the inscription Verbuin Veritatis, 
 the Word of Truth, and this she delivered to the Queen. 
 " But she, as soon as she had received the book, kissed 
 it," and after thanking the city for the present, said 
 " she would often read over that book " — " to the great 
 comfort," it is added afterwards, " of the lookers- 
 on." 
 
 To the attitude here taken up Elizabeth remained on 
 the whole consistent. For if slie did not always display 
 that religious zeal which the more ardent Reformers 
 hoped for, she at least consulted the feelings of her 
 Protestant subjects in leaving the circulation of the 
 Scriptures open and uncontrolled. In 1559 she pleased 
 English Churchmen by enacting, as Edward VI. had 
 done, that ''one book of the whole Bible of the largest 
 volume in English " should be set up in every parish ; 
 
THE BISHOPS' BIBLE 89 
 
 while in the following year she accepted the dedication 
 of the Bible of the Genevan exiles. 
 
 The two versions, the Great Bible and the Genevan 
 Bible, were thus brought into a kind of conflict which 
 was in any case inevitable. It would have been unreason- 
 able to expect that the successors of Cromwell and 
 Cranmer could look with favour on a Bible emanating 
 from the school of Calvin, and containing so many 
 "prejudicial notes." On the other hand the growing 
 popularity of the Genevan version amongst the people, j 
 and its admitted excellences of translation, made it 
 impossible for the Great Bible any longer to hold its 
 place unchallenged. The need of an " authorised " 
 version began thus to make itself very widely felt, and 
 about the year 1563-64, Matthew Parker, the new Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, set himself to try to supply the 
 want. The result was the Bible which, from the number 
 of Bishops engaged in its production, is generally known 
 
 as the Bishops' Bible. 
 
 § 2. Archbishop Parker and the Bishops.— 
 
 Parker's scheme was as follows. Sorting out " the 
 whole Bible into parcels " he distributed these amongst 
 qualified scholars " to peruse and collate," adding certain 
 general instructions for their guidance in the work. Of 
 these instructions the most important were, that the 
 revisers were " to follow the common English translation 
 used in the churches, and not to recede from it, but 
 where it varieth manifestly from the Hebrew or Greek 
 original"; and further "to make no bitter notes upon . 
 any text, or yet to set down any determination in places 
 of controversy." We shall see directly how these 
 instructions were carried out ; but in the meantime, to 
 show the character of the men engaged in the work, we 
 may gather a few sentences from their letters addressed 
 to Parker. 1 Thus Bishop Parkhurst of Norwich pledges 
 
 1 The initials of a number of the translators appear at the end of 
 their several "parcels," a course which the Archbishop thought 
 politic "to make them more diligent and answerable for their 
 doings." But these initials do not always agree with a list contained 
 
90 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 himself " to travel therein with such diligence and ex- 
 pedition as he might"; Bishop Sandys thinks "your 
 Grace shall do well to make the whole Bible to be dili- 
 gently surveyed by some well learned before it be put to 
 print" ; and Bishop Cox expresses the hope that "such 
 usual words as we English people be acquainted with 
 might still remain in their form and sound, so far forth 
 as the Hebrew will well bear. Ink-horn terms to be 
 avoided." In view of so sensible a suggestion it is 
 astonishing to find the same prelate proposing that the verbs 
 in the Psalms should be translated " uniformly in one 
 tense " — a method of securing uniformity only less objec- 
 tionable than that of Bishop Guest of Rochester. The 
 Psalter had been assigned to him, and writing to apologise 
 for his "rude handling" of it, he goes on to say: "Where 
 in the New Testament one piece of a Psalm is reported, 
 I translate it in the Psalms according to the translation 
 thereof in the New Testament, for the avoiding of the 
 offence that may rise to the people upon divers trans- 
 lations." "The principle of pious frauds," remarks 
 Dr. Plumptre, "of distorting the truth for the sake 
 of edification, has perhaps often been acted on by 
 other translators. It has not often been so explicitly 
 avowed." i 
 
 On 5th October 1568 a copy of the completed trans- 
 lation was ready for presentation to the Queen, and in a 
 letter to Cecil accompanying it Parker expressed the hope 
 that his "honour would obtain of the Queen's Highness 
 that this edition might be licensed, and only commended 
 in public reading in churches, to draw to one uni- 
 formity." "-^ But from whatever cause, this license was 
 apparently never granted. Cranmer's Bible continued to 
 bear upon it the mandate "according to the translation 
 
 in a letter addressed by Parker to Cecil, and it is no longer possible 
 to apportion the different books exactly. 
 
 1 Article " Version, Authorised," in Sviitlis Bib. Diet. vol. iii. p. 
 1674. 
 
 - Parker's passion for uniformity gave rise to Fuller's pun, "A 
 Parker indeed, careful to keep the fences." The Archbishop did 
 not like men that were not, to use his own epithet, " disciplinable." 
 
THE BISHOPS' BIBLE 91 
 
 appointed to be read in churches"; and not till 1573 
 was an edition of Parker's announced as '* Set foorth by 
 aucthoritie," and this, too, by episcopal^ not royal 
 authority. The support of Convocation indeed had 
 never been wanting to the new version. According to 
 the " Constitutions and Canons" of 1571 it was enacted 
 that " every archbishop and bishop should have at his 
 house a copy of the Holy Bible of the largest volume, as 
 lately printed in London . . . and that it should be placed 
 in the hall or large dining-room, that it might be useful 
 to their servants or to strangers " — an order that was 
 further extended to each cathedral, and as far as possible 
 to all churches. 1 
 
 § 3. Description of the Bishops' Bible.— The 
 
 original edition of the Bishops' Bible was a splendid 
 folio set forth with every attraction of paper and printing,^ 
 and furnished with a number of woodcuts, a description 
 of the Holy Land, and a chart of St. Paul's journeys. 
 The title was striking in its simplicity. It was merely — 
 
 The Holie Bible 
 
 and the only other words on the page were a quotation 
 in Latin from Rom. i. : " I am not ashamed of the Gospel 
 of Christ ; for it is the power of God unto salvation, to 
 everyone that belie veth." There was no special dedica- 
 tion ; but in the centre of the title-page was an engraving 
 of Elizabeth, and portraits of the Earl of Leicester and of 
 Cecil were introduced at the beginning of Joshua and 
 the Psalms. In addition to other prefatory matter 
 Cranmer's Prologue was reprinted from the Great Bible, 
 and two new Prefaces were provided by Parker himself 
 for the Old and New Testaments respectively. In the 
 first of these the Archbishop dwelt on the need of the 
 present revision, while emphasising what his instructions 
 
 1 By the same canon, Foxe's Book oy Martyrs was ordered to be 
 set up in the same places — a wonderful testimony to the high esteem 
 in which it was held. 
 
 '^ In a letter to Cecil, the Primate draws attention to the fact 
 that "the printer hath bestowed his thickest paper on the New 
 Testament, because it shall be most occupied." 
 
92 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 to his fellow-workers had already made clear — that it was 
 intended " not as condemning the former translation 
 [the Great Bible], which was followed mostly of any 
 other translation except the original text." He aptly 
 cited St. Augustine to the effect that " divers translations 
 many times have made the harder and darker sentences 
 the more open and plain " ; and Fisher, once Bishop of 
 Rochester, was also quoted as affirming that "many things 
 have been more diligently discussed, and more clearly 
 understanded by the wits of these latter days as well 
 concerning the Gospels as other scriptures, than in old 
 times they were . . . who can doubt, but that such things 
 as remain yet unknown in the Gospel, shall be hereafter 
 made open to the later wits of our posterity, to their 
 clear understanding ? " 
 
 The books of Scripture were classified as "some 
 legal, some historical, some sapiential, some prophetical," 
 which in the New Testament at any rate led to strange 
 results; for why should the Synoptic Gospels be " legal " 
 and St. John and the Acts " historical " ? In accordance 
 also with one of Parker's instructions in an edition in 
 1574 "places not edifying" were marked, "so that the 
 reader may eschew them in his public reading." 
 
 At the end of the Bible was, "A Table to fynde the 
 Epistles and Gospels read in the Church of England " ; 
 and the printer was stated to be " Richard Jugge, printer 
 to the Queenes Maiestie." His mark, a pelican feeding 
 her young with her blood, illustrative of the love of 
 Christ for His people, adorned the last page. 
 
 § 4- Character of the Translation. — The basis 
 
 of the work thi-oughout was the Great Bible, and Arch- 
 bishop Parker had further laid down, it will be remem- 
 bered, that this was to be altered as little as possible. 
 As might be expected, however, from the number of 
 scholars employed, this instruction was very variously 
 understood, and in some sections the changes introduced 
 are far more numerous than in others. • 
 
 Thus to confine ourselves in the first instance to the Old 
 Testament, the Historical books as a rule follow the Great 
 
THE BISHOPS' BIBLE 
 
 93 
 
 Bible very closely ; but in the Prophetical books there is 
 greater variation, many of the changes being distinctly 
 traceable to the influence of the Genevan Bible. The 
 striking thing however is, not that so many improved 
 Genevan renderings have been adopted, as that so many 
 have been neglected. And yet after all, in the circum- 
 stances, this was only natural. The Bishops could hardly 
 be expected to show on every page their indebtedness 
 to the very version they were seeking to supplant. But 
 at the same time it is obvious that this unwillingness to 
 avail themselves of the undoubted scholarship of the 
 Genevan exiles seriously marred their own version, and 
 failed to secure for it a permanent place. To illustrate 
 this we may print a short extract from the two versions 
 in parallel columns, which may further be compared 
 with Coverdale's version as given above on pp. 53-4. 
 
 Genevan Bible, 1560 
 
 1. Who will believe our re- 
 port : and to whom is the arm 
 of the Lord revealed ? 
 
 2. But he shall grow up before 
 him as a branch, and as a root 
 out of a dry ground : he hath 
 neither form nor beauty : when 
 we shall see him, there shall be 
 no form that we should desire 
 him. 
 
 3. He is despised and rejected 
 of men : he is a man full of 
 sorrows, and hath experience of 
 infirmities, we hid as it were 
 our faces from him : he was de- 
 spised, and we esteemed him 
 not. 
 
 4. Surely he hath borne our 
 infirmities, and carried our sor- 
 rows : yet we did judge him as 
 plagued, and smitten of God, 
 and humbled. 
 
 Isaiah liii. 1-5. 
 
 Bishops' Bible, 1568 
 But who hath given credence 
 
 unto our preaching ; or to whom 
 is the arm of the Lord known ? 
 
 For he did grow before the 
 Lord like as a branch, and as a 
 root in a dry ground : he hath 
 neither beauty nor favour ; 
 when we look upon him there 
 shall be no fairness ; we shall 
 have no lust unto him. 
 
 He is despised and ab- 
 horred of men: he is such a 
 man as hath good experience 
 of sorrows and infirmities: we 
 have reckoned him so vile, 
 that we hid our faces from 
 him. 
 
 Hovvbeit he only hath taken 
 on him our infirmity, and borne 
 our pains : yet we did judge 
 him as though he were plagued, 
 and cast down of God. 
 
