gunpowder spittle and parchment

8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment

1/221

GUNPOWDER,

SPITTLE &PARCHMENT:

The curious origins

of the greatest English Bible

Richard Major


2/221

a talk given

at the four hundredth anniversarycommemoration

of the King James Bibleat Faculty of Teacher Education,Zagreb, Croatia,

on 10 November 2011,


3/221

organised bythe Anglican Chaplaincy of Zagreb

(www.anglican.hr)and

Hravatsko Biblijsko Drutvo(www.hbd.hr)

[email protected]
http://www.anglican.hr/http://www.hbd.hr/http://www.hbd.hr/http://www.anglican.hr/


4/221

Its a great privilege to be here before you. And its a pleasure to be here

to praise something as splendid and beautiful as the King James Bible.Were come together this evening to commemorate the greatest

of all modern bibles. Youll be hearing from Janet Berkovic about itsliterary beauty, and from Jutta Henner about the principles of its

translation.Its my job to tell you why, humanly speaking, the King JamesBible came into existence. Im here to discuss the politics and history.

If you came expecting an edifying story youll be disappointed.Its a matter of intrigue, perversion, menace, and above all of violence:

of gunpowder, spittle and grubby old parchment. The production of theKing James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times.

And that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and sopeaceful. It hadto sound like that.

y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.

Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.


5/221

Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible:

King James himself.y ol

d parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and that, I

will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.


L


6/221

1.

SPITTLE:King James and his Bible


7/221

In spring of 1603 a curious little Scot travelled south to England,

a country he had never seen before.James had been King of Scotland for 33 years.

.y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:

and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.


8/221


9/221

Now at last, after a lifetime of waiting, he had become Kingof the much larger and richer realm of England.

.y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:

and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.


10/221


11/221

It is difficult to like James.Of course hed had a wretched life. His mother was the

infamous

. y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:


12/221

Mary,Queenof Scots


13/221

Mary,Queenof Scots,

the most

notoriouswoman ofthe age.


14/221

Mary,Queenof Scots,

the most

notoriouswoman ofthe age.

His fatherwas


15/221

the pitiful Henry, Lord Darnley,

h f l d l


16/221


a diseased and dimwitted teenager.

h i if l H L d D l


17/221


a diseased and dimwitted teenager.

In March 1566, when Mary was heavily pregnant,Darnleys cronies broke into her bedroom, put a gun to her head,


18/221

and stabbed to death David Rizzio,


19/221

her Italian secretary.


20/221

her Italian secretary.Very soon afterward later James was born; then the house

where Darnley was staying was blown up with gunpowder,


21/221

and Darnley was found in the orchard,


22/221

dead.

Everyone thought Mary was guilty of her husbands assassination.She was forced to abdicate, and fled to England,

where she plotted to murder Queen Elizabeth.

In the end, Elizabeth had to have her


23/221

beheaded.


24/221

Meanwhile

her son,little James Stuart

was, fromthe age of one,


25/221

James VI,King of Scots.


26/221

He grew up ugly andfurtive. He stammered.

His tongue was too bigfor his mouth he had theunfortunate habit of

spitting,

which everyone noticed,which annoyed everyone,


27/221

and which somehow seemed to define him.

James was, in a way,clever, an intellectual but without being,in any sensible

direction, intelligent.He was bookish andfoolish. His nickname

was the wisest fool in

Christendom. He wasa pedant, a bigot and abore. His mind wasfull of bent, bitter,nightmarish notions,


28/221

and so werehis books.


29/221


30/221

The book King James was proudest of was not the King James Bible,

but a treatise he wrote as King of Scots called


31/221

Dmonologie (1597),

which was all about witches:how to detect if they had

got through a keyhole;how to track them down;how to prosecute

and kill them.


32/221


33/221

Such he was,for many decades:King of Scotland;

scribbler of treasties;witch-hunter;red-headed, arrogant, sneaky,

full of spit.


34/221

Such he was,for many decades:King of Scotland;

scribbler of treasties;witch-hunter;red-headed, arrogant, sneaky,

full of spit.

He was waiting, waiting for a death, waiting for his splendid cousin


35/221

Elizabeth I,Queen

of Englandand Ireland,


36/221

to die; and when she did, early in 1603,


37/221

to die; and when she did, early in 1603,

James came south to


38/221

London,


39/221

the greatest metropolis of Christendom,


40/221

to be crowned


41/221

king.


42/221

Great thoughElizabeth had been,England was

tired of her,and expectations

were high for

king.


43/221

King James.

All those expectations were


44/221

disappointed.

His reign wasa failure and ascandal.

England has

never before orsince known


45/221


46/221

a morass ofintrigue,corruption

and depravity.of almostunthinkable

wickedness,

of poisoning,assassinationand debauch.


47/221

James himself was grossly fond of a succession of

a morass ofintrigue,corruption

and depravity.of almostunthinkable

wickedness,

of poisoning,assassinationand debauch.


48/221

beautifulyoung men,

of whomthe very

worst,


49/221

Steenie, createdby JamesDuke of Buckingham,

was allowed to

dominate thegovernment.

James was notoriouseverywhere.

About the time he washaving theKing James Bibleprinted, this


50/221

filthy poemwas being circulatedin France


51/221

James was despised throughout Europe,and under the mismanagement of Buckingham

the prestige of the kingdom sank low.

More seriously, the king abused the English constitution,and bequeathed a civil war to his saintly son and successor.

James was, surely,


52/221

the worst kingwe have ever had.He left our history

defiled withhis spittle.


53/221

But one very good thing came out of James reign.James I commissioned a revised translation of the Bible; and the

beauty and dignity of its English dazzled everyonethen, and eversince. As long as the language lasts, people, religious or not, will readthe King James Version with delight.

