little of Wycliffe's personal history, must be attributed largely, as we have seen, to the isolation into which he was driven by the probable estrangement of his proud Papal relations, to the rudeness of the age in which he lived, and still more, perhaps, to the governmental reaction against his opinions, which commenced even before his death. Of the first sixteen years of his life, from 1324 to 1340, nothing whatever is known, and next to nothing of the twenty years which followed. Fylingham, to which he was presented in 1361, and Ludgershall to which he was presented in 1368, add nothing to his memory. He is 48 years of age before he receives, in 1372, his Doctorate, and begins to lecture on Theology, at Oxford. Nine years after this, in 1381, he is silenced as a professor, and with a constitution seriously impaired, retires to his humble country parish of Lutterworth, to which he had been presented in 1375, and where on the last day of December, 1384, at the age of 60, he breathes his last. And so it has come to pass, that he seems to us not so much a real historic personage, a man of veritable flesh and blood, as an impersonal, unembodied force; in this respect, as in some others, standing in decided contrast with Luther, of whose personal habits and character so vivid a picture has been produced. The great German is our familiar next-door neighbor, whom we meet every day upon the street, and the music of whose flute or guitar, and the merry voices of whose romping children come to us over the garden wall. The great Englishman stalks in the distance, tall, lean and shadowy.

But besides this dimness and uncertainty of outline, so well nigh fatal to any biography whatever of him, the fame of Wycliffe has encountered the singular fortune of being assailed by some even of his Protestant successors. Papal writers may be excused for thinking

him a rationalistic schoolman, a radical politician, and a child of Satan. But it strikes us very strangely to meet with such a paragraph as the following in the Church History of the pious Milner: "I know no person of ecclesiastical eminence, whose life and character have cost me more thought and care than Wickliffe's. And after all, there is not much to record that deserves the peculiar attention of godly persons. I have consulted the best authorities, and in scrutinizing their contents, have been mortified to find, that I could not conscientiously join with the popular cry in ranking this man among the highest worthies of the Church. A political spirit, as we have seen, deeply infected his conduct."* If any further argument were needed in our day to make out the essential unfitness of Milner himself to be the historian of Christ's kingdom, which is certainly a kingdom in this world, though not of it, such an argument would be helped immensely by this narrow and mistaken judgment of his in regard to his great countryman. Not less strange is the censure passed upon Wycliffe by Melanchthon." I have looked into Wycliffe, who is very confused in this controversy [about the Lord's Supper]; but I have found in him many other errors, by which a judgment may be made of his spirit. He neither understood, nor believed the righteousness of faith. He foolishly confounds the Gospel and politics, and does not see that the Gospel allows us to make use of the lawful forms of government of all nations. He contends that it is not lawful for priests to have property. He will have it that tithes ought to be paid to none but those that teach, as if the Gospel forbade the use of political or

* Milner's "History of the Church of Christ," 14th century, 3d Chapter.

dinances. He wrangles sophistically and downright seditiously about civil dominion. In the same manner, he cavils sophistically against the received opinion of the Lord's Supper." A censure which would have been spared, we think, had Melanchthon possessed all those writings of Wycliffe, which are now accessible. And yet there is doubtless an impression, still somewhat current in certain quarters, that our great English forerunner of the Reformation is fairly obnoxious to the charge of divers inconsistencies of conduct and opinion; that, as a Protestant, he came short of the proper standard in some points, as much as he went beyond it in others; that his theology, in some important features of it, was not orthodox; and that, in short, the popular estimate of him is an exaggerated and mistaken one.

Certainly a curious phenomenon in history is this of a grand and world-wide reputation, gallantly establishing itself in the face of multiplied and powerful hostilities of fortune, and defying the Papal aspersions of successive centuries, to be challenged now, as it has been challenged repeatedly, by the very Protestantism of which it has been commonly reckoned as one of the chiefest ornaments and treasures. Vain would it be for us merely to array Wycliffe's traditional reputation against the criticism which thus impeaches it; it is this traditional reputation itself which is now arraigned. A new trial is ordered. Happily, the fame of Wycliffe has nothing to fear from it. The fuller light, furnished by the investigations of recent times, only vindicates the justice of the old claim to reverence and gratitude.

The writings of Wycliffe, by which he stirred so

* From Melanchthon's "Sententiæ veterum de Coena Domini," as cited by Lewis. Ed. of 1720, p. 113.

profoundly his own age, but only a small portion of which have witnessed for him in the literature of succeeding ages, were very voluminous; enough to fill, as computed by Wharton, nearly two hundred years ago, some four or five thick folios, and nearly equal in bulk to the writings of Augustine. A large proportion of what he wrote was in the form of brief treatises, many of them mere tracts, of from five to ten pages each, thrown off in the heat of controversy, and designed for immediate effect. At first, the language employed was chiefly the Latin, but later in life, as he aimed more at the masses, he betook himself more and more to the English, frequently himself translating into the vernacular what he had previously written in the learned tongue. His most considerable work, next after his translation of the Scriptures, was the famous Trialogus, an embodiment in four books and in vigorous Latin, of the substance of his theological lectures at Oxford. The fourth book of this treatise, in which he handles the Sacraments, and in which he makes his widest divergence from the Papal dogmas, is believed to have been elaborated into its present form after his retirement to Lutterworth in 1381. Indeed, it was here at Lutterworth, and during the last three or four years of his life, that his pen was busiest. Never idle even in his more scholastic career at Oxford, here in the midst of his country flock, whom he fed so diligently with the bread of life, and surrounded by a band of copyists, who served him instead of printers and a press, he worked with a prodigious energy, unfolding and dispensing the truth of God. So that when he was stricken down by the hand of death, he left behind him a pile of writings, which, had they all been preserved and published, would now fill a large space upon the shelves of our libraries.

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These writings took a wide range, from the driest questions in grammar and logic, through metaphysics and theology, to the homeliest problems of morality in daily life. Böhringer has undertaken the classification of them as follows: 1. The Logico-grammatical-such as "Quaestiones logicales," "De singulis," "De aggregatis," "Grammaticae tropi." 2. Metaphysical-such as "Time,” “Matter and Form," "The reality of universal Ideas," and the like. 3. Theological-such as "The Divine Attributes," "The Trinity," "The distinction of Persons in the Godhead." 4. Christologicalsuch as "The Incarnation," "The Unity of Christ," his Humanity” and his "Priesthood." 5. Anthropological-such as "The Constitution of Man," "The Soul,' its "Atributes" and its "Immortality." Under which head may be put also what he wrote on "Predestination" and Satanic influence. 6. Eschatological—such as "The Purgatory of the Pious." 7. Sacramentalsuch as "Baptism," "The Eucharist," "Priestly Orders," "The Wicket." 8. Ecclesiastico-Polemic, Apologetic and Reformatory-such as "Antichrist," "The Devil and his Members," "Prelates," "Simony," "The Church and its Members," "The Priesthood," "The Papal Schism," "Papal Bulls," "Why poor Priests have no Benefices." 9. Ethical-such as "The Decalogue," "Virtues and Vices," "The Sinner's Looking-glass," "Works of Mercy," "Twelve Hindrances of Prayer," "Of wedded Men and their Wives." 10. Exegetical -such as his comments upon the "Lord's Prayer," "Sermon on the Mount," "Decalogue,” and “ Apocalypse." 11. Homiletic-the number of his sermons still in existence being more than three hundred. From this list we exclude the Trialogus, as being comprehensive in its character, presenting in a systematic form the substance of Wycliffe's opinions on most of the great