the Bible of King James and that which will, we trust, be given to the world under the auspices of Queen Victoria.

Everybody knows that the present version of Holy Scripture was prepared by a Commission of Divines appointed by King James I., and that, as the title-page informs us, it was "with former translations diligently compared and revised;" but everybody does not know how greatly the present version was indebted to those "former translations," and above all to one of them, the translation of William Tyndale. The age had been prolific in translations, or rather editions, of Holy Scripture; the King's Instructions to the Translators, while directing that the Bishops' Bible of Queen Elizabeth should be followed, and as little altered as the original would permit, mentioned no less than five others which were to be consulted; but Tyndale's version, the first of the five in order of time, the first English translation from the original tongues, had infused its spirit into the rest. As Mr. Froude eloquently says, recording the appearance of Tyndale's Bible as one of the memorable events in the history of England: "Of the translation itself, though since that time it has been many times revised and altered, we may say that it is substantially the Bible with which we are all familiar. The peculiar genius-if such a word may be permittedwhich breathes through it, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur, unequalled, unapproached, in the attempted improvements of modern scholars, all are true, and bear the impress of the mind of one man-William Tyndale."

The story of the man who conferred so great a boon upon the English race is well worthy of preservation; and Mr. Demaus has executed his task with the fidelity, the minute and careful accuracy, and the literary taste and skill which were to be expected from the accomplished biographer of Hugh Latimer. The materials at his disposal were indeed comparatively scanty; the greater part of Tyndale's work was done in seclusion on the Continent, while the English authorities sought for him, persecuted him "unto strange cities," and burned his books as they longed to burn their author. Such a life, known in detail to few of his contemporaries, was not likely to leave materials for a perfect biography; but what has been left is sufficient to give an outline portrait of a true hero, as well as a glance into English life during the most stirring and momentous period of English history.

It appears impossible to fix with certainty either the place

or the time of William Tyndale's birth. The martyrologist Foxe, who could probably have given ample information, was satisfied to say, "He was born about the borders of Wales." Tradition has given the honour of his nativity to the county of Gloucester, which answers sufficiently to the vague description, as Monmouth was then considered to belong to Wales. A lofty monument to his memory was erected some years ago on Nibley Knott, one of the most conspicuous and beautiful of the Cotswold Hills. Mr. Demaus, however, has shown that, although Tyndale must have been born within no great distance from this spot, it was not at the place usually pointed out, the manor-house of Hunt's Court, in the village of North Nibley, but more probably in the parish of Stymbridge, near the Severn. The date, which no contemporary record has preserved, was somewhere between 1480 and 1490. About that time and place, in a quiet farmhouse in the midst of an agricultural neighbourhood, a child was born whose life and work were destined to do more than was done by any other agency without exception, in directing the progress of the English Reformation, and in forming the future character of the English people.

Although we know little of the precise circumstances of Tyndale's childhood, we have ample information of the state of things in the country and the world. His birth took place within a few years of the great battle of Bosworth Field, in which the long Wars of the Roses were ended, and the last blow was given to England's old feudal aristocracy. Perhaps ten years before, William Caxton had set up the first printing press in the Almonry of Westminster, bringing into England the infant invention which was to grow into such a gigantic power for good and evil, and which was to co-operate with other agencies of Divine Providence in causing the work of Tyndale to abide and triumph, where that of Wycliffe had almost passed away. Within the same decade the feet of Columbus stood first on the shores of the New World; and those great discoveries were begun which gave new scenes to commercial enterprise, new domains to science, and new empires to kings. The influence of these great events, however, had not reached the quiet village by the Severn shore where Tyndale spent his childhood. No part of England was more completely under the control of the clergy than that remote corner of Gloucestershire; and nowhere was there a more blind and ignorant superstition. The clergy had learned nothing from Wycliffe, and were eager to repress everywhere the spirit of inquiry which his teaching had evoked; they did

not read the Scriptures themselves, and they visited those who dared to read them with the severest penalties; but they sanctioned and directed those miserable mummeries which were degrading the ancient faith into a Fetish worship. The people kissed their thumbnails before engaging in prayer; they flung holy water at the devil; they bowed before the blood of Hailes, the sight of which was sufficient to insure eternal salvation. Being a bucolic people, whose great dependence was upon the produce of the dairy, they had a special saint to watch over churns, cream, and dairy maids. He or she, for the sex is doubtful, was called St. White, and was propitiated by the offering of a large cheese. All these things Tyndale witnessed from his childhood; and, as his intellect gathered strength, he must have seen them with growing disgust and repugnance.

