Pope. As late as 1521 five hundred Lollards
were arrested in London by the bishop.[1] Wiclif's
purpose, however, was to reach and help the
common people with the simpler, and therefore
the most fundamental, truths of religion.


[1] Muir, Our Grand Old Bible, p. 14.


The other movement which marks Wiclif's
name concerns us more; but it was connected
with the first. He set out to give the common
people the full text of the Bible for their common
use, and to encourage them not only in reading
it, if already they could read, but in learning to
read that they might read it. Tennyson
compares the village of Lutterworth to that of
Bethlehem, on the ground that if Christ, the
Word of God, was born at Bethlehem, the Word
of Life was born again at Lutterworth.[1] The
translation was from the Vulgate, and Wiclif
probably did little of the actual work himself,
yet it is all his work. And in 1382, more than
five centuries ago, there appeared the first complete
English version of the Bible. Wiclif made
it the people's Book, and the English people were
the first of the modern nations to whom the
Bible as a whole was given in their own familiar
tongue. Once it got into their hands they have