72G THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
that it was on account of errors that Wyclif 's version had been condemned. He was striving to parry the charge that the Church had withhehl the Bible from popuhir use, but, whatever the interpretation put upon his words may be (see this volume, p. 348), the fact remains that the English were slow in getting any printed version of their own and that the Catholic party issued none till the close of the 16th century.
Distinct witness is borne by Tyndale to the unwillingness of the old party to have the Bible in English, in these words : " Some of the papists say it is impossible to translate the Scriptures into English, some that it is not lawful for the layfolk to have it in the mother-tongue, some that it would make them all heretics."^ After the new views were quite prevalent in England, the English Bible had a hard time in winning the right to be read. Tyndale's version, for the printing ^of which he found no room in England, was at Wolsey's instaniie proscribed by Henry VHI. and the famous burning of 152J in S^.FaUl's churchyard of a1^ the copies Bishop Tonstall could lay his hands on will always rise up to rebuke those who try to make it appear that the circulation of the Word of God was intended by the Church authorities to be free. Tyndale declared that, " in burning the New Testament, the papists did none other thing than I looked for ; no more shall they do if they burn me also." Any fears he may have had were realized in his execution at Vilvorde, 1536.2 No doubt, the priest repre-
1 Pre/, to the Pentateuch, Parker Soc. ed., Tyndale'-s Doctr. Works, p. 302. Arundel did not adduce any errors in Wyclif s version. Abbot Gasquet, in The Old Engl. Bible, p. 108, and Eve of the Beform., p. 209 sqq., attempts to show that the Bible was not a proscribed book in England before the Reformation. The testimonies he adduces, commending the Scriptures, are so painfully few as to seem to make bis case a hopeless one. Dixon, Hist, of the Ch. of Engl., I. 451, speaks of Arundel's "proclaiming the war of authority against English versions."
2 Cochlajus informed the English authorities of Tyndale's presence in Wittenberg and his proposed issue of the English N. T., in order to prevent "the importation of the pernicious merchandise." Tonstall professed to have discovered no less than 2000 errors in Tyndale's N. T. See Fulke's Defence in Parker Soc. ed., p. 61. Tyndale, Pref. to the Pent., p. 373, says, that "the papists who had found all their Scripture before in their Duns or such like devilish doctrine, now spy out mistakes in my transl., even if it be only the dot of an i."
§ 77. STUDY AND CIRCULATION OF THE BIBLE. 727
sented a large class when he rebuked Tyndale for proposing to translate the Bible in the words, " We were better without God's laws than the pope's." The martyr Hume's body was hung when an English Bible was found on his person. _Li_1543ithe reading of the Scriptures was forbidden in England except to persons of ^quality. The Scotch joined the English authorities when the Synod of St. AndrewSiJL529i forbade the importation of Bibles into Scotland^,
In France, according to the testimony of the famous printer Robert Stephens, who was born in 1503, the doctors of the Sorbonne, in the period when he was a young man, knew about the New Testament mily from quotations from Jerome and the Decretals. He declared that he was more than^O years old before he knew anything about the New Testament. Luther was^ man before he saw a copy of the Latin Bible. in 1533, Geneva forbade its citizens to read the Bible in German or French and ordered all translations burnt.^ The strict inquisition of books would have passed to all countries, if the hierarchy had had its way. In 1535, Francis I. closed the printing-presses and made it a capital offence in France to publish a religious book without authorization from the Sorbonne. The attitude of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, since the Reformation as well as during the Reformation, has been against the free circulation of the Bible. In the 19th century, one pope after another anathematized Bible societies. In Spain, Italy and South America, the punishments visited upon Bible colporteurs and the frequent burning of the Bible itself have been quite in the line of the decrees of Arundel and Bertholdt and the treatment of Bishop Tonstall. Nor will it be forgotten that, at the time Rome was made^the capital of Italy in 1870i apapal law required that copies of the Bible found in the possession of visitors to the papal city be confiscateii.
On the other hand, through the agency of the Reformers, the book was made known and offered freely to all classes. What use the Reformers hoped to make of printing for the dis-
1 See Baird: Hist, of the Huguenots, I. 57 ; Lindsay: The Beformation, II. 80.