Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

WYCLIFFE AND THE BIBLE. 289
erroneously called "poor priests" who, under plea of
being O disestablished, 7 were democrats of the darkest
hue, the sworn enemies of existing powers.
Wycliffe has won golden opinions of Protestant
posterity, because it sees in him the man who
first put an English Bible into the people's hands.
Wycliffe is, on the contrary, the father of unauthorised
versions of the Scripture generally. His
part in the work of translation amounted at best
to the New Testament. What ,^----^---^- he i^» really "/ aimed
was tl view 1 w bt that everv
m a w m truct his religion out
of the Bible without any appeal to the authorit
of the Church. A study of Bede will convince
any
-^»*
inquirer that Catholics of his day were fully ii
conversant with the leading facts of Scripture history,
whilst the Saxon princes and princesses and
nobles 4l carried out the Gospel in their lives by fre-
quently giving up their all for the pearl of great
^^^M
price. Venerable Bede died in the act of translating
St. John. King Alfred's great desire was to put the
whole Bible into Saxon for the benefit of his subjects,
but long before his time the Psalms and Gospels
"^
had been translated into the vulgar tongue.1
^^^^^^^
In
the -, thirteenth century V the Albigenses O and Waldenses
were claiming the right of examining Scripture for
themselves, and Pope Innocent the Third raised his
voice against any unauthorised version of the Holy
ook, which inevitably "/ produced i as many j opinions i
1 Stevenson, p. 105.
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