FORWARD

THE YEARS SINCE McCLURE’S “TRANSLATORS REVIVED”

When Alexander McClure wrote “The Translators Revived” in 1858, he could not possibly have

foreseen the coming events which began when the 1881 translation first appeared. This version was the

joint effort of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and the revision committee was headed up by

Brooke Foss Westcott (Regius professor of Divinity at Cambridge), and Fenton John Anthony Hort

(Lecturer on New Testament at Cambridge), and had its origin in an action taken by the Convocation of

the Province of Canterbury in February 1870. There were two revision companies in England and

eventually two were formed in America.

In May of 1870, the Convocation of Canterbury laid down some basic rules which were to be observed

by the translation groups. These rules were as follows:

[1] To introduce as few alterations as possible into the text of the Authorised Version.

[2] To limit, as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language of the

Authorized and earlier English Versions.

[3] Each company to go twice over the portion to be revised, once provisionally, the second

time finally, and on principles of voting as hereinafter is provided.

[4] That the Text that is to be adopted be that for which the evidence is decidedly

preponderating; and that when the Text so adopted differs from that from which the Authorised

Version was made, the alteration be indicated in the margin.

[5] To make or retain no change in the Text on the second final revision by each Company,

except two thirds of those present approve of the same, but on the first revision to decide by

simple majorities.

[6] In every case of proposed alteration that may have given rise to discussion, to defer the

voting thereupon till the next meeting, whensoever the same shall be required by one third of

those present at the meeting, such intended vote to be announced in the notice for the next

meeting.

[7] To revise the headings of chapters and pages, paragraphs, italics, and punctuations.

[8] To refer, on the part of each Company, when considered desirable, to Divines, Scholars, and

Literary Men, whether at home or abroad, for their opinions.

THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE CONVOCATION OF CANTERBURY

In addition to the rules just mentioned, the Convocation also passed five resolutions that were to govern

the actions of the translation Committees. These resolutions are as follows:

[1] That it is desirable that a revision of the Authorised Version of the Holy Scriptures be

undertaken.

[2] That the revision be so conducted as to comprise both marginal renderings and such

emendations as it may be found necessary to insert in the text of the Authorised Version.

[3] That in the above resolutions we do not contemplate any new translation of the Bible, or any

alteration of the language, except where in the judgment of the most competent scholars such

change is necessary.

[4] That in such necessary changes, the style of the language employed in the existing Version

be closely followed.

[5] That it is desirable that Convocation should nominate a body of its own members to

undertake the work of revision, who shall be at liberty to invite the cooperation of any eminent

for scholarship, to whatever nation or religious body they may belong.

WHAT WAS INTENDED WAS NEVER DONE!

What the Convocation set out to do, and what was finally published have some grave differences,

which will be pointed out in the pages to follow. First of all, it should be noted that Bishop Westcott did

not conform to the desires of the Convocation, in that he insisted upon one particular Text to the

exclusion of the Texts used by the translators of the KJV. That Text, he frankly admitted, was Codex

Aleph, or Sinaiticus. The other manuscript which was highly esteemed by Westcott and Hort was Code

B, or Vaticanus. This Text (Codex Aleph) is a single Greek manuscript which was copied about 400

A.D. and is not the best available Scriptural evidence.

Read the words of Prebendary Scrivener, who was also on the Revision committee, as he writes of this

choice of manuscripts. “..entirely destitute of historical foundation..” Westcott made the assumption

that “oldest” was “best”, which, in the case of Biblical manuscripts, is simply not so! Upon making this

decision, he and Hort set aside a mountain of evidence that had come to light since the 1611 Authorized

Version, and had this material been consulted they would have found that most of the intrusions into the

Text were unwarranted, unnecessary and unscriptural!

In addition: by inserting the words “many ancient authorities omit...” or “the best manuscripts read

thus...” they automatically put themselves in the place of judge as to what actually constituted God’s

Word, and in many cases they chose an inferior reading to that which is in the Authorized Version.

What the Convocation desired, and explicity stated in both the resolutions and rules portion, was

simply set aside or excused, and insertions were made into the text which were based upon manuscript

evidence that was less reliable than the Textus Receptus.

WHAT IS GOD’S WORD?

If thought is expressed in words, then to know the mind of God we must know his Word. It has been

very popular in the 20th century to hold any version that comes along with the same veneration and

belief as the King James Bible. Words are of extreme importance, for God used the language of men to

express Himself... first in the language of the Hebrew nation, then in the Aramaic and Greek of the

New Testament. That language has been translated into almost every language on earth, and it is

remarkable that each rendering has remained as close to the original autographs as it has.

Because God only dealt with one nation in the Old Testament, the language of that people was used,

but when we come to the New Testament we find that there was a language in use that was as close to

being universal as any language had ever been, and that language is Greek.

Every time a translation is done from one language to another, something is inevitably lost. In many

cases a Greek word requires an entire sentence in English, and yet the translators of the King James

Version were adept enough to be able to find just the right word to express the fullest, richest meaning

of the Greek Text.

Surely reason would tell us that every version that has been printed cannot be God’s Word! Many of the

so-called versions are not translations at all, but merely personal interpretations, and even the plain

meaning of simple versions are obscured and mutilated to the extent that they often mean just the

opposite of the intended Word of God. As said before: language is the expression of thought, and to

know what God transmits from His mind to ours, we have to know what God’s Word really is.

Alexander McClure’s “Translators Revived” was not written to begin a KJV cult, nor was it his

intention to proclaim the KJV as a faultless production. The purpose of McClure was to show the

nature of the translation, and the character of the men who participated in the actual work of

translation. In this there can be no doubt that he succeeded, and the evidence can be weighed by all

who care to read his writings.

IS THE KJV GOD’S WORD?

Much derision and scorn is heaped upon those who hold in high esteem the work of the King James

translators. One group, made up of mostly younger men who are fairly recent graduates of Bible

Colleges or Seminaries, even use the term, “The King Jimmy Bible”, which ought to tell us something

of the lack of concern over which Bible is, indeed, the very Word of God!

As has been, and will be, pointed out, there are numbers of books which have “BIBLE” printed on the

cover, but what is inside may often be as far from the truth as the east is from the west. For that reason,

the reader is encouraged to thoroughly read the next few pages before getting into the main body of

McClure’s outstanding little treatise, for there are some things said that may cause a change of mind

when carefully weighed in the scales of TRUTH.

THE TRANSLATORS REVIVED

A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE AUTHORS OF THE ENGLISH

VERSION OF THE

HOLY BIBLE

BY

Alexander W. McClure, D.D.

PREFACE

This little volume has been long in preparation. It is more than twenty years since the Author's attention

was directed to the inquiry, What were the personal qualifications for their work possessed by King

James' Translators of the Bible? He expected to satisfy himself without difficulty, but found himself

sorely disappointed. There was abundance of general testimony to their learning and piety; but nowhere

any particular account of the men themselves. Copious histories of the origin, character, and results of

their work have been drawn up with elaborate research; but of the Translators personally, little more

was told than a meagre catalogue of their names, with brief notices of such offices as a few of them

held.

The only resource was to take these names in detail, and search for any information relative to each

individual. For a long time, but little came to hand illustrative of their characters and acquirements,

except in relation to some of the more prominent men included in the royal commission. The Author

quite despaired of ever being able to identify the greater part of them, by any thing more than their bare

surnames. But devoting much of his time to searching in public libraries, he by degrees recovered from

oblivion one by one of these worthies, till only two of them, Fairclough and Sanderson, remain without

some certain testimonial of their fitness for the most responsible undertaking the in the religious

literature of the English world. In regard to some of them, who for a long time eluded his search, the

revived information at last seemed almost like a resurrection. As the result of his researches, which he

has carried, as he believes, to the utmost extent to which it can be done with the means accessible on

this side of the Atlantic, he offers to all who are interested to know in regard to the general sufficiency

and reliable-ness of the Common Version, these biographical sketches of its authors. He feels assured

that they will afford historical demonstration of a fact which much astonished him when it began to

dawn upon his convictions, --that the first half of the seventeenth century, when the Translation was

completed, was the GOLDEN AGE of biblical and oriental learning in England. Never before, nor

since, have these studies been pursued by scholars whose vernacular tongue is the English, with such

zeal, and industry, and success. This remarkable fact is such a token of God's providential care of his

word, as deserves most devout acknowledgment.

That the true character of their employment, at the precise stage where those good men took it up, may

be properly understood by such as have not given particular attention to the subject, a condensed

"Introductory Narrative" is given. In its outlines, this follows the crowded octavos of the late

Christopher Anderson. He has gleaned out the very corners of the field so carefully, as to leave little for

any who may follow him. To his work, or rather to the skillful abridgement of it, in a single octavo

volume, by Rev. Dr. Prime, all who desire more minute information on that part of the subject are

respectfully referred.

The writers to whom the author of this book is most indebted for his biographical materials are Thomas

Fuller and Anthony A. Wood. The former, the wittiest and one of the most delightful of the old English

writers,--and the latter one of the most crabbed and cynical. What has been obtained from them was

gathered wherever it was sprinkled, in scattered morsels, over their numerous and bulky volumes.

Beside what was furnished from these sources, numerous fragments have been collected from a wide

range of reading, including every thing that seemed to promise any additional matter of information.

The work is, doubtless, quite imperfect, because after the lapse of more than two centuries, during

which no person appears to have thought of the thing, the means of information have been growing

more scanty, and the difficulty of recovering it has been constantly increased. Critical inquisitors may

be able to detect some inaccuracies in pages prepared under such disadvantages; but it will require no

great stretch of generosity to make due allowance for them.

The general result, to which the Author particularly solicits the attention of any who may honor these

pages with their perusal, is the ample proof afforded of the surpassing qualifications of those venerable

Translators, taken as a body, for their high and holy work. We have here presumptive evidence of the

strongest kind, that their work is deserving of entire confidence. It ought to be received as a "final

settlement" of the translation of the Scriptures for popular use,--at least, till the time when a body of

men equally qualified can be brought together to re-adjust the work, --a time which most certainly has

not yet arrived! If that time shall ever come, may there be found among their successors the vast

learning, wisdom, and piety of the old Translators happily revived!

INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE

The translation of the Bible into any language is an event of the highest importance to those by whom

that language is spoken. But when such a translation is to be read for successive centuries, by

uncounted millions scattered over all the earth, and for whose use so many millions of copies have

already been printed, it becomes a work of the highest moral and historical interest. Thus the translation

and printing of the Bible in English forms a most important event in modern history. Far beyond any

other translation, it has been, and is, and will be, to multitudes which none can number, the living

oracle of God, giving to them, in their mother tongue, their surest and safest teaching on all that can

affect their eternal welfare.

Many attempts had been made, at various times, to put different portions of the Scriptures into the

common speech of the English people. Of these, one of the most noticeable was a translation of John's

Gospel into Anglo-Saxon, made, at the very close of his life, by the "Venerable Bede", a Northumbrian

monk, who died in his cell, in May, A.D. 735. A most interesting account of his last illness is given by

Cuthbert, his scholar and biographer. Toward evening of the day of his death, one of his disciples said,

"Beloved teacher, one sentence remains to be written." "Write it quickly, then," said the dying saint;

and summoning all his strength for this last flash of the expiring lamp, he dictated the holy words.

When told that the work was finished, he answered, "Thou sayest well. It is finished!" He then

requested to be taken up, and placed in that part of his cell where he was wont to kneel at his private

devotions; so that, as he said, he might while sitting there call upon his Father. He then sang the

doxology, -"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost!" and as he sang the last

syllable, he drew his last breath. (See Neander, Denjwurdigkeiten, &c., III. 171-175; and Fuller, Church

History, I. 149-151.)

The admirable King Alfred, who ascended the throne two hundred years after the birth of Bede,

translated the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon. But the first complete translations which can be said to have

been published, so as to come into extensive use, was that made by Wiclif, about the year 1380. It was

not made from the "original Hebrew and Greek of the Holy Ghost;" but from the Vulgate, a Latin

version, chiefly prepared by Jerome during the latter part of the fourth century. John Wiclif was born in

Yorkshire, England, in the year 1324. He was a priest, and a professor of divinity in the University of

Oxford. His ardent piety was nursed by the Scriptures which gave it birth. He is commonly called "the

morning-star of the Protestant reformation," and was one of the brightest of those scattered lights of the

Dark Ages, who are often spoken of as "reformers before the reformation." Like Martin Luther, his

opposition to popish errors and corruptions was at first confined to a few points; but prayer, study of

the Bible, and growing grace, led him on a constant advance toward the purity of truth. He became in

doctrine what would now be called a Calvinist; and in church discipline his views agreed with those

which are now maintained by Congregationalists. After encountering many prosecutions and

persecutions, having however a powerful protector in John of Gaunt, (or Ghent, in Flanders, his native

place,) the famous old Duke of Lancaster, Wiclif peacefully closed his devout and laborious life, at his

rectory of Lutterworth, in 1384. Fourty-one years after, by order of the popish Council of Constance,

his bones were unearthed, burned to ashes, and cast into the Swift, a neighboring brook. "Thus," says

Thomas Fuller, "this brook has conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow

seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which is

now dispersed the world over." (This noble passage from a favorite author, Wordsworth has finely

versified in one of his Ecclesiastical Sonnets:

"As though these ashes, little brook, wilt bear

Into the Avon, Avon to the tide

Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,

Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst

An emblem yields to friends and enemies,

How the bold Teacher's doctrine, sanctified

By Truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed."

Wiclif's translation of the Bible was made before the invention of the printing machines; and the

manuscripts, though quite numerous, were very costly. Nicholas Belward suffered from popish cruelty

in 1429, for having in his possession a copy of Wiclif's New Testament. That copy cost him four marks

and forty pence. This sum, so much greater was the value of money then than it is now, was considered

as a sufficient annual salary for a curate. The same value at the present time would pay for many

hundred copies of the Testament, well printed and bound. Such are the marvels wrought by the art of

printing, which Luther was wont to call "the last and best gift" of Providence. (Summum et postremum

donum.) It has become the "capacious reservoir of human knowledge, whose branching streams diffuse

sciences, arts, and morality, through all ages and all nations." (Darwin's Zoonomia, I. 51.) Let us hope,

with an old writer, "that the low pricing of the Bible may never occasion the low prizing of the Bible."

Limited as the circulation of the English Bible must have been in its manuscript form, it still made no

little trouble for the monkish doctors of that day. One of them, Henry de Knyghton, said, "This Master

John Wiclif hath translated the gospel out of Latin into English, which Christ had intrusted with the

clergy and doctors of the Church, that they might minister it to the laity and weaker sort, according to

the state of the times and the wants of men. So that, by this means, the gospel is made vulgar, and made

more open to the laity, and even to women who can read, than it used to be to the most learned of the

clergy and those of the best understanding! And what was before the chief gift of the clergy and doctors

of the Church, is made for ever common to the laity." If the publication of an English Bible in

manuscript caused such popish lamentations, we need not wonder that the multiplication of a similar

work in print should afterwards awaken such a fury, that Rowland Phillips, the papistical Vicar of

Croyden, in a noted sermon preached at St. Paul's Cross, London, in the year 1535, declared; "We must

root out printing, or printing will root out us!"

Manuscripts of Wiclifs complete version are still numerous. His Bibles are nearly as numerous as his

New Testaments; and there are besides many copies of separate books of the Scriptures. They are quite

remarkable for their legibility and beauty, and indicate the great care taken in making them, and in

preserving them for nearly five hundred years. The New Testament of this version was printed in the

year 1731, or three hundred and fifty years after it was finished. The whole Bible by Wiclif was never

printed till two or three years since, when it appeared at Oxford, with the Latin Vulgate, from which it

was translated, in parallel columns.

Contemporary with Wiclif, was John de Trevisa, born of an ancient family, at Crocadon in Cornwall.

He was a secular priest, and Vicar of Berkeley. He translated several large works out of Latin into

English; and chiefly the entire Bible, justifying himself by the example of the Venerable Bede, who had

done the same thing for the Gospel of John. This great, and good, and dangerous task he performed by

commission from his noble and powerful patron and protector, Lord Thomas de Berkeley. This

nobleman had the whole of the book of Revelation, in Latin and French, which latter was then

generally understood by the better educated class of Englishmen, written upon the walls and ceiling of

his chapel at Berkeley, where it was to be seen hundreds of years after. Trevisa, notwithstanding his

translation of the Bible made him obnoxious to the persecutors of his day, lived and died unmolested,

though known to be an enemy of monks and begging friars. He expired, full of honor and years, being

little less than ninety years of age, in the year 1397. (Fuller's Church History of Britain, I. 467.) Little

else is known of him, or of his translation, which did not supersede the labors of Wiclif.

The first book ever printed with metal types was The Latin Bible, issued by Gutenberg and Fust, at

Mentz, in the Duchy of Hesse, between the years 1450 and 1455, for it bears no date. It is a folio of 641

leaves, or 1282 pages, in two volumes. Though a first attempt, it is beautifully printed on very fine

paper, and with superior ink. At least eighteen copies of this famous edition are known to be in

existence; four of them on vellum, and fourteen on paper. Twenty-five years ago, one of the vellum

copies was sold for five hundred and four pounds sterling; and one of the paper copies lately brought

one hundred and ninety pounds. Truly venerable relics! Thus the printing-press paid its first homage to

the Best of Books; the highest honor ever done to that illustrious art, and the highest purpose to which

it could ever be applied.

The first Scripture ever printed in English was a sort of paraphrase of the seven penitential Psalms, so

called, by John Fisher, the popish bishop of Rochester, who was beheaded by Henry VIII, in the year

1535. This little book was printed in 1505.

The first decided steps, however, toward giving to the English nation a Bible printed in their own

tongue, were the translations of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, made by William Tyndale, and by

him printed at Hamburg, in the year 1524; --and a translation of the whole of the New Testament,

printed by him partly at Cologne, and partly at Worms, in 1525. After six editions of the Testament had

been issued, he published Genesis and Deuteronomy, in 1530; and next year the Pentateuch. In the year

1535 was printed the entire Bible, under the auspices of Miles Coverdale, who mostly followed

Tyndale as far as he had gone; but without any other connection with him. Of Coverdale, further

mention will be made. But in the year 1537 appeared a folio Bible, printed in some city in Germany,

with the following title,--"THE BYBLE, which is the Holy Scripture; in which are contayned the Olde

and Newe Testament, truely and purely translated into Englysh--by Thomas Matthew.--MDXXXVII."

This is substantially the basis of all the other versions of the Bible into English, including that which is

now in such extensive use. It contains Tyndales' labors as far as he had gone previous to his martyrdom

by fire about a year before its publication. That is to say, the whole of the New Testament, and of the

Old, as far as the end of the Second Book of Chronicles, or exactly two-thirds of the entire Scripture,

were Tyndale's work. The other third, comprising the remainder of the Old Testament, was made by his

friend and co-laborer, Thomas Matthew, who was no other than John Rogers, the famous martyr,

afterwards burnt in the days of "bloody Mary"; and who, at the time of his immortal publication, went

by the name of Matthew.

William Tyndale, whose vast services to the English-speaking branches of the Church of God have

never been duly appreciated, was born in the Hundred of Berkeley, and probably in the village of North

Nibley, about the year 1484. His family was ancient and respectable. His grandsire was Hugh, Baron de

Tyndale. From an early age, he was brought up at the University of Oxford. Here, during a lengthened

residence in Magdalen College, he became a proficient in all the learning of that day, and in the latter

part of his time read private lectures in divinity. He was ordained a priest in 1502; and became a

Minorite Observatine friar. His zeal in the exposition of the Scriptures excited the displeasure of the

adversaries, and "spying his time," says Foxe, "he removed from Oxford to the University of

Cambridge, where he likewise made his abode a certain space." This place he had left by 1519. In total

independence of Luther, he arose at the same time with that great translator of the Bible into German;

being equally moved with him to resist the corruptions and oppressions of a priesthood, which sought

to imprison and enslave the minds of all nations, by keeping from them "the key of knowledge".

Returning from Cambridge to his native county, he spent nearly two years in the manor- house of Little

Sodbury, as tutor to the children of Sir John Walsh. On the Sabbath he preached in the neighboring

parishes, and especially at St. Austin's Green, in Bristol. At Sir John's hospitable board, the mitred

abbots, and other ecclesiastics who swarmed in that neighborhood, were frequent guests; and Tyndale

sharply and constantly disputed their mean superstitions. At the first, Sir John and his lady Anne took

the part of the "abbots, deans, archdeacons, with diverse other doctors and great-beneficed men;" but

after reading a translation of Erasmus' "Christian Soldier's Manual", which Tyndale made for them,

they took his part. Upon this, those "doctorly prelatists" forbore Sir John's good cheer, rather than to

take with it what Fuller calls "the sour sauce" of Tyndale's conversation. A storm was now gathering

over his head. Not only the ignorant hedge- priests at their ale-houses, but the dignified clergymen in

the Bishop's councils began to brand him with the name of heretic. In 1522 he was summoned, with all

the other priests of the district, before the bishop's Chancellor. In their presence he was very roughly

handled. In his own account, he says, "When I came before the Chancellor, he threatened me

grievously, and reviled me, and rated me as though I had been a dog."

It was not long after this, that in disputing with a diving reputed to be quite learned, Tyndale utterly

confounded him with certain texts of Scripture; upon which the irritated papist exclaimed, --"It were

better for us to be without God's laws, than without the Pope's!" This was a little too much for Tyndale,

who boldly replied, "I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spare my life, ere many years, I will

cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than you do!". A noble boast; and

nobly redeemed at the cost of his life! He now clearly saw, that nothing could rescue the mass of the

English nation from the impostures of the high priests and low priests of Rome, unless the Scriptures

were placed in the hands of all. "Which thing only," he says, "moved me to translate the New

Testament. Because I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to establish that lay

people in any truth, except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in the mother tongue."

When he could no longer remain at Sir John Walsh's without bringing that worthy knight, as well as

himself, into danger, Tyndale went to London, with letters introducing him, as a ripe Greek scholar, to

the patronage of that Dr. Tunstall, then bishop of London, who afterwards burned so many of Tyndale's

New Testaments. The courtly and classical bishop refused to befriend him; and he who had hoped in

that prelate's own house to translate the New Testament, was obliged to seek a harbor elsewhere. For

nearly a year, he resided in the house of Humphrey Munmouth, a wealthy citizen of London, and

afterwards an alderman, knight, and sheriff. During this time, he used to preach in the Church of St.

Dunstan's in the West. By this time, he was convinced that no where in all England would he be

permitted to put in act the glorious resolve he had formed at Little Sudbury.

In January 1524, with a heart full of love and pity for his native land, Tyndale sailed for Hamburg,

being "helped over the sea" by the generous Munmouth, who also assisted him during his fifteen

months' abode in that city. Here he so improved his time, that in May, 1525, he went to Cologne, and

began to print his New Testament in quarto form. Ten sheets had hardly been worked off, before an

alarm was raised, and the public authorities forbade the work to go on. Tyndale and his amanuensis,

William Roye, managed to save those sheets and to sail with them up the Rhine to Worms, where they

finished the edition of three thousand copies in comparative safety. A precious relic, containing the

Prologue and twenty-two chapters of Matthew, is all that is known to exist of this memorable edition,

which is in the German Gothic type. In the same year and place, there was printed another edition, in

small-octavo, of which one copy is extant in the Bristol Museum. During the subsequent ten years of

the Translators unquiet life, spent in labor and conceal- ment from foes, more than twenty editions of

this work, with repeated revisions by himself, were passed through the press. These, through the

agency of pious merchants and others, were secretly conveyed into England, and there with great

privacy sold and circulated, not without causing constant peril and frequent suffering to those into

whose hands they came. Many copies fell into the grasp of the enemy, and were destroyed; but very

many more were secretly read and pondered in castles and in cottages, and powerfully prepared the

way for the liberation of England from the yoke of Rome. This New Testament has been separately

printed in not less than fifty-six editions, as well as in fourteen editions of the Holy Bible.

Besides all these impressions of the work as Tyndale left it, it has been five times revised by able

translators, including those appointed by King James; and still forms substantially, though with very

numerous amendments, the version in common use. The changes made in these revisions, though

generally for the better, were not always so. The substitution of the word charity, where Tyndale had

used love, was not a happy change; neither was that of church, where he had employed congregation.

Still, large portions of his work remain untouched, and are read verbally as he left them, except in the

matter of spelling. The fidelity of his rendering is such as might be expected from his conscientious

care. "For I call God to record," he says, in his reply to Lord Chancellor More, "against the day we

shall appear before our Lord Jesus, to give a reckoning of our doings, that I never altered one syllable

of God's Word against my conscience; nor would this day, if all that is in the earth, whether it be

pleasure, honor, or riches, might be given me."

