In spite of the fact, then, that the actual work of publication was done at Basel, we may fairly count this great work as one of the fruits of the English period. Rightly to estimate the value of this service to the cause of a reasonable Christianity, we must consider for a moment the conditions of biblical scholarship in the year 1511. That the ultimate appeal in matters of Christian faith lay to the inspired word of the recognised canon of Scripture, no one doubted for a moment. True, the governing powers of the Church had insisted that alongside this source of truth there were two others of equal importance, the tradition of the Church and the authority of the Roman papacy; but Church and papacy had always been conceived of as expressing their own judgment through their interpretation of Scripture. Nothing which they could lay down could ever be in contradiction to the true teaching of the canonical writings. A modern mind would say, therefore, that nothing could have seemed more important to these interpreting agents than to know precisely what the writers whom they were interpreting had said and meant. One would think that every effort would have been made from the beginning to secure and maintain a version of the Scriptures in their original form, of such unquestionable accuracy that all deviations of interpretation could be anticipated and checked. The immense prestige which the Roman government of the Church might thus have secured to itself was deliberately thrown away. Not only did the chief church authority do nothing itself to promote so practical and so profitable an undertaking, but it systematically checked the efforts of individuals and groups of scholars to contribute toward this end. It rested all its own interpretation upon a translation into Latin, the so-called _Vulgata_, which had been made by Jerome in the years just before and just after 400, and repeatedly declared by the Church to be the sole authorised version. This translation was, so far as the New Testament was concerned, a revision of earlier Latin versions carefully compared with the Greek originals. The Old Testament was translated from the original Hebrew with close reference to the Septuagint and the early Greek commentators. The obvious motive of the Church in clinging to this defective presentation of its own supreme authority was the motive of uniformity. The longer the correction of errors could be postponed, the more hope that no effective criticism of institutions resting, perhaps, on errors would arise.