One of the most puzzling things to the unwary reader of the Authorized Version of the Bible is the fact that it is written in Elizabethan English. This fact is rendered less obvious because the language is not completely archaic, like that of Chaucer, and because words, whilst retaining their ordinary form and spelling, have in many instances changed their meaning. One of the words most often produced as an instance of this, of course, is the word let. In the most curious way the word let has completely reversed its meaning between Shakespeare's time and our own, so that to-day it means to permit, whereas in Shakespeare's time it commonly meant to prevent. Thus Latimer, in his sermons, declares, "The flesh resisteth the word of the Holy Ghost in our hearts, and lets it, lets it," meaning of course, continues preventing it; and in the same way Shakespeare writes, in Henry V,
And my speech entreats
That I may know the let, why gentle Peace
Should not expel these inconveniences
And bless us with her former qualities.
In precisely the same way the King James revisers translated the famous passage in Thessalonians, "Only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way," and this though the word is used in its later sense again and again elsewhere in the translation.
