03. John Wiclif

John Wiclif was born in Yorkshire, England, in the year 1324. He was a priest, and a professor of divinity in the University of Oxford. His ardent piety was nursed by the Scriptures which gave it birth. He is commonly called "the morning-star of the Protestant reformation," and was one of the brightest of those scattered lights of the Dark Ages, who are often spoken of as "reformers before the reformation." Like Martin Luther, his opposition to popish errors and corruptions was at first confined to a few points; but prayer, study of the Bible, and growing grace, led him on in a constant advance toward the purity of truth. He became in doctrine what would now be called a Calvinist; and in church discipline his views agreed with those which are now maintained by Congregationalists. After encountering many prosecutions and persecutions, having however a powerful protector in John of Gaunt, (or Ghent, in Flanders, his native place,) the famous old Duke of Lancaster, Wiclif peacefully closed his devout and laborious life, at his rectory of Lutterworth, in 1384. Forty-one years after, by order of the popish Council of Constance, his bones were unearthed, burned to ashes, and cast into the Swift, a neighboring brook. "Thus," says Thomas Fuller, "this brook has conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over."*

Wiclif's translation of the Bible was made before the invention of the printing machines; and

* This noble passage from a favorite author, Wordsworth has finely versified in one of his Ecclesiastical Sonnets:

"As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear

Into the Avon, Avon to the tide

Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,

Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst

An emblem yields to friends and enemies,

How the bold Teacher's doctrine, sanctified

By Truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed."

the manuscripts, though quite numerous, were very costly. Nicholas Belward suffered from popish cruelty in 1429, for having in his possession a copy of Wiclif's New Testament. That copy cost him four marks and forty pence. This sum, so much greater was the value of money then than it is now, was considered as a sufficient annual salary for a curate. The same value at the present time would pay for many hundreds of copies of the Testament, well printed and bound. Such are the marvels wrought by the art of printing, which Luther was wont to call "the last and best gift" of Providence.* It has become "the capacious reservoir of human knowledge, whose branching streams diffuse sciences, arts, and morality, through all ages and all nations."† Let us hope, with an old writer, "that the low pricing of the Bible may never occasion the low prizing of the Bible." Limited as the circulation of the English Bible must have been in its manuscript form, it still made no little trouble for the monkish doctors of that day. One of them, Henry de Knyghton, said, "This Master John Wiclif hath translated

* Summum et postremum donum.

† Darwin's Zoonomia, I. 51.

the gospel out of Latin into English, which Christ had intrusted with the clergy and doctors of the Church, that they might minister it to the laity and weaker sort, according to the state of the times and the wants of men. So that, by this means, the gospel is made vulgar, and made more open to the laity, and even to women who can read, than it used to be to the most learned of the clergy and those of the best understanding! And what was before the chief gift of the clergy and doctors of the Church, is made for ever common to the laity." If the publication of an English Bible in manuscript caused such popish lamentations, we need not wonder that the multiplication of a similar work in print should afterwards awaken such a fury, that Rowland Phillips, the papistical Vicar of Croydon, in a noted sermon preached at St. Paul's Cross, London, in the year 1535, declared; "We must root out printing, or printing will root out us!" Manuscripts of Wiclif's complete version are still numerous. His Bibles are nearly as numerous as his New Testaments; and there are besides many copies of separate books of the Scriptures. They are quite remarkable for their legibility and beauty, and indicate the great care taken in making them, and in preserving them for nearly five hundred years. The New Testament of this version was printed in the year 1731, or three hundred and fifty years after it was finished. The whole Bible by Wiclif was never printed till two or three years since, when it appeared at Oxford, with the Latin Vulgate, from which it was translated, in parallel columns.