i>0. 1 /////('* /'"/' '- s I "WOOD. UBRfiRf OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. BY TREADWELL WALDEN, RECTOR OF ST. PAUL*S CATHEDRAL, INDIANAPOLIS. PHILADELPHIA: PORTER AND COATES, 822 Chestnut Street. Entered, according to Act of Congress, In the year 1871, by PORTER & COATES, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, MEAKS * DUSESBERY, STEREOTYPER8. B. B. ASIIMEAI), PRINTER. To The Congregation of St. Paul's Cathedral, Indianapolis, This Account of the Origin and Growth of the English Bible, -already given to them in the form of Lectures IS Affectionately Dedicated. PREFACE. PEE design of this little volume is to give a descriptive narrative of the long and remarkable struggle of the Bible into English through policies of state, through dogmas of the church, through crudities of public opinion and through changes in the language .with a view : First, to suggest a greater reverence than ever for a work so wisely and heroically produced, and second, to prepare the ordinary reader to form an intelligent idea of the move- ment toward a more perfect and readable P REFA CE. Bible, which has already begun, and which is certain, if that movement retains the impetus of its history, not to stop until its end be accomplished. The full account, external and internal, of the English Bible has never yet been written, and all the numerous works which have been composed on the subject, are only contributions to it, but when exhaustively executed it will prove to be a wonderous and fascinating story, not alone to scholars and divines, but to any mind which is aware of the exquisite delicacy of language in itself as a material to be wrought up, of the growth and development of the peculiar English of the Bible, and is quick to see the changes on its surface made by the passing clouds of the century in which it rose into being. This brief narrative, drawn from many of these sources, it is hoped may give the reader a vivid general impression of the singular evo- PREFACE. vii lution of Bible out of Bible until the present noble Version was achieved. As these pages were written and delivered first in the form of parochial lectures, any redundant picturesqueness of illustration will be sufficiently accounted for by that fact, and doubtless pardoned. T. W. St. Paul's Cathedral, Indianapolis, May 1871. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. The proposed New Revision of the Bible. A movement like that in King James's time. The power and beauty of the pre- sent Version. With many the Version supersedes the Ori- ginals. Conventional and literary admiration of it. The original purpose and idea of the Version. A diversity of translations thought to be no injury to the popular faith. The best argument for its revision would be a review of its history Page 9-17 I. THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. THE BIBLE FOR THE PEOPLE. EARLY SAXON VERSIONS. THE VERSION OF JOHN WTCLIFFE. ITS REVISION BV JOHN PURVEY. Books in manuscript The Bible doubly locked up. The Greek and Latin Churches prohibiting translations. The English Bible wrought into the history of the English Refor- mation. Tendency of the English Church to encourage translations. Early Saxon and Norman Version. Only read by the educated among the people. The century before Wyc- liffe. The rise of the English tongue. Oxford and Cam- bridge Universities. Wyclifie like Luther. Modes of publi- cation in Wycliffe's day. Chaucer and Mandeville. The effect of his Version. Failure of official attempts to suppress it. Its revision by Purvey. Greek and Hebrew as yet un- x CONTENTS. known. The Version from the Latin. But the style adopted by Wycliffe since retained in every other Version. The first express endeavor to give the Scriptures to the people. The Version not a progenitor of the present one. Its glory in starting the English and Continental Reformation. The Lollards. Burning of Wycliffe's bones. John Huss and Jerome of Prague, disciples of Wycliffe. Ancient English independence of the Papal Power Page 18-45 II. THE AGE OF PRINTING. THE FIRST GREEK TESTAMENT. ERASMUS. CARDINAL XIME- NES. THE PATRIARCH-VERSION OF WILLIAM TYNDALE. The Latin Bible the first printed book. The Revival of Learn- ing. The study of Hebrew and of Greek. Erasmus. Dean Colet. Sir Thomas More. Erasmus at Cambridge. He ad- vocates the translation of the Scriptures for the people. He undertakes the publication of a Greek text of the New Testa- ment. Cardinal Ximenes engages in the same work for the whole Bible. The text of Erasmus issued with the works of St. Jerome. The text of Erasmus the first published. This text the basis of all future editions. The first English Ver- sion made from the Greek was by William Tyndale. Henry VIII. Luther's Version of the Bible. Birth and education of Tyndale. His controversies with Church dignitaries. His resolve to translate the Scriptures. The general preparation for the undertaking. He applies to the Bishop of London without success. Retires to the Continent. Issues Matthew and Mark. Forced to flee to Worms. Frightful reports of his work reach England. His stratagem for getting the Ver- sion into England. Its opposite reception by the people, and by the authorities. In order to disarm opposition he omits his "notes and comments." His repeated revisions of his Version. He undertakes a Version of the Old Testament. Issues Genesis and Deuteronomy, and finally the whole Pen- tateuch and Jonah. A great change in England Henry breaks with the Pope. Anne Boleyn's interposition. An edition preparing by the royal printer. Tyndale betrayed and imprisoned. Cranmer's attempt to issue a new Version. Crom- well's attempt. Coverdale's Version. Tyndale executed. The character of Tyndale. Excellencies and peculiarities of his Version. Its individuality and originality. Its influence on the present Version. The favorable condition of the En_ language when it was executed. A Version should be a version. 14 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. gious importance, can properly have serious consideration ; for whatever the Bible may have incidentally become to English literature, this was not its essential purpose. It was trans- lated into the English tongue so that the common people might be able to read it for themselves, and it was, besides, as carefully rendered as the mind and scholarship of the age would allow, in order that it might be cited as a generally accurate and standard authority. But no such pretension ever crowned the faith- ful work, as that this was the end, beyond which there was no possibility of improvement, an ultima thule in the vernacular ; and no such idea was given to the people as that they beheld the brightness of the Divine face without any interposing veil. The language of the " Trans- lators' Preface," exhibits but one anxious en- deavor, to present, if possible, an improvement on what had gone before. "Truly," it^avs, "we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, but to make INTRODUCTION. 15 a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one, not justly to be ex- cepted against : that hath been our endeavor, that our mark." While the importance of having A diversity of translations one standard which should be uni- thought to be no injury to the pop- versally accepted, was the wise oc- uiarfuitu. ca-sion of the great undertaking, yet a diversity of translations was not looked upon with that jealousy or misgiving which prevails in some quarters now. It did no harm to the people, and to the popular faith, at that time, to see the English Bible in the act of struggling out of the originals, or to feel that the scholarship of the age had, after all, only done its best to extract the whole that lay in those mysterious sources. Certainly, then, the most reason- The best argn- . meut for its re- able way ot breaking an almost idol- Tiskmwouidbea , , p , review of its his- atrous delusion now, and ot bringing tory. the subject clearly to " a wise and under- standing people," would be to withdraw from the misleading sentimentalism of the present 16 OL'R ENGLISH BTBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. day (which is always prone to give to that which is old and venerable a factitious value, seldom discriminating between things which, like wine, time improves, and those which, like a vesture, time deteriorates), and retire into the honest daylight of the age in which this great work was begun, continued, and con- summated. There is one unnoticed and unpondered sen- tence on the title-page of our Bible, which, like a door, opens directly back into the con- sciousness of the closing years of that long period : " Translated out of the original Tongues, and icith the former translations diligently compared and revised" If the modern printers had not left out the word " newly' before " translated," which appears in the early copies, we should have had an additional suggestion of recency to carry our minds back into that time. But when we get there, even so far as the days of King James, we must needs travel still further back, with the ancient fathers of INTRODUCTION. 17 the Authorized Version, into what was a long- past age to them, as difficult for them to realize and restore, as theirs is to us, but in which are to be found the fountains of the great movement of the Bible into English, which in their day had grown into such a mighty stream. I. THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. THE BIBLE FOR THE PEOPLE. EARLY SAXON VERSIONS. THE VERSION OF JOHN WYCLIFFE. ITS REVISION BY JOHN PURVEY. IT is hard for us, in this day, Books in * n - J ' uscript. sitting amid myriads of books, to go behind the Printing Press and to realize the long series of ages when a Book was a rare and curious wonder, and when the ability to read was an accomplishment equally rare and mar- vellous. And yet it was under just such con- ditions that the Scriptures were first written, and under the same they remained in every country where they were taken, and in every language into which they were translated, until only four hundred and thirty years ago. One man had to read for a thousand often for ten (19) 20 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. thousand, and much that was written had to go forth on the surface of the people in the transmuted form of oral explanation. The pulpits stood up in an ocean of popular igno- rance, dim light-houses of instruction, as well as of guidance, to un reading millions. The Bibie doub- But, on the other hand, the very ly locked up. mystery which enveloped the Scrip- tures scriptures, then, in the most literal sense as sources of Divine knowledge, in which lay the precious story of the Life of Christ, the history of the Chosen People, and the total Revelation of heavenly truth to man, could not but stimulate the curiosity of the people to be more fully informed about them. And when, in addition to this, they were known to be doubly locked up, first in the ancient, and what had become the ecclesiastical Latin tongue, and next, even as such, jealously kept within the cloisters of the church, the popular eager- ness to become acquainted with their contents could hardly have had a greater incitement. We ourselves cannot realize the power of this THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 21 threefold incentive to curiosity except by put- ting ourselves*into this long-past situation, and imagining our minds in such a darkness as would blot out our present enlightened con- sciousness of Christianity and our ability to read the Bible in our native tongue, and then, in all that strange obliviousness, to fancy our- selves hearing vaguely of the inspired authori- ties of our religion as sealed up in another, and not the original, language, and getting all our knowledge of it through the muffled dogmas of a church and the muzzled mouths of its priests ! It is all a matter of imagination now, but it was a hungry, anxious reality then; and such is the condition of things amid which this history opens. So, it will be noticed, in going back T The0r * and Latin Churches into these a^es, we come upon a P rohihitin g *. translations. greater obstacle to the diffusion of the Bible than even a general ignorance of letters. We come upon this traditional policy of the Church, which in both its branches, the Greek and the Latin, had from the earliest times " interdicted 22 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. the translation of the Scriptures into any ver- nacular tongue." And this policy became only the more intensified and deeply rooted as time went on and education began to spread among the laity, and the symptoms of a disposition to read and think for themselves, grew more strongly manifest. The English The experience of the Bible in Bible wrought m into the history its endeavors to reach the people of the English ... , . Reformation. has its best and most heroic history in the case of the Anglo-Saxon mind and of the English tongue. The spirit of Anglican independence of the Roman rule has in this its most striking illustration, and the annals of the Reformation in England are bound up and identical with the annals of the English Bible. EngHsh^church There would seem to have been a transition remarkable tendency in the early English Church, before Roman interference set in so strongly, to bring the Scriptures to the common people. In the great British collec- tions, the libraries of Oxford, of Cambridge, and of the British Museum, many vestiges of THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 23 this tendency may be found in Early Saxon and curious fragments of Anglo-Saxon Nommnversions. and Anglo-Norman versions : rude and imper- fect attempts to get portions of the Bible into the vernacular. The oldest of these, attri- buted to Csedmon, a monk, is the Bible history paraphrased in the alliterative verse of Anglo- Saxon poetry. The venerable Bede, who always wrote in Latin, is yet associated with a version of St. John's Gospel in his native tongue. A Psalter is extant, said to be by a Saxon Bishop of the seventh century. A few chapters of Exodus and the Psalms were trans- lated by King Alfred, who is recorded to have said that he desired " all the free-born youth of his kingdom should be able to read the English Scriptures."* There are three ver- sions of the Gospels and some fragments of the Old Testament referred to the ninth and tenth centuries. Three or four more of the Gospels are assigned to the eleventh and twelfth cen- * Plumptre Smith's Bible Diet. iii. 1665. 24 Oi'R ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. turies. Then, in the thirteenth century, a translation into Norman French of the whole Bible by an unknown hand, and various frag- mentary versions of the Psalms, and other portions of the Bible, seem to have appeared here and there ; all in uncouth, grotesque, and unintelligible lettering to the modern eye but hungrily read by the educated among the people of those passing centuries. nl ? rea !L by It is doubtful how far these were the educated among the intended for the masses, as the people. knowledge of letters had not yet gone down among the lower orders ; but it is evident that some of the higher and wealthier classes were familiar with the Scriptures in their native tongue. And so, it would appear, after all, that these Versions must have been shut up in the cloister, the cell, the circles of the court, and the houses of the opulent, mere rush-lights in a densely dark age ; and all of them would eeem to have burned so far apart, or in such seclusion, not to say oblivion, that when Wyc- liffe turned to his task of translating the Bible, THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 25 he is found complaining that there was nothing extant to help him.* Though still the age of manu- The century script, the century before Wycliffe before w y cliffe - had witnessed a gradual emergence from the gross darkness of these earlier times. It was comparatively an age of thought and of reading among the laity; quite enough to create an immense appreciation of his labors on the part of the people. The mind of all these later cen- The rise of the turies had been active enough, and Engllsh tongue - learning had been cultivated to a very great extent, but the thinkers and scholars were mostly to be found in the ranks of the clergy. The learned always wrote in Latin. The nobles spoke in Norman-French. But the people still clung to the Anglo-Saxon of their ancestors, and this was destined to become the noble and enduring basis of that future English tongue which all alike were * Plumptre Smith's Bible Diet. iii. 1665. 26 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. in time to employ both in speech and litera- ture. To indicate its long submergence under these other and more customary modes of speech and writing, and its slow ascension into use and power, the fact may be mentioned that not till the middle of the fourteenth century was a legal instrument put into English, and the close of that century drew near before it was recognised and spoken in Parliament, oxford and The thirteenth and fourteenth Cambridge Uni- . centuries witnessed also another advance. Those great seats of learning, Oxford and Cambridge, which had hereto- fore been only single and concentrated schools, now became each that collection of colleges which distinguishes them to-day. It was then that those separate institutions were founded, and those venerable structures reared, which now are so antiquated and picturesque, and which, with their scholastic traditions, have comedown to us laden with the romantic associations of a forming thought and literature, just as the old castles of Eng- THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 27 land linger in the present to be the ancient sanctuaries of its history, and the cathedrals are cherished as the ancient fortresses of its religion. There are said to have been thirty thousand students in the University of Oxford in the beginning of the fourteenth century : * and this was the century in which John Wycliffe was born, and grew into pre-eminent distinction as a scholar, a theologian, a philosopher, a writer of many controversial tracts, an inde- pendent student of the Scriptures, and finally, (with the aid of his friend Nicolas of Hereford in part of the Old Testament), the translator of the whole Bible from the Latin quoted by the schoolmen into the English spoken by the people. Wycliffe was, in his day and * * Wycliffe like generation, an anticipation of Lu!her - Luther, and almost the same circumstances seemed to have produced him as those which * Illus. Hist. Eng. i. 813, 28 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. afterwards produced the great German Re- former. He was a man who had drank deep of the Scriptures, and to whom they had become the only rule of faith and doctrine in opposition to a church which had found it convenient to forget and to conceal those earliest wells of its inspiration and guidance. He stood out against the four powerful reli- gious orders of his time as corrupt and noxious societies. He braved their rage and curses when the preponderating influence of the Church was at their back, and succeeded in lowering somewhat their public repute. He met the Bishops in controversy, and had to endure frequent episcopal persecution. He withstood even the Pope again and again, and was made the object of many Papal bulls. Luther, himself, was not so distinguished in the outset of his career, nor so personally formidable as a scholar and theologian, "the first casuist in the Empire,"* and the holder of high preferments in the gift of the Church, * English Hexapla 7. THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 29 nor was he any more alert and bold, in the proportion of his opportunity, in challenging the avalanche of Papal wrath to fall. And, as it afterward turned out in the mind of Luther, so it now turned out in the mind of Wycliffe : an almost immediate determination to assume the extraordinary task of translating the entire Bible into the language of the com- mon people, as the first and best means of acquainting them with the truth, and bringing, all the strength of their uprising against the corruptions of the Church. The merit of undertaking the self-same gigantic labor was all the greater that he had no such means or encouragement as the Print- ing Press at hand to spread his work by thousands, but was shut up to the simple and sluggish vehicles of publication known to his time. When any one would publish, in Modes- of P ni>- lication in \fyo those days, instead of committing uffe-sday. his book, as now, to the quickly multiplying types, he gave it to professional copyists, or he 30 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. himself pronounced it slowly from a pulpit erected in some public place, and there it was taken down by all who desired to possess a transcript. This was the halting way in which it became distributed among the people.* In like manner, doubtless, were the English Scriptures laboriously copied from Wycliffe's own manuscript, and borne into the secret re- cesses of English homes to be read, or heard read, in gratitude and wonder by the people as their own first fresh communion with the veritable oracles of God. Chaucer and Chaucer and Mandeville, whose works now mark the dawn of the present English tongue, were contemporaries of WycliiFe, and, as the former has been called the father of English poetry, so Wycliffe now earned a greater right than the latter to be called the father of English prose. The effect of The work of translation occupied his Version. i j , , him many years, and it was the frequent theme of his tracts long before it was * English Hexapla 8. THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 31 finished. The version appeared about 1380, and was of course copied eagerly and read everywhere. It was wildly protested against by his opponents, for, like the opening of win- dows in a long-closed building given up to the owls and the bats, this was opening the win- dows of a corrupt church which had shut itself up in darkness, " because its deeds were evil," and the pouring in of the whole blaze of God's sunlight to its insupportable disturbance. The swarming friars of the mendicant orders, who were battening on the ignorance and cre- dulity of the people, were stirred from their places by the exposure. The unclean lives of the clergy could not endure the revelation of the pure and spotless life of Christ.* The complaint of Knighton, a church dignitary of the time, gives us an inside view of the priestly discomfiture. " The gospel" (writes he) " which Christ committed to the clergy and doctors of the church, that they might sweetly dispense it to the laity and weaker persons, according *Westcott. History of the English Bible 19. 32 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. to the exigency of the times, and the wants of the people, hungering after it in their mind, this John Wycliffe has translated into the Anglican t not angelic, language; whence, through him, it has been published and disclosed more openly to laymen and women able to read, than it used to be to the most learned and intelligent of the clergy and so the gospel pearl is cast abroad, and trodden under foot of swine ; and what was dear to clergy and laity is now ren- dered, as it were, the common jest of both; so that the gem of the church becomes the derision of laymen, and that is now theirs lor ever, which before was the special property of the clergy and doctors.* Yes, it was " now theirs for ever." The great, brave, dangerous, but all necessary movement people-ward had begun, and the response of the people was never afterwards wanting. Wycliffe did not live to see it, but the released glad tidings went everywhere' among them, and the new faith flew from mouth * English Hexapla 7. THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT, 33 to mouth and heart to heart. It is the record of an enemy to the movement that the country was so full of converts that " a man could not meet two people on the road, but one of them was a disciple of Wyclifle." The Londoners were declared to be "nearly all Lollards,"* the name of reproach by which his followers were known. Among the foremost who were Failure of om- . cial attempts to alarmed by the growing reformation suppress it. wu.s Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, who set himself to extinguish its occasion, and pro- cured a decree of Convocation threatening the w " greater excommunication" upon any one who should read Wycliffe's version, or any other, in whole or in part, publicly or privately. It is a remarkable indication of how widelv, / ' nevertheless, the Bible continued to be copied and secretly read by both rich and poor, that about one hundred and fifty copies of it, and of the revised edition of it by John Purvey, some of them sumptuously illuminated and * Blunt's Dictionary of Theology 429. 34 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. bound, are now in existence, which had eluded Arundel's vigilant and destroying search. it* region by Without a notice of this subse- quent revision the account of Wyc- liffe's work would not be complete. John Purvey, " who boarded with Wycliffe, partook largely of his instructions, and completely imbibed his opinions, continuing his companion to his dying day," about four years after his death undertook the re-issue of his version on a scale of most elaborate and painstaking im- provement. Purvey seems to have stood in very much the same relation to Wycliffe, that John Rogers afterwards did to Tyndale, revis- ing the version of Wycliffe in the New Testa- ment, and the version of Nicolas of Hereford in the Old, as Rogers revised Tyndale in the New and Coverdale in the Old. Greek and He- But the material with which both brew as vet un- known. The ver- the translator and his reviser had sion from the Latia. to work was very different from that which was at hand a century and a half later. The Greek and Hebrew originals were THE AGE OF MAXUSCRIPT. 35 not known, and the study of these languages, except in very rare instances, had ceased in Western Europe. Wycliffe, distinguished scholar as he was, remained almost totally ignorant of both. The only form in which the Bible was accessible was in the Latin translation of St. Jerome, made in the fourth century, called the Yulgate. This was all that the Roman Church would recognise, and even this, as we have seen, it interdicted the laity from using. The copies of this Latin version, then in existence, were none of them clear of gross errors in the text. The version of Wycliffe was of course infected with these corruptions, and as soon as it got into wide circulation the necessity of a revision on the basis of a purer text became manifest. The revision was carefully and conscientiously done by Purvey, who also retouched the version throughout, and it is this form of WyclinVs Bible which finally took hold of the age and which has come down to the present time. But Purvey did not change the diction which 36 or It EXGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. But the style Wycliffe had adopted, and which adopted by \V>,- . litre since retain- was purposely neither scholarly nor od in every other version. courtly, but the simple, liomely Saxon speech of the people ; the style of the Bible in every one of the seven subsequent versions, including that which we accept to- day. In his ideas also of what constituted both spiritually and philologically an especial fitness for the work we doubtless see the spirit and power of his great predecessor, and there- fore the more eminent name still justly absorbs the authorship and renown of the wonderful achievement. The firet ex- Few are prepared to realize the press endeavor to give the scrip- extraordinary character of this tares to the peo- pie. pioneer attitude of Wycliffe, and especially the greatness of his undertaking not only to translate, for this had been done before, but to put the Scriptures into circulation among the people. The boldness of the act, its wisdom and far-sightedness, and the personal willingness in one of his eminence and dis- tinction to stand almost alone in defence of THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 37 and responsibility for convictions that were then novel and remarkable, cannot be over- estimated, especially when we see the great historic result which afterward justified and glorified him. But, although in the group of The version not a progenitor of English-Bible heroes we count him the present one. the foremost, yet in the golden chain of the translations his version cannot be included. It was only a translation of a translation. The time was yet to come when men should render direct from the inspired originals ; but, though by this vital distinction detached, and standing alone, without descent, as it was without ancestry, and as " born out of due time," still the immense interest will always invest it of being, after a spiritual and Provi- dential order, in the line of the ancestry of our English scriptures, the first to meet the hunger of the people, the first to kindle the fires of the Reformation, and destined to stand for ever as the earliest beacon light of that appeal to the people, and of that faith in the 38 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. wisdom of the popular judgment and will which has ^ince moved over both church and state, and which will finally illumine and regenerate the world. its giory m The New Testament of Wycliffe, starting the Eng- lish and conti- even now as a printed book, is far nental Reforma- tion, withdrawn from the English appre- hension by its antique Saxonisms of style and spelling, and was almost as unreadable to the next generation of reformers as to ourselves; but this is its everlasting glory, the glory of an extinct luminary it made itself an epoch, and it gathered around it the first organized and formidable resistance which ever occurred, to Romish corruption both in doctrine and life. The antiquated version will always have this magnificent association. Wycliffe gave it to his followers, and as the Roman Catholic his- torian, Dr. Lingard, justly says: "In their hands it became an engine of wonderful power. Men were flattered with the appeal to their private judgment; the new doctrines insen- sibly acquired partisans and protectors in the THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 39 higher classes, who alone were acquainted with the use of letters; a spirit of inquiry was generated ; and the seeds were sown of that religious revolution, which, in a little more than a century, astonished and convulsed the nations of Europe." The history of that century when TheLoiiards. these " seeds" were working in English soil, is a history which belongs to the State as well as to the Church of England. The emancipa- tion of the people took a political as well as a theological direction. The Lollards became a dreaded power ; high dignitaries and distin- guished names appeared among them. They represented an uncomfortable amount of the intelligence and thought of the people, and sometimes so turbulently that both the Church and the State agreed to imprison, to hang, and to burn. The " Lollards' Tower," often in this day a conspicuous part of the episcopal palaces of England, is a vestige of that early spiritual and political rebellion ; now the monument of 40 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. its history and sufferings, as it was then the prison of its temporary repression. Burning of In the midst of it all Wycliffe Wycliffe's bones, i i / i i himself experienced a most singular and typical resurrection. An order came from Pope Martin the Fifth, nearly a half-century after he had fallen dead at the foot of the altar of his parish church at Lutter worth, commanding his bones to be dug up and burned ; and the now quick and fiery ashes of those aged bones, already crumbling fast enough by nature into their original dust, were scattered on the Swift, a little streamlet which ran by the churchyard where he lay. "Thus," says old Fuller, ready both as a poet and a prophet to catch the augury, " 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 Wycliffe are the emblem of his doc- trine which is now dispersed all the world over." Or, as a more sprightly pen of the same day put it : THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 41 " The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the Sea, And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad, Wide as the waters be." Even so his followers survived every persecu- tion, and when, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, the power of Rome in England was broken and expelled, they were the first to join and swell the tide of that renewed move- ment toward Reformation which resulted in the complete independence of the English Church, and finally of Protestants of every name who spoke the English tongue. Wycliffe while he died a natural death, and only by an accident escaped martyrdom at the stake that accident being the onset against each other of two rival Popes was himself the spiritual father of two famous martyrs on the other side of the English Channel. It was owing to him that both John Huss JohnIIU88and Jerome of Prague, and Jerome of Prague, men of ^ iples of Wyc " scholarship, eloquence, courage, and an influ- ence which terrified the ecclesiastics of their 42 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. day, rose up in their place in Bohemia and agitated for the reformation of a corrupt church, nearly a century before Luther was born, and did for the coming religious revolu- tion on the continent what Wycliffe had done for it in England. " Wycliffe" was their watchword. They publicly proclaimed his writings and their adoption of his doctrines. They made his name ring far and wide through Europe. The church authorities caught up and burned his " pernicious" books and at last both John Huss and Jerome were also caught up, hurried to the stake and burned : their ashes, thrown upon the swift waters of the Rhine, to go, like Wycliffe 's, over the broad sea, as their spirit and power had already gone every- where over the ocean of the people to make the Reformation under Luther only the grand outburst of a long-brewing storm which should cause that ocean to rage and swell. But this historic reminiscence of Wycliffe and his work awakens still another association nearer to ourselves. THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 43 His Bible is a memorial stone of ,. * nc ;, ent E H ng ' hah independence English independence in sentiment p f ^ h e e r Papal and feeling, of Rome and the Papal Power, one hundred and fifty years and more before Henry the Eighth found it personally and dynastically convenient to drive out that intruding authority, and to be constituted himself the "Head of the Church." The ability of Henry to do this lay not in himself, but in the latent, long-growing and radical alienation of the English people from the Pope. As in primitive Saxon, or rather British times, the days of Gregory and his far-famed mis- sionary to Britain, St. Augustine, an inde- pendent church already existed there with its bishops and complete Episcopal organization, so it had continued, in every after-century since, notwithstanding the growth of Roman influence, to exhibit a reserve, manifested in some outbreak, royal or otherwise, until in the person of Wycliffe and his followers it struggled apart in a way that history has been especially called to record. And thus we find in the 44 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. epoch of Wycliffe, not of Luther, on English soil, not German, in the English Church, not the Roman, in the fourteenth century, not the sixteenth, the power and the feeling down among the people which made Henry the Eighth afterward possible as the leader of the English Reformation, and that development possible of organized independence, by which the church resumed her primitive character, and in which she has since proceeded alone. Just as primitive Christianity, struggling for existence, reached at last in the Emperor Con- stantine the political and the state opportunity to rise into power and grandeur, so did the primitive English Church, after suffering from this alien intrusion nearly a thousand years. reach in its bold bad monarch a political and a state occasion when it became a separate establishment in its own insular realms. Thus the sheaf of wheat, which had this rich outburst of golden grain in the time of Henry the Eighth, and which had been cut from the British soil in those early Saxon cen- THE AGE OF MANUSCRIPT. 