the principal matters contained in the Bible." For example, under the word "Advocate" the remark is made: "Note that I find not in all the Bible this word advocate, but only in I John ii. a, in the which place is said that Christ is our advocate toward the Father." The Table thus formed a kind of Concordance, and in any case it is interesting to know that from the study of Matthew's Bible the first English Concordance sprang. It was the work of Marbeck, one of the organists of St. George's, Windsor. Too poor to buy a copy of the new version for himself, he borrowed one from amongst his friends, and began to copy it out "on fair great paper." He had got as far as the beginning of Joshua when, according to his own account, "my friend, Master Turner, chanced to steal upon me unawares, and seeing me writing out the Bible, asked me what I meant thereby. And when I told him the cause: Tush!' said he, 'thou goest about a vain and tedious labour. But this were a profitable work for thee, to set out a Concordance in English.' 'A Concordance,' said I, 'what is that?' Then he told me it was a book to find out any word in the whole Bible by the letter, and that there was such an one in Latin already." Marbeck accordingly borrowed a Latin Concordance and set to work, and, though he narrowly escaped martyrdom for his pains, he was able to bring out the completed work in 1550 with the title: "A Concordance, that is to saie, a Worke wherein, by the ordre of the letters A, B, C, ye maie redely find any word conteigned in the whole Bible, so often as it is there expressed or mentioned." § 4. The first Authorised Version.-Apart from other interesting associations, Matthew's Bible has one special claim upon our attention. On its title-page, it will be remembered, it bore the words, “Set forth with the Kinges most gracyous lycece," and may thus be regarded as the first authorised version of the sacred Scriptures.1 This came about as follows. No sooner 1 In this same year of 1537 the royal license was obtained for the second edition of Coverdale's Bible. See above, p. 55. had it been published than Cranmer forwarded a copy to Cromwell with a letter in which he spoke of the book as "very well done," and that as far as the translation went he liked it "better than any other translation heretofore made." He then urged Cromwell to show the book to the King and obtain from him a "license that the same may be sold and read of every person, without danger of any act, proclamation, or ordinance heretofore granted to the contrary, until such time that we, the Bishops, shall set forth a better translation-which I think will not be till a day after Doomsday.' That Henry should grant this request was almost more than Cranmer could have dared to hope; for the King could not but know that a large part of the Bible was that very version of Tindale's he had already condemned more than once. But, whatever the reason, Henry yielded, and so it came about that "by Cranmer's petition, by Crumwell's influence, and by Henry's authority, without any formal ecclesiastical decision, the book was given to the English people, which is the foundation of the text of our present Bible. From Matthew's Bible-itself a combination of the labours of Tyndale and Coverdale-all later revisions have been successively formed."1 We shall see this more clearly in the pages that follow. In the meantime we have to notice the fate of the man by whom the Bible was produced. § 5. Martyrdom of Rogers.-In the troublous times of Queen Mary's reign, so prominent a Protestant leader as Rogers could hardly expect to escape, and accordingly in August 1553 he was ordered by the Council to remain in his own house as a prisoner. Later, through the intervention of Bonner, he was removed to Newgate, where he was detained among thieves and murderers for nearly eighteen months, when he was brought up for examination before Lord Chancellor Gardiner. No direct mention of his publication of the Scriptures seems to have occurred in the charge against him; but the care with which Gardiner in passing 1 Westcott, History, p. 73. sentence no less than three times named "Rogers otherwise called Matthew" may have been intended to point to the version called by his name. In any case his doom was fixed. On the morning of Monday 4th February 1555 he was suddenly awakened and told to prepare himself for the fire. He received the news with perfect calmness, and, after being "degraded" by Bonner, proceeded towards Smithfield, repeating the 51st Psalm by the way, "all the people wonderfully rejoicing at his constancy, with great praises and thanks to God for it." His last words, as the flames enveloped him, were, Lord, receive my spirit." "He was," says Foxe, "the first martyr of all the blessed company that suffered in Queen Mary's time at the