94 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 5. But he was wounded for Whereas he [notwithstanding] 
 
 our transgressions, he was was wounded for our offences, 
 
 broken for our iniquities ; the and smitten for our wickedness : 
 
 chastisement of our peace was for the pain of our punishment 
 
 upon him, and with his stripes was laid upon him, and with his 
 
 we are healed. stripes are we healed. 
 
 Beyond the general light that is cast on the character 
 of their version by the above comparison, the Bishops' 
 renderings in this passage do not call for any special 
 remark. Only three of them appear to be in any sense 
 original, that is, not directly traceable to the influence of 
 some earlier version — the omission of the last clause in 
 ver. 3, the translation of "infirmity" in the singular in 
 ver. 4, and the omission of the last two words in the same 
 verse — and of these " corrections " not one has met with 
 acceptance. This is indeed the general fate of the Bishops' 
 original emendations in the Old Testament. "They 
 stand neglected," says Dr. Edgar, "on the disused 
 pages of the Bishops' version, and on the pages of 
 that version only." At the same time it is only 
 fair to add that we owe to the Bishops such happy ex- 
 pressions as " He that hath a boiuitifid eye shall be 
 blessed" (Prov. xxii. 9); "Rend your heart, and not 
 your gar?nents^'' (Joel ii. 13); and "Now we call the 
 proud happy'" (Mai. iii. 15). 
 
 When we turn to the New Testament these evidences 
 of a fine literary instinct are still more numerous, while 
 many passages bear traces of a careful and independent 
 study of the Greek original. Thus in one short passage 
 (Eph. iv. 7-16) Bishop Westcott finds twenty-six varia- 
 tions from the Great Bible, of which no less than sixteen 
 are new, and of these again four have found their way 
 into our own A.V. To understand rightly, however, 
 the relation of the Bishops' version to the A.V. we 
 must study it not in the 1568 edition, but in a revised 
 edition which was issued four years later, and which in 
 the New Testament especially contained many marked 
 improvements. In the following extracts we shall there- 
 fore quote from it. The itaHcs show the places in which 
 
THE BISHOPS' BIBLE 95 
 
 the Bishops have introduced changes from the Great Bible 
 of 1539. The comparison with the A.V. the reader can 
 make for himself. 
 
 John x. 14-16 (Bishops' Bible, 1572) 
 
 14. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, 
 and am known of mine. 
 
 15. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I 
 also the Father ; and I give my life for the sheep, 
 
 16. And other sheep I have, which are not of this 
 fold : them also I must bring, and they shall hear my 
 voice, and there shall be one fold [and] one shepherd. 
 
 Heb. xiii. 5-8 (Bishops' Bible, 1572) 
 
 5. Let your conversation be without covetousness 
 beijig conieni with such things as ye have {add already, 
 Great Bible). For he hath said I will m no case fail 
 thee, neither forsake thee. 
 
 6. So that we may boldly say The Lord is my 
 helper, and I will not fear what man may do unto 
 me. 
 
 7. Remember them which have the oversight of 
 you, which have spoken unto you the word of God, 
 zvhose end of conversation ye considering, follow their 
 
 faith. 
 
 8. Jesus Christ yesterday and to-day, and the same 
 {add continueth Great Bible) for ever. 
 
 The Bishops' rendering of ver. 7 in the last extract 
 may serve to illustrate the only other point in their 
 translation to which we can draw attention, namely, its 
 occasional cumbrousness and love of "mouth-filling" 
 phrases. Thus their translation of Psalm xxiii. begins : 
 "God is my shepherd, therefore I can lack nothing: He 
 will cause me to repose myself in pasture full of grass, 
 and He will lead me unto calm waters " ; and in 2 Cor. 
 ix. 5, the Corinthians are exhorted to "prepare your 
 
96 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 fore-promised beneficence, that it might be ready as a 
 beneficence and not as an extortion." ^ 
 
 § 5- Marginal Notes.— The marginal notes in the 
 Bishops' Bible are not so numerous as in the Genevan, 
 and are very unevenly distributed through the different 
 books. The majority are occupied with points of inter- 
 pretation, but a few are doctrinal. The following 
 examples will illustrate both classes : — 
 
 Gen. ii. 19, "Man shewed himself lord of all 
 beasts, by giving them names." 
 
 Deut. vii. 12, " This covenant is grounded upon His 
 free grace, therefore in recompensing their obedience 
 He hath respect to His mercy, and not to their merits." 
 
 Psa. Ixviii. 4 {^^ His name Everlasting''^), "Jah, a 
 name of God that signifieth Him to be always and 
 other things to be of Him." 
 
 Luke iv. 29 {''Top of the hiir), "The Greek 
 readeth brow of the hill." 
 
 Phil. ii. 12, "Our health hangeth not on our 
 works, and yet are they said to work out their health 
 who do run in the race of justice. For although we 
 be saved freely in Christ by faith, yet must we walk 
 by the way of justice unto our health." 
 
 Of these notes the second, like many others through- 
 out the Bible, is taken directly from the Genevan version. 
 With the last it may be interesting to compare the 
 Genevan annotation on the same passage : "Run forward 
 in that race of righteousness wherein God hath freely 
 placed you through Jesus Christ, and conducteth you by 
 his Spirit to walk in good works, and so to make your 
 vocation sure." 
 
 § 6. General Estimate. — Of the Bishops' Bible 
 
 about thirty editions in all were published, the last 
 appearing in 1606 ; but along with the Genevan Bible, 
 
 1 Closely allied to this is the Bishops' habit of introducing brief 
 explanatory clauses within brackets, and in a different type, as 
 John xviii. \i{^' And Annas sent Christ bound unto Caiaphas the 
 High Priest " ) ; Eph. ii. 5, " By {whose) grace ye are saved." 
 
THE BISHOPS' BIBLE 97 
 
 it continued in use for some time afterwards. ^ It owed 
 its position however rather to external authority than to 
 any independent merits as a translation, although we can 
 hardly go to the length of a recent writer in describing 
 it as " the most unsatisfactory and useless of all the old 
 translations." 2 We may rather adopt the weighty and 
 guarded words of Dr. Moulton — he is speaking of 
 the 1572 New Testament: "The verdict of the 
 student will vary according to the portion which he is 
 examining. Again and again he will wonder at the 
 retention of an early rendering which had been corrected 
 by a later translator, or the preference shown for a 
 roundabout phrase ... but he will meet with many 
 proofs of close study of the original text, and an earnest 
 desire to represent it with all fairness to the English 
 reader." 
 
 1 So late as 1621 Bishop Andrews, though himself one of the 
 revisers to whom we owe the A.V. of 161 1, took his texts from the 
 Bishops Bible. 
 
 •-' Lovett, The Printed English Bible, p. 120. 
 
98 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE RHEIMS AND DOUAI BIBLE 
 
 I. The Rheims New Testament. 2. Character of the 
 translation. 3. Marginal Notes. 4. Influence on the 
 Authorised Version. 5. The Douai Old Testament. 
 
 As we have already seen, the Church of Rome had never 
 looked with favour on the translation of the Bible into 
 English, and different edicts had from time to time been 
 issued to tiy and prevent its circulation. In spite, how- 
 ever, of such prohibitions the spread of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures in England amongst all classes of the population 
 had gone steadily on, and with it, in the eyes of Rome, 
 an alarming increase in heresy. It was resolved there- 
 fore to tiy a change of policy, and, if the Bible must 
 be read, at least to provide the faithful with a version 
 free from the "partial and false translations," by which, 
 according to Romish Churchmen, all existing versions 
 were disfigured. Curiously enough this version, like the 
 immediately preceding Protestant version of Geneva, 
 was produced in exile. 
 
 At the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign a number 
 of English Catholics had taken refuge at Douai in 
 Flanders, and there established a college for the purpose 
 of training agents to win back England to Roman 
 Catholicism. To three of these refugees the credit of the 
 new version principally belongs, namely, William Allen, 
 Gregory Martin, and Richard Bristow. Allen, who was 
 afterwards created a cardinal, and who, if the Armada 
 had succeeded, was to have been Primate of England, 
 may be looked upon as the moving spirit of the whole 
 
THE RHEIMS AND DOUAI BIBLE 99 
 
 work; Martin, "an excellent linguist, exactly read and 
 versed in the Holy Scriptures," as the principal translator ; 
 and Bristow as one of the main contributors of the notes 
 which were a distinguishing feature of the version. 
 
 § I. The Rheims New Testament.— The first 
 
 part of the new translation to appear was the New 
 Testament, which was published in 1582 at Rheims, j^ 
 whither for a time, owing to a Huguenot riot, the college 
 had been removed. ^ It bore a somewhat formidable 
 title : — 
 
 ** The New Testament of lesus Christ, translated 
 faithfvlly into English out of the authentical Latin, 
 according to the best corrected copies of the same, 
 diligently conferred with the Greeke and other editions 
 in diuers languages : with Arguments of bookes and 
 chapters. Annotations, and other necessarie helpes, for 
 the better vnderstanding of the text, and specially for 
 the discouerie of theCorrvptions of diuers late transla- 
 tions, and for cleering the Controversies in religion, of 
 these dales. In the English College of Rhemes." 
 
 Then came this verse from Psa. cxviii, in Latin and 
 English: *' Giue me vnderstanding, and I wil searche 
 thy law, and wil keepe it with my whole hart " ; 
 followed by a quotation from St. Augustine also in 
 both languages : " Al things that are readde in holy 
 Scriptures, we must heare with great attention, to our 
 instruction and saluation : but those things specially 
 must be commended to memorie, which make most 
 against Heretikes : whose deceites cease not to circum- 
 uent and beguile al the weaker sort and the more 
 negligent persons." 
 
 The foregoing sentence from St. Augustine indicates 
 very clearly the spirit in which the whole work was 
 undertaken, and which is still further defined in 
 the elaborate Preface to the Reader. After guard- 
 ing against the idea "that the holy Scriptures should 
 
 1 It was restored at Douai in 1593, and finally located in Eng- 
 land in the parish of Standon in Hertfordshire. 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 always be in our mother tongue," and affirming that 
 they have only undertaken their present work "upon 
 special consideration of the present time, state, and 
 condition of our country," the translators extol the 
 wisdom of the Church in neither forbidding utterly nor 
 authoritatively commanding the use of any Catholic trans- 
 lation. They admit that the decree of the Council of 
 Trent according to which the Scriptures "may not be 
 indifferently read of all men," cannot any longer be "so 
 precisely observed, as in other times and places " ; but at 
 the same time they indignantly deny that our forefathers 
 suffered every one "that had a little Greek or Latin, 
 straight to take in hand the holy Testament ; or that the 
 translated Bibles into the vulgar tongues, were in the 
 handsof every husbandman, artificer, prentice, boys, girls, 
 mistress, maid, man. . . . No, in those better times 
 men were neither so ill, nor so curious of themselves, 
 so to abuse the blessed book of Christ : neither was 
 there any such easy means before printing was invented, 
 to disperse the copies into the hands of every man, as 
 now there is." " We therefore," they continue, " having 
 compassion to see our beloved countiymen, with ex- 
 treme danger of their souls, to use only such profane 
 translations . . . have set forth, for you (benign readers) 
 the New Testament to begin withal, trusting that it 
 may give occasion to you, after diligent perusing thereof, 
 to lay away at least such their impure versions as hitherto 
 you have been forced to occupy." 
 
