Unauthorized and opposed by the Church and State in England, John Wycliffe and friends, buoyed by a firm belief in the scriptures, forged ahead to give the English a complete Bible in their language.
“Not only did [John Wycliffe] maintain that [the scriptures] were a sufficient rule of life without any human additions, but he asserted the right of every man, cleric or lay, to study them for himself, even though he might be deficient in learning. ‘No man,’ he insisted, ‘was so rude a scholar but that he might learn the words of the Gospel according to his simplicity.’”
Supporting the idea of translation in the face of opposition, Wycliffe wrote, “it helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ’s sentence.”
From The Bible in Its Ancient and English Versions, Henry Wheeler Robinson, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940, pp. 137-138.
Related, John Wycliffe and the Lollards
Read The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards.
“The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards are preserved in their original English form (other Latin summaries survive) in Roger Dymok’s ‘Against the Twelve Heresies’ of the Lollards, an elaborate refutation of each of the heresies, written in 1396-97 for Richard II. The original conclusions were presented to Parliament (which took no action) and posted at St. Paul’s Cross.
“The text that follows is literally translated from the Middle English, at the cost of some archaisms and obscurities, a few of which are explained in italicized glosses.”
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