lish people, who have by this time the Bible in their hands, will speedily perceive that I am now no heretic, but the truest Churchman in the land. (( In the ende the truth will conquere.” Wyclif. "If the stiff-necked obstinacy of our prelates had not obstructed Wyclif's sublime and exalted spirit, the names of the Bohemians, Huss and Hieronymus, and even of Luther and Calvin, would at this day have been buried in obscurity, and the glory of having reformed our neighbors would have been ours alone."- Milton. "There is in the University Library of Prague a magnificent old Bohemian Cantionale written in the year 1572, and adorned with a number of finely illuminated miniatures. One of the most characteristic of these little works of art stands above a hymn in memory of John Hus, the Reformer. It consists of three medallions rising one above another, in the first of which John Wiclif, the Englishman, is represented striking sparks out of a stone; in the second, Hus, the Bohemian, is setting fire to the coals; while in the third, Luther, the German, is bearing the fierce light of a blazing torch. The trilogy of these miniatures is a fine illustration of the Divine mission of the three great Reformers. John Wiclif, the Englishman, is the true, original spirit, the bringer of a new light, another Prometheus in the realm of spiritual things. Modern research at least testifies in a singular manner to the truth of the miniature, and is bringing about a great change of opinion. Quite recently it has been shown by a German writer that the whole Bohemian movement of the fifteenth century was simply an imitation of the movement that had stirred England — and more particularly Oxford · under the influence of John Wiclif thirty years before. It has been proved conclusively that, as far as doctrine is concerned, Hus borrowed nearly all his reforming ideas from the strongminded Yorkshireman. In the works of the Oxford professor a rich fountain of new thought had been opened to him, by means of which he became the national and religious leader of a great people, the martyr of a great cause. The whole Husite movement is mere Wiclifism. It should never be forgotten, at least by Englishmen, that those mighty ideas had an Englishman for their parent. Wiclif was the first who, at a period of general helplessness, when the Church, lost in worldliness, was unable to satisfy the spiritual and national aspirations of her adherents, gave utterance to new ideas which seemed fully to replace the fading traditional forms of life and thought; and who thus made England t, become the glorious leader of the greatest spiritual movement of modern times. He it was who first dared to face the system of corruption and tyranny which had overspread all Europe, who first showed in his own person how much could be done against a whole world of foes by one single-hearted man, who had made himself the champion of truth. England owes to him her Bible, her present language, the reformation of the Church, her religious and, to a very large degree, her political liberty. With Chaucer, Shakspere, and Milton he is one of the makers of the English language, and his influence in English religious life is unparalleled by any later man. He must be pronounced to be the first, and by far the greatest, Reformer preceding the sixteenth century. He was one of the greatest men England has ever produced, a religious genius whose vestiges are to be found not only in the history of his own country, but in the spiritual history of mankind. Modern research proves that the Reformation neither of Germany, nor of England, nor of Bohemia, was a sudden outburst, but that its origin must be traced back into the past, and from no one can it with greater truth be said to have emanated than from John Wiclif the Englishman. In the spirit of this wonderful man Protestantism arose. By the greatness of his soul, the depth of his religious and national feeling, and the keenness of his intellect, he had become the leader of his people. When in England, towards the end of the Middle Ages, the new power of a national and religious awakening was struggling into existence, it was in Wiclif that it found its truest personification. Of him therefore in a singular manner is true what has been said of Luther, that he held the mind and the spirit of his countrymen in his hand, and seemed to be the hero in whom his nation had become incarnate.'" Buddensieg. Thomas Fuller, in his old Church History of Britain (1655), describes the scattering of Wyclif's ashes, by the decree of the council of Constance -the same council which decreed the martyrdom of Huss in quaint words which have become famous. The emissaries of the Church, he says, telling the story of their coming to Lutterworth churchyard, "take what was left out of the grave, and burnt them to ashes, and cast them into Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispensed all the world over." The words of Milton, quoted above, do not assert too strongly Wyclif's preeminent, original influence in the work of the Reformation. The passages given from Wyclif's own writings show how distinctly he anticipated Luther's doctrines and methods. He condemned as warmly as Luther the abuses of the doctrine of indulgence, which had become almost as gross in England in his time as under Tetzel in Germany a hundred and fifty years later; he exposed as tirelessly the corruptions of the clergy and the prevailing superstitions and traditionalism; he urged the importance of preaching above all ritualism; he gave the people the Bible in their own language; he emphasized the right and duty of private judgment; he taught the supremacy of the civil power; he trusted the people. That the whole Hussite movement was mere Wyclifism, as Buddensieg asserts, is abundantly shown in the learned and thorough work on Wiclif and Hus by Dr. Johann Loserth, translated by Rev. M. J. Evans. Consult the useful note by the translator of this work on the spelling of Wyclif's name — which we find in various places in as many forms as are possible: Wiclif, Wyclif, Wicklif, Wycklif, Wicliffe, Wycliffe, Wickliffe, Wyckliffe, etc. The best lives of Wyclif are those by Vaughan and the German Lechler. The earliest important life was by Lewis. There are good brief biographies by Pennington, Wilson and others. The admirable work by Professor Montagu Burrows, on Wiclif's Place in History, discusses in three lectures the history and present state of the Wyclif literature, Wyclif's relation to Oxford, and his true place as a reformer. The histories of Oxford by Lyte and Brodrick contain valuable chapters on Wyclif's life at the University. Green's chapter on Wyclif, in his history of England, is very interesting. See also the lecture on Wyclif in Herrick's Some Heretics of Yesterday. Rudolph Buddensieg's little book, John Wiclif, Patriot and Reformer, contains a brief biographical sketch and an interesting selection of passages from Wyclif's writings. Three volumes of the Select English Works of John Wyclif, edited by Thomas Arnold, were issued by the Clarendon Press in 1869. More of his works have been published since, and many still remain in MS. at Vienna and elsewhere. Those published consist largely of sermons and theological and political pamphlets. Wyclif's interest in political and social reform was scarcely less than his interest in religious reform. His denunciations of oppression were so severe and his democratic sympathies so outspoken that he was charged with being the intellectual author of the movement which culminated in the revolt of the peasantry under Wat Tyler a few years before his death. There is some ground for this, although Wyclif himself, like Luther, was a nonresistant. The essay on Wyclif by Thorold Rogers, in his Historical Gleanings, is interesting for its discussion of this general subject and its picture of the social condition of England in Wyclif's time. The essay by Edwin De Lisle, Wyclif begat Henry George, is worth reading in the connection. More important is the essay on Wyclif's Doctrine of Lordship, in R. L. Poole's Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought. Lordship or the right to rule, according to Wyclif, was conditioned upon the disposition to rule well. "Dominion is founded in grace," was his word. The ungracious ruler forfeited his rights; only the benevolent king had valid claim to dominion. Similarly he held concerning property, that the right to property was conditioned on its righteous use; the rich man is God's steward, and his rights as steward revert if he does not use his riches for the common weal. It is interesting to remember that Chaucer was Wyclif's contemporary. He pictures as powerfully as does Wyclif himself the corruptions in the Church against which Wyclif rose to do battle. Many have believed that Chaucer was a Wyclifite and that the picture of the Parson, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, if not indeed a portrait of Wyclif himself, is one of the company of "Poor Priests" that Wyclif organized to preach "God's Law through England. The young people should read this description of the good Parson in Chaucer. The careful student will read the essay, Chaucer a Wickliffite, by H. Simon, in the collection of Essays on Chaucer published by the Chaucer Society, part iii. "By the side of the repulsive characters of the friars and clergy and their officials," says Mr. Simon, "the Parson of the Prologue appears like a bright figure of sublime beauty. Nobody, perhaps, has read this delicate yet pithy picture without emotion; hundreds of times the Parson has been quoted as the ideal of Christian charity and humility, evangelical piety, unselfish resignation to the high calling of a pastor. It cannot be