church, the sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation." Fuller had reason for complaining that "preaching now ran very low," if this is a fair specimen of the pulpit oratory of the period.1 The conceit of it is not more manifest than is its bad taste.

The time was now ripe for a Bible not only approved by the king, but actually issued under his authority. It was to this that Cromwell directed. his energies in 1538. Coverdale was to undertake the work. Regnault, of Paris, was to print it with a splendor to which the English presses were not equal. In the early autumn, Cromwell received the welcome news that within five months the Bible would be ready. The inquisitor-general of France, however, appeared on the scene when the text was almost finished, and peremptorily forbade its further progress. Coverdale and Grafton, the generous London citizen who was with him, escaped to England. They were fortunate enough to carry off presses, types, workmen, and even four great dry vats full of condemned sheets, which had been sold to a tradesman as waste paper. Not by any means for the first time, the spirit of intolerance did the cause of liberty a good turn. England now possessed on her own shores men and material equal to carry through a worthy edition of the book in the

A. D. 1539.

mother tongue. By April, 1539, The Great Bible, as it came to be called, translated "by divers excellent men," was completed. If no royal dedication was prefixed to this book, the loss was amply compensated by a magnificent title-page, which Holbein, the court painter, is said to have designed, and in which the king figures giving the Bible to Cranmer and Cromwell, who distribute it among the ecclesiastics and laymen, while below, a crowd, admirably depicted, listens eagerly to a preacher who addresses them from a pulpit bearing the inscription : Vivat Rex. The Protestant Church of England was from the first subservient to the State, and Henry was not likely to let this be forgotten.' Much to Coverdale's regret, no comments were permitted to be printed with this great Bible, which owed so much to him, although he offered to submit them first of all to Bishop Bonner for his approval. The book, which lives in our literature in the Episcopal Psalter, remains the noblest monument to Cromwell's zeal. When he fell from power, in 1540, it survived his disgrace. Tunstall, the very same bishop who, although a scholar of repute himself, had refused to give the scholar's chamber to Tyndale, and who had afterward preached against his New Testament and ordered its destruction, was now forced to swim with the stream, and the third 1 See Stoughton for Illustration.

A. D. 1540.

command.

complete English Bible

edition bears on its title-page his name, as overseeing the translation by the king's By a specified day this was to be set up in every church throughout the kingdom. Latimer ordered it to be chained in the monastery of Worcester. Bonner put six copies in St. Paul's, and was sore distressed to find that people persisted in reading them even during the public services and while the preacher was declaring the word of God. Crowds would gather about the book, which was chained to a pillar, and there would be eager discussions as to the meaning of the passages read aloud by some scholar who chanced to be present.1

This bright hour was destined to be very brief. Cromwell's execution removed the principal advocate for the English Bible from the counsels of the king. In 1543, Henry's mind had completely changed. Tyndale's translation was prohibited by Act of Parliament. Coverdale's ambition to see a Bible published with his annotations was dashed to the ground by a clause commanding that all Bibles thus accompanied should be destroyed. Neither in public nor in private were apprentices, artificers, journeymen, servants, husbandmen, and laborers to be permitted to read the Scriptures. The public reading in the churches by the curates was probably continued, but the tide had set in against 1 1 Eadie, Vol. I., pp. 400, 401.

d., A. D. 1547.

the English Bible, and no one could tell how far or how fast it would run. Happily Henry VIII. was drawing near his end; but Coverdale's heart must have sunk when the sovereign to whom he had been so loyal issued another proclamation, in 1546, coupling his own version with that of Tyndale in a common condemnation. The bishops who had put their names to it, now hastened to disown their signatures. In some places Bibles were burned. The last edition of the Great Bible printed in Henry's reign appeared in 1541. A half-hearted proposition for a new translation fell to the ground. Coverdale himself fled to the continent, and in the town of Bergzabern married, was pastor of a church, and kept school.1 On the 28th of January, 1547, Henry died, and the period of suspense came to an end.

The accession of Edward VI., brought Coverdale home again. He was made a royal chaplain, and his zeal in suppressing a revolt in the west of England was rewarded with the bishopric of Exeter. The work of revision, however, if it did not actually slumber during the brief reign of the frail young king, was not active. The bishops were busy giving a constitution and prayer book to the English church. Cranmer, who never lost sight of the supreme ambition of his life, appointed 1 Dore, p. 89.

A. D. 1547-1553.

two great scholars, Fagius and Bucer, to professorships at Cambridge, and laid upon them the task of interpreting the Scriptures "according to the propriety of the language," and of illustrating obscure passages and reconciling those which seemed to be at variance the one with the other. But Fagius and Bucer both fell sick, and this, as the old chronicler, Strype, says: "gave a very unhappy stop to their studies." That the demand for the Scriptures grew is proved by the fact that, although Edward reigned only six years and a half, thirteen editions of Bibles and thirty-five of Testaments were published in England during his reign. The most ambitious attempt at a new version was made by Sir John Cheke, at one time professor of Greek at Cambridge, and tutor to Edward VI. He completed the Gospel of Matthew and began Mark; but then his work ceased. Possibly it was never intended for publication. Cheke had a perverse ingenuity in coining words, preferring biword, to parable; gainbirth, to regeneration; uprising, to resurrection; freshmen, to proselytes; crossed, to crucified.1

In 1553, the young king, from whom the Protestant party had hoped to receive such great benefits, passed away. Queen Mary at once prohibited the open reading of the Scriptures, and copies which

1 Westcott, pp. 119, 120.