Not only was this holy man faithful in his great work, but he was fully qualified for it by his

scholarship. His sound learning is evident enough on reading his pages. Certain historians, however,

while acknowledging his proficiency in Greek literature, have represented him as having little or no

acquaintance with Hebrew, and as making his translations of the Old Testament from the Latin or else

the German. As for German, then a rude speech just taking its "form and pressure" from the genius of

Martin Luther, there is no evidence that Tyndale ever had much acquaintance with it. But of his

knowledge of Hebrew there can be no question. In his answer to Sir Thomas More's huge volume

against him, he accuses the prelates of having lost the understanding of the plain text, "and of the

Greek, Latin, and especially of the HEBREW, which is MOST of need to be known, and of all phrases,

the proper manner of speakings, and borrowed speech of the Hebrews." In these words he clearly

indicates his critical familiarity with the Hebraisms of the New Testament, which contains so many

expressions conformed rather to the idiom of the Hebrew tongue than to that of the Greek. George

Joye, once occupied as his amanuensis, who turned against him, bears unwitting testimony upon this

point. "I am not afraid," he says, "to answer Master Tyndale in this matter, for all his high learning in

HEBREW, Greek and Latin, &c." What were the other tongues Joye referred to, we learn from Herman

Buschius, a learned professor, who was acquainted with Tyndale both at Marburg and Worms. Spalatin,

the friend of Luther, says in his Diary, --"Buschius told me, that, at Worms, six thousand copies of the

New Testament had been printed in English. The work was translated by an Englishman staying there

with two others,--a man so skilled in the seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish,

English, and French, that which- ever he spake, you would suppose it his native tongue."

We must draw this account of Tyndale to a close (Those who would know all they can of Tyndale are

referred to the First Volume of Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, which might have been entitled,

Tyndale and his Times.) But one curious incident must be mentioned, which took place in 1529.

Tunstall, then bishop of the wealthy see of Durham, bought up the balance of an edition of the New

Testament, which hung on Tyndale's hands at Antwerp, and burned them. The purchase was made

through one Packington, a merchant who secretly favored Tyndale. The latter rejoiced to sell off his

unsold copies, being anxious to put to press a new and corrected edition, which he was too poor to

publish till thus furnished with the means by Tunstall's simplicity. A year or two after, George

Constantine, one of Tyndale's coadjutors, fell into the hands of Sir Thomas More. That bitter persecutor

promised his prisoner a pardon, provided he would give up the name of the person who defrayed the

expense of this Bible-printing business. Constantine, being something of a wag, and aware that More

was a dear lover of a joke, accepted the offer, and amused the Chancellor by informing him that the

bishop of Durham was their greatest encourager; for, by buying up the unsold copies at a good round

sum, he had enabled them to produce a second and improved edition. Sir Thomas greatly enjoyed the

joke, and said he had told Tunstall at the time, that such would be the result of his fine speculation.

"This," as D'Israeli says, "was the first lesson which taught persecutors that is easier to burn authors

than books."

Early in 1535, Tyndale who had been constantly hunted by the emissaries of his English persecutors,

was betrayed by one Phillips, a tool of Stephen Gardiner, the cruel and crafty bishop of Winchester. He

suffered an imprisonment of more than eighteen months in the castle of Vilvorde, where he was the

means of converting the jailor, the jailor's daughter, and others of the household. All that conversed

with him in the castle bore witness to the purity of his character; and even the Emporer Charles the

Fifth's Prosecutor-General, or chief prosecuting officer, who saw him there, said that he was "homo

doctus, pius, et bonus,"--"a learned, pious, and good man." It was Friday, the sixth of October, 1536,

when this man, "of whom the world was not worthy," and who ought to be famed as the noblest and

greatest benefactor of the English race in all the world, was brought forth to die. Being fastened to the

stake, he cried out with a fervent zeal, and in a loud voice,-- "LORD OPEN THE EYES OF THE

KING OF ENGLAND!" He was then strangled, and burned to ashes. Thus departed one for whom

heaven was ready; but for whom earth, to this hour, has no monument, except the Bible he gave to so

many of her millions.

"He lived unknown

Till persecution dragged him into fame,

And chased him up to Heaven. His ashes flew--

No marble tells us whither. With his name

No bard embalms and sanctifies his song;

And history, so warm on meaner themes,

Is cold on this."

But there is a better world, where he is not forgotten. "Also now, behold, his witness is in heaven, and

his record is on high."

Old John Foxe, the martyrologist, who justly calls Tyndale "the Apostle of England," gives the

following beautiful sketch of the man--"First, he was a man very frugal, and spare of body, a great

student and earnest laborer in setting forth the Scriptures of God. He reserved or hallowed to himself,

two days in the week, which he named his pastime, Monday and Saturday. On Monday he visited all

such poor men and women as were fled out of England, by reason of persecution, unto Antwerp; and

these, once well understanding their good exercises and qualities, he did very liberally comfort and

relieve; and in like manner provided for the sick and diseased persons. On the Saturday, he walked

round the town, seeking every corner and hole, where he suspected any poor person to dwell; and

where he found any to be well occupied, and yet overburthened with children, or else were aged and

weak, these he also plentifully relieved. And thus he spent his two days of pastime, as he called it. And

truly his alms were very large, and so they might well be; for his exhibition (i.e., pension) that he had

yearly of the English merchants at Antwerp, while living there, was considerable, and that for the most

part he bestowed upon the poor. The rest of the days of the week he gave wholly to his BOOK, wherein

he most diligently travailed. When the Sunday came, then went he to some one merchant's chamber, or

other, whither came many other merchants, and unto them would he read some one parcel of Scripture;

the which proceeded so fruitfully, sweetly, and gently from him, much like to the writing of John the

Evangelist, that it was a heavenly comfort and joy to the audience, to hear him read the Scriptures;

likewise, after dinner, he spent an hour in the same manner. He was a man without any spot or blemish

of rancor or malice, full of mercy and compassion, so that no man living was able to reprove him of

any sin or crime; although his righteousness and justification depended not thereupon before God; but

only upon the blood of Christ, and his faith upon the same. In this faith he died, with constancy, at

Vilvorde, and now resteth with the glorious company of Christ's martyrs, blessedly in the Lord."

The good man's work did not die with him. During the last year of his life, nine or more editions of his

Testament issued from the press, and found their way into England "thick and threefold." But what is

strangest of all, and is unexplained to this day, at the very time when Tyndale by the procurement of

English ecclesiastics, and by the sufference of the English king, was burned at Vilvorde, a folio-edition

of his Translation was printed at London, with his name on the title page, and by Thomas Berthelet, the

king's own patent printer. This was the first copy of the Scripture ever printed on English ground.

THE TRANSLATORS REVIVED

Having thus traced the history of our Common Version, through the successive steps by which it has

come down to us in its present shape, it remains for us to inquire as to the PERSONS who put the

finishing hand to the work, and to satisfy ourselves as to their qualifications for the task. It is obvious

that this personal investigation is of the utmost importance in settling the degree of confidence to which

their labors are entitled. Unless it can be proved that they were, as a body, eminently fitted to do this

work as it ought to be done, it can have no claim to be regarded as a “finality” in the matter of

furnishing a translation of the Word of God for the English speaking populations of the globe.

It is exceedingly strange that a question of such obvious importance has been so long left almost

unnoticed. Numerous histories of the Translation itself have been drawn up with great labor; but no

man seems to have thought it worth his while to give any account of the Translators, except the most

meagre notices of a few of them, and general attestations to their reputations, in their own time, for

such scholarship and skill as their undertaking required. Even the late excellent Christopher Anderson,

in his huge volumes, replete as they are with research and information upon the minutest points relating

to this subject, allots but a page or two of his smallest type to this essential branch of it.

It is nearly twenty years since the writer of these pages began to consider the desirableness of knowing

more of those eminent divines, and he has ever since pursued a zealous search wherever he was likely

to effect any “restitution of decayed intelligence” respecting them. At first, he almost despaired of

ascertaining much more than the bare names of most of them. But by degrees he has collected

innumerable scraps of information, gathered from a great variety of sources; amply sufficient, with due

arrangement, to illustrate the subject. His object is simply to shew, that the Translators commissioned

by James Stuart were ripe and critical scholars, profoundly versed in all the learning required; and that,

in these particulars, there has never yet been a time when a better qualified company could have been

collected for the purpose.

Of the forty-seven, who acted under king James’s commission, some are almost unknown at this day,

though of high repute in their own time. A few have left us but little more than their names, worthy of

immortal remembrance, were it only for their connection with this noble monument of learning and

piety. But their being associated with so many other scholars and divines of the greatest eminence, is

proof that they were deemed to be fit companions for the brightest lights of the land. This is confirmed

by the fact that, though the king designed to employ in this work the highest and ripest talents in his

realm, there were still many men in England distinguished for their learning, like Broughton and

Bedell, who were not enrolled on the list of translators. It is but just to conclude, therefore, that even

such as are now less known to us, were then accounted to deserve a place with the best. What we many

know of the greater part of them, must lead to the highest estimate of the whole body of these good

men. The catalogue beings with one whose name is worthy of the place it fills.

LANCELOT ANDREWS

He was born at London, in 1565. He was trained chiefly at Merchant Taylor's school, in his native city,

till he was appointed to one of the first Greek Scholarships of Pembroke Hall, in the University of

Cambridge. Once a year, at Easter, he used to pass a month with his parents. During this vacation, he

would find a master, from whom he learned some language to which he was before a stranger. In this

way after a few years, he acquired most of the modern languages of Europe. At the University, he gave

himself chiefly to the Oriental tongues and to divinity. When he became candidate for a fellowship,

there was but one vacancy; and he had a powerful competitor in Dr. Dove, who was afterwards Bishop

of Peterborough. After long and severe examination, the matter was decided in favor of Andrews. But

Dove, though vanquished, proved himself in this trail so fine a scholar, that the College, unwilling to

lose him, appointed him as a sort of supernumerary Fellow. Andrews also received a complimentary

appointment as Fellow of Jesus College, in the University of Oxford. In his own college, he was made

a catechist; that is to say, a lecturer in divinity.

His conspicuous talents soon gained him powerful patrons. Henry, Earl of Huntingdon, took him into

the North of England; where he was the means of converting many papists by his preaching and

disputations. He was also warmly befriended by Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State to Queen

Elizabeth. He was made parson of Alton, in Hampshire; and then Vicar of St. Giles, in London. He was

afterwards made Prebendary and Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's, and also of the Collegiate Church of

Southwark. He lectured on divinity at St. Paul's three times each week. On the death of Dr. Fulke, in

1589, Dr. Andrews, though so young, was chosen Master of Pembroke Hall, where he had received his

education. While at the head of this College, he was one of its principal benefactors. It was rather poor

at that time, but by his efforts its endowments were much increased; and at his death, many years later,

he bequeathed to it, besides some plate, three hundred folio volumes, and a thousand pounds to found

two fellowships.

He gave up his Mastership to become chaplain in ordinary to Queen Elizabeth, who delighted in his

preaching, and made him Prebendary of Westminster, and afterwards Dean of that famous church. In

the matter of Church dignities and preferments, he was highly favored. It was while he held the office

of Dean of Westminster, that Dr. Andrews was made director, or president, of the first company of

Translators, composed of ten members, who held their meetings at Westminster. The portion assigned

to them was the five books of Moses, and the historical books to the end of the Second Book of Kings.

Perhaps no part of the work is better executed than this.

With King James, Dr. Andrews stood in still higher favor than he had done with Elizabeth. The "royal

pedant" had published a "Defence of the Rights of Kings," in opposition to the arrogant claims of the

Popes. He was answered most bitterly by the celebrated Cardinal Bellarmine. The King set Dr.

Andrews to refute the Cardinal; which he did in a learned and spirited quarto, highly commended by

Casaubon. To that quarto, the Cardinal made no reply. For this service, the King rewarded his

champion, by making him Bishop of Chichester; to which office Dr. Andrews was consecrated,

November 3d, 1605. This was soon after his appointment to be one of the Translators of the Bible. He

accepted the bishopric with great humility, having already refused that dignity more than once. The

motto graven on his episcopal seal was the solemn exclamation,--"And who is sufficient for these

things!" At this time he was also made Lord Almoner to the King, a place of great trust, in which he

proved himself faithful and uncorrupt. In September, 1609, he was transferred to the bishopric of Ely;

and was called to his Majesty's privy council. In February 1618, he was translated to the bishopric of

Winchester; which if less dignified that the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, was then much more

richly endowed; so that it used to be said,--"Canterbury is the higher rack, but Winchester is the better

manger." At the time of this last preferment Dr. Andrews was appointed Dean of the King's chapel; and

these stations he retained till his death.

In the high offices Bishop Andrews filled, he conducted himself with great ability and integrity. The

crack-brained King, who scarce knew now to restrain his profaneness and levity under the most serious

circumstances, was overawed by the gravity of this prelate, and desisted from mirth and frivolity in his

presence. And yet the good bishop knew how to be facetious on occasion. Edmund Waller, the poet,

tells of being once at court, and overhearing a conversation held by the king with Bishop Andrews, and

Bishop Neile, of Durham. The monarch, who was always a jealous stickler for his prerogatives, and

something more, was in those days trying to raise a revenue without parliamentary authority. In these

measures, so clearly unconstitutional, he was opposed by Bishop Andrews with dignity and decision.

Waller says, the king asked this brace of bishops, --"My lords, cannot I take my subject's money when I

want it, without all this formality in parliament?" The Bishop of Durham, one of the meanest of

sycophants to his prince, and a harsh and haughty oppressor of his puritan clergy, made ready answer,--

"God forbid, Sir, but you should; you are the breath of our nostrils!" Upon this the king looked at the

Bishop of Winchester,--"Well, my lord, what say you?" Dr. Andrews replied evasively,--"Sir, I have no

skill to judge of parliamentary matters." But the king persisted,--"No put offs, my lord! answer me

presently." "Then, Sir," said the shrewd Bishop, "I think it lawful for you to take my brother Neile's

money, for he offers it." Even the petulant king was hugely pleased with this piece of pleasantry, which

gave great amusement to his cringing courtiers.

"For the benefit of the afflicted," as the advertisements have it, we give a little incident which may

afford a useful hint to some that need it. While Dr. Andrews was one of the divines at Cambridge, he

was applied to by a worthy alderman of that drowsy city, who was beset by the sorry habit of sleeping

under the afternoon sermon; and who, to his great mortification, had been publicly rebuked by the

minister of the parish. As snuff had not then came into vogue, Dr. Andrews did not advise, as some

matter-of-fact persons have done in such cases, to titillate the "sneezer" with a rousing pinch. He seems

to have been of the opinion of the famous Dr. Romaine, who once told his full-fed congregation in

London, that it was hard work to preach to two pounds of beef and a pot of porter. So Dr. Andrews

advised his civic friend to help his wakefulness by dining very sparingly. The advice was followed; but

without avail. Again the rotund dignitary slumbered and slept in his pew; and again was he roused by

the harsh rebukes of the irritated preacher. With tears in those too sleepy eyes of his, the mortified

alderman repaired to Dr. Andrews, begging for further counsel. The considerate divine, pitying his

infirmity, recommended to him to dine as usual, and then to take his nap before repairing to his pew.

This plan was adopted; and to the next discourse, which was a violent invective prepared for the very

purpose of castigating the alderman's somnolent habit, he listened with unwinking eyes and his

uncommon vigilance gave quite a ridiculous air to the whole business. The unhappy parson was nearly

as much vexed at his huge-waisted parishioner's unwonted wakefulness, as before at his unseemly

dozing.

Bishop Andrews continued in high esteem with Charles I.; and that most culpable of monarchs, whose

only redeeming quality was the strength and tenderness of his domestic affections, in his dying advice

to his children, advised them to study the writings of three divines, of whom our Translator was one.

Lancelot Andrews died at Winchester House, in Southwark, London, September 25th, 1626, aged sixtyone

years. He was buried in the Church of St. Saviour, where a fair monument marks the spot. Having

never married, he bequeathed his property to benevolent uses. John Milton, then but a youth, wrote a

glowing Latin elegy on his death.

As a preacher, Bishop Andrews was right famous in his day. He was called "star of preachers." Thomas

Fuller says that he was "an inimitable preacher in his way; and such plagiarists as have stolen his

sermons could never steal his preaching, and could make nothing of that, whereof he made all things as

he desired." Pious and pleasant Bishop Felton, his contemporary and colleague, endeavored in vain in

his sermons to assimilate to his style, and therefore said merrily of himself,--"I had almost marred my

own natural trot by endeavoring to imitate his artificial amble." Let this be a warning to all who would

fain play the monkey, and especially to such as would ape the eccentricities of genius. Nor is it

desirable that Bishop Andrews' style should be imitated even successfully; for it abounds in quips,

quirks, and puns, according to the false taste of his time. Few writers are "so happy as to treat on

matters which must always interest, and to do it in a manner which shall for ever please." To build up a

solid literary reputation, taste and judgement in composition are as necessary as learning and strength

of thought. The once admired folios of Bishop Andrews have long been doomed to the dusty dignity of

the lower shelf in the library.

Many hours he spent there each day in private and family devotions; and there were some who used to

desire that "they might end their days in Bishop Andrew's Chapel." He was one in whom was proved

the truth of Luther's saying, that "to have prayed well, is to have studied well." His manual for his

private devotions, prepared by himself, is wholly in the Greek language. It has been translated and

printed. This praying prelate also abounded in alms-giving; usually sending his benefactions in private,

as from a friend who chose to remain unknown. He was exceedingly liberal in his gifts to poor and

deserving scholars. His own instructors he held in the highest reverence. His old schoolmaster

Mulcaster always sat at the upper end of the episcopal table; and when the venerable pedagogue was

dead, his portrait was placed over the bishop's study door. These were just tokens of respect;

"For if the scholar to such height did reach,

Then what was he who did that scholar teach?"

This worthy diocesan was much "given to hospitality," and especially to literary strangers. So bountiful

was his cheer, that it used to be said, --"My lord of Winchester keeps Christmas all the year round." He

once spent three thousand pounds in three days, though "in this we praise him not," in entertaining

King James at Farnham Castle. His society was as much sought, however, for the charm of his rich and

instructive conversation, as for his liberal housekeeping and his exalted stations.

But we are chiefly concerned to know what were his qualifications as a Translator of the Bible. He ever

bore the character of "a right godly man," and "a prodigious student." One competent judge speaks of

him as "that great gulf of learning!" It was also said, that "the world wanted learning to know how

learned this man was." And a brave old chronicler remarks, that, such was his skill in all languages,

especially the Oriental, that, had he been present at the confusion of tongues at Babel, he might have

served as Interpreter-General! In his funeral sermon by Dr. Buckeridge, Bishop of Rochester, it is said

that Dr. Andrews was conversant with fifteen languages.

JOHN OVERALL

This divine is the next on the list of three good men, of whom the marginal comment in the Popish

translation says,--"They will be abhorred in the depths of hell!" They may be abhorred there, bnt, after

a while no where else. He was born in 1559, at Hadley, and was bred in the free school at that place. He

lived through the whole of that happy period, which many, beside the old bard of Rydal Mount, regard

as the best days of old England,

"When faith and hope were in their prime,

In great Eliza's golden time."

In due season, he was entered as a scholar at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was next chosen

Fellow of Trinity College, in the same University. In 1596, he was made King's Professor of Divinity;

and at the same time took his doctor's degree, being about thirty-seven years of age. It is noted of this

eminent theologian by Bishop Hacket, that it was his custom to ground his theses in the schools on two

or three texts of Scripture, shewing what latitude of opinion or interpretation was admissible upon the

point in hand. He was celebrated for the appropriateness of his quotations from the Fathers. He was

soon after made Master of Catharine Hall very much against his will. To end a bitter contention in

regard to two rival candidates, he was elected, if election it could be called, under the Queen's absolute

mandate. When Archbishop Whitgift wished the new Master "joy of his place", the latter replied that it

was "terminus diminuens;" which is Latin for "an Irish promotion," or a "hoist down hill." But his

Grace, in the true spirit of a courtier "all of the olden time," told the dissatisfied Professor, that "if the

injuries, much more the less courtesies, of princes must be thankfully taken, as the ushers to make way

for greater favors." These appointments must be taken as full proof of Dr. Overall's superior scholarship

in that learned age, when such preferments were only won by dint of the severest application to study.

In 1601, on the recommendation of Lord Brooke, that noble friend and patron of men of learning and

genius, Dr. Overall was made Dean of St. Paul's, in London. It may be doubted whether this studious

recluse, absorbed in deep studies, shone with his brightest lustre in the pulpit. "Being appointed," says

Thomas Fuller, "to preach before the Queen, he professed to my father, who was most intimate with

him, that he had spoken Latin so long, it was troublesome to him to speak English in a continued

oration."

Soon after the throne was filled by James the First, whom that accomplished statesman, the Duke of

Sully, called "the most learned fool in Europe," the Convocation, or parliament of the clergy came

together. Dr. Overall was prolocutor, or speaker, of the lower house of Convocation. To this body he

presented a volume of canons, the only book from his pen now extant. Its object was to vindicate the

divine right of government. But though it was adopted by the Convocation, the King prevented the

publication of the book at that time, because it taught, that when, after a revolution or conquest, a new

government or dynasty was firmly established, this also, in its turn, could plead for itself a divine right,

and could claim the obedience of the people as a matter of duty toward God. This "Convocation Book,"

now so long forgotten, was printed many years after the death of "King Jamie;" and obtained some

historical and political celebrity, because it had the very effect which was apprehended by the monarch

who suppressed it. For when his grandson, James the Second, was expelled from the soil and throne of

England, many bishops and other clergymen, called "non-jurors," refused through conscientious

scruples, to swear allegiance to the new government of William and Mary. Bishop Sherlock and many

others, who at first declined the oath, professed to be converted from that error by the reading of Dr.

Overall's book. But conversions so favorable to thrift are apt to be held in suspicion. Dr. Overall was

the author of the questions and answers relating to the sacraments, which have been much admired, by

the ablest judges of such matters, and which were subjoined to the Catechism of the Church of

England, in the first year of James the First.

It was while he was Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, that he was joined in the commission, the highest of

his honors, for translating the Bible. Though long familiarity with other languages may have made him

somewhat inapt for continuous public discourse in his mother-tongue, he was thereby the better fitted

to discern the sense of the sacred original. He was styled by Camden "a prodigious learned man;" and

is said by Fuller to have been "of a strong brain to improve his great reading."

John Overall, who "carried superintendency in his surname," was made Bishop of Litchfield and

Coventry, in 1614. Four years later he was transferred to the see of Norwich, where, in a few months,

he died, at the age of sixty years. This was in 1619. He frequently had in his mouth the words of the

Psalmist,--"When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume

away like a moth; surely every man is vanity."

In his later years, he was unhappily inclined to Arminianism. He was a correspondent of Vossius and

Grotius, and other famous scholars on the continent. He was greatly addicted to the scholastic theology,

now so much decried. Since the days of Bacon the schoolmen have been much depreciated, because

there was so little practical fruit of their studies. And yet there was something wonderful in the

keenness and subtlety of their disputes; though it is lawful to smile at the excess of logical refinement

which subdivided the stream of their genius into a ramification of rills, absorbed at last in the dry desert

of metaphysics. One of them is highly praised by Cardan, "for that only one of his arguments was

enough to puzzle all posterity; and that when he was grown old, he wept because he could not

understand his own books." We can conceive, however, that the refinement of the schoolmen as to

precise definitions, and nicer shades of thought, might be a valuable quality in some, at least, of the

company of Translators.

HADRAIN SARAVIA

This noted scholar was a Belgian by birth. His father was a Spaniard, his mother was a Belgian, and

both were Protestants. He was born in 1530, at Hedin in Artois. Of his early life no notices have

reached us. He was, for some years, a pastor both in Flanders and Holland. He was, in his principles, a

terrible high- church-man; and seems, from his zeal for the divine right of episcopacy, to have had

some trouble with his colleagues and the magistrates at Ghent, where he was one of the ministers in

1566. From that place he retired to England. He was sent by Queen Elizabeth's Council as a sort of

missionary to the islands of Guernsey and Jersey, where he was one of the first Protestant ministers;

knowing, as he says of himself, in a letter, "which were the beginnings, and by what means and

occasions the preaching of God's word was planted there." He labored there in a twofold capacity,

doing the work of an evangelist, and conducting a newly established school, called Elizabeth College.

From his island-home, he was recalled to the continent by the Belgian churches, in 1577. He was

invited to become Professor of Divinity at the University of Leyden, in 1582; and soon after was also

made preacher of the French Church in that city. In 1587 he came to England with the Earl of Leicester,

and became master of the grammar- school in Southampton, where, in the course of a few years, he

trained many distinguished pupils.

His zeal for episcopacy led him to publish several Latin treatises against Beza, Danaeus, and other

Presbyterians. He also published a treatise on papal primacy against the Jesuit Gretser. All his

publications relate to such matters, and were collected into a folio edition, in the year 1611. They are

still highly praised by the "Oxford divines," who have given occasion to Macauley to say, in his caustic

style,--"The glory of being further behind the age than any other class of the British people, is one

which that learned body acquired early, and has never lost."