 How far they have succeeded in this, the Rhemists 
 modestly add, it is not for them to judge ; but, to guard 
 against error in every way, they claim to have at least been 
 "veryprecise and religious " in following their copy, " the 
 old vulgar approved Latin : not only in sense, which we 
 hope we always do, but sometimes in the very words also 
 and phrases, which may seem to the vulgar reader and 
 to common English ears not yet acquainted therewith 
 rudeness or ignorance ; but to the discreet Reader that 
 deeply weigheth and considereth the importance of sacred 
 words and phrases . . . reasonable and necessary." 
 
THE RHEIMS AND DOUAI BIBLE loi 
 
 A few examples are then given of their method of 
 translation, and attention is drawn to the marginal 
 notes in which they sometimes give the Greek rendering 
 "when the sense is hard." Finally they conclude : " Thus 
 we have endeavoured by all means to satisfy the indiffer- 
 ent reader, and to help his understanding every way. . . . 
 Fare well, good Reader, and if we profit thee any whit by 
 our poor pains, let us for God's sake be partakers of 
 thy devout prayers, and together with humble and con- 
 trite heart call upon our Saviour Christ to cease these 
 troubles and storms of His dearest spouse." 
 
 § 2. Character of the Translation.— From the 
 
 above abstract of the Editors' Preface it will be seen that 
 the Rheims Testament was, like the Wyclififite versions, 
 only a secondary translation, not made, that is, from the 
 original Greek, but from the Vulgate, or Latin translation 
 of it. We may expect therefore to find both the excel- 
 lences and the failings of this old version reproduced 
 — the more so because of the closeness, " word for word, 
 and point for point," with which it was followed. 
 
 A passage which we have already cited several times 
 will illustrate this as well as any other, besides lending 
 itself for comparison with earlier versions. 
 
 Phil. ii. 5-1 1 (Rheims, 1582) 
 
 5. For this think in yourselves, which also in 
 Christ Jesus, 
 
 6. Who when He was in the form of God, thought 
 it no robbery. Himself to be equal to God ; 
 
 7. But he exinanited Himself, taking the form of 
 a servant, made into the similitude of men, and in 
 shape found as man. 
 
 8. He humbled Himself, made obedient unto 
 death : even the death of the cross. 
 
 9. For the which thing God also hath exalted Him, 
 and hath given Him a name which is above all 
 names : 
 
 10. That in the name of Jesus every knee bow of 
 the celestials, terrestrials, and infernals : 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 II. And every tongue confess that our Lord Jesus 
 Christ is in the glory of God the Father, 
 
 The result, it must be confessed, if on the whole very 
 accurate, is from its extreme literalness somewhat stilted 
 and pedantic, while the same cause leads to actual 
 ambiguity in the first and last verses. Many more 
 glaring instances of this last fault might easily be cited. 
 Thus to mention only one or two, referred to by the 
 translators themselves : in John ii. 4 we find our Lord's 
 question rendered, " What is to me and thee, woman ? " ; 
 in Eph. vi. 12 the last clause runs, "The spirituals of 
 wickedness in the celestials " ; and in i Pet. ii. 2 the 
 exhortation takes the form, "As infants even now born, 
 reasonable, milk without guile desire ye " — a rendering 
 for which the defence is offered : " We do so place 
 'reasonable,' of purpose, that it may be indifferent both 
 to infants going before, as in our Latin text : or to milk 
 that followeth after, as in other Latin copies and in the 
 Greke." 
 I Closely connected with this literalness is the number 
 of Latin terms which the Rhemists employ, so that 
 their translation, as Fuller puts it, in turn "needs to be 
 translated." Thus in the passage given above we have 
 such a word as " exinanited," which had been used in 
 no previous version, and has fortunately failed to keep a 
 place in any subsequent one. Similarly we have such 
 renderings as, "Give us to-day our supersubstantial 
 bread" (Matt. vi. 11); " He was assumpted " (Acts i. 
 2) ; " Purge the old leaven, that you may be a new 
 paste, as you are azymes. For our Pasche, Christ, is 
 immolated " (i Cor. v. 7) ; " Keep the good deposiiiun " 
 \ (2 Tim. i. 14). 1 
 
 More interesting however than these Latinised terms, 
 many of which have disappeared from the revised 
 
 1 A table containing fifty-eight terms "not familiar to the vulgar 
 reader " is given at the end of the book ; but many of these, such as 
 " victim," "gratis," "allegory," are now in general use. It would he 
 interesting to know how far the Rheims Testament was responsible 
 for naturalising them. 
 
THE R HE I MS AND DOUAI BIBLE 103 
 
 editions of the Rheims Testament itself, are the 
 renderings in which the translators allow their theo- 
 logical opinions to appear. Thus John the Baptist's 
 message runs, " Do penance : for the kingdom of heaven . 
 is at hand" (^^af^'iIii 2) ; and Christ's beatitude is, 
 " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice : 
 for they shall have their fill" (Matt. v. 6), the rendering 
 "justice " being deliberately chosen, here and elsewhere 
 throughout the New Testament, instead of "righteous- 
 ness," because it was imagined that by the latter the 
 Protestants meant to suppress justification by works. 
 So too in Luke xxii. 20 we read of the " chalice " instead 
 of the "cup," to favour the view, so their Protestant 
 critic Dr. Fulke asserted, "that Christ used not a 
 common cup, usual to be drunken in at meat, but a 
 consecrated vessel such as is occupied at masse " ; while 
 in Titus iii. 5 "the laver of regeneration" takes the 
 place of the Genevan "the washing of the new birth." 
 Other Rhemish renderings have a close relation to 
 Scottish ecclesiastical nomenclature, as Luke iii. 14, 
 " Be content with your stipends" ; or Gal. vi. 6, "And 
 let him that is catechized in the word, communicate to 
 him that catechizeth him, in all his goods." 
 
 § 3. Marginal Notes. — The theological bias, which 
 shows itself here and there in the translation, is most 
 unmistakably present in the marginal notes and annota- 
 tions, which, like the famous Genevan notes, although 
 from a directly opposite standpoint, are largely of a 
 doctrinal and polemical character. The following are 
 examples : — 
 
 Matt. vi. 24, " Two Masters. Two religions, God 
 and Baal, Christ and Calvin, Masse and Communion, 
 the Catholic Church and Heretical Conventicles. 
 Let them mark this lesson of our Saviour, that think 
 they may serve all masters, all times, all religions. 
 Again the two masters do signify, God and the 
 world, the flesh and the spirit, justice and sin." 
 
 Acts iii. I, "This maketh for distinction of 
 
I04 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 canonical hours, and diversity of appointed times 
 to pray." 
 
 Acts viii. 31, "The Scriptures are so written that 
 they cannot be understood without an interpreter, as 
 easy as our Protestants make them." 
 
 2 Pet. ii. 19, "Who ever promised more liberty to 
 their followers than Luther, Calvin, and the like, 
 taking away penance, fasting, continency or chastity, 
 keeping of vows, necessity of good works (because 
 faith doth all), obedience to ecclesiastical pastors and 
 councils, and such like?" 
 
 Occasionally, however, there are notes of a more 
 critical character, which prove that the translators, 
 while translating from the Latin, must have kept the 
 Greek text before them as they worked. Thus on their 
 rendering of Acts xiii. 2, "As they were ministering," 
 they remark : " If we should, as our adversaries do, 
 boldly turn what texts we list, and flee from one lan- 
 guage to another for the advantage of our cause, we 
 might have translated for ministering^ sacrificing^ for so 
 the Greek doth signify, and so Erasmus translated. . . . 
 But we keep our text, as the translators of the Scriptures 
 should do most religiously." 
 
 The careful observance of the definite article in many 
 places where previous translators had neglected it points 
 in the same direction. For as the Latin has no definite 
 article, this can only have come from an independent 
 study of the Greek. Examples are " the pinnacle " 
 (Matt. iv. 5); "the meat . . . the raiment" (Matt. 
 vi. 25); "the lamp" (John v. 35); "the rest " (Eph. 
 ii. 3); and "the white robes" (Rev. vii. 13) — improve- 
 ments, it may further be noted, in which even the trans- 
 lators of our own A.V. failed to follow the Rhemists, 
 though they had their version before them. 
 
 § 4. Influence on the Authorised Version.— Of 
 
 this last statement there is abundant proof Though the 
 Rheims New Testament was not, as we shall see directly, 
 amongst the translations recommended to King James's 
 
THE RHEIMS AND DOUAI BIBLE 105 
 
 revisers, it was clearly made use of. From it, for 
 example, such Latin words have been introduced into 
 our version as "hymn" (Matt. xxvi. 30); "decease" 
 (Lukeix. 31) ; "separated" (Rom. i. i) ; "impenitent" 
 (Rom. ii. 5) ; and "contemptible" (2 Cor. x. 10). Or 
 to confine ourselves to a single Epistle. In the short 
 First Epistle of John the following familiar phrases are all 
 traceable directly to the influence of the Rhemish 
 version : * ' Confess our sins " (i. 9) where previous 
 versions had "knowledge" or "acknowledge"; "He 
 is the propitiation" (ii. 2) instead of "He it is that 
 obtaineth grace"; "the unction" (ii. 20) instead of 
 "ointment"; and "we may have confidence" (ii. 28) 
 instead of " we may be bold." 
 
 Other examples of this dependence might be given 
 were it necessary ; but enough has been said to show 
 that the Rheims New Testament is entitled to a place, 
 even if it be not a very prominent one, in the line of 
 ancestry of our English Bible. With an appeal that 
 was made to it and rejected under very tragic circum- 
 stances, we may take farewell of it. 
 
 On the evening before her execution, Mary Queen of 
 Scots, laying her hand on a copy of the Rhemish New 
 Testament, which happened to be on her work-table, 
 took a solemn oath of innocence. The Earl of Kent at 
 once interposed that the book was false, and that conse- 
 quently the oath was of no value. "Does your Lord- 
 ship suppose," replied the Queen, " that my oath would 
 be better, if I swore on your translation in which I do 
 not believe ? " 
 
 §5. The Douai Old Testament.— There is reason 
 to believe that the translation of the Old Testament had 
 been finished even before that of the New Testament ; 
 but its publication was delayed until 1609-10 " for lack 
 of good meanes," or, as the translators add, " our poore 
 estate in banishment." The title of the completed work, 
 which was in two volumes, began : — 
 
 "The Holie Bible Faithfully Translated into Eng- 
 lish out of The Avthenlical Latin. Diligently con- 
 
io6 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 fevred with the Hebrew, Greeke, and other Editions 
 in diuers languages," 
 
 On the title-page of vol. i. was the verse from Isa. 
 xii. "You shall draw waters in joy out of the Sauiours 
 fountaines " ; and on the last page the brief note, 
 " We have already found some faults escaped in printing, 
 but fearing there be more, and the whole volume being 
 over long to be examined again, we pray the courteous 
 reader to pardon all and amend them as they occur." 
 On the title-page of vol. ii. was the verse from 2 Pet. i. 
 *'The holie men of God spake, inspired with the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 There is again an address " To the right well beloved 
 English reader," in which the merits of the Latin text 
 are freely extolled. It is preferred, indeed, even to the 
 Hebrew original, which has been " foully corrupted," so 
 it is alleged, by the Jews. In other particulars the 
 address presents no special features, and the same may 
 be said of the translation generally. We find again the 
 same straining after an extreme literalness that met us 
 in the New Testament, and the same constant introduc- 
 tion of Latinised terms. This, for example, is how 
 our Psalm xxiii. was rendered. 
 