that Chaucer unintentionally produced this bright image with so dark a background. Involuntarily it occurs to us, as to former critics, that a Wicliffite, perhaps the great reformer himself, sat for the picture; and the more we look at it, the more striking becomes the likeness. This observation is not new; to say nothing of English critics, Pauli says that the likeness of the Parson has decidedly Lollardish traces, and Lechler expressly declares it to be Wicliffe's portrait, though he says, at the same time, that it is not only doubtful but improbable that Chaucer should have sympathized with, or really appreciated, Wicliffe's great ideas of and efforts for reform. Both scholars, however, principally refer to the description in the General Prologue; but the Parson is mentioned also in the Shipman's prologue and in that to the Parson's Tale; and it is exactly in the latter two that we find the most striking proofs of his unquestionably Wicliffite character.” Wyclif's translation of the Bible was the first general or important English translation. The young people are asked to compare the portion printed first here (Matthew, chaps. v, vi, vii) with the same in the common version. Tyndall's translation of the New Testament appeared in 1526; Coverdale's version of the whole Bible in 1535; Matthew's Bible in 1537; the Great Bible, usually called Cranmer's, in 1539; the Geneva Bible in 1557; the Bishops' Bible in 1568; the Douay Bible in 1610; the King James version in 1610. Wyclif, the great pioneer of the Reformation, died on the last dav of the year 1384, which is the fourteenth century date that the young people 'are asked to remember. The year of his birth, according to Leland, was 1324 just four hundred years before the birth of Kant (b. 1724), the great pioneer of modern thought. William of Wykeham was born in the same year as Wyclif. Chaucer was born a few years later, 1340, and died in 1400, the year that Guttenberg, the inventor of printing, was born. The year of Chaucer's birth was the year before Petrarch was crowned with the laurel wreath in the Capitol at Rome. Rienzi, "the last of the tribunes," was a personal friend of Petrarch, who supported him when he became tribune, in 1347. This was the year after Edward III and the Black Prince won the battle of Crecy, and just after Wyclif had begun his Oxford life. It will be remembered that Edward instituted the Order of the Garter soon after the battle of Crecy. The battle of Agincourt came thirty years after Wyclif's death, in the same year, 1415, that Huss, the great preacher of Wyclif's doctrines in Bohemia, was burnt at Constance. Jerome of Prague suffered the next year after Huss-both Jerome and Huss having been born in Wyclif's lifetime. Thomas à Kempis was born four years before Wyclif died. Tauler, the German mystic, died while Wyclif was teaching at Oxford. Wyclif's lifetime was the time of Jacob and Philip van Artevelde at Ghent, the time when the universities of Prague and Cracow were founded, when the Kremlin was founded at Moscow and the Bastile at Paris, the time of the terrible plague, the "Black Death," in Europe, the time of the first appearance of Halley's comet, the time of Douglas and Percy (Hotspur) and of Timur (Tamerlane), the time of the rising of the peasantry (the Facquerie) in France. The revolt of the English peasantry under Wat the Tyler and Jack Straw occurred three years before Wyclif's death. Arnold of Winkelried fell at Sempach two years after Wyclif's death; and Joan of Arc was born about the time that Wyclif's remains, thirty years after his death, were dug up, burnt and thrown into the Swift. When Joan was burnt at Rouen, we are near the time of the birth of Columbus. Since the above notes were written to accompany this leaflet, as first prepared in connection with the Old South lectures for young people on "The Story of the Centuries," in 1888, considerable important Wyclif literature has appeared in England. Several volumes have been added to the Latin edition of his works. Lewis Sergeant's" John Wyclif, Last of the Schoolmen and First of the English Reformers" is a critical and admirable biography; and George M. Trevelyan's " England in the Age of Wycliffe" is a careful and important social study. F. D. Matthews's contributions to the Wyclif literature are of high value. The thorough article on Wyclif in the Dictionary of National Biography is by Rev. Hastings Rashdall. Attention is called to the Old South Leaflet (No. 57) upon the English Bible, with specimens of the different translations and historical notes upon them. There is a complete critical edition of Wyclif's Bible in four volumes, published at Oxford in 1850, edited by Forshall and Madden, with a valuable historical introduction. [1902.] PUBLISHED BY THE DIRECTORS OF THE OLD SOUTH WORK, Old South Meeting-house, Boston, Mass. 496 RAR UNIVERSITY CAL OF |