. "Upon this
account," writes Strype, "Cheke seemed to dislike the English
translation of the Bible, because in it there were so many foreign
words. Which made him once attempt a new translation of the New
Testament, and he completed the gospel of St. Matthew. And made an
entrance into St. Mark; wherein all along he labored to use only true
Anglo-Saxon words."[201] Since Cheke's translation remained in
manuscript till long after the Elizabethan period, its influence was
probably not far-reaching, but his uncompromising views must have had
their effect on his contemporaries. Taverner's Bible, a less extreme
example of the same tendency, seemingly had no influence on later
renderings.[202]

Regarding the value of synonyms there is considerable comment, the
prevailing tendency of which is not favorable to unnecessary
discrimination between pairs of words. This seems to be the attitude of
Coverdale in two somewhat confused passages in which he attempts to
consider at the same time the signification of the original word, the
practice of other translators, and the facts of English usage. Defending
diversities of translations, he says, "For that one interpreteth
something obscurely in one place, the same translateth another, or else
he himself, more manifestly by a more plain vocable of the same meaning
in another place."[203] As illustrations Coverdale mentions scribe and
lawyer; elders, and father and mother; repentance, penance, and
amendment; and continues: "And in this manner have I used in my
translation, calling it in one place penance that in another place I
call repentance; and that not only because the interpreters have done so
before me, but that the adversaries of the truth may see, how that we
abhor not this word penance as they untruly report of us, no more than
the interpreters of Latin abhor poenitare, when they read rescipiscere."
In the preface to the Latin-English Testament of 1535 he says: "And
though I seem to be all too scrupulous calling it in one place penance,
that in another I call repentance: and gelded that another calleth
chaste, this methinks ought not to offend the saying that the holy ghost
(I trust) is the author of both our doings ... and therefore I heartily
require thee think no more harm in me for calling it in one place
penance that in another I call repentance, than I think harm in him that
calleth it chaste, which by the nature of this word _Eunuchus_ I call
gelded ... And for my part I