the Scriptures.

The Canon of the Bible, as we have seen, was framed in the fourth century.
In that same century Pope Damasus commanded a new and complete translation
of the Scriptures to be made into the Latin language, which was then the
living tongue not only of Rome and Italy, but of the civilized world.

If the Popes were afraid that the Bible should see the light, this was a
singular way of manifesting their fear.

The task of preparing a new edition of the Scriptures was assigned to St.
Jerome, the most learned Hebrew scholar of his time. This new translation
was disseminated throughout Christendom, and on that account was called
the _Vulgate_, or popular edition.

In the sixth and seventh centuries the modern languages of Europe began to
spring up like so many shoots from the parent Latin stock. The Scriptures,
also, soon found their way into these languages. The Venerable Bede, who
lived in England in the eighth century, and whose name is profoundly
reverenced in that country, translated the Sacred Scriptures into Saxon,
which was then the language of England. He died while dictating the last
verses of St. John's Gospel.

Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, in a funeral discourse on Queen
Anne, consort of Richard II., pronounced in 1394, praises her for her
diligence in reading the four Gospels. The Head of the Church of England
could not condemn in others what he commended in the queen.

Sir Thomas More affirms that, before the days of Wycliffe, there was an
English version of the Scriptures, "by good and godly people with devotion
and soberness well and reverently read."(152)

If partial restrictions began to be placed on the circulation of the Bible
in England in the fifteenth century, these restrictions were occasioned by
the conduct of Wycliffe and his followers, who not only issued a new
translation, on which they engrafted their novelties of doctrine, but also
sought to explain the sacred text in a sense foreign to the received
interpretation of tradition.

While laboring to diffuse the Word of God it is the duty, as well as the
right of the Church, as the guardian of faith, to see that the faithful
are not misled by unsound editions.

Printing was invented in the fifteenth century, and almost a hundred years
later came the Reformation. It is often triumphantly said, and I suppose
there are some who, even at the present day, are ignorant enough to
believe the assertion, that the first edit