At long last, in 1611, the agreed version was ready to be presented to the King, with a rather fulsome dedication drawn up by the Cambridge scholar, Dr. Smith, which makes one thankful that the text, itself, is free of glosses, and that no contemporary political theory or ecclesiastical divergence has been allowed to mar its beauty. For, miraculously, this small company of dedicated men had produced a masterpiece, and it was the very subjugation of individuality, upon which Bancroft had insisted from the start, which gave the translation its abiding value. Each person in the team had given fully and freely of his scholarship and piety, but no self-assertion, no striving after originality, intruded itself to lessen for posterity the potency and relevance of this authorized version of the Scriptures. For his share in this achievement, much can be forgiven to King James. One cannot be sufficiently thankful that, just at the time when the English language was at its finest and most expressive, and when the spiritual faculties of its most learned practitioners were exceptionally acute, a King should ordain and see accomplished this mighty undertaking.
The work was carried out by men immersed, at other hours, in multifarious duties in Church and State; it must have used up, over a space of years, their energy and leisure and time that they might have spent on their own literary compositions; they derived from it neither fame nor fortune; and it does, indeed, seem that the Holy Spirit of God accepted their sacrifice and worked through them to give, to all who speak the English tongue, a possession of lasting and imperishable worth.
Thus, at Westminster, in the ancient Jerusalem chamber, Lancelot Andrewes and his colleagues drenched themselves anew in the pages of the Old Testament, and told, again, the great story of the Creation, which never ceased to be, for him, a special source of wonder and worship. The figures of the Patriarchs, the journey through the wilderness, Israel’s anointed Kings, seemed at times more real than the life which went on beyond the Abbey precincts…
From: Lancelot Andrewes by Florence Higham (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1952), pp. 40-41. From Chapter 3: “The Authorized Version: 1604-1611″.
