confine to themselves, spread over the Continent. The calamities of Constantinople and of Mentz were the blessings of the world; and the war in each case marvellously announced the access, to the European nations, of "the Prince of peace." Rome welcomed the operative printers, whom conquest had expatriated. The Conclave seemed literally fascinated by an invention which was destined to expose its claims, and overturn its power. The Secretary of the Vatican, ardent in promoting the new work, 66 scarcely allowed himself time for sleep." The Pontiff sauntered into the printing-office for amusement! No alarm seemed to be taken, even though the Bible appeared. It was not at Rome, but at Paris, that the execution was ascribed to necromancy. First unconscious, then reclaiming, Popes and Cardinals were destined to grace the triumph of resuscitated and scriptural Christianity. Such zeal was there in the "eternal city" that, "in five years only, or from 1467 to 1472, they had printed not fewer than 12,475 volumes, in twenty-eight editions, some of them of large size, and all beautifully executed." Before 1476 appeared the first printed Commentary on the Scriptures,-that of Nicholas de Lyra; and, "before the close of the fifteenth century, the different works published in the Imperial city alone, had amounted to nearly one thousand!”

Just observing that William Caxton was the father of English printing, we will hear Mr. Anderson on the wider diffusion of the art :

Bamberg, in Franconia, and Cologne, had preceded Rome; and in ten years only after the capture of Mentz, the art had reached to upwards of thirty cities and towns, including Venice and Strasburg, Paris and Antwerp; in only ten years more ninety other places had followed the example, including Basil and Brussels, Westminster, Oxford, and London, Geneva, Leipsic, and Vienna. With regard to Germany, the mother country of this invention, Koberger of Nuremberg was supposed to be the most extensive printer of the fifteenth century. Having 24 presses and 100 men constantly at work; besides employing the presses of Switzerland and France, he printed at least twelve editions of the Latin Bible. And when we turn to the native capital of the reigning Pontiff, Venice, where printing had commenced only two years after Rome, what had ensued in the next thirty, or before 1500? Panzer has reckoned up not fewer than 198 printers in VENICE alone, more than sixty of whom had commenced business before the year 1480; and altogether, by the close of the century, they

had put forth at least 2980 distinct publications, among which are to be found more than twenty editions of the Latin Bible. As the roman letter was first used in Rome, so the italic was in Venice, where ALDUS had offered a piece of gold for every typographical error which could be detected in any of his printed pages.

In short, before the close of this century, a space of only thirty-eight years from the capture of Mentz, the press was busy, in at least 220 different places throughout Europe, and the number of printing-presses was far above a thousand! This rapidity, rendered so much the more astonishing from the art having risen to its perfection all at once, producing works so beautiful that they have never been excelled, has been often remarked, though it has never yet been fully described. To mark its swift and singular career throughout Europe with accuracy and effect, would require a volume; and, to certain readers, it would prove one of the deepest interest. (Page 1x.)

All this was but preparatory. Architecture, painting, statuary, song, printing, had yet effected no real improvement among the MASSES. These elegancies first served the dominant Church, which did not fail to array itself in their charms; and, when a hundred editions of the Latin Bible had come forth, Rome still claimed to be the capital of the Christian world.

From the early age of Wickliffe, and notwithstanding the sanguinary

law of Henry IV., many secretly cherished the principles that wrought out the Reformation. Mr. Anderson cannot allow to Switzerland, or Germany, or France, a prior zeal in this cause. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, appeared Lefevre, Zuinglius, Luther, and Tyndale; but each, in his own country, was individually prompted by a silent influence,—the visitation of omnipresent mercy. A vivacious author of the present day rightly says, Germany did not communicate the light of truth to Switzerland, nor Switzerland to France, nor France to England: all these lands received it from God, just as no one region transmits the light to another, but the same orb dispenses it direct to the earth." The methods of divine Providence, in carrying on the simultaneous work in its various scenes, are thus indicated by the Annalist :—

