Christianity.[1] In the Thirteenth Century, the Franciscans, as I think, wrought great havock among our old words, and brought into vogue hundreds of French terms. In the Sixteenth Century, the Jesuits and their friends strove hard to set up a religious machinery of their own among us; happy was it for England that she turned away from their merchandise, so hated of old Fulke. These luckless followers of the Pope, as time wore on, found their English style as much disliked as their politics or their creed; glad were they in the days of James II. when so great a master as Dryden came to their help in controversy.[2] Such evil words as probabilism and infallibilist were never to become common in English mouths.
The Reformation, among its other blessings, bound together those old foes England and Scotland by ties undreamt of in the days of Wolsey; it wrought a further change in the North country's speech. Tyndale's great work was smuggled from abroad into Scotland, as well as into England. A Scotch heretic on his trial in 1539, referred to his Testament, which he kept ready at hand; the accuser shouted, ‘Behold, Sirs, he has the book of heresy in his sleeve, that makes all the din and play in our Kirk!’[3] Tyndale, as I before showed, wrought for the good of England in more ways than one. John
- ↑ There are but two or three Latin words in our tongue, brought hither before Augustine's time.
- ↑ ‘Hout, Monkbarns, dinna set your wit against a bairn!’ says Edie Ochiltree. This sentence might be applied to Stillingfleet, when we consider the men pitted against him. Dryden says that it was the great Anglican divines who taught him how to write English.
- ↑ Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, ii, 501.
