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gory, prevarication, altercation, fallacy), others which have never gone into public use (as azyntes, corhana, parasceve, consubstantial, coin(piination, scenopegia). It has contributed some improvements to King James's revisers. See examples in Moulton's History of the Enrjlish Bible, p. 187 (London, 1878). " Nothing is easier," says Dr. Moulton, " than to accumulate instances of the eccentri■city of this revision, of its obscure and inflated renderings ; but only minute study can do justice to its faithfulness and to the care with which the translators executed their work."

(10.) The King James's Version (1611). — The final outcome of this series of original translations and revisions of transUvtions of the Scriptures was the socalled A. v., which for 250 years has been the channel whereby God's truth has flowed into Anglo-Saxon minds. But it has been even an instructor in o-ther things than those of religion, for from it the language has drawn its stability. Its style is regarded with admiration by natives and foreigners alike. It is the first of English classics. Even seceders to Rome admit this, as the sweet and fervent hymnist, Dr. F. William Faber, whose remarkable judgment (often falsely attributed to Dr. John Henry Newman) is well worth quoting in full: " Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the gre<at strongholds of heresy in this country ? It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind and the anchor of national seriousness. Nay, it is worshipped with a positive idolatry, in extenuation of whose grotesque fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it. The ])otent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the re])reseiitative of his best moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good sjieaks to him for ever out of his Enailish Bi

ble. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and contro versy never soiled. It has been to him all along as the silent — but oh how intelligible ! — voice of his guar dian angel, and in the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant, with one spark of religious ness about him, whose spiritual biogra phy is not in his Saxon Bible. And all this is an unhallowed power !"

The A. V. is a monument to the memory of King James I. of England, but he had no more to do with it than to appoint the commission, and did not contribute a penny for its exe cution. It was abruptly proposed in the Hampton Court Conference (Jan., 1604) by a learned Puritan divine, the Rev. Dr. Reynolds (1549-1607), president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who suggested to His Majesty ''that there might be a new transla tion of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reign of King Henry VIII. and Edward VI. were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the original." Bishop Ban croft opposed the motion as imperti nent, but the vain king, who thought himself as wise as Solomon, unexpect edly and at once agreed to it, and dis played his biblical erudition by criti cising the previous translations, espe cially that of Geneva, which he hated on account of its marginal notes. He in vited a number of distinguished schol ars to do the work (June ;>0, 1604), but without any expense to himself. Pro fessing his own poverty, he held ouf before the revisers the hope of Church preferment, giving orders to the bish ops to that effect, and for their immedi ate expenses he called upon the bishops and. chapters to contribute toward the requisite amount.

Revision had no attractions for the clergy nor for the people. The Bish ops' and (xeneva Bibles already in their hands seemed to answer every purpose. Accordingly, as far as can. be deter mined, no one responded to the king's call for money ; yet since the whole amount A^as only about £700, the pro portion from each diocese was really small. " King James's version never cost King James a farthing." At the chancellor's suggestion, the revisers met

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