 Psalm xxiii. (Douai, 1609- 16 10) 
 
 Our Lord ruleth me, and nothing shall be wanting 
 to me : in place of pasture there He hath placed 
 me. Upon the water of refection He hath brought 
 me up : He hath converted my soul. He hath con- 
 ducted me upon the paths of justice, for His name. 
 For, although I shall walk in the midst of the shadow 
 of death, I will not fear evils : because Thou art 
 with me. Thy rod and Thy staff: they have comforted 
 me. Thou hast prepared in my sight a table, against 
 them that trouble me. Thou hast fatted my head 
 with oil : and my chalice inebriating how goodly is 
 it! And Thy mercy shall follow me all the days of my 
 
THE R HE IMS AND DOUAI BIBLE 107 
 
 life : and that I may dwell in the house of our Lord, 
 
 in longitude of days. 
 
 How little adapted such a version is to the purposes 
 of devotion is self-evident ; while the general faultiness 
 of the translation of the Douai Psalter cannot be 
 wondered at when we keep in view that it is a transla- 
 tion from a corrupt Latin text, which in its turn was an 
 indifferent translation from the Greek, and not from the 
 original Hebrew. 
 
 On the Douai Old Testament, however, we need not 
 further dwell. As it was not published till 1610, it can 
 have had little or no influence on our Authorised Ver- 
 sion, which appeared in the following year. To the 
 history of that version we must now turn. 
 
io8 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE AUTHORISED VERSION — HISTORY OF THE 
 UNDERTAKING 
 
 I. Origin of the Authorised Version. 2. Work of trans- 
 lation. 3. Title and Contents. 4. The Preface. 
 
 5. Marginal Notes — References — Headings — Italics. 
 
 6. In what sense authorised. 
 
 At the close of the sixteenth century, leaving out of sight 
 the older translations, we are met with three Protestant 
 versions of the Bible in more or less general use. There 
 was the Great Bible of Henry VIII. , still to be seen 
 chained to the desk in many country churches ; there was 
 the Genevan Bible, the favourite Bible of the people ; 
 and there was the Bishops' Bible, supported by ecclesi- 
 astical authority. Such a state of things could not well 
 continue, and we might naturally have expected a general 
 movement on the part of the clergy or the people towards 
 securing greater uniformity. So far however as we can 
 learn no such movement took place, and it was left 
 to a casual utterance at a Conference summoned for a 
 different purpose to start the idea of the version which 
 was gradually to supersede all its rivals, and for two 
 hundred and fifty years hold its place unchallenged as 
 the Bible of all English-speaking peoples. 
 
 § I. Origin of the Authorised Version.— King 
 
 James I., on succeeding to the throne of England in 1603, 
 found himself face to face with two great parties in the 
 Church. There was the High Church or Ritualistic 
 party, and there was the party of the Puritans, who were 
 continually complaining of certain grievances to which 
 
THE AUTHORISED VERSION 109 
 
 they said they were subjected. In the great " Millenary 
 Petition " presented to the King on his way to London, 
 and signed by several hundreds of clergy, "groaning 
 under a common burden of human rites and ceremonies," 
 these grievances found distinct voice. Accordingly one 
 of James' first acts was to summon a Conference which 
 met at Hampton Court Palace on the 14th, i6th, and 
 1 8th of Januaiy 1604, to hear and determine "things 
 pretended to be amiss in the Church." 
 
 On most points the Puritans can hardly have been satis- 
 fied with the result of the Conference ; but in one, for us, 
 vitally important particular the King acceded to their 
 wishes. During the second day's proceedings, in the 
 course apparently of some general conversation on a por- 
 tion of the Apocryphal Books, Dr. Reynolds, the Puritan 
 leader, threw out the suggestion "that there might be a 
 new translation of the Bible because those which were 
 allowed in the reign of King Henry VHI. and Edward VI. 
 were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the ori- 
 ginal." The instances of mistranslation which he cited in 
 support of this allegation were neither numerous nor im- 
 portant ; and we can hardly wonder at the grumble of the 
 Bishop of London, that "if every man's humour should 
 be followed, there would be no end of translating." But 
 the King was of a different mind. He had always 
 delighted in theological disputations, and had even at 
 one time commenced a new translation of the Psalms 
 himself. Reynolds' proposal therefore quite fell in with 
 his views, and he expressed the wish that " some especial 
 pains should be taken in that behalf 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." James further 
 proposed that the new translation should Idc undertaken 
 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." 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 On the suggestion of the Bishop of London he gave this 
 caveat '* that no marginal notes should be added," having 
 found, so he said, in a Genevan Bible given him by an 
 English lady, "some notes very partial, untrue, seditious, 
 and savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous 
 conceits." In evidence he pointed to the notes on 
 Exod. i. 19, which "alloweth disobedience unto the 
 King"; and on 2 Chron. xv. 16, which " taxeth Asa for 
 deposing his mother only ; and not killing her." 
 
 It is impossible to believe that James' acquaintance 
 with the Genevan version was so recent as this account 
 pretends. On the contrary, it was the Bible in the use 
 of which, in Scotland, he had been brought up, and on 
 portions of which he had actually published certain 
 expositions. At the same time his dislike to its notes 
 seems to have been genuine, and probably tended as much 
 as anything else to his persevering in the new undertaking. 
 For a few months later we find him writing to Bancroft, 
 then representing the See of Canterbury, announcing that 
 he had appointed (probably at the suggestion of the Uni- 
 versities) " certain learned men, to the number of four and 
 fifty, for the translating of the Bible," and requiring him 
 to provide for their recompense by church preferment. 
 The immediate expenses of the undertaking Bancroft 
 was also commissioned to see to, for though His Majesty, 
 so it was said, was very ready "of his most princely 
 disposition " to have borne these, " some of my lords, as 
 things now go, did hold it inconvenient. " 
 
 The new version, accordingly, though it bears his 
 name, cost the King himself nothing. And, as a matter 
 of fact, the only money recompense that any of the 
 translators received was the sum of thirty shillings a 
 week which the Company of Stationers ^ paid to each of 
 the scholars engaged in the final revision. 
 
 § 2. Work of Translation. — The Hampton Court 
 Conference had met in the beginning of 1604, but three 
 years seem to have elapsed before the work was formally 
 
 1 According to another account the money was paid by Barker, 
 the printer. 
 
THE AUTHORISED VERSION 
 
 entered upon, and then, from whatever cause, we hear 
 only of forty-seven instead of fifty-four translators, A 
 full list of their names and the special portions assigned 
 to each company will be found in any of the larger 
 Bible histories. Plere it is enough to notice that amongst 
 the translators were many men justly famed for their 
 scholarship, such as Launcelot Andrews, of whom it was 
 said that he might have been "interpreter-general at 
 Babel"; Edward Lively, reputed "one of the best 
 linguists in the world" ; Miles Smith, the author of the 
 Preface, who " had Hebrew at his finger-ends " ; and 
 Andrew Downs, described as "one composed of Greek 
 and industry." 
 
 Fourteen rules had been drawn up for the translators' 
 guidance, to the most important of which we shall have 
 occasion to refer in connection with the different points 
 with which they deal ; but of the general history of the 
 undertaking almost nothing is known. " Never," says 
 Dr. Scrivener, who is our principal authority on all that 
 concerns this version, "was a great enterprise like the 
 production of our Authorized Version carried out with 
 less knowledge handed down to posterity of the 
 labourers, their method and order of working." i In 
 accordance, however, with the instructions laid down, 
 the translators were divided into six companies, two 
 meeting at Westminster, Cambridge, and Oxford re- 
 spectively, and after each company had gone over its 
 own portion, the result went the round of the other com- 
 panies "to be considered of seriously and judiciously." 
 The whole was then finally revised by a select committee 
 of six, or, according to another account, twelve, 
 who met in London for the purpose. To this last 
 revision an often -quoted anecdote is probably to be 
 referred. "The translation in King James' time took 
 an excellent way. That part of the Bible was given 
 to him who was most excellent in such a tongue 
 (as the Apocrypha to Andrew Downs), and then they 
 met together, and one read the Translation, the rest 
 1 The Authorized Edition of the English Bible, p. 9. 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 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." Accord- 
 ing to the translators' own account the whole work was 
 carried through in two years and three-quarters — no 
 very long time for so important an undertaking. 
 
 § 3. Title and Contents. — The full title of the 
 
 new Bible ran as follows : — 
 
 "The Holy Bible, conteyning the Old Testament 
 and the New : Newly Translated out of the Originall 
 tongues : with the former Translations diligently 
 compared and reuised by his Maiesties Speciall 
 Comandement. Appointed to be read in Churches. 
 Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to 
 the King's Most Excellent Majestic. Anno Dom. 
 1611." 
 
 After the title-page came the fulsome Dedication to 
 King James, which still appears in all our modem editions, 
 followed by " The Translators to the Reader," a noble 
 Preface of considerable length, which unfortunately is al- 
 most universally omitted. Then we have a Kalendar ; 
 Almanack for xxxix yeares, etc. ; Table of Proper Lessons, 
 etc.; and "The Names and Order of all the Books." 
 In many copies there was inserted a map of Canaan, and 
 also a copy of " Genealogies of Holy Scripture," by one 
 John Speed, to whom the King had sold the right of 
 inserting his work in the Authorised Version. At the 
 bottom of the last page was the single word FINIS. 
 
 § 4. The Preface. — The Translators' Preface is a 
 singularly interesting document, generally understood to 
 be chiefly the work of Dr. Miles Smith. To do it 
 justice it must be studied in its entirety, but the follow- 
 ing brief abstract may give an idea of its character. ^ 
 
 After some introductory remarks on the calumnies 
 that follow all reformers and revisers, the translators 
 pass to a beautiful eulogy in praise of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. "But now," they ask, "what piety without 
 1 It has been reprinted (price One Penny) by the S.P.C.K. 
 
THE AUTHORISED VERSION 
 
 truth ? What truth, what saving truth, without the 
 word of God ? What word of God, whereof we may 
 be sure, without the Scripture ? The Scriptures we are 
 commanded to search. ... If we be ignorant, they 
 will instruct us ; if out of the way, they will bring us 
 home ; if out of order, they will reform us ; if in heavi- 
 ness, comfort us ; if dull, quicken us ; if cold, inflame 
 us. . . . And what marvel ? the original thereof being 
 from heaven, not from earth ; the author being God, 
 not man ; the inditer, the Holy Spirit, not the wit of 
 the Apostles or Prophets ; the penmen, such as were 
 sanctified from the womb, and endued with a principal 
 portion of God's Spirit." 
 
