An order follows, of more significance: "Every parson or proprietary of every parish church within this realm shall, on this side of the feast of St. Peter ad Vincula next coming,[74] provide a book of the whole Bible, both in Latin and also in English, and lay the same in the quire, for every man that will to read and look therein; and shall discourage no man from reading any part of the Bible, but rather comfort, exhort, and admonish every man to read the same, as the very word of God and the spiritual food of man's soul; ever gently and charitably exhorting them, that using a sober and modest behaviour in the reading and inquisition of the true sense of the same, they do in nowise stiffly or eagerly contend or strive one with another about the same, but refer the declaration of those places that be in controversy to the judgment of the learned." [Sidenote: Translations existing before the Reformation.] The publication of the English translation of the Bible, with the permission for its free use among the people--the greatest, because the purest victory so far gained by the Reformers--was at length accomplished; a few words will explain how, and by whom. Before the Reformation, two versions existed of the Bible in English--two certainly, perhaps three. One was Wicliffe's; another, based on Wicliffe's, but tinted more strongly with the peculiar opinions of the Lollards, followed at the beginning of the fifteenth century; and there is said to have been a third, but no copy of _this_ is known to survive, and the history of it is vague.[75] The possession or the use of these translations was prohibited by the Church, under pain of death. They were extremely rare, and little read; and it was not till Luther's great movement began in Germany, and his tracts and commentaries found their way into England, that a practical determination was awakened among the people, to have before them, in their own tongue, the book on which their faith was built. [Sidenote: Tyndal's New Testament.] [Sidenote: Rapid sale in England.]