CHAP. VI. remains intact in our present Bibles, than that his spirit animates the whole. He toiled faithfully himself, and where he failed he left to those who should come after the secret of success. The achievement was not for one but for many; but he fixed the type according to which the later labourers worked. His influence decided that our Bible should be popular and not literary, speaking in a simple dialect, and that so by its simplicity it should be endowed with permanence. He felt by a happy instinct the potential affinity between Hebrew and English idioms, and enriched our language and thought for ever with the characteristics of the Semitic mind'.' Tyndale Lutheran in respect to doctrine. The Cambridge Re formers con sequently desert the theology taught by Erasmus. But while Tyndale's independence of Luther as a translator may be regarded as beyond question, it was far otherwise in matter of doctrine; for in this respect, as his Prologues clearly shew, he completely submitted himself to the teaching of the great Reformer. And hence, although the Cambridge Reformers undoubtedly derived their first inspiration from Erasmus, under the new influence their theology soon diverged from that of Rome to an extent which Erasmus had never anticipated, and on some points altogether discouraged that latitude of belief which he had sought to establish. Both the German and the English Reformer upheld in its most uncompromising form the doctrine of predestination. They consequently treated Jerome and the Greek fathers with but little respect. Luther indeed stigmatised the former as a heretic, and declared that he hated' him more than any of the wouldbe teachers of the Church. And these views, though not perhaps adopted by all the early Reformers, were certainly those that now prevailed at both universities. 1 Hist. of the English Bible, pp. 210-1. 6 2 Whose bokes be nothing els in effect, but the worst heresies picked out of Luther's workes, and Luther's worst wordes translated by Tyndall and put forth in Tyndal's own name.' More, English Works, p. 228. 3 Hieronymus soll nicht unter die Lehrer der Kirchen mit gerechnet noch gezehlet werden, denn er ist ein Ketzer gewesen......Ich weiss keinen unter den Lehrern, dem ich so feind bin als Hieronymo.' Tischreden, Walch, xx11 2070. The testimony of George Joye, fellow of Peterhouse, seems to point to contrary tendencies. In his narrative of his interview with Gascoigne, Wolsey's treasurer, he says: I came to Mr. Gascoing, whyche I perceyued by his wordes fauored archbp. of d. 1544. the alarm on ance of New Testa Among the first to sound the note of alarm, as the report CHAP. VI. of Tyndale's New Testament began to spread abroad, was Edward Lee, Edward Lee, at that time king's almoner and afterwards York. archbishop of York. A fit representative of the bigotry of' Oxford, he had already distinguished himself by a dishonest and despicable attack on Erasmus's Novum Testamentum, and had nearly quarrelled with Fisher on account of that prelate's friendship for Erasmus himself'. Having heard while on the continent that Tyndale's work was on its way to England, Lee forthwith wrote to king Henry to apprise him of the fact. 'I need not,' he said, 'to advertise your grace Lee sounds what infection and danger may ensue hereby if it be not the appearwithstanded. This is the new way to fulfil your realm with Tyndale's Lutherans......All our forefathers, governors of the Church ment. of England, have with all diligence forbid and eschewed publication of English Bibles, as appeareth in constitutions provincial of the Church of England". Spalatin, in Germany, all absorbed as his thoughts might well have been with the progress of events in his own country, noted down in his diary under 'Sunday after St. Laurence's Day, 1526,' that the English, in spite of the active opposition of the king, were Demand for so eager for the Gospel as to affirm that they would buy a England. New Testament even if they had to give a hundred thousand pieces of money for it. The alarm excited by the publication of the volume was not diminished on an examination of its pages. The circumstances that attended its appearance were indeed almost an exact repetition of those that marked that of Erasmus's Novum Instrumentum; there was the abstract hostility to the undertaking as an innovation upon the current theological notions, and there was the direct hostility to the volume itself as the vehicle of much that was distasteful. It was soon recognised that another formidable blow had been dealt at the whole system of mediæval me not, and he rebuked me because I studied Arigene [Origen] whyche was an heretike, said he; and he saide that I helde such opinions as did Bilney and Arture.' Quoted by Maitland, Essays on the Reformation, p. 9. 1 Cooper, Athena, 1 85; Lewis, Life of Fisher, 11 201-2. 2 Froude, Hist. of England, 1 31, note. 3 Schelhorn, Amoenit. Lit. Iv 431 (quoted by Westcott, p. 42). the work in Anti-Romish renderings of CHAP. VI. doctrinal teaching. The Greek words which in the Latin of the Vulgate had been translated as equivalent to 'church,' certain Greek priest,' 'charity,' 'grace,' 'confession,' 'penance,' had in Tynwords. dale's version been rendered by the words 'congregation,' 'elder,' Complaint of love,' 'favour,' 'knowledge,' 'repentance.' Ridley, the uncle of the Reformer, writing to Warham's chaplain, complained bitterly of the first of these substitutions. As if,' he says, 'so many Turks or irrational animals were not a congregation, except he wishes them also to be a church.' 'Ye shall Ridley. burnt at not need,' he adds, 'to accuse this translation. It is accused and damned by the consent of the prelates and learned men' The volume Wolsey advised Henry to condemn the volume to be burnt, Paul's Cross. and the royal mandate to that effect was forthwith issued. Cuthbert Tunstal, who presided at the burning at Paul's Cross, declared in his sermon on the occasion, that the version contained two thousand errors; while More, at a somewhat later period did not scruple to assert, that Tyndale's New Testament was 'the father of all the heresies by reason of his false translating. Such was the reception originally afforded by the ecclesiastic and the man of letters to the Tunstal's sermon on the occasion. 