45 turies, found its binding circlet midway, during the reign of Edward the Third, in the ripe movement of Wycliffe, the English Reformer ; and so does that great Church still s'and up, across the sea, a bound historic sheaf, after a long growth and precarious fruitage now safely harvested, old in herself, but young in her grain-seeds ; the power which has spread, and is still destined to spread everywhere, the glad tidings of Jesus Christ wherever the English language is spoken and the English Bible read. II. THE AGE OF PRINTING. THE FIRST GREEK TESTAMENT. ERASMUS. CARDINAL XIMENES. THE PATRIARCH VERSION OF WILLIAM TYNDALE. T>ET WEEN sixty and seventy years after the * death of Wycliffe, in the middle of the fif- teenth century, the night of the Dark Ages passed away, and the sun of the new civilization rose in its strength ; and, like the natural sun, it found the world prepared for its rising. There was every instinct alive and abroad to greet, and to grow under, the great and sudden illu- mination. This sun was the Printing Press. (46) THE AGE OF PRINTING. 47 Between the years 1450-55 John The Latin BI- bio the first Gutenberg, even while he held the printed book. precious product of his genius trembling in his hands, fearful of some one discovering and stealing his treasure, printed as his first publi- cation the Latin Bible.* The Bible, then, was the first book from the Press ! The dawn of the new Day was even so correspondent to the opening mind of the departing Night. Strange giving again to the people ! Inevitable move- ment of Providence ! When the sun rises, it first spreads abroad the diffused glory of the dawn, but when it reaches the horizon line it appears to rush up and reveals almost all its disk at once. Noth- ing can exhibit the instantaneous leap of this new sun, and the sudden outflood of its efful- gence upon mankind, more vividly than the simple statistics of that amazing era as it opened. Before the close of the ever memora- * Published in 1452, a splendid and beautiful volume. Scrivener. "Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament," 262. 48 OUR EXGLISH BIBLE AXD ITS ANCESTORS. ble fifteenth century, above one thousand printing presses were going in two hundred and twenty places in Europe. One hundred different editions of the Latin Bible had been issued,* and Bibles had been printed in Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch, German, and Bohemian versions.^ The English Bible was not yet forthcoming. It still remained in the manuscripts of the Wycliffites. But, for that matter, all of these Continental translations, like that of Wycliffe, were only secondary translations versions of the Vulgate. The Revival or Meantime, through all this half- century, the press was teeming with many other works, chiefly the Latin and Greek classics, and literature, in all the branches then known, entered upon its new and greater life. The eager study of the Greek and Hebrew languages was the first outburst of this " Revival of Learning." * Anderson. Annals of English Bible Ixiii. Introd. f Westcott. Hist. Kiig. Bib. 30. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 49 The Latin version of the Bible could no longer satisfy the new mind which had come into being. The theological thirst for truth and the religious excitement of the day sent every active intellect far back of this ecclesiastical cistern to the original but long-forgotten wells of the " living" water. It was religious inquiry which led the way to the study and resuscita- tion of these dead literatures, and when they revived, it was first in the form of the printed Old and New Testaments. The striking dec- laration of an eminent authority, quoted by Mr. TTestcott, is therefore as true as it is pic- turesque, that "Greece had risen from the grave with the New Testament in her hand."* risen first in the publication of a Greek - text of the Old Testament in 1488, when as yet only a few, except Jews, could read it. The Greek text of the New Testament did not appear for more than a quarter of a cen- tury afterwards. It had to wait until the * Westcott. Hist. Eng. Bib. 30. 50 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE ASD ITS ANCESTORS. knowledge of that language had been suffi- ciently acquired by the scholars of the day. But when it came, it came by way of Eng- land. The springs which fed that fountain of scholarship were found in Oxford. The history of this reads almost like a ro- mance, and it keeps the English Church con- spicuously in the line of the splendid succession. About nine years after the He- Erasmna. brew text had been published, and while the study of Greek was gathering at the great university centres, the illustrious Erasmus, then in his youth, and already famous as a scholar, but prematurely wasted in form and feature with poverty and study, came over from Holland to England in order to perfect his knowledge of the Greek in the University of Oxford. It was there that a remarkable and lovely triple friendship formed between himself, John Colet, afterward the celebrated Dean of St. Paul's, and Thomas More, after- ward the equally celebrated Lord Chancellor of the kingdom. The three have since been THE AGE OF PRINTING. 51 called the "Oxford Reformers of 1498." In the advanced and bold intelligence of these young and gifted men, and in their frank dis- cussion with each other of the theological questions which were agitating the period, lay the beginning of a subsequent opposition to the dogmatic subtleties and speculations of the " Schoolmen," who were the surviving Pharisees of the Dark Ages just left behind, and who were arrayed in stout phalanx for many years in defence of the church as it was. This became the great controversy of the time. A powerful party in the Roman Church resisted the " New Learning," as the study of Hebrew and Greek was called, and every one who had in him an advanced idea therein was accused of resisting the church. In the heat of the conflict it was declared that the study of Greek would make men Pagans, and that the study of Hebrew would make them Jews ! The dear old Latin version was pathetically declared to be crucified between two thieves, and the Greek was the one thief, the Hebrew the other ! 52 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. In such idolatry as this was held the Latin translation, and in such a strength of prejudice and prepossession stood the mass of empty scholastic speculation and theological dogmatism which had obtained until that time. Doancoiet. Meantime Erasmus rapidly in- Sir Thomas More. creased in reputation as the first scholar and philologist in Europe. The old college friendship remained in full force, and the old congeniality of views continued and intensified. Dean Colet, preaching in St. Paul's, grew clearer and stronger in declaring that the study of the Life of Christ and of the Epistles of St. Paul were nearer the heart of Christianity, and more influential in the Christian life, than all the cold and empty dogmas of the schools. But Sir Thomas More, while in continued sympathy with the war upon the schoolmen for the right to the " New Learning," was less pronounced in his opposition to the Church as it was. Erasmus at In 1509, Erasmus, ripe in Greek and every other knowledge of his THE AGE OF PRINTING. 53 day, now a great reputation everywhere returned to England from a sojourn on the continent, and took up his abode, not in Ox- ford, but in the University of Cambridge, as the Professor of Theology and Greek. His fame as the champion of an emancipated scholarship drew around him many whom the position of the Church on this subject had alienated. He remained there nearly five years, and, during that time, his influence in " awakening the English mind was greater than that of Luther and Zuinglius." So did he repay to England, by the liberality of his genius, the debt he owed to the generosity of her scholarship. " The credit," says Ander- son,* "of being one of the first learned men in Europe, who argued strongly for learning being cultivated, with a view 7 to the benefit and in- struction of the common people, can never be taken from Erasmus." What he had de- manded for himself, he demanded for every- one, and the inevitable conclusion of such a * Annals of the Ens. Bib. i. 24. 54 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. mind as bis was tbe rigbt of every one to read the Scriptures; not only the right of tbe learned to read them in the originals, but tbe right of those who were not learned to read them in their native tongue. Hear him. in his famous essay, called the " Paraclesis :" * "I utterly dissent from those who are unwilling He advocates ^j. foe g acre( J the translation of ti,, s, -nptures be rea( j ^ 7 fo e unlearned, translated fur the people. ' into their vulgar tongue, as though Christ had taught such subtleties that they can scarcely be understood even by a few theologians, or as though the strength of tbe Christian religion consisted in man's ignorance of it. The mys- teries of kings it may be safer to conceal, but Christ wished His mysteries to be published as openly as possible. I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospels should read the Epistles of St. Paul. And I wish they were translated into all languages. * * * To make them understood is surely the first step. * * I long that the husbnnd- * " Oxford Reformers," 256. THE AGE OF PRIXTIXG. 55 man sing portions of them to himself as ho follows the plough, that the weaver should hum them to the time of his shuttle, that the traveller should beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey." Erasmus, so wise as never to take e undertakes the publication an extreme position in his life, so of a Gr * text of the New Tes. evenly balanced as always to resist *n>ent. Romish bigotry on one side, and Protestant radicalism on the other, declared again and again this remarkable and revolutionary conviction, which, while it would seem to question the authority of the former and encourage the tendency of the latter, really- made him in his own person the earliest layer of that essential foundation, deeper than which no speculation or controversy could go. It icas Era* ma* icho became the founder of the New Testament in printed Greek. It was he who laid the original masonry on which the structure of the next English version was to rise. At the solicitation of Froben, a cele- brated printer of Basle, he undertook the 56 OUR ENGLISH nilil.E AND ITS ANCESTORS. great work of forming a text out of the few and scanty Greek manuscripts of the New Testament Scriptures, which were then known and accessible, and of publishing it to the world. The wide-spread interest in the enter- prise, started under such eminent auspices, may be imagined. cardinal xi- Before it had been begun rumors menes engages in the same work had come of a similar undertaking for the whole Bi- ble, contemplated and commenced by the celebrated Cardinal Ximenes, in the Uni- versity of Alcala, in Spain, to be performed on a splendid scale, with every facility in the employment of many learned men. access to the best manuscripts, and the use of the finest presses. But the poor and single-handed scholar, urged by his printer, worked the more earnestly to anticipate the issue of his formi- dable competitor. No manuscript earlier than the tenth century was known to him, and, of all he collated, none were perfect enough to furnish him with a complete text. In a few instances he was obliged to supply a chasm in THE AGE OF PR1STISG. 57 the Greek by rendering back the Latin Vul- gate into Greek. A thing, by the way, which Ximenes himself was also obliged to do.* The venerable Froben gave himself to the work with self-forgetful devotion : like his co- laborer, thoughtful not of pecuniary profit, but of developing an undertaking which was of such importance to the age and to be so fruitful for human good. But Erasmus had projected the The text of . . . i i Erasmus issued w r ork in a combination which gave with the works . of St. Jerome. both himselt and his printer a task of immense magnitude. He had resolved to bring out simultaneously with the Greek of the New Testament, the works of the great father, Jerome, who himself had, eleven hundred years before, taken a stand in some respects similar to that of the present reformers, and had advocated, amid much opposition, a version of the Greek Scriptures in the Latin vernacular, on the basis of an old Latin version * See Tregelles. " Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament," 21. 53 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. already in existence but very corrupt, and who finally had produced this self-same Vul- gate, now so universally received as the stand- ard and ultimate authority ! * There was a poetic symmetry, therefore, and something more, in the resolve to print the works of the great author of this early version, with the long-neglected and now disparaged original. The t.-xt of In the race with the Cardinal Erasmus the first published. an d hi s co-laborers, the lone scholar came out first. In fact the Cardinal did not race at all, but kept back his work till he had the whole Bible in print. The year 1516 is memorable for the appearance of the New Tes- tament, for the first time, in print.f It came out in the heavy, lumbering volumes of the primitive press, and from that moment * ' St. Jerome was the father who in his day strove to give to the people the Bible in their vulgar tongue." Oxford Reformers 265. f Strictly speaking, part of the Cardinal's N. T. was in print before Erasmus's text went to press. But Erasmus's text was the first published. THE AGE OF PRINTtSG. 59 the yellow and aged transcripts on parchment and paper, the heritage and work of monastic copyists for a thousand years or more, entered the era of endless youth, freshness, and stand- ard accuracy. Accompanying this (in subsequent revisions; was even another evidence of labor and devo- tion : a new version in Latin by Erasmus and theological notes. The work, so complete in idea if This text the basis of all fu- not in execution, raised, as might ture editions, have been expected, a storm of opposition and a host of enemies. Six years afterward the splendid volumes of Cardinal Ximenes ap- peared. But, by this time, Erasmus had made and published three revisions of his own work. Only six hundred copies, in all, were issued of the Complutensian Polyglot, as Ximenes' work was called. It was therefore very scarce and little used.* In his next revision and edition, the fourth, Erasmus made it contribute to the * Tregelles. " Historical Account of the Printed Greek Text of the New Testament," 27. 60 OCR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. perfection of his own text, and so it came to pass that the Greek text of Erasmus, the one first issued and the one most widely circulated, maintained its place as a foundation, which others might improve but not supersede. In the progress of early textual criticism, after this, the work of Ximenes continued to be used by others also, but only as a side contribution to the greater purity of the text, which was still anxiously sought. The first En g - "VVe now take a step further in lish Version made from the O ur history, and come to another Greek was by wm. Tyndaie. epochal man the pioneer of the next endeavor one also created by the emergency, and who feared not to meet its issues : to take Wycliffe's place almost in per- fect reproduction; but whose work, while it was to bring suffering upon himself to an extent that Wycliffe never knew even unto exile and martyrdom was nevertheless destined to THE AGE OF PRINTING. 61 remain so vitally wrought into the type and texture and substance of our English Bible as never to pass away in any future revision with- out an absolute change in the style and char- acter of that Household Word. This man of the new era was the brave, the rugged, the devoted, the invincible WILLIAM TYNDALE: "the patriarch," says Plumptre, " in no remote ancestry, of the Authorized Version :" " more than Cranmer and Ridley the hero of the English Reformation." For himself he appeared as a reformer a few years too soon, but for his work, just in time. It was in the beginning of Henry vm. the reign of Henry the Eighth that he be- came known, and before there was the least tendency on the part of that monarch to break with the Papal power. The king, who was a second son, and had been educated by his father in theology, that he might become Arch- bishop of Canterbury, prided himself upon his knowledge of divinity. He had even written a book in defence of the Papal authority, for 62 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. which the Pope had given him the title of " Defender of the Faith." But on the other hand he looked kindly on the " New Learning," and did not share the prejudice of the school- men against it. Cardinal Wolsey, also, was a munificent patron of letters, and Tunstal, Bishop of London, was a fine scholar in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Still there was no sign of the Reformation movement in this quarter. The kingdom was pledged to Rome. Even Sir Thomas More remained a rigid and prejudiced Romanist, although in sympathy with the "New Learning." Luther's version O n the continent the situation was widely different. The Re- formation had begun, and had grown into stupendous proportions. Numerous students in Germany had already translated separate books of the Bible, when Luther, single- handed, undertook and accomplished that great Version of the whole Bible which did the same service for his native tongue in fixing its idiom and character, that our version after- THE AGE OF PRINTING. 63 wards did for ours. His New Testament ap- peared in 1522. The whole Bible in 1534, and a revised edition in 1541. To find Tyndale we must go Birth and edu- _ . . -, t f,f- * i cation of Tyndale. back to the year 14/7, when he was born, in an obscure village of Gloucester- shire. He was brought up from a child at Oxford, and became a priest and a Franciscan friar. In his earliest manhood he was " sin- gularly addicted to the study of the Scrip- tures," and at the age of twenty-five he had translated portions of the New Testament.* While Erasmus resided in Cambridge, 1509- 1514, as Professor of Greek, he went himself thither, doubtless drawn by the fame of the great continental scholar. A few years after he returned to Gloucestershire, and became a tutor in the family of a Sir John "Welch, at Little Soderby, not far from Bristol. No other spot in England was a greater hot-bed of the Church in its most pretentious and most bigoted form than Gloucestershire at that c Plurnptre. Smith's Bib. Diet. iii. 1668. 64 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. time. It was " full of abbots, deans, archdea- cons, and divers other doctors and great bene- ficed men."* Thus was Tyndale surrounded by the Church in its most sumptuous exhibi- tions of lordly pride. But, like Wycliffe nearly a century and a half before, his familiarity with the Scriptures had so enlarged his views of Divine truth that he was brought into the fiercest antagonism with these arrogant repre- His ccntrover- sentatives of a corrupt church. His eies with church dignitaries. position as a tutor in a wealthy household, much resorted to by them, threw him frequently into their society. He was never prudent of speech in these controversies, chiefly talks at the table, never circumspect and never afraid, and at last he aroused their suspicion and hatred. A single incident, related by Anderson, is characteristic of his whole manner. " Tyndale happening to be in the company of a reputed learned divine, and in conversation having brought him to a point from which there was no escape, he * Eng. Hexapla 13. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 65 broke up with this exclamation : ' We were better to be without God's law, than the Pope's!' This was an ebullition in perfect harmony with the state of the country at the moment, but it was more than the piety of Tyndale could bear. ' I defy the Pope,' said he, in reply ; ' and all his laws j Hi * resolT e *<> translate the and if God spare my life, ere many scriptures. years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou dost.' " * This utterance, and his, so- called, heretical attitude generally, brought matters to a crisis. He was no longer safe in Gloucestershire. But the boast had evidently been The general preparation for the outbreak of a secret and long- tne undertakiog cherished determination to give the Scriptures to the " lay people." Everything, apparently, was now ready for him. He himself was a ripe scholar in Greek, and a master of English also. The Greek text of the New Testament * Anderson. Annals i. 36. Westcott. Eng. Bib. note 32. 66 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. had been published by Erasmus six years be- fore. Luther's translation of it into German was just finished and passing through the press. Abroad a great reformation was shaking the Church. At home, the people were eager to read and to think for themselves, and a wide sympathy with the Continental movement was smouldering among them. All that the poor scholar needed was to be pecuniarily supported while engaged in the work. He applies to So in 1522 he journeyed to Lon- the Bishop of . . London without don, and, unsophisticated provincial as he was, evidently expected to find the Church differently represented in its dignitaries there. The fame of Tunstal, Bishop of London, as a Greek scholar, and an en- lightened patron of the "New Learning," had been trumpeted by Erasmus, and Tyndale therefore sought the Episcopal palace, and opened before the Bishop the plan of the pro- posed translation. To prove his competency for the task, Tyndale submitted to Tunstal's examination a translation of an oration of Iso- THE AGE OF PRINTING. 67 crates. But the poor priest, so far from being admitted a member of the episcopal household, was coldly dismissed, and told to look for what he wanted elsewhere in London. He soon found that the spirit of Gloucestershire was in the metropolis also. " I understood at last," writes he, " not only that there was 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' 1 * While so dependent and knowing not which way to look or to turn, Monmouth, an alder- man of London, a large-hearted and liberal- minded merchant who had heard him preach once or twice, became so practically his friend as to help him with the money necessary for his journey to the Continent Retires to the Continent. whither accordingly he went, there- after to live and labor, as he touchingly says, in " poverty, exile, bitter absence from friends, hunger, thirst and cold, great dangers, and in- * Anderson. Annals i. 39. 68 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. numerable other hard and sharp fightings."* His first place of refuge was Hamburg, where, before the end of the year 1524, he translated and published the Gospels of St. issu^ Matthew and Mark. Matthew and St. Mark in separate volumes with notes.f Thus amid the ocean of a foreign language the English version began to rise like a coral island, showing itself first above the surface in this rim and ring of an experi- mental development of a mighty plan. From Hamburg he went to Cologne, with his assistant,! and set to work upon the entire New Testament, but was interrupted by a spy upon his movements, and only succeeded in * Westcott. Hist. Bib. 36. f A forthcoming life of Tyndale, by the Rev. R. Dundus, notices that " no printer is known to have been in Ham- burg about these years," in which case the place of the first issue is unknown. First Printed Eng. New T. Fac Sim. Pref. 5. J William Roy, author of the satire against Wolsey, " Rede me and be not wrothe." Cochlaeus an exile at Cologne " a virulent enemy of the Reformation." THE AGE OF PRINTING. 69 saving his papers and printed sheets by a flight by ship up the Rhine, to Worms. Forced to nee to Worms. Here he found a safe refuge in a city, whither only four years before Luther had declared we would go " if there were as many devils in it as there were tiles on the houses." It had now became " wholly Lutheran." Meantime word was sent to King Frightful re- ports of his work Henry, Cardinal Wolsey, and reach England. Bishop Fisher, of the peril in which England stood. Dreadful rumors prevailed of a certain Englishman who, at the instance of Luther, had translated the New Testament into English, and who, within a few days, intended "to return with the same imprinted into England," and it would "fill the realm with Lutherans."* A curious bit of table-talk comes down to us in the diary of a German scholar f dated in this year 1526, which gives us the gossip of the time. After mentioning the discussion of many political and other matters usual at a dinner * Westcott. Hist. Eng. Bible 41. f Herman von Busche, 11 Aug. 1526. 70 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. table of cultivated people, Erasmus and his literary conflicts being one of the topics, he speaks of a person at the table who told him that six thousand copies of the English New Testament had been printed at Worms : that it was translated by an Englishman who lived there with two of his countrymen, who was so complete a master of seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, French, that you would fancy that whichever he spoke in was his mother tongue. He added that the English, in spite of the active opposition of the king, were so eager for the Gospel, as to affirm that they would buy a New Testament even if they had to give a hundred thousand pieces of money for it." * ms stratagem Accompanying the message which for getting the 111 T-< version into Eng- had been sent to England, warning land. ... the authorities " to prevent the importation of the pernicious article of merchandise," was a description of the quarto *Westcott. Eng. Bible 42. Fac Sim. Text of Tyn- dale's N. T. 25. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 71 volume which Tyndale was preparing. Not to be foiled in that way, he resorted to an ingenious stratagem for his proposed invasion. He set to work upon another edition, a small octavo, and when it was printed, he returned to the other and completed that also. His plan was that the large volume should attract the attention of the English authorities, and, under cover of that diversion, the unknown small one should slip in among the people. And so it turned out. Both Testaments were shipped to England in number about six thousand, and got into the country. Just at the moment cir- cumstances happened to be propitious. Wolsey was engrossed in state affairs, then in a very critical condition at home and abroad. Tunstal had been sent to Spain on a political mission. The king was keeping Christmas in private. The books were eagerly purchased its opposite re- ception by the and became widely but secretly cir- people, and by the authorities. culated, not only in London, but in Oxford and Cambridge.* It was savagely * " The printed English Testaments being ready, there 72 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AXD ITS ANCESTORS. attacked by high dignitaries both of the church and state. Wolsey advised the king to condemn it to be burnt, which he did. Sir Thomas More, who was especially shocked by the independence of a translation which could ignore all ecclesiastical and technical words, denounced the translation as "ignorant, dishonest, and heretical." * When Tunstal re- turned he found both editions circulating every- where in his diocese. He mounted the pulpit of "Paul's Cross," and preached against it, and afterward, in conjunction with the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, issued a mandate requir- ing "the collection and surrender of copies." was a people prepared to receive them. For upwards of a century, amid all manner of national vicissitudes, the Lollards had been multiplying written copies of the original translation of Wycliffe, and of its revised version by John Purvey. They had increased, despite continuous perse- cution ; and were now a scattered unorganized association of tradesmen, craftsmen, and such like, especially numerous in those districts nearest the continent, and therefore most accessible to influences from without." " First Printed Text," 40. * Westcott. Eng. Bible 42. