directed every parish priest to supply his church with a copy of the whole Bible, editions, based all of them on the translation of Tyndal, followed each other in rapid succession. The bishops, who had undertaken to supply a version satisfactory to Catholic orthodoxy, had still left their work untouched. The King would not be trifled with. The Bible, in some shape, his subjects should possess; and if unsupplied by the officials of the Church, he would accept the services of volunteers whose heart was in their labours. Coverdale's edition was followed, in 1537, by Matthews's, 'printed with the King's most gracious license;'[1] and the same version, after being revised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, was reprinted in 1538, 1539, 1540, and 1541, under the name of 'The Great Bible,' or 'Cranmer's Bible.' The offence in Tyndal's translation was less in the rendering of the words than in the side-notes, prefaces, and commentaries: by the omission of these the Archbishop had been able to preserve the text almost without change.
Simultaneously, however, other editions were put in circulation, with the private connivance of Cromwell, where the same prudence had not been observed. In 1539 appeared 'Taverner's Bible,' with a summary at the commencement 'of things contained in Holy Scripture,' in which Protestantism of an audacious kind was openly professed. The priesthood was denied; masses and purgatory were ignored; the sacraments were described as nothing but outward signs; and the eucharist
- ↑ Matthews's name is supposed to have been fictitious. There is no real difference between his version and that of Coverdale.
