"I BELIEVE that in the end the truth will conquer."—Thus wrote Wycliffe, in full assurance of faith that God, who had allowed him to be the means of giving the people of England His word in their own common every-day speech, would not suffer the light He had kindled to be quenched by all the efforts of the powers of darkness to extinguish it. And God did keep this light of truth burning, to be the joy and strength of their souls to many in secret places through the long, sorrowful years which followed the death of Wycliffe, until, as we shall see, the time came when men dared openly to read His word, and to speak of salvation through Christ alone, no man making them afraid. Sad years they were indeed; times when terrible civil wars rent the country, and many a fair English field was red with English blood; when there was great dearth in the land, for the men who were left alive after the war and the pestilence were too few to till it. While sadder than all was the hard bondage in which the people were held by those who professed to be alone able to teach them the truths of God-that truth which makes free the soul which receives it.
Here and there, in the history of these times of trouble, we come upon some brief record, some story of faithfulness unto death, which shows us that though the voices of the "poor priests"—who, in Wycliffe's days had gone through the length and breadth of the land publishing the glad tidings of peace—were soon hushed, their words had already taken root, deep in the hearts of the people.
Scarcely had Wycliffe died before a cruel law had been made, forbidding anyone to possess, or even to read, one of his English Bibles. Nevertheless, numbers of the precious books were carefully hidden away, and stealthily read at midnight, though those who attended at these secret readings well knew the risk they ran.
That you may in some degree realize how great that risk was, I will tell you the story of some poor people, shoemakers by trade, living at Coventry, who desired to bring up their children in the fear of God. It would be of no use for them to attempt to instruct them out of the Latin Bible, which they did not themselves understand; the English Bible was a forbidden book to the common people. What were they to do? God gave them grace to act rightly in this matter, and delivered them from the fear of man. By degrees it became known that these simple people had access by some means to certain portions of the Scriptures in English, and that they were teaching their little children to read the word of God in their own language. The parents were first seized, and the poor, frightened little Ones were then examined, that it might be known what heresies they had been taught. When they confessed that they had learned the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments in English, they were threatened with punishment, but let go. A few weeks later, all the fathers, and one of the mothers—in whose sleeve a few leaves containing part of one of the gospels in English had been found—were burned at Coventry, in sight of all men, that others might learn by their example how dangerous a thing it was to touch a book which the church had forbidden.
Again we read of a man being brought to trial for having purchased an English New Testament—the price he paid for it was equal to nearly ₤50 of our money—and having not only read it himself, but taught others to read it.
By these means the Holy Scripture was "becoming a vulgar thing," the great churchmen said. “This reading of the word of God by the common people must be put down, cost what it might "-and it cost the lives of many, yet it was not put down.
The law" concerning the burning of a heretic" gave the bishops power to try people who were only suspected of heresy, and, if they were found guilty, they were given to the charge of the mayor of their town, who was obliged to have them publicly burned. Still a heretic had one chance allowed him; if he would recant, that is, give up his heresy, he might save himself. It was by this means that a tradesman, called “Doctor" Man, from his knowledge of the Scriptures, did save his life. But God did not allow Satan to have his way with His poor, weak, tempted child. Fear of the fire had wrung the recantation from him, but he knew no rest until he was sure that the Lord, who forgave the disciples when they, in the hour of peril, forsook Him and fled, and who said to Simon Peter, after he had denied Him, " Lovest thou Me?" had forgiven him, and would allow him to follow Him once more.
Man, leaving Oxford, traveled through the eastern parts of England, working with his own hands, as Wycliffe's gospellers had done, while he preached to the people where-ever he went. By-and-by he became bold enough to preach in lonely places in the neighborhood of London, and many hundreds were converted by his means. He was again arrested, and permitted to die, for the sake of Christ, the death from fear of which he had once denied His name.
The followers of Wycliffe were called Lollards by those who counted them idle babblers. This name became of such wide application, that a man who could read his own native language was in danger of being suspected as a Lollard, and banished from his home. But not all the Lollards were men whose only wish was to be allowed to worship God in truth, to read His word for themselves, and to make it known to others. Many, in their warfare for the truth, mixed themselves in worldly affairs, and spent their strength in speaking and writing fiercely against the wealth and splendor of the higher clergy. By these means they became more and more hated by those in authority, and brought the truth which they fought for into disrepute. Still there is no doubt that through the Lollards, by God's grace, a ‘faith in the authority of the Bible as His word was kept alive up to the time of the Reformation, which, you know began in England in the days of our King Henry the Eighth.
One of the saddest things we read in the history of these times is that, about fifty years after the death of Wycliffe, the one belief of the time was sorcery and magic. So low had our countrymen fallen, and so true is it that those who will not believe God's truth, find no difficulty in receiving the devil's lie. But God was preparing the way for the better knowledge of His word, and the wider circulation of it, through the invention of printing, and what has been called the revival of the old learning.
There still exists in a library at Cambridge a copy of a curious book. It is called the Poor Man's Bible, and was probably printed in Holland. If you ever have an opportunity of seeing this, or any other copy of this rare volume, I am sure, though you may think the pictures very rough and ugly, and the Latin sentences difficult to rear!, you will look at it with interest when you remember that it was such a book as this which probably gave people the first notion that it was possible to print books; it was in fact a rude attempt at printing. Scenes, taken partly from the lives of the saints—foolish and often harmful stories they were—partly from the life of our Lord, and from the Old Testament histories, were cut upon wooden blocks, from which the pictures were to be engraved, and underneath the scripture pictures were sentences from the Latin Bible, cut into the wood, to be engraved in like manner.
This old picture-book probably found its way over to England at the time when Wycliffe's Bibles, wherever they could be found, were being destroyed, and even by this means no doubt the word of God reached the homes of the wealthier classes. A Poor Man's Bible, in truth! such a book never could have been, for it must have been almost as costly as a book written by hand upon parchment. It was soon seen, that if a few sentences cut at the foot of a picture, upon a wooden block, could be engraved, a whole page of writing might be engraved. This was soon done, and block pages and books were made. C. P.