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 73 All this failing, and more editions coming in, the curious resort was had of buying up the books both in England and on the Continent. But this, of course, was of no avail. The popular interest in the work partook of the nature of a conflagration. It was too wide- spread to be stamped out. It was too fierce and earnest wherever it burned, to be quenched. The act of purchasing the editions was only pouring oil on that seat of the fire, the print- ing press of Tyndale. The whole power of the British throne could not extirpate the book. A secret organization was formed to receive and shelter it.* Every device was employed in importing it, so that by the year 1530 six * " These Testament Circulators deserve to be held in perpetual honor. They were Anti- Papists before the Testa- ments arrived in the country. They instinctively saw in them the great instruments of deliverance of the people from priestly thraldom that weighed so heavily upon them and at the hazard of their worldly health and wealth they devoted themselves to the dangerous work of their distri- bution far and wide/' First Printed Text Fac Simile 47. 74 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. editions of fifteen thousand copies were spread throughout England. And yet if there had been no further multiplication of them, even this great number had not been enough to withstand the endeavors to destroy them, for, so persistent and thorough was the search, that to-day only a mutilated fragment or two re- mains of all this multitude of copies.* * Anderson. Westcott. Hist. Eng. Bib. 45. " The most valuable of the late old English reprints is unquestionably the choice photolithograph perfect fac simile of the Unique Fragment of the first printed English X>ic Testament, translated by William Tyndale. It was prob- ably executed at Cologne in 1525. Its existence was long doubted until the discovery of the precious fragment con- taining Tyndale's " Prologge" and the Gospel of St. Mat- thew only, by Mr. Thomas Rodd, the bookseller. It was purchased by Mr. Grenville, and now forms the most precious article of the library bequeathed to the British Museum. It is difficult to estimate the value of a non- existent thing, but it may be safely said that a fine perfect copy would not wait long for a purchaser at 10,000/. in England, and very likely America might dispute its pos- session. The reprint, most completely edited by Mr. Edward Arber, contains a full examination of the very THE AGE OF PRINTING 75 But the sturdy translator across the Channel kept his printers at work, and the steady stream of imported Testaments ceased not. They came even on in the grain-ships, for En- gland was then starving as much for food as for the bread of life. During all this, when he found In rder todis - arm opposition, that the opposition was in great he omits his " notes and com- part personal, owing to certain ments." tracts he had written, and especially to the notes with which his work was accompanied, he offered to withhold the latter, and to let the Scriptures go bare of comment or explana- tion to the people, promising " never to write more." So free as this was his whole effort of self-interest or of the ambition to propagate his own views. But the translation itself was still perplexing literary history of the early versions of William Tyndale and his coadjutor, William Roy, whose labors were so effectually effaced by the Romanist authorities that their story has to be disentangled from the merest fragment of evidence. It forms a small quarto volume, elegantly printed."" Book-Buyer." 76 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. too individual and independent too clear a mirror for the scarlet woman to admire herself in. It needed the dimness imparted by super- stition, tradition, and dogma, before it would suit her complexion. This history would be extended too long if all were told which happened to Tyndale and his work during these thirteen years : the per- secutions and annoyances and treacheries which he suffered ; well as their detail would illustrate his heroic character and Christian patience. " He had been so harassed with enemies that, as he himself expressed it, ' very death would have been pleasanter to him than life.' " He w r as constantly compelled to keep his whereabouts a secret, as his person was never out of danger. HIS repeated All this time, while working off revisions of his version. edition after edition of his New Testament, he was by continual and laborious revision making it more and more perfect. Besides the suggestions of his own mind, he * Anderson. Annals i. 290. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 77 was always ready to receive and adopt hints for its improvement from whatever source they might come, taking an inspiration here and there from Luther's version, and a correc- tion now and then from the Vulgate or the Latin version of Erasmus. But his labors were not confined HO undertakes a Version of the to the New Testament. He had, ow Testament. at quite an early part of this period, set to work also upon the more voluminous Hebrew Old Testament. Probably he had acquired a knowledge of Hebrew before he left England, but doubtless he had perfected his acquaint- ance with it in his wanderings through Ham- burg, Cologne, Worms, and Antwerp, cities then filled with Jews, and men famous for Hebrew learning In 1530* he issued a translation of Genesis and Deuteronomy, just as he had before two * The year before he was shipwrecked on the coast of Holland while on the way to get part of the Old Testa- ment printed, losing his MS. and money. Encyc. Britan- nica xiv. 400. 6 78 OUR ENGLISH BJBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. -Genesis of the Gospels, in separate volumes. imd Deuterono- my, Rnd finally Soon after he published the entire the whole Penta- teuch and Jonah. Peutateuch. Three years later ap- peared the Book of Jonah. He never got further with this part of his undertaking (except some manuscript translations), and it was left to other hands to finish. That which interrupted him was a call to martyrdom. A great change But, some time before this took iu England Henry breaks place, a great change had come in with the 1'ope. England. The king had dissolved his relations with the Pope, and the Church of England had resumed her ancient independ- ence. A kinder feeling grew on the part of Henry and his counsellors toward the project of an English version ; for its production would strengthen the king's position with the people and help to alienate his realms from Rome. It is a significant incident which we hear, of , . the Protestant Queen, Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn a J rnterposition. sa ving from punishment a man who had been especially active in circulating the New Testament. And after awhile, when THE AGE OF PRINTING. 79 the news of her auspicious influence reached Tyndale, we find him preparing a magnificent copy of his New Testament, sumptuously printed and illuminated on vellum, and splendidly bound, and sending it to her with her royal name inscribed in crimson letters on its gilded edges. This book is still to be seen in the British Museum, and Mr. Plumptre speaks of passages in it underscored in red ink, " such as might be marked for devotional pur- poses." * Before he died Tyndale had the An edition pre- paring by the satisfaction of hearing that the royai printer. royal English printer, belonging to the party of the queen, was preparing to issue an edition in London of his own last revised Testament. It appeared after his death. In this way only did the exile return to his native land, but it was a return more sweet to him in the crown- ing of his life's work than any personal freedom to which he might have attained. That he never had again. The man who, as Anderson * Smith. Diet. Bib. iii. 1669. 80 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. says, "had been deemed of such importance that he had enjoyed the distinction of having been pursued by the agent of Wolsey the cardi- Tymiaie be- na l an( j o f the king himself, of Sir trayed and im- prisoned. Thomas More the Lord Chancellor, and even Cromwell, the future vicegerent,"* was at last overtaken by treachery a treachery singularly Judas-like in being a betrayal by a trusted friend arrested, and imprisoned in the castle of Vilvorde near Brussels. cranmer'sat- While he lay there, in his living tempt to issue a new version. tomb, his spirit was having even another strange apparition at home. The time was already growing so rapidly ripe for an English version that Cranmer, now Archbishop of Canterbury, had carried a resolution through Convocation that the Bible should be translated, and he took what is supposed to be by some Tyndale's New Testament, by others Wyc- lifle's, and cutting it into eight or ten parts, sent the fragments to as many ''best-learned bishops," requesting that they should be * Anderson. Annals i. 417. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 81 returned corrected on a certain day at Lambeth Palace. But the result was unsatisfactory, and Cranmer gave up the attempt in that quarter. The fact, however, of such an at- tempt is an indication of the great change of sentiment among the English authorities. The famous Thomas Cromwell, cromweii's at- tempt. King Henry's wise and able pilot in all these troublous times, when the English Church was tacking off the lee-shore of Rome, now saw his opportunity and turned the helm in that direction. But the account of this belongs to the next stage of this history. It is enough to say that before Tyndale died he beheld the unfinished portions of the Old Tes- tament completed by another and friendly hand, that of Miles Coverdale, his coverage's own translation retouched by the same skilful fingers (though sometimes blended too much with other phraseology), and the whole Bible, including so much of his own mas- sive and splendid contribution, enter England, with no voice, royal or ecclesiastical, raised 82 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS, against it, his name, to be sure, sunk out of sight for the sake of appearances, but his im- mortal work standing unshaken, to become, for ever after, the adopted form of the future English Bible, the type of its architecture and the material of its construction. Tyndale exe- But while the gift was received, cuted. . the giver was more than unacknow- ledged. He was persecuted now to his death. Through English counsel, solicitation, and management, the Emperor Charles the Fifth issued a decree under which Tyndale was led forth from his dungeon, conducted to a neigh- boring eminence, tied to a stake, but mercifully strangled before he was burnt to ashes. The last words that escaped from him before the agony of suffocation was a prayer for his coun- trymen in a prayer for his king : " Lord, open the King of England's eyes !" The character The character of Tyndale may be safely said to be one of the noblest in Christian annals. It is the best part of his record that no faction or sect ever THE AGE OF PRINTING. 83 gathered under his name. Self-exiled from his country, he was also an exile from him- self. Positive and aggressive as he was in his many writings and pamphlet conflicts, and the notes which at first accompanied his trans- lation, yet he was singularly impersonal and self-forgetful in it all. If he had had more of worldly wisdom and less unsophisticated trust in men, the base betrayal which finally de- stroyed him would not have been possible. He was a man altogether given up to the thought which moved him, and there is enough in his writings and in his life to prove that if the great object to which he had devoted all, had been attained, namely, the opening of the Scriptures to the glad entrance of the poorest and humblest of his countrymen, he would have been willing to have died, as he did die, in the simple happiness of that unshared con- sciousness. No public plaudits, no royal rec- ognition would have pleased him as well. And so, with all his publicity, he kept himself really inconspicuous. He was like one who had 84 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. been the projector of a great edifice, but who was content to secretly inspire its style of architecture and let it appear to be the sugges- tion of other and more accepted minds. His consciousness of success was his best reward.* And even thus he now appears : one of the * " Tyndale saw his life's work accomplished. Ere he was taken away, the English ploughboy came to know the Scriptures. * * * Ceaselessly for twelve years, at the least, he labored at his great work ; yet, so to speak, in secret : which is one reason for his not having been adequately appreciated by posterity. * * * Much more will some day be known of him. Among the archives of Belgium may yet be found the papers seized in his house at Antwerp by the emperor's attorney when he was captured. * * * And among some English dust-covered collection may still be found such of his manuscripts as, passing into the hands of his Timothy John Rogers came over into England. Enough is already ascertained to stimulate in us an unceasing search for any trace of him and an in- creasing study of his works ; and what we already know of his nature and character, of his work and purpose, fully justifies our for ever revering him as the great apostle of our early Reformation." " First Printed Eng. N. T. Far Simile Introd. 69, 70. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 85 unnoticed inspirations of a great movement, and, by it, one of the fathers of the Reforma- tion. In looking back we see him standing all alone in his hard and dark and eventful life. "Wycliffe had his Lollards, Luther his Lutherans, Calvin his Calvinists, but Tyndale is the father and the name of no sect. He is the father of the English Bible, and his name will remain when all sects and systems shall have passed away. The first remarkable element of Excellencies and peculiarities his version was its limpid outflow of his version. from the original. It rendered what it found there with no intermixture of personal ideas or church prejudices. At least this was its pure intent. And in this was the very pecu- liarity which precipitated the wrath of Church and state upon him. He rendered " congrega- tion," not "church;" "elder," not "priest;" " acknowledge," not "confess;" "repentance," not " penance ;" " favor," not " grace ;" " love," not " charity." These latter technical words, so deeply imbedded in the Roman concrete, 86 01' It ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. were not found in his New Testament, but, on the contrary, the former words, so fresh on the lips, so near the heart of everyday human life. " These simple and faithful renderings," ,*ay* Anderson, " once read in their connection, shook to its very foundations that fabric which the Chancellor (More) had strained all his powers to defend;"* for it was with Sir Thomas More, the champion of Romanism, that Tyndale had his chief combat in the war of controversy and of pamphlets. As a purely its indmdu- individual production, impressed ality and origi- nality, with the strong features of a nature which had grown up intellectually and spiritu- ally almost alone, and yet which possessed the elements of a singular earnestness, simplicity, and purity, as marking the breaking away of a distinctly independent mind, and its assertion of the truth in perfect insulation from the un- scriptural Church, the Version of Tyndale takes its immovable place in the history of the Re- formation, and as the controlling influence in * Annals i. 281. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 87 all future Versions. " From first to last," says Westcott, " his style and his interpretation are his own, and in the originality of Tyndale is included in a large measure the originality of our English version."*" Notwithstanding," says Anderson, " all the confessed improve- ments made in our translation of its influence on the present the Bible, large portions in almost version, every chapter remain verbally the same as he first gave them to his country ."f " He estab- lished," says Westcott again, " a standard of Biblical translation which others followed. * * * It is even of less moment that by far the greater part of his translation remains intact in our present Bibles, than that his spirit animates the whole. He toiled faith- fully 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 laborers worked. His influ- * Eng. Bib. 210. f Annals i. 245. 88 OUR ESGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. ence 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. He felt by a happy instinct the potential affinity between Hebrew and English idioms, and enriched our language and thought for ever with the characteristics of the Semitic mind."* " To Tyndale," says Plumptre, " belongs the honor of having given the first example of a translation based on true principles, and the excellence of later versions has been almost in exact proportion as they followed his. Believ- ing that every part of Scripture had one sense and one only, the sense in the mind of the writer, he made it his work, using all philolo- gical helps that were accessible, to attain that sense. Believing that the duty of a translator was to place his readers as nearly on a level as possible with those for whom the books were originally written, he looked on all the later theological associations that had gathered * Eng. Bib. 211. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 89 round the words of the New Testament as hindrances rather than helps, and sought, as far as possible, to get rid of them." " In this as in other things, Tyndale was in advance, not only of his own age, but of the age that followed him." " All the exquisite grace and simplicity which have endeared the Authorized Version to men of most opposite tempers and contrasted opinions, is due mainly to his clear- sighted truthfulness." * The historian Froude gives equally forcible testimony to his version. "The peculiar genius," he says, " if such a word may be per- mitted, which breathes through it; the min- gled tenderness and majesty; the Saxon sim- plicity, the preternatural grandeur, unequalled, unapproached, in the attempted improvements of modern scholars all are here, and bear the impress of one man, and that man William Tyndale."t And finally, listen to Bishop Ellicott, who * Smith's Bib. Diet. iii. 1669. f Hist. Eng. iii. 84. 00 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. to-day is the leading spirit in the new work of revision. Speaking of Tyndale's determination to make it in the simple and homely language of the people, he says : " It is to this steady aim and purpose that the special and striking idiomatic excellence of the Authorized Version is pre-eminently due. To this deep resolve we owe it that our own English version is now what we feel it to be, a Version speaking to heart and soul, and appealing to our deepest religious sensibilities with that mingled sim- plicity, tenderness, and grandeur, that make us often half doubt, as we listen, whether Apos- tles and Evangelists are not still exercising their Pentecostal gift, and themselves speaking to us in the very tongue wherein we were born. Verily we may bless and praise God that Tyndale was moved to form this design, and that he was permitted faithfully to adhere to it, for, beyond doubt, it is to that popular element in his Version not only that we owe nearly all that is best in our present English Testament, but that there remains to this very THE AGE OF PRINTING. 91 hour, in the heart of all earnest English people, an absolute intolerance of any changes in the words or phraseology that would tend to obscure this special, and, we may justly say, this providential characteristic. Tyndale not only furnished the type of all succeeding ver- sions, but bequeathed principles which will exercise a preservative influence over the Ver- sion of the English Bible, through every change or revision that may await it, until Scriptural revision shall be no longer needed and change shall be no more."* Aside from the natural aptitude The favorable condition of the which Tyndale had for his work, English lan- guage when it there was one circumstance which was executed. constituted for him an extraordinary opportu- nity. It enabled him to be, in his peculiar field, what we find the great poets to have been in theirs. The province opened by him was a fresh discovery, and he had the genius to ex- haust very nearly all its treasures. His suc- cessors were only gleaners. This favorable * Revision of Eng New Testament 60. 92 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. circumstance was the condition of the English language at the time in which he lived. It was then going through that long process of its formation, which we saw beginning in Wyc- liffe's day, in an emergence from the Anglo- Saxon, and transition, through the Latin and Norman-French, and which ended in its becom- ing a fixed national tongue. It was in its most plastic state, ready for any rich form into which both association and genius might mould it. In addition to this, both of the original languages of the Bible were found to be in most " potential affinity" with it. Tyndale himself discovered this, and states the fact in opposition to the common preference at that time for the Vulgate translation of both Testa- ments. " The Greek tongue," he says, " agreeth more with the English than the Latin."* "And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agree a thousand times more with the English than the Latin. The manner of speaking is in both one, so that in a thousand places * Westcott. Eng. Bib. 174. THE AGE OF PRINTING. 93 thou needest not but to translate it into English word for word."* The forming lan- guage yielded to the strong peculiarities of the others. Like a plastic substance, it took, under the skilful hands of Tyndale, the stamp and impress of both these dies, the Hebrew, and the Hellenistic Greek. It yielded to the idiom of either, again and again at will, till the style assumed often a foreign and oriental character ; and when the people began to read and quote their Bible, its pecu- liar turns of expression wrought themselves insensibly into the forms of their daily speech, and thus the plain, insular language of Eng- land, already composite, and disposed to be more so, became gradually enriched with the native force and beauty of the original tongues of the Scriptures. We ourselves are now daily employing unconsciously the idiom of both the earlier and the later Hebrews, and all because our language at this period of Tyndale melted so easily into both of the ancient and * Pluuiptre. Smith's Bib. Diet. iii. 1669. 7 94 OUR EXGLISH BIBLE AXD ITS ANCESTORS. bygone languages of the Bible. When a man of genius and spiritual intuition had such an untried opportunity as this, what wonder is it that the product of his labor became of everlast- ing permanence ; and what wonder, too, that he succeeded in occupying the field so entirely as to anticipate the future, and leave the work of improving upon him the only office of his successors ? / ,r r K ion ,- We owe still one other matter of should be a di- rect, impersonal i nes timable value to the example of transfer from tho original. Tyndale : namely, the principle that a version of the Bible should be perfectly colorless, tinctured with no thought which may previously have had possession of the translator. Even if it should come into being amid the rich embosoming of the church, and within the very walls of her doctrines, still it must take no ecclesiastical, traditional, or conventional form whatever. That which it is in the original it must be in the translation ; and this, as we have seen, was the marked element which dis- tinguished the Version of Tyndale, so far as he THE AGE OF PRIXT1XG. 95 was able to control it the element which, at the time, raised against his work the opposition of the church, but which hereafter it will be the very life and protection of the church to reproduce. Our Bible, through the influence of its subsequent revisions, cannot be said to be entirely free of doctrinal prepossessions. It took somewhat the color of the times through which it passed, but the stern, earnest finger of Tyndale still points onward to a day when the effulgence of the originals shall shine upon mankind, not through many-colored lights as of cathedral windows, to keep us all in a " dim religious light," but as the sun when it ^hineth on the face of nature in their purity and in their strength. NOTE. Mr. Blunt, in his " Plain Account of the Eng- lish Bible," written and published since the late movement towards revision, takes altogether different ground from the scholars quoted in this chapter, and, evidently moved by doctrinal prejudice, like the contemporary ecclesiastics of Tyii'' - him no place and no credit in the formation of the English Bible. It is a melancholy instance of how 96 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. a mind can bring itself to ignore palpable facts, in order to make room for its own prepossessions. By him our Version is based on WycliflVs, and WyclifFe's on previous Versions (though renderings from the Latin), because these Versions took the simple Saxon forms of speech, which characterize our present Bible. Tyndale is abused, slandered, and dis- owned. Mr. Blunt was born in the reign of Henry the Eighth! What is he doing on earth at the present time ? As to the quality of his judgment, it may be mentioned that in a late statement of reasons against revision, the final, and of course the strongest in his mind, is the fact that the English reading public have a " vested right" in the u Authorized Version" as so much property ; the copies in circulation would be rendered valueless by the issue of another, and thus injustice would be done to the owners ! The interests of truth, the full revelation of the Word of God, to be sacrificed to such a considera- tion as this ! III. THE SIX LINEAL DESCENDANTS OF TYN- DALE'S PATRIARCH-VERSION. THE BIBLES OF COVERDALE, ROGERS, CROMWELL, CRAN- MER, GENEVA, AND THE BISHOPS. THE GREEK TES- TAMENTS OF STEPHENS AND BEZA. THE HEBREW TEXT. THE BIBLE OF COVERDALE. A S we have seen, Erasmus laid the The work of foundation of the English New T^iTincom- Testament in gathering his Greek plet manuscripts together, and publishing the first Greek Text, and Tyndale reared the super- structure, and fixed for ever its style and arch- itecture. But the latter left, as we have also seen, the scaffolding still standing, and the building, which he had erected in such magnifi- cent masonry, unfinished and rough-hewn, (97) 98 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. awaiting the finer hands of the carver and gilder before all its glory could be revealed. And like the builders of a great cathedral, whose work still lies down in the crypt and among its supporting archways, which make the security, and in the solid walls of the building above, which mark the character of the fabric, both Erasmus and Tyndale have been almost for- gotten in the more effective labors and later ingenuity of their successors. Many years after the illustrious scholar had passed away, and his equally illustrious co- laborer, Cardinal Ximenes, other workmen were found strengthening the foundations and clearing the passages down amid the darkness of a long-dead language. Erasmus and Tyn- dale closed their labors and their lives almost together. They both died in 1536. About ten years after, in 1546, another workman was prepared to exhibit the result of his labors in the Greek text. The Greek The famous Robert Stephens, a Text of Ste- phens, printer of Paris, and a scholar as DESCENDANTS OF TYND ALE'S VERSION. 99 well, issued a new edition, correcting the work of Erasmus by manuscripts taken chiefly from the French Eoyal Library.* But the doctors of the Sorbonne persecuted him, and, after issuing two more editions, he went to Geneva and issued another, which is especially notable for a pecu- liarity with which every one is familiar. It was the first New Testament divided up into verses. This was Stephens's own vork, and had been done by him while riding on his mule from Paris to Lyons, in order, it is said, to faci- litate the references of a Concordance he was preparing. These divisions, however, were in- dicated by figures on the margin. He did not venture to break up the paragraphs into the apothegmic little morsels which disfigure our Bibles to-day. This was done in one of the Versions which afterward appeared. Ten or fifteen years after Ste- The Greek text phens had closed his labors Theo- dore Beza appeared down in the crypt, and * Tregelles. History of the Greek Text of the New Tes- tament, 31. 100 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. worked there thirty-three years 1565-98 issuing five editions of his text, correcting the work of Stephens by the aid of still more an- cient and valuable manuscripts. And he also, like Erasmus, accompanied it by a Latin trans- lation of his own, intended to exhibit the inac- curacy of the Vulgate. His Text and his ver- sion both became favorites with the Protest- ants. But the Romanists, still unlearned in the field of Greek textual criticism, and as prejudiced as ever, roundly abused this good workman also. The successors While these scholars, successors of Erasmus, were thus busy below upon the foundations, and completing the vaulted archways which should securely sustain the pavement above, the successors of Tyndale also were at work upon the superstructure which he had left unfinished. They availed themselves of his plan and his material, and here and there improved, and here and there, but only in slight instances, comparatively, deformed his building. But it was they who, after many DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 101 changes, were at last to take down the scaffold- ing that had stood about it through three gene- rations, and reveal to the world the almost " perfect beauty" which belongs to our present Bible. In the reader's view of this edifice, Type's work 7 on the Old Testa- during this opening era of its erec- ment - tion, he must not forget to notice the adjoining fabric of the Old Testament, rising also from its still older foundation, the published Hebrew Text, but as yet built not more than a single story above the ground : the five chambers of the Pentateuch complete, and the Book of Jonah standing like a lone column, the last printed work of Tyndale's hands. We return now to the moment cranmer'sfiwt attempt to issue when these after-builders entered the English Bille. upon his labors, and began anew upon the structure which he had erected. In 1534 Convocation, with archbishop Cranmer at its head, petitioned king Henry to "graciously indulge unto his subjects of the laity the read- ing of the Bible in the English tongue that 102 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AXD ITS ANCESTORS. a new translation might be forthwith made for that end and purpose." At this time twenty editions of Tyndale's New Testament were in England, circulating secretly under a ban, and others, more recently published, were pouring in. It will be noticed how this petition re- cognised its existence in this prayer for a " new translation." We have seen the fate of Cranmer's attempt, after permission had been obtained, to get the proposed Version from the bishops. They could not agree upon a Ver- sion clear of church trammels and technical words. Their fingers were tied, as their minds were tinged, by theological preposses- sions. Each one wore the Latin Vulgate as a pair of spectacles wherewith to read the Greek. And so Cranmer, after receiving their pre- judiced and variant suggestions, gave up the task as something which could not be had from that quarter " till," to use his own words, "the day after doomsday." cromweii's But Thomas Cromwell, then first attempt. .. n i rapidly rising to the height of his DESCENDANTS OF TYND ALE'S VERSION. 