 "But how," they continue, "shall men meditate in 
 that which they cannot understand ? How shall they 
 understand that which is kept close in an unknown 
 tongue ? . . . Translation it is that openeth the window, 
 to let in the light ; that breaketh the shell, that we may 
 eat the kernel ; that pulleth aside the curtain, that we 
 may look into the most holy place." A long account of 
 previous translations follows, and the labours of English 
 workers in this field are held to be deserving of " ever- 
 lasting remembrance." "Yet for all that," they say, 
 "as nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, 
 and the latter thoughts are thought to be the wiser : so, 
 if we building upon their foundation that went before 
 us, and being holpen by their labours, do endeavour to 
 make that belter which they left so good ; no man, we 
 are sure, hath cause to mislike us ; they, we persuade 
 ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us." Certain 
 cavils of their adversaries are then met, and after again 
 alluding to their own purpose in translating, the trans- 
 lators conclude : " It remaineth that we commend thee 
 (gentle Reader) to God, and to the Spirit of His grace, 
 which is able to build further than we can ask or think. 
 He removeth the scales from our eyes, the vail from our 
 hearts, opening our wits that we may understand His 
 word, enlarging our hearts, yea, correcting our affections, 
 that we may love it above gold and silver, yea, that we 
 
 8 
 
114 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 may love it to the end. . . . The Lord work a care and 
 conscience in us to know Him and serve Him, that we 
 may be acknowledged of Him at the appearing of our 
 Lord JESUS CHRIST, to whom with the Holy Ghost 
 be all praise and thanksgiving. Amen." 
 
 Other statements from the Preface will meet us 
 again in speaking of the character of the translation : in 
 the meantime we may notice one or two general features 
 of the version. 
 
 § 5. Marginal Notes— References— Headings— 
 
 Italics. — It will be remembered that when the question 
 of a new version was first mooted the King forbade 
 all such annotations as had appeared in the Genevan 
 Bible ; and to the same effect the sixth instruction to 
 the translators enjoined, "No marginal notes at all to 
 be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew 
 or Greek words which cannot, without some circum- 
 locution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text." 
 The first part of this rule was closely followed, and all 
 notes of a theological or controversial character were 
 rigidly excluded ; but at the same time the permission 
 extended in its latter part was liberally interpreted and 
 taken advantage of. In the original edition of our 
 Authorised Version, excluding the Apocrypha, over seven 
 thousand brief Marginal Notes are to be found, 1 of 
 which fully two-thirds in the Old Testament give the 
 more literal meaning of the Hebrew or Chaldee, while 
 in the New Testament about the same proportion 
 suggest alternative translations of the Greek. It has 
 been said that the marginal renderings of the Authorised 
 Version are as a rule more to be trusted than those in the 
 text ; but with this verdict no scholar now will prob- 
 ably be found to agree. At the same time the excellence 
 of many of them is shown by their having been trans- 
 ferred by the recent revisers from the margin to the 
 text.2 Others of the notes are helpful for the information 
 
 * Many more notes, such as the historical ones at the end of 
 Dan. ix., have been interpolated in subsequent editions, and ought 
 to be distinguished by brackets or in some other way. 
 
 ^ Examples which can be readily verified will be found at Gen. 
 
THE AUTHORISED VERSION 115 
 
 they convey regarding distances, weights, and measures. 
 But the usefulness of the notes as a whole is much marred 
 by their being so mixed up with the host of marginal 
 references, as in consequence to be frequently lost sight 
 of by the reader. ^ 
 
 These References are computed not to have ex- 
 ceeded nine thousand in 161 1, though in some modern 
 editions they have risen to the enormous total of sixty 
 thousand. They are all, at least in the original edition 
 with which alone we are at present concerned, intended to 
 facilitate the study of the Bible by comparing one passage 
 with another, and as a rule they fulfil that purpose admir- 
 ably. Occasionally however the reference is obscure, if 
 not actually misleading, as when John iv. 24, " God is 
 a Spirit ; and they that worship him must worship him 
 in spirit and in truth," is paralleled with 2 Cor. iii. 17, 
 "Now the Lord is that Spirit : and where the Spirit of 
 the Lord is, there is liberty." 
 
 Headings of chapters and columns had existed both 
 in the Genevan and in the Great and Bishops' Bibles ; 
 but the translators of the Authorised Version introduced 
 an entirely new set, which with only twelve exceptions 
 have kept their place in most of the Bibles now in use. 
 Thus for the pithy heading to Jer. x. 21 in the Bishops' 
 Bible, *'0f evil Curates," we have now "He lamenteth 
 the spoil of the tabernacle by foolish pastors " ; while 
 the quaint column-heading of the Genevan at Mark vi., 
 "Inconvenience of dancing," has given place to "John 
 the Baptist beheaded." 
 
 One other point which may be fittingly noticed here 
 is the use of Italics in the Authorised Version to mark 
 words not directly represented in the original. In 
 this the translators of 161 1 were simply following the 
 example already set them in previous versions, more 
 
 xxi. 33 ; xxxi. 19 ; Lev. xvi. 8 ; Psa. xxiv. 6 ; Ezek. xxix. 10 ; Matt. 
 ii. II ; iv. 12; V. 21 ; Mk. i. 4; vi. 27; vii. 3; John x. 24 ; i Cor. 
 vii. 15 ; xi. 2 ; Eph. ii. 10 ; Heb. ii. 16 ; vii. 28 ; Rev. xiii. i. 
 
 ' In the Annotated Paragraph Bible, published by the Religions 
 Tract Society, the notes are printed separately at the foot of the 
 page. 
 
ii6 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 particularly in the Genevan, and the practice has been 
 warmly commended as serving to mark distinctly that 
 the work is a translation. But against this it may be 
 urged that if the words italicised do no more than repre- 
 sent the sense of the original, there is no reason for 
 specially distinguishing them : while, if they go beyond 
 that, they are of the nature of a gloss or explanation, 
 and have no right to be there at all. In any case if 
 italics are to be admitted it is much to be regretted that 
 greater care was not taken in 1611 to secure uniformity 
 of practice in their use. In no particular have correc- 
 tions in subsequent editions been more required. One 
 example must suffice. In i Pet. iv. 11, " lei him speak" 
 is italicised in 161 1 ; but the clause immediately follow- 
 ing, which stands on exactly the same footing, ^^ lei him 
 do it,''^ not until 1629. 
 
 § 6. In what sense authorised. — There remains 
 still the question, In what sense can we speak of this 
 new version as the Authorised Version ? The name 
 ^ has been sometimes traced to the words on the title-page, 
 "Appointed to be read in Churches," as if its use 
 was at once formally enjoined by the King, as soon 
 as it was published. But, whatever the words may 
 mean, "no evidence has yet been produced to show that 
 the version was ever publicly sanctioned by Convocation 
 or by Parliament, or by the Privy Council, or by the 
 King." The Bishops' Bible, so long as the old copies 
 lasted, continued to be used in the churches : the 
 Genevan was for still a generation the favourite in the 
 home. Only slowly, and by the force of superior 
 merit, did King James' version attain the position 
 which it now enjoys. It became the "authorised" 
 version simply because it was the best. 
 
THE AUTHORISED VERSION 117 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE AUTHORISED VERSION — CHARACTER OF THE 
 TEXT 
 
 I. The Authorised Version a revision rather than a transla- 
 tion. 2. Dependence on earlier versions. 3. General 
 excellence and reception of the Authorised Version. 
 
 From the foregoing general account of the Authorised 
 Version we must turn to the character of the text, and 
 notice briefly one or two points that bring out its 
 peculiar excellences. 
 
 § I. The Authorised Version a Revision rather 
 
 than a Translation. — From the inscription on the 
 title-page, " Newly translated out of the Originall 
 Tongues," we might be led to think that the Authorised 
 Version was an altogether independent translation ; but 
 the words must be understood as directly qualified by 
 what follows, "with the former Translations dili- 
 gently compared and reuised.'' Our received version 
 was in fact, like its immediate predecessors, a revision 
 rather than a translation. The King himself showed 
 that he contemplated nothing else when in his opening 
 instruction he laid down : "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 permit." While the men engaged in the work 
 bear testimony to the same effect: "Truly, good 
 Christian Reader, we never thought from the begin- 
 ning that we should need 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 
 
ii8 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 principal good one, not justly to be excepted against ; 
 that hath been our endeavour, that our mark." 
 
 So far, therefore, from being dissociated from previ- 
 ous versions, the Authorised Version only represents a 
 fresh stage in the process of polishing and correcting 
 which our English version of the Scriptures had been 
 undergoing from the days of Tindale. Based upon the 
 Bishops' Bible, it reached back through that to the 
 Great Bible of 1539, and thence to Matthew's Bible of 
 1537 ; this in its turn was derived from the Coverdale 
 Bible of 1535, in the composition of which Tindale's 
 versions played so large a part. In other words, the 
 Authorised Version is a revision five times revised. 
 
 In this work of revision King James' translators 
 naturally depended in the first instance upon a careful 
 comparison of the Bishops' renderings with the original 
 Hebrew and Greek. "These," in their own words, 
 " are the two golden pipes, or rather conduits, where- 
 through the olive branches empty themselves into the 
 gold. ... If truth be to be tried by these tongues, 
 then whence should a translation be made, but out of 
 them?" In consequence we find in the Authorised 
 Version many exact and literal renderings now intro- 
 duced for the first time, as when in Isa. liii. 12 the 
 Hebrew verb in the first clause is translated "divide" 
 instead of as in the Bishops' Bible "give" ; or in Heb. 
 iv. I the participial clause gets its true meaning "a 
 promise being left us," not "forsaking the promise," 
 as in the earlier versions. Apart too from the correction 
 of actual errors the translators show their clear grasp of 
 the original by many graphic turns of expression, as in 
 this same Epistle to the Hebrews — " Captain of their 
 salvation" (ii. 10); "Let us labour^ therefore, to enter 
 into that rest" (iv. 11); and "The sin which doth so 
 easily beset tis'''' (xii. i). 
 
 § 2. Dependence on earlier Versions. — On 
 
 the whole, however, to return to the relation of the 
 Authorised Version to earlier English versions, its 
 points of agreement with them, considered collectively. 
 
THE AUTHORISED VERSION 119 
 
 are more noticeable than its divergences. Wherever 
 King James' translators found what seemed to them a 
 specially happy rendering they appropriated it, so that 
 their work became a kind of mosaic of the best results 
 of previous versions. In doing this they were again 
 only carrying out the King's wishes, for his fourteenth 
 instruction especially provided : "These translations to 
 be used when they agree better with the text than the 
 Bishops' Bible : Tindale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, 
 Whitchurch's [the Great Bible, so named from one of its 
 printers], Geneva." And one of the most interesting 
 exercises of the study in which we have been engaged is 
 to take a passage of the Authorised Version, and to 
 trace back its words and phrases to their different 
 sources. The short extracts scattered through our 
 pages will provide the reader with a certain amount of 
 material for doing this ; but it may be well again to 
 draw pointed attention to two versions, which, though 
 not occupying places in the direct line of descent of the 
 Authorised Version, were largely made use of by its 
 translators. These were the Genevan and Rhemish 
 versions. 
 