The very phrase King Jameshas come to mean, most often, not

the ghastly little monarch, but the glorious book he ordered intoexistence.Did King James commission the King James Bible out of virtue or

poetry or good taste?No; not a bit of it. He commissioned it out of fear. His fear was

the origin of its beauty.y old

parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and that,

I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.


54/221

2.

GUNPOWDER:

The explosive nature of

translating the Bible


55/221

James was full of fearnaturally enough, I suppose. When he was in

the womb hed heard the shrieks and roars as Rizzio was hacked todeath in his mothers chamber. He grew up knowing his mother hadconspired to murder his father with gunpowder. His mother was inprison throughout his boyhood, while his own government connived ather beheading so that he might succeed the woman who killed her. It isnot surprising that James nervous, tyrannical, distrustful.

Being a highbrow, he knew ways to deck out his vices as virtues:he posed as a peacemaker, and took as his motto Beati pacifici, Blessedare the peacemakers.

But the truth is that James was simply afraidafraid of theworld, notably afraid of soldiers, and afraid, most of all, of gunpowder.

y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:

and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.


56/221

Unfortunately, when James arrived in England the situation was indeed

explosive.The Reformation had wrecked the unity of Europe. It had

created a huge civil war in European civilisation, ebbing and flowingover the whole divided Continent.

In 1603 this civil war, eighty years old, was not dying down. Itwas intensifiying. Catholicism, revivified by the Council of Trent, hadreclaimed Austria, Hungary and Poland from the new religion. it wasnow pressing its counter-attack into the heartland of heresy: intoGermany itself.


57/221


58/221

Politically, too, Catholicism was reviving. Its great secular champion,the imperial Hapsburg dynasty, was on the march. The Hapsburgs vastterritories surrounded France



59/221


60/221

and looked across the Narrow Seas at England.

Already religious wars were alight in the Netherlands andIreland, and in beseiged France. It was clear that the whole Continentwas rolling towards a final conflagration, a culmination of all the warsof religion since Luther, a war that would decide the future of European

civilisation.And indeed that war was to erupt while James was still on the

throne. It would go on for thirty years, kill eight million peopleandend, alas, in a draw, so that Europe remained divided; and still does.


61/221

Meanwhile, England herself was divided.In 1603 James found his new kingdom torn into three

antagonistic religious factions.There was

the Established Church the state Church under the domination of


62/221

the Established Church, the state Church, under the domination ofthe monarchy: a Church shapeless, formless.

neither unimpeachably Catholic, nor properly reformed,


63/221

practising that ill-defined sort of Christianity later known as


64/221

Anglicanism.


65/221

Then, on the religious Left, were the party known as the


66/221

Puritans, so-called because they upheld the creed ofpure


67/221

Calvinism. The Puritans thought the English Reformation had

not gone far enough, and they were growing impatient with delay.


68/221

And on the religious Right were the Papists (as they werealways called), who rejected the Reformation altogether,

and remained loyal to the ancient creed of


69/221

Roman Catholicism.


70/221

The government fiercely persecuted the Papists, and intermittentlypersecuted extreme Puritans. And both these groups were increasingly

committed to violent revolution against the government.


71/221

Now, all three religious factions in England had their own Englishversion of the Bible.

Each translation expressed partisan position, and bolstered itsfaction in its position and its militancy.

For nothing in the seventeenth century was more politicallycharged than Bible translation.


72/221

Lets think about Bible translation for a moment.

In the beginning were the actual words, the Hebrewbooks of the Old Testament and the Greek books of the NewTestament.

The only people who can actually read the Bible arethose fluent in ancient Hebrew and Hellenistic Greek. And therehave never been many of them.

A few centuries before Christ, the Jews of the Diasporahad stopped using Hebrew, and their scriptures were translated

into Greek as the Septuagint.


73/221


74/221

Then, as Christianity spread to the West, there were more and moreChristians who couldnt read Greek, either.

The Old and New Testaments were therefore translated into

Latin. The definitive Latin text, produced by St Jerome at the beginningof the fifth century, became known as the Vulgate.


75/221


76/221

The Vulgate is incomparably the most important version of the Bible.

For more than eleven centuries the Vulgate simplywasthe Bible.Latin was the educated language of almost all Christendom, and thevast majority of Christians knew only one Bible, the Vulgate.

It was the verbal expression of the unity of the Church.

Its influence throughout the West was absolutefar greaterthan the influence of the King James Bible in England.The highest praise we can give the King James Bible is that it is

an echo, in one vernacular, of some of the universal authority andpower of the Vulgate.


77/221

Heres a

mediaevalmanuscriptof the

Vulgate Bible;


78/221

This is the Louvain printing of the Vulgate, done in 1583.


79/221

Heres an edition of 1922,showing the In principio, the luminous prologue to John,


80/221


81/221

Its worth stressing that there was no prohibition on translating the


82/221

Vulgate into localptois, and this was often done, when pastorallyusefuljust as people sometimes try to render bits of the English Bible

into various slangs and dialects.For instance, the tenth century Wessex Gospels translated thefour evangelists from Vulgate Latin into a Western dialect of OldEnglish. Heres the Lords Prayer. See if you follow it (represents th):

Fder ure u e eart on heofonum, si in nama gehalgod.To becume in rice, gewure in willa,

on eoran swa swa on heofonum.Urne gedghwamlican hlaf syle us todg, and forgyf us ure gyltas,

swa swa we forgyfa urum gyltendum.And ne geld u us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. Solice.

One of Luthers first acts of rebellion was to produce a Bible ofhis own.


83/221

It was a revolutionary act. Indeed it would have been even morerevolutionary if Luther had had his way. He wanted to make the canon

his own by ejecting certain books: Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude, andRevelation (I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit producedthem,he argued).

