he purely literary point of view, the
English Bible is of the utmost importance for study. Suppose we glance for
a moment at the principal events in the history of this evolution.

The first translation of the Bible into a Western tongue was that made by
Jerome (commonly called Saint Jerome) in the fourth century; he translated
directly from the Hebrew and other Arabic languages into Latin, then the
language of the Empire. This translation into Latin was called the
Vulgate,--from _vulgare_, "to make generally known." The Vulgate is still
used in the Roman church. The first English translations which have been
preserved to us were made from the Vulgate, not from the original tongues.
First of all, John Wycliffe's Bible may be called the foundation of the
seventeenth century Bible. Wycliffe's translation, in which he was helped
by many others, was published between 1380 and 1388. So we may say that
the foundation of the English Bible dates from the fourteenth century, one
thousand years after Jerome's Latin translation. But Wycliffe's version,
excellent as it was, could not serve very long: the English language was
changing too quickly. Accordingly, in the time of Henry VIII Tyndale and
Coverdale, with many others, made a new translation, this time not from
the Vulgate, but from the Greek text of the great scholar Erasmus. This
was the most important literary event of the time, for "it coloured the
entire complexion of subsequent English prose,"--to use the words of
Professor Gosse. This means that all prose in English written since Henry
VIII has been influenced, directly or indirectly, by the prose of
Tyndale's Bible, which was completed about 1535. Almost at the same time a
number of English divines, under the superintendence of Archbishop
Cramner, gave to the English language a literary treasure scarcely
inferior to the Bible itself, and containing wonderful translations from
the Scriptures,--the "Book of Common Prayer." No English surpasses the
English of this book, still used by the Church; and many translators have
since found new inspiration from it.

A revision of this famous Bible was made in 1565, entitled "The Bishops'
Bible." The cause of the revision was largely doctrinal, and we need not
trouble ourselves about this translation farther than to remark that
Protestantism was reshaping the Scriptures to suit the new state religion.
Perhaps this edition may have had something to do with the determination
of the