70 EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION
THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 71
new words into the Scriptures had its parallel in the efforts being made elsewhere to enrich the language. The Rhemish preface, published in 1582, almost contemporaneously with Lyly's Euphues and Sidney's Arcadia, justifies its practice thus: "And why should we be squamish at new words or phrases in the Scripture, which are necessary: when we do easily admit and follow new words coined in court and in courtly or other secular writings?" 1
The points at issue received their most thorough consideration in the controversy between Gregory Martin and William Fulke. Martin, one of the translators of the Rhemish Testament, published, in 1582, A Discovery of the Manifold Corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the Heretics of our Days, a book in which apparently he attacked all the Protestant translations with which he was familiar, including Beza's Latin Testament and even attempting to involve the English translators in the same condemnation with Castalio. Fulke, in his Defence of the Sincere and True Translation of the Holy Scriptures, reprinted Martin's Discovery and replied to it section by section. Both discussions are fragmentary and inconsecutive, but there emerges from them at intervals a clear statement of principles. Fundamentally the positions of the two men are very different. Martin is not concerned with questions of abstract scholarship, but with matters of religious belief. "But because these places concern no controversy," he says, "I say no more." 2 He does not hesitate to place the authority of the Fathers before the results of contemporary scholarship. "For were not he a wise man, that would prefer one Master Hiimfrey, Master Fulke, Master Whitakers, or some of us poor men, because we have a little smack of the three tongues, before St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, or St. Thomas, that understood well none but one?" a Since his field is thus narrowed, he finds it easy
1 Pollard, p. 291. 2 Defence, p. 42. 3 Ibid., p. 507.
to lay down definite rules for translation. Fulke, on the other hand, believes that translation may be dissociated from matters of belief. "If the translator's purpose were evil, yet so long as the words and sense of the original tongue will bear him, he cannot justly be called a false and heretical translator, albeit he have a false and heretical meaning." 1 He is not willing to accept unsupported authority, even that of the leaders of his own party. "If Luther misliked the Tigurine translation," he says in another attack on the Rhemish version, "it is not sufficient to discredit it, seeing truth, and not the opinion or authority of men is to be followed in such matters," 2 and again, in the Defence, "The Geneva bibles do not profess to translate out of Beza's Latin, but out of the Hebrew and Greek; and if they agree not always with Beza, what is that to the purpose, if they agree with the truth of the original text?"
Throughout the Defence he is on his guard against Martin's attempts to drive him into unqualified acceptance of any set formula of translation.
The crux of the controversy was the treatment of ecclesiastical words. Martin accuses the English translators of interpreting such words in their "etymological" sense, and consulting profane writers, Homer, Pliny, Tully, Virgil,4 for their meaning, instead of observing the ecclesiastical use, which he calls "the usual taking thereof in all vulgar speech and writing." Fulke admits part of Martin's claim: "We have also answered before that words must not always be translated according to their original and general signification, but according to such signification as by use they are appropried to be taken. We agree also, that words taken by custom of speech into an ecclesiastical meaning are not to be altered into a strange or profane significa-
1 Defence, p. 210.
2 Confutation of the Rhemish Testament, New York, 1834, p. 21.
3 Defence, p. 118. 4 Ibid., p. 160. 6 Ibid., p. 217.