He made the text his own, amending it to make the Lutheranintention of the authors more clear. Thus Luthers Bible reads man is

justified alonethrough faith(Romans iii28). That word allein, alone,isnt in the Greek St Paul had forgotten to write itbut Luther wasthere to make the Epistle to the Romans a Lutheran work.

Most importantly, Luther rejected the Vulgate altogether. He

translated and adapted the Hebrew and Greek texts into German, orrather into a version of German of his own devising. And becauseLuthers Bible became so influential, his particular dialect became thefoundation of Modern High German.


84/221


85/221

Lets reflect on the Vulgate.The Vulgate was the Bible of (virtually) all Christendom. The

Church was happy to see cribs produced, so that the illiterate couldhave things read to them in their own parochial speech. But the Vulgateremained, the literary symbol of Christian unity.

Luthers Bible was an attack on the principle of universality. Itwas sectarian, because it meant to vindicate the claims of the new

religion from its own rewriting of scripture; and it was national,designed to be read only by Germans, and even helping to define aseparate Germany by helping forge a separate German literarylanguage.


86/221

Thus in the sixteenth century Bible translation suddenly became an

explosive matter.To revolt against the Vulgate was to revolt against the universal

Church.To create new vernacular Bibles (which sometimes involved

inventinga vernacular) was to set up national Christianities, in revoltagainst the one Latin Church.


87/221

This impulse quickly spread from Germany to other northern nations.One of Luthers first followers in England was a clergyman

named



88/221

WilliamTyndale,


89/221

who left England for Luthers Wittenberg, and in 1525 produced anEnglish version of the New Testamenttranslating straight from theGreek (although naturally he couldnt get the Vulgate out of his head).



90/221

Like Luther Tyndale was anxious to prove that the new religion was


91/221

Like Luther, Tyndale was anxious to prove that the new religion wasthere in the ancient texts, by making the ancient texts consonant withProtestant views.

Thus (presbuteros), which for twelve centuries hadbeen the Christian word forpriest, was translated notpriestbut senior.And (ekklesia) became congregation, not church, lest the NewTestament sound ecclesial.

This was all very provocative. Tyndales Bible was burned by theauthorities, when they could seize it, and Tydnale himself was on thereceiving end of almost a million words of printed abuse by St ThomasMore.


92/221

But even if we grant Mores point,

the fact is that Tyndale wrote themost wonderful English.Heres his version of the

prologue to Johns Gospel. (Note,by the way, how printed Bibles

were touched up by hand to lookmore like manuscripts!)


93/221

In the begynninge was that worde/ and that worde with god: andgod was thatt worde. Its very like the version were used to, theKing James Bible.

And theres no surprise there, for some 83% of the KingJames Bible simplyis Tyndale.


94/221

Well, then: if the King James Bible is not a new translation but a mildrevision, why is it so important? Why are we making a fuss about theKing James Bible, and not about William Tyndale?

That is the question!Well answer it in due course.



95/221

Tyndale, despite his Protestantism, was consistently biblical enough tooppose Henry VIIIs divorce the issue which was the shipwreck ofCatholic England.

His old opponent More was martyed for opposing the divorce in1535, and a few months later Tyndale was captured near Brussels on a

warrant from Henry, and burned at the stake, having first beenstrangled. His last words, famously, were Lord, open the King ofEnglands eyes:


96/221


97/221

Sure enough, within a few years Henry had decided it suited his ownends to co-opt the new religion. He broke definitively with the Pope,began to persecute Catholic loyalists, and commanded the publicationof an official English Bible.

The Coverdale Bible had many weaknesses. Miles Coverdale,

who produced it, wasnt proficient in Hebrew or Greek. So he had tocobble his Bible together from Tyndale, from the Vulgate and evenfrom Luthers German.


98/221


99/221

Worse still, this hodgepodge was obviously a political gambit by the

English monarchy.Henry was quite happy to martyr both More and Tyndale. Hewas happy to have Catholics hanged for treason (for following thePope) and Protestants burned for heresy (for following Luther) on thesame day, in the same market-places. They both had to die, because

they both defied the essence of King Henrys new religion, which washis own role as autocratic Head of the Church.

The English Bible Henry produced was essentially a royalistdocumentand we can see from its

title page


100/221

title page.

At the top are a few images

summarising


101/221

salvation history, from Adam to Christ(note the quotation from the Vulgate!); butthe big important picture is of Henry himself,


102/221

handing out copies ofhis book to his grateful peers and bishops,

kneeling before him.


103/221

Revisions of the Coverdalewere just as overtly political.

Heres the Great Bibleof 1539; Henry is now at thetop of the page

(with Christ crowded


104/221

(with Christ crowdedinto a niche behindthe throne),

and beneath Henrysfeet are scores ofEnglish subjectsreceiving his book

with shouts of


105/221

VIVAT REX!


106/221

GOD SAVETHE KING!


107/221

The Bible said what the King told his translators it said.The divine text was throughly subordinated to the

Tudor project.




108/221

The next revision, the BishopsBible of 1568 (a paticularlyfeeble piece of work, by the

way), had Henrys daughter,

Queen Elizabeth,on its title-page.


109/221

In this half-coloured edition ofthe Bishops Bible she is beingcrowned by Justice and Mercy,and hailed by Fortitude andPrudence, between garlandsand cornucopias and caryatids.

Amidst all this pagan clobberthere is


110/221

no room for any Christian symbol at all!


111/221

While the royal presses were grinding out the official,royal scriptures (the Coverdale, which evolved into the GreatBible, which evolved into the Bishops Bible), the Puritans or

Calvinist zealots were not idle. They were not satisfied by themonarchys shoddy Bibles; they produced their own version,



the Geneva Bible( 6 6)


112/221

(1560, 1576),


113/221


114/221

which in terms of mere scholarship was an advance on Tyndale.Its English was very bold and energetic, too.But here was the problem:

y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and th

argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.



