'time there might be four or five principal prisoners 'more released; these were the four Evangelists and 'the apostle St Paul, who had been long shut up in an 'unknown tongue, as it were in prison, so as they 'could not converse with the common people. The 'Queen answered very gravely, That it was best first 'to inquire of them whether they would be released. 'or no'.' Chap. ii. Parker a revision Thus at first the Great Bible was allowed to retain its place as the authorised Bible for ecclesiastical use, but the wide circulation of the Genevan edition made its defects generally known, and Parker, who was na- Archbp. turally inclined to biblical studies, as soon as an oppor-undertakes tunity offered, took measures for the review of the old of the Bible. translation. This was about 1563-4. The method which he followed has been described by Strype. The Arch- His plan. 'bishop,' he writes, 'took upon him the labour to con'trive and set the whole work a going in a proper 'method, by sorting out the whole Bible into parcels..., 'and distributing those parcels to able bishops and 'other learned men, to peruse and collate each the 'book or books allotted them: sending withal his in'structions for the method they should observe; and 'they to add some short marginal notes for the illus'tration or correction of the text. And all those portions 'of the Bible being finished and sent back to the arch'bishop, he was to add the last hand to them and so to 'take care for printing and publishing the whole.' Among those whose help he sought was Sandys, bishop of Worcester. Sandys strongly urged the necessity of the work. 'Your Grace,' he says, 'should 'much benefit the Church in hastening forward the 1 Bacon, Collection of Apophthegms, Strype's Parker, 1. 414. $1. The opinion Sandys. of Bp. Chap. ii. Bp. Guest. Bp. Cox. Bible which you have in hand: those that we have be 'not only false printed but also give great offence to 'many by reason of the depravity in reading.' In another letter which accompanied his revision of the portion of Scripture assigned to him, he explains more at length the ground of his opinion. According to 'your Grace's letter of instruction I have perused the 'book you sent me and with good diligence; having 'also in conference with some other considered of the 'same in such sort, I trust, as your Grace will not 'mislike of...... In mine opinion your Grace shall do 'well to make the whole Bible to be diligently surveyed 'by some well learned before it be put to print...... 'which thing will require a time. Sed sat cito si sat bene. 'The setters forth of this our common translation fol'lowed Munster too much, who doubtless was a very 'negligent man in his doings and often swerved very 'much from the Hebrew......1. Other fragments of correspondence shew some of the difficulties with which Parker had to contend. Guest, bishop of Rochester, in returning the book of Psalms which had been sent to him for correction, gives a singular view of the duties of a translator. 'I have 'not,' he says, 'altered the translation but where it gave 'occasion of an error. As at the first Psalm at the 'beginning I turn the præterperfect tense into the 'present tense, because the sense is too harsh in the præterperfect tense. Where in the New Testament 'one piece of a Psalm is reported I translate it in the 'Psalms according to the translation thereof in the 'New Testament, for the avoiding of the offence that may rise to the people upon divers translations.......' Again, Cox, bishop of Ely, writing in May, 1566, 1 Strype's Parker, 1. 415, 6. 2 Id. I. 416. says, 'I trust your Grace is well forward with the Bible 'by this time. I perceive the greatest burden will lie ' upon your neck, touching care and travail. I would 'wish that such usual words as we English people be 'acquainted with might still remain in their form and 'sound, so far forth as the Hebrew will well bear; 'ink-horn terms to be avoided. The translation of the 'verbs in the Psalms to be used uniformly in one 'tense......'' Chap. ii. finished in However, in spite of all difficulties, the work went The work forward, and the Bishops' Bible, as it was called, ap-1568. peared in 1568 in a magnificent volume, printed by R. Jugge 'cum privilegio regiæ majestatis.' No word of flattery disfigures the book. It is even without a dedication. But a portrait of the Queen occupies the centre of the engraved title-page, and others of Leicester and Burleigh occur before the book of Joshua and the