forbidden to meddle in the business; and this Protestants and philologers alike must thankfully acknowledge. But the old housel, which in the English mind was linked with the Roman idea of the Eucharist, was cast aside when the Reformation triumphed.[1]
In the wordy strife between Tyndale and More, the two best English writers of their day, we trace further changes in English. The Chancellor often employs the old form sith (quoniam), and we also find the corrupt since; the two lingered on side by side into the next Century. Are (sunt) sometimes replaces be, in spite of the Reformer having been bred in Gloucestershire. He is perhaps the first Englishman who used the word popish. He speaks of a flock ‘going to pot,’ and gives us bo-peep and ‘huker-muker,’ which has been but little changed. He applies naughty, a new word, to a priest. The ever-waxing influence of classical learning was ere long to substitute victuals for the old vitaille, the sound of which we still partly keep: this influence may be traced in Tyndale's use of words like delectable and crudelity in the works he printed just before his death; these forms he would not have used when he fled from England a dozen years earlier.[2] He kept his eye upon each succeeding edition of Erasmus' Greek Testament, and thus made his own English version more perfect. I now
- ↑ Tyndale went wrong in using worship to translate many widely different Greek words. We have now almost lost the true sense of that good old verb. I have heard men find fault with that clause of the Marriage Service, ‘with my body I thee worship;’ of old, this verb meant nothing more but ‘to honour.’
- ↑ Mr. Marsh has pointed out More's rebuke to Tyndale for using yea and nay improperly.
