In a book entitled "Our English Bible and its Ancestors," the Rev. Mr. Walden says: "The experience of the Bible in its endeavors to reach the people has its best and most heroic history in the case of the Anglo-Saxon mind and of the English tongue. The spirit of Anglican in dependence of the Roman rule has in this its most striking illustration, and the annals of the Refor mation in England are bound up and identical with the annals of the English Bible. There would seem to have been a remarkable tendency in the early English Church, before Roman in terference set in so strongly, to bring the Scrip tures to the common people. In the great British collections, the libraries of Oxford, of Cambridge, and of the British Museum, many vestiges of this tendency may be found in curious fragments of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman versions—rude and imperfect attempts to get portions of the Bible into the vernacular. The oldest of these, attributed to Credmon, a monk, is the Bible his tory 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 translated 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 versions of the Gospels and some frag ments 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 centuries. 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 por tions of the Bible, seem to have appeared here and there; all in uncouth, grotesque, and unintelli gible lettering to the modern eye, but hungrily read by the educated among the people of those passing centuries." But the knowledge of letters at that time belonged only to the clerical and educated classes. The common people had no share in the word of God in their vernacular. When Wycliffe began his great work of translat ing the Scriptures, he declared that he found nothing extant to help him. The facts in the following account of succeeding translations have been derived largely from Dr. Schaff's Dictionary of the Bible." (2) John Wycliffe's Translation. John Wy cliffe lived in the fourteenth century, in the dawn of English literature. He was contempo rary with Chaucer the poet and Mandeville. The great seats of learning, Oxford and Cambridge, in his day became, in a measure, worthy the name universities. Oxford is said to have had thirty thousand students in the beginning of the four teenth century. But printing was not yet dis covered, and all books had to be multiplied by the slow process of writing them out by hand. The work of translation occupied Wycliffe many years.
The Rev. Dr. Krauth, in "Anglo-American Bible Revision," writes of him : "Called to the work of reformation in faith and life, he saw, with the divine instincts of his mission, that noth ing but the true rule of faith and life could re move the evil and restore the good, and that the restoration would be permanent only in the degree to which every estate of the church should be enabled, by possession of the rule, to apply and guard its teachings. He appealed to the Word, and to sustain his appeal translated the Word. He appealed to the people, and put into their hands the book divinely given to shape their con victions. The translation of the Scriptures as a
whole into English first came from his hands or tinder his supervision. It was finished in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. It was made from the Vulgate. Even had Wycliffe been a Greek and Hebrew scholar, it is doubtful whether he could have secured texts of the sacred originals from which to translate." His version appeared in 1380, and was eagerly read. The Archbishop of Canterbury threatened the "greater excommunication upon any one who should read 1Vycliffe's version or any other, publicly or pri vately." Nearly half a century after his death the bones of Wycliffe were dug up and burned, by order of the Pope, and his ashes thrown into :he Avon: "The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea, And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad, Wide as the waters be." (3) William Tyndale's Translation. The method of printing from movable type was dis covered in the fifteenth century, and rendered effi cient service in disseminating the translations of Scripture subsequently made. William Tyndale was born in 1484. and was burnt at the :take as a martyr to religious liberty, October 5, 1536. He determined "to cause the boy who driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures" than had been known by those who pretended to be learned divines. Luther was his contemporary, and it is said that the two great translators met at Witten berg. Tyndale's translation appeared at Worms in 1525. and was circulated in England in 1526.
(4) Miles Coverdale is the next name upon the list. His translation of the entire Bible appeared October 4, 1535, prefaced by a fulsome dedication to the king, Henry VIII. In order to render the volume more attractive, it was illustrated with several wood cuts. It was avowedly not made from the original tongues, but from three Latin and two German translations. The Old Testament was based chiefly on the Swiss-German (Zurich) Bible, and the New Testament on Tyndale, although with many varia tions. This translation had but little influence upon the so-called Authorized Version.
(5) The "Thomas Matthew" Bible was a compilation, although not a mechanical one, tin der this assumed name, made by John Rodgers (15o5-55), Tyndale's friend—who is famous as the first Marian martyr, burnt at Smithfield, February 4, 1555—from the above-mentioned translations of Tyndale and Coverdalc. It was published in London, t537, but probably printed by Jacob van Meteren in Antwerp. The pub lishers, Messrs. Grafton & Whitechurch, in some way interested Archbishop Cranmer in this edi tion who, through Crumwell, Earl of Essex. pro cured a royal license for it, and this Bible became the first authorized version.
(6) Richard Tavener issued a re vised edition of the Matthew Bible in 1539, but it never was widely used. Its sale may have been stopped by the publication of the so-called Great Bible.
(7) The "Great Bible," sometimes called Whitechurch's, after the name of one of the print ers, or oftener "Cranmer's Bible," from the mis taken idea that he was the editor of it, was pub fiche(' in London, 1539. Its name came front its size; its pages are fully fifteen inches in length and over nine in breadth. Its text is Matthew's, re vised by Coverdale. It was the first edition which printed in a different type the words not found in the original. It also derives interest from the fact that the Scripture sentences in the English Prayer book in the Communion Service, in the I lomilies, and the entire Psalter are taken from it.