was unsound, to prepare a better translation without delay. If they had been wise in their generation they would have secured the ground when it was offered to them, and gladly complied. But the work of Reformation in England was not to be accomplished, in any one of its purer details, by the official clergy; it was to be done by volunteers from the ranks, and forced upon the Church by the secular arm. The bishops remained for two years inactive. In 1533, the King becoming more peremptory, Cranmer carried a resolution for a translation through Convocation. The resolution, however, would not advance into act. The next year he brought the subject forward again; and finding his brother prelates fixed in their neglect, he divided Tyndal's work into ten parts, sending one part to each bishop to correct. The Bishop of London alone ventured an open refusal; the remainder complied in words, and did nothing.[1]
Finally, the King's patience was exhausted. The legitimate methods having been tried in vain, he acted on his own responsibility. Miles Coverdale, a member of the same Cambridge circle which had given birth to Cranrner, to Latimer, to Barnes, to the Scotch Wishart, silently went abroad with a license from Cromwell; with Tyndal's help[2] he collected and edited the scattered portions; and in 1536[3] there appeared in London, published cum privilegio and dedicated to Henry VIII., the
- ↑ Lewis's History of the English Bible.
- ↑ This is denied by Mr Westcott. Strype, writing from documents which no longer survive, says that Tyndal translated every part of the Bible except the Apocrypha, and that he had Coverdale's assistance in preparing the Bible which was printed in 1535. Life of Cranmer, p. 83.
- ↑ The printing was completed in October, 1535.
