but think in hearing them, how happy it was that a representative of one part of the country, pleading in another part for aid, could beget in the minds of his hearers such respect for those whom he represented, as to excite, with a disposition to contribute, a delicate fear of appearing in the relation of benefactors to them. That miserable sectional pride, which makes one community look down upon another is one of the greatest hindrances to our mutual affection. So far as the influence of these lectures is concerned we rejoice to say that they were, and we think will continue to be, a blessing to both districts of the Union.

The seminary over which the author presides has gained a firm hold upon the affection and confidence of Northern and Eastern men. We are happy in the belief that he and his associates will spare no pains to give a right direction to the minds of the generation of scholars who are coming forward under their care. It is of vast importance that the men who are now in preparation for exerting an influence upon the forming literature and religious characters of that great country, should be men of right principles in all the great moral subjects of the present age, as well as correct theologians. We thought of the rising institutions of the West when we read the following paragraphs. (Coleridge's Table Talk II. 23.)

"All harmony is founded on a relation to rest-on relative rest. Take a metallic plate, and strow sand on it; sound a harmonic chord over the sand, and the grains will whirl about in circles, and other geometrical figures, all as it were, depending on some point of sand relatively at rest. Sound a discord, and every grain will whisk about without any order at all, and with no points of rest.

"The clerisy of a nation, that is, its learned men, whether poets, or philosophers, or scholars, are these points of relative rest. There could be no order, no harmony of the whole, without them."

These new institutions at the West are forming men who are to be the points of rest, the centres of harmony in that great empire of mind. Though discord may have disturbed those institutions and the communities around them, and made their members in some degree experience the effect referred to in the paragraph just quoted, we have confidence that harmonic sounds will soon be heard above them, proving that men and things have found, and obey, their centres; and that the circles

of their influence will extend till neither the mountains on the one hand, nor the ocean on the other, will limit the power of their light nor the attraction of their love.

ARTICLE VI.

EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS OF THE BIBLE.

By the Editor.

Or the early history of the Christian church in Britain, our information is very imperfect. In whatever manner Christianity was introduced into the island, whether by Paul, or by some other missionary, it is altogether probable that the sacred writings were soon communicated to the new converts. Eusebius affirms that both Greeks and barbarians had the writings concerning Jesus in their own country-characters and language.* In an extraordinary consistory held at Rome, A. D. 679, respecting British affairs, it was among other things ordained, that lessons out of the divine oracles should be always read for the edification of the churches. About the middle of the sixth century, in 563, or 565, Columba founded the monastery on the island of Y-Kolmkill, best known under the name of Iona. In regard to the occupants of that celebrated seat of learning the venerable Bede says; "Tantum ea quae in propheticis, evangelicis, et apostolicis literis discere poterant pietatis et castitatis opera diligenter observantes."+ Respecting one of the bishops, Aidan, he remarks: "In tantum autem vita illius à nostri temporis segitiâ distabat; ut omnes qui cum eo incedebant, sive adtonsi, sive laici, meditari deberent, id est, aut legendis Scripturis, aut Psalmis discendis operam dare. Hoc erat quotidianum opus illius, et omnium, qui cum eo erant fratrum ubicunque locorum

* Jam ante ortas eorum qui hodie protestantes appellantur novitates apud omnes fere Christiani nominis gentes Scripturae versiones extitisse lingua vernacula multis probare non esset arduum.-F. Simon Disq. crit, de variis Bibl. edit.

+ Bede, Tom. III. Båsle ed. 1563. Lib. III. Hist. Eccles. ch. 4. p.7 4.

devenissent."* In the sermon of Chrysostom concerning the utility of reading the Scriptures, we find the following: "Though thou visitest the ocean and these British islands, though thou sailest to the Euxine sea, and travellest to the southern regions, thou shalt hear all men, every where, reasoning out of the Scripture, with another voice indeed, but not with another faith, with a different tongue, but with an according mind."+ Bede says further respecting Britain in his own time: "That in the language of five nations, it searched out and acknowledged one and the same acquaintance with the highest truth, and with real sublimity; to wit of the English, the Britons, the Scots, the Picts, and the Latins." The evidence, if not decisive, is at least strong, in favor of the existence of British translations of the Bible or parts of the Bible. Instances are given in Bede of children and youth who had a familiar knowledge of the Scrip

tures.

About the year 449, the Saxons were invited into England. They gradually increased in power, and founded one kingdom after another, till the full establishment of the octarchy about 586. The Britons, for the most part, took refuge in Wales, Cornwall, Bretagne, France and other countries. The Saxon conquest was so complete, that they spread their own language exclusively in the parts which they occupied. On every district or place where they came, they imposed their own names, generally denoting the nature, situation, or some striking feature of the places to which they were given. A succession of Saxon kings reigned in the island for 430 years, till about the year 1016; when Canute, a Dane, ascended the English throne. In a little more than twenty years, the Saxon line was restored, and continued till the Norman Conquest in 1066. The AngloSaxons removed to England from the Southern parts of Sleswig, and neighboring parts of Germany. They consisted of three distinct Gothic races-Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. Whether the Angles or the Saxons were the more numerous, is not known with certainty, but the Angles finally conquered a large

* Id. ch. 5. p. 75.