At an early age, the date again uncertain, William Tyndale was sent to Oxford, and entered in Magdalen Hall. The registers of the University unfortunately do not extend so far back as Tyndale's day, so that Oxford retains no memorial of one of her greatest sons, excepting a portrait with a laudatory inscription in the refectory of Magdalen Hall. The sole positive record of his University career is in the words of Foxe:" At Oxford, he, by long continuance, grew and increased as well in the knowledge of tongues and other liberal arts, as specially in the knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singularly addicted, insomuch that he, lying there in Magdalen Hall, read privily to certain students and fellows of Magdalen College some parcel of divinity, instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the Scriptures. Whose manners, also, and conversation, being correspondent to the same, were such that all they that knew him respected and esteemed him to be a man of most virtuous disposition, and of life unspotted. Thus he, in the University of Oxford, increasing more and more in learning, and proceeding in degrees of the schools, spying his time, removed from thence to the University of Cambridge, where, after he had likewise made his abode a certain space, being now farther ripened in the knowledge of God's Word, leaving this University also, he resorted to one Master Walsh, a knight of Gloucestershire, and was there schoolmaster to his children, and in good favour with his master."

At Oxford Tyndale found himself in an entirely different atmosphere of religion and intellectual life. There the strife had begun. A few bold innovators had brought from the Continent, where the revival of letters was dawning, the

knowledge of the Greek language and of the Latin classical authors. Up to this time, the University had provided for its students nothing better than the barbarous jargon which fitly enshrined the subtilties of scholastic divinity, and the new teaching provoked a storm of opposition. Tyndale himself has described the contest in characteristic language:"Remember ye not how within this thirty years and far less, and yet dureth to this day, the old barking curs, Dun's disciples [followers of Duns Scotus], and like draff called Scotists, children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew; and what sorrow the schoolmasters that taught the true Latin tongue had with them? Some beating the pulpit with their fists for madness, and roaring out with open and foaming mouth, that if there were but one Terence or Virgil in the world, and that same in their sleeves, and a fire before them, they would burn them therein, though it should cost them their lives, affirming that all good learning decayed and was utterly lost, since men gave them unto the Latin tongue."* There was at least equal hostility to the intelligent study of Holy Scripture as to Virgil and Terence. Indeed it may be strongly suspected that classical literature was chiefly dreaded as a step towards that Biblical research which would be fatal to ecclesiastical pretensions. The Vulgate had long been in the hands of the scholastic divines, but had not been so studied as to bring forth the truth it might have taught them. They had surrounded its plainest statements with allegorical interpretations; they had sought for expressions which might decide questions in metaphysical science, and had absolutely failed to understand its real revelation of man's sin and man's Saviour. Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas were more to them than Paul and John; and the quaintest and most profitless intellectual puzzle interested them more deeply than the solemn question,-"How can man be just with God ?"

Now, however, the waters were troubled.

The Hebrew

and Greek Scriptures were in the hands of young and eager students, and Colet, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, had been lecturing on the Pauline Epistles, reading the Apostle's words in the original, and endeavouring to discover and bring out, not a conventional interpretation, but the real meaning of the words. To us, perhaps to Romanists in our age and country, such a course of lectures would seem a very natural and ordinary incident in a Christian university, but the

* Works, Vol. III. p. 75.

impression produced at Oxford was extraordinary. The lecturer was young, accomplished, and eloquent. Such men as Thomas More and Erasmus delighted to hear him, and by their agency and that of others only less illustrious the fruit of Colet's expositions was scattered widely. Like his most renowned disciple, he was better qualified to point out to others the weak points of the great fortress of error, than to lead the forlorn hope to its capture; but such men as he laid the foundation of the glorious work which was afterwards accomplished by braver, and, perhaps, better men.

Such was the condition of the great University when Tyndale was entered at Magdalen Hall, and it was not long doubtful what part he was to take. He had great natural gifts for the study of other languages, as well as for the strong and graceful employment of his own. He became a master of the Greek, and, so far as his opportunities allowed, of the Hebrew also; nor did he hesitate in applying the sacred languages to their best and most important use, the study of the Original Scriptures. And after reading Scripture for himself, he was resolved to communicate to others what he had found there. We find him surrounded by a little company, not of undergraduates only, but of men of position in the University, "privily reading to certain students and fellows in Magdalen College some parcel of divinity, instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the Scriptures." The incident so graphically described suggests many thoughts. What Methodist can read of those students and fellows, without thinking of that other little company at Oxford, when John Wesley was Fellow of Lincoln, and Charles was student of Christ Church, that met and discussed the same questions out of the Scriptures, and without acknowledging the many obligations which our country owes to her ancient Universities?

From Oxford Tyndale removed to Cambridge; perhaps to be near Erasmus, who had already removed thither, and was lecturing on Greek and in the theology of the New Testament. The influence of that illustrious scholar was at this time thrown unreservedly into the scale of the Reformation. He appears to have regarded the conflict around him as simply an intellectual conflict, in which the truth must eventually triumph; he did not foresee how soon human passions would be dragged into the strife, and how the truths which he vindicated with scholarly eloquence would be vindicated by others in the agony of the martyr, until the flames in which good men died, rather than the sparks of his wit