The greater part of the opinions by which he was distinguished were so entirely at variance with the principles and prejudices of his age, that our wonder is not at their imperfect success, but at their escape from immediate extinction. Having thus escaped, however, and taken root in no inconsiderable portion of the community, they were such as to secure by their own strength and boldness their own progress and maturity. Neither was their author neglectful of the methods proper to ensure their dissemination. For in the first place, by his translation of the Sacred Book on which he supposed them to rest, he increased the means of ascertaining their truth, or at least the spuriousness of the system which they opposed. In the next, he sent forth numerous missionaries, whom he called his “Poor Priests,” for the express purpose of propagating his doctrines; and thus they acquired some footing even in his own generation. In succeeding years, the sect of Lollards, in a great measure composed of his disciples, professed and perpetuated his tenets; and by their undeviating hostility to the abuses of Rome, prepared the path for the Reformation. Nor were the fruits of his exertions confined to his native country. It is certain that his works found their way, at a very early period, into Bohemia, and kindled there the first sparks of resistance to the established despotism. The venerable Huss proclaimed his adherence to the principles, and his reverence for the person, of the English Reformer; and he was wont in his public discourses to pray, that “on his departure from this life, he might be received into those regions whither the soul of Wiclif had gone; since he doubted not that he was a good and holy man, and worthy of a heavenly habitation.” The memory of Huss is associated by another incident with that of his master. The same savage Council which consigned the former to the flames, offered to the other that empty insult, which we may receive as an expression of malignant regret that he had been permitted to die in peace. It published an edict, “That the bones and body of Wiclif should be taken from the ground, and thrown far away from the burial of any church.” After a long interval of hesitation, this edict was obeyed. Thirty years after his death, his grave was violated, and his ashes contemptuously cast into a neighbouring brook. On this indignity, Fuller makes the following memorable reflection:—“The brook did convey his ashes in Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblems of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.”