llowed to wrest from them. Christ and his
apostles converted the world by making known the Scriptures to men in a
form familiar to them, and I pray with all my heart that through doing
the things contained in this book we may all together come to the
everlasting life." This Bible translation he placed far the first in
importance of all his attempts to reform the English Church, and he
pursued his object with a vigor and against an opposition that remind
one of the old monk of Bethlehem and his Bible a thousand years before.

The result of the Blackfriars' synod was that after three days'
deliberation Wycliffe's teaching was condemned, and at a subsequent
meeting he himself was excommunicated. He returned to his quiet
parsonage at Lutterworth--for his enemies dared not yet proceed to
extremities--and there, with his pile of old Latin manuscripts and
commentaries, he labored on at the great work of his life, till the
whole Bible was translated into the "modir tongue," and England received
for the first time in her history a complete version of the Scriptures
in the language of the people.

And scarce was his task well finished when, like his great predecessor
Bede, the brave old priest laid down his life. He himself had expected
that a violent death would have finished his course. His enemies were
many and powerful; the Primate, the King, and the Pope were against
him--with the friars, whom he had so often and so fiercely defied; so
that his destruction seemed but a mere question of time. But while his
enemies were preparing to strike, the old man "was not, for God took
him."

It was the close of the old year, the last Sunday of 1384, and his
little flock at Lutterworth were kneeling in hushed reverence before the
altar, when suddenly, at the time of the elevation of the sacrament, he
fell to the ground in a violent fit of the palsy, and never spoke again
until his death on the last day of the year.

In him England lost one of her best and greatest sons, a patriot sternly
resenting all dishonor to his country, a reformer who ventured his life
for the purity of the Church and the freedom of the Bible--an earnest,
faithful "parson of a country town," standing out conspicuously among
the clergy of the time.

"For Criste's lore and his apostles twelve
He taughte--and first he folwede it himselve."

Here is a choice specimen from one of the monkish writers of the time
describing his death: "On the feast of the pass