 It may appear strange that the Genevan Bible should 
 have exercised any influence on the new version when 
 we remember that the King had already condemned 
 it as the worst of all translations ; but the fact is 
 beyond dispute. Thus, for example. Dr. Westcott has 
 pointed out that of the variations from the Bishops' 
 Bible in Isa. liii. "about seven - eighths are due to 
 the Genevan version," either alone or in agreement 
 with one of the Latin versions. And though he warns 
 us that this is an extreme instance, he adds that it 
 " only represents on an exaggerated scale the general 
 relation in which the Authorised Version stands to the 
 Genevan and Bishops' Bibles in the Prophetical books." 
 In the Historical books of the Old Testament the 
 influence of the Genevan is less marked ; but in the New 
 Testament it supplies us with many familiar phrases, 
 such as — 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Luke ix. 33, "It is good for us to be here " (" It 
 is good being here for us," Tindale and subsequent 
 versions). 
 
 Acts xiv. 15, "Men of like passions with you" 
 (" Mortal men like unto you," Tindale, etc.) 
 
 1 Cor. xiii. 12, "We see through a glass darkly" 
 ("We see in a glass even in a dark speaking," 
 Tindale, etc.) 
 
 2 Cor. V. 20, "Ambassadors for Christ" ("Mes- 
 sengers in the room of Christ," Tindale, etc.) 
 
 Heb. iv. 13, "The eyes of him with whom we 
 have to do" ("The eyes of him of whom we speak," 
 Tindale, etc.) 
 
 In the same way, although at the opposite pole 
 doctrinally and ecclesiastically from the Genevan, and not 
 mentioned at all in the King's instructions, the Rheims 
 New Testament has left its mark in many unsuspected 
 ways on our English Bible. Examples have already 
 been given, but a few more may be of interest. It will 
 be understood that the second rendering within brackets 
 represents the general rendering in versions other than 
 the Rhemish. 
 
 Matt. xxvi. 26, "Jesus took bread and blessed it " 
 ("gave thanks"). 
 
 John ix. 22, "He should be pit out of the syna- 
 gogue " (" excommunicate "). 
 
 Acts xiv. 23, "When they had ordained them 
 elders " (" ordained by election "). 
 
 2 Cor. V. 18, "Hath given to us the ministry of 
 reconciliation'^ ("the office to preach the atone- 
 ment "). 
 
 Heb. xii, 16, '•'■Profane person as Esau" ("'un- 
 clean "). 
 
 We cannot carry this comparison farther, but on the 
 whole question of the pedigree of the Authorised Version 
 we may sum up in the concise words of Dr. Eadie : 
 "The Authorized Version has in it the traces of its 
 origin, and its genealogy may be reckoned. For while 
 
THE AUTHORISED VERSION 
 
 it has the fulness of the Bishops' without its frequent 
 literalisms or its repeated supplements, it has the graceful 
 vigour of the Genevan, the quiet grandeur of the Great 
 Bible, the clearness of Tyndale, the harmonies of Cover- 
 dale, and the stately theological vocabulary of the 
 Rheims. It has thus a complex unity in its structure 
 — all the earlier versions ranging over eighty years having 
 bequeathed to it contributions the individuality of which 
 has not been in all cases toned down." 
 
 § 3. General Excellence and Reception of 
 the Authorised Version. — While, however, the 
 
 work of King James' translators was thus mainly one of 
 revision, we must not fail to accord to them the full 
 praise to which they are entitled for the care which they 
 exercised. " Neither did we disdain," they tell us, " to 
 revise that which we had done, and to bring back to 
 the anvil that which we had hammered . . . fearing 
 no reproach for slowness, nor praise for expedition." 
 Their method, too, of working in companies pre- 
 vented their version from showing those marks of 
 individuality by which certain previous translations had 
 been disfigured ; while their combined responsibility for 
 the whole, and not merely for their own several parts, 
 gave a general smoothness and consistency to the work, 
 in which the Bishops' Bible, for example, was sadly 
 lacking. To other points connected with the Authorised 
 Version, such as the appropriateness of its vocabulary, 
 the beauty of its style, its subsequent influence upon our 
 language and literature, and the part it has played in 
 forming the national character, it is impossible to refer 
 at length here ; but it is necessary to emphasise what 
 has been more than once alluded to, that the new 
 version, notwithstanding all its excellences, did not at 
 once meet with general acceptance. On the contrary it 
 had to work its way slowly and gradually in the face of 
 much bitter criticism. One eminent scholar went the 
 length of saying that he "had rather be rent in pieces 
 with wild horses than any such translation, by my 
 consent, should be urged on poor churches." Other 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 charges, such as those of an undue ecclesiastical or 
 doctrinal bias on the part of the translators in certain of 
 their renderings, though now in the main disproved, 
 could not fail to have considerable weight at the time. 
 The translators themselves had expected nothing else. 
 "Was there ever anything projected," they ask, "that 
 savoured any way of newness or renewing, but the same 
 endured many a storm of gainsaying or opposition ? " 
 
 As regards Scotland it is strange, and not altogether 
 to our credit, that the country of Knox and Melville 
 never produced a translation of the Bible of its own. 
 Copies of the Wycliffite versions and of Tindale's 
 Testaments had found their way into the Northern 
 Kingdom, and in 1579, as we have already seen, the 
 Genevan Bible was reprinted in Edinburgh ; but no 
 indigenous version was apparently ever thought of, 
 and in the beginning of the seventeenth century, not- 
 withstanding national and other antipathies, Scotland 
 had still to look to England for her Bible. According to 
 the "Canons and Constitutions Ecclesiasticall " of 1636 
 it was enacted that there should be provided for every 
 Parish " a Bible of the largest volume," and further, that 
 "the Bible shall be of the translation of King James." 
 And though two years later these canons were rejected, 
 the way was at least paved for the general circulation of 
 the Authorised Version.^ 
 
 If, however, the new version was thus slow in estab- 
 lishing itself, the hold which, once acquired, it has 
 since maintained is unparalleled in the history of any 
 other English translation. None have been more ready 
 to admit this than the men who in 1870 were appointed 
 to revise it. "We," so the New Testament revisers 
 tell us in their Preface, " have had to study this great 
 Version carefully and minutely, line by line ; and the 
 longer we have been engaged upon it the more we have 
 learned to admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, 
 its happy turns of expression, its general accuracy, and, 
 
 1 So recently as towards the close of last century, a Bible of the 
 Genevan translation was in use in the church of Crail, in Fifeshire. 
 
THE AUTHORISED VERSION 123 
 
 we must not fail to add, the music of its cadences, and 
 the felicities of its rhythm." 
 
 The previous independent testimonies of two of 
 their number to the same effect may well be quoted. 
 "We in this land," said Dean Alford, when advocat- 
 ing the necessity of revision in a sermon in St. Paul's, 
 "possess a version of Holy Scriptures which may '^ 
 challenge comparison for faithfulness, for simplicity, 
 and for majesty with any that the world has ever 
 seen. . . . And when we intensify all these claims to 
 our affection by the fact that it has been for centuries, 
 and is now, the vehicle to this great English race of 
 all that is pure, and holy, and lovely, and of good 
 report, — the first lesson of infancy, the guide of mature 
 life, the comforter of sickness and death, — we can 
 hardly be surprised that many and some of the best 
 among us refuse to see its faults, and are unable to con- 
 template with any content the prospect of their being 
 corrected." 
 
 And another great Biblical critic still happily spared 
 to us. Bishop Westcott, to whose History of the English 
 Bible we have made so many references in the preceding 
 pages, writes : " Our version is the work of a Church 
 and not of a man. Or rather, it is a growth and not a 
 work. Countless external influences, independent of 
 the actual translators, contributed to mould it ; and 
 when it was fashioned the Christian instinct of the 
 nation, touched, as we believe, by the Spirit of God, 
 decided on its authority." He adds — and the words 
 have an important bearing on the subject of our next 
 chapter: "Our Bible in virtue of its past is capable 
 of admitting revision, if need be, without violating its 
 history. As it gathered into itself, during the hundred 
 years in which it was forming, the treasures of manifold 
 labours, so it still has the same assimilative power of 
 life." 
 
124 T^HE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 I, Schemes for revision. 2. Origin of the Revised 
 Version. 3. Rules for the revisers' guidance. 4. 
 The revisers at work. 5. Comparison with the 
 Authorised Version. 6. Changes adopted in the 
 Revised Version. 7. Its reception. 
 
 § I. Schemes for Revision. — In the quotations from 
 
 two of the leading Biblical scholars of recent days with 
 which our last chapter concluded, the advisableness of 
 the revision of our Authorised Version was clearly hinted 
 at. We must not however suppose that it was left to 
 our own times to recognise this need. We are nearer 
 the truth when we say that the revision of our Bible in 
 one form or another has gone steadily on from the very 
 year in which it was first published. For it is a curious 
 fact that of the standard issues of the Authorised Version 
 bearing the date 1611 there are still two sets of copies 
 extant, differing in many minute particulars, and both 
 containing numerous errors of their own, which it has 
 been the work of later printers and editors to correct. 
 Thus the one issue reads in Matt. xxvi. 36, "Then 
 Cometh Judas," instead of '* Then cometh Jesus " ; 
 while the other prints a part of Exod. xiv. 10 twice 
 over. Other and less obvious emendations have been 
 introduced from time to time in subsequent editions, 
 until the reader of one of our modern Bibles would be 
 astonished if he realised in how many places it differed 
 from the 1611 text.i 
 
 1 The most important of these variations may be conveniently 
 
THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 Apart from these "deliberate changes, introduced 
 silently and without authority by men whose very 
 names are often unknown," we have abundant evidence 
 of more ambitious proposals for amending the new 
 vei-sion. Thus in 1645 Dr. John Lightfoot, preaching 
 before the House of Commons, urged them " to think 
 of a review and survey of the translation of the Bible," 
 and pleaded for " an exact, vigorous, and lively transla- 
 tion." And a few years later the Long Parliament 
 actually made an order that a Bill should be brought in 
 for a new translation. But though a committee was 
 appointed for the purpose, and held frequent meetings, 
 the work "became fruitless by the Parliament's dissolu- 
 tion." Various other schemes for revision were mooted 
 from time to time, and several independent translations 
 of the Bible either in whole or in part were issued. 
 The utmost, however, any of these can be said to have 
 done, was to keep the whole question of revision an 
 open one, and it was left to the Southern Convocation 
 of the Church of England to take the initial steps for 
 providing us with what is now known as par excellence 
 
 The Revised Version. 
 
 § 2. Origin of the Revised Version. — The very 
 
 fact that it took its rise in Convocation marks off 
 the Revised Version from all other English versions. 
 Tindale's Testament and Coverdale's Bible were the 
 work of individuals ; the Great Bible and the Bishops' 
 were Episcopal in their origin ; the Authorised Version 
 was due to the King acting in concert with the Universi- 
 ties ; but the idea of the Revised Version was matured 
 by representatives of the Church of England sitting 
 together in council, and carried through with the assist- 
 ance of members of other Churches. Over the steps 
 leading up to the final decision we cannot linger. Enough, 
 that in May 1S70 the report of a committee appointed in 
 the preceding February was adopted, to the effect "that 
 Convocation should nominate a iDody of its own members 
 
 studied in the margin of The Parallel Bible, Authorised Version 
 and Revised Version, 1885. 
 
