h people and the
cause of civilization. All the great reformers, successful and
unsuccessful, appealed to the Scriptures as the highest authority, even
when they did not rebel against the papal power, like Savonarola in
Florence, I do not get the impression that Wyclif was a great popular
preacher like the Florentine reformer, or like Luther, Latimer, and
Knox. He was a student, first of the Scholastic theology, and afterwards
of the Bible. He lived in a quiet way, as scholars love to live, in his
retired rectory near Oxford, preaching plain and simple sermons to his
parishioners, but spending his time chiefly in his library, or study.

Wyclif's translation of the Bible was a great event, for it was the
first which was made in English, although parts of the Bible had been
translated into the Saxon tongue between the seventh and eleventh
centuries. He had no predecessor in that vast work, and he labored amid
innumerable obstacles. It was not a translation from the original Greek
and Hebrew, for but little was known of either language in the
fourteenth century: not until the fall of Constantinople into the hands
of the Turks was Greek or Hebrew studied; so the translation was made
from the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome. The version of Wyclif, besides its
transcendent value to the people, now able to read the Bible in their
own language (before a sealed book, except to the clergy and the
learned), gave form and richness to the English language. To what extent
Wyclif was indebted to the labors of other men it is not easy to
determine; but there is little doubt that, whatever aid he received, the
whole work was under his supervision. Of course it was not printed, for
printing was not then discovered; but the manuscripts of the version
were very numerous, and they are to-day to be found in the great public
libraries of England, and even in many private collections.

Considering that the Latin Vulgate has ever been held in supreme
veneration by the Catholic Church in all ages and countries, by popes,
bishops, abbots, and schoolmen; that no jealousy existed as to the
reading of it by the clergy generally; that in fact it was not a sealed
book to the learned classes, and was regarded universally as the highest
authority in matters of faith and morals,--it seems strange that so
violent an opposition should have been made to its translation into
vernacular tongues, and to its circulation among the people. Wyclif's
translation was r