Thus, during his latter years, he lived in retirement at his little parish of Lutterworth, escaping the dangers of the troublous time, and dying--struck with paralysis at his chancel--in 1384, sixteen years before Chaucer.
TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE .-- The labors of Wiclif which produced the most important results, were not his violent lectures as a reformer, but the translation of the Bible into English, the very language of the common people, greatly to the wrath of the hierarchy and its political upholders.
This, too, is his chief glory: as a reformer he went too fast and too far; he struck fiercely at the root of authority, imperilling what was good, in his attack upon what was evil.

In pulling up the tares he endangered the wheat, and from him, as a progenitor, came the Lollards, a fanatical, violent, and revolutionary sect.
But his English Bible, the parent of the later versions, cannot be too highly valued.

For the first time, English readers could search the whole Scriptures, and judge for themselves of doctrine and authority: there they could learn how far the traditions and commandments of men had encrusted and corrupted the pure word of truth.

Thus the greatest impulsion was given to a reformation in doctrine; and thus, too, the exclusiveness and arrogance of the clergy received the first of many sledge-hammer blows which were to result in their confusion and discomfiture.
"If," says Froude,[19] "the Black Prince had lived, or if Richard II.

had inherited the temper of the Plantagenets, the ecclesiastical system would have been spared the misfortune of a longer reprieve." THE ASHES OF WICLIF .-- The vengeance which Wiclif escaped during his life was wreaked upon his bones.