The Portland daily press., 1880-12-10


officer to the commission, charging the prelate
to pronounce on him no sentence. The people
of London forced their way into the chapel at
Lambeth, and showed their purpose to defend
him. The result of the proceedings bore,
therefore, no proportion to the threatening
commencement; for though he was forbidden
further to teach the particular theses, ON the
ground that they would give offense to the
laity, he left the court Cor the open air OF
streets and fields, with his freedom unfettered
by the futile assault. The thin, tall figure,
the sharply cut features, the penetrative eye,
the firm set lips and flowing beard which his
portraits present, the thoughtful, earnest dig
nifed face, of which all men took note, were
thenceforth to be found in the perilous van OF
the long English battle for liberal church
and Scriptural faith.
TRANsLATING THE BIBLE INTO ENGLISH.
But now, as the greatest of all instruments
for this supreme work, he would have Gods
Word itself translated into the common
tongue of the people, and reproduced in mani
fold copies, till the peasant might have it
while the rich should gain through it rareI
treasure than jewels of price.
The "Ormulum," so called, paraphrase in
verse of the Gospels and Acts, had been made
in the thirteenth century, but this seems to
have been confined to a single copy. In the
fourteenth century two translations of the
Psalms had been made, and these were fol-
lowed, after time, by one of the Epistles Of
Paul. But up to A. D. 1860, the Psalter was
the only book of the Bible rendered into the
common speech, and copies of these were Ger
tainly very rare. Within the next quarter o
century there came into the English lam
guage the entire Bible; and it came, by the
witness of both adversaries and friends
through the impulse and labor of the grea,
"Reformer before the Reformation" How fal
he himself translated i is books is not wholly
certain. That he did so largely is undisputed
A Harmony of the Gospels, first translated
seems to have led the way to the rest. The Apo
CALYPSO, with its ncessant attraction for spirits
like his in times like those was prob ably the first
of the books to engage his hand Others fol
lowed, most of the New Testament being rem
dered by himself, doubtless with partial aid
from friends; the Old Testament probably in
good part by Nicholas Hereford, an intimate
however, to have been suddenly arrested in
the work and the rest to have been done by
another, probably by Wycliffe.,
OF course all the translations had to be made
from the Latin of Jerome, the Hebrew and
Greek being almost unknown. 1t was, in Other
words, the version of a version, and so exposed
to peculiar 3imperfection. But it must be re-
membered that Jerome had had early Greek
manuscripts. earlier than any known until re-
Gently to the scholars of Europe, and that SO in
translat:ng him Wycliffe stood but as one re,
move from the originals, while his perfect ac-
quaintance with the Latin gave him ample
opportunity to make his translation energetic
and full as an English equivalent. He com
pleted it probably as early at the latest, as
1892 and copies of it were rapidly made by the
hands of skilled and eager scribes.
But Wycliffe himself. no doubt was aware
that the work had been too rapidly done fol
its highest value or best effect, and planned
the revision, at once commenced, which final.
ly appeared from the hand of John Kurvey in
1888, four years after the masters death. OF
ry,if rsv,<o -.
in whole or in part, many written on vellum
with elaborate care, to be the possession OF
churches, or the wealthy, and not a few bear
ing the marks of long use and of the conceal.
ments into which they were hurried in times
of trouble. All these were written within 4C
years after Wycliffe's death; and if we remem.
Der what careful, destructive search for them
was made in the day of persecution, how many
went across the, sea, how many shriv-
eled in the fires of war, how many were
burned, with those who had read them, on
public squares, how many probably wait to be
their number at first must have been. Only a
spirit intense and determined could have
driven SO swiftly SO many pens.
Of the effects of this translation on the Eng.
lish language many have written. The judg-
ment of Lechler is undoubtedly just-that
sit marks an epoch in the development OF
the English language almost as much az
LutherS translation dues in the history oil
the German tongues" How vast the impress
sion produced by the version which thus burst
into use, not on language but on life in the
whole sphere of moral, social, spiritual, even
political experience, who shall declare!'
wYCLIFFE's LAST DAYS.
