THE FREE CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINY.

APRIL, 1872.

Letters to the Bishop of Winchester

ON THE

FREE CHURCH OF ENGLAND..

AN able reply having been written to the Bishop of Winchester by F. S. Merryweather, Esq., the intended series of letters by the Editor is unnecessary. The reply is in the form of a pamphlet, entitled "The Free Church of England, New Malden, Surrey, and the Lord Bishop of Winchester; or, What is the Free Church of England?" The pamphlet is sold for 1d., and has reached a second edition.

The Bible in Domestic Life.

No. V.

BY MR. F. S. MERRYWEATHER,

AUTHOR OF OUR ENGLISH HOME," 66 BIBLIOMANIA," &c.

THE effect of this prohibition of the use of the Bible in domestic life was for a time to entirely discourage those feeble attempts which had now and then been made by Churchmen to spread the Word of God among the laity. It seriously checked the work of the transcribers; sɔ much so indeed that by-and-bye the Bible became a rare book even in the libraries of the highest ecclesiastics or of the richest monasteries. Α growing carelessness for the preservation of God's Word is evident and traceable from the period of its prohibition as a domestic book. A careful examination of a very large collection of the bibliographical records. of English monastic and ecclesiastical libraries, proves that the declension of a desire for Bible transcription and preservation dates from that period. Scholars may extol the literary activity of the thirteenth

century, and see in a higher appreciation of the heathen beauties of Ovid and Terence some compensation for this neglect and dishonour to God's Word. Not so the Christian Churchman; he may value the writings of the Greeks and the Romans, but he will regard as a significant evidence of the decrease of spiritual life, the fact, that the catalogue of the library of Peterborough Monastery, which occupies nearly fifty pages of Gunter's folio History of Peterborough, and is abundantly rich in classic and patristic lore, scarcely contains a complete Bible; and, to give another instance, the fine library of St. Mary de la Pre, at Leicester, which in the fourteenth century possessed a remarkable collection of 600 volumes, only contained a poor, "defective, and worn-out Bible," with a few detached fragments of Holy Scripture.* So little did the monks care to multiply the Bible that even dignitaries of the Church found it difficult to procure a copy. The booksellers dared not expose transcripts of the Bible for sale. A free trade in manuscripts would have opened the door for the spread of the dreaded Word of God. A layman might buy a copy of the New Testament, and so violate the prohibitory mandate of the Church against that dangerous book! The public dealer in books was therefore placed under the rules and orders of the universities. He could not sell to whom he pleased, nor could he expose his tran. scripts for sale without permission.† A layman, therefore, had no chance of thus procuring a Bible for domestic use. The Bible became an unsaleable book, and did not pay for the labour of transcribing. The mendicant friars, who in the fourteenth century were numerous in England, and who with all their faults were great book lovers, bought up what few old copies were to be obtained in the book markets of England. Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, who in the fourteenth century delivered a celebrated oration in the presence of the Pope, against the friars, made the following declaration, which proves the difficulty of procuring a copy of the Bible, even in Oxford: "I sent of my Sugettes (chaplains) to scole, thre or foure persones, and hit is said to me that some of them beth come home agen, for thei myst nought (could not) find to selle one good bible."‡

The Bible, indeed, was scarcer and dearer than ever. The fact is that its prohibition had discouraged the labours of the scribes, for it lost them their most generous patrons. Those rich copies of the gospels, so elaborately and so artistically illuminated with pictures, that my lord, even if he had forgotten his Latin could yet refresh his memory with the graphic page, were now forbidden luxuries. My lord's chaplain might indeed possess a copy, but it was only to be read at matins or evensong.

*

"Nichol's Appendix to History of Leicester," p. 107.

Some curious particulars upon this subject will be found in a scarce book by M. Chevillier-" Origines de l'Imprimerie de Paris," 4to, 1694., p. 301.

MS. Harleian, in British Museum. No. 1,900, fo. 11 b.

Family reading of God's Word at mealtime, of which there are traces in Saxon and early Norman days, was no longer countenanced by the Church; no morning portion inspired the laity with hope and trust in God through the busy day; no evening lesson made them thankful for the blessings of the past. The Word of God was no longer reverenced in the circle of home, and the domestic life of England became vitiated by the introduction of a most objectionable literature. Immoral fabliaux, lays and dits composed by facetious monks, Norman trouveres, and jesters, and containing allusions and anecdotes which seemed an outrage on every sense of decency, formed too often the family reading of the baronial home. The example was copied by the humbler ranks, and William of Wadington, a poet who flourished soon after the Church had prohibited the reading of the pure Word of God, deplores the general taste of the English for these vicious romances, tales, and songs, which, instead of the Scriptures, had then become the Sunday reading of the laity.* In the wills of royal and noble personages of the fourteenth century† many such volumes of Gothic fable are enumerated among the household treasures of the homes of wealth, but never the Bible. The library of Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, rich in the literature of the period, and which he left to the monks of Bordesly Abbey, in Worcestershire,. in 1359, contained a large collection of romances, but not a single book of the Holy Scriptures. Nor can we wonder at this when we remember how many local and general decrees were issued by the Church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to banish the Bible from domesticlife. So eager were the medieval clergy to enslave the mind of the laity, and make it subservient to their despotic will, that, fearful of the Word of Truth, they gradually, by slow and crafty teaching, by penal laws. and ecclesiastical anathemas, excited such a prejudice and timidity that at last a layman was ashamed to acknowledge any acquaintance with Holy Scripture. It was heresy to possess the sacred volume or to quote a text. Bigotry and priestly craft rose up every barrier to the freeacceptance of the Gospel. The Breviary was esteemed more highly than the Bible, and the "Hours" of the Virgin Mary than the pure Gospel of Jesus. The Church of England was then in the deepest degradation, and in the bitterest bondage. The arrogance of the priests was intolerable, and they jealously hid the Light of the Truth, that it might not reveal the faithlessness of their stewardship in thus withholding the Word of God and the gross iniquity of their priestly pretensions. But a triumph awaited the Bible in this age of murkiest gloom. The cord had been too tightly drawn, and there arose some with awakening aspira

Lambeth MSS., No. 577, fo. 18. Quoted in "Todd's Illustrations to Gower and Chaucer," p. 161.