In 128 A. D., Aquila made another translation, it is thought in favor of the more zealous Jews and to the prejudice of Christians, and not as fair a work as the Septuagint, and in 300 A. D., Diocletian added to the infamies of the tenth great persecution an attempt to destroy the Bible by seizing and burning all copies that could be found. He is Jehoiachim No. 3. Such attempts in fulfillment of the declarations of the text are like the effort to exterminate a ripened head of wheat by stamping it beneath your feet; the next year many thrifty growths will laugh at the result.
In the early part of the fifth century good Saint Jerome, one of the most distinguished of the Latin fathers, profound in learning and devout of heart, collected all the important translations that preceded him, took up his residence in Palestine and made a very thorough version, called the Latin Vulgate, and used by our Catholic friends ever since, an important aid in all subsequent Bible work.
In 500 the Emperor Justinian decreed, to quell some discussion about the preferences of versions, that either might be used with entire liberty in any part of the realm. It is supposed that the Jewish sentiment, vacillating for some time between liberal views and their characteristic conservatism, rebounded at this decree and led to a tenacity for their own ancient language, to which they have since scrupulously adhered, reading mostly throughout their wide dispersion the ancient characters of Job and Moses, but some, as at Frankfort in Germany, using the Chaldaic shading of Ezra’s version. From a little before 600 we are able very definitely to trace the way of the book in England. There was dense ignorance among the masses of common people throughout the middle ages, but the convents and the great monasteries were some of them nevertheless centers of great learning. The Jews of England from the first kept a clear knowledge of their old writings, and furnished men in every century eminent in scholarship. Monks, so inclined, had little else to do but to eat and study, and God perpetuated through their work the knowledge of his word. I was shown in the British Museum a copy of the Gospels in Latin, of exquisite beauty, done by Eadfrid in the seventh century. It is on excellent paper, in red and black characters, executed almost with the precision of type. Near the close of that century Cædmon, the father of English poetry, translated portions of the Scripture into the Saxon or early English.
A fragment of manuscript written by Aldhelm, a bishop, in 706, praises the nuns for their fidelity in the daily reading of the holy Scriptures, a circumstance that indicates both that there was something of education among the convents, and also that they doubtless had many copies of Scripture manuscripts. Aldhelm himself is known to have translated fifty of the Psalms into the early English.
A bright picture comes to us by the pen of Saint Cuthbert in 735. On the 26th of May—Ascension Day—cloudless and beautiful toward its closing, there were silent tread and hushed voices among the monks of a great monastery in the county of Durham, in England. All attention along the cloisters was directed toward the passageway of one cell, and eager inquiries of all who came thence if the dying one were still alive.
Within the cell, on a low white bed, was the feeble form of an old man, bolstered up that his eye might rest upon either of the manuscripts supported in position on and about his bed. At a table near him was seated a scribe writing every word which the pale lips spake. One listening heard the scribe say, “There is only one chapter left, master, but you are too weary now, and you must sleep.” “No, go on, it is very easy, write rapidly,” was the reply; and so the writing proceeded according to the faint dictation of the exhausted old man, until he seemed to fall asleep. The scribe awoke him again, and the glassy eyes brightened as the old man heard, “Master, there is but one verse now,” and with an effort to fix the drooping eyes upon the adjusted scrolls, there came slowly forth, one by one, the words of the last verse of John’s gospel, and when the “Amen” was pronounced, the whitened head sank among the pillows lightened with the last rays of the setting sun, as it streamed through the grated window, and the bloodless lips murmured forth, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,” when the form of the Venerable Bede was still, and the awful silence of death followed immediately the ending of his translation.
Portions of the Word were also translated in the ninth century, and were authorized by King Alfred. He himself did something at translating, and was careful to have nicely executed, as a preface to every published code, the manuscript of the Decalogue. It might exercise a salutary effect if our statesmen, every law they read, might also have the ten commandments before them. King Alfred made the declaration more than once that he desired to see the day when all men in his kingdom would be able to read God’s word.
Elfrac also, after Alfred, from 1004 to 1030, translated portions of the Scriptures into English.
But the last manuscript translation of the English Scriptures is greater than any which preceeded it, and the only one which can be called a popular edition. The quaint old stone church of Saint Mary is still standing in Leicestershire, where John Wycliffe preached when in 1830 he completed his translation. He had long been the fiery lecturer at Oxford, and had come into sore conflict with ignorant priests of the papacy for his enunciations of religious liberty and his schemes for the better education of the masses of the people. So that when his translation was finished a strong hatred sought his life. He was cited to Rome, but being too feeble to go, he was buried in his own parish. Forty years afterward, however, the same council which burned John Huss exhumed the bones of Wycliffe, and having burned them, they gathered the ashes and scattered them into the river which had the significant name of “Swift,” down which they found their way through other rivers into the ocean, and were washed, it would seem, with the strength of Wycliffe’s spirit, upon every shore of the world. There were as many as one hundred and seventy copies of the Wycliffe version made with busy pens, and circulated secretly, but widely read, thus preparing the way for greater works thereafter, and confirming the propriety of calling their author “The Morning Star of the Reformation.”
A few years since I stood long before the great bronze statue of Gutenberg in Mayence on the Rhine, a place now of over fifty thousand population. All citizens are eager to show any American that can make out to ask it, the site of the building where the invention of printing with movable type was made about 1450. The house still stands where Gutenberg lived, and another in which he did his first work with his press. Twenty-five years later printing began in England, and in another twenty-five years there were in the world over two hundred and twenty places where printing was done. I took a walk on the heights back of Bristol, in England, and was asked if I was seeking Sudbury, the old manor, which I was not, but accidentally had it pointed out to me where Sir John Walsh lived, when he employed for the instruction of his children a young priest, a fine scholar and a great reader. The fact that he devoted so much of his time and thought to the Scriptures, and even taught children to read it, produced some sensation in the community. In June, 1523, at a dining, the young priest suffered some rebuke for his liberal handling of the Scriptures by the pompous parish priest, who was present, and who, among other things, declared that it was better even to disobey a law of God than a law of the Pope. At this the opposition in the heart of the young priest became very decided, and his reply was almost in these words: “I hope to live to see even the ploughboys of England knowing more of the Word of God than either yourself or the Pope.” That young priest’s name was William Tyndale. When it was noised about that his pen was busy preparing a translation of the Bible for print, he was obliged to fly abroad on the continent, where at Cologne on the Rhine he printed a few sheets, then fled again to Worms, where he printed all of his translation, and was soon thereafter imprisoned in Antwerp for six months, during which time he converted the jailor and his family. He was then strangled and burned at the stake, his last words being, “May the Lord open the King of England’s eyes.”