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secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers to the meanest of the people. It gave them a common interest in the common cause. Their hearts burned within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people by giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. It cemented their union of character and sentiment. It created endless diversity and collision of opinion. It found objects to employ their faculties, and a motive, in the magnitude of the consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the most daring intrepidity in maintaining it. Religious controversy sharpens the understanding by the subtlety and remoteness of the topics it discusses, and braces the will by their infinite importance. We perceive in the history of this period a nervous, masculine intellect. No levity, no feebleness, no indifference; or if there were, it is a relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone to its general character."

Such were the effects arising from the Bible being thrown open to the people of England. It was not, however, all at once that they obtained that inestimable boon. The importance of the subject demands a separate chapter.

CHAP. V.

THE BIBLE AND ITS TRANSLATORS.

THE oldest printed Bible in Europe is that known as the Mazarin Bible. The earliest practisers or inventors of the art of printing resolved on this great work, and brought it out as early as 1455-6, or some assert even earlier. The learned historian of the middle ages says, "We may see in imagination this venerable and splendid volume leading up the crowded myriads of its followers, and imploring as it were a blessing on the new art by dedicating its first fruits to the service of Heaven.”*

The first English translation of the Bible that was printed was set forth in May 6. 1541, with a grave and pious preface of Archbishop Cranmer, and authorised by the king's (Henry VIII.) proclamation. Seconded also with instructions from the king "to prepare the people to receive benefit the better from so heavenly a treasure," it was called "the Bible of the greater volume, rather commended than commanded to the

"Literature of the Middle Ages," vol. i. p. 151.

people.' Six of these bibles were chained in St. Paul's in convenient places. Those country parishes who could afford to purchase this precious treasure chained it to a desk, and the zeal of the people to hear it read was wonderful. Artisans and labourers assembled to listen to the reading. There might be seen the grey-haired sire and the eager youth, the mother hushing her awed and wondering children, the feeble grandame and the blooming maiden, all silent and intent, drinking in the inspired words with thirsty ears. Nor was it only within the building that the Bible was read. The spacious porch of many a country church would hold a goodly gathering, who, surrounding the reader, would listen perhaps all the more intently that it was not a mere formal service.

The clergy were not the only readers to the people. Any man who could read (the attainment was rare then among the people of England) was pressed into this sacred service. What a new tide of life was flowing in upon them as they listened! Not long before, they had been constrained to listen to an unintelligible formula in a foreign language. This was the only utterance they had heard associated with the worship of the Most High; and the rapid and prosy homily that suc

*Fuller's "Church History," book vii. p. 387.

ceeded was nearly as empty and unsatisfactory. Now it was not dead but living words that vibrated through them, quickening the pulse of the most supine, softening the most hardened, comforting the sad, instructing the ignorant. There was a portion for all: truths so simple that "the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein,” -truths so forcible, that they were 66 as a hammer breaking the rocky heart in twain," truths so tender, that the mourner felt, " as one whom his mother comforteth, even so the Lord comforteth his people," — truths so encouraging, that they called, saying, "Whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely,"- truths so just, and equal, and spiritual, that they announced there remained "no more bond or free, male or female, but all are one in Christ Jesus."

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The influence that this book had upon the people may be inferred from an interesting account of William Malden, inserted in Strype's "Memorials of Cranmer." "When the king first allowed the Bible to be set forth to be read in churches, immediately several poor men in the town of Chelmsford, in Essex, where his father lived, and he was born, bought the New Testament, and on Sundays sat reading of it in the lower end of the church. Many would flock about them to hear their reading; and he (William Malden), among the rest, being then but fifteen years old, came

every Sunday to hear the glad and sweet tidings of the Gospel. But his father, observing it once, fetched him away angrily, and would have him to say the Latin Matins with him, which grieved him much. This put him upon the thoughts of learning to read English, that so he might read the New Testament himself, which, when he had by diligence effected, he and his father's apprentice bought the New Testament, joining their stocks together; and to conceal it laid it under the straw bed, and read it at convenient times. One night, his father being asleep, he and his mother chanced to discourse concerning the crucifix, and the form of kneeling down to it, and knocking on the breast and holding up the hands to it when it came by in procession. This, he told his mother, was plain idolatry against the commandment of God, where he saith, Thou shalt not make any graven image, nor bow down to it, nor worship it.' His mother, enraged at him for this, said, 'Wilt thou not worship the cross which was about thee when thou wert christened, and must be laid on thee when thou art dead?' In this heat the mother and son departed, and went to their beds. The sum of this evening's conference she presently repeats to her husband, which he, impatient to hear, and boiling in fury against his son for denying the worship due to the cross, rose up forthwith, and goes into his son's chamber, and, like a mad zealot, taking

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