a hundred and fifty copies of the two are still extant, after all the persecution which threatened to leave 'not one remaining.' Comments from the Fathers and from Lyra are found in Purvey's Revision.

But we must pass on from the Manuscript to the Printed Bible; and here, comes first, the greatest name connected with it-Tyndale.

We are well acquainted with the rough time which Tyndale had of it in his own country before he went abroad to print the first English New Testament which ever saw the light. In Sir John Walsh's Gloucestershire Manor House, 'he spared not to show unto the priests his judgment' about the Word of God, and they spared not to employ their usual weapons, until they had driven him away. Not, however, till he had uttered the famous sentence, to which he held in spite of all opposition, that he would cause the boy that drove the plough to know more of the Scriptures than the priests themselves.' It seems to have been loyalty and ignorance, rather than daring, that led him then to go to the Bishop of London with his translation of Isocrates, as a sample of what he could do in Greek. 'Room,' however, he soon found there was in the Bishop's house 'for bellycheer, but none to translate the New Testament.' It was through some words of Erasmus, 'whose tongue,'

he says, 'makes of little gnats great elephants, and lifts above the stars whoever becomes his friend,' that he was first induced to go to London; and the visit was not in vain, for he found a friend in Humphrey Monmouth, though he could not in the Bishop. Poor Monmouth and his brother both suffered heavily afterwards for their faith, but for some months a home was found for Tyndale, where he studied hard. Then he had to flee, and never set foot in his native land again.

His story abroad has not been

sketched at the length it deserves, memorable as it is for all time. Madame Guyon said:

'Whilst place we seek, or place we shun,
The soul finds happiness in none :
But with a God to guide our way,
'Tis equal joy to go or stay.'

So with Tyndale, the place was indifferent, if it only gave him the opportunity of carrying out his purpose. He could not see, what he afterwards described, 'the poverty, the long exile from his own native land, the bitter absence from his friends, the hunger, the thirst, the cold, the great danger wherewith he was everywhere compassed, the innumerable other hard and sharp fightings which he had to endure.' He could see his work, a work that wanted doing, and that he felt a call to do; and that was enough.

He sailed for Hamburg, in the first instance, where liberty had just been accorded to the followers of Luther to preach their doctrines, and the traffic in indulgences was openly denounced. It was natural, however, for Tyndale to wish to see and hear Luther for himself, and to be at the centre of the movement which was agitating Europe. Accordingly, he made his way to Wittenberg, the common asylum of all apostates,' as the Duke of Saxony called it; the birthplace of freedom and truth. Here he heard Luther in the crowded University Church, met the chief spirits of the Reformation and settled down to his work.

Α

It gives an additional interest to the first of our English New Testaments, and that which has moulded them all, to think of its being executed in such circumstances. room or two in Wittenberg, as quiet as might be; the third edition of Erasmus's New Testament in Greek; Luther's German Version; a Lexicon and Grammar; and an Englishman with a purpose steadily held in his heart, working away hour

after hour, day after day, month after month! Outside, the hum of the busiest little bit of the world! Luther, married now, receiving all that came to him freely, and anon thundering away in the University Church! Learned men, enquiring men, and, side by side with them, restless and over-fiery men, were to be found in the streets. One of these last, William Roye, became for a time Tyndale's amanuensis. After leaving Cambridge he had been a friar at Greenwich, where his eyes were opened to the true character of Popery. I could rule him,' Tyndale says, as long as he had no money; but, as soon as he got money, he became like himself again.' They compared texts together, and then as soon as Tyndale could do without him, they parted for life, and as men say, a day longer.'

