The Life of John Wickliff [by P. F. Tytler]

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1826 edition. Excerpt: ... LIFE OF JOHN WICKLIFF. John Wickliff, the father of the Reformation, is perhaps more justly entitled to the epithet of a great man, than most others who have had that epithet bestowed on them. In the midst of the deepest intellectual slavery, under which the human mind had groaned for more than a thousand years, he was the first who successfully struggled to be free, and who exerted a noble liberty of thought, when comfort, and station, and life itself, were likely to be sacrificed in the adventure. He was greater in one respect, than his future follower Luther, because the darkness of ignorance which overspread the world in the time of Wickliff, was deeper and more hopeless than when the German reformer began his high career, because Luther was cheered and assisted by the light and force of reviving letters, while Wickliff, on the contrary, had to work alone, and surrounded by the profoundest scholastic gloom. Any one who has at all travelled through England, must know the beautiful little town of Richmond in Yorkshire, near which there is a small village called Spreswell, of poor appearance, but surrounded by fair woods and fertile fields. In this village, according to that excellent and learned antiquary John Leland, whose books are a storehouse of curious matters, John Wickliff was born; so at least, in Leland's days, said the current tradition of the neighbourhood. The time of his birth was about 1325, two years before the deposition of that imbecile monarch Edward the Second, and the accession of his victorious and famous son Edward theThird, the conqueror of France, and the father of Edward the Black Prince. Where John WicklifF was educated in his boyish years, is not now known. At this time the "Itinerary, vol. V. p. 09. only...