§ 42. WYCLIF AND THE SCRIPTURES. 341
For .hundreds of years no eminent teacher had emphasized %y^ the right of the laity to the Word of God. It was regarded as a book for the clergy, and the interpretation of its meaning was assumed to rest hirgely with the decretists and the pope. The Council of Toulouse, 1229, had forbidden the use of the Bible to laymen^ The condemned sects of the 12th and 13th centuries, especially the Waldenses, had adopted another rule, but their assailants, such as Alanus ab Insulis, had shown how dangerous their principle was. Wyclif stood forth as the _ ^ champion of an open Bible. It was_a_book to be studiedly all Christians, for ^' it is the whole truth." Because it was given to~the Church, its teachings are free to every one, even as is Christ himself.^
To withhold the Scriptures from the laity is a fundamental sin. To make them known in the mother-tongue is the first duty of the priest. For this reason priests ought always to be familiar with the language of the people. Wyclif held up the friars for declaring it heresy to translate God's law into English and make it known to laymen. He argued against their position by referring to the gift of tongues at Pentecost and to Jerome's translation, to the practice of Christ and the Apostles who taught peoples in their native languages and to the existence in his own day of a French translation made in spite of all hindrances. Why, he exclaims, " should not Englishmen do the same, for as the lords of England have the Bible in French, it would not be against reason if they had the same material in English." Through an English Bible Englishmen would be enabled best "to follow Christ and come to heaven." ^ What could be more positive than the following words ?
Christen men and women, olde and young, shulden study fast in the New Testament, and no simple man of wit shulde be aferde unmeasurably
kammer werfen kbnnen, we may without further thought cast the idea of Reformers before the Reformation into the historical rag bag. The remark he makes after stating how little the expression sola scriptura meant in the mouths of mediaeval reformers. See Walter in Litzg.^ 1905, p. 447.
1 Ilium librum debet omnis Christianus adiscere cum sit omnis Veritas. De ver., I. 109. Fideles cujuscunque generis, fuerint clerici vel laid, viri vel feminoe, inveniunt inea virtutem operandi, etc., pp. 117, 136. Op. evang., II. 36. 2 Matthew, Sel. Works, p. 429 sq.
342 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1204-1517.
to study in the text of holy Writ. Pride and covetise of clerks is cau.se of their blyndness and heresie and priveth them fro verie understonding of holy Writ. The New Testament is of ful autorite and open to uiiderstonding of simple men, as to the pynts that ben most needful to salvation.
Wyclif was the first to give tlie Bible to his people in their own tongrie. He knew no Hebrew and probably no Greek. His version, which was made from the Latin Vulgate, was the outgrowth of his burning desire to make his English countrymen more religious and more Christian. The paraphrastic translation of books which proceeded from the pen of Richard Rolle and perhaps a verse of the New Testament of Kentish origin and apparently made for a nunnery, ^ must be considered as in no wise in conflict with the claim of priority made for the English Reformer. In his task he had the aid of Nicolas Hereford, who translated the Old Testament and the Apocryphal books as far as Baruch 3 : 20. A revision was made of Wyclii's Bible soon after his death, by Purvey. In his prologue^ Purvey makes express mention of the " English Bible late translated," and affirms that the Latin copies had more need of being corrected than it. One hundred and seventy copies of theae two English bibles are^ extant, and it seems strange thatj_ until the edition issued by Forshall and Madden in 1850, they remained unprinted.2 The reason for their not being struck off on the presses of Caxton and other early English printers, who issued the Golden Legend, with its fantastic and often gre wsome religious tales, was that Wyclif had been pronounced a heretic and his version of the Scriptures placed under the ban by the religious authorities in England.
' The text pub. Cambr., 1902 and 1905, by Anna C. Paues : A Fourteenth Cent. Engl. Bible Vs.
2 Tlie Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books, i7i the earliest English Versions made from the Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers. 4 vols., Oxford, 1850. The work cost 22 years of labor. It contains Purvey's Prologue and an exhaustive Preface by the editors. Purvey's New Test, had been printed by John Lewis, London, 1731, and reprinted by Henry Baber, Lond., 1810, and in the Bagster English Hexapla, Lond., 1841. Adam Clarke had published Wyclif's version of the Canticles in his Commentary, 3rd vol., 1823, and Lea Wilson, Wyclif's New Test., Lond., 1848.