of the Bible would be helpful for the closing of
the chasm. It is a familiar remark of Miss
Jane Addams that the cure for the evils of
democracy is more democracy. Wiclif believed
that the cure for the evils of religion is more
religion, more intelligent religion. He found a
considerable feeling that the best things in
religion ought to be kept from most people,
since they could not be trusted to understand
them. His own feeling was that the best things
in religion are exactly the things most people
ought to know most about; that people had better
handle the Bible carelessly, mistakenly, than
be shut out from it by any means whatever.
We owe the first English translation to a faith
that the Bible is a book of emancipation for the
mind and for the political life.

John Wiclif himself was a scholar of Oxford,
master of that famous Balliol College which
has had such a list of distinguished masters.
He was an adviser of Edward III. Twenty
years after his death a younger contemporary
(W. Thorpe) said that "he was considered by
many to be the most holy of all the men of his
age. He was of emaciated frame, spare, and
well nigh destitute of strength. He was absolutely
blameless in his conduct." And even
that same Knighton who accused him of casting
the Church's pearl before swine says that in