The subsequent months of Wycliffe's life
were likehe stormy afternoon, whose turbu-
lence ce%es, whose glooms are scattered in
the sunsatT golden tranquility. An ecclesi-
astical assembly at London-called by him the
Earthquake Council" because it was shaken
by aSFepbe of planet-condemned his
]doctkhes, lbut left him untouched apparently
4ecauSe offhe spirit of the commons. Oxford
Iepelled or 6vaded the attacks repeated upon
Uam ot last yielded to a royal mandate,
and his loNg connection with it was closed. In
bve( pen "A. D. 1882, he seems to have
i again Nef6aded his doctrine before the pro-
8pcia3eyhod in London, and again to have
peH,pefsonal assault. The weight of his
character.in the country was too great, his fol-
lowing was too large to be challenged without
danger. A vigorous memorial addressed to
parliament against the English crusade for
Urban was one of his last public papers,
though many brief tracts were written and dis
tributed to the end of his life, and his sermons
went forth as leaves on the wind. Three hun
dred of them still remain.
He expected martyrdom, and others as
surely expected it for him. But he was of
that iron temper which fire hardens into steel
fOnnd it as true in his own time as it ever had
been, 'the nearer the sword, the nearer to
God" In point of fact he was never subjected
to blade or brand. He wrought in patience at
his rectory, making it center of impulse to
England. He stood to his convictions, though
John of Gaunt fell from his side, till stroke
of paralysis second time smote him, as he
was engaged in divine office, on the day of the
Holy Innocents, at the close of the year 1884 !;
and on the final day of that year, as reckoned
by us. he passed out of early struggle and care
and entered his immortal rest.
REFoRMERs WHO FOLLOWED wYcL1FFE.
The years which followed him in his own
country were years of darkness, almost of
his life. Almost singly, for time, he had
held antagaonistic force at bay. With the
withdrawal of his grand personality, the pow
ers which he had arrested and fought, gained
volume and velocity, and learned new cruel
ty both from previous fear and from later
success So his followers were scattered, and
multitudes OF them were ruthlessly hurled
to the flood or the flames. In the convoca-
tion of A. ID. 1408 it was forbidden to trans
late the scriptures, or to read any book COM
posed in his time. After the council of Con-
stance, as we know, his bones were burned,
and their very ashes strewed on the stream.
that Avon might carry them to Severn, and
Severn to the sea; but it was, as his disciples
said, tnat the world might be his sepulcher
and Christendom his convert. There came
time even in England when the fatal laws
against his adherents fell dead in their places,
and when the almost anarchic frenzy which
attended the long war of the Roses gave way
to peace in which liberty thrived That was
the time for which his quickening thought
had waited and having brooded silent in the
air ii then burst into voice as if touching
thousand souls at once. Still earlier. on the
continent, in Bohemia and in Italy, had been
felt his vast impulse. John Huss, Jerome of
Prague, Savonarola, repeated the onset of his
fearless spirit on the system which oppressed
them, with their different powers, with their
equal conservation; and no one of all died in
vain. In a copy of the missal containing the
old Hussite liturgy, in the library of the Glenn
entinum at Prague, richly illuminated by low
ing hands, Wycliffe is pictured at the top
lighting spark; Huss, below him, blowing
it into fame; Luther, still lower, waving on
high the lighted torch. 1t is true picture of
that succession, in which others followed,
with frightening lustre, this Morning Star
of the Reformation" till the sky was glowing
through all its arch with the radiance of the
uprising light.
Out of that reformation issued the new pro-
phetic age whose ample brightness is around
us. 1t lifted England to its great place in
Europe 1t wrenched powerful states from
the papal control. 1t gave wholly new free
dom to spirit and thought 1t filled this land
with its Protestant colonies. 1t opens to us
opportunity and hope. 1t is on the work ac-
complished by Wycliffe and those who fol-
lowed that our liberties have been builded.
Thank God that the book which at Oxford