That pestilent and most wretched John Wycliffe, of damnable memory, a child of the old devil, and himself a child or pupil of anti-Christ…crowned his wickedness by translating the Scriptures into the mother tongue!
Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury (d 1414), on the Synod which condemned Wycliffe's supervision of the translation of the Bible into English.
Wycliffe’s “Wickett” (small and narrow gate) - his defense of the enterprise...
[God] shows everywhere that all men should repent, and because of this all the legalistic clerics which have been ever against God the Lord, both in the old law and the new, find it necessary to kill the prophets that speak to them the word of God. You see that they spared not the Son of God, when the earthly judge would have released him (Matt 27) and in the same way they treated the apostles and martyrs that have truly spoken the word of God to them.
And they say it is heresy to express the holy scripture in English, but in saying so they would condemn the Holy Ghost who gave tongues to Christ’s apostles so they could speak the word of God in all languages that were ordained of God under heaven.
On Tuesday evenings we are doing a course on the Reformation and its antecedents. I'll be putting up the choicest highlights every once in a while.
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