VERSIONS FOUNDED ON LUTHER'S.

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my own glory. God is my witness, that I have done all from love to God and to the brethren."

Though we speak of this version as Luther's, it must not be supposed that the other reformers had no share in the work. Days and months were devoted to it by others as well as by hinr self. For many weeks together, a large party might have been noticed in Luther's rooms, of the most eminent scholars of Europe. Luther presided, having before him the Latin, Hebrew, and new German Bible; Melancthon, an insignificant, spare man, opened his Greek books, the Seventy, or the New Testament; Creuziger had in his hand the Hebrew and Chaldee Scriptures; Dr. Bugenhagen, or Pomeranus, the Vulgate; Dr. Bugenhagen and Justus Jonas, the rabbinical paraphrases. Each gave his views on the passage under consideration, and master George Borer marked them down. Days were thus devoted to a single verse. The edition of 1541 contains the results of all these labours; and Luther's own copy-a copy constantly used by him, after having passed through several hands, including Bugenhagen's and Melancthon's, is now in the British Museum.

The version of Luther is the basis of several versions. On it is founded the Belgic version, of 1526; the Swedish version, of 1541; the Danish version, of 1550; the Icelandic or Norse, of 1584; the Finnish, of 1542; and an early Dutch version, of 1560. A German-Swiss translation was made by Leo Juda, 1525-9;

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LEFEVRE AND FAREL.

and in 1667, a revised version, in the same tongue, was published at Zurich. These languages (the Finnish excepted) all belong, with the German, Saxon, English, and Gothic, to the Teutonic family of tongues.

This history of the Bible, in connexion with the religious movement in Germany, has been given at this length, because it furnishes a fair type of the progress of the Reformation elsewhere. We must notice, however, the history of translation in Switzerland and France.

Towards the close of the fifteenth century, and some years before Luther's labours had begun, there was a professor of theology in Paris whose teaching had excited much interest. He came originally from Etaples, in Picardy. He had received a rude education, but

was a man," says Beza, "of true genius and piety." Though attached at that time to the Romish church, he resolutely opposed the barbarism which prevailed in most of the universities of Europe. He condemned the dry metaphysical methods of inquiry then common even in theology; revived a taste for the study of classical antiquity; and feeling that no human science could regenerate our race, he went direct to the Scriptures, and sought to win to the study of them the hearts of his pupils. Full of gravity and unction in the pulpit, his intercourse with all classes was distinguished by a kindly familiarity, and large numbers of students from various nations gathered around him.

SAINTS' LEGENDS-The bible.

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Among his pupils was a young student from Dauphiné, a man of quick feeling and strong sense. A warm attachment sprang up between the two. The old doctor and the young disciple were soon known throughout Paris for their love to each other, and their zeal for the faith.

At that time the doctor was engaged in editing the legends of the saints, and arranging them as their names appear in the calendar. Two months of these biographies were already prepared, when the puerility of the whole was forced upon the mind of the writer. He began to regard them "as mere sulphur, fit only for lighting the fire of idolatry;" turned from them with disgust to the Epistles of Paul, and became a changed man. With characteristic openness, he declared his sentiments; and in the very heart of the Sorbonne, where he laboured, he proclaimed the great doctrines of the gospel with a zeal and fervour never surpassed. These events took place before the year 1512, and the doctor's name was Lefèvre.

His pupil, Farel, listened with avidity to his new instructions, studied the Bible, and soon embraced the new faith. “There is a righteousness," said the tutor," of faith, and a righteousness of works; the one is of man, and the other of God; the one is earthly and fleeting, and the other is Divine and eternal." "I saw it," says Farel, "in a word; and as soon as it was told me I believed." Thus was conducted to the truth, in the very year when Luther was receiving his doctorate, the man who won for

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Christ part of France, Neuchâtel, Lausanne, and lastly, Geneva.*

In the same school, and, probably, under the same teacher, was young Robert Pierre Olivetan, a native of Noyon. To him we owe the first translation of the Scriptures into French Swiss. It was he also who first brought the gospel under the attention of his relative and fellowtownsman, John Calvin, one of the most illustrious labourers in the work of reform.

Of course, this state of things could not be suffered to continue. In Paris, the members of the Sorbonne cried out, "Heresy!" and appealed to the king. The disciples of Luther had, in the meantime, reached the university of that city, though not his writings. "Multitudes insolently assumed the liberty of interpreting the Bible for themselves," says the Jesuit Maimbourg, quoted by Merle D'Aubigné. To protect their pupils, the faculty compelled Lefèvre to quit Paris. On leaving it, he moved to Meaux, and there, about the year 1523, he published the New Testament, boldly proclaiming "the sufficiency of Scripture," and the great doctrine of "justification by faith." The preachers in the national church caught his spirit, and the very bishop warned the people, that, "though an angel from heaven were to announce to them another gospel, they were not to listen to him, even," added he, "though I, your bishop, should change my language and my doctrine; beware then of changing like me."

• Merle D'Aubigné, book xii. § 2.

GATHERING AT BASLE.

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While Luther was preparing his theses, and Lefèvre was teaching the gospel at Meaux, Basle in Switzerland was the scene of a remarkable gathering. There might be seen, in the year 1514, a man of about forty years of age, of a "small, slender frame, of delicate appearance, but of most winning and graceful manners." This was Erasmus, the friend of sir Thomas More, and the first scholar at that time in Europe. He had come to Basle to carry through the press the first edition of the New Testament in Greek, and had been received by all classes with great distinction. One of the ministers of the city was a young man of mild disposition, slow and circumspect in business, fond of study, and of a loving heart. John Hausschein (House-light) was his Swiss name; now better known under its Greek form, Ecolampadius. Though still in communion with the church of Rome, he taught boldly and effectually, as Erasmus also held, "that in Scripture there was but one theme-that is, Jesus Christ." In the neighbourhood of Basle was also residing a man of a very different temperament, earnest even to a fault; a profound scholar, and, at the same time, a powerful preacher; not indisposed, if the truth must be known, to wield either sword, the spiritual or the secular, for liberty and truth-the impetuous Zwingle. How strange the histories of these three men-the last two the leaders in the Swiss reformation, the first honoured by them both, but a halting, inconsistent Romanist to the close.