In the meantime the Lutheran movement was growing apace in England. In
the last two decades of Henry's reign seven of Luther's tracts and some
of his hymns were translated into English. Five of the tracts proved
popular enough to be reprinted. One of them was _The Liberty of a
Christian Man_, turned into English by John Tewkesbury whom, having
died for his faith, More called "a stinking martyr." The hymns and
some of the other tracts were Englished by Miles Coverdale. In
addition to this there was translated an account of Luther's death in
1546, the Augsburg Confession and four treatises of Melanchthon, and
one each of Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Bullinger,--this last reprinted.
Of course these versions are not a full measure of Lutheran influence,
but a mere barometer. The party now numbered powerful preachers like
Latimer and Ridley; Thomas Cranmer the Archbishop of Canterbury and
Thomas Cromwell, since May, 1534, the king's principal secretary. The
adherence of the last named to the Reforming party is perhaps the most
significant sign of the times. As his only object was to be on the
winning side, and as he had not a bit of real religious interest, it
makes it all the more impressive that, believing the cat was about to
jump in the direction of Lutheranism, he should have tried to put
himself in the line of its trajectory {300} by doing all he could to
foster the Reformers at home and the Protestant alliance abroad.
[Sidenote: Coverdale, 1488?-1569]
One of the decisive factors in the Reformation again proved to be the
English Bible, completed, after the end of Tyndale's labors by a man of
less scholarship but equally happy mastery of language, Miles
Coverdale. Of little original genius, he spent his life largely in the
labor of translating tracts and treatises by the German Reformers into
his native tongue. [Sidenote: The English Bible, 1535] His first
great work was the completion of the English Bible which was published
by Christopher Froschauer of Zurich in 1535, the title-page stating
that it had been translated "out of Douche and Latyn"--the "Douche"
being, of course, Luther's German version. For the New Testament and
for the Old Testament as far as the end of Chronicles, Tyndale's
version was used; the rest was by Coverdale. The work was dedicated to
the king, and, as Cromwell had already been considering the
advisability of authorizing the English Bible, this was not an
unwelcome thing. But as the government was as yet unprepared to
recognize work avowedly based on German Protestant versions, [Sidenote:
1537] they resorted to the device of re-issuing the Bible with the name
of Thomas Matthew as translator, though in fact it consisted entirely
of the work of Tyndale and Coverdale. [Sidenote: 1538-9] A light
revision of this work was re-issued as the Great Bible, [Sidenote:
October 11, 1538] and Injunctions were issued by Cromwell ordering a
Bible of the largest size to be set up in every church, and the people
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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