But though this pleasant fancy of the literal fulfilment of an early promise must be discarded, Tindale achieved in every way a nobler fulfilment of it. Instead of lowering his translation to a vulgar dialect, he lifted up the common language to the grand simplicity of his own idiom. 'It 'pleased God,' as he wrote in his first Prologue, 'to put '[the translation] in his mind,' and if we look at his life and his work, we cannot believe that he was left without the Spirit of God in the execution of it. His single honesty is beyond all suspicion. I call God to recorde,' so he writes to Fryth in the Tower, 1533, 'against y° day we shall ' appeare before our Lord Iesus, to geue a recknyng of our 'doings, that I neuer altered one sillable of Gods word agaynst my cōscience, nor would this day, if all that is in 'the earth, whether it be pleasure, honour or riches, might 'be geuen me1. Not one selfish thought mixed with his magnificent devotion. No treacherous intrigues ever shook his loyalty to his king: no intensity of distress ever obscured his faith in Christ. I assure you,' he said to a royal

of Exeter College, Oxford, and there is a fragment in the British Museum.] The orthography in the Table of the four Evangelists and the Prologue to the Romans which follows (not displaced by the binder) offers no marked peculiarities. In sheet A we ǹnd aengell, waeye, faether, macke, waere, saeyde, moether, aroese, behoelde, toeke, harde (heard), &c., &c. In в, maester, mother, moether, father, sayd, or sayde (consistently), fayth, stoede, &c. In c, sayde, angels, moether, harde, maester, master, father, &c. In D, faether, moether, mother, sayde, hearde, &c. In F on one side, faether, moether, broether, and on the other, angels, sayde, daye, brother, told, hearde, &c. In y and z we have almost consistently faeyth, saeyde, hoepe, almoest, praeyer, &c. Yet again in b prayer, &c. In the headings of the Epistles we have saynct and sacynct. Some spellings certainly belong to a foreign compositor, thongs (tongues, 1 Cor.

xiii.) [but twice in the same page tonges]; thaugh (taught). Some I cannot explain, caled (called), holly (holy), which forms are consistently used. Of possible explanations none seems more likely than that the copy was read to a Flemish compositor (at Brussels? or Malines?) and that the vowels simply give the Flemish equivalents of the English vowel sounds. See note at the end of the section, P. 54.

The text is carefully revised, as will be shewn afterwards, and the chapter headings are simply transferred from the table of the Gospels and Acts in the Testament of 1534. Mr F. Fry has since found substantially the same text in an edition dated 1534 (G. H.), i.e. probably 1535, January-March. [Mr Fry's copy, now in the Library of the Bible Society, has a title-page with the date 1535.]

1 Tindale's Works, p. 456 (ed. 1573).

envoy', 'if it would stand with the king's most gracious 'pleasure to grant only a bare text of the Scripture to be 'put forth among his people, like as is put forth among 'the subjects of the emperor in these parts [the Nether'lands], and of other Christian princes, be it of the transla'tion of what person soever shall please his majesty, I shall 'immediately make faithful promise never to write more, 'nor abide two days in these parts, after the same; but 'immediately repair into his realm, and there most humbly 'submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering my 'body, to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace will, so that this be obtained. His life had seemed friendless, but his one dearest companion (Fryth) may interpret the temper common to them both. 'Doubt not,' he writes from the Tower to his desolate congregation, 'but 'that god...shal so prouide for you, that ye shall haue an 'hundred fathers for one, an hūdred mothers for one, an 'hundred houses for one, and that in this lyfe, as I haue 'proued by experience"! We dilute the promise by our comments these martyrs proved it in their lives.

The worth of Tindale as a scholar must be estimated by his translation, which will be examined afterwards. Of the spirit in which he undertook the great work of his life something has been said already. To the end he retained unchanged, or only deepened and chastened his noble forgetfulness of self in the prospect of its accomplishment, with a jealous regard for the sincere rendering of the Scriptures. Before he published the revised edition of 1534 he had been sorely tried by the interference of Joye, which might, as he thought, bring discredit to the Gospel itself.

