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It is true that Chaucer himself accepted Wiclif's teaching, and some of the wise men think that the "parson" of whom he speaks so finely as one who taught the lore of Christ and His apostles twelve, but first followed it himself, was Wiclif.
Religion was to be made rather a matter of practical life than of dogma or of ritual. The "poor priests" in their cheap brown robes became a mighty religious force, and evoked opposition from the Church powers. A generation after Wiclif's death they had become a mighty political force in the controversy between the King and the Pope.
'Policeman' has no evil subaudition with us; though in the last century, when a Jonathan Wild was possible, 'catchpole, a word in Wiclif's time of no dishonour at all, was abundantly tinged with this scorn and contempt.
Luther had enough to do with his papal antichrist and his German translation of the Greek of the Testament of Erasmus. The Lutheran church drove missions into the hands of the Pietists and Moravians Wiclif's offspring who nobly but ineffectually strove to do a work meant for the whole Christian community.
Two of these things have been dealt with already in other connections. Secondly, that the translators were constantly beholden to the work of the past in this same line. Where Wiclif's words were still in use they used them. That tended to fix the language by the use which had already become natural. The other two determining influences must be spoken of now.
Their combined efforts resulted in the burlesque of Molly Mog. These two and some others contributed each a verse in honor of the fair waiter. But they mistook her name, and the crown fell upon the less charming brow of her sister, whose cognomen was depraved from Mary into Molly. Wiclif's Oak is pointed out as a corner of the old forest, a long way east of the park.
Whether he shared Wiclif's opinions is unknown, but John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and father of Henry IV., who was Chaucer's life-long patron, was likewise Wiclif's great upholder against the persecution of the bishops.
"They have caught me," he said, "and shut me up here; but my ideas are out yonder in the streets and in the fields, absolutely free. They cannot overtake them." It was already too late, twenty years after Wiclif's version was available, to stop the English people in their search for religious truth.
He kneeled and prayed fervently for several minutes. James Arigoni, Bishop of Lodi, preached from Rom. 6:6 "That the body of sin might be destroyed." Henry de Piro proposed that Hus be delivered to the civil power for burning. Sixteen charges from Wiclif's writings were read. When Hus tried to explain, he was brutally refused. Thirty articles from Hus' own works were then read.
As late as 1521 five hundred Lollards were arrested in London by the bishop. Wiclif's purpose, however, was to reach and help the common people with the simpler, and therefore the most fundamental, truths of religion. Muir, Our Grand Old Bible, p. 14. The other movement which marks Wiclif's name concerns us more; but it was connected with the first.
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