P021 Wycliffe's Bible.

P021 Wycliffe’s Bible.

Copies of this Bible were multiplied as rapidly as the pens of scriveners could do the work. They were eagerly sought by all classes of people.

Some were written in folio, some in quarto, and many in smaller size, for greater convenience in daily use.

Though printing was invented less than a hundred years after Wycliffe’s death, no part of his translation was printed until Dr. Clarke, in 1823, published his comments on Solomon’s Song, to which he prefixed Wycliffe’s translation of that book.

Wycliffe’s New Testament was published by Lea Wilson in 1848, and the entire Bible in four quarto volumes by Forshall & Madden, Oxford, 1850, nearly five hundred years after the translation was made. A revised translation was completed about the year 1388, the work of John Purvey, a friend of Wycliffe, assisted by Nicholas de Hereford and others.

It was an improvement on Wycliffe’s version. It was first printed by Lewis, in 1731; then by Baber, in 1810; in Bagster’s Hexapla in 1841; and in Forshall & Madden’s Wycliffe’s Bible, in 1850. For many years Purvey’s revision was supposed to be Wycliffe’s original translation, and is so noted in three of the works just mentioned. The fourth, however, has both translation and revision.

-------------------------------------------

IV. AN INTERVAL OF NEARLY A CENTURY AND A HALF.

During the long interval between the death of Wycliffe and the publication of Tyndale’s New Testament the English people were mainly dependent on copies of Wycliffe’s Bible for their knowledge of Scripture.

It was a period of history crowded with events too numerous to be detailed here. A rapid glance at some of the most important is all that can be given. Of kings, Scotland had Robert III., and James I., II., III, IV., and V. England had Henry IV., V., VI.; Edward IV. and V.; Richard III., and Henry VII. and VIII. From 1450 to 1471 the country was convulsed with the "Wars of the Roses."