Here is John Wycliffe's greatest accomplishment: the translation of the Holy Scriptures into English. Producing the first complete English bible, Wycliffe was the first to set aside Latin as the language of the Scriptures and to reach the English people in their own tongue. Working from contemporary manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, he sought no strange English but only the easiest, most common -- albeit the most Latin-like -- language possible. Wycliffite translations of the New Testament (1380) and Old Testament (1388), which was actually completed by Nicholas of Hereford, opened a new...