† Κἂν εἰς τὸν ὠκεανὸν ἀπέλθῃς, καν πρὸς τὰς Βρεταννικὰς νήσους ἐκείνας· καν εἰς τὸν Εὔξινον πλεύσης πόντον, κἄν πρὸς τὰ νότια ἀπέλθῃς μέρη· πάντων ἀκούσῃ πανταχου τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς γραφῆς φιλοσοφούντων, φωνῇ μὲν ἑτέρα κα γλώσῃ μὲν διὰ φόρῳ, διανοίᾳ δὲ σύμφωνῳ.

Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, Vol. III. p. 1.

portion of the country, and gave their name to the whole nation. The Jutes were the fewest in number. The AngloSaxon tongue appears to have been in its origin a rude mixture of the dialects of the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes, but we are not acquainted with it in that state, these dialects having soon coalesced into one language, as the various kindred tribes soon united to form one nation, after they had taken possession of England. With the introduction of Christianity and the Roman alphabet, their literature began. Even under the Danish kings, all laws and edicts were promulgated in pure AngloSaxon. King Ethelbert adopted Christianity about 593 or 596, and his laws, which we may refer to about the year 600, are perhaps, the oldest extant in Anglo-Saxon.*

Strype, in his life of archbishop Parker,† gives the following account of some Saxon Mss. and versions of parts of the Bible. In the library of the university of Cambridge is Jerome's Latin Psalter in vellum, with the Saxon interlinear version. The Latin is in black letter, the Saxon in red, and the titles in green. There are besides sacred hymns, as those of Isaiah, Anna, and Moses, the three children, the magnificat, etc. in Latin and Saxon. Another book in vellum, written about the time of the conquest, contains the four Gospels in Saxon with rubricks. A third volume in vellum, also in the Cambridge library, in large octavo, contains a collection of Saxon homilies. In the library of Trinity college is another book of Saxon homilies in parchment, written a little before the Conquest. Archbishop Parker, in his preface to a new translation of the Bible, says: "Our old forefathers, who ruled in this realm, in their times, and in diverse ages, did their diligence to translate whole books of the Scriptures to the erudition of the laity; as yet to this day are to be seen divers books translated into the vulgar tongue, some by kings of the realm, some by bishops, some by abbots, some by other devout godly fathers. So desirous were they of old time to have the lay-sort edified in godliness, by reading in their vulgar tongue, that very many books be yet extant, though for the age of the speech, and strangeness of the character of many of them, almost worn out of knowledge. In which books, may be seen evidently, how it was used among the Saxons, to have in their churches read the four Gospels, so distributed and

* Rask's Anglo-Saxon Grammar, Preface, p. 47.

† Ed. of 1611, fol. p. 532.

VOL. VI. No. 20.

58

picked out in the body of the Evangelists' books, that to every Sunday and festival-day in the year, they were sorted out to the common ministers of the church in their common prayers, to be read to their people."

Adelm, or Aldhelm, the first bishop of Sherburne, translated the Psalter into Saxon, about the year 706. In his book De Virginitate, he praises the nuns to whom he wrote, for their great industry and towardliness in the daily reading of the Scriptures. Bede says that Aidan, a Scotch bishop, who diffused Christianity in Northumberland, in the reign of Oswald, took care that all those who travelled with him, whether clergy or laity, should spend a considerable part of their time in reading the Scriptures. Usher, in his Historia Dogmatica, ch. 5, says that Egbert, (otherwise called Elfrid, Eadfrid, and Eckfrid,) bishop of Landisferne, made a Saxon translation of the four Evangelists, without distinction of chapters.* A few years after, the venerable Bede translated a part, (probably not the whole) of the Bible into Saxon. Asser relates that the last sentence of John was finished when he was expiring. Nearly two hundred years after Bede, king Alfred executed a translation of the Psalms, either to supply the loss of Adhelm's (which is supposed to have perished in the Danish wars,) or to improve the plainness of Bede's version. A Saxon translation of the Pentateuch, Joshua, part of the books of Kings, Esther, and the apocryphal books of Judith, and the Maccabees, is also attributed to Elfric or Elfred, who was Archbishop of Canterbury, A. D. 995.

We now quote a few verses from the Anglo-Saxon Testament printed at Dort in 1665, opera Fr. Junii et Th. Mareschalii.

Luke 15: 11-19. "He cwaed sódlice: Sum man hacfde twégen suna; Já cwaéd se gyngra tó hys faeder: Faeder! syle me minne

* Appendix to Strype, p. 132. Watson's Tracts, Vol. III. p. 62.

"As some of the Anglo-Saxon characters deviate a little in their form from the Latin, of which both they and the Gothic are a corruption, or, as it were, a peculiar sort of hand, which is also used by the Anglo-Saxons, even in the writing of Latin itself; I have not hesitated to adopt, in their stead, those now in general use, with two exceptions.-Rask. These exceptions both answer to the English th, which has first a hard sound, as in thing, nearly resembling the 9 of the Greeks, and secondly a softer sound, as in this, thou, other, like the modern Greek 8. In the absence of the Anglo-Saxon types, we have used 9 to represent the hard sound, and 8 the soft sound.