11 DECEMBER 1926, Page 29

2 vols. 30s. net.)—The Principal of Westminster College has written

the authoritative book on Wyclif which has long been needed. The early reformer " stands half in and half out of the Middle Ages " and he has been sadly misunderstood by those who would regard him as a John Knox of the fourteenth century. Dr. Workman shows in this masterly treatise that Wyclif's character and aims were far more complex. Famous first as the Oxford scholastic philosopher and then as the politician of John of Gaunt's party, Wyclif gradually became the reformer and then organized the mission- ary preachers and the English versions of the Bible with which his name is most commonly linked. His ideas of Church reform carried out by the State were strange and premature. His doctrines found greater acceptance after his death in Bohemia, through John Hus, than in England. Yet he was a true pioneer, and Dr. Workman's thorough examination of Wyclif's career and of his genuine works—preserved for the most part in Continental libraries—is most warmly to be commended.