1 Vaughan's dispatch (1531) quoted by Anderson, I. p. 278. Fryth's language (1533) is to the same effect: 'This hath bene offered you, is offered, ' and shall be offered: Graunt that the 'word of God, I meane ye text of 'Scripture, may go abroad in our 'English toung, as other nations 'haue it in their tounges, and my

'brother William Tyndall, and I haue 'done, & will promise you to write 'no more. If you wil not graunt this 'condition, then will we be doing 'while we haue breath, and shew in 'few wordes that the Scripture doth in 'many: and so at the lest saue some.' Fryth's Works, p. 115 (ed. 1573).

2 Id. p. 82.

The passage with which he closes his disclaimer of Joye's edition reflects at once his vigour and its tenderness. There is in it something of the freedom and power of Luther, but it is charged with a simple humility which Luther rarely if ever shews....' My part,' Tindale writes, 'be not in Christ if 'mine heart be not to follow and live according as I teach, 'and also if mine heart weep not night and day for mine ' own sin and other men's indifferently, beseeching God to 'convert us all and to take his wrath from us and to be 'merciful as well to all other men, as to mine own soul, 'caring for the wealth of the realm I was born in, for the 'king and all that are thereof, as a tender-hearted mother 'would do for her only son.

'As concerning all I have translated or otherwise 'written, I beseech all men to read it for that purpose I 'wrote it: even to bring them to the knowledge of the 'Scripture. And as far as the Scripture approveth it, 'so far to allow it, and if in any place the word of God 'disallow it, there to refuse it, as I do before our Saviour 'Christ and His congregation. And where they find faults 'let them shew it me, if they be nigh, or write to me if they 'be far off: or write openly against it and improve it, and 'I promise them, if I shall perceive that their reasons con'clude I will confess mine ignorance openly.

'Wherefore I beseech George Joye, yea and all other 'too, for to translate the Scripture for themselves, whether 'out of the Greek, Latin or Hebrew. Or (if they will 'needs)...let them take my translations and labours, and 'change and alter, and correct and corrupt at their pleasures, 'and call it their own translations and put to their own 'names and not to play bo-peep after George Joye's 'manner...But I neither can nor will suffer of any man, 'that he shall go take my translation and correct it without 'name, and make such changing as I myself durst not do, 'as I hope to have my part in Christ, though the whole 'world should be given me for my labour'.'

1 W. T. yet once more to the Christian Reader' in the N. T. of

1534. I cannot find this address in my copy of Tindale's Works published

NOTE to p. 51.

Tindale's character is heroic. He could see clearly the work to which he was called and pursue it with a single unswerving faith in GOD and in the powers which GOD had given him. It was otherwise with Miles Coverdale, who was allowed to finish what Tindale left incomplete. The differences of the men are written no less on their features than on their lives. But our admiration for the solitary massive strength of the one must not make us insensible to the patient labours and tender sympathy of the other1. From the first Coverdale appears to have attached himself to the liberal members of the old party and to have looked to working out a reformation from within through them. As early as 1527 he was in intimate connexion with Crumwell and More'; and in all probability it was under their patronage that he was able to prepare for his translation of Holy Scripture. How long he thus laboured we cannot tell. In 1529 he met Tindale at Hamburgh', and must have continued abroad for a considerable part of the following years up to 1536. In the meantime a great change had passed over England since

Some sounds are expressed in different ways, especially 'o.' Thus we have aloene and aloone; boeldely and booldly; boethe and booth; coete and coote; hoeme and hoome; locke and louke (loke 1534); noene and noane; stoene and stoone; thoese and thoose; whoem and whoom. So also we have theare and theere; tought and thaught (taught).

Other exceptional forms are tappe (top), touth (to the 1534), waere and woere (where), woeld (would), te (the), mouny (money).

1 The later Puritanism of Coverdale is consistent with this view of his character. He was a man born rather to receive than to create impressions. 2 Anderson, I. p. 186.

3 In an undated letter to Crumwell he says, evidently in reference to some

specific 'communication' from him, 'Now I begin to taste of Holy Scrip"tures...Nothing in the world I desire 'but books as concerning my learning: 'they once had, I do not doubt, but 'Almighty God shall perform that in 'me which he of his plentiful favour 'and grace hath begun.' Anderson fixes this in 1531. The letter however from style seems to be nearly contemporary with another addressed to Crumwell in 1527. [State Papers, I. 383.]

4 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, V. I 20. I see nothing derogatory to Tindale or improbable in Foxe's explicit statement that at this time Coverdale helped him in translating the Pentateuch; though on such a point Foxe's unsupported statement is not sufficient evidence.