Roye was an author, in conjunction with Jerome Barlowe, also formerly a Greenwich friar. They wrote a satire against Wolsey, entitled 'Rede me, and be nott wrothe, For I say nothinge but trothe.' They justify the strong language it contains by saying that there are three stages of admonition employed by God: first, He shows men His Word in its purity; that failing, He stirs up some men's spirits to indite their faults, making utterance of their mischief; these being of no avail, He destroys them with pestilence and sword. Here is a sample of their manner of inditing Wolsey's faults:

'O miserable monster, most malicious
Father of perversitie, patron of hell!
O terrible tyrant, to God and man odious,
Advocate of Anti-Christ, to Christ

rebell :

To thee I speak, O caytife Cardinall, so cruell,

Causeles chargynge by thy coursed commandment,

To burn Godde's Worde, the wholly Testament.'

In the end Roye, after leaving

Tyndale, fled into Portugal, and was put to death by the Inquisition.

He

To return to Tyndale: we must increase the somewhat scanty library with which we furnished him. Not that he had any great critical apparatus, nor could have; but there is no doubt that he had before him the Vulgate, as well as the Latin version of Erasmus, whilst Luther's German Bible, then only just published, would be constantly helpful. Very likely he would hear stories about Luther's work as a translator, which would quicken his desire to make his own as accurate as possible. might hear, for instance, that, finding some difficulty in expressing the different parts of the animals treated of in the sacrificial laws of Moses, he had had butchers to dress sheep before him, in order that he might see the parts referred to, and acquire the proper German names for them. That Tyndale translated mainly from the German is, however, an entire mistake, and some supposed Germanisms are nothing to the purpose. There are, indeed, many such expressions as: 'So ordain I;' 'To the weak became I;' 'Of the Jews five times received I'; but this form of expression is as common both in the earlier English and in Anglo-Saxon as in the German. In Chaucer, for instance, we have:

'Her eyen cast she full lowe adowne.' 'And like a lyon loked he aboute.' 'Full hye upon a chare of golde stode he.' -Knight's Tale.

'She may have mercy, this hote I well.' -Parson's Tale.

The early Anglo-Saxon version of the Scriptures also has such expressions as- -Tha genam he.'* The fact is, Tyndale frequently comes nearer to the original than either Luther or the Vulgate. For his notes and prologues, however, he is largely indebted to Luther, though here also he

exercises an independent judgment, and makes a very different thing of the Epistle of James and of that to the Hebrews.

He says, in a letter to his friend and disciple Frith: 'I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus to give a reckoning of our doings, that I never altered one syllable of God's Word against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all that is in earth, whether it be honour, pleasure or riches, might be given me.' So far was he from seeking personal fame or gain, that he afterwards promised Henry that if he would have the bare text of Scripture given to the people, by whomsoever translated, he would never write again. In a note on John i., he answers, in a characteristic way, the old assertion that the Scriptures make men heretics :

'Because their darkness cannot comprehend the light of the Scripture, as it is written, "the light shineth in darkness, but the darkness could not comprehend it"; they turn it into blind riddles, and read it without understanding, as laymen do our Lady's matins, or as it were Merlin's prophecies their minds are ever upon their heresies. When they come to a place that soundeth like, there they rest, and wring out wonderful expositions to establish their heresies withal, like the tale of the boy who would fain have eaten of the pastry of lampreys, but durst not until the bells seemed to sing unto him: "Sit down, Jack boy, and eat of the lampreys," to stablish his wavering

conscience.'

It is not likely that the oftenquoted remark made to Spalatin had much more truth in it than a good many travellers' tales. That Tyndale should, the very following year, on being 'interviewed' at Worms, show such skill in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English and French, that, whichever he spoke, you would suppose it was his native tongue'. e-all this is more likely to be a proof of ignorance on the interviewer's part than knowledge on Tyndale's. But that, as an Oxford man, he would be a fair Greek and Latin scholar there

is every reason to believe, and there is good ground for thinking that, in all academical knowledge, he was much beyond the average. He had been at Cambridge for some time after leaving Oxford. It is not merely the correctness, as a whole, however, of his Wittenberg work that gives it its value, but its good taste and feeling: the best evidence of which is the fact that most of it has been retained in every succeeding translation.