1 Westcott, Hist. of the English Bible, p. 42, n. 2. So also More in his Dialogue (bk. III c. 8), 'Now dooe these names in our Englishe toungue neither expresse the thynges that be ment by them, and also ther appeareth (the circumstances wel considered) that he had a mischievous minde in the chaunge.' English Works, p. 229. 2 Westcott, p. 43. Or, according to Roy, a yet larger number : 'He declared there in his furious nes That he fownde erroures more and Above thre thousande in the trans- Rede me, etc. (ed. Arber), p. 46. 3.Of these bookes of heresies ther be so many made within these fewe yeres, what by Luther himself and by his felowes, and afterwards by the new sectes sprongen out of his, which like the children of Vippara would now gnaw out their mother's bely, that the bare names of those bookes wer almost inough to make a booke, and of every sort of those bookes be some brought into this realme and kepte in hucker mucker, by some shrewde maisters that kepe them for no good.-Besides the bokes of Latin, French, and Dutch (in which there are of these evill sectes an innumerable sorte), there are made in the English tongue, first, Tindale's Newe Testament, father of them al by reason of hys false translating. And after that, the fyve bookes of Moyses, translated by the same man, we nede not doubte in what maner, when we know by what man and for what purpose.' Confutation of Tyndale, English Works (1532), p. 341. 'For he had corrupted and purposely chaunged in many places the text, with such wordes as he might make it seme to the unlearned people, that the Scripture affirmed their heresies it selfe.' Ibid. p. 310. volume which must be looked upon as essentially the same CHAP. VI. with that over which the foremost biblical scholars of our country are at the present time engaged in prolonged study and frequent consultation, and while aiming at the removal of whatever is obsolete in expression or inaccurate in scholarship, are none the less actuated by reverent regard for what is at once the noblest monument of the English language and the edifice round which the most cherished associations and the deepest feelings of the nation have for three centuries entwined. Cardinal Col of the design. In the mean time the erection of Wolsey's college at Progress of Oxford had been rapidly progressing. As the scheme of a lege. single foundation it was on a scale of unprecedented magni- Magnificence ficence, and when in the year 1527 the university took occasion to address a formal letter of thanks to the cardinal for his numerous favours, they did not fail to select the new college as the principal theme of congratulation and dwelt in exuberant diction on the 'varied splendour and marvellous symmetry' of the architecture, the 'sanctity of the ordinances,' the provisions for the celebration of divine service, the 'beauty and order' that pervaded the whole design'. It was certainly Motives that no insignificant compliment to Cambridge that Wolsey paid ed the selecin inviting some of her most promising young scholars to Cambridge transfer themselves as teachers and lecturers to the new foundation; nor can we ask for more unequivocal testimony to the character and reputation of the younger members of the reform party than the fact that it was almost exclusively 1 Wilkins, Concilia, 111 709. 'The cardinal's plan in this benefaction was large and noble, as appears by a draught of the statutes sent to the society under his hand and seal. By this scheme, there was a dean and sub-dean, threescore canons of the first rank and forty of the second, thirteen chaplains, twelve clerks, and sixteen choristers; to which we must add, lecturers or professors in divinity, canon law, civil law, physic, philosophy, logic, and humanity. There were likewise four censors of manners and examiners of the proficiency of the students; there were also three treasurers, four stewards, and twenty inferior servants,-in all, 186. And lastly, there was a revenue possibly gui l tion of the students. CHAP. VI. upon these that the choice fell. It is of course quite possible that Shorton, who then filled the post of master of Pembroke College and to whom Wolsey mainly entrusted the matter', was well aware of what was going on on the other side of Trumpington Street within so short a distance of his own lodge, and he may even have often noted Rogers and Thixtill stealing out from the college to join the conferences of the malcontents. But he may also not improbably have thought that for a number of young men whose heads were full of crude notions, and who were still in the first ardour of their attachment to a cause they had but just embraced, there could be nothing better than removal to a distant and busy scene of action, where their minds would be absorbed in active duties, and where, with the responsibility of instructing others devolving upon them, they might consider more dispassionately the opinions they had embraced. Nor is it impossible that Wolsey, whose acknowledged leniency towards the Reformers had not yet been exchanged for a harsher policy, may have been a participant in this view The aid thus and have applauded Shorton's discretion. But however learning at this may have been, we certainly cannot assent to the represuperfluous. sentations of Antony Wood3, who would have us believe that learning at Oxford at this time was in so prosperous a state that the aid thus afforded by Cambridge to the sister university was altogether superfluous. The men who had most promoted the new studies some twenty or fifteen years before, had given place to another generation. Linacre, perhaps the ablest scholar of them all, died in the same year that the Oct. 20, 1524. Cambridge students were transferred to Cardinal College. His will, dated October 12, 1524, gave ample proof that his attachment to the cause of science was still unabated'; and it is certainly not to be attributed to any defect in his design or in his liberality that the founder of the College of given to Oxford not Death of Linacre, 1 Strype (Life of Cranmer, p. 3) mentions Dr. Capon, master of Jesus College, as also acting on Wolsey's behalf in the matter. 2 According to Dr. London's statement to Warham (Froude, 11 46), some of the migrators to Oxford 'had 4 Brewer, Letters and Papers, IV 322; Johnson, Life of Linacre, p. 272. |