The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 88

upon the people to consider whether these two priests were not speaking
the truth in condemning each other as the anti-christ. “God,” said he,
“would no longer suffer the fiend to reign in only one such priest, but ...
made division among two, so that men, in Christ’s name, may the more
easily overcome them both.”—R. Vaughan, Life and Opinions of John
de Wycliffe, vol. 2, p. 6.
Wycliffe, like his Master, preached the gospel to the poor. Not
content with spreading the light in their humble homes in his own parish
of Lutterworth, he determined that it should be carried to every part of
England. To accomplish this he organized a body of preachers, simple,
devout men, who loved the truth and desired nothing so much as to
extend it. These men went everywhere, teaching in the market places, in
the streets of the great cities, and in the country lanes. They sought out
the aged, the sick, and the poor, and opened to them the glad tidings of
the grace of God.
As a professor of theology at Oxford, Wycliffe preached the word of
God in the halls of the university. So faithfully did he present the truth
to the students under his instruction, that he received the title of “the
gospel doctor.” But the greatest work of his life was to be the translation
of the Scriptures into the English language. In a work, On the Truth and
Meaning of Scripture, he expressed his intention to translate the Bible,
so that every man in England might read, in the language in which he
was born, the wonderful works of God.
But suddenly his labors were stopped. Though not yet sixty years
of age, unceasing toil, study, and the assaults of his enemies had told
upon his strength and made him prematurely old. He was attacked by a
dangerous illness. The tidings brought great joy to the friars. Now they
thought he would bitterly repent the evil he had done the church, and
they hurried to his chamber to listen to his confession. Representatives
from the four religious orders, with four civil officers, gathered about the
supposed dying man. “You

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