more harm with it than good and honest folk would derive benefit." This, however, he declared was not his own personal view.1 "I would not," he writes, "for my part, withhold the profit that one good, devout, unlearned man might get by the reading, for fear of the harm a hundred heretics might take by their own wilful abuse. Finally, I think that the Provincial Constitution (already spoken of) has long ago determined the question. For when the clergy in that synod agreed that the English Bibles should remain which were translated before Wycliffe's days, they, as a necessary consequence, agreed that it was no harm to have the Bible in English. And when they forbade any new translation to be read till it were approved by the bishops, it appears clearly that they intended that the bishop should approve it, if he found it to be faultless, and also to amend it where it was found faulty, unless the man who made it was a heretic, or the faults were so many and of such a character that it would be easier to re-translate it than to mend it.” 2

This absolute denial of any attitude of hostility on the part of the Church to the translated Bible is reiterated in many parts of Sir Thomas More's English works. When, upon the condemnation of Tyndale's Testament the author pointed to this fact as proof of the determination of the clergy to keep the Word of God from the people, More replied at considerable length. He showed how the ground of the condemnation had nothing whatever to do with any anxiety upon the part of ecclesiastics to keep the Scriptures from lay people, but was entirely based upon the falsity of Tyndale's translation itself. "He pretends,” says Sir Thomas More, "that the Church makes some (statutes) openly and directly against the Word of God, as in that statute whereby they have condemned the New Testament. Now, in truth, there is no such statute made. For as for the New Testament, if he mean the Testament

But there is

of Christ, it is not condemned nor forbidden. forbidden a false English translation of the New Testament newly forged by Tyndale, altered and changed in matters of great weight, in order maliciously to set forth against Christ's true doctrine Tyndale's anti-Christian heresies. Therefore that book is condemned, as it is well worthy to be, and the condemnation thereof is neither openly nor privily, directly nor indirectly, against the Word of God."1

Again, in another place, More replies to what he calls. Tyndale's "railing" against the clergy, and in particular his saying that they keep the Scripture from lay people in order that they may not see how they "juggle with it." "I have," he says, "in the book of my Dyalogue proved already that Tyndale in this point falsely belies the clergy, and that in truth Wycliffe, and Tyndale, and Friar Barnes, and such others, have been the original cause why the Scripture has been of necessity kept out of lay people's hands. And of late, specially, by the politic provision and ordinance of our most excellent sovereign the king's noble grace, not without great and urgent causes manifestly rising from the false malicious means of Wycliffe and Tyndale," this has been prevented. "For this (attempt of Tyndale) all the lay people of this realm, both the evil folk who take harm from him, and the good folk that lose their profit by him, have great cause to lament that ever the man was born." 2

The same view is taken by Roger Edgworth, a popular preacher in the reign of Henry VIII. After describing what he considered to be the evils which had resulted from the spread of Lutheran literature in England, he says: "By this effect you may judge the cause. The effect was evil, therefore there must needs be some fault in the cause. But what sayest thou? Is not the study of Scripture good? Is not the knowledge of the Gospels and of

the New Testament godly, good, and profitable for a Christian man or woman? I shall tell you what I think in this matter. I have ever been in this mind, that I have thought it no harm, but rather good and profitable, that Holy Scripture should be had in the mother tongue, and withheld from no man that was apt and meet to take it in hand, specially if we could get it well and truly translated, which will be very hard to be had."1