In 1590, Saravia was made Doctor of Divinity at Oxford, as had been done long before at the

University of Leyden. He was made Prebendary of Gloucester, next of Canterbury, in 1695; and then of

Westminster in 1601. This last was his highest preferment. He added to it the rectorship of Great Chart,

in Kent, some eight years after. He died at Canterbury, January 15th, 1612, aged eighty-two years. Thus

his fluctuating life ended in a quiet old age, and a peaceful death.

He is said, by Anthony a-Wood, to have been "educated in all kinds of literature in his younger days,

especially in several languages." It was his fortune to find friends and patrons among the great.

Archbishop Whitgift, that stern suppressor of Puritanism, held him in high esteem, and made great use

of his aid in conducting his share in the controversies of the time. In particular the arch-prelate relied

much on Dr. Saravia's "Hebrew learning" in his contest with Hugh Broughton, that stiff Puritan, whom

Lightfoot styles "the great Albionean divine, renowned in many nations for rare skill in Salem's and

Athen's tongues, and familiar acquaintance with all Rabbinical learning." Thus the Prebendary of

Westminster was accustomed to cross swords with no mean adversaries; and was, no doubt, thoroughly

furnished with the knowledge necessary for a Bible translator.

While Dr. Saravia was Prebendary of Canterbury, the famous Richard Hooker was parson of the village

of Borne, about three miles distant. Between these worthies there sprang up a friendship, cemented by

the agreement of their views and studies. Professor Keble says, that Saravia was Hooker's "confidential

adviser," while the latter was preparing his celebrated books "Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity." Old

Izaak Walton gives the following beautiful picture of their Christian intimacy;-- "These two excellent

persons began a holy friendship, increasing daily to so high and mutual affections, that their two wills

seem to be but one and the same; and their designs, both for the glory of God, and peace of the church,

still assisting and improving each other's virtues, and the desired comforts of a peaceable piety."

RICHARD CLARKE

Dr. Clarke is spoken of as a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge; and as a very learned clergyman

and eminent preacher. He was Vicar of Minster and Monkton in Thanet, and one of the six preachers of

the cathedral church in Canterbury. He died in 1634. Three years after his death, a folio volume of his

learned sermons was published. But alas for "folios" and learned sermons" in these days. When people

look on such a thing, they are ready to exclaim, like Robert Hall, at the sight of Dr. Gill's voluminous

Commentary,--"What a continent of mud!"

JOHN LAIFIELD

Dr. Laifield was Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Rector of the Church of St. Clement's,

Dane's, in London. Of him it is said, "that being skilled in architecture, his judgment was much relied

on for the fabric of the tabernacle and temple." He died at his rectory in 1617. Few things are more

difficult, than the giving of architectural details in such a manner as to be intelligible to the

unprofessional reader.

ROBERT TIGHE

This name, in all the printed lists of the Translators, has been misspelled Leigh. It should be Teigh or

Tighe *. Dr. Tighe was born at Deeping, Lincolnshire; and was educated partly at Oxford, and partly at

Cambridge. He was Archdeacon of Middlesex and Vicar of the Church of All Hallows, Barking,

London. He is characterized as "an excellent textuary and profound linguist." Dr. Tighe died in 1620,

leaving to his son an estate of one thousand pounds a year; which is worth mentioning because so

rarely done by men of the clerical profession.

"therefore employed in the Translation of the Bible."

•

FRANCIS BURLEIGH

Dr. Burleigh, or Burghley, was made Vicar of Bishop's Stortford in 1590, which benefice he held at the

time of his appointment to the important service of this Bible translation.

GEOFFRY KING

Mr. King was Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. It is a fair token of his fitness to take part in this

translation-work, that he succeeded Mr. Spaulding, another of these Translators, as Regius Professor of

Hebrew in that University. Men were not appointed in those days to such duties of instruction, with the

expectation that they would qualify themselves after their induction into office. *

at Andover, all he knew of the language was that ash' rai meant blessed, and ha-ish meant the man!

Psalm 1:1

•

RICHARD THOMPSON

Mr. Thompson, at the time of his appointment, was Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. According to

Wood he was "a Dutchman, born of English parents." By the Presbyterian divines, he was called "the

grand propagator of Armenians." Of the prelatic Armenians Coleridge too truly said, that "they

emptied revelation of all the doctrines that can properly be said to have been revealed". If "sin be the

greatest heresy," as that class usually affirms, a more serious error imputed to Mr. Thompson is

intemperance in his later years. As to his literary qualifications, he is described by the learned Richard

Montague as "a most admirable philologer," who was "better known in Italy, France, and Germany,

than at home."

WILLIAM BEDWELL

Mr. Bedwell was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was Vicar of Tottenham High Cross,

near London. He died at his vicarage, at the age of seventy, May 5th, 1632, justly reputed to have been

"an eminent oriental scholar." * He published in quarto an edition of the epistles of St. John in Arabic,

with a Latin version, printed at the press of Raphelenguis, at Antwerp, in 1612. He also left many

Arabic manuscripts to the University of Cambridge, with numerous notes upon them, and with a font of

types for printing them. His fame for Arabic learning was so great, that when Erpenius, a most

renowned Orientalist, resided in England, in 1606, he was much indebted to Bedwell for direction in

his studies. To Bedwell, rather than to Erpenius, who commonly enjoys it, belongs the honor of being

the first who considerably promoted and revived the study of the Arabic language and literature in

Europe. He was also tutor to another Orientalist of renown, Dr. Pococke. For many years, Mr. Bedwell

was engaged in preparing an Arabic Lexicon in three volumes; and went to Holland to examine the

collections of Joseph Scaliger. But proceeding very slowly, from desire to make his work as perfect as

possible, Golius forestalled him, by the publication of a similar work.

After Bedwell's death, the voluminous manuscripts of his lexicon were loaned by the University of

Cambridge to aid in the compilation of Dr. Castell's colossal work, the Lexicon Heptaglotton. Some

modern scholars have fancied, that we have an advantage in our times over the translators of King

James's day, by reason of the greater attention which is supposed to be paid at present to what are called

the "cognate" and "Shemetic" languages, and especially the Arabic by which much light is thought to

be reflected upon Hebrew words and phrases. It is evident, however, that Mr. Bedwell and others,

among his fellow-laborers, were thoroughly conversant in this part of the broad field of sacred

criticism.

Mr. Bedwell also commenced a Persian dictionary, which is among Archbishop Laud's manuscripts,

still preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. In 1615, he published his book, "A Discovery of the

Impostures of Mahomet and of the Koran." To this was annexed his "Arabian Trudgeman." Trudgeman

or truchman is the word Dragoman in its older form, and is derived from a Chaldee word meaning

interpreter. This Arabian Trudgeman is a most curious illustration of oriental etymology and history.

Dr. Bedwell had a fondness for mathematical studies. He invented a ruler for geometrical purposes, like

what we call Gunter's Scale, which went by the name of "Bedwell's Ruler."

these modern times."

Close of first group

This closes what we have to say of that first Westminster Company, of ten members, to whom was

committed the historical books, beginning with Genesis and ending with the Second Book of Kings,

once "commonly called," as its title still says, "The Fourth Book of the Kings."

The second company of King James's translators held its meetings in Cambridge. To this section of

those learned divines, was assigned from the beginning of Chronicles to the end of "The Song of

Songs, which is Solomon's." The eight men to whom this important part of the work was assigned, was

no whit behind their associates, in fitness for their great undertaking.

EDWARD LIVELY

He is commemorated as "one of the best linguists in the world." He was a student, and afterwards a

fellow, of Trinity College, Cambridge, and King's Professor of Hebrew. He was actively employed in

the preliminary arrangements for the Translation, and appears to have stood high in the confidence of

the King. Much dependence was placed on his surpassing skill in the oriental tongues. But his death,

which took place in May, 1605, disappointed all such expectations; and is said to have considerably

retarded the commencement of the work. Some say that his death was hastened by his too close

attention to the necessary preliminaries. His stipend had been but small, and after many troubles, and

the loss of his wife, the mother of a numerous family, he was well provided for by Dr. Barlow, that he

might be enabled to devote himself to the business of the great Translation. He died of a quinsy, after

four days' illness, leaving eleven orphans, "destitute of necessities for their maintenance, but only such

as God, and good friends, should provide." He was author of a Latin exposition of five of the minor

Prophets, and of a work on chronology. Dr. Pusey, of Oxford, says, that Lively, "whom Popcoke never

mentions but with great respect, was probably, next to Popcoke, the greatest of our Hebraists."

JOHN RICHARDSON

This profound divine was born at Linton, in Cambridgeshire. He was first Fellow of Emanuel College,

then Master of Peterhouse from 1608 to 1615; and next master of Trinity College. He was also King's

Professor of Divinity. He was chosen Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1617, and again in 1618. He

died in 1625, and was buried in Trinity College Chapel. He left a bequest of one hundred pounds to

Peterhouse.

He was noted as a "most excellent linguist," as every good theologian must be; for, as Coleridge says,

"language is the armory of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the

weapons of its future conquests."

In those days, it was the custom, at seats of learning, for the ablest men to hold public disputes, in the

Latin tongue, with a view to display their skill in the weapons of logic, and "the dialectic fence." As the

ancient knights delighted to display and exercise their skill and strength in running at tilt, and amicably

breaking spears with one another; so the great scholars used to cope with each other in the arena of

public argument, and strive for literary "masteries." Those scholastic tournaments were sure to be got

up whenever the halls of science were visited by the king, or some chief magnate of the land; and the

logical conflicts, always conducted in the Latin tongue, were attended with as much absorbing interest

as were the shows of gladiators among the Romans.

On such an occasion, when James the First was visiting Cambridge, "an extraordinary act in divinity

was kept for His Majesty's entertainment. Dr. John Davenant, a famous man, and afterwards Bishop of

Salisbury, was "respondent." His business was to meet all comers, who might choose to assail the point

he was to defend,--namely, that kings might never be excommunicated. Well did Dr. Davenant urge the

wordy war, till our Dr. Richardson pushed him tremendously with the example of Ambrose, the famous

Bishop of Milan, who, to the admiration of the whole Christian world, excommunicated the emperor

Theodosius the Great. Here was a poser! King James, who was always very nervous on the subject of

regal prerogative, saw that his champion was staggering under that stunning fact; and, to save him,

cried out in a passion,--"Verily, this was a great piece of insolence on the part of Ambrose!" * To this,

Dr. Richardson calmly rejoined,-- "A truly royal response, and worthy of Alexander! This is cutting our

knotty arguments, instead of untying them." ** And so taking his seat, he desisted from further

discussion. The mild dignity of this remonstrance, in which independence and submission are happily

combined, presents him in such a light as to constrain us to regret that this detached incident is about all

we know of the personal character of the man. We can readily believe that he was a wise and faithful,

as well as learned, Translator of the Book of God.

dignum; hoc est non argumenta dissolvere, sed desecare.

•

LAWRENCE CHADERTON

This divine was a staunch Puritan, brave and godly, learned and laborious, full of moderation and the

old English hardihood. He was born at Chaderton in Lancashire, in the year 1537. His family was

wealthy, but bigotted in popery, in which religion he was carefully bred. Being destined to the bar, he

was sent to the Inns of Court, at London, where he spent some years in the study and practice of the

law. Here he became a pious protestant; and, forsaking the law, entered, as student, at Christ's College,

Cambridge. Oh that, in a far higher sense, all divinity-students might be trained in Christ’s own college,

and learn their science from the Great Teacher himself!

These changes took place in 1564. Mr. Chaderton applied to his father for some pecuniary aid; but the

wrathful old papist "sent him a poke, with a groat in it, to go a-begging;" and disinherited his son of a

large estate. The son had to occasion to use the begging-poke. His high character and scholarship

procured him much favor; while his mind was sustained by the promises of the Saviour, for whose sake

he had "endured the loss of all things." He took his first degree in 1567, and was then chosen one of the

Fellows of his College. He became Master of Arts in 1561; and Bachelor of Divinity in 1584. He did

not receive the degree of Doctor in Divinity till 1613, when it was pressed upon him, at the time when

Frederick, Prince Palatine of the Rhine, who married King James's daughter Elizabeth, visited

Cambridge in state. Fuller, remarking on this matter, writes,--"What is said of Mount Caucasus, 'that it

was never seen without snow on the top,' was true of this reverend father, whom none of our father's

generation knew in the University before he was gray-headed."

"He made himself familiar with the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues, and was thoroughly skilled in

them. Moreover he had diligently investigated the numerous writings of the Rabbis, so far as they

seemed to promise any aid to the understanding of the Scriptures. This is evident from the annotations

in his handwriting appended to the Biblia Bombergi,* which are still preserved in the library of

Emanuel College."** His studies were such as eminently to qualify him to bear an important part in the

translating of the Bible. In 1576, he held a public dispute with Dr. Baron, Margaret Professor of

Divinity, upon the Arminian sentiments of the latter. In this debate, Dr. Chaderton appeared to the

highest advantage, as to his learning, ability and temper.

For sixteen years he was lecturer at St. Clement's Church, in Cambridge, where his preaching was

greatly blessed. In 1578, he delivered a sermon at Paul's Cross, London, which appears to have been his

only printed production. About that time, by order of Parliament, he was appointed preacher of the

Middle Temple, with a liberal salary. It was thought best, perhaps, that a flock of lawyers should have

the gospel preached to them by one who had been bred to know the sins of their calling.

In the year 1584, Sir Walter Mildmay, one of Queen Elizabeth's noted statesmen, founded Emanuel

College, at Cambridge. Sir Walter was not supposed to be a very high Churchman, and the Queen

charged him with having "erected a Puritan foundation." In reply, he told her, that he had set an acorn,

which, when it became an oak, God only knows what will become of it." And truly, it pleased God, that

it should yield plenteous crops of Puritan "hearts of oak;" and afford an abundant supply of that sound,

substantial, and yet spiritual piety, which stands in strong contrast with all superstition and formality.

Emanuel College Chapel, by order of the founder, was built in the uncanonical direction of north and

south. Nearly a hundred years after, this non-conforming building was punished by the crabbed

prelates, who had it pulled down, and rebuilt in the holy position of east and west, agreeably to the

solemn doctrine of the "orientation of churches!" Perhaps there was no better way to convert it from the

Puritanism wherewith it was infected, than thus to give it first an over turn, and then a half turn toward

popery.

It is likely, however, that the religious peculiarities which long marked this College are to be ascribed

less to the position in which the chapel was placed, than to the influence of its first Master. For this

important office, Sir Walter Mildmay made choice of Dr. Chaderton. The modesty of the latter made

him quite resolute to refuse the station, till Sir Walter plainly told him,--"If you will not be the Master, I

will not be the Founder." Upon this, Dr. Chaderton accepted the office; and filled it with zeal, and

industry, and high repute, for thirty-eight years. Through his exertions, the endowments of the

institution were greatly increased, and it became a nursing mother to many eminent and useful men.

At the Hampton Court Conference, in 1603, Dr. Chaderton was one of the four divines appointed by the

King as being "the most grave, learned, and modest of the aggrieved sort," to represent the Puritan

interest. Dr. Chaderton, however, took no part in the debates, perceiving that the Conference was

merely a royal farce, got up to give the tyrant an opportunity to avow his bitter hostility to Puritanism,

because of its incompatibility with abject submission to arbitrary power. Coleridge, who was a staunch

adherent of the Church of England, but by no means blinded on that account to the truth of history, thus

expresses his opinion as to the Hampton Court affair. "If any man, who, like myself, hath attentively

read the Church history of the reign of Elizabeth, and the Conference before, and with, her pedant

successor, can shew me any essential difference between Whitgift and Bancroft, during their rule, and

Bonner and Gardiner in the reign of Mary, I will be thankful to him in my heart, and for him in my

prayers. One difference I see,--namely, that the former, professing the New Testament to be their rule

and guide, and making the fallibility of all churches and individuals an article of faith, were more

inconsistent, and therefore, less excusable than the popish persecutors."***

It was during his mastership of Emanuel College, that Dr. Chaderton was engaged in the Bible

translation, in which good work he was well fitted and disposed to take his part. "He was a scholar, and

a ripe and good one." Having reached his three score years and ten, his knowledge was fully digested,

and his experience matured, while "his natural force was not abated," and his faculties burned with

unabated fire. Even tot he close of his long life, "his eye was not dim," and his sight required no

artificial aid.

Many years after, in 1622, having reached the great age of eighty-five, this Nestor among the divines

resigned the office he had so long sustained. Not that he was even then disqualified for its duties by

infirmity; but because of the rapid spread of Arminianism, and the fear that, if the business were left till

after his death, a divine of lax sentiments, who was then waiting his chance, would be thrust into the

place by the interference of the Court. The business was so managed, that Dr. Preston, the very

champion of the Puritans, was inducted as Dr. Chaderton's successor. The vivacious patriarch, however,

lived to survive Dr. Preston; and to see Dr. Sancroft, and after him, Dr. Holdsworth, in the same station.

This latter incumbent preached Dr. Chaderton's funeral sermon. Dr. Holdsworth used to tell him, that,

as long as he lived, he should be Master in the house, though he himself was forced to be Master of the

house. The patriarch was always consulted as to the affairs of the College.

The most protracted and useful life must come to its end. There have been various accounts of the time

of Dr. Chaderton's death, and of the place of his interment. But all mistakes are corrected by his Latin

epitaph, which has been found on a monumental stone, at the entrance of Emanuel College chapel, and

has been translated as follows:

Here

Lies the body of

Lawrence Chaderton, D. D.,

who was the first Master of this College.

He died in the year 1640,

in the one hundred and third

year of his age.

Perhaps such longevity was more common then than now. It is on record, that "ten men of

Herefordshire, a nest of Nestors, once danced the Morish before King James, their united ages

exceeding a thousand years." Their contemporary, Dr. Chaderton, was more honored by the gravity of

his gray hairs, than they by the levity of their giddy heels.

He was greatly venerated. All his habits were such as inspired confidence in his piety. During the fiftythree

years of his married life, he never suffered any of his servants to be detained from public worship

by the preparation of food, or other household cares. He used to say, --"I desire as much to have my

servants to know the Lord, as myself." These things are greatly to his honor; though his regard to the

Lord's Day may excite the scorn of some in these degenerate times.

Dr. Chaderton is described by Archdeacon Echard, as "a grave, pious, and excellent preacher." As an

instance of his power in the pulpit, we will close this sketch with an incident which could hardly have

taken place any where on earth for the last hundred years. It is stated on high authority, that while our

aged saint was visiting some friends in his native country of Lancashire, he was invited to preach.

Having addressed his audience for two full hours by the glass, he paused and said,--"I will no longer

trespass on your patience.” And now comes the marvel; for the whole congregation cried out with one

consent,--"For God's sake, go on, go on!" He, accordingly, proceeded much longer , to their great

satisfaction and delight. "When," says Coleridge, "after reading the biographies of [Izaak] Walton and

his contemporaries, I reflect on the crowded congregations, who with intense interest came to their

hour-and-two-hour-long sermons, I cannot but doubt the fact of any true progression, moral or

intellectual, in the mind of the many. The tone, the matter, the anticipated sympathies in the sermons of

an age, form the best moral criterion of the character of that age." Let us not be so unwise as to inquire

concerning this, "What is the cause that the former days were better than these?" For even now people

like to hear such preaching as is preaching. but where shall we find men for the work like those who

gave us our version of the Bible?

** Vita Laurentii Chadertoni, a W. Dillingham, S. T. P. Cantab. 1700. Pp. 15, 24.

*** Literary Remains, II. 388

•

FRANCIS DILLINGHAM

He was a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. After the translation was finished, he became parson

of Dean, his native place, in Bedfordshire. He also obtained the rich benefice of Wilden, in the same

County, where he died a single and wealthy man. "My father," says worthy old Thomas Fuller, "was

present in the bachelor's school, when a Greek act was kept * between Francis Dillingham and William

Alabaster, to their mutual commendation. A disputation so famous, that it served for an era or epoch,

for the scholars in that age, thence to date their seniority." From this, it would seem, that he was not

without reason styled the "great Grecian." He was noted as an excellent linguist and a subtle disputant,

and was author of various theological treatises. His brother and heir, Thomas Dillingham, also minister

of Dean, was chosen one of the famous Assembly of Divines at Westminster; but on account of age,

illness, and for other reasons, did not take his seat. Francis Dillingham was a diligent writer, both of

practical and polemical divinity. He collected out of cardinal Bellarmine's writings, all the concessions

made by that acute author in favor of Protestantism. He published a Manual of the Christian faith, taken

from the Fathers, and a variety of treatises on different points belonging to the Romish controversy.

•

ROGER ANDREWS

Dr. Andrews, who had been Fellow in Pembroke Hall, was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. He

also became Prebendary of Chichester and Southwell. He too was a famous linguist in his time, like his

brother Lancelot, the Bishop of Winchester, whose life has been already sketched as President of the

first company of Translators.

THOMAS HARRISON

He had been student and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and was now Vice-Master of that

important seminary. Thomas Fuller records the following instance of his meekness and charity. “I

remember when the reverend Vice-Master of Trinity College in Cambridge was told that one of the

scholars had abused him in an oration. ‘Did he,’ said he, ‘name me? Did he name Thomas Harrison?”

And when it was returned that he named him not,--’Then,’ said he, ‘I do not believe that he meant

me.’” We have a strong evidence of his reputation in the University in another duty which was assigned

him. “On account of his exquisite skill in the Hebrew and Greek idioms, he was one of the chief

examiners in the University of those who sought to be public professors of these languages.” *

•

ROBERT SPAULDING

Dr. Spaulding was Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He succeeded Edward Lively, of whom

we have briefly spoken, as Regius Professor of Hebrew.

ANDREW BING

Dr. Bing was Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. In course of time he succeeded Geoffry King, who was

Dr. Spaulding’s successor, in the Regius Professorship of Hebrew. Dr. Bing was Sub-dean of York in

1606, and was installed Archdeacon of Norwich in 1618. He died during the times of the

Commonwealth.

Second and third company of Translators

JOHN HARDING

This divine was president in his company; a station which shews how high he ranked among this

brethren who knew him; though but little relating to his character and history has come down to our

times. The offices filled by him were such as to confirm the opinion that his learning and piety entitled

him to the position he occupied in this venerable society of scholars. At the time of his appointment to

aid in the translation of the Bible, he had been Royal Professor of Hebrew in the University for thirteen

years. His occupancy of that chair, at a time when the study of sacred literature was pursued by

thousands with a zeal amounting to a passion, is a fair intimation that Dr. Harding was the man for the

post he occupied. When commissioned by the King to take part in this version of the Scriptures, Dr.

Harding was also President of Magdalen College. He was at the same time rector of Halsey, in

Oxfordshire. The share which he, with his brethren, performed, was, perhaps, the most difficult portion

of the translation-work. The skill and beauty with which it is accomplished are a fair solution of the

problem, “How, two languages being given, the nearest approximation may be made in the second, to

the expression of ideas already conveyed through the medium of the first?”

JOHN REYNOLDS

This famous divine, though he died in the course of the good work, deserves especial mention, because

it was by his means that the good work itself was undertaken. He was born in Penhoe, in Devonshire, in

the year 1549. He entered the University at the age of thirteen, and spent all his days within its

precincts. Though he at first entered Merton College in 1562, he was chiefly bred at Corpus Christi,

which he entered the next year, and where he became a Fellow in 1566, at the early age of seventeen.

Six years later he was made Greek Lecturer in his college, which was proud of the early ripeness of his

powers.

About this time occurred one of the most singular events in the history of religious controversy. John

Reynolds was a zealous papist. His brother William, who was his fellow-student, was equally zealous

for protestantism. Each, in fraternal anxiety for the salvation of a brother’s south, labored for the

conversion of the other; and each of them was successful! As the result of long conference and

disputation, William became an inveterate papist, and so lived and died. While John became a decided

protestant of the Puritan stamp, and continued to his death to be a vigorous champion of the

Reformation. From the time of his conversion, he was a most able and successful preacher of God’s

word. Having very greatly distinguished himself in the year 1578, as a debater in the theological

discussions, or “divinity-acts” of the University, he was drawn into the popish controversy. Determined

to explore the whole field, and make himself master of the subject, he devoted himself to the study of

the Scriptures in the original tongues, and read all the Greek and Latin fathers, and all the ancient

records of the Church. Nor did this flood of reading roll out of his mind as fast as it poured in. It is

stated that “his memory was little less than miraculous. He could readily turn to any material passage,

in every leaf, page, column and paragraph of the numerous and voluminous works he had read.” He

came to be styled “the very treasury of erudition;” and was spoken of as “a living library, and a third

university.”

