plete than the editions of Lewis and Baber, having been minutely collated with it, and every variation compared with the readings of twenty-one MSS. The introductory verses to St. Luke's Gospel are supplied from a MS. in the library of Queen's College, Oxford.

4. The earlier version of the New Testament from a MS. (in 1850 in the Earl of Ashburnham's collection) was printed by Mr. Lea Wilson in 1848 under the title: The New Testament in English, translated by John Wycliffe, circa MCCCLXXX., etc., 4to, London, 1848.

5. The New Testament was likewise published, very carefully, by Bosworth and Waring, London, 1865.

6. Of the Old Testament the only portion published, was the Song of Solomon by Dr. Adam Clarke, in the third volume of his Commentary, 8 vols., 4to., London, 1810-1825; from a MS. now in the British Museum, Eg. 618, 619.

7. The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions, made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, edited by the Rev. Josiah Forshall, F.R.S., etc., late Fellow of Exeter College, and Sir Frederic Madden, K. H., F.R.S., etc., Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum, 4 vols., 4to., Oxford, 1850. This is a work on which the editors bestowed twenty-two years of labor; they have examined and described one hundred and seventy MSS. and printed two of the best in parallel columns, the first written before 1390, and the second before 1400. A full glossary is added to vol. iv. They say that with the exception of the Song of Solomon, given by Dr. Adam Clarke, no part of the earlier of the two versions before 1390 had ever been printed before 1850.

CHAPTER IV.

TYNDALE'S VERSION.

THE printing of the Hebrew Bible (Brescia, A. D. 1488) and of the Greek Testament (Basel, A. D. 1516) in successive editions, eagerly bought up, and the impulse it gave to the study of the Word of God, alarmed the ignorant and illiterate monks, who tried to arrest the movement by violent utterances from the pulpit that "there was now a new language discovered called Greek, of which people should beware, since it was that which produced all the heresies; that in this language was come forth a book called the New Testament, which was now in everybody's hands, and was full of thorns and briers; that there was also another language now started up which they called Hebrew, and that they who learned it were turned Hebrews" (Hody, de textib. bibl., p. 465). On the reception his Testament met with in England, Erasmus (Epist. Lib. xxxi., No. 42, ed. 1642) says: "These" (especially one college in the University of Cambridge) "object to us the feigned authority of synods, and magnify the great peril of the Christian faith, and the danger of the Church, which they pretend to support with their shoulders, that are much fitter to prop a wagon. And these clamours they disperse among the ignorant and superstitious populace, upon whom, having the reputation of being great divines, they are very loth to have their opinions called in question, and are afraid that when they quote the Scripture wrong, as they often do, the authority of the Greek and Hebrew verity should be cast in their teeth, and that by and by appear to be a dream, which was by them given out for an oracle." The vicar of Croydon said in a sermon, preached at St. Paul's Cross: "We must

root out printing, or printing will root out us" (Foxe, Acts and Monuments, I., p. 927).

It was while such sentiments prevailed in England that William Tyndale conceived the idea of translating the Scriptures from the original tongues into English. "I defy the pope and all his laws," he said in 1520, in the heat of a conversation with a Roman Catholic divine, who held it better to be without God's laws than the pope's, "and if God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than you do!" (Foxe in Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, Am. ed., p. 43.)

William Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire, A. D. 1471. Of his early life authentic data are wanting, except the statement of Foxe (II., p. 301) that he went early to Oxford (about A. D. 1500) and "grew up and increased as well in the knowledge of tongues and other liberal arts, as especially in the knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singularly addicted." He is said to have taken his degrees in Magdalen Hall, and to have privately read lectures in divinity to the students and fellows of that hall and the adjoining college. His picture is preserved in the former, with this inscription: Refert hæc Tabella, quod solum potuit ars, Gulielmi Tindal effigiem, hujus olim Aulæ Alumni simul & Ornamenti, qui post felices purioris Theologiæ primitias hic depositas Antwerpiæ in Novo Testamento nec non Pentateucho in vernaculum transferendo operam navavit Anglis suis ea usque salutiferam, ut inde non immerito Angliæ Apostolus audierat. Wilfordiæ prope Bruxellas Martyrio coronatus anno 1536. Vir, si vel adversario (procuratori nempe Imperatoris generali) credamus, perdoctus, pius et bonus (Hist. & Antiq. Oxon., lib. II., p. 379, col. 2).* From Oxford he went to Cambridge, and as the

