John Wycliffe and His Work

It is an old and true saying, that nations sometimes know little about some of their greatest benefactors. If there ever was a man to whom this saying applies, it is John Wycliffe, the forerunner and first beginner of the Protestant Reformation in this country. To Wycliffe England owes an enormous debt: yet Wycliffe is a man of whom most Englishmen know little or nothing.


In drawing up a few pages about this great and good man, the words of the Apostle St. Peter rise up before my mind. He says, “I think it meet to stir you up by putting you in remembrance” (2 Pet. i. 13). This is exactly what I want to do in this volume. I wish to stir up my readers, and try to make them remember and never forget the man who has been justly called “The Morning Star of the English Reformation.”