About the year 1578, John Hart, a popish zealot, challenged all the learned men in the nation to a public

debate. At the solicitation of one of Queen Elizabeth’s privy counsellors, Mr. Reynolds encountered

him. After several combats, the Romish champion owned himself driven from the field. An account of

the conferences, subscribed by both parties, was published, and widely circulated. This added greatly to

the reputation of Mr. Reynolds, who soon after took his degrees in divinity, and was appointed by the

Queen to be Royal Professor of Divinity in the University. At that time, the celebrated Cardinal

Bellarmine, the Goliath of the Philistines at Rome, was professor of theology in the English Seminary

at that city. As fast as he delivered his popish doctrine, it was taken down in writing, and regularly sent

to Dr. Reynolds; who, from time to time, publicly confuted it at Oxford. Thus Bellarmine’s books were

answered, even before thy were printed.

It is said, that Reynolds’ professorship was founded by the royal bounty for the express purpose of

strengthening the Church of England against the Church of Rome, and of widening the breach between

them; and that Dr. Reynolds was first placed in the chair, on that account, because of his strenuous

opposition to the corruptions of Rome. “Oxford divines,” at that period, were of a very different stamp

from their Puseyite successors in our day. But even at Oxford, there are faithful witnesses for the truth.

Dr. Hampden, whose appointment to the bishopric of Hereford, a few years since, raised such a storm

of opposition from the Romanizing prelates and clergy, was for many years a worthy successor of Dr.

Reynolds, in the chair which was endowed so long ago for maintaining the Church of England against

the usurpations of Rome.

Yet even so long ago, and ever since, there were persons there whose sentiments resembled what is

now called by the sublime title of Puseyism. The first reformers of the English Church held, as

Archbishop Whately does now, that the primitive church-government was highly popular in its

character. But they held that neither this, nor any other form of discipline, was divinely ordained, for

perpetual observance. They considered it to be the prerogative of the civil government, in a Christian

land, to regulate these matters, and to organize the Church, as it would the army, or the judiciary and

police, with a view to the greatest efficiency according to the state of circumstances. They held that all

good subjects were religiously bound to conform to the arrangements thus made. These views are what

is commonly called Erastianism. The claim of a “divine right” was first advanced in England in behalf

of Presbyterianism. It was very strenuously asserted by the learned and long-suffering Cartwright.

Some of the Episcopal divines soon took the hint, and set up the same claim in behalf of their order;

though, at first, it sounded strange even to their own brethren. *

Dr. Bancroft, Archbishop Whitgift’s chaplain, and his successor in the see of Canterbury, maintained in

a sermon, preached January 12th, 1588, that “bishops were a distinct order from priests; and that they

had a superiority over them by divine right, and directly from God.” This startling doctrine produced a

great excitement. Sir Francis Knollys, one of Queen Elizabeth’s distinguished statesmen, remonstrated

warmly with Whitgift against it. In a letter to Sir Francis, who had requested his opinion, Dr. Reynolds

observes, --”All who have labored in reforming the Church, for five hundred years, have taught that all

pastors, whether they are entitled bishops or priests, have equal authority and power by God’s word; as

the Waldenses, next Marsilius Patavinus, then Wiclif and his scholars, afterwards Huss and the

Hussites; and Luther, Calvin, Brentius, Bullinger, and Musculus. Among ourselves, we have bishops,

the Queen’s professors of divinity, and other learned men, as Bradford, Lambert, Jewell, Pilkington,

Humphrey, Fulke, &c. But why do I speak of particular persons? It is the opinion of the Reformed

Churches of Helvetia, Savoy, France, Scotland, Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Low Countries, and our

own. I hope Dr. Bancroft will not say, that all these have approved that for sound doctrine, which was

condemned by the general consent of the whole church as heresy, in the most flourishing time. I hope

he will acknowledge that he was overseen, when he announced the superiority of bishops over the rest

of the clergy to be God’s won ordinance.”

Good Dr. Reynold’s charitable hopes, though backed by such an overwhelming array of authorities,

were doomed to be disappointed. Bancroft’s novel doctrine has been in fashion ever since. Still there

are not wanting many who soundly hold, in the words of Reynolds, that “unto us Christians, no land is

strange, no ground unholy; every coast is Jewry, every town Jerusalem, every house Sion; and every

faithful company, yea, every faithful body, a temple to serve God in. The presence of Christ among two

or three, gathered together in his name, maketh any place a church, even as the presence of a king with

his attendants maketh any place a court.”

Notwithstanding that Elizabeth was no lover of men puritanically inclined, she felt constrained to

notice the eminent gifts and services of Dr. Reynolds. In 1598, she made him Dean of Lincoln, and

offered him a bishopric. The latter dignity he meekly refused, preferring his studious academical life to

the wealth and honors of any such ecclesiastical station. It is supposed, however, that conscientious

scruples had much to do with his declining the prelatic office.

He resigned his deanery in less than a year, and also the Mastership of Queen’s College, which latter

post he had for some time occupied. He was then chosen President of Corpus Christi College, in which

office he was exceedingly active and useful till his death. This College had long been badly infested

with papistry. The presidency being vacant in 1568, the Queen sent letters to the Fellows, calling upon

them to make choice of Dr. William Cole, who had been one of the exiles in the time of Queen Mary.

The Fellows, however, made choice of Robert Harrison, formerly one of their number, but an open

Romanist. The Queen pronounced this election void, and commanded them to elect Cole. On their

refusal, Dr. Horn, Bishop of Winchester, the Visitor of the College, was sent to induct Cole; which he

did, but not till he had forced the College-gates. A commission, appointed by the Queen, expelled three

of the most notorious papists. As might have been expected, there was but little harmony in that society.

In 1579, Dr. Reynolds was expelled from his College, together with his pupil, the renowned Richard

Hooker, author of the “Ecclesiastical Polity,” and three others. On what ground this was done is not

known. It was the act of Dr. John Barfoote, then Vice-President of the College, and Chaplain to the

potent Earl of Warwick. In less than a month, the expelled members were fully restored by the agency

of Secretary Walsingham. In 1586, this Sir Francis Walsingham offered a stipend for a lectureship on

controversial divinity, for the purpose, as Heylin, that rabid Laudian, says, of making “the religion of

the Church of Rome more odious.” Dr. Reynolds accepted this lectureship, and for that purposed

resigned his fellowship in the College; “dissentions and factions there,” as he says, “having made him

weary of the place.” He retired to Queen’s College, and was Master there, till, as has been stated, he

became President of Corpus Christi in 1598, on the resignation of Dr. Cole. Dr. Barfoote struggled hard

to secure the post; but by the firm procedure of that “so noble and worthy knight Sir Francis

Walsingham,” Dr. Reynolds carried the day.

King James appointed him, in 1603, to be one of the four divines who should represent the Puritan

interest at the Hampton Court Conference. Here he was almost the only speaker on his side of the

question; and confronted the King and Primate, with eight bishops, and as many deans. The records of

what took place are wholly from the pens of his adversaries, who are careful that he should not appear

to any great advantage. It is manifest from their own account, that, in this “mock conference,” as Rapin

calls it, the Puritans were so overborne with kingly insolence and prelatic pride, that, finding it of no

use to attempt any replies, they held their peace. In fact, the whole affair was merely got up to give the

King, who had newly come to the throne of England, an opportunity to declare himself as to the line of

ecclesiastical policy he meant to pursue.

The only good that resulted from this oppressive and insulting conference was our present admirable

translation of the Bible. The King scornfully rejected nearly every other request of the Puritans; ** but,

at the entreaty of Dr. Reynolds, consented that there should be a new and more accurate translation,

prepared under the royal sanction. The next year Dr. Reynolds was put upon the list of Translators, on

account of his well known kill in the Hebrew and Greek. He labored in the work with zeal, bringing all

his vast acquisitions to aid in accomplishing the task, though he did not live to see it completed. In the

progress of it, he was seized with consumption, yet he continued his assistance to the last. During his

decline, the company to which he belonged met regularly every week in his chamber, to compare and

perfect what he had done in their private studies. Thus he ended his days like Venerable Bede; and “was

employed in translating the Word of Life, even till he himself was translated to life everlasting.” His

days were thought to be shortened by too intense application to study. But when urged by friends to

desist, he would reply,--”Non propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas,”--for the sake of life, he would not

lose the very end of living! During his sickness, his time was wholly taken up in prayer, and in hearing

and translating the Scriptures.

The papists started a report, that their famous opposer had recanted his protestant sentiments. He was

much grieved at hearing the rumor; but being too feeble to speak, set his name to the following

declaration,--”These are to testify to all the world, that I die in the possession of that faith which I have

taught all my life, both in my preachings and in my writings, with an assured hope of my salvation,

only by the merits of Christ my Saviour.” The next day, May 21st, 1607, he expired in the sixty-eighth

year of his age. He was buried in the chapel of his College, with great solemnity and academic pomp,

and the general lamentation of good men.

His industry and piety are largely attested by his numerous writings, which long continued in high

esteem. Old Anthony Wood, though so cynical toward all Puritans, says of him, that he was “most

prodigiously seen in all kinds of learning; most excellent in all tongues.” “He was a prodigy in

reading,” adds Anthony, “famous in doctrine, and the very treasury of erudition; and in a word, nothing

can be spoken against him, only that he was the pillar of Puritanism, and the grand favorer of nonconformity.”

Dr. Crackenthorpe, his intimate acquaintance, though a zealous churchman, gives this

account of him,--”He turned over all writers, profane, ecclesiastical, and divine; and all the councils,

fathers, and histories of the Church. He was more excellent in all tongues useful or ornamental to a

divine. He had a sharp and ready wit, a grave and mature judgment, and was indefatigably industrious.

He was so well skilled in all arts and sciences, as if he had spent his whole life in each of them. And as

to virtue, integrity, piety, and sanctity of life, he was so eminent and conspicuous, that to name

Reynolds is to commend virtue itself.” From other testimonies of a like character, let the following be

given, from the celebrated Bishop Hall of Norwich,--”He alone was a well-furnished library, full of all

faculties, all studies, and all learning. The memory and reading of that man were near to a miracle.”

Such was one of the worthies in that noble company of Translators. Nothing can tend more to inspire

confidence in their version than the knowledge of their immense acquirements, almost incredible to the

superficial scholars in this age of smatterers, sciolists, and pretenders. How much more to be coveted is

the accumulation of knowledge, and the dispensing of its riches to numerous generations, than the

amassing of money, and the bequeathing of hoarded wealth. Who would not choose the Christian

erudition of an Andrews or a Reynolds, rather than the millions of Astor or Girard?

* “Dr. Peter Heylin, preaching at Westminster Abbey, before Bishop Williams, accused the nonconformists

of ‘putting all into open tumult, rather than conform to the lawful government derived from

Christ and his apostles.’ At this, the Bishop, sitting in the great pew, knocked aloud with his staff on the

pulpit, saying, --’No more of that point! no more of that point, Peter!’ To whom Heylin answered, --’I

have a little more to say, my lord, and then I have done:’--and so finished his subject.” --BIOG. BRIT.

IV. 2597. Ed. 1747.

** Their requests were very reasonable, viz.: 1. “That the doctrine of the Church might be preserved

pure, according to God’s word. 2. That good pastors might be planted in all churches, to preach the

same. 3. That church government might be sincerely ministered, according to God’s word. 4. That the

book of Common Prayer might be fitted to more increase of piety.”

THOMAS HOLLAND

This good man was born at Ludlow, in Shropshire, in the year 1539. He was educated at Exeter

College, Oxford; and graduated in 1570, with great applause. Three years after, he was made chaplain

and Fellow of Baliol College; and as Anthony Wood says, was “another Apollos, mighty in the

Scriptures,”--also “ a solid preacher, a most noted disputant, and a most learned divine.” He was made

Doctor in Divinity in 1584. The next year, when Robert Dudley, the famous Earl of Leicester, was sent

as governor of the Netherlands, then just emancipated from the Spanish yoke, Dr. Holland went with

him in the capacity of chaplain. In 1589, he succeeded the celebrated Dr. Lawrence Humphrey as the

King’s Professor of Divinity, a duty for which he was eminently qualified, and which he trained up

many distinguished scholars. He was elected Rector of Exeter College in 1592; an office he filled with

great reputation for twenty years, being regarded as a universal scholar, and a prodigy of literature. His

reputation extended to the continent, and he was held in high esteem in the universities of Europe.

These were the leading events in his studious life.

As to his character, he was a man of ardent piety, a thorough Calvinist in doctrine, and a decided nonconforming

Puritan in matters of ceremony and church- discipline. In the public University debates, he

staunchly maintained that “bishops are not a distinct order from presbyters, nor at all superior to them

by the Word of God.” He stoutly resisted the popish innovations which Bancroft and Laud strove too

successfully to introduce at Oxford. When the execrable Laud, afterwards the odious Archbishop of

Canterbury, was going through his exercises as candidate for the degree of Bachelor in Divinity, in

1604, he contended “that there could be no true churches without diocesan episcopacy.” For this, the

young aspirant was sharply and publicly rebuked by Dr. Holland, who presided on the occasion; and

who severely reprehended that future Primate of all England, as “one who sought to sow discord

among brethren, and between the Church of England and the Reformed Churches abroad.”

As a preacher, Dr. Holland was earnest and solemn. His extemporary discourses were usually better

than his more elaborate preparations. As a student, it was sad of him, that he was so “immersed in

books,” that this propensity swallowed up almost every other. In the translation of our Bible he took a

very prominent part. This was the crowning work of his life. He died March 16th, 1612, a few months

after this most important version was completed and published. He attained to the age of seventy-three

years.

The translation being finished, he spent most of his time in meditation and prayer. Sickness and the

infirmities of age quickened into greater life his desires for heaven. In the hour of his departure he

exclaimed,--”Come, Oh come, Lord Jesus, thou bright and morning star! Come Lord Jesus; I desire to

be dissolved and be with thee.” He was buried with great funeral solemnities in the chancel of St.

Mary’s, Oxford.

One of his intimate associates and fellow-translators, Dr. Kilby, preached his funeral sermon. In this

sermon it is said of him,--”that he had a wonderful knowledge of all the learned languages, and of all

arts and sciences, both human and divine. He was mighty in the Scriptures; and so familiarly

acquainted with the Fathers, as if he himself had been one of them; and so versed in the Schoolmen, as

if he were the Seraphic Doctor. He was, therefore, most worthy of the divinity-chair, which he filled

about twenty years, with distinguished approbation and applause. He was so celebrated for his

preaching, reading, disputing, moderating, and all other excellent qualifications, that all who knew him

commended him, and all who heard of him admired him.” In illustration of his zeal for purity in faith

and worship, and against all superstition and idolatry, the same sermon informs us, that, whenever he

took a journey, he first called together the Fellows of his College, for his parting charge, which always

ended thus,--”I commend you to the love of God, and to the hatred of all popery and superstition!” *

He published several learned orations and one sermon. He left many manuscripts ready for the press;

but as they fell into hands unfriendly to the Puritanism they contained, they were never published.

* Commendo vos dilectioni Dei, et odio papatus et superstitionis.

RICHARD KILBY

Among those grave and erudite divines to whom all the generations which have read the Bible in the

English tongue are so greatly indebted, a place is duly assigned to Dr. Richard Kilby. He was a native

of Radcliff on the river Wreak, in Liecestershire. He went to Oxford; and when he had been at the

University three years, was chosen Fellow of Lincoln College, in 1577. He took orders, and became a

preacher of note in the University. In 1590, he was chosen Rector of his College, and made Prebendary

of the cathedral church of Lincoln. He was considered so accurate in Hebrew studies, that he was

appointed the King’s Professor in that branch of literature. Among the fruits of his studies, he left a

commentary on Exodus, chiefly drawn from the writings of the Rabbinical interpreters. He died in the

year 1620, at the age of sixty.

These are nearly all the vestiges remaining of him. There is one incident, however, related by “honest

Izaak Walton,” in his life of the celebrated Bishop Sanderson. The incident, as described by the amiable

angler, is such a fine historical picture of the times, and so apposite to the purpose of this little volume,

that it must be given in Walton’s own words.

“I must here stop my reader, and tell him that this Dr. Kilby was a man of so great learning and

wisdom, and so excellent a critic in the Hebrew tongue, that he was made professor of it in this

University; and was also so perfect a Grecian, that he was by King James appointed to be one of the

translators of the Bible; and that this Doctor and Mr. Sanderson had frequent discourses, and loved as

father and son. The Doctor was to ride a journey into Derbyshire, and took Mr. Sanderson to bear him

company; and they, resting on a Sunday with the Doctor’s friend, and going together to that parish

church where they then were, found the young preacher to have no more discretion, than to waste a

great part of the hour allotted for his sermon in exceptions against the late translation of several words,

(not expecting such a hearer as Dr. Kilby,) and shewed three reasons why a particular word should have

been otherwise translated. When evening prayer was ended, the preacher was invited to the Doctor’s

friend’s house, where, after some other conference, the Doctor told him, he might have preached more

useful doctrine, and not have filled his auditors’ ears with needless exceptions against the late

translation; and for that word for which he offered to that poor congregation three reasons why it ought

to have been translated as he said, he and others had considered all them, and found thirteen more

considerable reasons why it was translated as now printed; and told him, ‘If his friend,’ (then attending

him,) ‘should prove guilty of such indiscretion, he should forfeit his favor.’ To which Mr. Sanderson

said, ‘He hoped he should not.’ And the preacher was so ingenuous to say, ‘He would not justify

himself.’ And so I return to Oxford.”

This digression of honest Izaac’s pen may serve to illustrate the magisterial bearing of the “heads of

colleges,” and other great divines of those times; and also, what has now become much rarer, the

humility and submissiveness of the younger brethren. It also furnishes an incidental proof of the

considerate and patient care with which our venerable Translators studied the verbal accuracy of their

work. When we hear young licentiates, green from the seminary, displaying their smatterings of

Hebrew and Greek by cavilling in their sermons at the common version, and pompously telling how it

out to have been rendered, we cannot but wish that the apparition of Dr. Kilby’s frowning ghost might

haunt them. Doubtless the translation is susceptible of improvement in certain places; but this is not a

task for every new-fledged graduate; nor can it be very often attempted without shaking the confidence

of the common people in our unsurpassed version, and without causing “the trumpet to give an

uncertain sound.”

MILES SMITH

This person, who was largely occupied in the Bible translation, was born at Hereford. His father had

made a good fortune as a fletcher, or maker of bows and arrows, which was once a prosperous trade in

“merrie England.” The son was entered at Corpus Christi College, in 1568; but afterwards removed to

Brazen Nose College, where he took his degrees, and “proved at length an incomparable theologist.”

He was one of the chaplains of Christ’s Church. His attainments were very great, both in classical and

oriental learning. He became canon- residentiary of the cathedral church of Hereford. In 1594, he was

created Doctor in Divinity.

He had a four-fold share in the Translation. He not only served in the third company, but was one of the

twelve selected to revise the work, after which it was referred to the final examination of Dr. Smith and

Bishop Bilson. Last of all, Dr. Smith was employed to write that most learned and eloquent preface,

which is become so rare, and is so seldom seen by readers of the Bible; while the flattering Dedication

to the King, which is of no particular value, has been often reprinted in editions on both sides of the

Atlantic. This noble Preface, addressed by “the Translators to the Reader,’ in the first edition, “stands as

a comely gate to a glorious city.” Let the reader who would judge for himself, whether our Translators

were masters of the science of sacred criticism, peruse it, and be satisfied.

Dr. Smith never sought promotion, being, as he pleasantly said of himself, “covetous of nothing but

books.” * But, for his great labor, bestowed upon the best of books, the King, in the year 1612,

appointed him Bishop of Gloucester. In this office he behaved with the utmost meekness and

benevolence. He died, much lamented, in 1624, being seventy years of age, and was buried in his own

cathedral.

He went through the Greek and Latin fathers, making his annotations on them all. He was well

acquainted with the Rabbinical glosses and comments. So expert was he in the Chaldee, Syriac, and

Arabic, that they were almost as familiar as his native tongue. “Hebrew he had at his fingers’ ends.” He

was also much versed in history and general literature, and was fitly characterized by a brother bishop

as “a very walking library.” All his books were written in his own hand, an in most elegant

penmanship.

In the great Bible-translation, he began with the first of the laborers, and put the last hand to the work.

Yet he was never known to speak of it as owing more to him than to the rest of the Translators. We may

sum up his excellent character in the words of one stiffly opposed to his views and principles, who

says,--”He was a great scholar, yet a severe Calvinist, and hated the proceedings of Dr. Laud!”

* Nullius rei praeterquam librorum avidus.

RICHARD BRETT

This reverend clergyman was of a respectable family, and was born at London, in 1567. He entered at

Hart Hall, Oxford, where he took his first degree. He was then elected Fellow of Lincoln College,

where, by unwearied industry, he became very eminent in the languages, divinity, and other branches of

science. Having taken his degrees in arts, he became, in 1595, Rector of Quainton in Buckinghamshire,

in which benefice he spent his days. He was made Doctor in Divinity in 1605. He was renowned in his

time for vast attainments, as well as revered for his piety. “He was skilled and versed to a criticism” in

the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, and Ethiopic tongues. He published a number of erudite

works, all in Latin. It is recorded of him, that “he was a most vigilant pastor, a diligent preacher of

God’s word, a liberal benefactor to the poor, a faithful friend, and a good neighbor.” This studious and

exemplary minister, having attained this exalted reputation, died in 1638, at the age of seventy, and lies

buried in the chancel of Quainton Church, where he dispensed the word and ordinances for three and

forty years.

MR. [DANIEL] FAIRCLOUGH

The author has bestowed great labor in endeavoring to identify this person. After exhausting all the

means of information within his reach, he is lead to the belief, that the last on the list of this company

of Translators, who is designated simply as “Mr. Fairclough,” is Daniel Fairclough, otherwise known as

Dr. Daniel Featley; which, strange to say, is a corrupt pronunciation of the name Fairclough. This is

distinctly asserted by his nephew, Dr. John Featley, who wrote a life of his uncle, and printed it at the

end of a book, entitled, “Dr. Daniel Featley revived.” The nephew states, that his uncle was ordained

deacon and priest under the name Fairclough. The main ground for questioning the identity, is the age

of Daniel Fairclough, who, when the Bible-translators were nominated, was only some twenty-six years

old, which is considerably less than the age of most of his associates. He was, however, an early ripe,

and a distinguished scholar; and comparatively young as he was, it devolved on him to preach at the

funeral of the great Dr. Reynolds, who died during the progress of the work. This funeral service was

performed with much applause, at only four days’ notice.

The birth-place of Daniel Fairclough, or Featley, to call him by the name whereby he is chiefly known,

was Charlton, in Oxfordshire, where he was born about the year 1578. He was admitted to Corpus

Christi College in 1594; and was elected Fellow in 1602. He stood in such high estimation, that Sir

Thomas Edwards, ambassador to France, took him to Paris as his chaplain, where he spent two or three

years in the ambassador’s house. Here he held many “tough disputes” with the doctors of the Sorbonne,

and other papists. His opponents termed him “the keen and cutting Featley;” and found him a match in

their boasted logic;

“For he a rope of sand could twist,

As tough as learned Sorbonnist.”

On returning to England, he repaired to his College, where he remained till 1613, when he became

Rector of Northill, in Cornwall. Soon after, he was appointed chaplain to Dr. Abbot, Archbishop of

Canterbury, also one of the Translators, by whom he was made Rector of Lambeth, in Surrey. In 1617,

he held a famous debate with Dr. Prideaux, the King’s Professor of Divinity at Oxford. About this time,

the Archbishop gave him the rectory of Allhallows Church, Bread Street, London. This he soon

exchanged for the rectory of Acton, in Middlesex. He was also Provost of Chelsea College; and, at one

time, chaplain in ordinary to King Charles the First.

Being puritanically inclined, Dr. Featley was appointed, in 1643, to be one of the Assembly of Divines

at Westminster. As he was not one of the “root and branch” party, who were for wholly changing the

order of government, he soon fell under the displeasure of the Long Parliament. Some of his

correspondence with Archbishop Usher, who was then with the King at Oxford, was intercepted. In this

correspondence, he expressed his scruples about taking the “solemn league and covenant;” and for this,

was unjustly suspected of being a spy. He was cast into prison, and his rectories were taken from him.

The next year, on account of his failing health, he was removed, agreeably to his petition, to Chelsea

College. There, after a few months spent in holy exercises, he expired, April 17th, 1645. “Though he

was small of stature, yet he had a great soul, and had all learning compacted in him.” He published

some forty books and treatises, and left a great many manuscripts. His other labors have passed away;

“but the word of the Lord,” which, as it is believed, he aided in giving to unborn millions, “abideth for

ever.”

The fourth company of these famous scholars was composed of Oxford divines; and to them, as their

portion of the work, were assigned the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Revelation of St.

John the Divine.

THOMAS RAVIS

This person, the president of his company, was born of worthy parentage, at Malden, in the County of

Surrey. He was bred at Westminster School; and then entered, in 1575, as student of Christ’s Church,

one of the Oxford Colleges. As it is a matter of some interest, shewing that he went through an

extensive course of study, the dates of his various degrees will be given. In 1578, he graduated as

Bachelor of Arts; in 1581, he proceeded as Master of Arts; in 1589, he became Bachelor in Divinity;

and in 1595, he was made Doctor in Divinity. The successive degrees of the greater part of the persons

belonging to the list of Translators could be given; but are omitted for the sake of brevity. It is enough

to record, that they nearly all attained to the highest literary honors of their respective universities.

