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and ecclesiastical questions. Now, though we are perfectly at one with Mr Buckle in believing that liberality of spirit, exhibited in a practical form, is one of the best and truest attributes of civilised life, we are perfectly convinced that, judged by a practical standard, the Scotch are more liberal than the English. For example, the English Church unchurches the Scotch, the Scotch recognise the church-standing of the English. The English universities have always been kept as ecclesiastical preserves, or governed as mere appendages of the English Church, and on the most narrow and bigoted principles; so that though dissenters may gain a few of its prizes, no dissenter can be allowed to fill one of its chairs. On the other hand, there is no such connection in Scotland between the universities and the church, and there is no such exclusion of dissenters from the professorial chairs. Some people think, however, that Scotch theology is far too rigid and unaccommodating, and that it would be a real advantage to the religion of the country, to have it weakened and desolated by that philosophical pestilence which rages so furiously in the bosom of English Christianity. We have no sympathy with a religious liberalism of this order, and yet no real friend of that massive structure of British theology which was "reared two centuries ago by the piety and genius of the Westminster divines," will object to see an ethically disciplined, metaphysical spirit, operating according to the canons of a well-applied logic, under the increasing light of Biblical science, working towards the fuller development and elucidation of a richly intellectual and profoundly scriptural theology. sure we are that the Scotch mind will never yield to that miserable cowardice of unbelieving, so boldly insinuated by Mr Buckle, that the more' man advances in intellectual, moral, and social culture, the more will God turn away his face from him. This is the miserable doctrine of that scepticism which has been well named the suicide of the soul, and whose warmest dreams and moral aspirations, if such can be at all imagined, will never secure its disciples from the most terrible attacks of hopelessness and despair. T. C.

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Tyndale and the English Bible.

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ART. V.-Tyndale and the English Bible.

The Annals of the English Bible. By CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON.
London: William Pickering.

Foxe's Acts and Monuments of the Church. London.

The Church History of Britain. By THOMAS FULLER, D.D.

FROM

Vols

COM the tenth to the thirteenth century, theology, as a science, was more and more studied simply as a philosophy. The Scriptures were not appealed to as determining the form of Christian dogmas. The schoolmen sought to elucidate and develop theology by speculation and the dialectics of Aristotle. This system culminated about the middle of the thirteenth century. At that time, amid the noisy conflicts of the Thomists and the Scotists, a voice was heard in England calling the attention of students to the Bible as the fountain head of all religious truth. It was Robert Grosseteste (or Capito), a teacher at the university of Oxford, and afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, who took the lead in the reactionary movement against the scholasticism of the middle ages. He held up the word of God as the great standard of authority. But he went further than even this. He spoke out in favour of a translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular languages. "It is the will of God," said he, "that the holy Scriptures should be translated by many translators, and that there should be different translations in the church, so that what is obscurely expressed by one, may be more perspicuously rendered by another." Capito died in the year 1253. A century must pass away before practical effect begins to be given to this idea. Robert of Sorbonne, a teacher at Paris, and founder of the Sorbonne,* and Cardinal Hugo de St Caro (St Chers, at Vienne), exerted no little influence in the same direction; but the growth of opinion in favour of the Scriptures was very slow.

About the middle of the fourteenth century we find Richard Fitzralph, the primate of Ireland, standing prominently out among his compeers as a diligent student of God's word. So ambitious was he to collect books, that he "sent four of his secular chaplains from Armagh to Oxford, who sent him word again that they could neither find the Bible nor any other good profitable book in divinity meet for their study, and therefore were minded to return home to their own country." His studious habits and his love for books were participated in by many around him. He says of himself that "the Lord had taught him and brought him out of the

* The Theological Faculty of the University of Paris.

profound vanities of Aristotle's philosophy to the Scriptures of God." It is said that he translated the New Testament into the Irish language. He died in the year 1360. At that time Wyckliffe had already entered on his important labour at Oxford, in expounding and defending the truth.

Wyckliffe, who has justly been styled the "morning star of the Reformation," was born in 1324 and died in 1384. When he was about forty years of age, he began to take a prominent part in the great controversy then rising into national importance in England, between the spirit of liberty then growing up among the people, and the spirit of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny which animated the whole Romish system, and under which the nations groaned. Wyckliffe became the acknowledged leader in that movement. His publications were circulated far and wide throughout the land. They were even carried abroad into other countries, and everywhere kindled in the bosoms of multitudes an ardent desire for the liberty wherewith the truth makes free. Those who, under the leadership of Wyckliffe, threw off the yoke of Romish superstition, and clung to the simple truths of the gospel, as the very life of their souls, became the objects of bitterest hatred on the part of the priests, whose authority they renounced. They were cruelly persecuted. They were imprisoned, were despoiled of their goods, were tortured and put to death with all the refinements of fiendish cruelty. Notwithstanding all this, the Lollards-for so they began to be called-continued to increase in number. Those who had been students under Wyckliffe at Oxford University, wandered about the country preaching the word from house to house, and sometimes more openly to multitudes of eager listeners, and the gospel prevailed till it would almost seem as if England would rise in the majesty of a ransomed nation and cast off for ever the thraldom of the Antichristian yoke. But there were coming dark and troublous times. The fires of persecution became the fiercer. The Lollards were everywhere hunted as beasts of prey. They met together in dens and caves of the earth. The tracts and books published by Wyckliffe were industriously copied and circulated amongst them long after their great leader's death. They could but suffer and pray, and hope that God would yet send them deliverance. Generations passed away, children learning from their fathers the truths of God and inheriting their faith, and yet the day of deliverance dawned not. Long and weary was their waiting, yet their hope did not give way. All seemed to be against them. The combined civil and ecclesiastical authorities sought their complete destruction. Yet they perished not from out the land. They

