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to translate as clearly as he could to the sense, and to have many good fellows and cunning at the correcting of the translation. According to his facilities, his method was that of the more learned divines who, centuries later, took up his work in the Jerusalem Chamber.

How untrustworthy the manuscripts of the Vulgate then were is shown by Purvey's statement that "the common Latin Bibles have more need to be corrected, as many as I have seen in my life, than hath the Latin Bible late translated." 2

We are attracted to Purvey by the simplicity of his nature, and by the scholarly modesty that led him to "pray for charity and for the common profit of Christian souls, that if any wise man find any default of the truth of translation, let him set in the true sentence." The "simple creature" lived an unsettled life, was imprisoned for his opinions, and in 1400 recanted at St. Paul's Cross. Of the one hundred and fifty copies of his version known to us, all appear to have been written before 1430, by which time Purvey himself was dead. But there must have been many later manuscripts, for although proscribed in convocation by Archbishop Arundel in 1408, the book was circulated widely, and more than any other version was the Bible of the English people, until the printing press gave the place of honor to the trans1 Westcott, p. 16. 2 Ibid., p. 18.

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lation of William Tyndale in the next century. The work of Wycliffe and of Purvey was done at a time when the thought of the nation, as well as its speech, was in a state of transition. Translating as they did, not from the original, but from the Vulgate, there are traces in their versions of ecclesiastical dominance and of theological error. The word clergy, which stout James Melville the Presbyterian said smelled of papistry, although used by the congregation of believers, frequently occurs, so does sacrament where later versions use mystery (1 Tim. 3:9); and penance for repentance; and priests for elders (Titus 1 : 5). But there is often music in the sentences which once heard cannot soon be forgotten, as when the man cured of blindness at the pool of Siloam, says: "I wente, and waischid, and sai." There is a tenderness lacking in later versions, in Persida, moost dere worthe womman (Romans 16: 12). The play on language is very effective in such a verse as Alle thingis ben nedeful to me, but not alle thingis ben spedeful (1 Cor. 6: 12); and there is sound teaching in making Paul say (1 Cor. 14:38) If ony man unknoweth, he schal be unknowen, where in our later version we read, If any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant. The noble description of Moses' old age in our version is perhaps more dignified, but it is certainly not more graphic than Wycliffe's: Moises was of an hun

drid and twentie yeer whanne he diede; his ize dasewide not, nether his teeth weren stirid.1

That Wycliffe's Bible should be inferior to our authorized version is not to be wondered at. Even had he been one only among a large and learned company, and favored with royal patronage as well as with scholarly leisure, this would have been natural. We must consider under what disadvantages he worked. How rapidly at that time the language was changing is seen at once by contrasting his earliest version, of 1380, with that of Purvey of 1388. But the impulse sprang from peaceful Lutterworth to which we are indebted for our Bible to-day. Priestly proscriptions were powerless to arrest the circulation of the book, which found most favor in Purvey's revision. Some of the copies still extant, to judge from their size, were evidently the friends and companions of their owners in the home and on the road; but others were counted fit to be the gifts of princes.2 Foxe is no doubt right in saying that within thirtysix years of its first publication by Wycliffe, the sweetness of God's word had been tasted by great multitudes, and that to read and hear it well-disposed hearts sat up all night. To obtain the book in England "some gave five marks [about two hundred dollars] some more, some less for a book;

1 "The Bibles of England," by Andrew Edgar, D D., p. 8, et seq. 2 Westcott, p. 24.

some gave a load of hay for a few chapters of St. James or of St. Paul."

Wycliffe's work was all done between the years 1356 and 1384, and probably no Englishman in so short a time has made so deep and lasting an impression on his land and age. He stands at the source and fountain head of the Protestant Reformation, and draws his faith direct from the pages which he translates. If he anticipates Luther at the desk, he anticipates Wesley in the field, and sends out his itinerants preaching, bare of foot and clad in unbleached russet, to evangelize the land. While his wide and generous scholarship taught him to reverence human reason, his temperament and training taught him equally to reverence authority. The first may have made him a Protestant, but the second kept him in humble submission to the Scriptures. His preachers bore with them on their journeys the conviction that their master inculcated nothing which he had not first experienced himself. With a frame as frail as Calvin's, he possessed not a little of the same restless energy, indomitable will, and impetuous spirit. At the same time he had popular gifts, geniality, humor, audacity, a love of the right, a hatred of all falsehoods and fraud, a wealth of invective and of persuasion, which bespoke his English blood. Our space has allowed us only to glance at the mighty influence which John Wycliffe ex

erted not only upon his own country, but also upon the whole continent of Europe. Heroic John Huss gave utterance to the feelings of thousands of devout souls when he said, in refusing to condemn Wycliffe: "I am content that my soul should be where his soul is." He came to an age which many different influences had combined to make ready for his message. Speaking at the Wycliffe Commemoration, in 1881, Dr. Stoughton said: "There was an intellectual activity-there was spiritual life throughout the period. The nadir was in the tenth century; the fourteenth saw the dawn of modern civilization. Society then appears on the move; feudalism was in decay; cities were rejoicing in newly sealed charters. Parliaments in Eugland were asserting their rights; commerce had left its cradle full of energy and life. The springtime of poetry had opened, and Chaucer had gathered the crocuses and snowdrops. God every now and then sends some strong man into the world to do much needed work. The hour calls for the man, and the man comes to meet the hour. The Divine hand that strikes the bell creates the representative fitted to obey the summons. God struck the hour for the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and Luther appeared. A hundred and fifty years earlier, and the bell rung for a reformer before the Reformation. Behold John Wycliffe in answer to that signal!”