103 power and influence, the great manager of the English Reformation in ( its earlier stages, wisely and quickly seized the opportunity which was yet open, of advancing the progress of English independence of the Papal power. It was desirable, if the work of Coverdale. translating should fall again into the hands of an individual, in default of any present ability in the church authorities' to agree upon an English Version, that it should come from one who, unlike Tyndale, had not made himself obnoxious in any way to them, especially to the king, and who was of a nature compliant enough to accommodate his translation temporarily to the situation. Whether or not the peculiar gifts required, were actually discovered and noticed in one person, and led to his connection with the undertaking, or were afterward developed by himself, certainly the successor of Tyndale was astonishingly well fitted to meet the necessity as it stood. There is a mystery in his move- ments which may have been accidental, but 104 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. which probably was designed, in the conniving action of Cromwell and others. All we know is that Miles Coverdale, at one time a priest and an Augustine friar, but early in sympathy with the Reformation, and, about the time of Tyndale's first issue, intimately connected with Cromwell and More, was the singularly quali- fied man by whom the great work was under- taken at this critical moment. By taste, talent and preference a preacher, yet the finger of Providence, either in the suggestion of Crom- well or the monitions of his own heart, proba- bly both, seemed to point to this arduous and unwonted task. Four or five years before this, he had met Tyndale at Ham- burg, and some say he had a hand in assist- ing the pioneer. Doubtless he there imbibed an intense interest in the translation then proceeding. It is very likely when the change came over the Church of England, that he ' understood the situation, and that Cromwell also understood him. At any rate he is found, just at this period, self-exiled on DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 105 the continent, no one knows where, engaged with tremendous energy on the work of pre- paring not only another New Testament, but the whole Bible for the English public. The tireless industry with which he must have labored is indicated by the fact that he com- pleted the stupendous work and had it printed in eleven months ! He reproduced all Tyndale's New coverdaie issues the whole Testament, and the portions of the B">i e . Old Testament already executed, revising them with a rich infusion of his own paraphrastic style, (but sometimes rendering very felici- tously), and then added the remainder in a very free version. Whether it was part of his accommodating tact, or whether it was the simple fact, he did not pretend to have produced his Version from the originals but, by a kind of distillation, to have gathered and concentrated the riches of five other translations into his own. " I have," he says in his dedication, " purely and faithfully translated this out of five sundry interpreters." Two of these were 106 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. Latin Versions, two German, and the other was very probably Tyndale's. His knowledge of Hebrew and Greek enabled him to discrimi- nate in a selection of renderings, and his com- mand of English gave him occasionally most happy turns of expression. Many of these subtle changes remain in our present transla- tion, adding much to its force and beauty. His Version was thus a composite piece of architecture, introduced to complete the edifice of the Bible, and was made to unite and blend itself with the grand but simple structure of Tyndale. characteristics But the work of Coverdale, when of his Version. n i -i -i ITIII i t finished and published, developed an individual character of its own. It was too free and paraphrastic for accuracy, but was, nevertheless, smooth, rich, and rhythmical. "Though he is not original," says Westcott,* " yet he was endowed with an instinct of dis- crimination which is scarcely less precious * Hist. Eng. Bib. 217. DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 107 than originality, and a delicacy of ear which is no mean qualification for a popular transla- tor." " Our admiration for the solitary mas- sive strength of the one (Tyndale) must not make us insensible to the patient labors and tender sympathy of the other." * The Psalter in the Book of Common Prayer as compared with the more literal rendering of the Psalms in the Authorized Version is a very fair specimen of the way in which he executed the entire Bible. His contribution to our present Version may be summed up, first, in certain peculiar felici- ties of expression, and next in the general result of a quickness to avail himself of the suggestions of other masters of the original tongues. But, in another point, the Version, in his hands, took a step backward into the old ecclesiastical preoccupation, and many of the words which Tyndale had so independently * Hist. Eng. Bib. 70. 108 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. rendered, were changed in order to better suit the time. utility of a The distinguishing element of diversity of translations. strength B&Q. wisdom in Coverdale was his belief in a diversity of translations, in the consultation of many minds, and in the greater wealth that could be given to a Ver- sion which combined the impressions received by different scholars from the self-same origi- nal passage ; variations not in essence, but in light and color. "One translation," he says, " declareth, and openeth, and illustrateth another, and in many places one is a plain commentary unto another." It is this prin- ciple which ought to enter into any other Version and revision, and bring about the introduction of a marginal variorum of ren- derings, so that the reader may learn to gather the sense with the mind as well as with the eye, and to catch the living spirit more than to weigh the inadequate letter of any secondary form in which God's word may come to him. This principle is already realized DESCENDANTS OF TYN DALE'S VERSION. 109 somewhat, but not by any means enough, in the marginal renderings inserted in our present Bible. Such is all we owe to Coverdale. His Ver- sion had its own great use, and it was only such a one, pretending so little to be an origi- nal production, and accommodating itself so skilfully to the temper of the time, that could have hoped to get the king's approval, and attain to an open circulation among the people. When it was published in 1535, corerdaie's iii Bible licensed by less than ten years after Tyndale s the king, first issue, with a dedicatory letter to the king, it was allowed by the authorities to go where it would, and, in about two years, another edition appeared with "the king's most gracious license." So at last the Scrip- tures were no longer secretly published and read in England. Thus far we have the whole Bible Tyudaieand Coverdale com- produced, and with such a curious pared, paternity : by two men so picturesquely oppo- site and yet complemental to each other, and both so fitted to their opportunity : the strong, 8 110 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AXD ITS ANCESTORS. the positive, the uncompromising, the original Tyndale : the amiable, the negative, the com- plying, the skilful Coverdale : the one intro- ducing the true type of what a version should be, and boldly presenting it in advance of his time : the other clothing it with an illusive vesture, which softened its outlines and brought it without suspicion into the precincts of the court and the church. The one was the sun, giving a positive and original light; the other, the moon giving the lustre of the former, but in a diminished radiance : each rising in his turn, to illumine the Scriptures in order that the people might read the Word of God. Tyndale died at the stake, a martyr to the cause of the Bible. Coverdale lived to see it rise from the ashes of that martyrdom, to wit- ness its eventful progress, to follow, and i to participate in its future history, to behold his own imperfect work superseded, and yet to labor with splendid energy on the better work that was to come. DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. Ill THE BIBLE OF ROGERS. Two years after Coverdale's sue- John Rogers. . . His Version a re- cessiul and unopposed introduction vision of Tyndaie n i i i -r>-i i i TT and Coverdale. of the whole Bible, another V ersion, its success. in large folio, entered England, and received a greeting as strange and cordial as it might be supposed to have been unexpected. The after- ward famous martyr, John Rogers, then an eminent divine, and a chaplain to an English mercantile society at Antwerp, a companion of Tyndaie, and well known to be his friend and co-laborer, printed abroad and sent over to Eng- land a Bible, which was made up of Tyndale's Version of the New Testament, and of the already mentioned portions of the Old, as it was before Coverdale's revision, and also of Coverdale's individual Version of the re- mainder.* The characteristic contributions of * This Bible was known at the time, as " Matthews's Bible, 1 ' from the name of Thomas Matthews having been allowed to appear conspicuously in it. The name was either a pseudonym for Rogers or represented the person who bore the cost of the work. 112 OUR EXGLfSH BIBLE AXD ITS ANCESTORS. the two were united, but not, as before, blended. Tyndale stood out for himself, and Coverdale for himself. Well as it had answered its tem- porary purpose, Coverdale's Bible was not yet satisfactory to scholars, however popular it may have been with the people. To the latter it must have been acceptable, for it passed through edition after edition for eighteen years. But a scholar like archbishop Cranmer felt too sensibly its lack of distinctness and close fidelity to the original not to be anxious that another Version should be forthcoming. And so, strangely enough, reappeared this New Testament of Tyndale, with hardly an altera- tion, with even his formidable initials TV. T. curiously flourished in one part, and with even some of his obnoxious notes, and yet by the petition of Cranmer, and by the influence of Cromwell the king's express license was pro- cured for it. As the Bible of Coverdale would seem to have come in by the management of the states- man Cromwell, so the Bible of Rogers appears DESCENDANTS OF TYND ALE'S VERSION. 113 to have entered under the encouragement of the prelate Crammer. His delight, when he received the first copy, was unbounded, and he did not rest till he had secured, through Cromwell, the full authorization of the king. "A copy was ordered by royal proclamation to be set up in every church. This was therefore the first Authorized Version." * At this point, the building, m i > stripped, as to Tyndales part, of point or an snb- n i ti sequent rev' Coverdales alterations and decora- OM. tions, and, as to Coverdale's part, left quite as its author had produced it, stands up a singular composite of two styles, no longer intermingled, but side by side, and, from this moment, be- gins that more systematic and uninterrupted improvement of each, which, in about seventy- five years, was to result in our present Bible. * Plumptre. Smith's Bib. Diet. iii. 1671. 114 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. THE BIBLE OF CROMWELL. cromweir 8 Cromwell was now vicegerent.* (1536.) There were already four Versions in the field : Tyndale's, Coverdale's, Rogers's, and one by Taverner a noted lay scholar. Many thousands of these were in circulation, but still none were entirely satis- factory. Besides internal deficiencies, they were burdened with polemical notes or com- mentaries, designed to throw a color over the Version they accompanied. Cromwell pro- jected a new Bible on a magnificent scale. This time it should not creep up to the throne, but should come from the throne. There was no press in England worthy to execute it. In Paris there were more excellent materials and * " Cromwell had been the secretary of Wolsey. His advocacy of his master, in the hour of his fall, is a memo- rable instance of noble fidelity, his love of the Scriptures was early proved by his learning the whole of Erasmus's Latin Testament by heart, and his preference for the reformed religion was unquestionably decided." Enylish Hexapla 21. DESCENDANTS OF TYN DALE'S VERSION. 115 more skilful workmen. Francis the First, in his zeal for fine printing, had founded the Royal Printing House, the types of which have been celebrated ever since. Moved by Cromwell, king Henry applied to king Francis for permission to have the forthcoming Bible printed at this Royal Press in the University of Paris, which was granted. Now CoTerdll i, again appears Coverdale, called upon a second time by Cromwell to engage in the great undertaking, and this time, under these better auspices, to issue a new Version on the basis of Rogers's, and of course to supersede his own, then quite as popular as any other. It was characteristic of the man to forget him- self in the great cause, and he accordingly departed for Paris, taking with him Grafton, a printer of London, who had already made great efforts to secure the exclusive royal right to publish Rogers's Bible, but without success. Coverdale and Grafton, reviser R n, a nistm , -, , . Paris interrupt and printer, had got well on with the work. their work, when Roman Catholic jealousy 116 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. overtook them. The inquisitor-general of France ordered the presses to stop, and the sheets to be seized. The Englishmen had to flee, but they had already taken the precaution to remove the larger part of what they had done to England. Not long after they returned and succeeded in conveying presses, type, and even workmen to London, and four great dry vats full of sheets, which had been condemned to be burned, but which had instead been sold as waste paper. Thus, what at first appeared to be a great misfortune turned out to be a great benefit; for, by this importation of material and skill, a new impetus was given to the art of printing in England, and the Bible could thenceforth be altogether a home production. The Great Cromwell's Bible was finished and published in 1539. It appeared in a large and mighty folio, and was distinguished by the name of " The Great Bible." A signi- ficant cut appeared on the title-page, designed by Holbein, representing the king on his throne, with a group of ecclesiastics on the DESCENDANTS OF TTND ALE'S VERSION. 117 right hand, and a group of nobles on the left, to each of which the king is handing a volume labelled in Latin " The Word of God." Below the ecclesiastics stands archbishop Cranmer, and below the nobles vicegerent Cromwell, both also engaged in distributing the Holy Bible. This Bible went to the people without note or comment ; and so far it was the sole enterprise of Cromwell. THE BIBLE OF CRANMER. The next year, 1540, Cranmer himself undertook the work, and issued under his own name, as archbishop of Canterbury, a revision of Cromwell's Bible, in which there were so many changes that the issue merits a distinct place in the chain of Versions.* It was published, like its predeces- sor, in stupendous folio, under the same skilled direction, and from the types which had been brought from Paris. In other superficial re- spects, also, it resembled its predecessor, and was * English Hexapla, 29. Cranmer's re- Tision of it. 118 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. also known as " The Great Bible." One marked feature, however, distinguished it : an elaborate Preface, foreshadowing the true ideal of a ver- sion, written by the archbishop. There is now in the British Museum " a splendid copy of it, on vellum, with the cuts and blooming letters curiously illuminated." This was the gift of Cranmer to his royal master. its use en- Simultaneously with the appear- ing. Thepopu- ance of the Great Bible a royal de- lar delight. ... cree enjoining its use was issued, which was ordered " to be set up upon every church door," and given to the clergy to read to their congregations. There was not a little feeling against this act of the king among many of these ecclesiastics, and not a few endeavors to make it of none effect, but with no success. The people were not slow in seizing their advan- tage and manifesting their delight. Six copies of the Great Bible had been set up in St. Paul's, chained to as many desks, for public reading. Crowds gathered round each, listening eagerly to the loud tones of some one able to read in a DESCENDANTS OF TYN DALE'S VERSION. 119 sufficiently clear voice to be heard by all. An old author gives us a graphic picture of the public enthusiasm at this time. " It was won- derful to see," he says, " with what joy this book of God was received not only among the learneder sort and those that were noted for lovers of the Reformation, but generally all England over among all the vulgar and com- mon people; and with what greediness God's Word was read, and what resort to places where the reading of it was. Everybody that could 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 purpose. And even little boys flocked among the rest to hear portions of the Holy Scripture read."* St. Paul's Cathedral, as may be SccnesinSt . imagined, beheld many a noisy scene about this time. Crowds of people gathered round its six desk-chained Bibles to listen to those among them who were educated enough * Strype, in Westcott's Hist. Eng. Bib. 107. 120 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. to read the black-letter text, and neither the readers nor the hearers seem to have had much regard for the regular uses of the place in their eagerness to read and to hear the Word of God for themselves. It mattered not at what hour it was, the hour of prayer, or the hour of high mass, they flocked round their Bibles, and the loud voices of their lay readers, with their own earnest comments, sometimes drowned the voices of the priests officiating before the altar. So, under the very roof of the cathedral, the revolutionary uproar of the people crowding to the fresh fountains of living water, and the choral tones of a service still conducted in Latin, and therefore appear- ing like buckets for ever ascending but bring- ing nothing up, came into discordant conflict, and miniatured the general antagonism of the time. The church and the people were not yet in full sympathy. A wilful, fickle monarch, full of royal humors, not protestant principles, at heart a catholic, only in policy no papist, had granted this inconsistent liberty to his sub- DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 121 jects ; and the church, also divided as to its own counsels, in one part of it stood in oppo- sition, resistance, and complaint, and in the other part of it tried to accommodate itself to the situation, to meet the people half way in their newly found freedom, and to gather them once more into the fold of the primitive church the church as it was, before the Romish develop- ment began to turn what was intended to be a refuge of safety into a house of bondage. Cromwell and Cranmer had this latter work in hand. But the time drew near when the one was to be broken before the royal will, and the other had to bend. Cromwell perished at the block ; and, when the Bible was to be printed again, his coat-of-arms ignomiuiously disappeared from the title-page, and the names of Bishops Tunstal and Heath, his opponents, appeared with that of Cranmer, to give credit to the edition. Thus it happened, in less than triumph of twenty years from the day in which Tyndaie. the poor scholar Tyndale applied ^at the palace 1-2-2 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. of Tunstal for his patronage in translating the Scriptures, and was coldly dismissed ; in less than fifteen years from the days in which " my lord of London" was collecting, purchasing, and burning the Testaments of Tyndale ; Tunstal is found putting his name on the title-page of what was still substantially that martyr's work. A later edition still exhibits Cranmer bending, as was his policy, before the formidable humors of the king, and in his Preface taking that neutral tint which enabled the Great Bible " to keep its ground during the changing moods of Henry's later years." Edward vi. Parliament, at this moment, pro- tothcKUe in scribed Tyndale's translation ; and the king prohibited all other editions and forms of the Bible, Coverdale's included, leaving only the Great Bible unforbidden. And even the reading of this was restricted by decrees to certain classes of the people, during this strange reaction of the royal mind. In the midst of it all, however, Henry died, 1547, and was succeeded by his son, Edward the Sixth. Then DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 123 the tide set strongly the other way, and the reforming party were afloat again. It is said that the Great Bible was even used at his coronation. A chronicler writes, " When three swords were brought, signs of his being king of three kingdoms, he said there was one yet wanting. And when the nobles about him asked him what that was, he answered, ' Tlie Bille: i That Book,' added he, ' is the Sword of the Spirit, and to be preferred before these swords.' And when the pious young king hud said this, and some other like words, he commanded the Bible with the greatest rever- ence to be brought and carried before him.'" 1 If the boy-king was crammed by Cranmer, pro- bably this actually took place. At any rate the utmost freedom of publication was decreed, and in this short reign of six years and a half, thirty-five editions of the. New Testament, and thirteen editions of the whole Bible were printed. The people were allowed to exercise their preference for Tyndale's, Coverdale's, * Westcott. Hist. Eng. Bib. 116. 124 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. Taverner's, or Cranmer's versions. Instead of restrictions limiting to the educated class the right of reading the Scriptures, " the public use of them was made the subject of admonition and inquiry."* The people were exhorted to read. Formation of Meanwhile a new labor fell to the Prayer-Book. /-* i i , Cranmer, which, in its turn, en- grossed his attention as a matter of the next importance. This was the constitution of the English Church and the remoulding of the Ser- vice Books. Now commenced the formation of the Book of Common-Prayer, like the birth of a sister, following the already sturdy youth of her elder brother the English Bible. Even at this stage of their growing together we can find the lineaments of a family likeness between them. The " Psalter" version of the Psalms was taken from the Great Bible of Cranmer, and has been allowed to remain through all the repeated revisions of the Prayer-Book, because of its better adaptation to choral rendering. * Westcott. Hist. Eng. Bib. 116. DESCENDANTS OF TYND ALE'S VERSION. 125 It was declared to be "smoother and more easy to sing." The familiar sentences in the Communion office,* also, continue as they were in the Great Bible, and are to us the footsteps, yet unobliterated, of the Bible as it was then passing on to a period of greater perfection. Those old standards and authorities of church doctrine, the " Homilies," also, are thick-strewn with like vestiges of this period, for all their quotations of Scripture are from this Bible of Cranmer. But the next historic vicissitude T he P ersecu- was close at hand, to cut short the labors of the English Reformers on the Prayer Book, and to bring another stifling but brief epoch upon the Bible they had given to the church. Edward died, and was succeeded by his Roman Catholic sister, Mary. Cranmer and Rogers now went to the stake. Coverdale,. who had been made Bishop of Exeter, fled to the continent. The Bible was removed from * Westcott says that these were independently trans- lated by Cranmer from the Latin. 9 126 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. the churches, which had become Roman Catho- lic again. Everything fell back into the old condition of the time of Tyndale. The Bible printing presses were stopped. The Bibles were burnt. The crown, the cardinal, and the bishops were again in array against them, and the people were again obliged to keep their precious treasure concealed. The revision Once more was the undertaking of the Bible at . . . Geneva. ot Scriptural revision driven into exile, to gather new strength for its next inva- sion of England. Of admitted imperfection, as it stood, even by Cranmer himself, and look- ing to another revision which should satisfy scholars by diminishing the infusion of Cover- dale's too free phraseology, the Great Bible was destined to be superseded by another magnifi- cent contribution, which should bring the Ver- sion a long step further on toward the point of perfection so anxiously desired. And this next stage in the interesting progress was not in the line of the English Church, for the English Church lay under suppression : DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 127 smouldering in the ashes of the martyrs. The Version that now appeared was made under the lantern of John Calvin. It came from the Puritans and Presbyterians of Ita remarkable Geneva, and proved to be one of the D wisest and greatest of the translations, one of the noblest of the tributaries which joined the swelling river, bringing a wealth in its allu- vium of renderings by which the Bible will always be enriched ; and yet on account of one unfortunate peculiarity in its editing, creating a ripple in the smooth current of its language by which the pellucid meaning of the original beneath is almost hopelessly dis- turbed. This was the breaking up of the paragraphs into verses. But the account of a translation of such marked origin, in- fluence, and character, of which it can be truly said that it was "for sixty years the most popular of all Versions," a formidable rival for nearly a generation of our present Bible, com- peting with that consummate work of the church, even after its own best elements had 128 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. been incorporated therein, an exile from Eng- land and produced independently of the church, the account of such a translation may well open the next stage of this chapter of Bible history and conduct it to its close. We have so far seen the Providential influence of individualism in Tyndale, of eclecticism in Coverdale, of ecclesiasticism in Cranmer; and now we shall see the influence of Puritanism (or independency), in the Version of Geneva, of the Established Church (or authority), in the Version of the Bishops, and finally of the best catholicity that was then attainable in the Version of the King. THE BIBLE OF GENEVA. The product As the best beginning for the of independent mind. translation of the Bible proved to be an individual version, for, in that, was reached the fixed character of its structure, so the best contribution to its subsequent im- provement came from independency. And, at that time, the conditions of both were persecu- DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 129 tion and exile. Thirty years after the lone Tyndale's Version appeared in 1557-60 another of almost equally marked character came forth from the press of Geneva, the city of Calvin and Beaa, and was executed chiefly, as to the New Testament, by one man, (Wil- liam Whittingham, a brother-in-law of Calvin) but not in loneliness, nor in poverty, nor want of sympathy ; for a company of scholars, in- cluding Coverdale, assisted him. Calvin him- self penned the Introduction, and the congre- gation of exiles, with enthusiastic generosity, paid for the printing, which was beautifully done, and with ideal sentiment, from silver type.* It was the persecution under Pr0 vide n tiai Mary which had brought about this expatriation of such a number of English people, and it was the presence of Calvin which produced this concentration of non-con- forming Biblical students and others at Geneva. " For the first time," says Westcott, * Anderson. Annals of the Eng. Bib. ii. 307. 130 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. " the task of emendation was undertaken by men who were ready to press it to the utter- most. They spoke of their position as Provi- dential, and in looking back upon the later results of their Bible, we can thankfully acknowledge that it was so." * " Seeing," they say in their Preface, " the great opportunity and occasions which God presented unto us in this Church, by reason of so many and godly men and such diversity of translations in divers tongues, we undertook this great and wonderful work, which our God according to His divine Providence hath directed to a most prosperous end." Their advantages had been, besides the material already accumulated, certain new Versions in German and Latin, especially the latter of Beza. They had around them also a group of scholars who were engaged in correcting the French Ver- sion ; which Calvin, by the way, revised three times in thirteen years. The basis of their work was the Great Bible of Cranmer. Origi- * Hist. Eng. Bib. 272. DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 131 nal and independent as it was, it was still, like all its predecessors, only a revision. A readiness to accept suggestions from this and that quarter, and to avail themselves of the assistance of many minds, would seem to have been the humble and true principle of the translators. And this principle of conference and consultation afterward grew into the appointment of companies of scholars, com- missioned to execute the work, as we shall see in the case of the two remaining Versions which complete the series. Certain it is that no other Version except the present one has had more the decided approval of learned men. Probably every one qualified "to judge \vill endorse the declaration of Mr. Scrivener, one of the most careful and accurate authorities of the age, who has minutely investigated its critical value. " It is not too much to say," he writes, " that their (the Geneva translators') Version is the best in the English language, with the single exception of the Authorized Bible." 132 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AXD ITS ANCESTORS. characteristics Besides its wonderful merit as which gave it (MM revealing more of the force and meaning of the originals than any preceding translation, it had certain other marked features. Hitherto the Bibles which had come out by royal license, and been ordered to be Bet up in the churches, had been produced on too stately a scale, and with a certain safe leaning backwards, even in mechanical form and execution, which is characteristic of all official authorizations, but which is too slow and hesitating to suit the spirit of activity and progress. The Bibles of Coverdale, Cromwell, and Cranmer had all appeared in ponderous, unwieldy folios, and were printed in black- letter, a type then unpopular and not easily read. The more free and independent issue of the Genevan scholars, who were not ham- pered by the heavy machinery of church and state, was a product which assimilated itself, externally as well as internally, with the spirit of the age and the mind of the people. It had no royal or ecclesiastical reluctance to DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 133 declare itself thoroughly ; either in the fearless renderings of its text, or in any necessary departure from the traditional proprieties of publication which might bring it the nearer to the popular heart. Its first purpose was to be read and understood. And, therefore, more than any other Version, it succeeded in reach- ing the hearths and homes of England. In- stead of appearing in tremendous and expensive folio, it came out in a comparatively small and cheap quarto. Instead of wearing the ancient and obsolescent vesture of black-letter, it went among the people in the every-day garb of the roman character, In addition to this, its margins itaBibiewc- were full of condensed and telling comments, which seemed to elicit the spiritual meaning of passages still obscure in the trans- lation. Of course these marginal interpreta- tions were somewhat Calvinistic. A subse- quent edition was accompanied by an excellent Bible Dictionary another most wise provision for its entire intelligibility. 