115/221

quite overshadowing thetext of the Geneva Bible

was a preposterously largeand controversial

apparatus:

Ephesians i3-4

headers,defining the subject


116/221

interpolated essays

marginal commentary,setting out Calvinistdoctrine

the actual text


117/221

The divine text was thus thoroughly subordinated to the Calvinistproject.


argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.

The Roman Catholics, meanwhile, answered both the royal andPuritan Bibles with their own English translation.

The Catholic position had hardened in the face of the


118/221

The Catholic position had hardened in the face of thesectarian Bibles of the Protestants. The Council of Trent declared

that the

old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so manyyears, has been approved of in the Church, be held as authentic;

and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretextwhatever .

Christ had promised to remain with His Church, the Catholicsargued, leading His people into all truth; the Vulgate, which had be

authoritative for eleven of the fifteen-and-a-half centuries sinceChrist, wasthe normal vehicle for Christs bibical revelation ofHimself.

Therefore the Catholics counterblast,


119/221

the Douai-RheimsNew Testament of 1582,declared forthrightlythat it was


120/221

translated faithfully out of the authentical Latin, but also diligentlyconferred the Greek. In other words, it aimed at being authoritative,and aimed at the discovery or exposure of


121/221

corruptions of diverse late translationsthe Bishops Bible,the Geneva Bible and the resolution of the controversies inreligion, of these days.

The Douai-Rheims didnt clear away controversy, ofcourse. But it greatly strengthened the Catholic position.They now had an English text translating what Christianshad read as the Bible for over a millennium a text whichdidnt say what the Reformers said the Bible said.


122/221

So what did the Bible say?In 1603 there were three rival English Bibles, each

confidently preaching a different religion, each justifying

violence against the other two.



123/221


124/221

Three different Bibles! Three hostile Christianities!The time for religious reconciliation seemed over The


125/221

The time for religious reconciliation seemed over. Theseason of coexistence was gone. The great controversy was

coming to a head.Europe was slithering towards a final, total religious conflic

the Thirty Years War.In England too there was a dangerous increase in tension.

Expectations had been high when James arrived in England.Puritans hoped he would reform the Church, Papists that he wouldlighten persecution.

But he was a sneaky fellow, as we have seen, used toworming out of promises. Both factions were disappointed and

disgusted with James, and their reaction was terrifyingA group of young papist aristocrats

resolved to move the situation along at the next State Opening.


126/221

resolved to move the situation along at the next State Opening.


127/221

They secreted a ton of gunpowder in a cellar beneath theHouses of Parliament. The blast would obliterate James, the royalfamily, the entire government, the peers and the House of

Commons except for a few Papists warned to stay home


128/221

Heres a crash-test dummy mock-up of the Jacobean House ofLords, constructed for a sensationalist documenary,

The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend(ITV, 2005).


129/221

Here is James, reading his address from the throne to


130/221

his peers; and this is what things look like


131/221

a second later.


132/221


133/221

Of course it didnt quite happen. The governments spies followedthe Gunpowder Plot from the beginning. On the eve of the

blast they swept in to arrest the plotters, who were


ll argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.

Lets be in with the man behind the Kin James Bible: Kin James himself.


134/221

put to


135/221

death


136/221

with theutmost


137/221


138/221

barbarity.


139/221


140/221


141/221


142/221


143/221

3.

PARCHMENT:

The creation of a new Bible


144/221

All this would have been sufficiently alarming for any government;

with King James hereditary horror of gunpowder, it was critical.For at some moment, the other wing of English Christianitywas becoming more restive.

The Puritans were insisting on religious reform. Jamessummoned them to a conference at the most imposing of his palaces,

Hampton Court


145/221

a good place to intimate people.


146/221

The Hampton Court conference of 1604 was a very mixed success.Puritan demands were not met; except in one area.

Reynolds, one of the Puritan leaders, moved his Majesty there might bea new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the


147/221

reign of Henry VIII .were corrupt, and not answerable to the truths of

the original.James, who always liked to think himself a great scholar,declared he could never yet see a Bible well translated into English, butthe worst of all his Majesty thought, the Geneva, since some of its noteswere very partial, untrue, seditious, and savoured too much ofdangerous and traitorous conceits.

The stress here is on sedition and treason. The Bible must nolonger serve the Kings enemies. It had to stop being a weapon againsthim. It had to stop encouraging the assassination of kings (James

explained at some length how the Geneva Bible notes tended toregicide). The Bible had to be pacified. Beati pacifici.


148/221

As a matter of fact, the Puritans had a case. There wasa lot of

corruption in the royal Bibles (the Coverdale-Great Bible-Bishops Bibletext).

It was often marred by awkward misprints. In 1562, forinstance, instead ofBlessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called

the children of God, it read Blessed are the placemakers.And apart from typos, some translations were pretty shocking.


149/221

Psalm xci5


150/221

Thou shall not nede to be afrayed forenybugges by night.

The Coverdale Bible(popularly known as the Bug Bible),

and also the Great Bible

Jeremiah viii22


151/221

Is there no balm in Gilead?

(King James Bible)

Jeremiah viii22


152/221

Is there no tryacle in Gilead?

The Great Bible(henceforth known as

the Treacle Bible)

Genesis iii7


153/221

they sewed fig leaves together,and made themselves aprons.

(King James Bible)

Genesis iii7


154/221

they sowed figge-tree leaves together,and made themselves breeches.

