Study of the King James Bible | Page 7

says that in philosophy "he
came to be reckoned inferior to none of his time."
But it was not at Oxford that he came to know common life so well and
to sense the need for a new social influence. He came nearer to it when
he was rector of the parish at Lutterworth. As scholar and rector he set
going the two great movements which leave his name in history. One
was his securing, training, and sending out a band of itinerant preachers
or "poor priests" to gather the people in fields and byways and to
preach the simple truths of the Christian religion. They were unpaid,
and lived by the kindness of the common people. They came to be
called Lollards, though the origin of the name is obscure. Their
followers received the same name. A few years after Wiclif's death an
enemy bitterly observed that if you met any two men one was sure to
be a Lollard. It was the "first time in English history that an appeal had
been made to the people instead of the scholars." Religion was to be
made rather a matter of practical life than of dogma or of ritual. The
"poor priests" in their cheap brown robes became a mighty religious
force, and evoked opposition from the Church powers. A generation
after Wiclif's death they had become a mighty political force in the
controversy between the King and the Pope. As late as 1521 five
hundred Lollards were arrested in London by the bishop.[1] Wiclif's
purpose, however, was to reach and help the common people with the
simpler, and therefore the most fundamental, truths of religion.
[1] Muir, Our Grand Old Bible, p. 14.
The other movement which marks Wiclif's name concerns us more; but
it was connected with the first. He set out to give the common people
the full text of the Bible for their common use, and to encourage them
not only in reading it, if already they could read, but in learning to read
that they might read it. Tennyson compares the village of Lutterworth
to that of Bethlehem, on the ground that if Christ, the Word of God,
was born at Bethlehem, the Word of Life was born again at
Lutterworth.[1] The translation was from the Vulgate, and Wiclif
probably did little of the actual work himself, yet it is all his work. And
in 1382, more than five centuries ago, there appeared the first complete
English version of the Bible. Wiclif made it the people's Book, and the

English people were the first of the modern nations to whom the Bible
as a whole was given in their own familiar tongue. Once it got into
their hands they have never let it be taken entirely away.
[1] "Not least art thou, thou little Bethlehem In Judah, for in thee the
Lord was born; Nor thou in Britain, little Lutterworth, Least, for in thee
the word was born again." --Sir John Oldcastle.
Of course, all this was before the days of printing, and copies were
made by hand only. Yet there were very many of them. One hundred
and fifty manuscripts, in whole or in part, are extant still, a score of
them of the original version, the others of the revision at once
undertaken by John Purvey, Wiclif's disciple. The copies belonging to
Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth are both still in existence, and both
show much use. Twenty years after it was completed copies were
counted very valuable, though they were very numerous. It was not
uncommon for a single complete manuscript copy of the Wiclif version
to be sold for one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars, and Foxe,
whose Book of Martyrs we used to read as children, tells that a load of
hay was given for the use of a New Testament one hour a day.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence of this gift to the
English people. It constitutes the standard of Middle English. Chaucer
and Wiclif stood side by side. It is true that Chaucer himself accepted
Wiclif's teaching, and some of the wise men think that the "parson" of
whom he speaks so finely as one who taught the lore of Christ and His
apostles twelve, but first followed it himself, was Wiclif. But the
version had far more than literary influence; it had tremendous power
in keeping alive in England that spirit of free inquiry which is the only
safeguard of free institutions. Here was the entire source of the
Christian faith available for the judgment of common men, and they
became at once judges of religious and political dogma. Dr. Ladd
thinks it was not the reading of the Bible which produced the
Reformation; it was the Reformation itself which procured the