Now I begin to taste of Holy Scriptures; now, honour be to God, I am set to the most sweet smell of holy letters. Nothing in the world I desire but books as concerning my learning: they once had, I do not doubt but Almighty God shall perform that in me which he of his most plentiful favour and grace hath begun. Miles Coverdale. CHAPTER IV. COVERDALE, AND THE GREAT BIBLE. TYNDALE was martyred, but the work so dear to his heart went on. In his prison at Vilvoorden, the news may have reached him that what he aimed at was actually accomplished. On the fourth of October, 1535, a year before his death, the first complete Bible printed in the English language was published. Advancing no claim to such thorough scholarship as distinguished the work of Tyndale, this translation was confessedly made from the German and Latin, by King Henry's "humble subject and daylye oratour, Myles Coverdale." It is his story that we are now to tell. A. D. 1488-1569. Born under the shadow of the fine old monastery of Coverham, in Yorkshire, and bearing a name given to the whole district and still to be read on headstones in the village churchyard, Miles Coverdale was yet young when he was sent to complete his studies at the Augustinian monastery in Cambridge. Here, if not earlier, he would naturally receive a powerful impulse toward the Protestant 1 Dore, "Old Bibles," p. 88. |