fire" and " constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience in the defence of Christ's gospel." § 6. Taverner's Bible. Before parting from Rogers it may be well to notice here another Bible, which was closely connected with his version. It was the work of one Richard Taverner, and bears traces throughout of his original and somewhat quaint personality. In his early years Taverner was connected with Cardinal College, Oxford, and along with certain other young men was imprisoned in the College cellar for reading Tindale's New Testament. He owed his release, it is said, to his skill in music. He afterwards went to the Inner Temple in London, "where his humour was to quote the law in Greek when he read anything thereof." In 1534 he was taken into the attendance of Cromwell, by whom he was promoted a few years later to be Clerk of the Signet to Henry VIII. During the reign of Henry's successor, Taverner, though a layman, received a license to preach, and a curious description has been preserved of his appearing in the pulpit of St. Mary's, Oxford, with a gold chain about his neck, and a sword by his side. His sermon, if we may judge from its opening words, can hardly have tended greatly to edification: "Arriving at the Mount of St. Mary's, in the stony stage where I now stand, I have brought you some fine biscuits, baked in the oven of charity, and carefully conserved for the chickens of the church, the sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation." Taverner's translation, undertaken apparently at the instigation of Cromwell, was published in 1539, and bore to be "newly recognised with great diligence after most faythful exemplars." The preliminary matter was practically the same as in Matthew's Bible, but there was a new Dedication to the King in much better taste. "This one thing," he says, "I dare full well affirm, that among all your Majesty's deservings · your Highness never did anything more acceptable unto God, more profitable unto the advancement of true Christianity, more displeasant to the enemies of the same, and also to your Grace's enemies, than when your Majesty licensed and willed the most sacred Bible, containing the unspotted and lively word of God, to be in the English tongue set forth to your Highness's subjects." The changes which Taverner introduces in the Old Testament, mostly from the Vulgate, call for no special remark; others in the New Testament are significant, as when he gives its full force to the definite article in John i. 9, 21, "That was the true light," "Art thou the prophet?" ("a true light," "a prophet," Tind. 1534). As a rule, however, Taverner's corrections are due not so much to textual considerations, as to the desire to give more pointed forcible renderings. Thus in Matt. xiii. 41 he substitutes "griefs " for "things that offend"; in xxi. 17 "lodged" for "had his abiding"; and in xxii. 12 "had never a word to say," for "was even speechless." In these last two chapters Dr. Moulton finds in all about forty variations, of which one-third are retained in the Authorised Version; but the general influence of Taverner's Bible on subsequent versions cannot be said to have been great, and we must pass on to the Great Bible, which was to succeed Matthew's as the authorised version for a period of nearly thirty years. CHAPTER IX THE GREAT BIBLE 1. Origin of the Great Bible. 2. Title and Title-page. 3. Translation and text. editions. 4. The Psalter. 5. New 6. Reception in England. 7. Instances of intolerance. § 1. Origin of the Great Bible.-Although Henry VIII. had permitted both Matthew's and Coverdale's Bibles of 1537 to be set forth with his "most gracious license," we must not therefore regard the King as an ardent advocate on their behalf. Any credit in this direction must rather be given to his great minister Thomas Cromwell, who, since his patronage of Coverdale in the early days of his career, had proved himself the steady friend of Bible-translation. But with neither of these versions was Cromwell yet satisfied. Matthew's was disfigured by its objectionable notes; while Coverdale's translation had been proved in many respects unsatisfactory. Accordingly early in 1538 he applied to Coverdale to undertake a wholly new revision, using Matthew's Bible as his basis. It says much for the nobility of Coverdale's spirit that he showed no signs of resentment at his own previous work being thus set aside, but at once along with one Grafton proceeded to Paris, where it had been determined that the new edition should be brought out. By means of a letter from Henry, a special license for the printing was obtained from the King of France, and on 23rd June 1538 the two editors were able to write to Cromwell: "We be entered into your work of the Bible, whereof (according to our most bounden duty) we have |