Dr. Ravis, in 1591, was appointed rector of the Church of All-hallows, Barking, in London. The next

year, he became Canon of Westminster, and occupied the seventh stall in that church. Two years later,

he was chosen Dean of Christ’s Church College. He was also, in 1596 and the year following, elected

Vice-Chancellor of the University. In 1598, he exchanged his benefice at All- hallows Church for the

rectory of Islip. He also held the Wittenham Abbey Church, in Berkshire. All these preferments and

profitable livings mark him as a rising man. His holding a plurality of churches for the sake of their

revenues, in neither of which he could perform the duties of the pastoral office, was one of the main

cases that justified the complaint of the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, at the Conference in Hampton

Court. His lordship complained of this practice, as occasioning many learned men at the universities to

pine for want of places, while others had more than they could fill. “I wish, therefore,” said he, “that

some may have single coats, or one living, before others have doublets, or pluralities.” To this, the

frugal Bancroft, then Bishop of London, who kept his own ribs thoroughly warmed with such

investitures, made the thrifty reply,-- ”But a doublet is necessary in cold weather!” This prelate, a fierce

persecutor of Puritans, was reputed to have manifested very little “saving grace,” except in the way of

penurious hoardings. The graceless wags of his day made this epitaph upon him;

“Here lies his Grace, in cold clay clad,

Who died for want of what he had!”

The pernicious custom of pluralities, whereby a man receives tithes for the care of souls of which he

takes no care, fleecing the flock he neither watches nor feeds, is one of those abuses still continued in

the Church of England, and calling for thorough reform.

In 1604, soon after Dr. Ravis was commissioned as one of the Bible-translators, the Lords of the

Council requested his acceptance of the bishopric of Gloucester, for which there were very many eager

suitors. Three years later, he was translated to the bishopric of London. Anthony Wood says, that he

was first preferred to the see of Gloucester, which he reluctantly accepted, on account of his great

learning, gravity, and prudence; and that though his diocese “was pretty well stocked with those who

could not bear the name of a bishop, yet, by his episcopal living among them, he obtained their love,

and a good report from them.” If he deserved this commendation while at Gloucester, he changed for

the worse on his translation to London, where he not only succeeded the biter Bancroft in his office, but

also in his severe and exacting behavior. So true is the remark, that “bishops and books are seldom the

better for being translated.” No sooner had he taken his seat in London, than he stretched forth his hand

to vex the non- conforming Puritans. Among others, he cited before him that holly and blessed man,

Richard Rogers, for nearly fifty years the faithful minister of Weathersfield, than whom, it is said, “the

Lord honored none more in the conversion of souls.” In the presence of this venerable man, who, for

his close walking with God, was styled the Enoch of his day, Bishop Ravis protested,--”By the help of

Jesus, I will not leave on preacher in my diocese, who doth not subscribe and conform.” The poor

prelate was doomed to be disappointed; as he died, before his task was well begun, on the 14th of

December 1609. On account of his high offices, and his dying before the translation was completed, it

is not probably that he took so active a part in that business as some of his colleagues. Though too

much carried away by a zeal for the forms of his Church, which was neither according to knowledge

nor charity, he lived and died in deserved respect, and hath a fair monument still standing in his

cathedral of St. Paul’s.

GEORGE ABBOT

This distinguished ecclesiastic was a native of Guildford, in Surrey. He was the son of pious parents,

who had been sufferers for the truth in the times of popish cruelty. He was born October 29th, 1562. At

the age of fourteen, he was entered as a student of Baliol College, Oxford; and in 1583, he was chosen

to a fellowship. In 1585, he took orders, and became a popular preacher in the University. He was

created Doctor of Divinity, in 1597; and a few months after, was elected Master of University College.

At this time began his conflicts with William Laud, which lasted with great severity as long as Abbot

lived. Dr. Abbot was a Calvinist and a moderate Churchman; while Dr. Laud was an Arminian, and

might have been a cardinal at Rome, if he had not preferred to be a pope at Canterbury.

In 1598, Dr. Abbot published a Latin work, which was reprinted in Germany. The next year he was

installed Dean of Winchester. In 1600, he was elected Vice-Chancellor of the University; and was reelected

to the same honorable post in 1603 and 1605. It was about this time, that he was put into the

royal commission for translating the Bible.

Dr. Abbot went to Scotland, in 1608, as chaplain to the Earl of Dunbar; and while there, by his prudent

and temperate measures, succeeded in establishing a moderate or qualified episcopacy in that kingdom.

This was a matter which King James had so much at heart, that he ever had held Dr. Abbot in great

favor, and rapidly hurried him into the highest ecclesiastical dignities and preferments. He was made

Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry on the 3d of December, 1609; and then, in less than two months,

was translated to the see of London. In less than fifteen months more, he was made Archbishop of

Canterbury, and Primate of all England. Thus he was twice translated himself, before he saw the Bible

translated once. Though an excellent preacher, he had never exercised himself in the pastoral office,

rising at one stride from being a University-lecturer to the chief dignities of the Church.

When he reached the primacy, he was forty-nine years of age; and was held in the highest esteem both

by the prince and the people. In all great transactions, whether in church or state, he bore a principal

part. And yet, at times, he showed, in matters which touch the conscience, a degree of independence of

the royal will, such as must have been very distasteful to the domineering temper of James, and very

unusual in that age of passive obedience, and servile cringing to the dictates of royalty. Thus it was,

when the King, under the pretence that the strict observance of the Sabbath, as practiced by Protestants,

was likely to prejudice the Romanists, and hinder their conversion, issued his infamous “Book of

Sports.” This was a Declaration intended to encourage, at the close of public worship, various

recreations, such as “promiscuous dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May-games, Whitsunales, or

morrice-dances, setting up of May-poles, or other sports therewith used.” This abomination edict was

required to be ready by all ministers in their parish- churches. Its promulgation greatly troubled the

more conscientious of the clergy, who expected to be brought into difficulty by their refusal to publish

the shameful document. Archbishop Abbot warmly opposed its enforcement, and forbade it to be read

in the church of Croyden, where he was at the time of its publication. The opposition was too much,

even for the ruthless king; and he, at last, gave up his impious attempt to heathenize the Lord’s Day.

It was in 1619, that the Archbishop founded his celebrated hospital at Guildford, the place of his

nativity, and nobly endowed it from his private property. In that same year, a sad mischance befell him.

His health being much impaired, he had recourse to hunting, by medical advice, as a means of restoring

it. This sort of exercise has never been in very good repute among ecclesiastics. Jerome recognizes

some worthy fishermen who followed the sacred calling; but says, that “we no where read in Scripture

of a holy hunter.” While his Grace of Canterbury was pursuing the case in Barmshill Park, a seat of the

Earl of Ashby de la Zouch, an arrow from his cross-bow, aimed at a deer, glanced from a tree, and

killed a game-keeper, an imprudent man, who had been cautioned to keep out of the way. This casual

homicide was the cause of great affliction to the prelate. During the rest of his life, he observed a

monthly fast, on a Tuesday, the day of the mishap. He also settled a liberal annuity upon the poor gamekeeper’s

widow, which annuity was attended with the additional consolation, that it soon procured her a

better husband than the man she had lost. For the Primate, however, who was ever a celibate, there was

no such remedy of grief, and all the rest of his life was overcast with gloom. This business subjected

him to many hard shots from them that liked him not. Once returning to Croydon, after a long absence,

a great many women, from curiosity, gathered about his coach. The Archbishop, who hated to be stared

at, and was never fond of females, exclaimed somewhat churlishly, “What make these women here!”

Upon this an old crone cried out,--”You had best to shoot an arrow at us!” It is said that this tongueshot,

which often goes deeper than gunshot, went to his very heart.

His enemies made a strong handle of this accidental homicide. It was insisted, that the canon-laws

allows no “man of blood” to be a builder of a spiritual temple; and that the Primate who had retreated

after the accident to his hospital at Guildford, was disenabled from his clerical functions. The King

appointed a commission to try the question, Whether the Archbishop was disqualified for his official

duties by this involuntary homicide? After long debate, in which the divines on the continent took part,

it was the general decision, that the fact did disqualify. Nevertheless, King James, in his usurped

character as supreme head of the English Church, an office which rightly belongs only to the King of

kings, issued, in 1621, a full pardon and dispensation to the humbled Primate. Still, several newlyappointed

bishops, who had been awaiting consecration, and among them Dr. William Laud, then

bishop elect of St. David’s, refused to receive it from his hands, and obtained the mysterious virtues of

“episcopal grace” from other administration. Others, however, as Dr. Davenant, bishop elect of

Salisbury, and Dr. Hall, bishop elect of Norwich, were solemnly consecrated by their dejected

metropolitan.

All this did not discourage Archbishop Abbot from making vigorous opposition, in the following year,

to the proposed match between Charles, Prince of Wales, and the Infanta, or Princess Royal, of Spain.

Though this foolish, unpopular, and unsuccessful scheme was a favorite piece of policy with the King,

who was quite unused to be thwarted by his couriers, Dr. Abbot continued to enjoy his confidence till

the King’s death in 1625.

When Charles the First succeeded to the throne, he was crowned and annointed by the Archbishop of

Canterbury. Nevertheless, the latter soon found himself in deep eclipse. His inveterate foe, the resolute

Dr. Laud, then Bishop of Bath and Wells, came between, and intercepted the sunshine of royal favor.

The matter of the fortuitous homicide seems to have been revived against him, as ground for his

sequestration. Charles required him to live in retirement, which he did at Ford; and in 1627, appointed a

commision of five prelates, to suspend him from the exercise of his archiepiscopal functions. These

prelates were Dr. Mountaigne, Bishop of London; Dr. Neile, Bishop of Durham; Dr. Howson, Bishop

of Oxford; and Dr. Laud, Bishop of Bath and Wells. When the instrument for the Archbishop’s

suspension was drawn up for their signature, the four senior bishops declined to set their hands thereto,

and appeared to manifest much reluctance and regret. “Then give me the pen!” said Bishop Laud; and

“though last in place, first subscribed his name.” The others, after some demur, were induced to follow

his example. From that time, it is said, the Archbishop was never known to laugh; and became quite

dead to the world.

Next year, however, the fickle king saw fit to alter his course; and, about Christmas time, restored Dr.

Abbot to his liberty and jurisdiction. He was sent for to Court; received, as he stepped out of his barge,

by the Archbishop of York and the Earl of Dorset, and by them conducted into the royal presence. The

king gave him his hand to kiss, and charged him not to fail of attendance at the Council-table twice a

week. He sat in the House of Peers, and continued in his spiritual functions without further interruption

till his death some five years after, when he was succeeded in his see by his implacable and ill-starred

rival, William Laud.

Dr. Abbot’s brief sequestration had made him popular in the country, and his restoration was probably

owing to a desire to conciliate his influence in the parliament, with which the king was already in

trouble. The Archbishop rather countenanced the liberal party, and stiffly resisted the slavish tenet of

Dr. Mainwaring, which raised such an excitement. This divine had publicly maintained, as was

supposed with the royal approbation, “that the King’s royal will and command, in imposing laws, taxes,

and other aids, upon his people, without common consent in parliament, did so far bind the consciences

of the subjects of this kingdom, that they could not refuse the same without peril of eternal damnation.”

Here was the “divine right of kings” with a vengeance!

Dr. George Abbot continued in office during those troublous times which preceded the civil wars, till

he died, at his palace of Croydon, on Sunday, August 4th, 1633, at the age of seventy-one, quite worn

out with cares and infirmities.

He was a very grave man, and of a very “fatherly presence,” and unimpeachable in his morals. He was

a firm Calvinist, and a thorough Church-of-England man. He was somewhat indulgent to the more

moderate Puritans; but the more zealous of them accused him sharply of being a persecutor, while the

high-toned churchmen vehemently charged him with disloyalty to their cause. It is also said, that as he

had never exercised the pastoral care, but was “made a shepherd of shepherds, before he had been a

shepherd of sheep,” he was wanting in sympathy with the troubles and infirmities of ministers. He was

severe in his proceedings against clerical delinquents; but he protested that he did this to shield them

from the greater severity of the lay judges, who would visit them with heavier punishments, to the

greater shame of themselves and their profession. He was, in truth, stern and melancholy. As compared

with his brother, Robert Abbot, the Bishop of Salisbury, it was said, that “gravity did frown in George,

and smile in Robert.” The other brother of these bishops was Lord Mayor of London.

The Archbishop was regarded as an excellent preacher and a great divine. Anthony Wood speaks of him

as a “learned man, having his learning all of the old stamp,”--that is to say, vast and ponderous. He

published lectures on the book of Jonah, and numerous treatises, mostly relating to the political and

religious occurrences of the times. But to have borne an active part in the preparation of the most useful

and important of all the translations of the Bible, is an honor far beyond the chief ecclesiastical

dignities and the highest literary fame.

RICHARD EEDES

Dr. Eedes was a native of Bedfordshire, born at Sewell, about the year 1555. At an early age he was

sent to Westminster school. He became a student of Christ’s Church, in Oxford, in 1571. He

subsequently took his two degrees in arts, and two more in divinity. In 1578, he became a preacher, and

arose to considerable eminence. In 1584, he was made Prebendary of Yarminster, in the cathedral

church of Salisbury; and two years later, became Canon of Christ’s Church, and chaplain to Queen

Elizabeth. In 1596, he was Dean of Worcester, which was the highest ecclesiastical preferment he

attained. He was chaplain to James I., as he had been to the illustrious queen who preceded him; and

was much admired at court as an accomplished pulpit orator. In his younger days, he was given, like

some other fashionable clergymen, to writing poetry and plays; but, in riper years, he became, as the

antiquarian of Oxford says, “a pious and grave divine, an ornament to his profession, and grace to the

pulpit.” He published several discourses at different times. Dr. Eedes died at Worcester, November

19th, 1604, soon after his appointment to be one of the Bible-translators, and before the work was well

begun, so that another was appointed in his place. But let him not be deprived of his just

commendation, as one who was counted worthy of being joined with that ablest band of scholars and

divines, which was ever united in a single literary undertaking.

GILES TOMSON

This good man was a native of “famous London town.” In 1571, he entered University College,

Oxford; and, in 1580, was elected Fellow of All Souls’ College. A few years later, he was out in a

shower of appointments, “with his dish right side up.” He was, at that lucky season, made divinity

lecturer in Magdalen College; chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, as was his friend, Dr. Richard Eedes;

Prebendary of Repington; Canon residentiary of Hereford; and Rector of Pembridge in Herefordshire.

He was a most eminent preacher. He became Doctor in Divinity in 1602; and was, in that year,

appointed Dean of Windsor. In virtue of this latter office, he acted as Registrar of the most noble Order

of the Garter. Dr. Tomson took a great deal of pains in his part of the translation of the Bible, which he

did not long survive. He was consecrated Bishop of Gloucester, June 9th, 1611; and a year after, June

14th, 1612, he died, at the age of fifty-nine, “to the great grief of all who knew the piety and learning of

the man.” Man is like the flower, whose full bloom is the signal for decay to begin. It is singular that

Bishop Tomson never visited Gloucester, after his election to that see.

SIR HENRY SAVILE, KNT

Some have doubted whether the “Mr. Savile,” on the list of Translators, was the renowned scholar

afterwards known as Sir Henry Savile. But the matter is put beyond doubt by Anthony Wood and

others. Savile was born at Bradley, in Yorkshire, November 30th, 1549, “of ancient and worshipful

extraction.” He graduated at Brazen Nose College, Oxford; but afterwards became a Fellow of Merton

College. In 1570, he read his ordinaries on the Almagest of Ptolemy, a collection of the geometrical and

astronomical observations and problems of the ancients. By this exercise he very early became famous

for his Greek and mathematical learning. In this latter science, he for some time read voluntary

lectures.

In his twenty-ninth year, he travelled in France and elsewhere, to perfect himself in literature; and

returned highly accomplished in learning, languages, and knowledge of the world and men. He then

became tutor in Greek and mathematics to Queen Elizabeth, whose father, Henry VIII., is said by

Southey to have set the example of giving to daughters a learned education. It is to her highest honor,

that when she had been more than twenty years upon the throne, she still kept up her habits of study, as

appears by this appointment of Mr. Savile.

In 1686, he was made Warden of Merton College, which office he filled with great credit for six and

thirty years, and also to the great prosperity of the institution. Ten years later, he added to this office,

that of Provost of Eton College, which school rapidly increased in reputation under him. “Thus,” as

Fuller says, “this skilful gardener had, at the same time, a nursery of young plants, and an orchard of

grown trees, both flourishing under his careful inspection.” He was no admirer of geniuses; but

preferred diligence to wit. “Give me,” he used to say “the plodding student. If I would look for wits, I

would go to Newgate; --there be the wits!” As might be expected, he was somewhat unpopular with his

scholars, on account of the severity with which he urged them to diligence.

Soon after his nomination as one of the Translators, having declined all offers of other promotion,

whether civil or ecclesiastical, he was knighted by the King. About the same time, he buried his only

son Henry, at the age of eight years. In consequence of this bereavement, he devoted most of his wealth

to the promotion of learning. He translated the Histories of Cornelius Tacitus, and published the same

with notes. He also published, from the manuscripts, the writings of Bradwardin against Pelagius; the

Writers of English history subsequent to Bede; Prelections on the Elements of Euclid; and other learned

works in English and Latin.

He is chiefly known, however, by being the first to edit the complete works of John Chrysostom, the

most famous of the Greek Fathers. He spent large sums in procuring from all parts of Europe,

manuscripts, and copies of manuscripts. He not only made learned and critical notes on his favorite

author, but procured those of Andrew Downes and John Bois, two of his fellow-laborers on the

Translation of the Bible. His edition of one thousand copies was published in 1613, and makes eight

immense folios. All his expenses in this labor of love amounted above eight thousand pounds, of which

the paper alone cost a fourth part. * It was fifty years before all the copies were sold. The Benedictines

in Paris, however, through their emissaries in England, succeeded in surreptitiously procuring the

labors of the learned knight, sheet by sheet, as they came from the press. These they reprinted as they

were received, adding a Latin translation, and some other considerable matter, and forming thirteen

mighty folios. By this transaction, the friars may have gained the most glory, but surely are not entitled

to much honor.

Sir Henry Savile also founded two professorships at Oxford, with liberal endowments; one of

geometry, and the other of astronomy. It is related of him; that he once chanced to fall in with a Master

Briggs, of the rival University of Cambridge. In a learned encounter, Briggs succeeded in demonstrated

some point in opposition to the previous opinion of Sir Henry. This pleased the worthy knight so well,

that he appointed Mr. Briggs to one of his professorships. He made other valuable benefactions to

Oxford, in land, money, and books. Many of his books are still in the Bodleian library there.

Sir Henry Savile died at Eton College, where he was buried, February 19th, 1621, in his seventysecond

year. He was styled, “that magazine of learning, whose memory shall be honorable among the

learned and the righteous for ever.” He left an only daughter, Elizabeth, who was married to Sir John

Sedley, a wealthy baronet of Kent. Sir Henry’s wife was Margaret, daughter of George Dacrews, of

Cheshunt, Esq. It is said that Sir Henry was a singularly handsome man, and that no lady could boast a

finer complexion.

He was so much of a book-worm, and so sedulous at his study, that his lady, who was not very deep in

such matters, thought herself neglected. She once petulantly said to him, “Sir Henry, I would that I

were a book, and then you would a little more respect me.” A person standing by was so ungallant as to

reply, “Madam, you ought to be an almanac, that he might change at the year’s end.” At this retort, the

lady was not a little offended. A little before the publication of Chrysostom, when Sir Henry lay sick,

Lady Savile said, that if Sir Harry died, she would burn Chrysostom for killing her husband. To this,

Mr. Bois, who rendered Sir Henry much assistance in that laborious undertaking, meekly replied, that

“so to do were great pity.” To him, the lady said, “Why, who was Chrysostom?” “One of the sweetest

preachers since the apostles’ times,” answered the enthusiastic Bois. Whereupon the lady was much

appeased, and said, “she would not burn him for all the world.” From these precious samples, it may be

inferred that your fine lady is much the same in all ages of the world, no matter whom she may marry.

It is enough for our purpose, that Sir Henry Savile was one of the most profound, exact, and critical

scholars of his age; and meet and ripe to take a prominent part in the preparation of our incomparable

version.

the value of more than three hundred thousand dollars!

JOHN PERYN

Dr. Peryn was of St. John’s College, Oxford, where he was elected Fellow in 1575. He was the King’s

Professor of Greek in the University; and afterwards Canon of Christ’s Church. He was created Doctor

of Divinity in 1596. When placed in the commission to translate the Bible, he was Vicar of Watling in

Sussex. His death took place May 9th, 1615. These scanty items may serve to show, that he was fit to

take part, with his learned and reverend brethren, in preparing our English Bible for the press.

RALPH RAVENS

This was the Vicar of Eyston Magna, who was made Doctor of Divinity in 1595. He died in 1616. It is

thought that he did not act, for some reason, under the King’s commission; and that Doctors Aglionby

and Hutten were appointed in place of him, and of Eedes, who died before the work was begun.

JOHN HARMAR

A native of Newbury, in Berkshire. He was educated in William de Wykeham’s School at Winchester;

and also at St. Mary’s College, founded by the same munificent Wykeham at Oxford. “Manners make

the man, quoth William of Wykeham,” is a motto frequently inscribed on the buildings of his School

and College. Mr. Harmar became a Fellow of his College in 1574. He was appointed the King’s

Professor of Greek in 1585, being, at the time, in holy orders. He was head-master of Winchester

School, for nine years, and Warden of his College for seventeen years. He became Doctor of Divinity

in 1605. His death took place in 1613. He was a considerable benefactor to the libraries both of the

school and the college of Wykeham’s foundation.

For all his preferment he was indebted to the potent patronage of the Earl of Leicester. He accompanied

that nobleman to Paris, where he held several debates with the popish Doctors of the Sorbonne. He

stood high in the crowd of tall scholars, the literary giants of the time.

He published several learned works; among them, Latin translations of several of Chrysostom’s

writings,--also an excellent translation of Beza’s French Sermons into English, by which he shows

himself to have been a Calvinist, the master of an excellent English style, and an adept in the difficult

art of translating. Wood says, that he was “a most noted Latinist, Grecian, and Divine;” and that he was

“always accounted a most sold theologist, admirable well read in the Fathers and Schoolmen, and in his

younger years a subtle Aristotelian,” Of him too it may be said, “having had a principal hand in the

Translation,” that he was worthy to rank with those, who gave the Scriptures in their existing English

form, to untold millions, past, present, and to come.

WILLIAM BARLOW

The fifth company of Translators was composed of seven divines, who held their meetings at

Westminster. Their special portion of the work was the whole of the Epistles of the New Testament.

The president of this company was Dr. William Barlow, at the time of his appointment, Dean of

Chester. He belonged to an ancient and respectable family residing at Barlow, in Lancashire. He was

bred a student of Trinity Hall, in the University of Cambridge. He graduated in 1584, became Master of

Arts in 1587 and was admitted to a fellowship in Trinity Hall in 1590. Seven years later, Archbishop

Whitgift made him sinecure Rector of Orpington in Kent. He was one of the numerous ecclesiastics of

that day, who were courtiers by profession, and studied with success the dark science of prefermente.

When Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was beheaded for high treason in the year 1600, Dr. Barlow

preached on the occasion, at St. Paul’s Cross, in London. He was now a “rising man.” In 1601, the

prebendship of Chiswick was conferred upon him, and he held it till he was made Bishop of Lincoln. In

the year 1603, he became at the same time, Prebendary of Westminster and Dean of Chester. This latter

prebendship, he held in “commendam” to the day of his death.

When, soon after the accession of James Stuart to the throne of England, the famous Conference was

held at Hampton Court, that monarch summoned, as we have said, four Puritan divines, whom he

arbitrarily constituted representatives of their brethren. To confront them, he summoned a large force of

bishops and cathedral clergymen, of whom Dean Barlow was one, all led to the charge by the doughty

king himself. At the different meetings of the Conference, the Puritans were required to state what

changes their party desired in the doctrine, discipline, and worship, of the Church of England. As soon

as they ventured to specify any thing, they were browbeaten and hectored in the most abusive manner

by the monarch and his minions. In his time, when comparing his reign with the preceding, it was

common to distinguish him by the title Queen James; and his illustrious predecessor, as King Elizabeth.

When his learned preceptor, Buchanan, was asked how he came to make such a pedant of his royal

pupil, the old disciplinarian was cruel enough to reply, that it was the best he could make of him! This

prince, who fancied himself to be, what his flatterers swore he was, an incomparable adept in the

sciences of theology and “kingcraft,” as he termed it, was quite in his element during the discussions at

Hampton Court. He trampled with such fury on the claims of Puritanism, that his prelates, lordly and

cringing by turns, were in raptures; and went down on their knees, and blessed God extemporaneously,

for “such a king as had not been seen since Christ’s day!” Surely they were thrown off their guard by

their exultation, when they set such an impressive example of “praying without book.”