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The secret and universal Mover being once acknowledged, upon advancing only a single step farther, we instantly discover that a marked distinction has been drawn between our own separate island, and all other countries on the adjoining Continent. In France, but more especially in Switzerland and Germany, there was the living voice, throughout life, of the man raised up, calling upon his countrymen to hear and obey the truth; and so God had ordered it in England, a century and a half before, in the case of Wickliffe. But now His procedure is altogether different, and out of the usual course pursued in other lands. Tyndale had lifted up his voice, it is true, boldly, and with some effect; but he is withdrawn from his native land, and never to return. The island is left behind by him, and left for good. In

other countries the man lives and dies at home. Lefevre, when above a hundred years old, weeps because he had not felt and displayed the courage of a martyr ; Zuinglius dies in battle for his country; and Luther, after all his noble intrepidity, expires in his sick chamber; but Tyndale is strangled and burnt to ashes, and in a foreign land. Englishmen, and Scotsmen, and Germans, are gathered together against him; yes, against the man who enjoyed the honour of having never had a Prince for his patron or protector all his days; men of three nations at least concur to confer upon him the crown of martyrdom; so that, among all his contemporaries, in several points of view, but especially as a translator of the Scriptures, he stands alone.

(Vol. i., p. 3.)

Julius II., the reigning Pope from 1503 to 1513, was warlike, not literary. To Michael Angelo, inquiring whether he would be represented in statuary with a book in his left hand, this militant successor of Apostles candidly said, "No,-give me a sword, I am no scholar." He first checked the Venetian power; but England and Scotland he regarded as unwaveringly loyal to his throne,-offering to their rulers the styles of "Most Christian King," and "Defender of the Faith." His successor, Leo X., gave Wolsey a Cardinal's red hat. Circumstances of European history, well known, inflamed with high ambition this English Churchman and his young King Henry VIII. In delusive prospect the one saw the Cæsars' throne; and the other, the chair of Peter. Not only was the fascinating Wolsey made Lord Chancellor,-the office being then clerical,—but he became the correspondent of allied Sovereigns, and the Plenipotentiary of Leo, besides a long list of other honours and emoluments, both English and foreign. But of the Papal throne he was bitterly and repeatedly disappointed.

Not a few Englishmen had resorted to the seats of learning in the brighter South of Europe; and Henry's court was flatteringly described by Erasmus as superior to any academy of learning. Yet, among the men that adorned and amused it, there was none that thought of giving the message of an infinitely higher Court, in an availing form, to myriads of alienated, yet pitied and redeemed, subjects. In justice to the narrative,

Mr. Anderson remarks the intimate connexion then subsisting between Britain and Rome, and the twelve sources of income hence enjoyed by the latter. This result of Papal alliance is, of course, quite in order. The magnetic needle, as a writer of celebrity observes, "turns away from the rising sun, from the meridian, from the occidental, from regions of fragrancy and gold and gems, and moves with unerring impulse to the frosts and deserts of the North :" but the needle is not more true to the pole, than Rome in reversing that inclination. The fiscal arrangement, to which reference has been made, Mr. Anderson describes as "operating on the inhabitants" of our land "without any exception, and with as much regularity as the rising and setting of the sun. It was a pecuniary connexion of immense power, made to bear upon the general conscience, which knew no pause by day, no pause by night, falling, as it did, not merely on the living, but on the dying and the dead!"

In no other country throughout Europe, without exception, was it so probable that this system, in all its oppressive and fearful integrity, would be maintained. Under an imperative Monarch, originally educated as an ecclesiastic, and who now gloried in his acquaintance with scholastic divinity; with a Prime Minister so well known to every foreign court, and who himself breathed with ardour after the Pontificate, England had become

the right arm or main-stay of this system. Nay, as if to render this still more apparent, and so fix the eye of posterity, the King upon the throne had resolved to distinguish himself as the reputed author, in support of this singular power; and he became at once the first and the only Sovereign in Europe who was understood to have lifted his pen in defence and defiance. * *

(Vol. i., p. 11.)

The diocess of Worcester, then spreading from Kidderminster to the border of Somerset, and containing numerous "mitred abbeys," was commonly enjoyed by non-resident Italians. Men at the Pontiff's ear, and often his most unscrupulous myrmidons, obtained this see. But hence arose a man to give the people the word of life. Obscurity hangs on the date of TYNDALE's birth. According to our annalist, that event occurred about 1485, within the hundred of Berkeley, Gloucestershire. Into the question of Tyndale's ancestors, and their residence and name as affected by the war of the Roses, we need not go. It is mentioned, as a "curious fact," that he was "nurtured upon ground held immediately by the Crown, which was afterwards farmed for Italian bishops, by Cardinal Wolsey." Opportunely for the education of the future translator, attention had been much directed to the learned languages; notwithstanding many an invective from the pulpit, and many an admonition to beware of Greek, lest it should be the vehicle of heresy,—and of Hebrew, lest the student should become a Jew, or like one! "In short, and without mentioning single portions of the sacred volume, by the year 1526, there had been published fourteen editions of the Hebrew Bible, in folio, quarto, and octavo, with and without points; and it is especially to be remembered, that divine Providence had so overruled the whole, that not one of the sacred originals, whether in Hebrew or Greek, had ever been restrained by any Government, however absolute." As to our own country, it is sufficient to cite the mandate of Henry, transmitted to the University of Oxford, "that the study of the Scriptures, in the original languages, should not only be permitted for the future, but received as a branch of the academical institution."

