[The history of the English Bible] is twofold. There is the external history of the different versions, as to when and by whom and under what circumstances they were made; and there is the internal history which deals with their relation to other texts, with their filiation one on another, and with the principles by which they have been successively modified. The external history is a stirring record of faithful and victorious courage: the internal history is not less remarkable from the enduring witness which it bears to that noble catholicity which is the glory of the English Church (B. F. Westcott, A General View of the History of the English Bible, 7-8).