134 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. Anunfortn- Another element of its adapta- nate novelty. The paragraph tlOD to the people, while at tllC broken into yerses. time well calculated to make it effec- tive, afterward proved to be a most unfortunate innovation, and this feature has come down even to us as a heritage, which to-day, instead of making the Bible popular and readable, rather makes it unpopular and unreadable, besides giving it in an unessential respect a peculiarity among other books. This is the breaking up of the paragraphs into the frag- ments called "verses" or "texts." It was never done until this Genevan version did it. At first, as we have seen, it was only a device of a printer of a Greek Testament to facilitate reference, and the figures were placed on the margin, while the page remained as it was written. Now, however, the Bible appeared, broken into these minute portions, and such an intense and individual look was given to each of them, that they seemed to be pithy expres- sions, full of their own meaning, apart from any paragraphical connection, like proverbs, apho- DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 135 risms, and wise sayings. These came to be quoted as separate utterances, and were balanced against or combined with similar apothegms to be found elsewhere in the Holy Book, and, as a consequence, the mental habit set in of catch- ing the meaning of the Bible by a comparison and collection of these detached portions, more than by apprehending the current thought of the writings as they were continuously read. It became an effort to follow the thread of an argument or extended statement with these incessant breaks in the texture. The Bible might have remained clear to a mind which could overlook them, but this innovation fur- nished too often an occasion for the uncultivated intellect to stumble and to stop, and then to form conceptions and theories, and finally build doctrines out of this broken material which otherwise would never have had such a sug- gestion. Sectarianism has found any amount of opportunity amid these unfortunate schisms in the simple text of the Scriptures. We can- not thank the Puritan Presbyterian Bible, 136 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. therefore, for this novelty. But, at the time, it was wisely contrived to enhance the popu- larity of the new Version ; and little did its authors dream of its ultimate abuse. The Apocrypha One other peculiarity of the Gene- van Version may be mentioned as having had an effect in the present time. It was the first to omit the apocryphal books, and therefore few Bibles now contain them. The Apocrypha, while properly not canonical, has become too rare and is too little read. It yet retains, however, its place in the official Bible of the English Church, not as an authority, but as containing a certain splendor of truth and a practical wisdom, in many portions, which the church "would not willingly let die." Acce.kmof The Genevan Version, originating Elizabeth. Re- ,. . - turn of the Bible m so many peculiar providences, and to England in j i j i i . , the Genevan developed by so much spiritual in- sight, found, in the evolution of its good fortune, the time already ripe for its issue and reception. "Bloody Mary" had just died, DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALE'S VERSION. 137 and the protestant Elizabeth had ascended the throne of England. At the first, indeed, it would seem as if it were threatened with Tyn- dale's experience over again, for, having been printed a few months before Mary's death, the ports of England were shut against it. But the change to Elizabeth suddenly opened the whole country to the return of the exiles with their noble achievement. When the Version entered England it came of course with a " Dedication to the Queen," for that was in accordance with the custom of the time. But it came also with another signifi- cant innovation : an Address to the People. The coronation ceremonies and pageant of Elizabeth, like those of Edward the Sixth, were curiously associated with the new freedom given to the Scriptures. Lord Bacon relates this incident : " On the morrow of her corona- tion, it being the custom to release prisoners at the inauguration of a prince, one of her courtiers besought her with a loud voice : That now this good time there might be four 138 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. or five principal prisoners more released ; there were the four Evangelists and the Apostle St. Paul, who had long been shut up in an un- known tongue, as it were in prison, so that they could not converse with the common people." The release of The freedom that followed and all the Versions. The greater it was now for ever came alike to popularity of the Genevan. all the Versions then in existence; but the Genevan had more than liberty ; it had popularity. It was so expressly constructed for the people, and marked such an era of pro- gress on this account that it distanced every other in their affections, and became the house- hold Bible of England. The Great Bible was left far behind. It was restored to the churches foe public reading, but the Genevan was read at the hearth-stone. There it remained a favorite for seventy-five years, and became the Bible of the great Puritan party. DESCENDANTS OF TYXDALE'S VERSION. 139 N 00fficia ij n . tolerance, aa yet, f ^^ Ter . THE BISHOPS' BIBLE. One generous and fearless idea 1 i ,1 , -i . -I , prevailed at this time which it were o well if something like it prevailed now. There was no popular uneasiness about the appearance of many versions, and no official determination to make one fixed and unvarying standard, in English, represent the ancient tongues ; but there was a tendency to make the last Version better than any former one. Tyn- dale's and Coverdale's translations and the Great Bible continued to be published. No less than forty editions of them were printed and circulating all through Elizabeth's and James's reign, and ninety of the Genevan.* Besides these there were several Liberal policy of archbishop individual Versions ; the one already Parker - noticed by Taverner, and another by Lawrence Tomson, based on the Genevan, and which was very popular. An instance of this want of solicitude on account of such a diversity of * Anderson. Annals of Eng. Bib. ii. 353. 140 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. translations, and how little it entered the mind of the fathers of the English reformation that such could have any effect in undermining the faith of the people a misgiving strangely prevalent now is furnished by no less an eminent personage than Cranmer's own suc- cessor* in the See of Canterbury, archbishop Parker. Even while his thoughts -were intent on producing still another Version that should be superior to the Genevan, he used his influ- ence with the authorities to have the Genevan printed in England. (It had been printed all along on the continent.) In his letter to Cecil, he says, That to encourage the Genevan would " nothing hinder, but rather do much good to have diversity of translations and readings, "f Like Coverdale he felt the contributory power of many minds, and the endless opportunity for improvements and new developments which lay in so great an undertaking. And this it * Immediate successor, if we omit the Roman Catholic Reginald Pole. f Plumptre. Smith's Bib. Diet. iii. 1674. DESCENDANTS OF TYNDALKS VERSION. 141 was which urged him on to make even another attempt, in the hope of reaching a more perfect Version still. Never at any time, in this or the succeeding period, did either the people or their leaders dream of attaining a final and unchangeable completeness. The work was always issued like one that might still be improved, and seldom, if ever, were the print- ers given the book to be set up again without retouches more or less numerous. It was in this spirit that the Eng- Hi8 project of t i /-N-i i j , i a new Version. lish Church made its new endeavor to issue even a better Version than the Gene- van, and to resurrect the Great Bible in another big folio, that should again be placed on the lecterns in the cathedrals and churches, and, it was hoped, find also, in a smaller form, an equally popular place on the family table. It was high time that this was done, for the ecclesiastical Great Bible was suffering by com- parison with the household Genevan. So the archbishop started on his enterprise in the same direction as Cranmer had before him. 10 142 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. He laid his plans before the bishops and other learned men. This was in 1563. Like Cran- mer he distributed the Bible in parcels among them to receive their corrections and sugges- tions, after which the fragments were to be returned to him for final revision and publica- tion. Unlike Cranmer he was met with quick and generous encouragement, and after five years' labor, what was known as the " Bishops' Bible" was published by him in a magnificent volume. It incorporated many of the render- ings of the Genevan Bible. Four years after, in 1572, another edition was issued, still fur- ther revised, especially in the New Testament. So delighted was archbishop Parker with his work that when the volume was finished he uttered the exclamation of Simeon as he took the Christ-child in his arms, "Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine it, .useful eyes have seen Thy salvation!"* ^umpuoiTof And yet the same wise COnSCioUS- f . , ness of incompleteness comes out * Eng. Hexapla, 42. DESCENDANTS OF TYXD ALE'S VERSION. 143 in the Preface of the revisers. " There be yet in the Gospels," they say, "very many dark places which without all doubt to posterity shall be made much more open. For why should we despair herein, seeing the Gospel was delivered to this intent that it might be utterly understanded of us, yea, to the very inch? Wherefore * * * who can doubt but that such things as remain yet un- known in the Gospel shall be hereafter made open to the later wits of our posterity, to their clear understanding?" "They felt then," says Westcott, " that their labor was provi- sional, and that the Spirit had yet further lessons in His Word to teach to later ages."* The whole influence of the church The riTalr y of was put forth to make this the Bible of universal use, but the whole preference of the people still continued for the Genevan. The one was the official Version, and the other the popular Version, and both were quite *Hist. Eng. Bib. 184. 144 DUE ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. abreast in the race of merit, if not in that of acceptance. But now we shall come to that other and final endeavor, which took up the Bishops' Bible and revised it so well and so thoroughly that after a long run through a generation or two, the Genevan gave up the race, and retired to its present place as a Version gone out of use. This renewed official attempt was that which produced our present Bible. IV. THE PRESENT BIBLE. ITS FORMATION. ITS GENERAL EXCELLENCE. POINTS OF REVISION AND IMPROVEMENT. /^iUR present Bible is, in the order of its generations since Tyndale, a seventh son. It would seem to have taken its patent of nobility by virtue of that long descent through the most heroic period of the church, and to have earned its title of " The Authorized," because it inherited so many of the excellencies of its ancestors, and produced so many of its own. The two rival Versions, "the Genevan Ver- Genevan" and " the Bishops', " con- n nor the Bishops' satiafao- tinued to occupy the realm, the one tory. mostly in the homes, the other mostly in the churches, for a little more than thirty years (145) 146 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. after the date of the latter's attempt to get the supreme place in the affections of the public. But the Bibles of the Puritans were four times more numerous than the others. Nevertheless neither version was satisfactory to scholars. "Grave fault was found with both." No attempt, however, was made during the re- mainder of Elizabeth's long reign to produce another ; but when James the First ascended the throne the great undertaking which resulted in our present Bible had a most unex- pected and sudden birth. James i. The James, like Henry the Eighth, a conflict of the church party theological monarch, quite deeply and the Puritan party. read in divinity and proud of con- siderable ability in it, but at the opposite pole from Henry in being a Presbyterian, came down from Scotland to ascend the throne of England. The two parties of the church were full of agitation ; the churchmen dreading what one of them called the coming " Scotch mist," the Puri- tans confident that a new era was opening favor- able to themselves. Both parties sent messen- THE PRESENT BIBLE. 147 gers to meet the king in his progress. The Puritans even burdened their messenger with a bulky petition, signed by seven hundred and fifty clergymen. But the king had learned a lesson or two in the Kirk of Scotland, and was wary of the Puritans. He received the dean of Canterbury, the messenger of the archbishop of Canterbury, graciously, but he issued a proclamation against any more Puritan peti- tions. It was evident that he intended to maintain the established order of the Church of England, and not accommodate it to the ideas of the powerful party within its borders. The Puritans were especially discontented with the Prayer-Book, and complained of the cor- rupt translation of the passages of Scripture contained in it, all of which, it will be remem- bered, were taken from Cranmer's Great Bible and the Bishops' Bible. So the gathering struirde of the adherents of the Genevan Bible <_. c with those of the Church Bible, came to an issue in the field of the common liturgy. The Prayer-Book was the battle-ground, and the 148 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. pivM'iit Version was the result of the battle ; and this result came about, not by the victory of one side and the defeat of the other, but by the unexpected development of a new event, which, like a banner in the sky, diverted the attention of both combatants. The nampton This is the singular history. The ence. Puritan clergy asked for a conference with the king and the bishops, at which certain of their representatives should discuss in the royal presence, and with the bishops, the dif- ferences which then divided the church. The request was granted. But a frightful plague broke out in London, and the matter had to be postponed for awhile. The king retired to the palace of Hampton Court, a royal abode picturesquely situated some distance up the Thames, and which had been the splendid gift of cardinal Wolsey to king Henry the Eighth. It was within these once alien precincts that the project of the Authorized Version was to be born, for the conference was called together here. King James presided, with much parade of THE PRESENT BtDLE. 149 oratory and learning, but listening to the debates with interest and alert intelligence. Nine bishops, six deans, and one archdeacon were present. The bishops were arrayed in their episcopal robes, as when they sat in the House of Lords; the other divines wore the scarlet gowns, customary to doctors of divinity. But the four representatives of the Puritans de- parted so far from the clerical costume, respectful to the occasion, as to appear in " such gowns as were then commonly worn by Turkey merchants, cloth gowns trimmed with fur."* It was a symbol of their radicalism, and contempt of the church order and tradi- tion. Besides these twenty, there were pre- sent some members of the Privy Council, five ecclesiastical lawyers, among whom sat a Scotch Presbyterian minister, "the solitary dissenter." Such was the celebrated Hampton Court Conference. Three days were spent in discussion, but with little result so far as any of the matters, " amiss in the church," pre- * Blunt. Plain Account of the Eng. Bible, 73. 150 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. viously arranged for discussion, were concerned. The controversy raged chiefly around the revi- sion of the Prayer-Book, but with no effect except to bring about " a few verbal changes A new version f no importance whatever." The complaints by the Puritans of the use of the then authorized Bible in the Prayer- Book, brought the debate to a point where both sides, to their surprise, perhaps, came to a sudden agreement. Dr. John Reynolds, Presi- dent of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the leader of the Puritan four, " moved his majesty that there might be a new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reign of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth were corrupt, and not answerable to the truth of the original." It was a motion and a necessity which had been apparently but little considered by these readers of the "Genevan Version," for the alleged corruptions of the " Bishops' Bible," when they named them, were so few and trivial as not to merit discus- sion. The proposition was met characteristi- THE PRESENT BIBLE. 151 cally by the bishops, with indifference and timid conservatism, the Bishop of London pro- bably giving utterance to the sentiment of the others, by exclaiming, " If every man's humor should be followed, there would be no end of translating." But the king, not yet such a bigoted churchman as to let his common sense be hampered, and at least enough of a Puritan, through his Presbyterian education, to have a ready instinct for progress, with a quick intelli- gence caught at the idea, and it is owing to him that it did not evaporate with Dr. Beynolds's breath. " He sketched out in a moment," The wag favors the under- says Blunt, " an idea of the way in taking, which the work should be undertaken." * He disliked the Genevan Version, because some of its notes were not favorable to king-craft. As to the Bishops' Bible it was confessedly imper- fect, and the Great Bible still continued to be read in some of the churches. So there was a want of uniformity, as well, even in the * Plain Account 75. 152 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. Authorized Bible of the church. " His high- ness," the record says, "wished that some special pains should be taken in that behalf for one uniform translation, and this to be done by the best learned in both the universi- ties ; after them to be revised 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 upon it, and none other." He added, on the sugges- tion of the bishop of London, " that no mar- ginal notes should be added" like those "annexed to the Geneva translation." The conference broke up ; the Puritans hav- ing been driven from point to point by the onsets of the bishops, and failing at last in all, except in the result of this one immature proposition, which did make a lodgment in the royal, if not in the episcopal mind, and was destined shortly, by the royal influence, to take the magnificent shape in which it afterward appeared. THE PRESENT BIBLE. 153 During the next five months the Thepianof king was busy with his councillors !< in selecting those to whom the new transla- tion was to be committed, organizing the "companies" into which they were to be divided, arranging the method of the work, and laying down the principles upon which it should be executed. Fifty-four distinguished scholars were fixed upon, and, by command of the king, Bancroft bishop of London commu- nicated with each of them, "informing them that it was the king's pleasure that they should begin their work immediately." One very- practical suggestion, of a material nature, was acted upon in the month following. In order to insure the pecuniary support of the translators during the long labor now assigned them, some of whom had to give up their regular church or professional engagements, the archbishops and bishops were enjoined to keep in reserve whatever gifts of position and emolument were in their hands, or under their influence, for those who were insufficiently 154 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. provided. Contributions of mone}' also were solicited, and other measures suggested to meet the expenses of the undertaking, composition The companies were made up of the compa- .,. . 11*1 i nieewhowereto with justice and liberality in other make the revi- Bion. respects also. Ihere were as many clergy of the Puritan party appointed as of the Church party : among them Dr. Reynolds, and Dr. Chatterton, one of his fellows at the confer- ence. Laymen, also, of eminent scholarship, were associated with the clergy and the bishops were enjoined by the king " to inform themselves of all such learned men within their several dioceses, as, having especial skill in the Hebrew and Greek tongues, have taken pains in their private studies of the Scriptures, for the clearing of any obscurities either in the Hebrew or in the Greek, or touching any diffi- culties or mistakings in the former English translation, which we have now commanded to be thoroughly viewed and amended, and thereupon to write unto them, earnestly charg- ing them, and signifying our pleasure therein, THE PRESENT BIBLE. 155 that they send such their observations * * * to be imparted to the rest of their several com- panies ; that so our said intended translation may have the help and furtherance of all our principal learned men." Thus the preparations for the the project iii- 11 looked upon as undertaking were most elaborate on iy an ewen- and thorough. All the learning of the kingdom was to be concentrated upon it. And yet it was looked upon by all as still ten- tative still only an attempt to reach a greater perfection than any of its predecessors still a feeling out into the future. The Preface claims for it neither the merit of originality nor the intent of finality. As the work was itself derived, so all that was hoped for it was the superior excellence which could not but result after such an amount of care, labor, and scholarly pains had been expended upon it. It was regarded as only one grander step for- ward than had yet been taken. The principles and instructions ate prindph* of the new revi- which were given to guide the sion. 156 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. undertaking are in themselves a foreview of its history, and exhibit the limitations by which it was kept from attaining the perfect ideal even then before some scholarly minds. It is unnecessary to detail in full these in- structions, but the mention of a few will draw attention to the points where it was compelled to fall short. The first injunction was to make the " Bishops' Bible" the basis of the revision, and to alter it as little as the original would permit. Already had there set in around this, the Authorized Version of that day, something of the reverential feeling which has gathered about the present one, and this injunction was " intended probably to quiet the alarm of those who saw, in the proposal of a new Version, a condemnation of that already exist- ing."* The ecclesiastical words, which Tyn- dale had neglected, and Coverdale had restored, were to be retained and so we have " church" instead of " congregation," and " charity" * Plumptre. Smith's Bib. Diet. iii. 1676. THE PRESENT BIBLE. } :>~ instead of "love,"&c. "When a word hath divers significations," runs the fourth rule, " that to be kept which hath been most com- monly used by the most ancient fathers, being agreeable to the propriety of the place, and the analogy of the faith." "This," says Plurnptre, "like the former, tends to confound the functions of the preacher and the trans- lator, and substitutes ecclesiastical tradition for philological accuracy." The fifth rule directs " the division of chapters to be altered either not at all, or as little as may be, if necessity so require." On which Plumptre comments : " Here, again, convenience was more in view than truth or accuracy, and the result is that divisions are perpetuated which are manifestly arbitrary and misleading." The sixth rule enjoined "no marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explana- tion of the Hebrew or Greek words, which cannot, without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text ;" on which,. among other things, Mr. Plumptre well re- ll 158 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. marks, " Had an opposite course been adopted, we might have had the tremendous evil of a whole body of exegesis imposed upon the church by authority, reflecting the Calvinism of the synod of Dort, the absolutism of James, the high-flying prelacy of Bancroft." The remaining portion of the rules sketches the plan of the revision, makes provision for difficulties and for a wider consultation with scholars, if necessary, appoints the directors of the work, and finally names the Versions of Tyndale, Coverdale, Rogers, Cranmer, and Geneva, enjoining that if the renderings of any of them should agree more with the originals than those of the " Bishops' Bible," they should be adopted. The Revision The revisers forty-seven, not ;:;rat y fifty-four as appointed-divided into tafori,MdCtai. g i x companies, set to work simulta- neously in Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge, two companies in each place, one engaged on the Old Testament, the other on the New. This was in 1607. The work THE PRESENT BIBLE. (which very likely had been already begun in parts) proceeded so noiselessly for the four years to come that we can hardly find anything in contemporary documents or correspondence which will give us an inner glimpse of its pro- gress. The process, we know, was The process. this. The translators being gathered at their three centres, two companies at each centre, every member of a company took the same portion, and translated and amended it by himself. Then all met together, each bringing his own work. After a collation and comparison of renderings a selection was agreed upon, and then a single copy made of the portion as thus revised. Selden, in his " Table Talk," opens to us an inside view at this stage of the proceedings. " That part of the Bible was given to him," he says, " who was most excellent in such a tongue, and then they met together, and one read the transla- tion, the rest holding in their hands some Bible, either of the learned tongues, or French, 160 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. Spanish, Italian, &c. ; if they found any fault they spoke ; if not, he read on." * The work of a company being thus far done, the result was sent to the other companies for criticism. If alterations were suggested which were approved, they were adopted at once. If the suggestions were not agreed to, they were referred to a final committee of revisers. This committee, composed of two from each com- pany, met at the close in London. Thus every portion passed through thirteen, and sometimes sixteen, examinations, and, as the substance of every portion was the Bishops' Bible, the pro- cess was like a system of natural filtration by which that work was clarified and purified ; and a very close system of filtration it proved to be, * These Bibles were, beside those already mentioned, the Douay-Rhemish version (from which many Latinized words were taken), several new Latin Versions which had appeared, the authorized French Bible, put forth by ' ; the Venerable Company of Pastors" at Geneva, an Italian translation just issued (1607) by Diodati, and two Spanish versions. THE PRESENT BIBLE. 161 for never before was any version, on the whole, so colorless or so pure as this which had perco- lated through such a varied stratification. Fil- tration, however, can hardly describe the whole process, unless there be included with it a posi- tive element of improvement derived from the different media through which the percolation passed, in which case the living water, though not less colorless, may be said to have now issued forth with additional virtue as a healing power. The year 1611 saw our present Bible published, in a large black- of four years. letter folio, by the committee of final revision. It had much in its favor, already, to commend it to the public. It came with the whole influ- ence of the throne, with the prestige of con- temporary scholarship, and finally with the great advantage of a general adoption by the Established Church, for the publication of the " Bishops' Bible" ceased when it was issued.* * Though its adoption was general, yet in some churches the ' Bishops' Bible" was not displaced by it for a long 1G2 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. But to none of these advantages does there seem to have been given any undue prominence or pressure by the authorities. The work was left with the greatest confidence to make its own way among the people, and to distance if it could by its own intrinsic merits all competi- tors. The following remarkable statement is made by Mr. Westcott : " 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. It gained its currency partly, it may have been by the weight of the king's name, partly by the personal authority of the prelates and scholars who had been engaged upon it, but still more by its own intrinsic superiority over all its rivals." * HOW it came The Genevan Bible continued to thorizedVer-"" be printed and continued to be read (in a way that will shortly be told), time. Ten years after its publication we find Bishop An- drews, one of its leading revisers, taking the tests of his sermons from the " Bishops' Bible." * Hist. Eng. Bib. 158. THE PRESENT BIBLE. 163 but, by the middle of the century, after a com- petition of fifty years, it had gradually gone out of use, and thus the " Authorized Version" of the present day proves to have taken its own place not by royal decree, but by the choice of the people: "Authorized" because preferred and accepted by them. It marks a curious revo- lution in a single century, for, scarcely one hundred years before, Tyndale and his Version made on behalf of the people, could not get even the ear of the king, much less his license, and now the matter was so completely turned the other way, that the king, having originated and elaborated a most perfect revision, appeals to the will and leaves it all to the consent of the people. What a change too, and what a consummation since Wycliffe's day ! Mr. West- cott thus eloquently concludes his own history : " Whatever else may be thought of the story which has been thus imperfectly told, enough has been said to show that the history of the English Scriptures is, as was remarked by anticipation, unique. The other great verna- 164 Or/i i;.\GIJSn BIBLE AXD ITS ANCESTORS. cular versions of Europe are the works of single men, definitely stamped with their impress and bearing their names. A German writer some- what contemptuously remarks that it took nearly a century to accomplish in England the work which Luther achieved in the fraction of a single lifetime. The reproach is exactly our glory. Our Version is the work of a church and riot of a man, or rather it is a growth and riot a work. Countless external influences, independent of the actual translators, con- tributed to mould it; and when it w:is fash- ioned the Christian instinct of the nation, touched, as we believe, by the Spirit of God, decided on its authority. But at the same time, as if to save us from that worship of the letter, which is the counterfeit of true and implicit devotion to the sacred text, the same original words are offered to us in other forms in our Prayer-Book, and thus the sanction of ii-c is distinguished from the claims to finality. Our Bible, in virtue of its past, is capable of admitting revision, if need be, without violat- THE PRESENT BIBLE. 