P023 Interval of a Century and a Half.

P023 Interval of a Century and a Half. In 1408, at a Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, held in Oxford, under Archbishop Arundel, a decree was passed forbidding the translation or the use of "any books of this kind composed lately in the time of John Wycliffe, or since his death." In the Parliament of 1414 a law was passed prohibiting every one from reading the Scriptures in English under penalty of forfeiting "land, catel, lif, and goods, from theyr heyres for ever." In spite of these restrictions copies were multiplied and read. Some bought, others borrowed.

Sometimes(1) poor people united their means and purchased a book, which they owned in common. The entire manuscript Bible cost five marks, equal to over two hundred dollars of our money, so that many had to be satisfied with small portions of the book.

They were ready to suffer persecution and even death for the possession of God’s word.

This, opposition to the reading of the Bible was especially violent in the early part of the fifteenth century. The years 1509 to 1517, and above them all the year 1521, were particularly noted for bitter persecution. Still the people read.

There were reading associations called "Brothers in Christ," meeting chiefly in London, but also at different places in the Counties of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Buckingham.

They owned various parts of the manuscript Bible, which they read at their meetings.

During the interval we are considering Bibles were printed in German and in other languages,(1) so that other nations had the Scriptures in print years before the English people.

Caxton printed the "Golden Legend" in 1483, but the Scripture it contained was mingled with romance.(2) The first portion of the Bible ever printed in English consisted of the penitential psalms, on which Bishop Fisher prepared seven sermons in 1505. It was called, "The Fruytful Saynges of Davide in the seven penitential Psalmes; devyded in seven sermons." As we get nearer to the time for the appearing of the first printed English Testament we find on every side tokens of the coming Reformation, of which Wycliffe has been very appropriately called "the Morning Star."

------------ (FN1)See pp. 12, 13.

(FN2)See p. 16.

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