This matter is mentioned here the more fully, because the principal account we have of this Conference

is given by the Dean of Chester. It is not strange that the Puritans make but a sorry figure in his report

of the transactions. Gagged by royal insolence, and choked by priestly abuse, it could hardly have been

otherwise. Indeed, they were only summoned, that, under pretence of considering their grievances, the

King might have an opportunity to throw off his mask, and to show himself in his true character, as a

determined enemy to further reformation in his Church. Dr. Barlow’s account is evidently drawn up in

a very unfriendly disposition toward the Puritan complainants, and labors to make their statements of

grievances appear as weak and witless as possible. Had the pencil been held by a Puritan hand, no

doubt the sketch would have been altogether different. The temper of the King and of his sycophantic

court-clergy may be inferred from the mirth, which, Dr. Barlow says, was excited by a definition of a

Puritan, quoted from one Butler, a Cambridge man,--”A Puritan is a Protestant frayed out of his wits!”

The plan of the King and his mitred counsellors was, the substitution of an English popery in the place

of Romish popery. Their notions were well expressed, some years afterward, in a sermon at St. Mary’s

Cambridge,--”As at the Olympic games, he was counted the conqueror who could drive his chariotwheels

nearest the mark, yet not so as to hinder his running, or to stick thereon; so he who, in his

sermons, can preach near popery, and yet not quite popery, there is your man!”

As we have already related, almost the only request vouchsafed to the Puritans at this Conference was

one which was well worth all the rest. The King granted Dr. Reynold’s motion for a new translation of

the Bible, to be prepared by the ablest divines in his realm. Dr. Barlow was actively employed in the

preliminary arrangements. He was also appointed to take part in the work itself; in which, being a

thorough bred scholar, he did excellent service.

In the course of the work, in 1605, being, at the time, Rector of one of the London parishes, St.

Dunstan’s in the East, Dr. Barlow was made Bishop of Rochester. He was promoted to the wealthier see

of Lincoln in 1608, where he presided with all dignity till his death. He died at a time when he had

some hopes of getting the bishopric of London. His decease took place at his episcopal palace of

Buckden, where he was buried in 1613. He published several books and pamphlets, which prove him

not out of place when put among the learned men of that erudite generation of divines.

JOHN SPENCER

This very learned man was a native of the county of Suffolk. He became a student of Corpus Christi

College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1577. He was elected Greek lecturer for that College, being but

nineteen years of age. His election was strenuously, but vainly opposed by Dr. Reynolds, partly on

account of his youth, and on the ground of some irregularity in his appointment. Perhaps this

opposition was also to be ascribed to the fact, that young Spencer early attached himself to that party in

his College which dreaded Puritanism quite as much as Popery. In 1579, he was chosen Fellow of the

same College.

He was the fellow-student, and, like Saravia, and Savile, and Reynolds, the intimate friend of Richard

Hooker, the author of that famous work, “The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.” This work, in the

preparation of which Spencer was constantly consulted, as was even said to have “had a special hand”

as in part its author, and which he edited after Hooker’s death,--this work is to this day the “great gun”

on the ramparts of the Episcopal sect. Its argument, however, is very easily disposed of. It is thus

described by Dr. James Bennett; --”The architecture of the fabric resembles Dagon’s temple; for it rests

mainly upon two grand pillars, which, so long as they continue sound, will support all its weight. The

first is, ‘that the Church of Christ, like all other societies, has power to make laws for its well-being;’

and the second, that ‘where the sacred Scriptures are silent, human authority may interpose.’ But if

some Samson can be found to shake these pillars from their base, the whole edifice, with the lords of

the Philistines in their seats, and the multitude with which it is crowded, will be involved in one

common ruin. Grant Mr. Hooker these two principles, and his arguments cannot be confuted. But if a

Puritan can show that the Church of Christ is different from all civil societies, because Christ had

framed a constitution for it, and that where the Scriptures are silent, and neither enjoin nor forbid, no

human association has a right to interpose its authority, but should leave the matter indifferent; in such

a case, Hooker’s system would not be more stable than that of the Eastern philosopher, who rested the

earth on the back of an elephant, who stood upon a huge tortoise, which stood upon nothing.”

After the death of Hooker in 1600, his papers were committed to Dr. Spencer, the associate and

assistant of his studies, to superintend their publication. He attended carefully to this literary

executorship, till the translation of the Bible began to engross his attention, when he committed the

other duty, though still retaining a supervisory care, to a young and enthusiastic admirer of Hooker. The

publication was not completed at the time of Dr. Spencer’s death, and the papers of Hooker passed into

other hands.

When he became Master of Arts, in 1580, John Spencer entered into orders, and became a popular

preachers. He was eventually one of King James’s chaplains. His wife a pupil of Hooker’s, as well as

her brothers, George and William Cranmer, who became diplomatic characters, and warm patrons of

their celebrated teacher. Mrs. Spencer was a great-niece of Thomas Cranmer, that Archbishop of

Canterbury, whom Queen Mary burnt at the stake for his Protestantism. In 1589, Dr. Spencer was made

Vicar of Alveley in Essex, which he resigned, in 1592, for the vicarage of Broxborn. In 1599, he was

Vicar of St. Sepulchre’s, beyond Newgate, London. He was made President of Corpus Christ College,

on the death of Dr. Reynolds, in 1607. Dr. Spencer was appointed to a prebendal stall in St. Paul’s,

London, in 1612. His death took place on the third day of April, 1614, when he was fifty-five years of

age. Of his eminent scholarship there can be no question. He was a valuable helper in the great work of

preparing our common English version. We have but one publication from his pen, a sermon preached

at St. Paul’s Cross, and printed after his decease, of which Keble, who is Professor of Poetry at Oxford,

says, that it is “full of eloquence, and striking thoughts.”

ROGER FENTON

This clergyman was a native of Lancashire. He was Fellow of Pembroke Hall, in Cambridge

University. For many years, he was “the painful, pious, learned, and beloved minister” of St. Stephen’s,

Walbrook, London, to which he was admitted in 1601. He was also presented by the Queen to the

Rectory of St. Bennet’s, Sherehog, which he resigned in 1606, for the vicarage of Chigwell, in Essex.

He was also collated, in place of Bishop Andrews, to the Prebendship of Pancras in St. Paul’s cathedral,

where he was Penitentiary of St. Paul’s. His prebendship of Pancras also made him, (so Newcourt

says,) Rector of that church. He died January 16th, 1616, aged fifty years. He was buried under the

communion-table of St. Stephen’s, where there is a monument erected to his memory by his

parishioners, with an inscription expressing their affection toward him as a pastor eminent for his piety

and learning.

His principal publication is described as a “solid treatise” against usury. His most intimate friend was

Dr. Nicholas Felton, another London minister. The following singular incident is related of them by

good old Thomas Fuller; --”Once my own father gave Dr. Fenton a visit, who excused himself from

entertaining him any long. ‘Mr. Fuller,’ said he, ‘hear how the passing bell tolls, at this very instant, for

my dear friend, Dr. Felton, now a-dying. I must to my study, it being mutually agreed upon betwixt us,

in our healths, that the survivor of us should preach the other’s funeral sermon.’ But see a strange

change! God, ‘to whom belong the issues of death,’ with the patriarch Jacob blessing his grandchildren,

‘wittingly guided his hands across,’ reaching out death to the living, and life to the dying. So

that Dr. Felton recovered, and not only performed that last office to his friend, Dr. Fenton, but survived

him more than ten years, and died Bishop of Ely.” By that funeral sermon, it appears that Dr. Fenton

was free of the Grocers’ Company, a wealthy guild, to whom belonged the patronage of St. Stephen’s

Church. He was also Preacher of Gray’s Inn, a society or college of lawyers. Bishop Felton says of him,

--”None was fitter to dive into the depths of school divinity. He was taken early from the University,

and had many troubles afterward; yet he grew and brought forth fruit. Never a more learned hath

Pembroke Hall brought forth, with but one exception.” This nameless exception was doubtless the great

Bishop Lancelot Andrews. Dr. Fenton suffered severely in regard to health, in consequence of his

sedentary habits. “In the time of his sickness,” says his friend, “I told him, that his weakness and

disease were trials only of his faith and patience.” Oh no, he answered, they are not trials but

corrections. *

* Non probationes, sed castigationes.

RALPH HUTCHINSON

Dr. Hutchinson, at the time of his appointment, was President of St. John’s College, having entered that

office in 1590. This, which marks him as a learned man, is all we can tell of him.

WILLIAM DAKINS

He was educated at Westminster School, and admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, May 8th, 1587.

He was chosen Fellow in 1593. He became Bachelor in Divinity in 1601. The next year he was

appointed Greek lecturer. In 1604, he was appointed Professor of Divinity at Gresham College,

London. He was elected on the recommendation of the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Colleges in

Cambridge, and also of several of the nobility, and of the King himself. The King in his letter to the

Mayor and Aldermen of London, calls him “an ancient divine,” not in allusion to his age, but his

character. This appointment was given him as a remuneration for his undertaking to do his part in the

Bible-translation. He was considered peculiarly fit to be employed in this work, on account of “his skill

in the original languages.” In 1606, he was chosen Dean of Trinity College; but died a few months

after, on the second day of October, being less than forty years of age. Though taken away in the midst

of his days, and of the work on account of which we are interested in him, he evidently stood in high

repute as to his qualifications for a duty of such interest and importance.

MICHAEL RABBET

All we can tell of him is, that he was a Bachelor in Divinity, and Rector of the Church of St. Vedast,

Foster Lane, London.

MR. SANDERSON

The bare name is all that is left to us with any certainty. Wood mentions a Thomas Sanderson, D. D., of

Baliol College, Oxford, who was installed Archdeacon of Rochester in 1601; but does not say whether

he was one of our Translators.

The sixth and last company of King James’s Bible-translators met at Cambridge. To this company was

assigned all the Apocryphal books, which, in those times, were more read and accounted of than now,

though by no means placed on a level with the canonical books of Scripture. * Still this part of the

Translators had as much to do as either of the others, in the repeated revision of the version of the

canonical books.

* The reasons assigned for not admitting the apocryphal books into the canon, or list, of inspired

Scriptures are briefly the following.

1. Not one of them is in the Hebrew language, which was alone used by the inspired historians

and poets of the Old Testament.

2. Not one of the writers lays any claim to inspiration.

3. These books were never acknowledged as sacred Scriptures by the Jewish Church, and

therefore were never sanctioned by our Lord.

4. They were not allowed a place among the sacred books, during the first four centuries of the

Christian Church.

5. The contain fabulous statement, and statments which contradict not only the canonical

Scriptures, but themselves; as when, in the two Books of Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes is

made to die three different deaths in as many different places.

6. It inculcates doctrines at variance with the Bible, such as prayers for the dead and sinless

perfection.

7. It teaches immoral practices, such as lying, suicide, assassination and magical incantation.

For these and other reasons, the Apocryphal books, which are all in Greek, except one is extant only in

Latin, are valuable only as ancient documents, illustrative of the manners, language, opinions and

history of the East.

JOHN DUPORT

The president of this company was Dr. Duport, then Master of Jesus College, and Prebendary of Ely.

He was son of Thomas Dupont, Esquire; and was born at Shepshead, in Leicestershire. He was bred at

Jesus College, Cambridge, where he became Fellow, and afterwards Master, which latter office he

exercised with great reputation for nearly thirty years. He was a liberal benefactor of the College. In

1580 he was Proctor in the University; and in the same year he was made Rector of Harlton in

Cambridgeshire. He afterwards bestowed the perpetual advowsance of this rectory on his College. He

was soon after Rector of Bosworth and Medborn, in his native County. In 1583, he was collated to the

rectory of Fulham, in Middlesex, which was a sinecure. Such frequent change of parishes, in a clergyman

of the Anglican Church, is a sign of great prosperity; as they are always changes from a poorer

benefice to a better, and are considered as ‘preferments.”

Almost every parish, whenever vacant, is in the gift of some man of wealth, or high officer in church,

state, university, or other corporation: Hence frequence removals to more desirable parishes tend to

shew that a clergyman has very influential friends or is in high esteem. Still this does not necessarily

follow, inasmuch as a very great part of this business is mere matter of bargain and sale. The person

who has the right of presenting a clergyman to be pastor of a vacant church is called the “patron;” and

the right of presentation is called the “advowson.” These advowsons are bought, sold, bequeathed or

inherited, like any other right or possession. They may be owned by heretics or infidels, who are under

very little restraint as to their choice of ministers to fill the vacancies that occur. If the bishop should

refuse to institute the person nominated, it would involve the prelate in great trouble, unless he could

make out a very strong case against the fitness of the rejected presentee. Meanwhile the flocks, who

pay the tithes which support the minister, have no voice in the matter, except in comparatively few

parishes. They may be dearly loved for their flesh and fleece; but they must take the shepherd who is

set over them. If they dislike his pasture, and jump the fence to feed elsewhere, they must pay tithes

and offerings all the same to the convivial rector, fox-hunting vicar, or Puseyite priest, who has secured

the “benefice” or “living.” It is astonishing, that, under such an ecclesiastical system, the Church of

England is not more thoroughly corrupted. And it is astonishing, that such as system can be endured to

the middle of such a century as this, by a nation whose loudest and proudest boast is of liberty.

While Dr. Duport was rapidly rising in the scale of preferment, he retained his connection with Jesus

College. After he was made Master in 1590, he was four times elected Vice-Chancellor, the highest

resident officer, of the University. In 1585, he became Precentor of St. Paul’s, London; and in 1609,

was made Prebendary of Ely. He married Rachel, daughter to Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely. There were

very happy in their son James Duport, D. D., a distinguished Greek professor and divine. The father

died about Christmas, in 1617, leaving a well-earned reputation as “a reverend man in his generation.”

Let him also be reverend in this generation, for his agency in the final preparation of the Bible in

English.

WILLIAM BRAINTHWAITE

Of Dr. Brainthwaite we recover but little. He spent his life in Cambridge University, where he was first

a student of Clare Hall, then Fellow of Emanuel College, and at last Master of Gonvil and Caius

College. He was in this last office, when he was named in the royal commission as one of the

Translators. He was a benefactor of the last-mentioned colleges; and in 1619, was Vice-Chancellor of

the University. These few items go to mark him as a learned, reverend, and worshipful divine.

JEREMIAH RADCLIFFE

Dr. Radcliffe was one of the Senior Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1588, he was Vicar of

Evesham; and two years later, he was Rector of Orwell. He was Vice-Master of his College in 1597. In

the year 1600, he was made Doctor in Divinity, both at Cambridge and Oxford. Thus he, too, is to be

ranked as a scholar and a divine by calling. His death took place in 1612.

SAMUEL WARD

This was a man of mark,--”a vast scholar.” He was a native of Bishop’s Middleham, in

the county of Durham. His father was a gentleman of “more ancientry than estate.”

He studied at Cambridge, where he was at first a student of Christ’s College, then

a Fellow of Emanuel, and afterwards Master of Sidney Sussex College. He entered

upon this latter office in 1609, and occupied it with great usefulness and honor

till his death, thirty-four years after. His college flourished greatly under his

administration. Four new fellowships were founded, all the scholarships augmented,

and a chapel and new range of buildings erected, all in his time. He was distinguished

for the gravity of his deportment, and for the integrity with which he discharged the

duties of his Mastership.

Being appointed chaplain to the royal favorite, Bishop Montague, he was by

that prelate made Archdeacon of Taunton in 1615, and also Prebendary of Wells.

The King next year presented him to the rectory of Much-Munden in Hertforshire; and also

appointed him one of his chaplains. In 1617, the excellent Dr. Toby Mathew, archbishop

of York, made him Prebendary of Ampleford in the cathedral church of York; and this stall

Dr. Ward retained as long as he lived.

King James sent him, in 1618, to the Synod of Dort, in Holland, together with

Bishops Carleton, Davenant, and Hall; as the four divines most able and meet to represent

the Church of England, at that famous Council. After a while Dr. Goad, a powerful divine

and chaplain to Dr. Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, was sent in the place of Dr. Hall,

recalled at his own request, on account of sickness. The English delegates were treated

with the highest consideration; and having exerted a very happy influence in the Synod,

returned with great honor to their own country, after six or eight months’ absence.

The sittings of the Synod began November 3d, 1618, and ended April 29th of the next

year. During all this time, the States General of Holland allowed the British

envoys ten pounds sterling each day; and at their departure, gave them two hundred pounds

to bear their expenses; and also to each of them a splendid gold medal, representing the

Synod in session.

At this celebrated ecclesiastical council, Walter Balcanqual, B.D., Fellow

of Pembroke Hall, and afterwards Master of the Savoy, by order of King James, represented

the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. There were also, besides the members from the

Dutch provinces, delegates present from Hesse, the Palatinate, Bremen, and

Switzerland, all of whose churches practised the Presbyterial form of discipline

and government. The Church of England, through its “supreme head,” acknowledged

and communed with all these as true churches of the Lord Jesus Christ, --sitting and

acting with them, by its delegated theologians, in a solemn ecclesiastical assembly.

Surely the spirit of the Anglican Church in those days was widely different from what

is manifested now.

The object of the Synod, which convened by order of their High Mightinesses, the

Lords States General, was to settle the doctrinal disputes which ten convulsed the

established Church of the Netherlands. For some ten years the dispute had been very

sharp between Calvinists, who adhered to the old national faith, and the followers of

Arminius, who innovated upon the old order of things. The points in dispute related to

divine predestination, the nature and extent of the atonement, the corruption of man,

his conversion to God, and the perseverance of saints. These five points are explained

in some sixty “canons,” which were “confirmed by the unanimous consent of all and each

of the members of the whole Synod.” The Dordrechtan Canons are, perhaps, the most

careful and exact statement of the Calvinist belief, in scientific form, that

has ever been drawn up. It is wisely framed, so that all the usual objections to

these doctrines are forestalled and excluded in the very form of their statement.

Although the decrees of Dordrecht had not the desired effect of quelling the errors of

Armenians, they are worthy of all it cost to procure them. At the time of their

adoption, King James was very hostile to the Armenians. He soon, however, became more

lenient toward them, when convinced by Bishop Laud, that the laxity and pliancy of

Armenianism made it far more supple and convenient for the purposes of “kingcraft”

and civil despotism, than the stiff and unyielding temper of Calvinism, whose first

principle is obedience to God rather than to man. The court favor took such a turn,

that it was not many years till, in answer to a question as to what the Armenians

held, it was wittily said, that they held almost all the best bishoprics and

deaneries in England.

Before going home to England, the British delegates made a tour through the

provinces of Holland, and were received with great respect in most of the principal

cities. On his return, Dr. Ward resumed his duties as head of Sidney College. In

1621, he was Vice-Chancellor of the University. In the same year, he was made the

Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity, which office he sustained with great celebrity

for more than twenty years. The English Bible, which he actively assisted in

translating, was formally published in 1611. Some errors of the press having crept

into the first edition, and others into later reprints, King Charles the First, in

1638, had another edition printed at Cambridge, which was revised by Dr. Ward and Mr.

Bois, two of the original Translators who still survived, assisted by Dr.

Thomas Goad, Mr. Mede, and other learned men.

When the Assembly of Divines was convened at Westminster, 1643, Dr. Ward was

summoned as a member, but never attended. In doctrine, he was a thorough Puritan; but

in politics, a staunch royalist. In the sad and distracted times of the civil wars, as

Thomas Fuller, his affectionate pupil, says, “he turned as a rock riseth with the tide.

--In a word, he was accounted a Puritan before these times, and popish in these times;

and yet, being always the same, was a true Protestant at all times.” When

hostilities broke out, he joined the other heads of Colleges at Cambridge, in sending

their college-plate to aid the tyrannical Charles Stuart, whose character, partially

redeemed by some private virtues, has been so admirably exposed by Macaulay.

“Faithlessness,” says that philosophic historian, “was the chief cause of his disasters,

and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable

propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange that his conscience, which,

on occasions of little moment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached

him with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was perfidious, not

only from constitution and from habit, but also on principle.” This historical

judgment may seem severe; but its truth is maintained by other competent critics.

James Stuart was undoubtedly one of the worse sort of monarchs; but of him Coleridge

frankly says, --”James I., in my honest judgment, was an angel, compared with his

sons and grandsons.”

Dr. Ward, no doubt, like many other good men who disliked the King’s proceedings,

was compelled, by his conscientious belief in the long established doctrine

of the “divine right of kings,” to uphold his sovereign. In consequence of his

sending the college-plate to be coined for the King’s use, the parliamentary

authorities deprived Dr. Ward of his professorship and mastership, and

confiscated his goods. He was also, in 1642, with three other heads of colleges

involved in the same transaction, imprisoned in St. John’s College for a short

time. During his confinement, he contracted a disorder that proved fatal in six

weeks after his liberation, which was granted on account of his sickness. He died, in

great want, at an advanced age, in 1643, and was the first person buried in Sidney Sussex

Chapel. A beautiful character is drawn in some Latin verses addressed to him by

Dr. Thomas Goad, the close of which is thus given in English by Fuller; -

“None thy quick sight, grave judgment, can beguile,

So skilled in tongues, so sinewy in style;

Add to all these that peaceful soul of thine,

Meek, modest, which all brawlings doth decline.”

Dr. Ward maintained much correspondence with learned men. His correspondence

with Archbishop Ushur reveals traits of diversified learning, especially in biblical

and oriental criticism. * In his letters to the elder Vossius he animadverts upon

that distinguished author’s History of Pelgianism. His character cannot be better

described than in the following beautiful passage from Dr. Fuller’s History of

the University of Cambridge. “He was a Moses, not only for slowness of speech,

but otherwise meekness of nature. Indeed, when, in my private thoughts, I have

beheld him and Dr. Collins, ** (disputable whether more different, or more

eminent in their endowments,) I could not but remember the running of Peter and

John to the place where Christ was buried. In which race, John came first, as youngest

and swiftest; but Peter first entered the grave. Dr. Collins had much the speed of

him in quickness of parts; but let me say, (nor doth the relation of pupil misguide me,)

the other pierced the deeper into underground and profound points in divinity. Now as

high winds bring some men the sooner into sleep, so, I conceive, the storms and tempests

of these distracted times invited this good old man the sooner to his long rest, where

we leave him, and quietly draw the curtains about him.”

* Dr. Usher, in one of these letters, corrects a misprint in the Translator’s Preface,

where the name Efnard should be Eynard, or Eginhardus.

** Samuel Collins, Provost of King’s College, and for forty years Regius Professor. “As

Caligula is said to have sent his soldiers vainly to fight against the tide, with

the same success have any encountered the torrent of his Latin in disputation.”

ANDREW DOWNES

Dr. Downes was Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. For full

forty years he was Regius Professor of Greek in that famous University. He is

especially named by the renowned John Selden as eminently qualified to share

in the translation of the Bible. Thus it is the happiness of Dr. Downes to be

“praised by a praised man;” for no man was ever more exalted for learning and

critical scholarship than Selden, who was styled by Dr. Johnson, “monarch in

letters;” and by Milton, “chief of learned men in England;” and by foreigners,

“the great dictator of learning of the English nation.” His decisive testimony

to Downes’s ability was one of the revising committee of twelve, composed of the

principal members of each company, who met at London to prepare the copy for the

press. This venerable Professor is spoken of as “one composed of Greek and industry.”

He bestowed much labor on Sir Henry Savile’s celebrated edition of the works of

Chrysostom, and many of the learned notes were furnished by him. “His pains were

so inlaid” with that monument of erudition, that “both will be preserved together.”

He died, February 2nd, 1625, at the great age of eighty-one years.

JOHN BOIS

This devoted scholar was a native of Nettlestead, in Suffolk, where he was

born January 3rd, 1560. His father William Bois, a convert from papistry, was a

pious minister, and a very learned man; and at the time of his death, was Rector

of West Stowe. His mother, Mirable Poolye, was a pious woman, and a great reader

of the Bible in the older translations. He was the only child that grew up. He

was carefully taught by his father; and at the age of five years, he had read the

Bible in Hebrew. By the time he was six years old, he not only wrote Hebrew legibly,

but in a fair and elegant character. Some of these remarkable manuscripts are

still carefully preserved. This precocious scholar, who yet lived to a ripe

and hale old age, was sent to school at Hadley, where he was a fellow-student with

Bishop Overall. He was admitted to St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1575.

He soon distinguished himself by his great skill in Greek, writing letters

in that language to the Master and Senior Fellows, when he had been but half a year

in College. Bois was a pupil to Dr. Downes, then chief lecturer on the Greek

language, who took such delight in his promising disciple, that he treated him

with great familiarity, even while he was a freshman. In addition to his

lectures, which Dr. Downes read five times in the week, he took the youth to his

chambers, where he plied him exceedingly. He there read with him twelve Greek

authors, in verse and prose, the hardest that could be found, both for dialect

and phrase. It was a common practice with the young enthusiast to go to the

University Library at four o’clock in the morning, and stay without intermission

till eight in the evening.