Tyndale appears to have remained at Wittenberg about a year, and then returned to Hamburg. To print his book at the very seat of Lutheranism would have been unwise, but Hamburg did not furnish a solitary printingpress, so he resolved to try at Cologne, where he arrived about June, 1525. It is likely that he chose Cologne as a good place to hide in, being at that time a city of great importance, full of merchants; and hence he might reasonably hope to prosecute his labours without interference. It was also a famous place for printing. Ulric Zel had led the way, having an office there as early as 1466, and other well-known printers were then doing work there. It is rather remarkable, in view of subsequent events, that the first instances of books printed with Imprimatur, or Romish official permission, are two printed at this city of Cologne in 1479, one of them a Bible.

Whether Tyndale brought the whole New Testament translated to Cologne or not we cannot tell, but it is probable he did, and that so the first work that he and Roye had to do was to find a printer. This they did in Peter Quentel, probably one of the foremost of the time, and the work was put to press in quarto form, with

notes.

But another stranger was in hiding in Cologne at the same time: Cochlæus, 'one of the most bitter opponents of the Reformation. He had been driven out of Frankfort,

where he was Dean of one of the Churches, by the people. Thence he went to Mentz, from which also he was expelled; and even at Catholic Cologne such serious disturbances had just taken place that he had meditated flight. The power of the Prince Archbishop had prevailed, however, and now Cochlæus, an indefatigable controversialist and scholar, was employing his leisure in printing a book at the veritable office of Peter Quentel! Tyndale's secret inevitably came out. Cochlæus heard the printers confidently say, in their cups, that, whether the King and Cardinal would or would not, all England would shortly become Lutheran. He got some of them to his house, gave them plenty of wine, and learnt all about the matter. Hurrying off at once to Rinck, a Patrician of Cologne, he asked him to get an order from the Senate to stop the printing, which he did. The sheets were advanced as far as K, and these Tyndale snatched away, and sailed up the Rhine. Rinck and Cochlæus wrote to Henry to take precautions against 'that most pernicious article of merchandise,' the New Testament, and, for a time, the enemy triumphed. Poor Cochlæus ! he never got anything for his zealous service, though he wrote a book to show how important it was. Subsequently he printed a letter to James V. of Scotland, questioning whether it was expedient for laymen to read the Scriptures; and it is to this and two other works that we owe the minute account of the whole of these transactions, of which he was not a little proud.

Tyndale, with his heavy bale of printed paper, set off for Worms, 'cast down, but not destroyed.' Very likely Worms was chosen for more than one reason: its strong Lutheran feeling, its distance from Cologne, and possibly the fact of Schaeffer being there. It was certainly not a main

seat of the art of printing, however: Antwerp had become the headquarters of Bible-printing. In this city no fewer than thirteen editions of the whole Bible, and twenty-four of the New Testament in Flemish or Dutch, had seen the light during the early part of the sixteenth century, besides various other editions in French, Danish and Spanish. Perhaps it was avoided for that very reason, though afterwards Tyndale resided there for a considerable time.

Worms, then, was to see the carrying out of the work which had been frustrated at Cologne; and Tyndale had thus to sail up the loveliest part of the Rhine. There were no gay, crowded steamers then, however, and we can only guess at the effect produced on his mind by the Seven Mountains, Coblentz, Bingen, the castle-crowned heights and the innumerable legends which haunt the banks of the famous river. With his work interrupted in the middle, and so far a failure, it is not likely that he would be in a mood to make many enquiries; but we may imagine him led up in prayer to God in the lovely solitudes through which he would pass, and pacing at night, it may be, a heavy barge, similar to those which the tourist now frequently sees slowly working its way against the strong, deep current.

The associations of the towns, however, would not be lost upon a mind like his. Passing Oberwesel, the birthplace of John Richrath, Tyndale, would be reminded that his views were by no means modern. Richrath had taught at Erfurt in the preceding century, and his influence at that University continued down to Luther's time: Luther speaks of his having been prepared for the degree of M.A., in part, by the study of his books. He was, like Luther, disgusted by the preaching of Indulgences, in connection with the