BIBLE (1560)

TITLE-PAGE OF THE GENEVA OR BREECHES
The lines on this title-page were ruled in red ink with a pen

to say, what is taught, and dogma, which has been defined as arrogant expression of opinion, have paled before the blazing sun of science, it seems almost unbelievable that four hundred years ago, in what called itself a civilized and Christian country, men were persecuted and put to death for holding beliefs that arose, not so much from the Bible itself as from the expounders of it. Miles Coverdale, then Bishop of Exeter, a pious and exemplary old man of seventy, to whom we owe so much, was deprived of his bishopric and obliged to flee for his life before the bloody rage of Queen Mary. He deserves to be remembered for his saying, in a time when violence of opinions was counted for righteousness, that he was "always willing and ready to do his best as well in one translation as in another." His name is associated with three versions of the Bible: the edition of 1535, which bears his name, the Great Bible of 1539, and the Geneva Bible of 1560.

When he returned from his exile abroad, he was not reinstated in his see of Exeter, but was made rector of the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr. However, he soon gave up this living, and at his death he was buried in the Church of St. Bartholomew by the Exchange, in London. When that church was demolished, his remains were by pious hands transferred to his old church of St. Magnus, London Bridge. There has been recently some talk of the destruction of this church: it impedes somewhat the traffic approaching the north end of the historic

bridge, but it is altogether probable that it will be saved because it is the final resting-place of the ashes of Miles Coverdale. A long and somewhat labored inscription to his memory may still be seen on a marble tablet on the east wall of the church, not far from the communion table.

Various reasons have been given for the popularity of the "Breeches Bible." It had a romantic background: it was the Bible of the Reformation, the Bible of Calvin and Knox and their followers, and it was of convenient size; it was portable and inexpensive. Above all, it was the first Bible that was cut up into verses which could readily be committed to memory. For all these reasons it came to be beloved by the common people as no other Bible had ever been.

But English ecclesiastics were jealous of its popularity and were determined to oust it if possible; their efforts resulted in the "Bishops' Bible" of 1568. Nothing was left undone to make this appealing; it was issued in magnificent style with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth and in very bad taste another of her supposed lover, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, and of Lord Burleigh, her minister. Its cost was about the equivalent of twenty pounds today, and an order of the Convocation of Bishops required that every archbishop and bishop should have at his home "a copy of the Holy Bible as lately published," and that it should be kept in the hall or dining-room, that it might "be useful to servants or