The Geneva Bible

(generally known asthe Breeches Bible)


155/221

And so James resolved to commission a new translation, as one

way of soothing the dangerous divisions of England.This revised translation would be of such splendid

scholarshipwould sound so serene and authoritativewouldbe so free of controversial marginal notesthat it would drive

out all the alternatives, and unite the nation. Beati pacifici.

Who were they, the 47 men James appointed to revise the Bible?


156/221

Who were they, the 47 men James appointed to revise the Bible?A mixed bag. They divided up the text and worked in

separate companies, and the differences still show.Some were companies were hardworking, and some

more inclined to leave their base-text, the Bishops Bible,untouched.

Some made more use than you might expect of theDouai-Rheims Bible of the Roman Catholics.

Forty-six of the 47 were clergymen, but their religiouspolitics were various, too.

There wasLancelot Andrewes,


157/221

Lancelot Andrewes,Bishop of Chichester

and then of Ely,a saintly figure,and an author ofexquisitely lovely

prose. He acted asgeneral editor of thenew translation.

There was RichardBancroft, Archbishop ofCanterbury Bancroft


158/221

Canterbury. Bancroftmaintained general controlof the project until hisdeath in 1610, and insistedon a few changes inlanguage, to make the new

Bible teach a more Catholicsort of Christainity. He wasa great persecutor ofPuritans. If Bancroft had

lived, says Clarendon, hewould quickly haveextinguished all that fire inEngland which had beenkindled at Geneva.

And after Bancroft died,he was succeeded as


159/221

he was succeeded asArchbishop by GeorgeAbbot, a sincere butnarrow-minded Calvinist,

who saw the new Biblethrough the press.

(Abbot came to a badend. While hunting deerhe shot a keeper dead byaccident, fell into

depression, was deprivedof his primacy, thrust outof power ...).

They worked quickly, and presented their work to King James


160/221

only six years after he commissioned them.And so in 1611 the new translation or Bible without

notes was


161/221

published.

Now theres a lot of cant spoken and written about the KingJames Bible, the KJB; lets try to praise it honestly.


162/221

J J ; y p yWas it a great translation? No, it wasnt a translation at

all. It was just a revision, and a light revision at that, of theBishops Bible, often lifting passages from the Geneva Biblewhere the Bishops Bible was too verbose. And both the BishopsBible and the Geneva Bible overwhelmingly preserve William

Tyndales English.The KJB companies referred to published editions of the

Hebrew and Greek text andmore than you might expecttheVulgate, but they didnt bother looking at any old manuscripts.No actual parchment was involved. Theres not much freshscholarship involved in their work.

(True, the title-page of the KJB claimed to offer the Oldand New Testaments


163/221

newly translatedout of the originaltongues

but that is a fib!)


164/221

So (as we have already said) why do we make such a fussabout the KJB, if it was merely the final revision of

Tyndales work?Why arent we talking about Tyndales Bible?

This is why.


165/221

yTyndales Bible was a self-consciously heretical work. It

was meant to blow up the existing English Church and createsomething new in the rubble. That was Tyndales project.

King James Bible was a self-consciously soothing work.It was meant to defend and vindicate the existing English

Church. That was James project.And it was James project that succeeded.


166/221

Of course most of Tyndales work survived in the 1611 Bibleunchanged, counting word by word. But the changes wereenough to change what the English Bible signified.

The KJB is the Bible of peace. It is designed to soothe.

1. For instance: James insisted that all the Greek ecclesial


167/221

terms be translated in a way that affirmed the existing

arrangements in England. Thus we read church,priest,bishopricbut notpenance. The KJB is an AnglicanBible. It fits innicely with the style and terms of the Book of Common Prayer.There is nothing in it to suggest that the Church of England

should reform itself further and become more like ContinentalProtestantism; there is nothing in it to suggest that the Church ofEngland should recover its history and return to Rome.

The KJB is mellow. It affirms the existing compromise.


168/221

2. Although James was just as insistent as Henry VIIIthat his Bible say what he want, the monarchical quality of theBible is much more discretely expressed.




True, the KJB has a nasty craven Preface,dedicating the whole Bible to James.


169/221

It continues:


170/221

ru


171/221

No mentionof spittle, then,nor of Steenie.


172/221

But in appearance the KJBcarefully avoids lookinglike royalist propaganda


173/221

the title page actually shows the Twelve Apostles,rather than the English monarch!

Here (it is implied) is the Bible: simply the Bible.


174/221

3. Again, the KJB is not meant

to stir the reader into angrytheological debate. It has noneof the polemics of Luther orTyndale or Geneva or Douai-

Rheims. There is no doctrinalcommentary in the marginsto guide the reader,


175/221

just a few marginal glosseson Greek and Hebrew terms,

and modest,uncontroversial


176/221

headnotes,

summaringeach chapter.

4. Again, while there is some preemptive aggression againstRoman Catholics and Puritans in the Dedication, the final note is ofpeacefulness: James, the prince of peace, will guarantee the KJB

against uncharitable and violent critics.


177/221

5 B t f th titl d th D di ti t th t


178/221

5. But of course the title-page and the Dedication arent the most

important thing.What matters about the KJB so much is its style. It is the styl

of the KJB that transformed the English Bible from an angryProtestant tract, liable to promote rebellion, liable to provoke

gunpowder plots, into a thing of such universal serenity and beautyno one could resist it.The KJB virtually brought English Bible translation to an en

for three centuries: no one could want anything else. Its style wasirresistible


179/221

You hear a lot of nonsense about the style of the King James Bible.The important thing to remember is this ravishing beauty has apolitical purpose. It was part of King James programme.

Most of the base-text (which was, ultimately, Tyndales wor

was preserved. But the deft touches made by King James men allpoint in the same direction. They make the Bible sound more melloand even more dreamy.

