QUERIES.
QUERIES RESPECTING PURVEY ON THE APOCALYPSE, AND BONNER ON THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS.
I beg leave to make the two following Queries:—
1. In Bayle's very useful work, Scriptorum Illustrium Majoris Brytanniæ Catalogus, fol. Bas. 1559, among the writings ascribed to John Purvey, one of Wycliffe's followers, and (as Walden styles him) Glossator, is mentioned Commentarius in Apocalypsin, beginning "Apocalypsis, quasi diceret;" and Bayle adds:—
"Prædictus in Apocalypsin Commentarius ex magistri Wielevi lectionibus publicis per Joannem Purvæum collectus, et nunc per Martinum Lutherum, Ante centum annos intitularus, anno Domini 1528, sine authoris nomine, Witembergæ fuit excusus. Fuit et ipse Author in carcere, ac cathenis insuper chalybeis, cum ea Commentaria scripsit, ut ex decimo et undecimo ejus scripti capite apparet. Scripsit autem Purvæus hunc librum anno Domini 1390, ut ex decimo tertio capite et principio vigesimi apparet."
This account of Bayle (who is mistaken, however, about the title of the work) is confirmed by Panzer; who, in his Annales, vol. ix. p. 87. enters the volume thus, "Commentarius in Apolcalypsin ante Centum Annos æditus, cum Præfatione Maritini Lutheri. Wittembergæ, 1528. 8vo." Can any of your readers refer me to a copy of this book in a public library, or in private hands?
2. In Lewis's History of the Translations of the Bible, edit. 1818. p. 25., he quotes a work of Bishop Bonner, "Of the Seven Sacraments, 1555," in which a manuscript English Bible is cited by the Bishop, as then in his possession, "translated out of Latyne in tyme of heresye almost eight-score years before that tyme, i.e. about 1395, fayre and truly written in parchment." Lewis proceeds to conjecture, that this MS. was the same which is preserved in the Bodleian Library under the mark Fairfax, 2. And in this erroneous supposition he has been followed by later writers. The copy in question, which belonged to Bonner, is actually in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, No. 25., and contains the Pentateuch in the earlier Wycliffite version (made, no doubt, by Nicholas Hereford), whilst the rest of the Old and New Testament is in the later or revised translation by Purvey and his coadjutors. What I now wish to inquire about, is, where can I meet with a copy of Bonner's work, De Septem Sacramentis, in which the passages occur referred to by Lewis? They are not in A Profitable and Necessarye Doctryne, with certayne Homelies adjoyned, printed in 1555 by John Carood, although one of these homilies is on the subject of the seven sacraments.
F. MADDEN.