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XIII.

EARLY PRINTED ENGLISH BIBLES.

(A) Tyndale: New Testament with part of the Old Testament.

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ILLIAM TYNDALE, equally with John Wycliffe,

belongs to the "Immortals." He was educated at Oxford University, but about 1510 the fame of Erasmus, in connection with the New Learning, led him to Cambridge, where he formed the resolve to which his whole life was given, to translate the Bible into English.

One day, in discussion with a learned man, his opponent said:

"We were better without God's laws than without the Pope's."

Tyndale replied :·

"I defy the Pope and all his laws," and then added, little thinking that his words would be handed down through many generations:

"If God spares my life, 'ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth a plough to know more of the Scripture than thou dost."

In his preface to the Pentateuch, he says that he "perceived by experience how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scriptures were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order and meaning of the text. This thing only moved me to translate the New Testament."

He went to London in the hope that Dr. Tunstall, the Bishop of London, would approve his intended work and protect him--but there was no room for him in the Bishop's household. He soon found that no printer in England dare bring out an English Bible. His own words are:

"I understand that not only was there no room in my Lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do it at all in England."

In 1524 he went to Hamburgh and worked at this translation, which was ready for the printer in 1525. He was a learned man and a great scholar.

Erasmus had produced his Greek New Testament in its first three editions in 1516, 1519 and 1522. Tyndale used this along with the Vulgate, Luther's German Version of 1522, and the Latin of Erasmus, bringing to the whole work independently his own scholarship and learning.

The New Testament of Erasmus, which he called "Novum Instrumentum" (The New Instrument), was first published March 1, 1516.

In the preface Erasmus said: "I altogether and utterly dissent from those who are unwilling that the Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, should be read by private persons, as though the teachings of Christ were so abstruse as to be intelligible only to a few theologians, or as though the safety of Scripture rested on man's ignorance of it. It may be well to conceal the mysteries of Kings; but Christ willed that His mysteries should be published as widely as possible. I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospel-should read the Epistles of Paul. I long that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveller should beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey."20

Archdeacon J. M. Wilson in one of his "Clifton College Sermons," when summing up the evidence for the genuineness of the Synoptic Gospels, remarks that it is because the Gospels

20. Quoted by Hon. Joseph H. Choate in Queen's Hall, London, March 8, 1904 in his address during the Centennial Meetings of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and by R. G. M. in Church Standard under date of February 26, 1904 (issue of March 5).

are so primitive and authentic, that they bring before us not some visionary ideal, not some legend of glorified and saintly figure, but the vivid image of the Lord as He lived among men. He says:

"I have quoted before in this chapel those splendid words of Erasmus on the vivid character of the Gospel narrative as portraying Christ. You will like to hear them in their original and glowing Latin.

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'Haec evangelia tibi sacrosanctae mentis illius vivam referunt imaginem ipsumque Christum, loquentem, sanatem, morientem, resurgentem; denique totum, ita praesentem reddunt ut minus visurus sis si coram oculis conspicias.' (Or in English)

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'The Gospels bring before thee a living image of that sacred soul. They bring before thee Christ Himself, speaking, healing, dying, rising again; so complete, in a word, is the image they present that if He stood here before our eyes thou wouldst see Him not more plainly but less.'

"And on this listen to Erasmus's own comment, and remember that you are listening to the words of one who went far to monopolize the wit and the learning and the critical insight of his age. 'Happy the man whom death finds meditating on the Gospels, because what we read will affect what we are." "21

In 1525 Tyndale went to Cologne, celebrated for its printers, and the work of printing three thousand copies of the New Testament in English, was proceeded with, when it was suddenly interrupted by the action of a spy, and he escaped, taking the printed sheets with him.

In October of the same year he arrived at Worms, where a new edition in octavo was issued of which three thousand copies were printed and the quarto edition, partly printed at Cologne, was completed.

21. Quoted by R. G. M. in Church Standard as above.

The books were smuggled into England, hidden in bales of merchandise, early in 1526, when the navigation opened.

From 1525 to 1528 six editions of the New Testament, comprising 18,000 copies, were printed. Wolsey's agents were so zealous and untiring in their search for and in the destruction of the books that now there are only three of these early printed copies in existence.

Westcott (No. 114) thinks that Tyndale published the two Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark at Antwerp before proceeding to Cologne.

The three original prints of Tyndale's New Testament now in existence may be described as under:

1. A mutilated copy of the Quarto Edition, comprising sixtytwo pages of St. Matthew, now in the British Museum.

This is part of the work printed at Cologne; and was found bound up along with another book.

It contains a prologue, a list of the Books of the New Testament, a wood-cut of an angel holding an inkstand into which St. Matthew is dipping his pen, and a translation of St. Matthew's Gospel up to xxii. 12. The title page is wanting. This is known as the Grenville Fragment, having been purchased by Thomas Grenville and by him bequeathed to the Museum.

2. A copy of the Octavo edition printed at Worms, now in the library of the Baptist College at Bristol, complete and in beautiful preservation, except that it wants the title page.

From this copy the edition of 1836 was printed. No. 8 is one of the copies of this reprint.

3. Another copy of the same, comprising about six-sevenths of the New Testament; 48 leaves out of 333 containing the text being wanting. This copy is in the library of St. Paul's Cathedral, London.

On various occasions Tyndale's Testaments were publicly burned. Some information as to these Bible burnings, Tyn

dale's comments, and the ignorance of his enemies, is now given.

A number of Lutheran works were burned on February 11, 1576, at St. Paul's Cross, in the presence of Cardinal Wolsey. The occasion was the recantation and humiliation of Dr. Barnes. A sermon was preached at the Cross, baskets full of the books were placed in front of the pulpit, and at the close of the sermon Dr. Barnes and his companions had to walk three times around the fire and then themselves to throw in the books. Some writers say that Tyndale's books were burned at this time, but it would appear that this was not so, as none of his Testaments had yet reached England.

Westcott (No. 114, page 43, Note 4) says that Tyndale's books were burned as early as 1526, but the great burning was in 1530. The octavo and quarto editions of 1525 came into England without any indication of the translator's name. Tyndale's name appears in the revised edition of 1534, and as early as 1527 in his Parable of the Wicked Mammon he gives his reasons for printing the New Testament anonymously. (No. 114, page 40.)

In the preface to the English translation of the King's famous reply to Luther's letter, he states that with the deliberate advice of various bishops he has ordered certain untrue translations of the New Testament (Tyndale's) to be burned.

In September, 1526, soon after the bishops had given this advice to the King, a great spectacle was arranged at Paul's Cross, when Tunstall preached against Tyndale's translation, declaring its naughtiness, and asserting that he himself had found in it more than 2,000 errors. At the close of his sermon he hurled the copy that he held into a great fire that blazed before him. This dramatic act seems to have been followed by the public burning of the large number of Tyndale's Testaments purchased by the Bishop of London. The fact of several burnings of the books is certain, but the particular inci

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