126 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 to undertake the work of revision, who shall be at 
 liberty to invite the co-operation of any eminent for 
 scholarship to whatever nation or religious body they 
 belong." Shortly afterwards in terms of this resolution 
 two Companies for the revision of the Old and New 
 Testaments respectively were appointed. 
 
 Dr. Harold Browne, Bishop of Winchester, was 
 Chairman of the Old Testament Company, which, in- 
 cluding all who at any time took part in the work, 
 consisted of thirty-seven members. Amongst these 
 were such well-known English scholars as Bishops 
 Thirlwall of St. David's, and Wordsworth of Lincoln ; 
 Deans Perowne, Plumptre, and Payne Smith ; Professors 
 Cheyne and Driver, Oxford, and William Wright, 
 Cambridge. The representatives from Scotland were 
 Dr. Lindsay Alexander, Edinburgh ; Professor Birrell, 
 St. Andrews; Professor A. B. Davidson, F.C. College, 
 Edinburgh ; Principals Douglas and Fairbairn, F.C. 
 College, Glasgow; Professor IM'Gill, St. ' Andrews ; 
 Professor W. Robertson Smith, F.C. College, Aberdeen ; 
 and Professor Weir, Glasgow. 
 
 The New Testament Company was presided over by 
 Dr. EUicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, and 
 consisted at first of twenty-seven, but for the greater 
 part of the time of twenty-four members. These in- 
 cluded Archbishop Trench ; Bishops Lightfoot and 
 Westcott ; Deans Stanley and Vaughan ; Professors 
 Hort and Kennedy, and Dr. Moulton, Cambridge ; and 
 Dr. F. H. A. Scrivener. The Scottish representatives 
 were Bishop Wordsworth, St. Andrews ; Principal 
 Brown, F.C. College, Aberdeen ; Professor Eadie, U.P. 
 College, Glasgow ; Professor Milligan, Aberdeen ; and 
 Professor Roberts, St. Andrews. 
 
 The responsibility of the work was further shared 
 and its interest extended by the appointment of similar 
 Companies in America, to whom the British revisers 
 transmitted from time to time the several portions of their 
 revision, receiving from them in return criticisms and 
 suggestions. Dr. Philip Schaff of New York was the 
 
THE REVISED VERSION 127 
 
 President of the whole American Revision Committee ; 
 while the Chairman of the Old Testament Company was 
 Dr. William Henry Green of Princeton, and the Chairman 
 ofthe New Testament Company, Dr. Theodore D. Woolsey 
 of Vale College. To the " care, vigilance, and accuracy " 
 of their American colleagues in these happily united 
 labours, the revisers bear testimony in their Preface. 
 
 § 3. Rules for the Revisers' Guidance.— These 
 
 rules or general principles were eight in number, of 
 which the five first were the most important : — 
 
 1. To introduce as few alterations as possible into 
 the Text of the Authorised Version consistently with 
 faithfulness. 
 
 2. To limit, as far as possible, the expression of 
 such alterations to the language of the Authorised 
 and earlier English Versions. 
 
 3. Each Company to go twice over the portion to 
 be revised, once provisionally, the second time 
 finally, and on principles of voting as hereinafter is 
 provided. 
 
 4. That the Text to be adopted be that for which 
 the evidence is decidedly preponderating ; and that 
 when the text so adopted differs from that from 
 which the Authorised Version was made, the altera- 
 tion be indicated in the margin. 
 
 5. To make or retain no change in the Text on the 
 second final revision by each Company, except two- 
 thirds of those present approve of the same, but on 
 the first revision to decide by simple majorities. 
 
 § 4- The Revisers at Work.— With the assist- 
 ance of these rules, and the accounts which from various 
 sources have reached us, it is not difficult to imagine the 
 revisers at work. Unlike the translators in King 
 James' time they were not divided into sub-committees, 
 but each Company met as a whole, thereby securing an 
 even greater uniformity in their work. The place of 
 meeting was the Jerusalem Chamber, a large room 
 attached to the Deanery of Westminster Abbey, and 
 
128 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 already famous as the scene of the preparation of the 
 Westminster Confession of Faith. On either side of a 
 long table, reaching from end to end of the room, the 
 revisers seated themselves, a sheet of paper with a 
 small portion of the Authorised Version printed in the 
 centre, and wide margins on either side for notes, lying 
 l^efore eacli. After prayers and the reading of the 
 minutes of the last meeting, the Chairman read over the 
 appointed passage, and asked for suggestions. Those 
 dealing with questions affecting the original text were 
 first considered, and the results noted ; then points of 
 rendering were attended to. Whenever a marked 
 difference of opinion arose, a vote of the whole Company 
 was taken. So, in the case of the New Testament 
 Company, the work went on for ten and a half 
 years, the Company sitting for four days eveiy month 
 (with the exception of August and September) in each 
 year, until at length in i88i the Revised New Testa- 
 ment was published. Four years later the Revised Old 
 Testament was ready, so that in 1885 the English 
 reader had the complete Revised Version before him. 
 Its title ran simply : — 
 
 "The Holy Bible containing the Old and New 
 Testaments translated out of the Original Tongues : 
 being the Version set forth a.d. 161 i compared 
 with the most ancient Authorities and revised." 
 
 § 5- Comparison with the Authorised Version. 
 
 — It is unnecessary to print lengthy extracts from a trans- 
 lation which is within the easy reach of all ; but it may 
 be well to illustrate the advantages to be gained by a 
 comparative study of the Authorised and Re\dsed Ver- 
 sions by means of a few parallel verses. Let us take the 
 passage of which we have already given Coverdale's ren- 
 dering on pp. 52-3. The close relation to it, and conse- 
 quently to Tindale, of both our Authorised and Revised 
 Versions is very marked, and need not be further com- 
 mented upon. 
 
THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 129 
 
 Matt. xiii. 3-8. 
 
 The A.V. 161 
 
 The R.V. 
 
 3. And he spake many things 
 unto them in parables, saying, 
 Behold, a sower went forth to sow. 
 
 4. And when he sowed, some 
 J cds fell by the wayside, and the 
 fowls came, and devoured them up. 
 
 5. Some fell upon stony places, 
 where they had not much earth : 
 and forthwith they sprung up, 
 because they had no deepness of 
 earth. 
 
 6. And when the Sun was up, 
 they were scorched : and because 
 they had not root, they withered 
 away. 
 
 7. And some fell among thorns : 
 and the thorns sprung up, and 
 choked them. 
 
 8. But other fell into good 
 ground, and brought forth fruit, 
 some an hundredfold, some sixty- 
 
 3 And he spake to them many 
 things in parables, saying. 
 Behold, the sower went forth 
 
 4 to sow ; and as he sowed, some 
 seeds fell by the wayside, and 
 the birds came and devoured 
 
 5 them : and others fell upon 
 the rocky places, where they 
 had not much earth : and 
 straightway they sprang up, 
 because they had no deepness 
 
 6 of earth : and when the sun 
 was risen, they were scorched : 
 and because they had no root, 
 
 7 they withered away. And 
 others fell upon the thorns ; 
 and the thorns grew up, and 
 
 8 choked them : and others fell 
 upon the good ground, and 
 yielded fruit, some a hundred- 
 fold, some sixty, some thirty. 
 
 fold, some thirtyfold. 
 
 Here it will be noticed that the R.V. has not " Be- 
 hold, a sower, "but "Behold, the sower, "the definite article 
 at least suggesting the presence of some sower actually at 
 work in a field close at hand, and so giving reality to the 
 whole story. Passing over such slight changes as "as 
 he sowed " for " when he sowed," " the birds "for " the 
 fowls," "devoured them" for "devoured them up," 
 which could doubtless all be justified were it necessary, 
 we come in ver. 5 to the important substitution of " upon 
 the rocky places" for "upon stony places." The latter 
 naturally recalls to the reader a field whose surface is 
 covered with loose stones, which, however, is clearly out 
 of keeping with the fate of the seed which fell upon it ; 
 whereas by "the rocky places" we are led to think of 
 a thin sprinkling of earth over a rocky bed, exactly the 
 kind of ground in which seed would spring up quickly, 
 
I30 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 but as quickly wither away. Again it is "upon the 
 thorns," and not " among thorns " that other seeds fell — 
 upon soil, that is, in which the seeds of thorns lay already 
 lurking, rather than among growing and flourishing thorn- 
 plants, which the sower would see and avoid. While 
 once more we cannot but feel the precision given to the 
 fourth kind of soil, "the good ground," and not merely 
 "good ground." Doubtless no one of these alterations 
 in itself is of great importance, but taken together they 
 certainly give a fresh interest to the passage, if in no 
 other way, at least by arresting our attention, and causing 
 us to ask what exactly it is that the words imply. 
 
 But it must not be thought that this represents all the 
 value of the Revised Version. On the contrary' it corrects 
 many actual errors, and exhibits many passages in a wholly 
 different light. With the aid of a Parallel Bible the 
 reader can easily trace these for himself; but it may help 
 him in this most important study, as well as prove the 
 need there was of revision, if we suggest one or two 
 examples under four general heads. 
 
 § 6. Changes adopted in the Revised Version. 
 
 — (l) Changes necessitated by i?nproved, that is, better 
 authenticated readings. — During the two and a half cen- 
 turies that had elapsed since the Authorised Version was 
 published, many ancient MSS. of great importance had 
 been discovered, and in consequence the revisers found 
 themselves in an immensely better position than their 
 predecessors for determining what were the exact words 
 of the original text. The result was additions in some 
 places, omissions in others, and in others again altera- 
 tions often of a very striking character. For an addition 
 we may point to i John ii. 23, "He that confesseth the 
 Son hath the Father also," where the removal of the 
 italics from the Authorised Version shows that the words 
 are possessed of independent authority ; for an omission, 
 to the disappearance of the famous proof-text for the 
 Trinity in the same Epistle, " In heaven, the Father, the 
 Word, and the Holy Ghost : and these three are one. 
 And there are three that bear witness in earth" (v. 7. 8); 
 
THE REVISED VERSION 131 
 
 and for an alteration, to such a verse as Luke ii. 14, where 
 a slight change in a Greek word gives a wholly new turn 
 to the last clause, ' ' Glory to God in the highest, and on 
 earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased." 
 
 (2) Changes necessitated by a viis understanding of the 
 original. — An obvious example is Acts xxvi. 28, where 
 for the familiar, "Almost thou persuadest me to be ai 
 Christian," we now read, "With but little persuasion ' 
 thou wouldest fain make me a Christian." So far from 
 admitting himself to be "almost" converted, Agrippa 
 rather insinuates that Paul is surely expecting too much 
 from the short conversation that had passed. Of pre- 
 vious versions Purvey's revision of Wycliffe came nearest 
 to this sense, "And Agrippa seide to Poul, In litil I 
 thing thou counseilist me to be maad a Cristen man." ' 
 It is perhaps, however, in their treatment of the definite 
 article, of prepositions, and of the tenses, that the excel- 
 lence of the revisers' work under this head is most 
 clearly seen — as when by the almost invariable insertion 
 of the definite article before "Christ" in the Gospels,^ 
 they show that the word is not yet a proper name, but 
 denotes an office : ' ' Behoved it not the Christ [in His 
 character, that is as Messiah] to suffer these things ? " 
 (Luke xxiv. 26) ; or when they bring out the definite 
 past change worked for the believer by these sufferings, 
 "We who died ['are dead,' Authorised Version] to sin, 
 how shall we any longer live therein ? " (Rom. vi. 2) ; 
 or when they emphasise that it is only by continued 
 union with his Lord that the complete benefits of this 
 salvation can be enjoyed, "The free gift of God is 
 eternal life in ['through,' Authorised Version] Christ 
 Jesus our Lord " (Rom. vi. 23). The force of these fine 
 distinctions may not be fully appreciated at first, but 
 time will prove their value. 
 
