EDWARD MOSELEY: CHARACTER SKETCH.
BY II. II. HILL.
"Of all the men who watched and guided the tottering footsteps
of onr infant Stale, there was not one who iu intellectual ability, in
solid and polite learning, in scholarly cultivation and refinement, in
courage and endurance, in high Christian morality, in generous con¬
sideration for tise welfare of others, in all true merit in fine, which
makes a man among men, who could equal Edward Moseley.
IIox. Georgf. Davis.
Fortunately for men of action the judgment of their con¬
temporaries is often modified or reversed by the clearer judg¬
ment of posterity. Of Wycliffe, the first translator of the
Bible into our “modir tonge” and one of the stoutest oppon¬
ents of ecclesiastical tyranny, a contemporary, Lewis, says, in
his “Life of Wycliffe:”
“On the feast of the passion of Saint Thomas, of Canter¬
bury, John Wycliffe, the organ of the devil, the enemy of the
church, the idol of heretics, the image of hypocrites, the re¬
storer of schism, the storehouse of lies, the sink of flattery,
being struck by the horrible judgment of God, was seized with
the palsy throughout his whole body, and that mouth, which
was to have spoken huge things against God and his saints,
and Holy church, was miserably drawn aside, and afforded a
frightful spectacle to beholders ; his tongue was speechless and
his head shook, showing plainly that the curse which God
had thundered forth against Cain was also inflicted on him.”
Of this same Wycliffe Dr. Patterson Smyth says, in the
tempered judgment of 1899:
“In him England lost one of her best and greatest sons, a
patriot sternly resenting all dishonor to his country, a re¬
former who ventured his life for the purity of the church and
the freedom of the Bible — an earnest, faithful ‘parsoun of