Tyndale was brought up at St. Mary Magdalen's Hall, Oxford; probably at the charges of his parents. He afterwards removed to Cambridge. That he was a diligent and successful student, many large portions of our

authorized version-which are his, without alteration-will show. As early as his University days, there is reason to affirm, his mind was carefully turned to matters bearing on his future usefulness. But it was in Gloucestershire that his purposes were matured.

The opposition of the Priests became stormy. Their conferences were held in ale-houses! and they called forth, from the tutor, a train of remark which cannot be followed without lively interest :

"A thousand books," says he, "had they lever (rather) to be put forth against their abominable doings and doctrine, than that the Scripture should come to light. For as long as they may keep that down, they will so darken the right way with the mist of their sophistry, and so tangle them that either rebuke or despise their abominations, with arguments of philosophy, and with worldly similitudes, and apparent reasons of natural wisdom; and with wresting the Scriptures unto their own purpose, clean contrary unto the process, order, and meaning of the text; and so delude them in descanting upon it with allegories; and amaze them, expounding it in many senses before the unlearned lay people, (when it hath but one simple literal sense, whose light the owls cannot abide,) that though thou feel in

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thine heart, and art sure, how that all is false that they say, yet couldst thou not solve their subtle riddles.

"Which thing only moved me to translate the New Testament. Because I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text: for else whatsoever truth is taught them, these enemies of all truth quench it again-partly with the smoke of their bottomless pit, (whereof thou readest in Apocalypse, chap. ix.,) that is, with apparent reasons of sophistry, and traditions of their own making; and partly in juggling with the text, expounding it in such a sense as is impossible to gather of the text itself." (Page 33.)

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The Priests, Tyndale among them, were soon summoned to appear before the Chancellor of the diocess. But, little knowing what the offender was destined to achieve, the "Italianized" tribunal simply dealt out to him a measure of abuse, and allowed an occasion to pass which would have been bought back at a costly rate. Returning to Little Sodbury, Tyndale was sustained in his opinions by finding an ex-Chancellor in the neighbourhood, whose ecclesiastical experience had led him, though quietly, to renounce the Pope. But he was roused by the dictum of a different theologian, who, pressed by argument, said, "We were better to be without God's laws, than the Pope's!" This exclamation (alas! characteristic of the times) drew forth the memorable words of indignant piety, an utterance worthy of the Sapphic eulogy, xpvooù xpvσorépa, more golden than gold:" "I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and IF GOD SPARE MY LIFE, ERE MANY YEARS, I WILL CAUSE A BOY THAT DRIVETH THE PLOUGH TO KNOW MORE OF THE SCRIPTURE THAN YOU DO!" The author of such a statement was, of course, denounced as a heretic in sophistry, a heretic in logic, and now also a heretic in divinity." He found it necessary to withdraw from the Italian diocess of Worcester; and Foxe reports his words to Sir John: "Sir, I perceive that I shall not be suffered to tarry long in this country, neither shall you be able, though you would, to keep me out of the hands of the spirituality; and also what displeasure might grow thereby to you for keeping me, God knoweth; for the which I should be right sorry." The flattering praise bestowed by Erasmus on Tunstal, Bishop of London, ("one of the future burners of the New Testament!") led Tyndale to dream of finding a sanctuary for his toils in the episcopal residence. But his "Lordship's house was full;" and Tyndale gained nothing by offering his translation from Isocrates, except, perhaps, an undesigned testimony to his literary competency. He remained in London almost a year, for the most part under the roof of Humphrey Munmouth, a wealthy citizen; and "he used to preach at St. Dunstan'sin-the-West, Fleet-street." Of this hospitable man it will be interesting