When John Bois was elected Fellow of his College in 1580, he was laboring under

that formidable disease, the small pox. But, with his usual resolution, rather

than lose his seniority, he had himself wrapped in blankets, and was carried to be

admitted to his office by his tutors, Henry Coppinger and Andrew Downes. He

commenced the study of medicine; but fancying himself affected with every disease

he read of, he quitted the study in disgust, and turned his attention to

divinity. He was ordained a deacon, June 21st, 1583; and the next day, by a

dispensation, he was ordained priest of the Church of England.

For ten years, he was Greek lecturer in his college; and, during that time,

he voluntarily lectured, in his own chamber, at four o’clock in the morning, most

of the Fellows being in attendance! It may be doubted, whether, at the present day,

a teacher and class so zealous could be found at old Cambridge, new Cambridge, or any

where else,--not excluding laborious Germany. At this time, Thomas Gataker,

afterwards one of the most distinguished of the Westminster Divines, was a

pupil to Bois.

On the death of his father, Mr. Bois succeeded to the rectory of West

Stowe, but soon resigned it, and went back to his beloved College. The Earl

of Shrewsbury made him his chaplain; but this too he soon resigned. When he

was about thirty-six years old, Mr. Holt, Rector of Boxworth, died, leaving the

advowson of that living in part of a portion to one of his daughters; and

requesting of some of his friends, that “if it might be procured, Mr. Bois, of St.

John’s College, might become his successor.” The matter being intimated to that

gentleman, he went over to take a view of the lady thus singularly portioned,

and commended to his favorable regards. The parties soon took a sufficient liking

to each other, and the somewhat mature lover was presented to the parsonage by his

future bride, and instituted by Archbishop Whitgift, October 13th, 1596. He

fulfilled the other part of the bargain, by marrying the lady, February 7th, 1598;

and so resigned his beloved Fellowship at St. John’s. He could not, however, wholly

separate himself from old associates and pursuits. Ever week he rode over from Boxworth

to Cambridge to hear some of the Greek lectures of Downes, and the Hebrew exercises

of Lively, and also the divinity-acts and lectures. Every Friday he met with neighboring

ministers, to the number of twelve, to give an account of their studies, and to

discuss difficult questions.

While thus absorbed in studious pursuits, he left his domestic affairs to

the management of his wife, whose want of skill in a few years reduced him to

bankruptcy. He was forced to part with his chief treasure, and sell his library,

which contained one of the most complete and costly collections of Greek literature

that had ever been made. This cruel loss so disheartened him, as almost to drive the

poor man from his family and his native country. He was, however, sincerely

attached to his wife, with whom he lived in great happiness and affection for five

and forty years.

In the translation of the Bible, he had a double share. After the completion

of the Apocrypha, the portion assigned to his company, the other Cambridge company, to

whom was assigned from the Chronicles to the Canticles inclusively, earnestly

intreated his assistance, as he was equally distinguished for his skill in Greek and

Hebrew. They were the more earnest for his aid, because of the death of their

president, Professor Lively, which took place shortly after the work was undertaken.

During the four years thus employed, Mr. Bois gave close attention to the

duty, from Monday morning to Saturday evening, spending the Sabbaths only at his

rectory with his family. For all this labor he received no worldly compensation,

except the use of

his chambers and his board in commons. When the work had been carried through the

first stage, he was one of the twelve delegates sent, two from each of the companies,

to make the final revision of the work at Stationers’ Hall, in London. This occupied

nine months, during which each member of the committee received thirty shillings per

week from John Barker, the King’s printer, to whom the copy-right belonged. Mr. Bois

took notes of all the proceedings of this committee.

He rendered a vast amount of aid to his fellow-translator, Sir Henry Savile, in

his great literary undertaking, the edition of Chrysostom. Sir Henry speaks of him,

in the Preface, as the “most ingenious and most learned Mr. Bois;” and it is said

that the aged Professor Downes was so much hurt at the higher commendations bestowed

on his quondam pupil’s share in that labor than upon his own, that he never got

entirely over it. Mr. Bois, however, did not cease to regard his veteran instructor

with the utmost respect and esteem. For his many years of hard labor bestowed upon

Chrysostom, he received no compensation, except a single copy of the work. This was

probably owing to the sudden demise of Sir Henry Savile, who was intending to make

him one of the Fellows of Eton College.

Mr. Bois continued to be quite poor and neglected, till Dr. Lancelot Andrews,

then Bishop of Ely, and who had also been employed in the Bible-translation,

of his own accord made him a Prebendary of the cathedral church of Ely, in 1615. He

there spent the last twenty-eight years of his life, in studious retirement, providing

a curate for Boxworth. After his removal to Ely, he visited Boxworth twice a year,

to administer the sacraments and preach, and to relieve the wants of the poor. He left,

at his death, as many leaves of manuscript as he had lived days in his long life; for

even in his old age, he spent eight hours in daily study, mostly reading and

correcting ancient authors. Among his writings, was a voluminous commentary in Latin

on the Gospels and Acts, which was published some twelve years after his decease.

He was of a social and cheerful disposition, and had a great fund of anecdote

at command. He kept up a strict family government. His charity to the necessitous

poor was limited only by the bottom of his purse; though he “chode the lazy,”

knowing that charity’s eyes should be open, as well as her hands. He was ‘in fastings

oft,” sometimes twice in the week; and punctual in all religious duties. His preaching

was without notes, though not without much prayer and study. In performing this solemn

duty, his main endeavor was to make himself easily understood by the humblest and most

ignorant of his hearers. This is a wise and noble trait in one of such a vast

acquirements; and one to whom Dalechamp, in dedicating to him a eulogy on Thomas

Harrison, said with truth, that he was “in highest esteem with studious foreigners,

and second to none in solid attainments in the Greek tongue.” He was so familiar with

the Greek Testament, that he could, at any time, turn to any word that it contained.

His manner of living was quite peculiar. He was a great pedestrian all his

days. He was also a great rider and swimmer; and possessed a very strong

constitution, which all his hard study could not impair. He took but two meals, dinner

and supper, and never drank at any other time. He would not study between

supper and bed-time; but spent the interval in pleasant discourse with friends. He

took special care of his teeth, and carried them nearly all to the grave. Up to

his death, his brow was unwrinkled, his sight clear, his hearing quick, his countenance

fresh, and head not bald. He ascribed his health and longevity to the observance of

three rules, given him by one of his college tutors, Dr. Whitaker: --First,

always to study standing; secondly, never to study in a draft of air; and thirdly,

never to go to bed with his feet cold!

He had four sons and three daughters. The first-born son died an infant.

The second son and eldest daughter he saw married. The third son died of consumption,

at the age of thirty, at Ely, where he as a canon in the cathedral. The

youngest son died of the small-pox, while a student of St. John’s College. Thus the

father was not without his sore afflictions. These seem to have been sanctified to

his good. He said of himself, near the end of his life,--”There has not been a day

for these many years, in which I have not meditated at least once upon my death.”

Thus he met death, at last, with great joy, as an old acquaintance, and

long expected friend. Having survived his wife for two lonesome years, Mr. Bois had

himself carried about five hours before his end, into the room where she died. He

there expired, on the Lord’s Day, January 14th, 1643, in the eighty-fourth year

of his age. “He went unto his rest on the day of rest; a man of peace, to the God

of peace.”

JOHN WARD

This name closes the original list of King James’s translators. Dr. Ward was

Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Fuller gives him the strange title of

“Regal,” probably denoting some station in the University. All that we gather of

this Dr. Ward is that he was Prebendary of Chichester, and Rector of Bishop’s Waltham

in Hampshire.

It remains for us to add a brief account of some, who are known to have

assisted in different stages of the work. It has been shewn that two or three of

those who were named in the King’s commission, died soon after their appointment.

At least two others appear to have taken their places, and therefore require

our notice.

JOHN AGLIONBY

Dr. Aglionby was descended from a respectable family in Cumberland.

In 1583, he became a student in Queen’s College, Oxford, of which college he

afterwards became a Fellow. After receiving ordination, he travelled in

foreign countries; and, on his return, was made chaplain in ordinary to Queen

Elizabeth, who endured no drone or dunce about her. In 1601, he was made Rector

of Blechindon. In the same year, he was chosen Principal of St. Edmund’s Hall, in

the University of Oxford; and about the same time, he became Rector of Islip.

On the accession of James I., he was appointed chaplain in ordinary to the

King. Dr. Aglionby was deeply read in the fathers and the schoolmen, “an

excellent linguist,” and an elegant and instruction preacher. It is said of him by

Anthony Wood, in his Athanae,--”What he hath published I find not; however, the

reason why I et him down here is, that he had a most considerable hand in

the Translation of the New Testament, appointed by King James I., in 1604.” Dr. Aglionby

died at his rectory, on the sixth day of February, 1609, aged forty-three. In the

chancel of his church at Islip, is a tablet erected to his memory by his widow. Thus

he lived just long enough to do the best work he could have done in this world.

LEONARD HUTTEN

This divine was bred at Westminster School, from whence he was elected, on

the score of merit, to be a student of Christ’s Church, one of the Oxford colleges,

in 1574. He there devoted himself, with unwearied zeal, to the pursuit of

academical learning in all its branches. He took orders in due time, and became

a frequent preacher. In 1599, at which time he was a Bachelor in Divinity of some

eight years’ standing, and also Vicar of Flower in Northamptonshire, he

was installed canon of Christ’s Church. He was well known as an “excellent Grecian,”

and an elegant scholar. He was well versed in the fathers, the schoolmen, and the

learned languages, which were the favorite studies of that day; and he also investigated

with care the history of his own nation. In his predilection for this last study he

shewed good sense, “seeing,” as an old writer has it, “history, like unto good men’s

charity, is , though not to end, yet to begin, at home, and thence to make its

methodical progress into foreign parts.” Of Dr. Hutten it is expressly stated by

Wood, that “he had a hand in the translation of the Bible.” He died May 17th, 1632,

aged seventy-two.

Thus we close the best record, which, with very great care and research,

we have been able to make, of this roll of ancient scholars. Their united labors,

bestowed upon the common English version of the Bible, have produced a volume

which has exerted a greater and happier influence on the world, than any other

which has appeared since the original Scriptures themselves were given to mankind.

Several other persons were employed in various stages of the work. In a

letter from the King to the Bishop of London, dated July 22d, 1604, the monarch

says,--”We have appointed certain learned men, to the number of four and fifty,

for the translating of the Bible.” As the authentic lists contain but

forty-seven names, it is presumed that the others were certain “divines” referred

to in the fifteenth article of the royal instructions as to the mode of prosecuting

the work. In this fifteenth article it is provided, that besides the several

directors or presidents of the different companies, “three or four of the most

ancient and grave divines in either of the Universities, not employed in

translating, be assigned by the Vice-Chancellor, upon conference with the rest of

the Heads, to be overseers of the Translation, as well Hebrew as Greek, for the

better observance of the fourth rule.” That rule required, that among the different

meanings of any word, that one should be adopted which is most sanctioned by the

Fathers, and is most “agreeable to the propriety of the place, and the analogy of

the faith.” It is not known who those supervisors were; but if one of the

Universities designated three of them, and the other designated four, it would

make out the requisite number.

When the six companies had gone through with their part of the undertaking,

three copies were sent to London; one from the two companies at Cambridge, another

from those at Oxford, and the third from those at Westminster. Each company also

delegated two of its ablest members to go up to London, and prepare a single

copy from these three. When the Synod of Dort was discussing the subject of preparing

a version to be authorized for the use of the Dutch churches, Dr. Samuel Ward, one

of the members, informed that celebrated body as to the manner in which that business

had been conducted in England. He then stated, that this last single copy was

arranged by twelve divines “of good distinction, and thoroughly conversant in the

work from the beginning;” and he, as one of the Translators, must have known the number.

This oft revised and completed copy was then referred, for final revision in

preparation for the press, to Dr. Smith, one of the most active of the Translators,

and soon after made Bishop of Gloucester, and to Dr. Bilson, then Bishop of

Winchester. These two prepared the summary of contents placed at the head of the

chapters, and carefully saw the work through the press in the year of grace, 1611.

THOMAS BILSON

Dr. Thomas Bilson was of German parentage, and related to the Duke of Bavaria.

He was born in Winchester, and educated in the school of William de Wykeham. He

entered New College, at Oxford, and was made a Fellow of his College in 15645.

He began to distinguish himself as a poet; but, on receiving ordination, gave

himself wholly to theological studies. He was soon made Prebendary of

Winchester, and Warden of the College there. In 1596, he was made Bishop of

Worcester; and three years later, was translated to the see of Winchester, his

native place. He engaged in most of the polemical contests of his day, as a stiff

partizan of the Church of England. When the controversy arose as to the meaning of

the so called Apostles’ Creed, in asserting the descent of Christ into hell, Bishop

Bilson defended the literal sense, and maintained that Christ went there, not to

suffer, but to wrest the keys of hell out of the Devil’s hands. For this doctrine he

was severely handled by Henry Jacob, who is often called the father of modern

Congregationalism, and also by other Puritans. Much feeling was excited by the

controversy, and Queen Elizabeth, in her ire, commanded her good bishop, “neither

to desert the doctrine, nor let the calling which he bore in the Church of God, be

trampled under foot, by such unquiet refusers of truth and authority.” The

despotic spinster ruled with such energy, both in Church and state, as to sanction

the saying, that “old maids’ children are well governed!” Dr. Bilsons’ most famous

work was entitled “The Perpetual Government of Christ’s Church,” and was published in

1593. It is still regarded as one of the ablest books ever written in behalf of

Episcopacy. Dr. Bilson died in 1616, at a good old age, and was buried in Westminster

Abbey. It was said of him, that he “carried prelature in his very aspect.” Anthony

Wood proclaims him so “complete in divinity, so well skilled in languages, so read

in the Fathers and Schoolmen, so judicious is making use of his readings, that at

length he was found to be no longer a soldier, but a commander in chief in the spiritual

warfare, especially when he became a bishop!”

RICHARD BANCROFT

In the Translators’ Preface, which used to be printed with all the earlier

editions of the Bible, there is an allusion to one who was the “chief overseer

and task-master under his Majesty, to whom were not only we, but also our whole

Church, much bound.” This was Dr. Bancroft, then Bishop of London, on whom

devolved the duty of seeing the King’s intentions in regard to the new version

carried into effect. Though he had but little do to in the studies by which

it was prepared, yet his general oversight of all the business part of the

arrangements makes it proper to notice him on these pages.

He was born near Manchester, and educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. He was

chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, under whom he became Bishop of London in 1597.

On the death of Whitgift, in 1604, he succeeded to the archbishopric of

Canterbury. In one year thereafter, such was his fury in pressing conformity,

that not less than three hundred ministers were suspended, deprived,

excommunicated, imprisoned, or forced to leave the country. He was indeed a

terrible churchman, of a harsh and stern temper. Bishop Kennett, in his history of

England, styles him “a sturdy piece;” and says “he proceeded with rigor, severity,

and wrath, against the Puritans.” He was the ruling spirit in that infamous

tribunal, the High Commission Court, a sort of British Inquisition.

Nicholas Fuller, an eminent and wealthy lawyer of Gray’s Inn, ventured to sue

out a writ of Habeas Corpus in behalf of two of Bancroft’s victims in that Court,

and argued so boldly for the liberation of his clients, that Bancroft threw him

also into prison, where he lingered till his death. Fuller gives the following picture

of this prelate: --”A great statesman he was, an a grand champion of church-discipline,

having well hardened the hands of his soul, which was no more than needed for him

who was to meddle with nettles and briars, and met with much opposition. No wonder

if those who were silenced by him in the church were loud against him in other places.

David speaketh of ‘poison under men’s lips.’ This bishop tasted plentifully thereof

from the mouths of his enemies, till at last, (as Mithradates,) he was so habituated

unto poisons, they became food unto him. Once a gentleman, coming to visit him,

presented him a libel, which he found pasted on his door; who nothing moved thereat,

‘Cast it,’ said he, ‘to an hundred more which lie here on heap in my chamber.’”

Peremptory as his proceedings were with all sorts of Dissenters, whether popish or

puritan, he seems sometimes to have had a relenting fit. It is but fair to relate

the following incident. Fuller tells of an honest and able minister, from whom

he derived the statement, who protested to the Primate, that it went against his

conscience to conform to the Church in all particulars. Being about to be deprived

of his living in consequence, the Archbishop asked him, --”Which way will you live,

if put out of your benefice?” The minister replied, that he had no way except to beg,

and throw himself upon Divine Providence. “Not that,” said the Archbishop, “you shall

not need to do; but come to me, and I will take order for your maintenance.” Such

instances of generosity, however, were “few and far between.”

Imperious as Bancroft was to his inferiors, he set them an example of servility

to himself, by his own cringing to his master, the King. In a despicably flattering

oration, in the Conference at Hampton Court, he equals King James to Solomon for wisdom,

to Hezekiah for piety, and to Paul for learning! Scotland owes his memory a grudge

for his unwearied endeavors to force Episcopacy upon that people. He was equally

strenuous for the divine rights of kings and of diocesan bishops. He vigorously

prevented the alienation of church-property; and succeeded in preventing that most

greedy and villainous old courtier, Lord Lauderdale, from swallowing the

whole bishopric of Durham!

Dr. Bancroft died in 1610, at the age of sixty-six years, and was buried at

Lambeth Church. He cancelled his first will, in which he had made large bequests

to the church, and so gave occasion to the following epigram:--

“He who never repented of doing ill,

Repented once that he had a good will.”

In his second testament, he left the large library at Lambeth to the University of

Cambridge. Although in his time, the political sky was clear, he is said to have

had the sagacity to foresee that coming tempest, which Lord Clarendon calls

“the great rebellion,” and which burst upon England in the next generation.

In his general supervision of the translation-work, he does not appear to have

tampered with the version, except in a very few passages where he insisted upon giving

it a turn somewhat favorable to his sectarian notions. But, considering the

control exercised by this towering prelate, and the fact that the great majority of the

Translators were of his way of thinking, it is quite surprising that the work is not

deeply tinged with their sentiments. On the whole, it is certainly very far

from being a sectarian version, like nearly all which have since been attempted in

English. It is said that Bancroft altered fourteen places, so as to make them speak

in phrase to suit him. Dr. Miles Smith, who had so much to do with the work in all

its stages, is reported to have complained of the Archbishop’s alterations. “But he

is so potent,” says the Doctor, “there is no contradicting him!” Two of those alleged

alterations are quite preposterous. To have the glorious word “bishopric” occur at

least once in the volume, the office is conferred, in the first chapter of Acts, on

Judas Iscariot! “His bishopric let another take.” Many of the Puritans were stiffly

opposed to bestowing the name “church,” which they regarded as appropriate only to

the company of spiritual worshippers, on any mass of masonry and carpentry. * But

Bancroft, that he might for once stick the name to a material building, would have

it applied, in the nineteenth chapter of Acts, to the idols’ temples! “Robbers of

churches” are strictly, according to the word in the original, temple-robbers; and

particularly, in this case, such as might have plundered the great temple of Diana

at Ephesus. Let us be thankful that the dictatorial prelate tried his hand no

farther at emending the sacred text.

* It is not till about A.D. 229, that we find any record of the assembling of

Christians in what would now be called a church. -- BARTON, ECC. HIST., 496.

CONCLUSION

Having now completed these biographical sketches, we may close with a few pages

relating to the literature of the subject. On this, indeed, a larger volume

might well be penned.

The first edition of the authorized version was printed, as has been stated, in

1611, and in a black-letter folio. The first edition in quarto appeared the next

year. The successive reprints, in different styles and sizes, became very numerous.

In 1638, an edition revised by the command of Charles I., for the purpose of

typographical correction, was prepared by a number of eminent scholars, among whom

were Dr. Samuel Ward and Mr. Bois, two of the original Translators. The

edition in folio and quarto, revised and corrected with very great care by

Benjamin Blaney, D. D., under the direction of the Vice-Chancellor of

Oxford, and the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, in 1769, has been the standard

edition ever since; till one was published in 1806, by Eyre and Strahan, printers

to his Majesty. This impression approaches as near as possible to what is called “an

immaculate text,” as only one erratum, and that very slight, has been detected in

it. Among so many reprints of the Bible, and in so many different offices, it

would have been a mass of miracles had not many inaccuracies crept in through error

and oversight on the part of printers and correctors of the press. As this is

a point on which every reader of the Bible must feel some anxiety, it may be

well to make the following statement. A very able Committee of the American Bible

Society, spent some three years in a diligent and laborious comparison of recent

copies of the best edition of the American Bible Society, and of the four leading

British editions, namely, those of London, Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, and also

of the original edition of 1611. The number of variations in the text and punctuation

of these six copies was found to fall but little short of twenty-four thousand. A vast amount!

Quite enough to frighten us, till we read the Committee’s assurance, that “of

all this great number, there is not one which mars the integrity of the

text, or affects any doctrine or precept of the Bible.” At this, however, is a

point in which the minutest accuracy is to be sought, that Committee have

prepared an edition wherein these variations are set right, to serve as a standard

copy for the Society to print by in future.

Infinite is the debt of gratitude which the world owes to its Maker for the Bible.

Scarcely less is its debt to his goodness, in raising up competent instruments

for its translation into different tongues, unlocking its treasures to enrich

the nations. This matter is finely touched by Dr. Field, a divine of the

seventeenth century, in whose writings that great critic, S. T. Coleridge, was wont

to take a deep and admiring delight. “That most excellent light of Christian wisdom,

revealed in the sacred books of the Divine Oracles, is incomparable and

peerless, and whereupon all others do depend; the bright beams of which heavenly light

do show unto us the ready way to eternal happiness, amidst the sundry turnings and

dangerous windings of this life. And lest either the strangeness of the languages

wherein these Holy Books were written, or the deepness of the mysteries or the

multiplicity of hidden senses contained in them, should any way hinder us from the

clear view and perfect beholding of the heavenly brightness; God hath called and

assembled into his Church out of all the nations of the world, and out of all people

that dwell under the arch of heaven, men abounding in all secular learning and

knowledge, and filled with the understanding of holy things, which might turn these

Scriptures and Books of God into the tongues of every nation; and might unseal this

Book so fast clasped and sealed, and manifest and open the mysteries therein

contained, not only by lively voice, but by writings to be carried down to all

posterities. From hence, as from the pleasant and fruitful fields watered with

the silver dew of Hermo, the people of God are nourished with all saving food. Hence

the thirst of languishing souls is restinguished, as from the most pure fountains

of living water, and the everlasting waters of Paradise.”

It is of the highest importance, that the Bible in English should be placed in

the hands of all who may be able to read it. This is due to the excellence of the

translation itself; and much more to the value of its contents. To the inquirer after

religious truth, the Scriptures stand in the same relation, as the works of nature

stand in to the inquirer after scientific truth. The natural philosopher who

should shut his eyes upon all the facts and phenomena of the material universe,

could not fall into greater blunders and follies, than the theologian who closes

the lids of his Bible. Without this blessed Book, Protestantism is nothing. Says

Luther, a most enthusiastic student and translator of the Bible,--”This volume alone

deserves to occupy the tongue, the heart, the eyes, the ears, the hearts of all.” (Solus

hic liber omnium lingua, manu, oculis, auribus, cordibus, versaretur) And again,

--”While the Word of God flourishes, all things flourish in the Church. (Florente verbo,

omnia florent in Ecclesia.)

The refusal of Popery to allow the common people free access to the Scriptures in

their vernacular tongues, condemns their divine Author for not having originally

inspired his prophets and apostles to write them in dead languages, and unknown

tongues. God was not afraid to give the Old Testament to the Hebrews in their mother

tongue; nor to publish the New Testament in the Greek speech, which was then more

widely spoken and understood than any other. Has it ever been supposed, that the

Churches at Corinth and Colosse, for instance, suffered any detriment in receiving

those inspired Epistles from the Apostle Paul in a language familiar to all their

members? Why, then, may not the people of modern Italy safely read the same writings

rendered into their own tongue wherein they were born?

