[Sidenote: No scarcity of the means of grace in Mediaeval times.]
There are also good grounds for believing that the provision made by the Church for the spiritual necessities of the people was not, at any rate, less abundant than is the case at the present day. Indeed, there is no doubt that both Churches and Clergy, and consequently opportunities for worship and instruction, were far more in proportion to the number and needs of the population than they can be said to be now in our own country, even after the persevering and liberal efforts of late years. [Sidenote: Difficulties respecting Services and Bibles on the vernacular,] If it is objected that the want of free access to the Holy Scriptures, and the use of the Latin tongue in the public services of the Church, were calculated largely to outweigh any advantages which the people of those days might possess, we may remember that those comparatively few who could read were just those who would have access to the necessarily rare copies then existing of the Word of God, and that to them also the Latin version would be more comprehensible than any other. Again, with regard to Latin services, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to translate the devotions of the Church into any of the slowly-forming dialects of the different European nations; whilst Latin was more universally spoken and understood than French is now, and was probably intelligible to a larger number of men and women during a { 117} considerable portion of the Middle Ages than any one of the other languages used.
[Sidenote: but the wish for them not wholly disregarded.]
As the various languages of Europe became gradually developed, a desire naturally arose amongst those who spoke them for services in the vernacular; and this desire was not left altogether ungratified even long before the Reformation. Thus, in England, the Epistles and Gospels and the Litany were translated into the native language in the Services of the Church, and interlinear translations were made of many portions of the Mediaeval Prayer Books[3]. Neither must we imagine that the translations of Holy Scripture put forth by the Reformers, or even that earlier version to which Wickliffe gave his name, were by any means the first efforts made to produce the Holy Bible in the vernacular. From Anglo-Saxon times downwards, we have traces of Bibles translated for the use of those who preferred such versions; and to the truth of this statement may be quoted the testimony of John Foxe, the "martyrologist," who says, "If histories be well examined, we shall find, both before the Conquest and after, as well before John Wickliffe was born as since, the whole body of the Scriptures by sundry men translated into this our country tongue[4]."