78 THE REV. JOHN SHARP, M.A., ON THE LAST 



In England, the nineteenth century inherited from its 

 immediate predecessors divided opinions as to the divine 

 authority of the Scriptures, and the duty of placing them 

 within men's reach in vernacular versions. In the first half of 

 the sixteenth century the publication of his translation of the 

 New Testament into English cost William Tindale his life. In 

 the second half of that century, as J. E. Green tells us, the people 

 of England became the people of a hook, and that hook ivas the 

 Bible* in English. 



The beginning of the seventeenth century saw the ever- 

 memorable issue, just three hundred years ago (1611), of the 

 " Authorised Version " of that English Bible. Before the 

 century's close, John Locke published his Ussay on Human 

 Understanding (1690). Locke himself called the Bible " God's 

 Word," but his essay provided a foundation upon which the 

 Deists of the next century erected their claim that Reason and 

 a Religion of Nature must take precedence of a problematical 

 Revelation. 



The Deists were followed in the second half of the eighteenth 

 century by such sceptical foes of Revelation as Hume (1750), 

 Bolingbroke (1754), Gibbon (1776), Voltaire (d. 1778), and 

 Tom Paine (1794). Before the end of the century, the French 

 Revolution (1789) gave the world a lurid sample of what might 

 anywhere be the outcome of an " Age of Reason." 



But, even in that eighteenth century, the Bible was at work. 

 In November, 1729, four young gentlemen of Oxford began to 

 spend some evenings in a week together in reading chiefly the 

 Greek Testament."f Those readings bore spiritual fruit in the 

 " Methodist Revival " which was the forerunner of the thirty 

 million adherents of Methodism now.J 



There arose also, before the eighteenth century closed, in 

 part out of the " Methodist Revival," and in part independently, 

 that evangelical movement within the Church of England, 

 which to some extent revived its spiritual activity. Every 

 good work set on foot by a small band of evangelical clergy 

 was aided by purse, prayer and effort on the part of some 

 earnestly religious laymen of note. Both clergy and laity 

 believed the Bible to be " the Word of God."§ Their united 

 convictions led to certain proceedings out of which some of 



* Short History of the English People, p. 447. 



t Short History of Methodism, by John Wesley. 



X History of the Evangelical Party, G. R. Baleline, p. 43. 



§ I Thess. ii, 13. 