There is, it is true, no doubt, that the destruction of Tyndale's Testaments and the increasing number of those who favoured the new religious opinions, caused people to spread all manner of stories abroad as to the attitude of the Church authorities in England towards the vernacular Scriptures. Probably the declaration of the friend, against whom Sir Thomas More, then Chancellor, in 1530, wrote his Dyalogue "that great murmurs were heard against the clergy on this score," is not far from the truth. Ecclesiastics, he said, in the opinion of the common people, would not tolerate criticism of their lives or words, and

desired to keep laymen ignorant. "And they" (the people) "think," he adds, " that for no other cause was there burned at St. Paul's Cross the New Testament, late translated by Master William Huchin, otherwise called Tyndale, who was (as men say) well known, before he went over the sea, as a man of right good life, studious and well learned in the Scriptures. And men mutter among themselves that the book was not only faultless, but also very well translated, and was ordered to be burned, because men should not be able to prove that such faults (as were at Paul's Cross declared to have been found in it) were never in fact found there at all; but untruly surmised, in order to have some just cause to burn it, and that for no other reason than to keep out of the people's hands all knowledge of Christ's Gospel and of God's law, except so much as the clergy themselves please now and then to tell

1 Roger Edgworth, Sermons, London, Caly, 1557, f. 31.

them.

Further, that little as this is, it is seldom expounded. And, as it is feared, even this is not well and truly told; but watered with false glosses and altered from the truth of the words and meaning of Scripture, only to maintain the clerical authority. And the fear lest this should appear evident to the people, if they were suffered to read the Scripture themselves in their own tongue, was (it is thought) the very cause, not only for which the New Testament translated by Tyndale was burned, but also why the clergy of this realm have before this time, by a Constitution Provincial, prohibited any book of Scripture to be translated into the English tongue, and threaten with fire men who should presume to keep them, as heretics; as though it were heresy for a Christian man to read Christ's Gospel."""

It has been already pointed out how Sir Thomas More completely disposed of this assertion as to the hostility of the clergy to "the open Bible." In his position of Chancellor of England, More could hardly have been able to speak with so much certainty about the real attitude of the Church, had not the true facts been at the same time well understood and commonly acknowledged. The words of the "objector," however, not only express the murmurs of those who were at that period discontented with the ecclesiastical system; but they voice the accusations which have been so frequently made from that day to this, by those who do not as a fact look at the other side. Sir Thomas More's testimony proves absolutely that no such hostility to the English Bible as is so generally assumed of the pre-Reformation Church did, in fact, exist. Most certainly there never was any ecclesiastical prohibition against vernacular versions as such, and the most orthodox sons of the Church did in fact possess copies of the English Scriptures, which they read openly and devoutly. This much seems certain.

1 Sir Thomas More, English Works, p. 108.

Moreover, Sir Thomas More's contention that there was no prohibition is borne out by other evidence. The great canonist Lyndwood undoubtedly understood the Constitution of Oxford on the Scriptures in the same sense as Sir Thomas More. In fact, as it has been pointed out already, to his explanation Sir Thomas More successfully appealed in proof of his assertion that there was no such condemnation of the English Scriptures, as had been, and is still, asserted by some. It has, of course, been often said that Sir Thomas More, and of course Lyndwood, were wrong in supposing that there were any translations previous to that of the version now known as Wycliffite. This is by no means so clear; and even supposing they were in error as to the date of the version, it is impossible that they could have been wrong as to the meaning and interpretation of the law itself, and as to the fact that versions were certainly in circulation which were presumed by those who used them to be Catholic and orthodox. Archbishop Cranmer himself may also be cited as a witness to the free circulation of manuscript copies of the English Scriptures in pre-Reformation times, since the whole of his argument for allowing a new version, in the preface to the Bishops' Bible, rests on the well-known custom of the Church to allow vernacular versions, and on the fact that copies of the English Scriptures had previously been in daily use with ecclesiastical sanction.

The same conclusion must be deduced from books printed by men of authority and unquestionable piety. In them we find the reading of the Scriptures strongly recommended. io take an example: Thomas Lupset, the friend and protégé of Colet and Lilly, gives the following advice to his sisters, two of whom were nuns : "Give thee much to reading; take heed in meditation of the Scripture, busy thee in the law of God; have a customable use in divine books."1 The same pious scholar has much

1 Thomas Lupset, Collected Works, 1546. Gathered Counsails, f. 202.