For many centuries, while the Greek was a living and widely diffused language, the

New Testament in its original form was as freely circulated and read as it could be in

manuscript. And the early Latin versions were also industriously diffused among old and

young in the Roman empire. We have a letter full of godly counsels, written by

a bishop Theonas to Lucian, chief chamberlain to the Emperor Dioclesian before the

latter had become a bitter persecutor. Theonas says,--”Let not one day go by without

reading at a set time some portion of Holy Writ, and meditating thereon. Neglect not

the reading of the Bible. Nothing so nourishes the heart, and enriches the mind, as

the reading of the Bible.” (This admirable letter is to be found in D’Achery’s Spicilegium,

III. 298.) In a most beautiful sketch of the religious life of any pious husband and

wife, Tertullian says,--”They read the Scriptures together, they pray together,

they fast together, they mutually instruct, exhort, and sustain each other.” (In

Psal. 90, Serm. II.) The sermons and other treatises of Augustine abound in

exhortations to his hearers of every degree, to make themselves familiar with the

contents of the Sacred Writings. In one place, he urges them to this, that they may be

able to give a reason of the hope that is in them to any of the inquiring or the

skeptical from among the heathen who may apply to them for instruction, rather

than to the ecclesiastics. (Ad Uxorem, Ep. II. 8.) Like Chrysostom, Augustine

often closed his sermon with some important question to be discussed in his next

preaching, in order to excite his hearers to reflect upon the subject, to search the

Scriptures in regard to it, and to talk it over among themselves. As many as were unable

to read, the rulers of the church took care that there should be a daily reading of the

Scriptures in course for their benefit. Alluding to this, Augustine says,--”Since

many of you cannot read, either because you have no time, or know not how, such must not

forget to gain the doctrine of salvation at least through diligent hearing.”

(Serm. 105. para. 2) In another place he says,--”The weak and the strong both drink

of the same stream, and quench their thirst. The water saith not, ‘I am proper for

the weak!’ --thus repulsing the strong. Neither saith it,--’Let the strong draw near;

but if the weak cometh, he shall be swept away by the force of the stream.’ It flows

so sure and so gentle, as to quench the thirst of the strong without frightening

the weak away.--To whom speaks the resounding Psalm? and who exclaims,--’It is too

high for me!’ What the Psalm resounds, be it even of the deepest mysteries, it so

resounds, that the very children are delighted to hear, and the unlearned draw near,

and pour out the full heart in the song.” (In Psal. 103, Serm. III. para. 4.) Ambrose,

the famous pastor of Milan, exhorted his congregation to the daily study of the

Scriptures. “In such studies,” he says, “the soul is quickened by the word of God. This

is the principle of life in our souls whereby they are fed and ruled. The more the

word of God abounds in our souls, and is there conceived and understood, the more

their life abounds; and, on the other hand, as the word of God is wanting there, so

their life decays.” (In Psal. 118, Serm. VII., para. 7.) Jerome also constantly

stirs up his readers to diligent study of the Scriptures. Thus he commends Laeta, a

Roman lady, for making her daughters early conversant with them. “Instead of jewels and

silks, let them the rather delight themselves in the Holy Scriptures, never having

the gospels out of their hands,” and “absorbing the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles

with all the eagerness of the soul.” (Epis. 107.) But perhaps none of the Fathers has

spoken on this point so often, so fully, so earnestly, as the eloquent Chrysostom,

who preached in the very language in which the New Testament was originally written.

Costly as manuscripts then were, he insists that even the poorer class should possess

copies of the Scriptures, as well as of the tools used in their worldly callings. He

often, both in conversation and preaching, exhorted his hearers not to be content with

what they heard read from the Scriptures at church, but to read them with their families

at home. (For references on this point, consult Chrysostom’s Homilies III. and IV.

de Statuis; Hom. XI. and XXIX. in Genes.; Ser. III. and IV. de Lazaro; Hom. I.

and II. in Matt.; Hom. X. XI. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. and LVIII. in Joan.; Hom. XIX.

in Acta.; Hom. I. ad Rom.; and IX. ad Coloss.)

So as long ago as the fourteenth century, when the popish bishops in the House of

Lords brought in a motion to suppress the use of the Bible, as then translated into English

by Wiclif, they were stiffly opposed by “old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster.”

This noble duke argued earnestly for the free circulation of the Scriptures. He was

seconded by others who said, that “if the gospel by its translated into English,

was the occasion of men’s running into error, they might know that there were more

heretics to be found among the Latins, than among the people of any other language.

For that the decretals reckoned no fewer than sixty-six Latin heretics; and so the

gospel must not be read in Latin, which yet the opposers of its English translation

allowed.” The debate was closed by throwing the bill out of the house. And well might

it be discarded. How much less than blasphemy is it to hold that it is dangerous that

a book should be generally circulated and read, which has God for its author, and his

eternal truth as its subject-matter, and which he has commanded all men to obey as the

condition of their everlasting salvation?

Robert Boyle, that devout son of science, on whom first the mantle of Lord Bacon

fell, has said,--”I can scarce think any pains misspent that bring me in solid

evidence of that great truth, that the Scripture is the word of God, which is indeed the

GRAND FUNDAMENTAL. --And I use the Scriptures, not as an arsenal to be resorted

to only for arms and weapons to defend this or that party, or to defeat its enemies;

but as a matchless Temple, where I delight to be, to contemplate the beauty, the

symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase my awe, and to

excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored.” Another scholar of

the highest genius, S. T. Coleridge, who went as far in metaphysical

studies as did Boyle in the pursuit of natural philosophy, has spoken in the

like experimental manner of the Bible,--”I can truly affirm of myself, that my

studies have been profitable and availing to me, only so far as I have endeavored to

use all my other knowledge as a glass, enabling me to receive more light in a

wider field of vision from the Word of God.” (Literary Remains, III. 139.)

As to the Bible in its English form, it is safe to assume the impossibility of

gathering a more competent body of translators, than those who did the work so well

under King James’s commission. Since then, a great many revisions of particular

books in the Bible have been published in English, and some of them embodying the

best labors of the most distinguished scholars. But who has dreamed of substituting

so much as one of them all, in the place of such books as they now stand in the common

version? The late Professor Stuart was a man of learning and piety, whose candor ran

almost to excess. He prepared elaborate translations of the Epistles to the Romans

and to the Hebrews; but while we gladly use them as helps toward the better

understanding of those portions of the Bible, who would think of using them for devotional

purposes, either to settle his faith, or to stir up its activities? An edition

of the Bible, with those labors of that celebrated Professor substituted for those

in the common editions, would be a strange affair indeed! It is quite certain that no

portion of the work has been done over again since 1611, by any divine of England or

America, in a way which, by general consent of the Christian community, could supplant

the corresponding portion as it stands in our family and pulpit Bibles.

And what has not been done by the most able and best qualified divines,

is not likely to be done by obscure pedagogues, broken-down parsons, and sectaries

of a single idea, and that a wrong one,--who, from different quarters, are talking

big and loud of their “amended,” “improved,” and “only correct” and reliable retranslations,

and getting up “American and Foreign Bible Unions” to print their

sophomorical performances. How do such shallow adventurers appear along side of

those venerable men whose lives have been briefly sketched in the foregoing pages! the

newly-risen versionists, with all their ambitious and pretentious vaunts are not worthy

to “carry satchels” alter those masters of ancient learning. Imagine our greenish

contemporaries shut up with an Andrews, a Reynolds, a Ward, and a Bois, comparing notes

on the meaning of the original Scriptures! It would soon be found, that all the aid

our poor moderns could render would be in snuffing the candles,--and these, it

is to be feared, would too often be snuffed out! It were better for them to be framing

a Hamlet that shall supersede the master-piece of the “bard of Avon;” or a “Paradise Lost”

that shall throw the great epic of the seventeenth century into the shades of oblivion.

Let tinkers stick to the baser metals; and heaven forefend that they should clout the

golden vessels of the sanctuary with their clumsy patches. When one of these nibbling

critics tries his puny teeth upon this glorious and indestructible version,

it seems as unnatural as that scaring portent mentioned in “Macbeth;”

“A falcon, towering in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawked at, and pecked.”

But it is not well to be too much vexed at these petty annoyances, which

will speedily pass away and be forgotten, as has been the fate of all previous pests

of the kind.

Not that the utmost verbal perfection is claimed for the English Bible as it now

stands. Some of its words have, in the lapse of time, gone out of common use; some have

suffered a gradual change of meaning; and some which were in unexceptionable use

two hundred years ago, are now considered as distasteful and indelicate. But the

number of such words is very small, considering the great size and age of the volume;

and the retaining of them causes but little inconvenience, compared with the

disadvantages of wholesale projectors of amendment volunteered by incompetent and

irresponsible schemers. If ever the time shall come for a new revision of the

Translation, let it be done with the care and solemnity which marked the labors

of King James’s commissioners; and above all, let it be done by men who shall know what

they are about, and how it ought to be done. It will be a vast undertaking, affecting

the dearest interests of ages of time, and millions upon millions of immortals.

Meanwhile, it may help our contentment with the Bible as we have it, to notice what

opinions have been expressed as to its merits by the ablest judges of a performance

of this nature. These testimonials might be swelled to the size of a volume, but a

few will be sufficient for the present occasion. George Hakewills, D. D.,

Archdeacon of Surrey, thus speaks to the point. --”Of all the auncient Fathers but

only two, (among the Laintes St. Hierome, and Origen among the Grecians,) are found

to have excelled in the orientall languages; this last centenary having afforded more

skilfull men that way than the other fifteene since Christ. (An Apoligie or Declaration

of the Power and Providence of God. 1627.)” The famous John Selden, in his Tabletalk,

thus utters his opinion,--”The English translation of the Bible is the best

translation in the world, and renders the sense of the original best.” Dr. Brian Walton,

the learned editor of a Bible, in nine different languages, and six tall-folios, assigns

the first rank among European translations to the common English version. Dr. Edward

Pococke, that profound Orientalist, in the Preface to his Commentary on Micah,

speaks of our translation as “being such, and so agreeable to the original, as that we

might well choose among others to follow it, were it not our own, and established by

authority among us.” Dr. Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta, and for ever famous for his

work on the Greek Article, says, --”The style of our present version is incomparably

superior to any thing which might be expected from the finical and perverted taste of

our own age. It is simple, it is harmonious, it is energetic; and, which is of no

small importance, use has made it familiar, and time has rendered it sacred. (Doctrine

of the Greek Article, page 328.)”

One Bellamy having made a blind and rabid attack on our version, in crying

up some opposition-wares of his own, he was thus chastised in the London Quarterly;--

”He has no relish or perception of the exquisite feeling of the Original, no touch

of that fine feeling, that pious awe, which led his venerable predecessors to

infuse into their version as much of the Hebrew idiom as was consistent with the

perfect purity of our own; a taste and feeling which have given perennial beauty

and majesty to the English tongue. (London Quarterly Review, No. XXXVIII. p. 455.)”

Dr. White, Professor of Arabic at Oxford, to other strong commendations adds;

--”Upon the whole, the national churches of England will have abundant reason to be

satisfied, when their versions of Scripture shall approach in point of accuracy,

purity, and sublimity, to the acknowledge excellence of our English translation.”

Dr. John Taylor, of Norwich, a very learned man, but unhappily an Arian, thus delivers

his testimony;--”You may rest fully satisfied, that as our English translation

is, in itself, by far the most excellent book in our language, so it is a pure and

plentiful fountain of divine knowledge, giving a true, clear, and full account of the

divine dispensations, and of the gospel of our salvation; insomuch that

whosoever studieth the Bible, the English Bible, is sure of gaining that

knowledge and faith, which, if duly applied to the heart and conversation, will

infallibly guide him to eternal life. (Scheme, &c., Chap. XI. In Watson’s Collection

of Theological Tracts. Vol. I., p. 188.)” To this testimony let there be added that

of Dr. Alexander Geddes, who himself also attempted a re-translation of the

Bible into English;--”The highest eulogiums have been made on the translation of James the

First, both by our own writers and by foreigners. And, indeed, if accuracy, fidelity,

and the strictest attention to the letter of the text, be supposed to constitute

the qualities of an excellent version, this of all versions, must, in general; be

accounted the most excellent. Every sentence, every word, every syllable, every letter

and point, seem to have been weighed with the nicest exactitude; and expressed, either

in the text, or margin, with the greatest precision. Pagninus himself is hardly more

literal; and it was well remarked by Robertson, above a hundred years ago, that it may

serve as a Lexicon of the Hebrew language, as well as for a translation.

(Prospectus of a New Translation, &c. Page 92. The hint of Robertson has since

been realized by Bagster’s Englishman’s Hebrew and Greek Concordance to the

Holy Bible.)”

Dr. Adam Clarke, the Wesleyan, in the General Preface to his Commentary on the Bible,

having spoken of the common version as superior in accuracy and fidelity to the other

European versions, adds the following declaration; --”Nor is this its only praise; the

translators have seized the very spirit and soul of the original, and expressed this

almost ever where with pathos and energy. Besides, our translators have not

only made a standard translation, but they have made their translation the

standard of our language.”

The late Professor Stuart, whose mind was so constituted that he neither clung

to antiquity, nor shrank from novelty, thus gives his opinion; --”Ours is, on the

whole, a most noble production for the time in which it was made. The divines of

that day were very different Hebrew scholars from what most of their successors

have been, in England or Scotland. With the exception of Bishop Lowth’s classic work

upon Isaiah, no other effort at translating, among the English divines, will compare,

either with respect to taste, judgment, or sound understanding of the Hebrew, with the

authorized version. (Dissertation on Studying the Original Languages of the

Bible, Page 61.)” Not to crowd the court with witnesses in superfluous numbers,

let us close the taking of testimony on this point with the words of the grave

and judicious Thomas Hartwell Horne, in his invaluable Introduction to the

Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; --”We cannot but call to mind

with gratitude, and admiration, the integrity, wisdom, fidelity, and learning of the

venerable translators, of whose pious labors we are now reaping the benefit; who,

while their reverence for the Holy Scriptures induced them to be as literal as they

could, to avoid obscurity have been extremely happy in the simplicity and dignity

of their expressions; and who, by their adherence to the Hebrew idiom, have at once

enriched and adorned our language.”

We may well be satisfied and devoutly thankful for an English Bible whose

sufficiency and excellence has such ample vouchers. And if we were not content, it

is almost frightful to think of the immense multitude of printed copies which must be

superseded, before any new version can be generally adopted. Since the present

century began, the Bible Societies in Great Britain and America have published some

thirty-seven millions of copies of the present version; and according to the

laborious computations of Anderson, a still greater number have been issued on

private sale. This vast amount is increasing more rapidly than ever. No book is

so abundantly sold, or so freely given away. Doubtless, allowing largely for wear and

tear, there are at least twenty-five millions of these copies now in actual use and

service. The notion of displacing all these by copies of another, and

especially if it be a very different translation, seems to be rather visionary,

to say the least.

It ought to be considered, too, that the language of the current version is

thoroughly blended with the whole religious literature of the English tongue. It

also pervades the religious experience, and expresses the devotional feelings,

of all the Christians who speak that tongue. Truly, the introduction of a

very different translation,--and if not very different, there could be no reason

sufficient to justify such a sweeping change,--must have a very disconcerting effect

upon the public mind, and give rise to an infinity of vexations. The present

translation has been, and is, the text-book for millions of Sabbath-School

pupils, and religious inquirers; and is hallowed by associations so tender and sacred,

that the attempt to discard it will seem to multitudes of devout men and women but

little better than sacrilege. It was sufficient, they will say, for the salvation

of our godly parents and others of our sainted friends,--and, with the blessing

of their God and our God, it shall suffice for ours.

Especially objectionable must be the attempt to furnish translations for the

use of the various Christian sects. Our common version, though prepared by members

of the Church of England, was prepared before dissent from that Church had became so

very extensive and earnest. Hence it was, on the whole, drawn up in a spirit remarkably

free from sectarianism; and all Protestant denominations, ever since, have confidently

appealed to it, as to an impartial arbiter. To these denominations, it has

always been the common standard, around which they have rallied against the usurpations

and impostures of Rome. Now, were each denomination to issue for itself a new

translation, modified to suit the peculiar opinions of the sect, it would place them

all in the same position toward each other, as that which they together occupy toward

Rome. It would cut off all mutual sympathy, by leaving no common “rule of faith” which

the mass of the people could consult or apply. Each class of believers having its

own rule of faith, there would be as many distinct Christian religions as professed

versions of the Bible. This multiplication of strictly and irreconcilably sectarian

Bibles, each acknowledged only by the party from which it emanated, would

proclaim a triumphant jubilee to skepticism and infidelity. If only some sects were

to pursue such a course, it must prove a suicidal policy to them; for it would be a

virtual and practical confession that our long received and thoroughly impartial

translation is not in their favor, and that they could not sustain themselves

except by a new version so framed as specially to help their cause. The denominations

retaining the authorized translation would secure the whole benefit of its celebrity,

its authority, and its mighty hold upon the affection and reverence of the

Anglo Saxon race.

For nearly two hundred and fifty years this translation has been in common

use. During that time, it has had free course and circulation among successive

generations speaking the English tongue. . It was made ready in good season to

cross the Atlantic with the first English colonists of America. During that time

the reigning dynasty of England has changed once and again, America has become

the greatest of republics, science has been even more often and fully revolutionized

than politics, the arts of life have almost created society anew by marvellous

inventions and discoveries, popular intelligence has brightened from its dawnings

into the broad light of day, philosophy has restlessly traversed a thousand circles

of inquiry and speculation, and theology has been rushing backward and forward

through successive alternations, like a ship beating into port against wind and

tide, and losing on one tack, what may have been gained on the other. And yet

this glorious version, alone unchanged, remains unrivalled. Though, here and

there, some have murmured and threatened, and some have complained and

reviled aloud, and some have put forth their skill in “improved” or “corrected”

versions, they have been wholly unheeded by the great body of readers. The common

version was never more popular than it is now. It is in greater demand, more

abundantly supplied by the press, more elaborately adorned by Christian art,

and more widely spread abroad than ever before. This among a people so intelligent

and cultivated, and so prone to progress, is an unexampled popularity. There

must be inherent and pre-eminent excellence in a work which keeps such firm hold upon

the esteem and veneration of a race of men, who show but little conservatism as to

any other matter of general concernment. While all else has been falling away,

the word of the Lord “liveth and abideth for ever.”

This enduring popularity may in part be accounted for by the personal character,

the vast scholarship, and exalted piety, of its authors. The way had been well

prepared for them by a succession of older translations and revisions so

excellent, that our Translators modestly say, in their Preface, that they did not

“need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one; but to

make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one.” Still,

their work, though much assisted by the labors of the devout men and martyrs who had

wrought in the same line before them, is essentially original. It was done with

such prudence, diligence, and scrupulous care, that even the men who would fain

have supplanted it with something of their own, have been forced to extol it, as

Balaam did the tabernacles of Jacob. “Let us not too hastily conclude,” says Mr.

Whittaker, “that the Translators have fallen on evil days and evil tongues, because

it occasionally happens an individual, as inferior to them in erudition as in

talents and integrity, is found questioning their motives, or denying their

qualifications for the task which they so well performed. --It may be compared

with any translation in the world, without fear of inferiority; it has not shrunk

under the most rigorous examination; it challenges investigation; and, in spite of

numerous attempts to supersede it, has hitherto remained unrivalled in the

affections of the country. (Historical and Critical Enquiry. P. 92.)” Who would be

so tasteless and senseless as to insist on infusing new wine into the old bottle? Let

us rather, to use the strong language of its able vindicator, Mr. Todd, “take up the

Book, which from our infancy we have known and loved, with increased delight; and

resolve not hastily to violate, in regard to itself, the rule of Ecclesiasticus,--

’Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him.’”

The work, though not absolutely perfect, nor incapable of amendment in

detached places, is yet so well done, that the Christian public will not endure

to have it tampered with. It would be impossible, as has been demonstrated in the

foregoing biographical sketches, to collect at this day a body of professors and

divines, from England and America together, which should be equal in numbers and in

learning to those assembled by King James; and in whom the churches would feel

enough of confidence to entrust them with a repetition of the work. The common

version has become a permanent necessity, through its immense influence on the

language, literature, manners, opinions, character, institutions, history, religion,

and entire life and development of the Anglo-Saxon race in either hemisphere.

Taking into account the many marked events in divine Providence which

led on to this version, and aided its accomplishment, and necessitated its

diffusion,--and also that to uncounted millions, and to other millions yet to be

born, it is the only safeguard from popery on the one side, and from infidelity on

the other, we are constrained to claim for the good men who made it the highest

measure of divine aid short of plenary inspiration itself. We made this claim

regardless of the supercilious airs of flippant Sadduccees, or the pitying smiles

of literary pantheists. Not that the Translators were inspired in the same sense as

were the prophets and apostles, and other “holy men of old,” who “were moved by the

Holy Ghost” in drawing up the original documents of the Christian faith. Such

inspiration is a thing by itself, like any other miracle; and belongs exclusively

to those to whom it was given for that high and unequalled end.

But we hold that the Translators enjoyed the highest degree of that special

guidance which is ever granted to God’s true servants in exegencies of deep

concernment to his kingdom on earth. Such special succors and spiritual

assistances are always vouchsafed, where there is a like union of piety, of prayers,

and of pains, to effect an object of such incalculable importance to the Church of

the living God. The necessity of a supernatural revelation to man of the divine

will, has often been argued in favor of the extreme probability that such a

revelation has been made. A like necessity, and one nearly as pressing, might be

argued in favor of the belief, that this most important of all the versions of

God’s revealed will must have been made under his peculiar guidance, and his

provident eye. And the manner in which that version has met the wants of the most

free and intelligent nations in the old world and the new, may well confirm us in

the persuasion, that the same illuminating Spirit which indited the original

Scriptures, was imparted in rich grace to aid and guard the preparation of

the English version.

The readers of this admirable version shall do well, if they avail themselves of

every help toward a right understanding of it according to the intent of its

authors. But such as can obtain no other help that the Book itself affords, by

prayerful study and comparison of scripture with scripture, may rely on it as a

safe interpreter of God’s will, and will never incur his displeasure by obeying

it too strictly. Whosoever attempts to shake the confidence of the common people in

the common version, puts their faith in imminent peril of shipwreck. He is

slipping the chain-cable of the sheet-anchor, and casting their souls adrift among

the breakers. Against all such attempts let them be fully warned, who can

only hear the “lively oracles” of God address them “in their own tongue wherein they

were born.” Let them never fear but that the All-merciful who has spoken to the

human race at large, to teach them his love, his will, and his salvation, has so

cared for the souls of the fifty civilized millions who now use the English speech,

as to repeat to them his teachings in a form most sure and sufficient as to

the whole round of saving faith and holy living. The best fruits of Christianity

have sprung from the seeds our translation has scattered.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Translating for King James”, John Bois’ notes and life, by Ward Allen,

Vanderbilt Univ. Press, 1969

“Annals of the Reformed Church of England”, by Edward Cardwell, Oxford, 1839

“Charles I”, by Christopher Himmert, Harper and Row, 1st U.S. Ed., 1968

“Medieval Church History”, by Richard Chenevix Trench, Publ. London,

Spottiswood, 1977

“History of the Reformation”, by Merle D’Aubigne, Publ. Philadelphia, 1847

“History of the Church of Christ Previous to the Reformation”, in 6 volumes,

publ. London for the Relgious Tract Society, 1845

“The Ante Nicene, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers”, Published Eerdmans

in 38 volumes

“Sacred Latin Texts”, numbers I, II, III, IV, V, by E.S. Buchanan, London, 1909-1916

“The Parallel N.T., 1881 Revision”, published by Oxford and Cambridge Universities,

1882

“The American Standard Version”, published by Thomas Nelson and Sons,

New York, 1901

“The Life of John Wiclif “, by Watkinson, 1885, reprinted 1984, Maranatha

Bible Society

“The Translators Revived”, by Alexander McClure. Published 1858, reprinted

1973. Maranatha Publ. Reprinted Maranatha Bible Society, 1984 with updating.

“The Stuart Constitution 1603-1688: Documents and Commentary”, by

J.P. Kenyon, Cambridge University Press, 1966

“Archbishop Laud 1573-1645”, by H. R. Trevor-Roper, McMillan, 1962

“A Concise History of the English Bible”, American Bible Society

“Historical Catalog of Printed Bibles”, American Bible Society

“Aikin’s Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth”, publ. Ward, Lock,

London, 1854

“Diary of the Times of Charles II”, Henry Sidney in 2 volumes, London, 1843

“The Doctrinal Decrees and Canons of the Council of Trent” translated from the

first edition printed at Rome, 1564., preface and notes by W. C. Brownlee, Collegiate

Reformed Dutch Church, New York, publ. by American Protestant Society, N.Y., 1845

“Is Higher Criticism Scholarly” by Robert Dick Wilson, Princeton Theological

Society

“History of the Puritans” by Daniel Neal, in 5 volumes, Publ. William Baynes

and Son, London, 1822

“Revision Revised” by Dean Burgon

“The Last 12 Verses of Mark 16” by Dean Burgon.. both of last two published

variously.

“William Tyndale” by J. F. Mozley, published by S.P.C.K., London

“Zwingli, The Third Man of the Reformation” by Jean Rillet, Westminster

Press, Philadelphia.

“Matthew Henry’s Commentary” in 6 volumes..various publishers.

WHILE NOT USED IN THIS INTRODUCTION, THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ARE

INDISPENSABLE FOR THE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THEM.

“WHICH BIBLE”, “TRUE OR FALSE” AND “COUNTERFEIT OR GENUINE”,

ALL OF WHICH ARE COMPILED AND EDITED BY DAVID OTIS FULLER.