17.  Peculiar honour is due to those who lead the way in whatever advances human happiness.  And, surely, our just admiration of the character of the reformers must be not a little enhanced, when we consider what they did for letters as well as for the church.  Learning does not consist in useless jargon, in a multitude of mere words, or in acute speculations remote from practice; else the seventeen folios of St. Thomas Aquinas, the angelical doctor of the thirteenth century, and the profound disputations of his great rival, Duns Scotus the subtle, for which they were revered in their own age, had not gained them the contempt of all posterity.  From such learning the lucid reasoning of the reformers delivered the halls of instruction.  The school divinity of the middle ages passed away before the presence of that which these men learned from the Bible, as did in a later age the Aristotelian philosophy before that which Bacon drew from nature.

18.  Towards the latter part of the fourteenth century, Wickliffe furnished the first entire translation of the Bible into English.  In like manner did the Germans, a hundred and fifty years after, receive it in their tongue from the hands of Luther; who says, that at twenty years of age, he himself had not seen it in any language.  Wickliffe’s English style is elegant for the age in which he lived, yet very different from what is elegant now.  This first English translation of the Bible, being made about a hundred years before the introduction of printing into England, could not have been very extensively circulated.  A large specimen of it may be seen in Dr. Johnson’s History of the English Language.  Wickliffe died in 1384.  The art of printing was invented about 1440, and first introduced into England, in 1468; but the first printed edition of the Bible in English, was executed in Germany.  It was completed, October 5th, 1535.

19.  “Martin Luther, about the year 1517, first introduced metrical psalmody into the service of the church, which not only kept alive the enthusiasm of the reformers, but formed a rallying point for his followers.  This practice spread in all directions; and it was not long ere six thousand persons were heard singing together at St. Paul’s Cross in London.  Luther was a poet and musician; but the same talent existed not in his followers.  Thirty years afterwards, Sternhold versified fifty-one of the Psalms; and in 1562, with the help of Hopkins, he completed the Psalter.  These poetical effusions were chiefly sung to German melodies, which the good taste of Luther supplied:  but the Puritans, in a subsequent age, nearly destroyed these germs of melody, assigning as a reason, that music should be so simplified as to suit all persons, and that all may join.”—­Dr. Gardiner’s Music of Nature, p. 283.