same king who had caused Tyndale to be strangled for publishing the English Scriptures at Antwerp, was now spreading Tyndale’s work throughout the parishes of England.  Coverdale published many editions, among which the most noted was Cranmer’s Bible, issued in 1539, so called because Cranmer wrote a preface to it.  Coverdale led an eventful life, being sometimes in exile and prisoner, and at others in high favor.  He was Bishop of Exeter, from which see he was ejected by Mary, in 1553.  He died in 1568, at the age of eighty-one.

THE GENEVAN:  BISHOPS’ BIBLE.—­In the year 1557 he had aided those who were driven away by Mary, in publishing a version of the Bible at Geneva.  It was much read in England, and is known as the Genevan Bible.  The Great Bible was an edition of Coverdale issued in 1562.  The Bishops’ Bible was so called because, at the instance of Archbishop Parker, it was translated by a royal commission, of whom eight were bishops.  And in 1571, a canon was passed at Canterbury, requiring a large copy of this work to be in every parish church, and in the possession of every bishop and dignitary among the clergy.  Thus far every new edition and issue had been an improvement on what had gone before, and all tended to the production of a still more perfect and permanent translation.  It should be mentioned that Luther, in Germany, after ten years of labor, from 1522 to 1532, had produced, unaided, his wonderful German version.  This had helped the cause of translations everywhere.

KING JAMES’S BIBLE.—­At length, in 1603, just after the accession of James I., a conference was held at Hampton Court, which, among other tasks, undertook to consider what objections could be made to the Bishops’ Bible.  The result was that the king ordered a new version which should supersede all others.  The number of eminent and learned divines appointed to make the translation was fifty-four; seven of these were prevented by disability of one kind or another.  The remaining forty-seven were divided into six classes, and the labor was thus apportioned:  ten, who sat at Westminster, translated from Genesis through Kings; eight, at Cambridge, undertook the other historical books and the Hagiographa, including the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ruth, Esther, and a few other books; seven at Oxford, the four greater Prophets, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the twelve minor Prophets; eight, also at Oxford, the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Revelation of St. John; seven more at Westminster, the Epistles of St. Paul, and the remaining canonical books; and five more at Cambridge, the Apocryphal books.  The following was the mode of translation:  Each individual in one of the classes translated himself every book confided to that class; each class then met and compared these translations, and thus completed their task.  The work thus done was sent by each class to all the other classes; after this, all the classes met together, and while one read the others