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lingered on till the glorious morning of the Reformation. dawned upon them in all its cloudless splendour.

Wyckliffe's great work, and that by which the spirit of the Reformation was mainly nurtured in England, was his translation of the Bible in the English language. This was accomplished about the year 1380. The Lollards prized the Bible, thus given to them in their own language, above all things. But they possessed it not without the peril of their lives. They had to read it in secret and by stealth. They gathered together in little bands in some retired cottage, or in some remote glen or mountain fastness, to read together from the precious book. The priests and monks instituted strict search, and wherever they could find the obnoxious volume or any part of it, they committed it to the flames and cast its possessors into prison-the civil authorities giving effect to the cruel persecuting decrees of the rulers of the land.

For many a long and weary day were the Lollards the objects of relentless cruelty. Darkness again seemed to be about to settle down over the land. No one dared to utter his voice in favour of the truth. Popery, which had been so valiantly assailed and almost wholly overthrown by Wyckliffe, once more triumphed, But time wore on, and events were rapidly maturing toward a second and more widely spread, and more complete revolution in the religious history of England.

In the year 1509, king Henry VIII. ascended the throne of England. He professed to be a great patron of learning, and the scholars of that age, with Erasmus at their head, hailed his coronation as the bringing in of a new era. Henry married Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand. She had been the wife of his brother Prince Arthur, who had died in 1505. The Pope, Julius II., by a special dispensation, allowed the marriage to take place.

Wolsey, a priest, having obtained the office of almoner under Henry VII., became, on the death of that king, a great favourite with Henry VIII. He was an ambitious, unscrupulous ecclesiastic. He at length rose to the dignity of Lord Chancellor of England and Papal Legate. He had reached the very summit of his ambition. In his palace he surrounded himself with royal pomp and splendour, and when he appeared in public, the retinue which accompanied him was brilliant and imposing. The clergy of England had declared themselves as above the law of the land. They maintained that, as the anointed of God, the civil authorities could have no control over them. They could only, they affirmed, be tried before an ecclesiastical tribunal. Wolsey

boldly upheld this priestly supremacy. "Sire," said he to Henry, "to try a clerk is a violation of God's law." The king was by no means disposed to acquiesce in this doctrine. He replied, "By God's will we are king of England, and the kings of England in times past had never any superiors but God only. Therefore know you well that we will maintain the right of our crown." The Parliament of England was now again, as it had been in the days of Wyckliffe, weary of the arrogant pretensions of the clergy, and resisted their claims. The old conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities was about to be renewed.

The priests manifested everywhere a furious hatred against all such persons as were suspected of heresy. We read of persons in diverse places being seized and condemned as Lollards, and burned. The priests saw that there was growing up in England a band of men of learning, trained by Erasmus, who was then in London, whose spirit and aims seemed to threaten the overthrow of the whole ecclesiastical system. They looked on this new movement with the greatest suspicion. Erasmus first came over to this country from Holland in 1497. He came for the purpose of studying the Greek language at Oxford, under the celebrated Grocyn. "Here," he says, "I have met with humanity, politeness, learning-learning not trite and superficial, but deep, accurate, and true; and withal so much of it, that but for curiosity, I have no occasion to visit Italy." After a residence of two years at Oxford, he went over to Paris and pursued his studies at the University there for three years. He then went over to Italy. In 1509 he returned to England, and became Professor of Greek at Cambridge, where he remained till 1514. He stood high in public favour as one of the first learned men in England. On account of some sarcastic remarks he had made concerning the priests, he became the object of their bitter hatred. They resolved to deal with him as a heretic. To escape their persecution he fled to the continent, and took up his residence for a time in the city of Basle. Here he issued from the printing press of Frobenius the New Testament in Greek, with a Latin translation. The art of printing, discovered by John Gutenberg about 1435, was by this time practised in all the chief cities of Europe. About the close of the fifteenth century there were no fewer than a thousand printing presses briskly at work in 220 different towns of Europe. A mighty change was silently and rapidly passing over the face of the world. The publication of Erasmus's Greek Testament (A.D. 1516) was an event of the greatest importance. It was printed now for the first time. It was rapidly conveyed over to Eng

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