The KJB virtually invents its own dialect.I f h i d f h d i h h i i


180/221

It perfumes the mind of the reader with archaic, romantic

terms: verily, and it came to pass.The KJB is happy to sound Latinate. The Douai-Rheims

translators had invented lots of English words to turn the Vulgateinto English: acquisition, adulterate, advent, allegory, verity,

calumniate, character, cooperate, prescience, resuscitate, victim,and evangelise. Whereas the Geneva often simplified the Greek intoAnglo-Saxon words (with pungent marginal notes to raw out thefullCalvinist -- meaning), the KJB, forbidden marginalcommentary, is not afraid of long, newly-invented Latinate wordswhere they are necessary.

A d th KJB f ld f hi d E li h f Th d


181/221

And the KJB prefers old-fashioned English forms. Theeand

thouare always used instead of singularyou. The third personsingular present is always -ethand never not -es: appearethandhateth, that is, never appearsand hates. Quite often the KJB haswhichinstead ofwhoor whom: Lot also which went with Abram. I

all these matters the Jacobean English spoken in the streets (and onthe stage) was closer to modern English than is the KJB.Consider these two versions of a passage in the Apocalypse:

Revelation vi12the sun was as black as sackcloth of hair,


182/221

the sun was as black as sackcloth of hair,

and the moon was like blood.And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth,

as a fig tree casteth hergreen figs,

when it is shaken

the sun became black as sackcloth of hair,and the moon became as blood;

and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth,even as a fig tree casteth heruntimely figs,

when she is shaken

The top version is the Geneva Bible, the bottom the KJB. TheGeneva is more modern, the KJB much more beautiful. In KJB


183/221

the vision of cosmic annihilation (windfall constellations rainingdown) is softened, and we can behold it with pleasure. The moonwas like bloodis alarming, it sounds like eyewitness testimony of acatastrophe; the moon became as bloodis an incantation. Greenfigsis ominous, untimely figsis poetry. Even the end of the world

charms us. This is an Anglican apocalypse: gentle, moderate,whimsical, comfortable, cheerful, clever.

These differences may not seem much in this short passage.But the King James Bible is consistent; all its touches are in the same

direction; and the differences accumulate over the whole giganticbulk of Scripture until they create what is really a new book.

The Geneva Bible became contraband after 1616. It was printedin Amsterdam and smuggled into England. It lay in the hands of aCaroline Puritan as an act of defiance against King and Church and


184/221

Caroline Puritan as an act of defiance against King and Church and

law. Its language was as bare and belligerent as the traditions of Englishtranslation then allowed. We have seen much more bleak prosepurporting to translate the Bible, but bleakness is relative, and to aBaroque Englishman, the Geneva seemed brutal and swaggering as a

1960s poured concrete tower block. And its every marginal note,folding itself into the text so it could scarcely be distinguished, was awhispering tempter, urging pride or rebellion or slaughter.

The Geneva was the book the Roundheads literally carried intobattlea selection of passages from the Geneva was given toevery soldier in the New Model Army as The Soldiers Pocket Bible


185/221

every soldier in the New Model Army as The Soldier s Pocket Bible

(Do I not hate them that hate thee, O Lord? I hate them withperfect hatred.) It was book that pricked them to their murders inEngland, their assassinations in Scotland, their massacres inIreland. What else was it likely to inspire? When King Asa

deposing his grandmother for worshipping other gods, theGeneva Bible hisses in this he showed that he lacked zeal, for sheshould have died but he gave place to foolish pity. The leitmotifof the Geneva Bible isput them to the sword.

When Cromwell laid Ireland waste he was only acting out the


186/221

Geneva Old Testament, as he said himself, and his words are full ofwhat he thought were biblical notes. Drogheda surrendered; Cromwellhad the garrison and population exterminated. I believe we put to thesword the whole number of the defenders. I do not think 30 of thewhole number escaped with their lives. Women and children crowded

into a church were burned to death. The moon was like blood. AnyCatholic clergy were, as he breezily said, knocked on the head, which isto say clubbed to death without any foolish pity, after the manner of theChildren of Israel with the priests of Baal.

When good triumphed over evil in 1660, many things were

restored along the monarchy: the Church, parliament, drama andthe King James Bible. The Geneva, was finally stamped out; its infamousnotes were printed for the last time in 1715


187/221

notes were printed for the last time in 1715.

That is the early history of the KJB: it was generally known asthe Bible without notes, the Bible that wasnt the Geneva. The Genevawas the regicide book , the book ofperfect hatred; the Douai was theBible of the Gunpowder Plotters; the KJB was the book of peace.

That is why it sounds so serene. It hadto.


188/221

4.

GLORY:a fresh revelation

So far I have tried to describe the origins of the KJB levelly.


189/221

Now its time to ask: What do we reallythinkof it?Now we turn controversial.There is so much pious balderdash uttered about the KJB

that its healthy to hear from a wise and cynical pagan: in thiscase, the great American journalist H.L Mencken.

Whoever it was who translated the Bible into excellent Frenchprose is chiefly responsible for the collapse of Christianity inFrance. Contrariwise, the men who put the Bible into archaic,sonorous and often unintelligible English gave Christianity a newlease of life wherever English is spoken They did their work at a


190/221

lease of life wherever English is spoken. They did their work at a

time of great theological blather and turmoil, when men of allsorts, even the least intelligent, were beginning to take a vast andunhealthy interest in exegetics and apologetics. They were far tooshrewd to feed this disconcerting thirst for ideas with a Bible in

plain English; the language they used was deliberately artificialeven when it was new. They thus dispersed the mob by appealingto its emotions, as a mother quiets a baby by crooning to it. TheBible that they produced was so beautiful that the great majorityof men, in the face of it, could not fix their minds upon the ideasin it. To this day it has enchanted the English-speaking peoples soeffectively that, in the main, they remain Christians, at leastsentimentally.y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:


Lets be in w

Mencken, in his ironic, hardboiled fashion, is putting his finger onan important truth. English-speakers


191/221

still remember the twenty-third Psalm when the doctor begins toshake his head, they are still moved beyond compare (though not,alas, to acts!) by the Sermon on the Mount, and they still turn once

year from their sordid and degrading labors to immerse themselves

unashamed in the story of the manger. It is not much, but it issomething.


