CHAPTER I. THE MANUSCRIPT BIBLE. nal His 1525; (2) THE external history of the English Bible may 1. Exter be divided into two periods of not very unequal tory. Two periods: length, the first extending from the beginning of (1) 1380Wycliffe's labours to the publication of Tyndale's 1525-1611. New Testament in 1525, the second from that date to the completion of our present received version in 1611. The first of these will be the subject of the present chapter. tions. It has been already said that the 14th century (1) First period. was the first stage in the dissolution of the medi- Manuscript æval church. Its character was marked by the translacorruption of the higher clergy, and the growth of independence in the masses of the people. Both facts favoured an appeal from custom and tradition to the written and unchanging Word. Moreover the last great progressive effort for the restoration of the Church-the establishment of the mendicant СНАР. I. The beginning of orders had failed, but not before the people had been roused by the appeals which were addressed to them. In England the crisis was keenly felt. Men turned with intense longing to the Bible, and in the first instance naturally to the Psalter, which has been in every age the fresh spring of hope in times of trial. No less than three versions of this, dating from the first half of the 14th century, have been preserved. But the work of translation did not long stop here. The years from 1345 to 1349 were full of calamities-pestilence and famine and war—which seemed to men already deeply stirred by the sight of spiritual evils to portend the end of the world. Other commotions followed which shewed the wide-spread disorganization of society. In France there was the terrible rising of the Jacquerie (1358); in Italy the momentary triumph. and fall of Rienzi (1347-1354); a great schism (1378-1417) divided the forces of the Church; and Adrianople became (1360) the capital of a Turkish Empire in Europe built on the ruins of a Christian power. It was shortly after this time that Wycliffe, Wycliffe's who had already written his Last Age of the Church transla tion. (1356), began his labours on the Bible by a translation of the Apocalypse. This was followed by CHAP. TAMENT. a translation of the Gospels with a commentary, and at a later time by versions of the remaining books of the New Testament with a fresh rendering of the Apocalypse, so that a complete English New Testament was finished about 1380. To this NEW Tesa version of the Old Testament was soon added, which appears to have been undertaken by a friend of Wycliffe's, Nicholas de Hereford. The original manuscript of Nicholas is still preserved in the Bodleian, and offers a curious memorial of his fortunes. For having incurred the displeasure of his superiors, he was cited to appear in London in 1382, to answer for his opinions. He was excommunicated, and left England shortly afterward, breaking off his translation in the middle of Baruch (iii. 20), where the manuscript ends abruptly. The OLD TES work was afterwards completed, as it is supposed, by Wycliffe, who thus before he died in 1384 had the joy of seeing his hope fulfilled and the Scriptures circulated in various forms among his countrymen. TAMENT. Latin Like the earlier Saxon translations, Wycliffe's From the translation was made from the Latin Vulgate, and Vulgate. from the text commonly current in the 14th century, which was far from pure. It was also so exactly literal that in many places the meaning I. CHAP. was obscure. The followers of Wycliffe were not blind to these defects, and within a few years after Revised by Purvey, c. his death a complete revision of the Bible was 1388. undertaken by John Purvey, who had already become notorious for his opinions, and had shared in the disgrace of Nicholas de Hereford1. Purvey's account of Purvey has left, in a general Prologue, an his work. interesting account of the method on which he proceeded in his revision, which is marked by singular sagacity and judgment. He had, as will be seen, clear conceptions of the duties of the critic and of the translator, and the comparison of his work with Wycliffe's shews that he was not unable to carry out the design which he formed. After enumerating several obvious motives for undertaking his task, he continues: 'For these reasons 'and other, with common charity to save all men in our realm, which God will have saved, a simple 'creature [so he calls himself] hath translated the 'Bible out of Latin into English. First this simple 'creature had much travail with divers fellows and 'helpers to gather many old bibles and other doc 1 Purvey's copy is still preserved at Dublin. The Latin MSS. which Purvey used exhibit many different readings from Wycliffe's, but they are not dif ferent in character. Both translations contain the interpolations in the books of Samuel, e.g. I Sam. v. 6; x. I, &c. I. 'tors and common glosses, and to make a Latin CHAP. • bible sumdel [somewhat] true1; and then to study it of the new, the text with the gloss...; the third time to counsel with old grammarians...; the fourth time to translate as clearly as he could to the sentence [sense], and to have many good fellows and cunning at the correcting of the translation. First it is to know that the best translating is...to translate after the sentence and not only after the words, so that the sentence be as open, either opener, in English as in Latin, and 'go not far from the letter....In translating into · English many resolutions moun [can] make the * sentence open, as an ablative case absolute may ⚫ be resolved into these three words with covenable [suitable] verb, the while, for, if...and when.... Also a participle of a present tense...may be ' resolved into a verb of the same tense and a conjunction copulative....Also a relative, which may be resolved into his antecedent with a con'junction copulative....And when rightful construc 1 The collation of manuscripts must have heen very partial and scanty. Thus in 1 John ii. 14 all the copies of Purvey's translation read 'brithren,' i.e. fratres for patres, a blunder of which I can find no trace in Bentley's C |