Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/279

 attributed to Wyclif is one which was first printed in the reign of Edward VI., in the year 1550. It is thus described on the title-page: "The true Copye of a Prolog, zvritten about two hundred years past by John Wycliffe . . . the Original whereof is found written in an old English Bible, betwixt the Old Testament and the New." We do not seem to possess any better evidence of the authenticity of this Prologue than is supplied in the title just quoted; and it must be confessed that the worthy Reformer who reproduced it was somewhat easily satisfied on the point of authorship. Unquestionably, if we could accept this as a genuine production of Wyclif it would possess great interest and value, as being descriptive of his work and method as a translator of the Bible. But neither the style nor the language of the Prologue, of which an extract is here added (with the spelling modified), will warrant us in agreeing that it is his work.

"Though covetous clerks are mad through simony, heresy, and many other sins, and despise and impede Holy Writ as much as they can, yet the unlearned people cry after Holy Writ to know it, with great cost and peril of their lives. For those reasons and other, with common charity to save all men in our realm which God will have saved, a simple creature hath translated the Bible out of Latin into English. First this simple creature had much labour with divers companions and helpers to collect many old Bibles and other doctors, and common glosses, and to make a single Latin Bible fairly correct, and then to study it anew, the text with the commentary and