192/221

I think its quite a lot. For many Anglophone Christians, thesoundof the KJB is tied up with what they mean by religiousexperience. Its English was designed to sootheto soothe rebelliousCalvinists and recalcitrant papists. But it is too splendid merely to

soothe: it conjures up the peace that passes understanding, therichness of heaven, the presence of God. The language of the KingJames Bible is a sacred language.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has recently argued that we have nosacred languages.

Of all the great world religions, it is Christianity that has the most


193/221

obvious and pervasive investment in translation. We do not have asacred language; from the very first, Christians have been convincethat every human language can become the bearer of scripturalrevelation. The words in which revelation is first expressed are notsolid, impenetrable containers of the mystery ..

But this cannot be right. Christianitydoeshave sacred languages:Hebrew, Greek, Latin, the only languages whose words werehammered up over the dying Word.


ll argue is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful It had to sound like that

That is a particular fact about Jesus. All the interesting factsabout Jesus are particular. God didnt just become human, He


194/221

became a man. God first revealed Himself in Hebrew poetry, andbecame a man in a particular placewithin Hellenistic culture anwithin Latin polity. The church He founded remains Jewish in itspoetry, Greek in thought and Roman in structure. These are oftenthought to be scandalous facts; but after all incarnation always

involves the scandal of particularity. The Gospel of Tiberius subjectthe man Whose name was always hellenised to Jesus, can't beculturally neutral. Vatican II inculturation is bunk.




195/221

Every language presumes a culture. Language is very noisy.I fear that vernacular translation risks drowning out the concreteand specific Christ in the roar or titter of random cultures. After

all, isn't the Living Bible essentially a faithful record of what liberalWest Coast Protestantism was like in the 1960s? And if so, of whatelse can it be a faithful record?


ll argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.

Lets be in with the man behind the Kin James Bible: Kin James himself

Myself, I would cheerfully have burned Tyndale. But theirony is that in due course his translation was adapted by KingJames men into a text almost as numinous opaque and evocative


196/221

James men into a text almost as numinous, opaque, and evocative

as the Vulgate. The loudest note in King James English is exoticism.The KJB cries out: These words come from a different place, faraway, long ago. It resists the idea of a God Whos very like me(which means, in the end, culturallylike me) murmuring directly to

me, the solitary Bible reader, without His voice crossing throughany distance of history or ecclesial authority.It is this false idea of the solitary reader, at one with the

Word whatever words he happens to be reading, which has hasproduced all the modern heresies and schisms and massacres.

Bring back the Vulgate! But failing that, KJB forever! For I


197/221

suppose we might say that Christianity has, beside its threelegitimate sacred languages, fabricated certain semi-sacredlanguages: Old Church Slavonic; and King-James-ese. The languagof the KJB is just as much a self-conscious art-tongue as OldChurch Slavonic in Eastern Europe.

And that is why the KJB seems such a huge thing: it is notjust a book, it is a whole language.




198/221

We seem to have wandered quite some way from 1611!Let us return to King James reign. He was lucky to

commission his Bible when he did. These were the years of


199/221

Shakespeares final plays:

Elizabethan English, having reached its classic perfection, was justpassing into baroque decadence. It was an ideal moment tocompose something of perpetual value.

The KJB is perpetual. It is so valuable it surmounts itssordid background and its origin in that obscene king, in his


200/221

sordid background and its origin in that obscene king, in his

effeminate timidity and horror of bangs in the night. It is sovaluable it survived the failure of his selfish political goals.

For there was a failure.The incomparable literary excellence of the KJB

drove all competitors from the market; it soon became theEnglishBible; Papists and (in the end, after 1660) even Puritansembraced it.

Nonetheless, James was not a real peace-maker.The Roman Catholics were never reconciled to the Church of

England.


201/221

And, as for the Puritans, they clungto the Geneva, rebelled againstKing James son, the saintly Charles

Stuart,


202/221

defeated him,andmartyred him.


203/221

The English dynasty King James founded was overthrown, its placeeventually usurped by princes from Germany.

But the English Bible King James sponsored has never beenoverthrown, nor had its place usurped. The glory of King James


204/221

Bible has outlasted the disgraces and scandals of his reignthewretchedness of his parentage and catamitery, the witch-dread,gunpowder and the slobber.

In the end no one could resist it. It has dominated English literature and the English language ever since 1611, virtually

unaltered. And I suspect it always will. The glory King James Bible iinexhaustible. We never quite get to the end of it. It tells ussomething about England which we cant hear anywhere else,something about English, something about language, something

about the peace that passeth understanding, and even somethingabout God.

AN AFTERTHOUGHT


205/221

We say the KJB is unchangingbut that is to forget printers errors The King James Bible has not been well served by the press,beginning with the so-called Printers Bible of 1612, its second yeaof publication:

Psalm cxix161

Princes have persecuted me


206/221

p

without a cause

was misprinted as


207/221

Psalm cxix161

Printers have persecuted me


208/221

p

without a cause

And printers have persecuted it!

Exodus xx14Thou shalt


209/221

not commit adultery.

(King James Bible)

Exodus xx14Thou shalt


210/221

commit adultery.