105 ing its history. As it gathered into itself, during the hundred years in which it was forming, the treasures of manifold labors, so it still has the same assimilative power of life."* The history of the immediate The strong. f L i // I" T-I i , fate ami exp*ri- outset oi the "Kings JJible, as it emvofnu- . . - , . Genevan Bible was called, is a singular one, and i,,i,,,oit,>ut . . , . . . . nut of use. shows that this universal authoriza- tion, though it came at last, was long delayed delayed not by a want of appreciation, but by party strife. Five editions of it were rapidly issued, and were an earnest of the success which belonged to it, but the times were in tumult with the Puritan excitement, which was on the increase. There was a rampant use and abuse of the Genevan Bible for the next fifty years, under the influence of this excitement, which, as in all such cases, kept the calmer and greater power biding its time in the background. The irresponsible issue of the Puritan Bible by the printers, in countless numbers, and in all forms and sizes, * Hist. Eng. Bib. 370. 166 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. under a wild and often unprincipled demand, brought into it errors of the most serious de- scription. Many of these were purposely in- troduced, either in a spirit of mischief to create confusion, and with malignant intent against a doctrine of the church, or with the design to advance and sustain some half-fledged sectarian creed. "The important negative" was, in one edition, left out of the seventh commandment, and out of many another passage also, to the complete perversion of both precept and doc- trine. Sometimes whole texts were left out. The learned Usher is described as hastening one day to preach at " Paul's Cross," and stop- ing on the way at a bookseller's to purchase a Bible, but " when he came to look for his text, he found to his astonishment and horror" that the verse had been omitted ! In one Bible six thousand errors were discovered. In another, three thousand six hundred. The great Sel- den used to get^ip in the Puritan "Assembly of Divines," where the most ignorant discus- sions often prevailed, sustained by these diminu- THE PRESENT BIBLE. 167 tive Bibles, which every one was ready to pull out and quote in " chapter and verse," and say, "Perhaps in your little pocket Bible with gilt leaves the translation may be so, but the Greek or the Hebrew signifies this." " While these transactions were occurring," says D'Israeli,* "it appears that the authentic translation of the Bible, such as we now have it, by the learned translators in James the First's time, was suffered to lie neglected. The copies of the original manuscript were in the possession of two of the king's printers, who, from cow- ardice, consent, and connivance, suppressed the publication ; considering that a Bible full of errata, and often, probably, accommodated to the notions of certain sectarists, was more va- luable than one authenticated by the hierarchy ! Such was the state of the English Bible till 1660 !" But the period of Puritan domi- Th final - ceptance and nation came to an end, and then the permanence of the Authorized " King's Bible" took all the more Ven oD - * Curiosities of Literature, iv. 354. 168 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. triumphant place, like a rock which had been only washed over and submerged, but not displaced, by the waves of fanaticism. It grew rapidly in popular esteem. Still, not until the reign of Queen Anne, nearly one hundred years after its fii~t appearance, did it take that very exalted position which has been accorded to it ever since. Then " the tide of glowing panegyric set in," says Plumptre. " It would be easy to put together a long catena of praises stretching from that time to the pre- sent. With many, of course, this has been only the routine repetition of a traditional boast. ' Our unrivalled translation,' and ' our incomparable Liturgy' have been, equally, phrases of course. But there have been wit- nesses of a far higher weight. In proportion as the English of the eighteenth century was infected with a Latinized or Gallicised style, did those who had a purer taste look with re- verence to the strength and purity of a better time as represented by the Authorized Version. THE PRESENT BIBLE. 1G9 * Each half-century has naturally added to the prestige of these merits."* It is these literary excellences The elemenu which constitute now its strength ^Tand and unattainable perfection. And p they were the work of time the work, also, of its extraordinary evolution out of a remarkable opportunity in the history of our language, and its passage through as remark- able an experience. No amount of skill or ingenuity could produce such another style, so exquisitely simple and so curiously inter- woven with the oriental idiom of the originals. The story of its gradual production is its best eulogy. It contains the wealth of seven an- tecedent Versions, and of as many contem- porary Versions in other tongues. It took the savor of antiquity from the moment Tyndale touched it, and it always leaned back into the past at any subsequent revision. At no time was it other than olden and oriental in its modes and forms of phraseology, and therefore, * Smith's Bib. Diet. iii. 1678. 170 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. as a representative of the originals, themselves so far in the past, this one element of it as a translation is of unspeakable value. Whatever may be done with it hereafter, this feature will be most jealously guarded, and will never be permitted to depart from it. The eicmenu But time has wrought a change of its present . . , n . imperfection and in it, and around it, as in all other improvement. things, a change which does not touch this its inestimable peculiarity, but which has made more conspicuous certain de- fects in its structure, that were not so apparent in its own age, and were only noticed here and there by learned men in the early course of its progress. A sun corrupt To recur to the obvious analogy original text. i i i 111 i i Progress of winch has prevailed through this textual criticism. i i -i i history : alter two hundred and sixty years have passed, it has been found necessary to re-examine and repair the ancient building of the Authorized Version. A new set of work- men have been down in the crypt of the origi- nal languages, and while they have found the THE PRETEXT BIBLE. 171 massive walls and vaulted archways generally secure, yet, in the New Testament especially, they have discovered so many minor im- perfections in this textual foundation which Erasmus, Ximenes, Stephens, and Beza laid, that its solidity is seriously affected. These new workmen upon the deep-laid foundations, and in a darkness which has all along removed them from popular sight and appreciation, are almost too many, now, to mention in detail. We must content ourselves with the names of the master- work men. John Mill began at it before the seventeenth century was out. Then Bengel and Wetstein, in Germany, devoted them- selves to it in the first part of the eighteenth cen- tury. In this the nineteenth century, Griesbach, Scholtz, Lachman, and Tischendorf, all Ger- mans, and Tregelles, Wordsworth, Ellicott, and Alford, all Englishmen, have labored so magni- ficently, that even the unscholarly mind has sometimes taken a rush-light and gone down into the crypt to curiously view their stupendous achievements in the way of emendation, and 172 01' II ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. the astonishing contributions to the strength of the original walls which several of them have made in their discovery of forgotten stones, chiselled for this very work, but left in the quarry until now.* The effect or And time has had its inevitable i i T_ l_ XT A. incompleteneiw. casions of incompleteness which affect our present Bible, and which were inevitable, either in the age of its production, or in the sub- sequent passage of years : First : the admitted imperfection of the original texts particularly the Greek tex' this having been made especi- ally manifest by the late discovery and colla- tion of manuscripts of much greater age and authority ; second : the comparatively insuffi- cient knowledge of the original languages on the part of the translators, especially in some of the niceties of grammar and philology : third : the insensible lapse of our own language, and the obsolete and obsolescent character, therefore, of many of our words, by which the meaning they had once, has gone out of them, and by which they have become assigned to other and narrower uses and associations; fourth: the lack of brief philological (not theological), an- notations, critically developing all the sub- tilties couched in a word or phrase of the original, and also of a full marginal " variorum,'* 178 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. or renderings of different hands, by the com- bination of which the whole force and spirit of the original should be thrown out, like an odor, whenever the English expression adopted in the text might prove to be inade- quate without a resort to circumlocution; fifth: the lack also of archaeological notes which would restore, as far as possible, the occasion of the original composition and the contemporary circumstances of each book, and, in some cases, part of a book. Seven errors T theSG negative pOUltB of m- completeness may be added these positive errors of judgment : first, in the divi- sion of the books into chapters,* and the chap- * The translators are not responsible for the division into chapters, but for the adoption of it. " It derived its origin from Cardinal Caro. who lived in the twelfth century." See Campbell's Translation of the Gospels, I. 492. " There are several instances in which the sense is injured, if not destroyed, by an improper division. Very often the chapter breaks off in the midst of a narrative, and if the reader stops because the chapter ends, he loses the connection. Sometimes the break is altogether in the wrong place, and separates two sentences which must be THE PRESENT BIBLE. 179 ters into verses,* in places where the sense of a passage is interrupted by the division; second, in the breaking up of the paragraphs into verses instead of keeping the figures on the margin to facilitate reference merely ; third, in the introduction of the chapter-headings, by taken together in order to be understood." Eadie's Bill. Encyclopedia. " In each of the following sixteen passages, the connec- tion between the end of one chapter, and the beginning of the other, is so intimate as to render the chapter divi- sion extremely unsuitable : 1 Sam. ix. x. ; Eccles. xi. xii.; Song iv. v.; Isa. Hi. liii. ; Ezek. i. ii.; Amos i. ii.; Jonah i. ii. ; iii. iv. ; Mark viii. ix. ; John xviii. xix. ; Acts iv. v.; xxi. xxii. ; 2 Cor. iv. v. ; Gal. iv. v. ; Eph. v. vi. ; Heb. iii. iv. Such are a few specimens of the extreme inaccuracy with which the text of Scripture is divided.'' Plea for a New Enyl. Version of the Scri'pturcs, Ly a Licentiate of the Church of Scotland, 199. * " The following are a few of many passages in which the versification is extremely inaccurate : Exod. xx. 5, 6 ; 9, 10; Deut. xxxiv. 1, 2, 3; 10, 11, 12; Isa. Ixii. 6, 7 ; John iii. 14, 15; Rom. viii. 33, 34; 1 Cor. iii. 22, 23; vi. 19, 20 ; vii. 29, 30, 31 ; Gal. v. 19, 20, 21 ; 22 Eph. i. 15, 16 ; 2 Tim. iii. 16 ; 17 ; Heb. i. 1, 2 ; 1 Pet 180 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. which an interpretative gloss or commentary is often made, as in the case of the Canticles, Psalms, and Prophets, to anticipate the reading of a chapter; fourth, the introduction of an excessive amount of italicised expressions, ori- ginally intended to clear the meaning, but which in some cases affect the sense ; * fifth, a want of uniformity in proper names, by which the personages of the Old Testament are hardly recognisable in the New, and the connection of the two histories is almost broken apart ;f i. 3, 4, 5. In each of these sixteen passages the former verse ends and the latter begins in the midst of a sen- tence." 11. 197. * This was done after 1611. Great errors crept into the text, and it had to be revised. This revision was made by .Dr. Scattergood in 1683 and by Dr. Blayney in 1769. The latter revised the punctuation, examined and corrected the italics, introducing them more frequently than was neces- sary, altered the summaries of the chapters and running titles, corrected errors in chronology, and greatly increased the number of the marginal references. f E. (j. Elias for Elijah, Eliseus for Elisha, Noe for Noah, Cis for Kish, Jesus for Joshua, and so on. THE PRESENT BIBLE. 181 sixth, errors in punctuation, and especially the want of quotation marks, by which the frequent citations of the Old Testament Scriptures are made almost unapparent, and the individual speeches which appear in both Testaments are allowed to blend themselves with the comments and context of the writer;* and seventh a matter of translation the indelicacy of many passages, especially in the Old Testament, which even a fidelity to the original does not make necessary, and which would only have appeared in an age when literary and social taste was grosser than in this. There were two disadvantages /be translator* o imperfect know- under which the translators labored, IX^JSJ 1 and which accounts for much of the J^"" inadequacy of their Version. In the first place * In some cases it will not be easy to satisfy all readers that the marks of quotation are inserted in the right place and properly indicate the termination of a reported utterance, and the beginning of the reporter's comment, but in such instances the doubt ought to be honestly stated and the reader be left to form his own opinion. 182 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. they were not as well informed as we are now in the manners, customs, traditions, ideas, and general mind of the East; and in the next place, instead of learning Greek and Hebrew, as we do, through English grammars and lexi- cons, and other philological aids, they learned the Greek through the Latin, which was almost a vernacular language to them, but a very coarse medium through which to study the subtilest tongue on earth. The Greek has a much closer affinity to the English than to the Latin. But reading it with these Latin lenses, the translators often failed to render the true force of tenses, cases, prepositions, and articles, and so we have lost some of the finer shades which give emphasis and vividness to the ori- ginal not to speak of being sometimes more seriously misled. As to the Hebrew, there was another limitation, quite as unfortunate. In the strict line of Old Testament Hebrew, there were probably as great scholars then as now. Broughton, (one of the projectors though not one of the translators of the present Bible, THE PRESENT BIBLE. 183 and a severe critic of the version when finished,) could speak it like his native tongue. But it was learned at that time in the close tra- dition of the Rabbins, and not with the wider illustration of the cognate Semitic languages which have been opened by scholars since. Mr. Blunt, an opponent of revi- The movement to revision a de- sion, says 01 the present Bible: mandof theage. " The plain man may use it with a firm con- fidence that he is using that which will give him substantially true impressions of what has come down to us under the name of Holy Scrip- ture."* This is no more than any one is pre- pared to say of " Our dear old English Bible." For a "plain" unlearned Christian, who may devotionally read it, it is all-sufficient. It does convey "substantially" all of God's truth, and in the sweetest and richest of rhythmical language. But the movement to revision, which to-day has become so earnest and serious as to engage the attention of such a large number of English bishops the most conser- * Plain Account, 97. 184 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. vative of all men and which has come at last to them after the subject has been agitated so many years, is not made in the interest of " plain," simple minds, but of a great, thinking, questioning, scrutinizing age ; it is made in the interest of honesty and truth ; it is made be- cause " the people" who have " authorized" the present Version, desire it and demand it. This is an age when the people, more than ever, think and read for themselves, and with a culture and intelligence never known before. Their reasonable wish is that their Bible should come to them with no darkness, nor even dimness upon any part of it, that it should represent the original to the utmost, and that every faci- lity should be given them for arriving at the most perfect knowledge of what is conveyed to them in this word of God. The advanced character of the age, therefore, is in itself an argument for a new advance also in the English Bible. The hutoricai And for that Bible to advance is argument for re- vision. only a part of its genius, and in the THE PRESENT BIBLE. 185 order of its history. As we have seen, it is, in itself, the consummate result of repeated revi- sions. Purvey revised Wycliffe,* Tyndale revised himself many times, and very probably caught much of his simplicity of style and ancient flavor from both Wycliffe and Purvey. Coverdale revised Tyndale, Rogers revised Tyn- dale and Coverdale, the Bible of Cromwell was a revision of the Bible of Rogers, the Bible of Cranmer was a revision of the Bible of Crom- well, the Bible of Geneva was a revision of the Bible of Cranmer, the Bible of the Bishops was a revision of the Bible of Cranmer and of Geneva, and, finally, the Bible of king James was a revision of the Bible of the Bishops, with the seven antecedent Bibles open around his translators, expressly to contribute each its strength to the mighty work which the neces- sity and the spirit of that age had inspired. In the momentum of such a history, in the impetus of such an experience, it can be * Perhaps, as Mr. Blunt says, Wycliffe's Version was a revision of the previous Saxon and Norman Versions. 186 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. nothing new or strange to see the Scriptures ushered even once more upon another critical period, into a new era, when still another revi- sion shall revive the waning interest, and excite the latent enthusiasm of minds which have never yet dreamed of or realized the depth of their divinity and the breadth of their humanity, as a message from God to man. We must have a care of that tendency in us to the official "black-letter,"* which would retain the Bible in its present shape, because that shape is traditional and venerable, even at the risk of alienating those who would other- wise read it j and we must learn, at such a time as this, to take hold of the mind of the age in the wise spirit of the more popular " roman letter," and make it an attractive, intelligible, powerful, and penetrating word direct to the hearts and the homes of the people. The church would reverse the whole of her his- tory, and forget the lessons of her experience, if she. should act now with any conservative * See p. 133. THE PRESENT BIBLE. 187 reserve or timidity in giving to the world just that Bible which the world needs. In the spirit of Wycliffe let her think of the Bible as expressly for the people. In the spirit of Tyndale let her make it colorless of any church preconception, and convey absolutely what the original conveys. In the spirit of Coverdale, let her gather the rich marginal illustration of many translators around the English text. In the spirit of Cranmer, let her issue it as from the church, with conscientious- ness, with dignity, and with authority. In the spirit of Geneva, let her issue it without official vesture, as a thing of humanity as well as divinity, with the contributed power of a scholarship outside the church, and with the lamp of antiquity in its hand to illumine the darkness behind the page and behind the reader's eye. In the spirit of the Bishops, let her publish it in the hope that it may exceed in excellence its predecessor and competitor, and yet in generous confidence, let her give all its rivals room. And, finally, in the spirit of 188 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. king James and of the church in his time, let her work be so carefully, so elaborately, so courageously complete, both as a Version and as an arrangement, that she may commit it without reserve to the intelligent judgment of the age, and trust to its being " authorized" again by the unanimous preference, both of the church and of the people, through the com- pelling power of its own perfection. NO extensive The delineation of all this cumu- alteration de- signed, lative force, which ought to go into the next Version, may very possibly give the reader the idea of extensive alteration : such as would almost destroy the identity of the Bible and make it look like a new book. This is not designed by the present movement in the Church of England, and it can never take place. The present Version is too generally complete and satisfactory already, to admit of any change which would affect its familiar and reverend form. The revision now going on, is no more than a process of preservation and renovation, like that which may be, and THE PRESENT BIBLE. 189 often is, applied to an ancient work of art. The great unfinished picture of an old master, the lines of whose genius no after-hand would dare to touch, may yet be growing dimmer and dimmer in the lapse of time, its colors may be gradually fading out, the distinctness of its purpose may be much impaired, the crust of time may be gathering over it, and the tooth of time be eating away the very canvas on which the precious work is laid. It becomes then a work of duty both to the painter and to the world, that some skilful hand should remove the dust of years and bring out the colors anew in their olden beauty ; that some pencil, allied in genius with its author, should strike in the unfinished lines, and so complete the work ; and that by the process of another and newer art, the work on the perishable canvas should be transferred to the imperishable stones of the mosaic. In like manner this act of revision is only a cleaning and retouching and completing of the ancient picture, which portrays the history of our faith, and it is an act of rescuing 190 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. it from the ravages of time by transferring it to the more permanent conditions of the present day. And these permanent conditions of the present day are the open-eyed scrutiny with which the age approaches everything, and the open-hearted honesty with which everything approaches the age. The aery test The fires of verbal criticism have of adverse criti- cism has re- burned around the original text, and vealed the truth of the original, the flames of historical criticism have risen around the books of Scripture, but they have burned and raged only to reveal the pure asbestos of the divine origin and character belonging to both. so a thorough And in like manner this new pre- and fearless revi- r 1 1 i i sion will insure sentment ot them in our daily the permanency . i i of the work, tongue, must be so true, so clear, and unfold its .-, < i .. run power to the that criticism can no longer criticise, that the vision of things divine shall be no longer dim, that their inspiration shall be no longer doubtful : the whole Bible, whether as history, or prophecy, or psalmody, whether as the life of Christ, or as the opening story of THE PRESENT BIBLE. 191 the early church, to be so vivid in every part, so richly circumstanced throughout, and so duly proportioned in the measure of the import- ance belonging to every book, that the Truth shall come out in a spirit stronger than the letter, and like the sun, which in its rising and in its setting gives a glory to the clouds that is not their own, fill these human words of man's contrivance with the splendors of a meaning which none but heavenly light could have painted on them. Christianity can rely on, itself, and on its own consistency with itself, for its best evi- dence and best credential. Let then every veil be lifted from its blessed record, let every occa- sion of dimness be cleared away, that every eye may see its greatness, and every heart bow down before its power. This little history has been pre- Conclusion. pared because the time is ripe for the subject ; because the new crisis has come, and because, already, authorized companies of distinguished men are engaged in trying to 192 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. meet it.* We ourselves are passing through just such another period as one of those which gave each time the English Bible a new and better form. We are at a new stage of its * The mode of procedure by the present re\ isers is modelled on that of their predecessors in King James's time. As the latter took the then official Bible, "the Bishops'," for the basis of their revision, so the former take "The King's Bible" for the basis of the new revision, and seem to go to work with almost too much fear of making even most necessary changes (at least this is the impression conveyed by Bishop Ellicott's little book). The old church conservatism still lingers in them, and no doubt, on the whole, wisely. Better that they should be slow than too fast, timid -rather than rash. They are divided into two companies, instead of six; one engaged on the Old Testa- ment and the other on the New. Their number is not so great as in the former revision, but vast treasures of scholarship have accumulated since then, which are entirely in their possession. One significant element of the new movement is the union with it, by invitation, of eminent scholars outside the English Church. For a full account of the character and principles of the movement see Bishop Etticott " On the Revision of the English Ntw Testa- ment" London, 1870. THE PRESENT BIBLE. 193 history. The Holy Book is to take another step onward. It is to leave behind the imper- fections of its former construction, and to assume that additional completeness which will adapt it to the necessities of a new and remark- able age. Surely, this alone were occasion enough for such a delineation of the successive epochs of its development, as has now been so imperfectly performed. But even if there were no such issue at hand, the account of its strange and eventful history could not but add a tenfold interest to it, and reverence for it as it is. It lives among us the venerable relic of a terrible and stirring age. It came into being amid persecution and exile. It was sprinkled with the ashes of the stake, and the blood of the block. It was tram- pled under foot by one king, but it became the royal diadem of another. It was tried as silver is tried, and as gold refined seven times in the fire, for in seven successive crucibles of intellect, saintliness, and scholarship, was it gradually purged of its dross. It was commenced in the 194 OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS ANCESTORS. secret closet of a lone translator, hidden amid the obscurities of a Continental town ; it was finished in the open chamber of a congress of scholars in the heart of the metropolis of England. At the first in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of its own countrymen, in weariness and pain- fulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness, it reached repose at last in the courts of princes and governors, in the cloisters of universities and cathedrals, in the hearths and homes of the millions of a nation. It has appeared in the agitations of the state, and it has felt all the vicissitudes of the church. The most critical century of the church's history is mirrored in its bosom, and all the fluctuations of her doc- trine, during her season of trial, have been reflected in the mutations of its language. The labor expended in these pages will have been well bestowed if they shall have given new interest to this wonderful historic fruit and flower, and furnished a renewed occasion THE PRESENT BIBLE. 195 of reverence for that which deserves, by the heroism and singularity of its experience in our native tongue, as well as by the Divinity of its inspiration and authorship in the tongues of men now dead and gone, the title of the " BOOK OF BOOKS." APPENDIX. A NOTE. I~T has not been thought necessary to give a list of the - 1 - imperfections which originally appeared in the English Version, nor of the others which have since become so conspicuously manifest. Most of them will be found in a sort of tabulated form, and well reasoned for besides, in the " Plea for a new English Version of the Scriptures, by a Licentiate of the Church of Scotland." Many works of like character have appeared of late years, and, in some cases, entire Versions by eminent scholars and philologists. The following celebrated persons are associated with this move- ment as its advocates, either in their works or by their individual translations: Lowth, Doddridge, Wesley, Camp- bell, Newcome, Waterland, in days gone by, and, to-day, Trench, Scholefield, Ellicott, Alford, Stanley, Jowett, Conybeare, Howson, and many others. (197) 198 APPENDIX. It may be as well to refer the reader to the following works lately published, containing suggestions, more or less numerous, for a new revision : Archbishop Trench '' On the Authorized Version," and " The Synonyms of the New Testament." Dewes's " Plea for a New Transla- tion of the Scriptures." Scholefield's " Hints for some Im- provements in the Authorized Version of the New Testa- ment." Alford's "How to Study the New Testament." " New Testament for English Readers," and " Greek Testament." Francis Trench's " Notes on the New Tes- tament." Bishop Ellicott " On the Revision of the English Version of the New Testament." Lightfoot's ' Fresh Revision of the New Testament." A list of the new " Versions" which have lately appeared would fill another page. The writer ventures to append the following on a point that has seemed to be strangely overlooked by most, though not by all, and, in the overlooking, to involve even so great an inversion as the making the ethical element of our religion secondary to the emotional. The Greek words have been printed in English letters also, in order that the subject may be understood by any reader. THE RENDERINGS " REPENT YE" AND " REPENTANCE" INADEQUATE AND MISLEADING. n^HESE are the great initial, foreshadowing words of the Gospel which meet the reader as he opens his New Testament, at the point where its action begins. In Matt. iii. 12, one of them represents the theme of John the Baptist's preaching, or more properly heralding, " Repent ye !" In Mark i. 4, and Luke iii. 3, the other appears as his theme in connection with a certain practical test .and outward sym- bol, " the baptism of Repentance" Further on in Matt. iv. 17, and Mark i. 15, the proclaim- ing, comprehensive first appears again "when Jesus began to preach," after the voice of John had been hushed in prison : " Repent ye !" Taking the Evangelists thus in harmony the reader finds the keynote and strain of the (199) 200 APPENDIX. whole Gospel struck in these words of its earliest announcement. They are in them- selves harbingers. But I forget. If he reads the EiKjlish New Testament, with no knowledge of the Greek, he does not find the tenor of the whole Gospel anticipated in them, and what is more, he finds no expression in the beginning of John's Gospel which corresponds to them thus throwing it out of harmony in this par- ticular. If, on the contrary, he reads them in the original, he finds it otherwise ; at least so I must understand if I am right in what follows. The Authorized Version was made to bring the Scriptures to the common people. The learned had them already in the Greek and Hebrew originals, or in Latin Versions. The endeavor was to create an English Standard of revealed truth, so plain as to be understood by Tyndale's " plough-boy" on the one hand, and so exact as to be available for citation by teachers of the truth on the other. The words " Repent ye" and " Repentance" arc APPENDIX. 