16. =JOHN WICLIFFE.=--John Wicliffe,* or John de Wycliffe, was born at the village of Hipswell, near Richmond, in Yorkshire, in the year 1324. He died at the vicarage of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, in the year 1384, at the age of sixty. He was the first Englishman who attempted to make a complete translation of the Scriptures. Of this work, however, the Gospels alone can be certainly identified as the work of Wicliffe himself. The Old Testament and apocryphal books were translated principally by Nicolas de Hereford, and it is supposed that his work was interrupted in 1382, and that the Bible was completed about that time by extracting the text of the gospels from Wicliffe’s commentary on the gospels (written in 1360), and adding to it a new translation of the rest of the New Testament. A later version was finished by Wicliffe’s friend, John Purvey, about 1388, and appears to be mainly a revision of the work of Hereford and Wicliffe. The later is a less close and literal version than the former, and is expressed in more idiomatic and less laboured English. 17. =OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS HISTORY.=--The first fresh translation from the original sources was that of =William Tyndale=. His New Testament, printed at Cologne and at Worms, reached the English shores in 1526, and was followed three years later by the Pentateuch. To this translation our authorised version owes much of its peculiar force and beauty. The first complete English Bible was that of =Miles Coverdale=, which appeared in 1535. In April 1539 appeared the =Great Bible= (so called from its large size), prepared by Coverdale at Paris, but completed in London under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell. The translation of the psalms in the Great Bible has remained, without alteration, the Psalter in the Book of Common Prayer. During the last year of Mary’s reign and the beginning of Elizabeth’s, the English refugees at Geneva completed a fresh revision of the Great Bible, which was published in 1560, in a handy size, with a marginal commentary, and the chapters divided into verses. The =Genevan version= (sometimes called the Breeches Bible), became popular with the Puritans, and more than two hundred editions of it were published, and it gave way slowly before the present authorised version. Soon after Elizabeth’s accession, Archbishop Parker organised a revision of the Great Bible of 1539, which was published in 1568, and became known as the =Bishops’ Bible=. During Elizabeth’s reign, the Popish exiles at Rheims produced a new version from the Vulgate, which was printed at Douay in 1609, and is known as the =Douay Bible=. The English Bible which is now recognised as the ‘=authorised version=’ wherever the English language is spoken, is a revision of the Bishops’ Bible, begun in 1604 and finished in 1611. Of this noble version many millions have been printed, and its general acceptance by all English-speaking people is the best testimony to its excellence. No book has had so great an