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lam, Marsh, Russell, and Smiles; by Johnson and Newcome; while Macknight and Whittaker give the alternative of Hamburg or Antwerp, and Blunt proposes Cologne, where a small portion only of the quarto had left the press. Cochlæus had already warned the king, Wolsey, and the Bishop of Rochester to watch all the ports, in order to prevent the introduction of "that most pernicious merchandise ";1 and Tyndale, who could not be aware of what the spy had written, but, probably suspecting that some communication would be sent to England, proceeded at once with the octavo, that it might find its way without attracting to itself special attention and suspicion. He himself seems to give the priority of printing to the octavo-"When I had translated the New Testament, and added a pistle unto the latter end,”—the

reference being to this edition. In the same "Pistle or

address to the Reder," at the end of the volume, he says. "I beseche that the rudeness off the worke at the fyrst tyme offende them not." The text of the quarto was apparently somewhat revised before it was reprinted in the octavo form. For though there are not many variations, perhaps not more than fifty between the two issues, the majority of the readings peculiar to the octavo are found in Tyndale's subsequent editions. The eye of the translator was vigilant; in the quarto, Matthew xx, 23, the text is "to give you"; but "you," which originated in the Vulgate, is omitted rightly in the octavo. Of the octavo only two copies survive, one perfect but without the title page, in the Baptist Theological Library, Bristol, of which Mr. Fry has published so correct and beautiful a facsimile. The other, which is imperfect, is in the Library of St. Paul's Cathedral.

It would seem that there were also separate editions of Matthew and Mark. Ridley, in a letter already quoted from, speaks of "Matthew and Mark in the first print." The reference is not precise: as the "first print" with the "commentaries and annotation," might refer to the quarto. Foxe seems to point to an edition of Matthew by itself. On April 28, John Tyball, on examination before Tunstall, confessed to

1

1 Merx illa perniciosissima. Cotton MSS., Cleopatra, E. V, p. 362.

having the "New Testament in English, and the Gospel of Matthew and Mark in English," which he had of John Pykas, of Colchester. The translation of Matthew and Mark, which would form a small thin volume, has been supposed with some plausibility to have been the little treatise that Tyndale conveyed to Munmouth, when he sent for his promised "exhibition." That such a section did exist is highly probable, and it may have been printed as a first experiment at Wittemberg. But the fragment of the quarto has no connection with this earlier issue; for its Prologue refers to all the books of the New Testament as following it, and there is a catalogue of them.

1 Harleian MSS., p. 421.

CHAPTER VIII.

TYNDALE entered on the momentous and responsible work

of translation from noble and disinterested motives. With characteristic self-abnegation he does not obtrude himself in his first preface,1 but simply says, "The causes that moved me to translate, I thought better that others should imagine than that I should rehearse them." So conscious was he of his integrity, that he fondly hoped to prepare an English New Testament in the palace of the Bishop of London as one of his chaplains. He had thought of the task when he was a domestic tutor, and had then spoken with prophetic rapture of the result. In his preface to the five books of Moses, he argues with earnestness the necessity of a translation, and shows the baseless objections brought against his own. "When I had translated the New Testament, I added an epistle unto the latter end, in which I desired them that were learned to amend, if ought were amiss. But our malicious and wily hypocrites say, some of them, that it is impossible to translate the Scripture in English; some, that it is not lawful for the lay people to have it in their mother tongue; some, that it would make them all heretics; as it would, no doubt, from many things which they of long time have falsely taught, and that is the whole cause why they forbid it, though they other cloaks pretend; and some, or rather every one, say that it would make them rise against the king, whom they themselves (unto their damnation) never yet obeyed." As for my translation, in which they affirm unto unto the lay

1 Reprinted separately, with some Pathway into the Holy Scripvariations, under the title, "A ture."

people (as I have heard say) to be I wot not how many thousand heresies, so that it cannot be mended or correct; they have yet taken so great pain to examine it, and to compare it unto that they would fain have it, and to their own imaginations and juggling terms, and to have somewhat to rail at, and under that cloak to blaspheme the truth; that they might with as little labour (as I suppose) have translated the most part of the Bible."

His exile and his continuous self-denial were endured for this special and glorious end-the preparation of a New Testament in the island tongue. He was forced to go abroad, to scorn privation, danger, and solitude, that he might translate; but he did not forget his country, for it he toiled and suffered. He protested to Vaughan, the English envoy, in 1531: “Again, may his grace, being a Christian prince, be so unkind to God, which hath commanded His word to be spread throughout the world, to give more faith to wicked persuasions of men, which, presuming above God's wisdom, and contrary to that which Christ expressly commandeth in His Testament, dare say that it is not lawful for the people to have the same in a tongue that they understand; because the purity thereof should open men's eyes to see their wickedness? Is there more danger in the king's subjects than in the subjects of all other princes, which in every one of their tongues have the same, under privilege of their sufferance? As I now am, very death were more pleasant to me than life, considering man's nature to be such as can bear no truth." Not only was he governed by the highest of impulses, but he carried out his task with perfect honesty. In a letter to Fryth, "his dearly beloved brother Jacob," written in 1533, he devoutly and solemnly appeals to God as the witness of his entire conscientiousness: "For I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus Christ, to give a reckoning of our doings, that I never altered one syllable of God's word against my conscience, nor would this day, if all that is in the earth, whether it be pleasure, honour, or riches, might be given me. Moreover, I take God to record to my conscience, that I desire 1 Cotton MSS., Titus, B. 1, p. 67, British Museum.

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135

of God to myself, in this world, no more than that without which I cannot keep his laws."1 Fryth, in his Reply to More, expresses perfect harmony of view: "Tyndale, I trust, liveth well content with such a poor apostle's life as God gave His Son Christ and His faithful ministers in this world, which is not sure of so many mites as ye be of pounds; although, I am sure that, for his learning and judgment of Scripture, he were more worthy to be promoted than all the bishops in England." After quoting a portion of the stirring letter to himself, he then adds: "Judge, Christian reader, whether these words be not spoken of a faithful, clear, and innocent heart. And as for his behaviour, it is such that I am sure no man can reprove him of any sin; howbeit, no man is innocent before God which beholdeth the heart." And he had already delivered an eloquent and bold protest: "This hath been offered you, is offered, and shall be offered. Grant that the Word of God-I mean the text of Scripture-may go abroad in our English tongue, as other nations have it in their tongues, and my brother William Tyndale and I have done, and will promise you to write no more." With the modesty of a true scholar, and that humility which so befits a translator of the divine volume, Tyndale's appeal in the first preface is, “exhorting instantly, and beseeching those that are better seen in the tongues than I, and that have better gifts of grace to interpret the sense of Scripture and the meaning of the spirit than I, to consider and ponder my labour, and that in the spirit of meekness; and if they perceive in any places that I have not attained the very sense of the tongue or meaning of the Scripture, or have not given the right English word, that they put to their hands to amend it, remembering that so is their duty to do. He was conscious of the imperfections of his work-" many things are lacking which are required," and bespeaks indulgence, on account of" very necessitie and combrance (God is recorde) above strength, which I will not rehearse, lest we should seem to boast ourselves"; referring not only to his anxious and incessant literary toil as a translator, but to his 1 Foxe, vol. V, 153. vol. III, p. 344, 339, ed. Russell, Works of Tyndale and Fryth, London, 1831.

"2