201 supposed then to represent the Greek, and to convey the same impression to people now as the original words did to the first readers of the Gospels. We turn then to the common mirrors of speech, in its popular use, to ascertain what the people do really understand by them. Bai- ley's Etymological Dictionary defines Repent- ance : " a sorrow for past deeds or omissions." Worcester's Dictionary defines it : " The state of being penitent ; sorrow or pain for something done or left undone ; penitence ; contrition ; compunction ; remorse." This is its primary signification. A secondary one is then given,, taken from the theological books: "Sorrow for sin, such as produces amendment or newness of life." Perhaps a book of synonyms may give a wider margin to the word; but Car- penter's Work furnishes no more than these : "penitence," "contrition," "remorse," "com- punction." Perhaps Roget's Thesaurus in which all the words, whether synonymous or not, that can be gathered under certain generic ideas, are to be found classified may enlarge f>02 APPENDIX. the scope of the word in its popular accepta- tion. But we find it under the head (that is under the idea of) " Penitence," and in this company: "contrition," "compunction," "re- gret," " remorse," " self-reproach," " self-re- proof," "self-accusation," "self-condemnation," "qualms or prickings of conscience," "confes- sion," " acknowledgment," " apology," and at the end of the list, as if the last and least associa- tion of all the most remote cousin of all that kindred " to reclaim, to turn from sin." It may be said that the word is technical, and that to those properly instructed, it has an additional and peculiar force. But certainly the Bible ought to have no technical terms, or words of arbitrary signification, unless the poverty of the English compels the absolute appropriation of a word to a particular mean- ing. In view, however, of a possible technical use we turn to the books of theological defini- tions. Cruden, in his Concordance (a book which accompanies the Bible in many house- holds), thus defines Repentance " That regret APPENDIX. 203 and reluctance that arises in a person after having done something that he ought not to have done" and the case in point that is cited is the emotion of Judas after he had betrayed his Master. In the technical definition which follows of "Evangelical repentance," it is as- signed to "grief" on account of sin, and this feeling " accompanied by a resolution to forsake sin, and an expectation of forgiveness." Now to Buck's Theological Dictionary (intended for popular use) : " In general, it is sorrow for any- thing past. In theology it signifies that sorrow for sin which produces newness of life." In both of these, whether popular or technical, we see " sorrow" represented as the first and almost exhaustive element of the word ; in one, amendment of life is implied as a possible con- sequence of it, while in the other it is mentioned as the result of it. But enough has been quoted to show that the word refers more to emotion than to thought or action, and that this is very nearly the exclusive impression conveyed by it. Now shut the English and open the Greek 1204 AP PESO IX. Testament, We find John the Baptist and Jesus proclaiming /uraxjsjre, metanoeite, and John proclaiming the " baptism /aeravwa?, metanoias." But let us pause a moment here, and go to the word used to express the feeling of Judas after the betrayal, which is also rendered "repent," and which Cruden cites as the primary illus- tration of the idea. We find /zer^/r^k, iiittdineletheis a different word. This is only one instance out of man}'- where a single English word is made to do duty for two, not synonymous nay, in this instance, almost opposite Greek words. But the citation of this alone will serve to show that the " habit" of the A. V. prevents the English reader from making any distinction between the grand call of the Gospel into the way that leadeth unto Life, and the wretched emotion of Judas which led him to hang himself. Throughout the A. V. " re- pent" is indifferently the rendering of either. Thus we have another element of confusion added, and this by the Version itself. But to return to our word of splendid signi- APPENDIX. 205 ficance, ^-d^a, metanoia. It is compounded of rj.a, meta after ; and vW W) noed to perceive. As the familiar -word metamorphosis, from nsra, meta after, and /^/^w, morphoo to form, means a transformation, and in this sense is applied to the changed appearance of our Saviour on the mount, so fierdvoia, metanoia, is a " transmentation," to use a coinage of Cole- ridge a cliange of mind, a change of perception . The Lexicons of the New Testament define it thus ; that of Green : /^raWw, metandeo, " to undergo a change in frame of mind and feeling to make a change of principle and practice, to reform, * * practical reformation reversal of the past;" that of Robinson: "to perceive after- wards, to have an after-view, hence to change ones views, mind, purpose" And he adds, " In a religious sense implying sorrow for unbelief and sin, and the turning from them." The implication is of sorrow on the one hand, and of turning on the other; but the middle and essential meaning is a change of perception, or transformation of mind. From this trunk 14 206 APPENDIX. these two main branches spring, as far as defi- nition is concerned. So much for the word in itself. But now see the reflexive force of its circumstances , keeping it in that signification and sublimating it. METavoEire, " Metanoeite I " said both John and Jesus, " for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand !" JAravoeiTe, " Metanoeite ! and believe the good tidings!" The people were summoned to a frame of mind and heart corresponding to this new order of things. The call was not "The wrath of God has come! Repent ye !" i. e. be penitent ; but the " Good News has come, the long-expected kingdom has come prepare yourselves for it. The long-de- sired Deliverer has come go ye out to meet Him !" Of course, under the stern, legal preaching of the Baptist that " inward change" sometimes pointed to the " wrath to come," and doubtless that dark side of the bright Gospel was often urged ; but what do we find, even in his teaching, follows the call to /zerdvoca, metanoia ? Do we read of cries, and tears, and remorse ? or APPENDIX. 207 is it not just the other way ? Is it not action that we see, and only emotion by implication ? Stirred by his "exhortations," and his por- trayal of the Great One who was at hand, they crowded to his baptism, and going down into the water, "buried" the "old man" in that grave, and rose again as the "new man." If that expressive act was not a vivid symbol of an absolute change, what could be ? But still further, see the word in the reflexive light of his teachings also First, as a change of percep- tion, vow:, nous, " Think not," said he to the Pharisees and Sadducees, and (according to Luke) to the multitude as well, "Think not to say within yourselves ' we have Abraham to our father,' for God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham !" A full exposition of that statement must have had an enlighten- ing and revolutionizing effect on the minds of those who listened to it ; and John, emerg- ing from his ascetic seclusion, in the hairy dress and leathern girdle of an ancient prophet, with the look of Elijah and the voice of Isaiah, 208 APPENDIX. was an unquestioned authority on that subject to the multitude, if not always to their leaders. So again, when he said that the axe was laid at the root of the trees, and every tree that brought not forth good fruit was to be hewn down, there was material for " reflection" and change of "perception," bordering close on a change of disposition also ; for the heart is not far off from the mind, and a change of situa- tion in one is apt to induce a change of situa- tion in the other. And Second, "Bring forth," said he, "fruits worthy of perd-soia, metanoia," and in a few lines we have a digest of his practical teachings of what a man should do, whose perceptions had been changed. Read the ps-rawa, metanoia , in this light: To the people who asked "What must we do, then?" he said, "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise." To the publicans, " Exact no more than that which is appointed you." To the sol- diers, " Do violence to no man ; neither accuse APPENDIX. 209 any falsely ; and be content with your wages." These glimpses into his teaching are his own definition of ^-dvtna, metanoia. It was nothing less than a change of view as to principle, and a reformation as to heart and life, and, as far as the stress of the record goes, more of either than of sorrow, evidently and strongly as that is implied also. So, if we seek the interpreta- tion of the word from its circumstances, and the import of the proclamation from its effect, we find ^rd^na, mctanoia, to have a meaning immeasurably deeper and grander than the repentance of the dictionaries and the ver- nacular. It meant just what it was prophesied that John should accomplish. He was to " turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready" (not make sorry) " a people pre- pared for the Lord." (Luke i. 16.) So the Baptist, uttering the spirit of the Law, which was half-way to the Gospel, urged to a mind and life which conformed to it. And afterwards, when he had done his part, Christ 210 APPENDIX. took up the self-same word and theme metanoeite ! and carried it on into the full Gos- pel. The last note of the law, by the last of the prophets, was even what its first note was. " Reform !" live up to the law leave the wrong live to the right! And when the Gospel took up its sublime movement, its trumpet rang the self-same note again, and, this time, so that all humanity should hear it " Reform !" The idea and purpose of the one were only more magnificently the idea and purpose of the other righteousness of life, genuineness of nature, faithful and practical morality of heart and conduct. Read /seravoerre, metanoeite, as proclaimed by the lips of Jesus in the light of His teaching also ; and see again the infinitely practical sig- nificance of the word. Read in it the whole Sermon on the Mount, in which the law was not destroyed, but fulfilled. Read in it every precept and every parable pointing to the Christian life, uttered in the teaching of the long three years to come ! The whole weight APPENDIX. 211 of that vast morality is thrown into the scale. Which way, then, does the beam turn ? towards the emotion on this side of the " changed mind," or towards the action on the other ? So great is the preponderance of the latter, that we are more than ever impatient of a word which keeps the fact and its telling, captivating lesson from the people. And with all this so patent, comes the strangest aspect of this matter. No commen- tary within my reach notices regretfully this inversion of meaning ; hardly any notice it at all and no one of them suggests the necessity of remedying it. Dean Alford, whose elaborate Greek Testament is so full of fine renderings, and the development, sometimes, of the almost incommunicable force and subtle distinctions of the original, who has issued three different works containing suggestions as to a revision of the A. V., never even pauses at the word, fjLSTavoeiTs, metanoeite, but leaves the " Repent ye," we are so familiar with, to go on uttering its vague, uncertain sound. I turn to a score 212 APPENDIX. or more of versions that are lying around me, and can cite but two or three, among them all, that make or suggest an alteration. These exceptions, and eminent ones they are, will be mentioned further on. I open Archbishop Trench's work on the " Synonyms of the Greek New Testament," where so many admirable discriminations appear, and fisravHiw, metanoeo and fj.sTctfjittu/jLat, metamelomai are not on the list ; at the end of the book, however, in a brief supplementary mention, they are inserted, and reference is made to a Latin extract from Bengel, in the appendix.* But this extract is upon a * A new edition, issued siuce the above was written, contains a learned and elaborate statement of the question, and in entire agreement with the view now presented. " Msravoeiv" he says, "is properly to know after, as -fid'sHsly to know before, and fierd'soia. /?er-knowledge, as xpovota /ore-knowledge * * * At its next step fj.srd.vota signifies the change of mind consequent on this after- knowledge * * * At its third, it is regret for the course pursued; resulting from the change of mind consequent on this after-knowledge * * * Last of all it signifies change of conduct for the future, springing from all this.' 1 APPENDIX. 213 passage, in 2 Cor. vii. 8, which I was just about to cite as a culminating instance of confusion and misconception in the A. V. in this regard. lie goes on to say : " At the same time this change of mind, and of action, may be quite as well a change for the worse as for the better j there is no need that it should be a ' rescipiscentia' as well; this is quite a Christian superaddition to the word." Certainly. The word is best defined by its connection the nature of the change by its circumstances, a set of bad influences and ideas coming upon a good mind and a good life may produce the fierdvota, a change of view, disposition, and action. But Archbishop Trench proceeds : " It is only after fjL~avo'.a has been taken up into the uses of Scripture * * * that it comes predominantly to mean a change of mind, taking a wiser view of the past, a regret for the ill-done in that past, and out of all this a change of life for the better * * * in the New Testament //eravoelv and p.srdvoia are never used in other than an ethical sense. * * * But while they gradually advanced in depth and fulness of meaning (he is alluding to a less definite classical use), till they became the fixed and recognised words to express that mighty change in mind, heart, and life wrought by the spirit of God which we call repentance, the like honor was very partially vouchsafed to p-era-nlketa and fisranlhaOai." New Testament Synonyms, p. 241, Ixix. 214 APPEXDIX. The two words come together, and no wonder that some one thought it high tiino to dison- tangle them from each othor " For though 1 made you sorry with a letter. I do not rtywf ptreif^ioftai (mefamelomai, regret), though 1 did repent /tfrajuexo^ijy (metameJomSn. regret). * * Now I rejoice, not that ye wore made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance ^ravav (metanoian, reformation). For godly sorrow worketh repentance furdvmav (metanoiin. roforma- tion) unto salvation, not to be repentetl of afilrafi^mv (ametamel^ion, regretted). The distinction between these two words was evidently thought too small, by the translators, to be of practical account. Their own inade- quate perception of the chief one allowed them to admit this play on words, without any thought that it was losing its individual force or significance. And as it is here, so it was allowed to be throughout the New Testament, to the unhappy production of the same confusion of meaning. It is time, now, in order that the distinction APPKNblX. 215 may \*> more than ever manifest, to find out exactly what this other word, rendered "re- pentance," luraiitttia, metameleia, meanB. It IB compounded of //era, meta, after, and //u, w'./, signifying " care, concern ;" //era, weto, gives this " care" or " concern," an after character. Con- cern for an event " to come" is anxiety, but concern for an event "past" would be Borrow. MrcaiJ.{).tta, metameleia, therefore, signifies a cJianye of care, a returning to the pat with regret. From thin, very naturally, proceeds the occasional meaning of a change of one's judgment on past points of conduct, and it mounts into a mental process, which may have a purpose in it, and, BO far, a mind but a very different mind from the we*, now. Where is the identity, then, with (urdwia, metan< They occupy two different spheres. One act forward, the other backward. One, turawuL, melanoia, is a forward movement of view and disposition, which may have part of its occa- sion in a backward look at its conduct, and t therefor, but may also be induced by a 216 APPENDIX. front occasion of enlightenment and persua- sion. The other, juera/^/eta, metameleia, is a backward movement of care, which finds its total existence in the regretted thing done, and has but little forward movement, intelli- gence and fixedness of purpose. When it has that, it becomes the other, and must change its name. The words diverge as much in their use and application as the English words " re- morse" and "reformation." Bengel, in the extract above referred to, draws the distinction thus: - l >t~>i;<,:a. metauoia, belongs properly to the understanding ; ^sra/^/e.'a, metameleio, to the will ; because the former expresses the change of sentiment, the latter the change of care, or rather of purpose. * * * * M^a^/.^.a, metameleia, is generally an intermediate term and chiefly refers to single actions ; but /^rawta, metanoia, especially in the New Testament, is taken in a good sense, denoting the repentance which concerns the whole life, and. in some respects, ourselves, or that whole blessed remembrance of the mind, after which suitable fruits follow. APPEXDIX. 217 Hence it happens that ^rro>o, metanoein, is often put in the imperative; ^-apskaOat, me- tamelestJun, never; but elsewhere, wherever [UTd;ota, metanoia is read, /zcra/iUca, metameleia, may be substituted, but not vice versa.''* Bengel's distinction is made on a review which takes in the use of the words in the Septucymt, which is more indiscriminate than the use in the New Testament; both words being put indifferently for one Hebrew word. But a version made in Egypt, in the time of the Ptolemies, three hundred years before the Christian era, cannot be perfect authority for a usage which may have obtained a whole generation after the Christian era. As Campbell says, "we know that in a much shorter period than that which intervened between the translation of the Old Testament, and the composition of the New, some words may become obsolete, and others considerably alter in signification." And he points to the A. V. as an instance of it, where (150 years in * Gnomon on 2 Cor. vii. 10. 218 APPENDIX. his time, in ours 250 years), several words are antiquated, and others bear a different mean- ing now from what they did then.* We may dismiss the Septuagint then from the discussion of the New Testament usage of these words, especially because, to quote the authority of Campbell again (and the quotation will save a citation of passages), " where this change of mind is inculcated as a duty, or the necessity of it mentioned as a doctrine of Christianity, the terms are invariably yueravoew, metanoeo, and (jLsrdvoia, metanoia. But when such sorrow is alluded to, as either is not productive of refor- mation, or, in the nature of the thing, does not imply it, they are never used."f But, to return to the distinction between them : Wm. Webster, in his " Syntax and Synonyms of the Greek Testament," thus draws the line of difference : " J/era/iWojucK, metamelomai, alter one's purpose, denoting change of feeling, the anxiety consequent on * " Gospels," I. 206, 207. f Ib. 207, 208. APPENDIX. 219 a past transaction, remorse, sometimes imply- ing a return to a right state of mind, poenitet, piget. jl/erdi/oew, metanoeo, change one's views for the better, implying the sorrow by which sin is forsaken ; Latin resipisco, recover one's senses, come to a right understanding. Msrdvota, metanoia, conversion, the sanctified effect of /uETa/^/eta, metamehia, or godly sorrow ; Resipis- centia, the growing wise. Dr. Wordsworth thus expresses the difference : Merdvoca, me- tanoia, change of mind, belongs only to the good ; fjLsrafishia, metameleia, pain of mind, belongs to evil men, as well as good. Peter nzravoit, metanod, as well as //era^erac, metameletai. Msrdvos-a), metanoeo, begins with ^era^/u^a, meta- meleia, but at length delivers from perantteta, metameleia, whereas ^eraju&efa, metameleia, with- out fterdvota, metanoia, continues to eternity."* I believe there is perfect coincidence and accordance in these extracts with the views set forth above. And when such weighty authorities as these can be cited, what can be * Syntax and Synonyms of the New Testament, 221-2. 220 APPENDIX. reason of the silence in other quarters on the subject ? But how did the word "repentance," for fjLsrd^ota, metaiwia, get into our version ? Simply from the influence of the Vulgate and other Latin versions. To this influence not a few expressions in the A. V. can be traced. The Latin was almost vernacular to scholars at that time, and it was as natural to them to refer to a usage in that tongue, as to one in the English. The Vulgate has for naws'trs, metanoeite, poeni- teiitiam agite, which in the Douay-Rheirns Bible is rendered " do penance," and which, a foot- note says, " does not only signify repentance, and amendment of life, but also punishing past sins by fasting and such like penitential exer- cises." This idea of " punishment" comes from poena the root of the word. Out of " penance" comes "penitent," "one who is penitent or sorrowful for sin ; a repentant" (Worcester) ; and "penitence" is "the state of being peni- tent." In the Vulgate, there is no discrimina- tion between ^erdvoia, metanoia, and /^ra/^/u.'a. APPENDIX. 221 metameleia, as we might well suppose. The English word has thus become saturated with the idea of "pain." "penalty," and never suggests, except by implication, the idea of change or reformation. Beza, in his Latin version, in a true Protes* tant spirit, went back to the fountain head, and, in trying to render the Greek more exactly, introduced the word resipisco for //e-dvoetw, me- tanoeo, and resipiscentia for //erdvota, metanoia. In this the surcharging influence of "peni- tence," " pain," suggested by the Vulgate, was eliminated and the idea of the Greek word was more nearly approached. Beza would seem to have derived t^-ravota, metanoia, from /tero, meia, and aw.a, cuioia ; a*ma, ctnoia, want of under- standing, folly, rashness, heedlessness ; a change, therefore, from a want of mind, or per- ception, a return to one's senses. This, Adam Clark seems also to prefer.* Resipisco (from re and sapere) conveys the idea of a " return to wisdom," and might be made to mean all that * Cf. Comm. in loc. 15 222 APPENDIX. is conveyed by ne-avow, metanoeo. It was a decided divergence from the Vulgate, and drew Beza into controversy with the Roman Catholic theologians who preferred poenitentia to resipis- centia because, to quote Archbishop Trench, "hallowed by long ecclesiastical usage, and having acquired a certain prescriptive right, by its long employment in the Vulgate."* I sup- pose a change of "repentance" to some word more expressive, would be resisted now in some quarters on the same grounds. But Beza could cite ancient ecclesiastical authority for the change. With the decided influence which his Version had upon Protestant theologians, his Greek text too being the chief reliance of those who formed the A. V., it seems strange that the equivalent at least of resipisco was not put into English. Repent does not represent it, neither " mind" nor " want of mind," are sug- gested by it, but it would seem to be a sort of mild rendering of the Vulgate, at any rate be- traying its influence in keeping uppermost the * Authorized Version, 52. APPENDIX. 223 idea of penitence. Repentance, was certainly never born of ^sravota, metanoia, which Beza always renders by resipiscentia. " Poenitentia is at fault," says Trench, "in that it brings out nothing but a serious dis- pleasure on the sinner's part at his past life, and leaves the changed mind for the time to come, which is the central idea of the original word, altogether unexpressed and untouched."* And yet Trench resists the alteration ! What then is the force of re-poenitentia? Nothing more, it seems to me, than " repentance" in its ordinary and popular acceptation. But in alluding to the Vulgate, and its authority for such a strange inversion and sup- pression (perhaps want of development) of the meaning of /^ravoezre, metanoeite, we have another and even older index of the ancient meaning. The Syriac Version, the oldest known to scholars, written in the very language spoken by the Baptist, by the Saviour, and by the people ; a rendering back from the Greek * :; Authorized Version," 52. 224 APPENDIX. into the Aramaic, and not unlikely, in this instance, into the very words originally spoken, is uniform in preserving the distinction between Reformation and Repentance. Jthrdwstv, mela- noein, it renders (see Campbell) thub, " to reform, to return to God, to amend one's life;" metanoia, thebutJia, a "reformation;" i, metamelestliai, is rendered tliua " to repent," " to be sorry for what one has done.* Nothing could be more satisfactory, after an analysis of the Greek words themselves, than this almost vernacular evidence of their primi- tive meaning. The two languages, one born on the spot, and the other occupying the country; one the speech of its people, the other the dialect of their Scriptures unite most im- pressively here to condemn the Latin intrusion. It rouses in us something of the spirit of that ancient people to be rid of the Roman yoke, and to possess our heritage free of such alien repression. After all this, we may be allowed to wonder * " Gospels" 211. APPENDIX. 225 at the indifference of theologians to such an important distinction a distinction which, if made, -would amount almost to a revelation to the people. The practical effect of the word "repentance" when representing (lerd^oia. meta- noia, in the New Testament, is to give a fore- most consequence to " penitence," and to keep its possible, but all requisite result, "amend- ment," in the background. The tendency of the popular mind is to lose sight of the fact that the first design of the Gospel is to produce reformation of heart and life ; and this unfor- tunate rendering has done not a little to form that general misapprehension as to the end and aim of the Christian religion,, and to encourage that mere emotionalism, in which so much of the Christian impulse is content to remain. And is it not occasion enough for regret, and for discus- sion too, when it can be truly said of this ren- dering that, from the initial position, and fore- shadowing character of the word, it affects the distinctness of the moral system of the New Testament, and does not adequately suggest the 226 APPENDIX. ethical character of the Christian Religion. But give fjLcrdfjio'.a., metanoia, its full intrinsic force, and then we have identically that divine change which John, in the beginning of his Gospel, with such characteristic memory and insight, reports as the early call of Jesus : "Ye must be born again." Now all four Gospels become strikingly and vividly accordant at once. They all utter the same note. Remark the correspondence : the Baptist, in Mark and Luke, preaching "the Baptism of Reformation." JESUS, in Matthew, " Reform ! for the king- dom of heaven is at hand !" In Mark " The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come, Reform !" In John " Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God !" In Matthew " Except be ye converted (i e. changed into something else) and become as little children, ye shall not enter the king- dom of heaven." Nor does it stop here. Peter, in the Acts, cries "Reform! and be baptized every one of you for the remission of sins." " Reform (become changed in mind), APPENDIX. ^11 therefore, and be converted (changed in life), that your sins may be blotted out." Paul, in Corinthians, writes, " If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new," and in Ephesians " Be renewed in the spirit of your mind put on the new man." Thus the whole system seems to have been grasped in the long reach of its first great heralding word, and becomes from beginning to end sublimely consistent with itself. But admitting the inadequacy of this render- ing, as many may be ready to do, the question will rise how to change it. It is not a question whether it shall be changed at all, as one might be led to ask in view of the probable objections of those who would cling to it as it is, despite its error, solely on the ground of its long use and hallowed association the Roman Catholic reason, as we have seen above, against the Be- zan departure from the Vulgate ; but how can it be changed or remedied ? The word " Re- pentance" takes its inadequate force into the 228 APPENDIX. whole literature of Christianity. It pervades Catechisms, and established formularies of doc- trine, and even the Prayer Book itself. If this difficulty did not exist, the suggestion of Dr. Campbell and more lately of Mr. Robert Young, might be adopted.* They prefer the words "Reform," "Reformation," for the fisravo'.a, metanoia, leaving " Repent" and " Re- pentance" to stand, where they represent the idea of the //era, meta, and /^/da, melo. " Imayine our New Testament opening with the clarion call " Reform f" and the whole working of the Gospel untechnically declared to be from Bap- tism on, as unto "Reformation," and what a new association and vivid interest would be awakened ! how much more grandly, too, would the historic event and spectacle of the Glad Tidings appear !" That noble Version, "the Genevan," of whose singular independence and wisdom I * Campbell, Gospels, I. 207. " The Holy Bible trans- lated according to the Letter and Idioms of the Original Languages," by Robert Young, Edinburgh, in loc. APPENDIX. 229 have had occasion to speak so frequently in the preceding pages, renders "Amend your / for " Repent ye." The rendering is in three words, instead of one, but with exactly the same meaning.* As a single word is the more desirable, " Reform" would seem on the whole, to be the best English equivalent for t^ra-^e'.-^ metanoeite. for, if it leans at all, it leans forward to action, and not backward to sorrow, as " Repentance" certainly does. No one word in our language can exactly represent the signifi- cant original, and therefore, the nearest that can be found ought to be used, and then a glossarial foot-note assign and limit it to the full philologi- cal force of the Greek. The word " Reform" carries with it much of that massiveness and definiteness of meaning which belonged to the original word that ushered in the Gospel. As denned by Worcester, it means " To change * In Matt. iii. 8. " Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance," the marginal rendering is, " answerable to amendment of life." Why is this glimpse of the true meaning given here and no hint of it repeated elsewhere ? 230 APPENDIX. from worse to better;" "to correct;" "to amend ;" " to restore ;" " to reclaim" (not one allusion to "repent," by the way). We use the word of individuals when they have turned from some especial course of wickedness. Any public sentiment which looks to the correction of evils, or to social improvement, or to a change for the better in humanity, is known by this significant name. We apply it to the great change for the better in the Church three hundred years ago. And as it seems to me, when we consider the national and revolutio- nary significance of the Baptist's call and its individual application and reception together, we could not find a word so instantly and com- pletely equivalent as this. In any future Ver- sion which can insulate itself from theologies and systems, and which shall seek to give only the independent force of the original, this without question ought to be the rendering of fierdvota, metanoid. For the present, and until some such radical alteration be demanded and listened to, it ought APPENDIX. 231 to be possible to reverse entirely the present meaning of the word Repentance, to give it arbitrarily the exact force of fjisrdvota, metanoia, and of reformation, and to drop out of it, as much as can be, its old and foremost meaning. Let it become absolutely and confessedly tech- nical objectionable as that would be and hereafter enter the dictionaries as such; be defined when theologically used, as "reform," " change of mind, of character, of conduct, of life," and be made generally synonymous with " reform." 