Psalms. At the end is an elegant couplet on the device of the pelican feeding her young: Matris ut hæc proprio stirps est satiata cruore, of the work. It was not by these signs only that Parker shewed The spirit, his true sense of the character of the task which he had undertaken. The revisers, speaking through him in the Preface, express a noble consciousness of the immensity of their labour. There be yet,' they say, quoting the words of John [Fisher], once bishop of Rochester, 'in the Gospels very many dark places which 'without all doubt to posterity shall be made much 'more open. For why should we despair herein, seeing 'the Gospel was delivered to this intent that it might 'be utterly understanded of us, yea to the very inch. 1 Strype's Parker, 1. 417. Comp. II. 212 ff. Chap. ii. The revisers not certainly known. 'Wherefore forasmuch as Christ sheweth no less love 'to his Church now than hitherto he hath done, the 'authority whereof is as yet no whit diminished, and 'forasmuch as that Holy Spirit [is] the perpetual 'Keeper and Guardian of the same Church, whose 'gifts and graces do flow as continually and abundantly 'as from the beginning: who can doubt but that such 'things as remain yet unknown in the Gospel shall be 'hereafter made open to the later wits of our posterity, 'to their clear understanding? They felt then that their labour was provisional, and that the Spirit had yet further lessons in His Word to teach to later ages. It is not certainly known by whom the whole revision was actually made. Initials are placed at the end of some of the books, and this, Parker says, was done by his own wish that the several scholars might be 'more diligent, as answerable for their doings.' But it seems evident from the manner in which the initials are distributed that they do not indicate all the contributors'. They do not stand at the end of groups of books which might naturally be supposed to have been given to one reviser. Once the same initials are repeated in consecutive books. Some names too are certainly passed over. Lawrence, for example, had a considerable part in the revision of the New Testament, and his initials nowhere occur. Of the revisers who can be probably identified eight were bishops, and from them the revision derived its popular title3. 1 This is indeed implied in Parker's own language; see p. 103 n. I. 2 See ch. III. § 7. 3 The initials given are the following (for the identifications I am indebted mainly to the Historical Account). At the end of the Pentateuch W. E. [W. Exoniensis, Wil liam Alley, bp. of Exeter]: of 2 Samuel R. M. [R. Menevensis, Richard Davies, bp. of St David's]: of 2 Chronicles E. W. [E. Wigornensis, Edwyn Sandys, bp. of Worcester]: of Job A. P. C. [Andrew Pearson, canon of Canterbury]: Chap. ii. The Bishops' tioned by use. When the edition was ready for publication Parker endeavoured to obtain through Cecil a recognition of it by the Queen. The revision did not, he pleaded, Bible sanc 'vary much from that translation which was commonly Convocation 'used by public order, except when the verity of the for public 'Hebrew and Greek moved alteration, or when the text 'was by some negligence mutilated from the original.' His design was to secure a uniform text for public use, and in some places the Genevan revision was now publicly read, which seemed to be an infringement of ecclesiastical discipline, and yet the Great Bible could not be honestly maintained'. to shew whether the Queen of the Psalms T. B. [? Thomas Be: con]: of the Song of Solomon A. P. E. [Andrew Perne, canon of Ely]: of Lamentations R. W. [R. Wintonensis, Robert Horne, bp. of Winchester]: of Daniel T. C. L. [T. Cov. & Lichf., Thomas Bentham, bp. of Lichfield and Coventry?]: of Malachi E. L. [E. Londinensis, Edmund Grindal, bp. of London]: of Wisdom W. C. [afterwards omitted]: of 2 Maccabees 7. N. [J. Norvicensis, John Parkhurst, bp. of Norwich]: of the Acts R. E. [R. Eliensis, Richard Cox, bp. of Ely] of Romans R. E. [as before]: of 1 Corinthians G. G. [Gabriel Goodman, dean of Westminster]. In the copy of the edition of 1568 which I have used the letters A. P. C. do not occur after Proverbs. [Mr F. Fry tells me that he has 'both 'leaves of this edition one with A. 'P. C., and one without.'] To the other books no initials are appended. Parker's words are important as describing the care which was spent There is no evidence upon the edition, and the objects for of their names be partly affixed in Churches, to draw to one uniform- |