p. 21 | Wycliffe and the Bible

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 26, 1911

Wycliffe and the Bible

“You call me a heretic,” said Wycliffe, “because I have translated the Bible into the common tongue of the people. Do you know whom you blaspheme? Did not the Holy Ghost give the Word of God at first in the mother tongue of the nations to whom it was addressed? Why do you speak against the Holy Ghost? Is it not from the Bible that we learn who is the Builder and Sovereign of the church, what are the laws by which she is to be governed, and the rights and privileges of her members? Without the Bible, what chart has the church to show for all these?”

Of this Reformer the historian Wylie says: “He organized a body of preachers who knew the gospel, and were willing to preach it at crossroads and in market-places, in city and village and rural lane. . . . Though Wycliffe had lived a thousand years, and occupied himself during all of them in preaching, he could not have hoped for the good which he now saw being accomplished by the silent action of the English Bible.”