and used in this realm, or elsewhere, in any of the King's dominions."

And farther," that no manner of persons, after the first of October, should take upon them to read openly to others, in any church or open assembly, within any of the King's dominions, the Bible or any part of Scripture in English, unless he was so appointed thereunto by the King or by any ordinary, on pain of suffering one month's imprisonment."

And farther, "That no women, except noble women and gentle women, might read the Bible to themselves alone; and no artificers, apprentices, journeymen, servingmen, of the degrees of yeomen, husbandmen, or laborers, were to read the Bible or New Testament to themselves or any other, privately or openly, on pain of one month's impris onment."

'ap

How vividly do these enactments mirror the times; revealing the wide-spread and inextricable hold which the Bible had gained upon the English masses! When " prentices, journeymen, servingmen, husbandmen, and laborers" had once learned to read the Bible, it was certain that no laws could recall it from the nation's hands. So the imperious monarch found it; for three years later, this statute was followed by another still more sweeping, viz. "that from henceforth, No man, woman, or person, of what estate, condition, or degree he or they shall be, shall, after the last day of August next ensuing, receive, have, take, or keep in his or their possession, the text of the New Testament of Tyndale's or Coverdale's, nor any other that is permitted by the Act of Parliament, made in the session of Parliament holden at Westminster, in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth year of his Majesty's most noble reign.”

Eight days after the passage of this Act, July 16, 1546 the heroic Anne Askew perished with three companions at the stake, for refusing to acknowledge Henry's Popish doctrine of the Mass. How entirely the reception of the Scriptures, as supreme authority, was identified with rejection of the special dogmas of his Roman-English church, is seen from the dying words of this intrepid woman: "Finally, I believe all those Scriptures to be true which he hath confirmed with his most precious blood. Yea, and as St. Paul saith, those Scriptures are sufficient for our learning and salvation, that Christ hath left here with us; so that I believe we need NO UNWRITTEN VERITIES to rule his Church with. Therefore, look, what he hath said unto me with his own mouth in the Holy Gospel, that have I, with God's grace closed up in my heart; and my full trust is, as David saith, that it shall be a lantern to my footsteps.'

On the 28th of January, 1547, Henry VIII was summoned to meet the victims of his personal resentment, and of his murderous religious zeal,- -a fearful host!—at the bar of the righteous Judge. His son Edward VI, the English Josiah, succeeded to the throne. The stream which had been for a while repressed now burst forth with gathered strength; and this short reign, less than six and a half years, was signalized by at least fourteen editions of the whole Bible, and thirty-six of the New Testament.† A brief interruption succeeded this period of prosperity, during the reign of Mary. But from that time to the present, a period of three hundred years, the Anglo-Saxon race has never seen the day when its rich and its poor might not read, in their own tongue wherein they were * Anderson, vol. II, p. 198. † Ib. 237.

born, unmolested by Church or State, the wonderful works of God! THE PRINCIPLE HAD TRIUMPHED.

Wickliffe gave England her first Bible; Tyndale her first Bible translated from the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Thus was fully developed the great Protestant principle, announced by Wickliffe nearly a century and a half before. For the same principle which demands the Inspired Word as the sole standard of religious faith, demands also the most exact representation of it which it is possible to obtain. This is obvious on a moment's thought. Every translation, however able and honest, is but a human reflexion of God's revelation of truth, and as such, is liable to the imperfection which attaches to every thing human. The philological principles of the translator may sometimes mislead him, or his religious creed may bias his judgment of words; or, in process of time, through the vicissitudes of language, or corruptions in the church, renderings which were once a just expression of the original may come to convey a false meaning. These considerations apply with double force to a second hand translation, every remove from the original making the conclusions proportionably unreliable. Hence Wickliffe's version, venerable as the first English Bible, and endeared by the associations of a hundred years of persecution, was at once set aside on the appearance of another drawn directly from the inspired sources.

But to accept any version, to stand for all time in place of the sacred originals, was contrary to the spirit of primitive English Christianity. The glass through which the grand outlines of truth could be discerned, was dear for so much of the truth as it revealed; another, which revealed

more, was dearer still. We shall observe the influence of this spirit through the whole subsequent history of Bible translation in England. The Christian scholars of that age were fired with a generous, sacred emulation to render THE PEOPLE'S BIBLE a perfect reflexion of the inspired Word. In the track of Tyndale's noble version sprang up a long line of revisions and translations, which were gratefully accepted by the church of Christ as independent witnesses, of whom one might correct the errors of another, and whose agreeing testimony made the truth doubly certain.

But for the New Testament of Tyndale a peculiar honor was reserved. It furnished not only the basis, but, in great part, the substance of all that followed. To a command of Greek learning surpassed by none of his age, Tyndale added those higher qualities of a translator of the Scriptures so eminently possessed by his great predecessor, a mind of large grasp and earnest force, illuminated by a heart which knew but the single sublime aimto ascertain the revealed will of God and make it worthily known to man. A mind so qualified for the task could not but express itself with a noble freedom, a simple majesty, in harmony with the inspired utterances of truth. The successors of Tyndale recognized in his translation that impress of the master spirit; and while they corrected its errors without scruple, by the increasing light of sacred scholarship, they transferred the body of it, unchanged, into their own versions. Like a gem repeatedly new cut and polished, it has been handed down from generation to generation, the most precious heir-loom of the English race; and we, at this day, read in large portions of our common version, the very words with which Tyndale clothed the Scriptures for the men of his own age, in those times of conflict and of blood.

CHAPTER XIII.

COVERDALE'S BIBLE.

THIS version deserves special notice, as one of the most marked indications of the new impulse in favor of vernacular translations effected by Tyndale's early labors. It claims veneration, too, as the first translation of the whole Bible circulated in England. For, though strictly the offspring of the state of public opinion created by his greater contemporary, and commenced several years after the publication of Tyndale's New Testament and Pentateuch, Coverdale's version made its appearance some two years prior to Rogers' edition of Tyndale's Bible.

Miles Coverdale was educated at Cambridge, and was a pupil and intimate friend of Barnes, then the great ornament of the University in liberal learning, and the chief leader at Cambridge of the religious party, stigmatized by the Romanists as "the new learning." When Barnes was arrested by Cardinal Wolsey, Coverdale was one of those who stood faithfully by their teacher, following him to London, and assisted in preparing his defence. It is supposed that the favor of Crumwell, then a protegè of Wolsey, secured him from the immediate consequences of so bold a step. But in 1528, having been accused of preaching