(TheAdulterous Bible of 1631;printers fined 300;

only 11 copies survive)

John viii11

Go and sin no more


211/221

(King James Bible)

John viii11

Go and sin on more


212/221

(Sin On Bible of 1716)

Psalm xiv1

the fool hath said in his heart


213/221

f

there is no God

(King James Bible)

Psalm xiv1

the fool hath said in his heart


214/221

f

there is a God

(The Fools Bible of 1763;printers fined 3000;

all copies ordered destroyed)


215/221

ANOTHER AFTERTHOUGHT

Incidentally, there is a Croatian connection to all this!


216/221

chapel of Windsor Castle in timefor Evensong, you might haveheard the lovely cadences of the


217/221

King James Bible being readaloud to King James himself ina Croatian accent.

SOME NOTES

The views of late Elizabethan London, and ofShakeaspeares stage, are stills from RolandEmmerichs imbecilic filmAnonymosus (2011).

The enthroned portrait of King James


218/221

The enthroned portrait ofKing James

I of England and VI of Scotlandis by DanilMijtens (1621).

The obscene manuscript poemaddressed to the duc de Boukinquan(Buckingham) is by Thophile de Viau; it wascomposed around 1611, and is archived in Parisas MS. Fr. 15220 B.N. (fol. 50v) .

Chesterton from Charles II in TwelveTypes: A Collection of Biographies.

H. L. Mencken, Holy Writ, from theSmart Set, October 1923.

The Eadwine Psalteris in TrinityCollege, Cambridge (MS R.17.1).

SOME MORE THINGS ONLINE

Rowan Williams sermon in St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the bicentenary of theBritish and Foreign Bible Society, 8th March 2004, athttp://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1648/bicentenary-of-the-british-and-foreign-bible-society; Im grateful to Matjaz Crnivec of the Bible Society of Slovenia


219/221

and foreign bible society; I m grateful to Matjaz Crnivec of the Bible Society of Slovenia

for this reference.You can boggle at James morbidity in this online version of Dmonologie,

http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/demonologie/index.html; and at Mores rancouragainst Tyndale, http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/moretyndale.pdf.

For a fine but fusty defence of the Douai, seehttp://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/wbible.htm#CHAPTERXIII

The Geneva Bible notes are athttp://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/gbnmatthew.htm

The Soldiers Pocket Bible is athttp://www.archive.org/stream/soldierspocketbi01rale#page/14/mode/2up The bloodthirsty devoitons I quote are on p. 14.

I have been unable to master the technology and embed these videos: theexecution of Tyndale at http://www.anglican.si/1611/Tyndale.flv; an excerpt fromExploding the Legend at http://www.anglican.si/1611/boom.flv; and an edifying hanging-drawing-and-quartering to go with the Gunpowder Plot,http://www.anglican.si/1611/hanging.flv.

MORE BOOKS ON THE KING JAMES BIBLE

The best general introduction is Bruce M. Metzger and Michael CoogansOxford Companion to the Bible (Oxford University Press, 1993; ISBN0-19-504645-5); or more narrowlyFrederick Fyvie Bruce, History of the Bible inEnglish (Lutterworth Press, 2002, ISBN0718890329).

For the political aspects of the King James Bible, you can read theexcellent but, alas, Marxist, ChristopherHill, The English Bible and the

h l i (All L ISBN 8 ) th
http://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/gbnmatthew.htmhttp://www.archive.org/stream/soldierspocketbi01ralehttp://www.archive.org/stream/soldierspocketbi01ralehttp://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/gbnmatthew.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University_Presshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Fyvie_Brucehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0718890329http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Christopher_Hillhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0713990783http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0713990783http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Christopher_Hillhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0718890329http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Fyvie_Brucehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University_Press


220/221

seventeenth-century revolution (Allen Lane, 1993, ISBN0713990783); or theWhiggish Benson Bobrick: Wide as the waters: the story of the English Bibleand the revolution it inspired(Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN0684847477).

On the religious impact, see, from an Evangelical perspective,Alister McGraths In the beginning: the story of the King James Bible and how itchanged a nation, a language, and a culture (Anchor Books, 2002,ISBN0385722168).

On the language, see Charles Laurence Barber, Early modern

English (Edinburgh University Press, 2nd edition 1997, ISBN0748608354).Adam Nicolson, 5th Baron Carnock, a member of a great English literarydynasty, wrote a charming book, Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the

Making of the King James Bible (HarperCollins, 2003, ISBN0007108931), whichwas published in America as Gods Secretaries, and reissed this year with thecamp new title When God Spoke English.

However, the best recent book on the Jacobean period isJohnStubbsJohn Donne: The Reformed Soul(2008; ISBN 0393333663,9780393333664), an exemplary literary biography which manages to be lots ofother things too, including a harrowing account of Jamie Stuart.

Dr Richard [email protected]

A FINAL CAVEAT

Chesterton, writing in the Daily News

Protestant Christianity believes that here is a Divine record in a book;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0713990783http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0684847477http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0385722168http://books.google.com/?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4Chttp://books.google.com/?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4Chttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0748608354http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0007108931http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22John+Stubbs%22http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22John+Stubbs%22mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22John+Stubbs%22http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22John+Stubbs%22http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0007108931http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0748608354http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://books.google.com/?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4Chttp://books.google.com/?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4Chttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0385722168http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0684847477http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0713990783http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number


221/221

Protestant Christianity believes that here is a Divine record in a book;that everyone ought to have free access to that book; that everyone who

gets hold of it can save his soul by it, whether he finds it in a library orpicks it off a dustcart.

Catholic Christianity believes that there is a Divine army or

league upon earth called the Church; that all men should be induced tojoin it; that any man who joins it can save his soul by it without everopening any of the old books of the Church at all. The Bible is only oneof the institutions of Catholicism, like its rites or priesthood; it thinks

gunpowder spittle and parchment

Documents