“No friendly hand,” says Dr. Shirley, “has left us any even the slightest memorial of the life and death of the great Reformer. A spare, frail, emaciated frame, a quick temper, a conversation ‘most innocent,’ the charm of every rank—such are the scanty but significant fragments we glean of the personal portraiture of one who possessed, as few ever did, the qualities which give men power over their fellows. His enemies ascribed it to the magic of an ascetic habit; the fact remains engraven on every line of his life.[56] His bitterest enemies cannot refrain from involuntary tributes of admiration extorted from them by the singular and unsullied excellence of the man whose doctrines and doings as a reformer they detested. Like the “amiable and famous Edward, by-named, not of his color, but of his dreaded acts in battle, the Black Prince,”[57] Wycliffe was in nothing black save in his dreaded doctrines and works of reformation. Apart from these, “all tongues—the voice of souls”—awarded him the praise due to lofty genius, exemplary virtue, and personal godliness. His heretical deeds were the occasion of all the obloquy heaped upon his name and memory:— “In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds, And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.” If we cannot as yet cherish the hope that, besides erecting in Oxford some visible monument to the memory of Wycliffe, the University should, as an example to Cambridge and to the Scottish universities, institute a Wycliffe Lectureship for the exposition of the works of the great Reformer, it is surely not too much to expect that Oxford should give all possible countenance and support to the project for the printing and the publication of Wycliffe’s unprinted and unpublished writings. This, in the meantime, is perhaps the best tribute that can be offered to the memory of Wycliffe. For, as Dr. Shirley said, some nineteen years ago, “The Latin works of Wycliffe are, both historically and theologically, by far the most important; from these alone can Wycliffe’s theological position be understood: and it is not, perhaps, too much to say, that no writings so important for the history of doctrine are still buried in manuscript.”[58] These neglected, unknown, and hitherto inaccessible works, are being printed under competent editorship by “The Wycliffe Society.”—They have more than a mere theological interest. They are important in their relation to the thought which developed itself in the reformation of religion, in the revival of learning, and in the assertion, maintenance, and defence of constitutional liberty in England.