 1 The only places where the article is not found in the Greek are 
 Mark. ix. 41 ; Luke ii. 11; xxiii. 2; John ix. 22. "The turning- 
 point," as Bishop Lightfoot has pointed out, "is the Resurrection. 
 . . . From that time fonvard Christ begins to be used as a proper 
 name with or without the article " (jDn a Fresh Revision of the 
 English New Testament, p. 100). 
 
132 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 (3) Changes necessitated by archaisms. — It is an 
 obvious imperfection in a popular version to retain v^^ords 
 that have wholly passed out of general use, and it is well 
 that the mysterious " taches," "wimples," and "haber- 
 geon " of the authorised Old Testament have given place 
 to the more intelligible "clasps," "shawls," and "coat 
 of mail " of the Revised Version. But still more serious 
 confusion has been caused by words which have changed 
 their meaning since 161 1, and which, though a correct 
 rendering of the original at that time, are no longer 
 so. A commonly cited instance is the familiar word 
 "thought," which has lost the idea of care or anxiety 
 once attached to it, and can therefore no longer adequately 
 stand alone in such a verse as Matt. vi. 31. We must 
 now translate "Take no anxious thought," or, as in 
 Revised Version "Be not anxious.'' Again when in 
 I Cor. iv. 4 St. Paul writes, " I know nothing by 
 myself," how few realise that he means, as the revised 
 rendering shows, " against myself," according to the old 
 use of " by." 
 
 (4) Changes necessitated by inconsistency of rendering 
 of the sajue words and phrases. — This is a very numerous 
 class, for, according to their own admission, the translators 
 of the Authorised Version did not feel themselves tied " to 
 an uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words," 
 with the result that in this translation many instructive 
 parallelisms in the original are quite lost sight of. These 
 are now happily restored in the Revised Version, as 
 when we read that "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit 
 [' Ghost,' Authorised Version] . . . was led by the 
 Spirit in the wilderness" (Luke iv. i); or find the 
 warning, " Every branch that beareth fruit he cleanseth 
 ['purgeth,' Authorised Version] it," followed by the 
 gracious assurance to the Apostles, "Already ye are 
 clean because of the word which I have spoken unto 
 you " (John xv. 2, 3). 
 
 § 7. Its Reception. — From these examples of 
 amended translations in the Revised Version — the list 
 of which might be almost indefinitely extended — and such 
 
THE REVISED VERSION 133 
 
 other obvious improvements as the arrangement of the 
 text into paragraphs, and the mode of printing the 
 quotations from the Poetical books of the Old Testa- 
 ment, ^ it might reasonably have been expected that 
 the new version would speedily supplant the old in 
 general use. This, however, has not proved to be the 
 case. After the extraordinary rush of interest which 
 the first appearance of the Revised Version caused, 
 the public have shown themselves slow to give up 
 the version already hallowed to them by so many 
 memories. And after all, in so acting, they have only 
 repeated what has happened in the reception of most 
 previous versions, in none more noticeably than of the 
 Authorised Version itself. Meanwhile, we may be 
 thankful that we have the Revised Version in our hands 
 for comparison and guidance. It is an aid which no 
 one who desires to get at the exact meaning of original 
 Scripture can afford to do without. And the more it is 
 studied, the more will its so-called blemishes disappear, 
 and every page be found to throw new and striking light 
 on the inexhaustible depths of meaning hidden in the 
 sacred Word. 
 
 We have finished our survey of the English versions 
 of the Bible, and have seen how in the last of these we 
 are the possessors of a translation which, in point of 
 accuracy at any rate, leaves almost nothing to be desired. 
 It is a long period from the Wycliffe Bible of 1382 to 
 the Revised Version of 1885, and, as we look back upon 
 it and recall the many influences and persons who have 
 combined in giving us our English Bible, a new illustration 
 is afforded of the old saying, ' ' Others have labow'cd, and 
 ye are entered into their labour.'^'' 
 
 Nor is it only of the labour of past generations that 
 the story of our Bible reminds us, but of self-sacrifice and 
 
 ' For information regarding the marginal notes, the use of italics, 
 punctuation, etc., the reader is referred to the Revisers' Prefaces to 
 the Old and New Testaments, which should in any case be carefully- 
 studied by all who would rightly understand the nature of their 
 work. 
 
134 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 martyrdom. For it is a striking fact that of the men 
 most actively engaged in Bible translation during the 
 sixteenth century, no fewer than four perished by a 
 violent death. Tindale was martyred in 1536 ; Cromwell, 
 to whom we owe the Great Bible, was executed in 1 540 ; 
 John Rogers or Matthew was the first victim of the Marian 
 persecutions ; and Cranmer, who gave his name to later 
 editions of the Great Bible, was burnt at the stake in the 
 same reign. 
 
 It is well for us to remember these things, and the 
 toils and self-denials of other workers in the same field, 
 if only that we may understand how precious is the legacy 
 bequeathed to us, and how great our corresponding 
 responsibility. "Ye are brought," say the translators of 
 the Authorised Version, "unto fountains of living water 
 which ye digged not. . . . O receive not so great things 
 in vain : O despise not so great salvation. ... It is a fearful 
 thing to fall into the hands of the living God ; but a blessed 
 thing it is, and will bring us to everlasting blessedness in 
 the end, when God speaketh unto us, to hearken ; when 
 He setteth His word before us, to read it ; when He 
 stretcheth out His hand and calleth, to answer, Here 
 am I, here we are to do Thy will, O God." 
 
SOME BOOKS ON THE SUBJECT 
 
 I. Introductory — 
 
 Lovett (R.), The Printed E?iglish Bible, 1525-1885. 
 
 IS. 
 
 Smyth (J. Paterson), Hozv we got our Bible, is. 
 Talbot (Canon), Our Bible and how it has come to 
 us. IS. 6d. 
 
 r-j2.- Histories— 
 
 tr^ Eadie (John), The English Bible. 2 vols. ;Ci:8s. 
 
 Moulton (W. F.), The History of the English Bible. 
 
 3s. 6d. 
 Westcott (Bishop), A General View of the History 
 of the English Bible. 2nd Ed. 1872. (Out of 
 print. ) 
 
 To these may be added as good popular accounts — 
 
 Pattison (T. Harwood), The History of the English 
 
 Bible. 4s. 6d, 
 Stoughton (John), Our English Bible : its Transla- 
 tions and Translators. 6s. 
 
 While for reference the following will be found useful — 
 Dore (J. R. ), Old Bibles. 5s. 
 Edgar (Andrew), The Bibles of England. 7s. 6d. 
 Mombert (J. I.), English Versions of the Bible. 6s. 
 Scrivener (F. H. A.), The Authorized Edition of 
 the English Bible, 1611. 7s. 6d. 
 
136 THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books — Bible, 
 Part I. 4S. 
 
 Lewis's History of the English Translations of the 
 Bible (Lond. 1818), and Anderson's The 
 Annals of the English Bible (i vol. revised 
 edition, Lond. 1862), contain much useful in- 
 formation, but require to be carefully verified. 
 
 3. Reprints — 
 
 Those who wish to study the subject for themselves, and 
 have not access to the original editions in the great libraries, 
 will find the following reprints very useful : — 
 
 Job, Psalms, etc., Wycliffe, Hereford, and Purvey. 
 
 1 881. 3s. 6d. (Clarendon Press. ) 
 The New Testament, Wycliffe and Purvey. 1879. 
 6s. (Clarendon Press.) 
 
 These are reprinted from Forshall and Madden' s great 
 work on The Wycliffite Versions. The following can 
 usually be obtained at a moderate cost at the second-hand 
 bookshops : — 
 
 The New Testament, J. Wic lif {Pmvey's revision). 
 
 Edited by H. H. Baber. 18 10. 
 The First Printed English New Testament, W. 
 
 Tindale, 1525. Edited by E. Arber, 1871. 
 The New Testament, W. Tyndale, 1526 (being the 
 
 complete octavo edition). Edited by G. Oftbr. 
 
 1836. 
 The Holy Scriptures, M. Coverdale, 1535 (Bagster). 
 The English ^^jra/ /a, containing the New Testaments 
 
 of Wiclif (Purvey's revision), Tyndale (1534), 
 
 Great Bible (1539), Geneva (1557), Anglo- 
 
 Rhemish (1582), Authorised (1611) (Bagster). 
 The Oxford Reprint of the Authorized Version, 
 
 1611. 1833. 
 
BOOKS ON THE SUBJECT 137 
 
 Mombert's reprint of Tindale's Five Books of Moses, 
 and Fry's New Testament, Tyndale, 1525, and Biblio- 
 graphical Descriptions of the different Tindale Testaments, 
 and of the various editions of the Great Bible, are also 
 very important, but they are scarcer and more costly. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by v.. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinbursh. 
 
HELPS TO BIBLE STUDY. 
 
 THE AGES BEFORE MOSES. A Series of Lectures 
 on the Book of Genesis. By J. M. Gibson, D.D. 
 i2mo. Cloth. $i.oo. 
 
 ' ' These lectures are timely, noteworthy, and original. They are 
 all separately interesting, and form as a whole a very complete 
 picture of a period around which many Bible readers are apt to 
 throw a vague mistiness, which obscures the mind, even when it 
 is intent upon seeing and seeking the truth. . . . " — Southern 
 Ckjirchman. 
 
 THE MOSAIC ERA. A Series of Lectures on Exodus, 
 Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. By J, M. 
 Gibson, D.D., author of "Ages before Moses," etc. 
 i2mo. Cloth, fi.oo. 
 
 " No book that has lately appeared contains such valuable ex- 
 positions of the Mosaic record. The author is a scholar and an 
 able lecturer, and the productions of his pen are full of instructive 
 and suggestive thoughts." — Baltimoi'e Presbyterian. 
 
 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JESUS THE MESSIAH. 
 
 By A. Edersheim, M.A. Oxon., D.D., Ph.D. 2 
 vols. Royal 8vo. Cloth. $6.00 net\ by mail, 
 $6.50. Abridged edition in one volume, $1.75, 
 illustrated. Rev. Dr. HOWARD Crosby wrote to 
 the American publishers as follows : — 
 
 " Edersheim' s 'Life of Christ' is superior to all the works of 
 this class that have appeared for the English reader in the matter 
 of illustration and exj^lanation from a Rabbinical point of view. 
 His work is a storehouse of exact information, more full and more 
 clear than old Lightfoot, and is an indispensable encyclopaedia for 
 a well-equipped minister." 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 182 FIFTH AVENUE, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
^m Gaylord Bros. ^M 
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 The English Bible : a sketch of its 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00081 2869