*The picture is a wretched affair, so wretched indeed that the engraver whom Lewis wanted to copy it told him "that it was not worth while to copy it." The statement in the inscription, that Tyndale translated the New Testament and the Pentateuch at Antwerp, is not true.

In

state of learning in the latter university at that time was not sufficiently advanced to attract scholars, and as it would seem that during the wide gap in the history of Tyndale, the period A. D. 1509 to 1514 marks the residence of Erasmus on the banks of the Cam, it is very probable that he was the centre of attraction. Whether he had any thing to do with the collection of MSS. and material for the preparation of the Complutensian Bible by Cardinal Ximenes, as Plumptre seems to intimate, can not be ascertained; but it is certain that he turned his opportunities to good account, for having, as early as 1502, translated portions of the New Testament, and visited London in 1522, for the purpose of securing Tonstal's sanction of his scheme of translating the whole New Testament into English, it may fairly he surmised that he filled up the interval with studies qualifying him for that work. the same year he seems to have accepted a tutorship in the family of Sir John Walsh at Little Sodbury, a short distance from Bristol, where he met many ecclesiastical dignitaries of the neighborhood, who did not at all relish his arguments drawn from the Scriptures, and "bore him a secret grudge,” which they did not hesitate to express to the knight and his lady. The lady repeated to Tyndale the drift of their unenviable criticism, and sought to cut short his vindication with the following irresistible argument: "Well, there was such a doctor, which may dispend a hundred pounds, and another two hundred pounds, and another three hundred pounds, and what were it reason, think you, that we should believe you before them?" Unable to "dispend" his hundreds of pounds, the poor tutor could not argue with her ladyship on that basis, but succeeded, nevertheless, to establish himself in her heart and that of her husband by his presentation to them of his translation of Erasmus's Enchiridion Militis (Manual of a Christian Soldier), which seems to have wrought a very deep conviction in their minds. That conviction, and the consequent aliena

tion from the ecclesiastics with plethoric purses, did not cure these of their hatred of Tyndale, who says in this connection, "For when I was so turmoiled in the country where I was that I could no longer dwell there (the process whereof were too long here to rehearse), I this wise thought in myself: this I suffer because the priests of the country be unlearned, as God knoweth these are a full ignorant sort, which have seen no more Latin than that they learn in their portesses and missals, which yet many of them can scarcely read; and therefore (because they are thus unlearned, thought I), when they come together to the ale-house, which is their preaching place, they affirm that my sayings are heresy. And besides that, they add of their own heads what I never spake, as the manner is, to prolong the tale, to short the time withal, and accused me secretly to the chancellor and other the bishop's officers. And indeed, when I came before the chancellor, he threatened me grievously, and reviled me, and rated me as though I had been a dog, and laid to my charge whereof there could be none accuser brought forth (as their manner is not to bring forth the accuser), and yet all the priests in the country were the same day there" (Tyndale and Frith, Works, I., 3, 1831).

From the uncomfortable surroundings in Gloucestershire, where, after all, the worst that befell him had been abuse, and where he had preached as well as taught, he went to London, and for some time preached at St. Dunstan's in the West, his main object, however, being the accomplishment of his set purpose to translate the Holy Scriptures into English. With that end in view, he thought of the bishop of London, "whom Erasmus (whose tongue maketh of little gnats great elephants, and lifteth up above the stars whosoever giveth him a little exhibition) praiseth exceedingly, among other, in his Annotations on the New Testament, for his great learning"; but although he tried to secure the patronage of Tonstal by inducing Sir Harry Guildford, the king's comptroller, to whom