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The range of authors is very wide; the biographical notices lull and inter- esting. lam surprised that the author has been nble to collect so ir.:aiy particulars in this way. The selections appear to me to h dis- crimination, and the criticisms atlon of the qualities of the writers, as well as I can judge.' H'iltium Jf. Preicott, the HMarian. The present edition has been thoroughly revised, every pafe h: gone over, and notices of authors \vli' the i revi<,us editions were published, have been revised and continued to t!-f j.s ri d of their decease.and long and critical articles on tl . n-.'int day have been added, making the work complete in every rc'prct t i tlie present time. It should occupy a prominent place in the library of every cultivated American. GEMS FROM THE AMERICAN POETS. With brief biographi- cal notices. \Vith a line i-n^raviiig on .steel. 32mo, i GO cents; illumiuated sides, 90 cent! ; Turkey mor., extra, il.OJk FREDERIC H. HEDGE, D.D. THE PROSE WRITERS OP GERMANY. With Introductions. Biographical Notices, and Tr:;: Yv'r.lisix] steel and ensravecl title. Imperial svo. Cloth, extra, gilt top, bevelled boards, So.CO; sheep, marbled edges, library style, $3.00; half calf, gilt, c7.50; full Turkey morocco, tlO.OD. "There Is no book accessible to the Knslish or American reader which can furnish so comprehensive and symmei r, r._;ure to thcuniiiated: and those already runvcs classics will find hero valuable and edi viiu :v in this country can gain access." I'rof.A. l'.rcatxxiy,i>i J,~urlh American KevUw. PROF. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. THE POETS AND POETRY OF EUROPE. With Introductions, Biographical Notices, and Translations, from t'.:c KurlUst Period to the Present Time. New e; full Turkey mon<-.- ., 12.0 i. "Tliis valuable volume contains select ions from about three hundr Bl.xty authors, translated Iror.i ten lanr:nnf;"s, tin- 1 ,'<-li,(;y AI.I:XAMM:I: ( 'n AI.M i:i:s, A.M., and uiossariul and other Notes and Keiervne, >. i by (JEOKIJE Lux(; DrvcKiNK. With twelve full-pa^e tinted Illustrations, designed by Nicholson, a superb portrait mi steel, from the celebrated Droeshottt picture, and beaut Mill engraved title, on steel. HT'i pp. Imperial 6vo. Cloth, extra, gill back, > I...,; .sneep, library stylo, $1.50. FINE EDITION" OF THE AP.OVE, on extra calendered paper, with the addition of a Hlfctory of the Early Drama and sia^e. to the time of Bhakspeare, a full an 1 comprehensive Lite, by J. PAYNK ( '01.1,11:1:, A.M., Bhakspeare'a Will, critical and his- torical Introductions to cadi i:ay, and thirty-live full-, tinted engravings, irom designs by Nicholson, u superh j>or- trait on 'steel irom tin) cclcbrati-d I troc-iliotit jiiciurc, and beautiful en^ravi'd title on steel. Imperial 8vo. 1081 pages. Half calf, gilt, t.s.T.i; lull Turkey morocco, $10.00. POEMS AND SONNETS. With a line cnirnivin^ on steel. ::-_:mo. Cloth, OJ cts.; illuminated side, IW cts.; 1'urkey morocco, jl. . THOMAS PERCY, D.D., Bishop of Dromore. To which is now added a Supplement of many Curious liis- torical and Narrative I'.allads, reprinted from rare copies, with a copious glossary and notes. New edition, uniform with the above. 558pp. Imperial 8vo. Two steel plates. Kino cloth, bdk, Kilt, $3.75; sheep, library style, 1.00; full Turkey morocco, ^10.00. "But above all, I thon first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's Beliquc's of Ancieut Poetry ..... I remember well the spot where I read i. !'*! volumes fe.r the Ihst time. It was beneath u DUge l)laiit:inus ... -on Intended for an old-fashioned nrl>or, in ; liave mentioned. The s.i.a..i r day aped around so fast, lliat notwithsuuidlng tiie sliarp app.-.ite ot thirteen, I lorgct the hour of din- ner v, for witu anxiety ami w.is still lound entranced In my liitcllfctuaL li uiqnct. To read and t > rememlH r was in this instance the same tliini:, an! a t 1-';' ofntemporartea. -Words that brea) ' i:lt h ', :r , :l> < ",?,'. 1 merely ornaments, but the con., .on stapleol his pn, try: a::d ";, i ^"'.''' '" ppirod'or impros^iv.. oMlvin somo ha; body and t.ssue ofliis composition.' -J*>rd Jfffrry, J-Muiburgh, brvirw. cts.; illuuiiuatedside, 90 cts.; Turkey morocco, $1.50. PORTER A COATES PUBLICATIONS. ALEXANDER WILSON. AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY; or, The Natural History of the L>ii es. Ill as t rated \viih : and colored fro:.i o:-u;iiu:'. ot" the li. .:h(u-, by Georre On!. . x.'itll r>o:uii.::r;e's continuation, conl vy of Birds Inhabiting the Unit ,\nl\v \Vil ai. \, it!i figures drawn. Laden Bonaparte. (Prince of ,"'. volumes, imi carefully colored plates, emhraeiir; nearly -,..O li :r.r. - mostly life si7< . iv bound in elo; . silt tops, uiicut, $iio.OJ; half Turkey morocco, uiarbicd edges, ..00. A new and magnificent edition of this world-renowned work, printed from this work lor accuracy of dcscr. been acknowledged. D.ini. 1 \V* :suf it in Kiel ing that ot" the salt water birds, mentioned in "Wil one, and compared them with his delineations : ... d ix v CASK lound them PKI:I . ::.\TK TO N on Quartrrly Tfrrinpchara. a specimen of American book maUinir. it l-.ns never iven fur; - the low prieo it H now offered, should bo ia every public and private . of aii}' pretensions. ELIZABETH BARRETT DROWNING. THE POETICAL "\VORICSOI-'' ELIZABETH BARRETT EROV.'X- ING. Complete. Printed wills ,ca laid 111 and a line port rait on steel. T\vo clc-T:-.:it vclur.ics, 1 $5.1.0; h;:lf t-alf, ilt, CXtl . , : ^ull Turkey, extra, , crown 8vo volume, clotli, extra, C-1CO. The poems of Mrs. Browning have received tne encomiums of the ablest authors and critics, a:ul have u^ume.I tal names tliat are not soon tod i wrote with the same vigor of tlioujht, united with such del' ment Of feeUnc. Witli many she is decidedly preferred to T while she has the same happy turns of expression, and pretty conceits of language, sue unites more strength, and character. A CHARMING WORK. MOTHER GOOSE IN HER NEW DRESS. A Series of Charming Sketches, bo.iutil'ully eli: . vill create a sensation. The dislin ilhorcss dt ori3inal of this v.-orlc as a bu - . v.-ho occupies one of t'.jc highest positions i:i t::e I'nited : ornment, l)'.:t ::rs h;:; pcning t>> ^ei> it A. Struck by it ; r.u rit ;, t'.'.:M Mother Goose never ' ::arr.iiiv: c sent dross. Cloth, gilt, beautifully bound, v.'ith linen gi. $1,50. CERVANTES. THE HISTORY AND ADYrVITUrs OF DON QUIXOTE DE LA liANCHA. From the Spanish ol s. \\'ith six full- illustrations, by Gustavo Doru. Largo 12mo, cloth, extra, fci.60. POUTER & COAXES' PUBLICAT - CHARLES KNIGHT. HALF HOURS WITH THE P,F.ST AUTHORS. With Short Bio- graphical and Cmi.-ul No gantly printed on tin- : r*i nut* \V 1 1 1 fl-^/. i- f *-., 1 ....t * i *- o i. Saper. With fine steel portraits. vuls.."<-iown \-o ci.,- oardvgllt tops, 0.00; half calf, gilt, $l >.<;:>; half morocco ellt 18,00; or t ., U n Jfirtionary of Author*. 'TliU is a new and !> lur V..- :\ of a national romance which bas.hoen m mii'-:i r -xd and admired as almost any of Scott s or Dickens' I'ovels. It M low-priced, well printed, and handsomely bound. Thousand* of readers will be glad to go over this stirring tale once more." Philadel- phia Insi. REGINA MARIA ROCHE. TUT: rniLDREX OF THE ABBEY, illustrated by F. o. c. DAE- ,. Uniform with " The Scottish Chiefs." Crown Svo, W6 pp. Fine English cloth, gilt. Price, il.53; half calf, gilt, - "This classic Is more neatly published in the new edition than we have ever seen it. It was long a standard, and had more favor than "r.iaddeus of V/arsaw,' and it deserved better. It takes a new lease of existence now, and W almost envy those who read it for the tlrst time." Jfforth American, Philadelphia, ROBERT McCLURE, M.D., V.S. THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN'S STABLE GUIDE. Contaln- in-c a l-':uniliur Description of the American .stubl--; th<- m-.st approved Method of Feeding, Grooming, and General Manage- ment (if II >r:-< -s; to^'.'tlKT with Directions for the Care of Carriages, Harness. Ac. Expressly adapted for the owners ol equipages and fine horses. Cloth extra, illustrated, $L50. A handv manual, giving to the owner of a horse just the Information of a practical n..:r.rc mat lie often feeli tic need of, and by an author who thoroughly understands what he is writing about, and what is needed by every gentleman. "Such a treatise has been needed for years, and we think this volume will supply t he want. The illustrations are very good and timely." PMtburgk Daily Gazette. PORTER * COATES PUBLICATIONS. JOHN J. THOMAS. THE AMERICAN FRUIT CULTURIST. Containing Practical Directions lor tin- Propagation and Culture of Fruit Trees in the Nursery, Orchard, acid Garden. "\Vith inscriptions ot the Principal American and Foreign Varieties cultivated in the United States. Si-coud edition. Illustrated with -H ac'-urate figures. Crown 8vo. Cloth extra, bev. bds., gilt back. t-'i.iA). We IKIVO read hundreds of criticisms on this hook, nml they unanimously pronounce it the most CAoroupA, proftteot, and comprrAmriwework puiilNln d, Tii" engravini:-! an- not copies ol' old cuts from other books, but are mainly original with the author. J. H. WALSH, F.R.C.S. ("Stonehenge.") THE HORSE IN THE STABLE AND THE FIELD; his Manage- ment hi Health and Disease. From the last London edition, -,vith copious Notes and Additions, by ROBEKT Mcl'Lvui:, M.D.. Y.S., author of "Diseases in tin; American Stable, Fit-Id, and Farm-yard," with an Essay oil the American Trotting Horse, and suggestions on the Breeding and Training of Trotters, by EI/LWOOD HAUVKY, M.l>. With so engravings, and full-page engravings from photographs from lite. Crown Svo. Cloth, extra, bev. bds. "This Americanizing of 'Stonehenge' gives ns the best piece of Horse Literature of tho season. Old horsemen need not be told who JSton. is in the British Books, or that he is the highest authority in turf ami nary nfiairs. Add to these the labors of such American writers as J)r. McClure and Dr. Harvey, with new portraits of some,of our most popular living horses, and we have a book that no American horseman can afford to be without." Ohio Kirnicr, Cleveland. April 24. ' It sustains its claim to be the paly work which has brought together In a single volume, and in clear, concise, and comprehensive lanuuaire. ad'-lr. Norris's example, and not write upon a subject until they had practically mastered it, wo should have fewer and better works. Ills volume will live. It is thoroughly instructive, good-tempered, and genial." Philadelphia Pre*t, PORTER & rOATES* I'V r,T.Ic.\Tin\S OLIVER BUNCE. ROMANCE OF THE REVOLUTION. Bein? true Stories of the Thrilling Adventures, Romantic Incident*, Hair-breadth Escapes :m:l Heroic Exploit* Of the ."-;. Laid ] with six iliustratious. l(3rno, cloth, extra. "U'hile the principal events of the history of our glorious Revolution are known to every imelli;,'cul American, much rciiK. lu.,ed of the inner history of the w.ir, and the motives and | eople. There were deeds of Individual during, her... of i ; recce and Home, dashing and hazardous < bravely borne, performed by subalterns and private soldiers in tin army CECIL B. HARTLEY. LIFE OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE, Wife of Napoleon I. "\Vilh a fine Port rait on. Steel. ICmo. Printed on fine laid paper. Cloth, extra, il.50. "Her career and her character were alike remarkable; surrounded by the ili- t..f the l-'ren:-h d .. K<>ia:.n matron in stern rectitiKlo, win a pro-eminent fld compr ih a warm heart and a noble ; Bhe was de peer of Napoleon, and In some i cutive her fores!:;'.:! w::< great r. Iti-s to her that the index S : i oleon got a i! i lier because he wisln d his seed to inherit the French Crown. >ra of hto Hapobnrg marr :ie the 'u of Josephine now weara t::c purple of Fr:uife this is m< r poetic justice. * * * In the book before us, the story of her life Is told In !e. nnd possesses a fascination rarely met with In bio- graphy.'' Chicapu Evening Journal. MRS. ANNA JAMESON. LIVES OF CELEBRATED FEMALE SOVEREIGNS AND IL- LrsTtllDt"^ Wn.MiiX. I-Mii.'il l>v Mary K. Hewitt. With four portraits <>n sto-1. IGmo, beautifully printed on laid paper. Cloth, extra, il.oO. The celebrated Mrs. Jameson, who wields a powerftil, readv, and pleasant pen, has taken hold of some of the leading events in tho brilliant some of the most world-noted women, and depicted tlvm in very attracl colors. It is a lovely book for young ladies, and will give tnem a taste for history. J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE. HISTORY OF THE GREAT REFORMATION OF THE SIX- ::.VTI1 CENTURY, in Germany. Switzerland, * ranee, England*-. Five volumes iu one. Royal 8yo, 8o3 pp. \\itu LO , n-ravin-s on ste.-l. and n superb ])ortr:iir .t th $5.00; sheep, library style, Wi.OO; hail' calf, antique, Now tlmt the dosrtnaof InfaUihlllty of thn P"r ^J^f? JS .i-min,' history of simil:. v. r llir-. ; huii.lr . > ac.mires a new interest. The narrative is so picturesquely told, it ha allll attractions of a romance. PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. MARGARET HOSMER. Author of "Chcrrv. t:-,o rrrMomr*-." "Ornndma rrcrritfs Stories," "The Voyage of the \VLite I'alcon," hiladcljjhia Daily Age. LENNY, THE ORPHAN; or, Trials and Triumphs. Illustrated, by Faber. IGmo. Price, cl.'Jo. " A story hook of nn orphan hoy. who Is thrown loos npon the world by a conflagration. i:i w.iicii l.is niu'lht r nnd only surviving parent is burnt. Tin- varieties of experience, both porrowiul and happy, through which tiie boy passes, ore wrought up Into a. story of no little power, and \ t ;> , as often occu- in actual life. The religious teachings of the book are good, ond penetrate the entire structure of the story. \Ve rprommend dially to a place Lu the Sunday-school library." ^'ajitUij/-A'./xyi Tunes, Phila- delphia. "The author of this book has written some of the best Sunday-school bnoks which have rei-i-ntly boen issued from the press of tho American Sun- day School I'nion. The volume beiowms portrays Ihetrlals of a litl w!io loses his mother in eanv IKe, and is subjected to the Intricnesof a de- { person, from which he o'lluins a luippy deliverance. Tliectoryla well planned and written, and its mural and religious lessons are good." WeeJcty freedman, Kew Bruiiswick, JX. J. PORTER A COATES' PUBLICATIONS. JAMES HOGG, the Ettrick Shepherd. THE MOUNTAIN HARD AX:> F< Hir.sT MIXSTRr.U legendary Bongs and Ballads. \\'ii,i i\v> lino < clota, i) ) r.'iit.s; illuminated bide, 00 cxuU; Turkey inor., U.5J. " He U a poet, in the highest, acceptation of the uame." Lord Jeffrey. PERCY BYSSHE SHZLLEY. POETICAL WORK*. With a fine engraving on steel. "Cmo, cloth, (JO cents ; illumiuated side, 9J cents ; Turkey mor., ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. THE FARMER'S F,OY, and other Poems. Illustrated withafln> engraving on steel. 3Jmo, cloth, 00 cents; illuminated bide, OJ cents; Turkey morocco, $1.00. "Few compositions in the English language have boon so generally ad- mlred as the Farmer's By. Tuosu wliu ugrved lit but liuie (i.e. i:i ; 11 in ter-<. wen- unanimous i'\ t'M> commendation of me po- tlral pr,\v . ! \>y the peasuiu uud juurmyuiau mecUuuic.' Allibone's JJicliunary ROBERT BURNS. POETICAL WORKS. With a fine engraving on steel. 32mo, cloth, 00 cents ; illuminated side, 00 ci tits ; T urkey mor., $1.0 J. " B-irns is by far the rreatest poet that evcrsprang from the bosom oftho peo;;l.', :ind lived and died in an humblo condition. Indeed, no country in tho wrrld but f;cotla:;d f>ul I have j-rodnced Euoh ixman; and he will bo firev r r "rirded nit he glorious representative of 1hOGC"lnsoI hH country. II u was bom ai>oet. it' ever uiau was." /Vo/. M'iison'M Lstay on Hurra. WILLIAM DODD, LL.D. THE CEAITTIES OF SIIAKSPEARE. From the lust London edition, with large additions, and the author's latest correc- tions. With two flne engravings on steel. Fine edition, on toned paper, with carmine border. Square 21mo. cloth, gilt cd- : 32mo, cloth, 00 cts. ; illuminated side, irkcy morocco, tl.50. Thn r^tinbUcition of n book ST universally and deservedly popular M Dodd's Beauties, makes it peculiarly valuable us a giU book. THOMAS HOOD. POETICAL AVOHirS. With a flne engraving on steel. 32mo. Cloth, OJcts.; illuminated side,00cts.; Turkey morocco, ?!. "Hood's verse, whether serious or comic, whether serene, like a cloud- less autumn evening, or s;>. rliling with puns likeaf rosty January mid:d; wit'.i stars, was ever pregnant with materials for thought l.!l:o every author distinguished for true comic humor, there was a deep vein or melancholy pathos running through his mirth : and even when Ins sun shone brightly, its light seemed oiten reflected as if only over the run ol a cloud. Jj. JUtJtoir, THOMAS MOORE. THE MORAL AXD REAUTiFUL FROM THE POEMS OF. Edited bv lii-:v. VV'ALTEH COLTON, author of " Deck :.nd 1'ort,' &C..&C. 'With a lino engraving on st(d. 32mo. Cloth, CJ cts.; illuminated sides, NS. MISS H. B. McKEEVER, Author of "The Flounced Kobe, and What it C >*t," Kdith's Ministry," WoudtUiOe," "Silver Tiireada," tc., icc. These stories have the merit of being entertaining, instructive, .and really uperior to the comoiuii run ui J .: it-lent authority. prono;:. l.iu LieatTuud luUidBumeM Juvenile Books oi Hie season. " Lyuius J{< publican. - M -Keever always writes witli point ami meaning, arid in a manner to gain aud hold the utleiiUuii." Sunday-School 1 tint*. ELEANOR'S THREE BIRTHDAYS. "Charity seoketh not her own." Illiutraied. lomo., -*.M IT., fl.OO. MARY LESLIE'S TRIALS. "Is not easily provoked." Illus- trated. IJmo., Sl.oj. LUCY FORRESTER'S TRIUMPHS. "Thinkcth no evil, believ- ull things, hopetli all things." Illustrated. IGmo. Price, R. M. BALLANTYNE. New and beautiful editions of these world-renownrd books, second only to those of Cooler aud Jiarryatt, and betti r tii... Mayne Held, in tin.- picairo.s presented to the reader of wil.l li.o among tin- in.i::.ns. tno - und fierce delights of a huiitiT^' hlc, and tin 1 ] ''lAi<- on the Ocrun Wavi 1 ." IJullantync's iiunic is wi-11 kno\\n to t \ i ry Intelligent boy of spirit. Leading the reader into the Jungles ;u:; !i, extr.i. -1.-J3. "Thoroughly at home on subjects of adventure. Like all his stories for hoy>, thrilliii!? iu interest and abounding in incidents of every kind." Tlie Quiver, London. THE DOG CRUSOE. A Tale of the Western Prairies. IGmo, illus- trated, cloth, extra, "This is another of Jlr. B.illantync's excellent stories for the youiiT. They are all well written, fall of romuniic . .! uie "t uoi ful moral tendency; on tiie contrary, tin y jin- iir. inbody sentiments of true piety, manliness and virtue."- Jnvi rnrss Advn I. GASCOYNE. THE SANDAL-WOOD TRAPER. A Tale of the Pacific. ICmo, illustrated, cloth, extra, . "'Gascoyne' will rivet t'io attention of every one, whether old or young, who pursues H." Edinburgh (,'ourunt. FREAK'S ON THE FELLS; or. Throe Months' Rustication. And why I did not become a Bailor. Illustrated, Limo, cloth, extra, Sl.iS. " 3Ir. Ballantyno's namo on the title-page of a hook, has for some ye/.rs been a guaranty to buyers that the volume i.s cheap at its price." London TIIE WILD MAN OF Tin: WEST. A Tale of tho Ro.-ky tains. ICmo. Illustrated, eloih, exiia, .. < cenerally considered .'iantr'nc's famous nnrra- ' Indian warfare and border h:e. In this U miiv io Coopc-r. ijlIIITING WINDS. A Story of tin- Sea. Cloth, extra, illustrated. PORTER & COATES' Prr.I.irATI"' 11 R. M. BALLANTYNE Second Series. "Indulgent fathers and cornl nudes will look a Ion:* tiin before they will find book* more interesting or Instructive i'ur hi.yst.mn volumea the author introduces i. regions, the wild bunting-ground :.ipany tin- .t:id midnight sun ot Norway, and the e\ci; of the deep on tin 1 pathless lidds of tin' ocean. 1 1 md has the (acuity of taking t.:e bo\ - him in his narrative, and making them fed at hi. in.- i:i V c Information and to inculcate sound principles of virt lie miimlcs en ugh of fancy with the fact and the moral li more Impressive and the more sure to be remembered. The i M ,y wh . ilumcs at the time when his mind is mi^t susceptible i I and adventure, will cultivate a taste li.r > ite works of travel und discovery, in mature \ March, D.D. FIGHTING TTTi: WHALES; or, Doings nml Dangers on n Fishing Cruise. With lour mil-page Hhist ration*. IMIIM., Illu.-i : 7"> '-ruts. AWAY IX THE WILDEUXESS; or, Lifo Among the Red In- dians and l-'nr-TnuU-r.s ui' North America. ISmo., Illuxt: .. I'xtra, ~'i cents. It is one of (lie most delightful books this famed author has written. -.bin;; the exciting adventures of Indian 1. and attractive Information about the lar north portion ol'our CD; in, if ever, has there been a better description of life in the lands of the Hudson's Bay Company, than is 1'ouud in this little work. FAST IX THE ICE; or. Adventures in the Polar Regions. ISmo. Illustrated. loth, extra, 7"> cents. " Is attractive and useful. There is no more practical way of communi- cating e!>Mnontary information than that which lias been adopted in lii Mined iii i ; i such Information as men of fair eiuc.iticu - INimimaux. music-oxen, bears, walv. with all the ordinary incidents of an Arctic voyage, woven iu'o a clear <''>n- narrative. we must admit that a K"od work has been done, and that theau;!i'.r deserves tlie gratitude of young people of all classes.' London At/ni." CIIASIXG THE SUX; or, Rambles in Norway. 18mo. Illustrated. Cloth, extra, ~~> cent-. Describing a country almost new to u<, the author tolls of many strange natural curiosities, of the manners and customs of the pr>le, and the curious modes of travel and conveyance. ANNE BOWMAN. THE BEAR IIUXTERS OF THE ROCKY MorXTAINS. 16mo. Illustrated. Cloth, extra, A story of trapper life in the Kooky Mountains. A bett< r Insight of real life in these uncivilized wild < is gained from books like this than from scores of the dry details of travellers. ADVENTURES IX CAXADA; or, Life In the Woods. 16mo. Illustrated. Cloth, ?!.- '. This is not n, mere work of fiction, but the true narrative of .1 bright hoy who rou-hed it in the bush when Canada, tin- h< ich wilder than it is now. The boys, especially, w . with the adventures with Indians, bears, and w, -n hunts and duck shootiii"" while the old^r class of readers wiil be drawn to it by !H charm- ing description of t he scenery, and condition of what may, before long, be- come a part of the United states. 12 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. FOSTER'S TRANSLATION. THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS; or The Arabian Nights' i:iiuTtu:iK.u'iit. A new edit. on. \\ iih eight lull-page illustra- tions. Large l.'mo, cloth, extra, Cl.OU. "M >ro widely diffused among ihe nations of the earth than any o'.hcr product of t:ie human mind. While it is ivud or r. cited to crowds c listeners In the Arab coffee-houses of Asia and Airicn, it i-s y.i-i r. ; eager. y perused on the banks of the Tagus, the Tiber, the Setae, the Than Hudson, the Mississippi, and the Uang-'R. , . . While tliero are children on earth to love, so Jong will the 'Arabian Nights' be loved." Ajwlcttm's American Encyclopedia, article "^iraliiun JXiy/its." D. W. BELISLE. THE AMERICAN FAMILY ROBINSON ; or The Adventures ot a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West. IGino. Illus- trated. Cloth, extra, $1.25. DANIEL DE FOE. THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. In- cluding a Memoir of the Author, and an Essay on his Writings. Large 12nio. Illustrated. Cloth, extra. Trice, tl.Od. Carefully printed from new stereotype plates, with large, clear, open type, this is the best, as well as the cheapest, edition of this charming work pub- lished. " Perhaps there exists no work, either of instruction or entertainment, in the Knglish language, which has been inure generally read and i.u.re uni- versally admired, than 'The Lii'e and Adventures of Bob insou Crusoe.' it Is difficult to say in what the charm consists, by which persons of nil classes and denominations are thus fascinated; yet the majority of readers will re- collect it as among the first works that awakened and interested their youth- ful attention, and feel, even in ndvanced )i e and in the maturity ot 'their understanding, that there are still associated With Hohinson Crusoe the sen- timents peculiar to that period, when all is bright, which the experience of after-life tends only to darken and destroy." i'ir Walter Scott. JEAN RODOLPHE WYSS. THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON; or, The Adventures of a Father, Mother, and four Sons, on a Desert Island. Two parts, complete in one volume, illustrated. Large 12mo. Cloth, extra Price, $1.50. GRIMM. POPULAR GERMAN TALES AND HOUSEHOLD STORIES. Collected by the Brothers Grimm. With nearly 200 illusira- . tions by Edward H. Wehnert. Complete in one volume. New edition. Fine English cloth, bev. bds., full gilt back and side stamp, $2.50; half calf, gilt, &1.50. The stories in these volumes are world-renowned, and they will continue to be read, as they long have been, in different languages, and to charm and delight not only the young, but many readers in mature liie who love the recollections of childhood and its innocent diversions. COUNTESS DE SEGUR. FRENCH FAIRY TALES. Translated by Mrs. Coleman and her daughters. With ten full-page illustrations, by Gustave Dore and Jules Didier. lOmo, price, $1.50. The Countess de Besmr, the authoress of this charming work, and the mother of the wife Of the French ambassador at Florence, the brilliant Ba- rone's Malaret, is iv Knssian lady, and a daughter of the heroic Prince Kostopchin. who ordered the burning of Moscow, when Napoleon captured that devoted c't v. "Not many of the fniry stories written for children nre so admirably con- trived or so charmingly written as these." Worcester Daily Spy. PORTER A COAXES' PUBLICATIONS. 13 W. S. GILBERT. THE BAB BALLADS; or, MuHi Sound and Little Sonsr\ With in illustrations by the autuor. bg^uaro liinio., cloth, bev. gilt edges, v-l.jo. T . M r. ;Iiads, first published in periodicals, rapidly achieved a whim- sical popularity, winch soon demanded tueir publication in a collected loriu. Much of this is due to the series ot inexpressibly funny drawings by the author, who is happy in being iirtist enough to Interpret Lis own humor in these admirable sketches: \ve piiy the man who cannot appreciate and enjoy them. Tlie Ballads will rank wiih the 1 Thackeray, Bon (Jaultier, or Ingoldsby. Let every one who in these dull timers has Hie blues, procure a copy us the cheapest remedy. While it is a nearly penect/o simile of the English copy, it is only half the price. ot'mr* are smply amusing from their supreme asurty. The mirth is aided by the author's original cuts, which are quite in keeping with the poetry." Advance, Chicago, the Great .Religious Weekly. C. M. METZ. DRAWING-BOOK OF THE HUMAN FIGURE. With many Ex- amples from, the best studies of the Old Masters, beautifully engraved in the first style of the art. Folio, half morocco, an- ticitie, 7.50. H. B. STAUNTON. THE AMERICAN" CHESS PLAYER'S HANDBOOK. Teaching the liudimeiits of tlie Game, and giving an analysis of all the recognized openings, amplitied by appropriate games actually played by Morphy, Horwitz, Ander.s.sen, Staunton, Paulson, Montgomery, Meek, and others. From the work of atauntou. Illustrated. IGmo, cloth, extra, bev. bds. $1.23. " Among the great wants of students of t his noble game of chess has been ahundbook wliuM f-houul o cupy 11 midd:e ground between the large aiid expensive work oi'Siauntoii and the ton cent guides with which the country is .ljodt-'d. This want is happily supplied by the present volume. I abridgment of Btaunton'a work, and contains full accounts and descriptions of the common openings find defences, besides a large number of illustra- tive prames and several ending* and problems. It is a book which will be decidedly useful to all beginners in the game, and iuteresliug to those who are a' ready proficient in it." Pfnria Trtaucrtpt, "Will prove an invaluable guide for the admirers of the great and strnte- le of chess. It siiould be hi tlie hands of every chess-player." : >nrg Republican. " Jt is the b"st manual for the heplrmpr with which we are acquainted, exCeedhigly clear and iutelhgible." Aeu; Orleans ficayune. SAHAH E. SCOTT. EVETIY-DAY COOKERY. FOT1 EVERY FAMILY. Containing nearly luOJ i:cceipts udaptcd to moderuto incomes, and .-..ia- i.ri-iin" the best and most economical methods of roasting, boiling, broiling and stewing all kinds of m>a:, lisU, poultry, cams and vegetables; simple and inexpensive instructions Ur mailing pies, puddinas, tarts, and all other pastry ; ho\v to pickle and preserve fruits and vegetables; suitable cookery Ijr i-ivalids and children; food in season, and how to if fie best ways to make domestic wines and syrti; ample receipts for l>read, cake, soups, gravies, satire's, dess, rts, jollies, brandiod fruits, soaps, perfumes, &C., Ac,,nnd lull direc- tions for carving. Illustrated. lOuio., cloth. Price, It PORTER 4 COATES' PUBLICATIONS. MISS WETHERILL. ROBIXSOX CRrsOF/S FARM YARD; or. Stories and Anecdotes <>t' Aiiiuials. Illustrating their Hablu. By Miss \Vciherill, au- thor of "\Vide, Wide World," " <^ueeehy," "Kllcn Mont- ;iery's Book Shelf," A.C. With ciuht lull-page illustrations. Square li;mo, N pp., cloth, gilt, -1J ". COXTKVTS. The Cow ; The Horse; The Chamois: Tho Camel : Tlio llcin- i he J>n-r; The .Monkey; The P.dar r.ear: The B : The Squirrel; The Tiger; The Elephant; The Sh"ep; Tin- Krmine; The Lion; The Seal: The Stag; The Hyena; The Ilog: The Hare; The Cut. MISCELLANEOUS. THE LIBRARY ; or, What Books to Read, and TTow to Buy thorn. A few practical hints, by an old Book buyer. iGmo, paper eo\ i-r, lo cents per copy ; >s.nt per hundred. Kvcryboily has felt tlie want of a reliable guide in selecting hooks for their library 111 this little manual, the author has endeavored i;i>:, in a prelimi- ay, to point OOt hOW to read books to the best advam. to buy tin-in : second, what books to buy, by giving 1 iiitren hundred volumes of standard works, such as are necessary to every well- I library; these an- given with the number of volumes, the best and different editions, and the prices. It thus forms a complete and intelligent guide, as to what is best to buy first, such as every person of any pretensions to literary taste should possess. THOUGHTS OF PEACE; or.Ptrontr TTopo and Consolation for the Bearer of the Cross. From tlielaM London edition. Beauti- fully printed on tinted paper, with carmine border. Square. lOmo. Fiiie Euglisu cloth, bevelled boards, red edges, $1..JO. "Remarkable as the assertion is. that very many of the best works are the product of the chastened and milk-led in society, it is nevi rthcless true that the world is greatly ciiric-lird by the presence of invalid uifted mini!.; in all ages. This dclightiul little volume is the product of one who has lelt the acuteness of disease, and it illustrates the experience of one who 1,. been an invalid. The Scriptural texts, and poetic suggestions, evinc. acquaintance with the scriptures and the poets. Tin- book is beautifully printed on tinted paper, n d line border, and richly bound, ilauy would pj-ize it as a gut book.'' 1'iltsbury Gu " This is a reprint from the latest London edition, ami is a beautiful little Work, both In Style of typography and binding, ami in tne senuniei ciqusly selected and collated from the. sacred Scriptures and poets. It com- prises three hundred and sixty-tiveot the most soul-comforting and Inspiring i' the nible one lor each day of the year. Following each text is a Short selection from some hymn, or sacred poem of Corresponding senti- ment. .No better souvenir could be given to one having experienced some Of life's sorrows and who ha* not! and who has learned to look for con- solation to Holy Writ." Muuch Chunk Gazette. PAPA'S BOOK OF AXTMALS. Wild and Tame. Chiefly from the writings i>f IJi-v. .1. phain. >small 4to., fine English cloth, gilt, bev. bds. Price, ?! SLOVENLY PETER; or, Cheerful Stories and Funny Pictures for d Little 1'olks. \\illi nearly two hundr.d enurax ii.u's. .iitil'ully colored. Printed on heavy ].aj>er. l.aiL;e Ho. ( 'loth, bevelled boards, extra, ?\.~~>. A new edition of this charming book, a standard among. juveniles, surely of stern morality and humanity were never more pleasantly anil effectually taught than in this book. - -':.-:. i H a ^' : --'''.^ v Y L :, msim i - 1 "' ' . < V. -- ;: - i i ? : . i ' - , . "' ! : 1 Iff j : m m ' Bi