JOHN WYCLIFFE: HIS LIFE AND WORK.

The quincentenary of the death of John Wycliffe occurring on the 31st

day of this month (December 1884), invites us to review the work

with which the name of Wycliffe is associated and identified. “John

Wycliffe,” says Dean Hook, “may be justly accounted one of the greatest

men that our country has produced. He is one of the very few who have

left the impress of their minds, not only on their own age, but on all

time,”[8] He is also one of the few who are known to us only in their

work, and by their work. For it may be said that, apart from Wycliffe’s

work, we know nothing of the man. His work is his memorial: in it he

lives.

Wycliffe’s work may be viewed in its relation to the

University—Oxford; to the Crown—the national independence; to the

hierarchy—the clergy; and to the laity—the people. According to this

method of survey and review, Wycliffe appears successively in history

as a student and scholastic disputant; as a politician and patriot;

as a theologian and reformer; and as a Christian evangelist and

preacher of grace, righteousness, and truth. These successive phases

of Wycliffe’s work correspond with the events of his life; and they

indicate the progress of the great work to which Wycliffe had dedicated

his powers. This, again, implies that it was only step by step—little

by little—that Wycliffe’s views assumed that form in which they were

developed and expressed in the later years of his life.

It is impossible to determine either the date of Wycliffe’s first

admission to Oxford or the college in which he first studied. Of his

early life at the university, as of his earlier life at home, we know

nothing. According to the statements of some of his biographers,

Wycliffe was born in the year 1324, in the hamlet of Spreswell, near

old Richmond, in Yorkshire. In 1340, he went to Oxford, and was one

of the first commoners received into Queen’s college—an institution

opened that year for the first time. After a short attendance in

Queen’s, he joined himself to Merton, and became a fellow of that

famous College. The historian Fuller says that Wycliffe was a graduate

of Merton, but he makes no mention of his having been at an earlier

time connected with Queen’s College. “We can give no account,” he

says, “of Wycliffe’s parentage, birthplace, or infancy; only we find an

ancient family of the Wycliffes in the bishopric of Durham,[9] since by

match united to the Brackenburies, persons of prime quality in those

parts. As for this our Wycliffe, history at the very first meets

with him a man, and full grown, yea, graduate of Merton College in

Oxford.”[10] Of the six Oxford colleges of that time, Merton had

acquired for itself a splendid and well-deserved reputation. “And,

indeed, malice itself cannot deny that this college, or little

university, rather, doth equal, if not exceed, any one foundation in

Christendom, for the famous men bred therein.”[11] Roger Bacon (1280),

_Doctor Mirabilis_; John Duns Scotus (1308), _Doctor Subtilis_; Walter

Burley (1337), _Doctor Approbatus_; William of Ocham (1347), _Doctor

Singularis_ or _Pater Nominalium_; and Thomas Bradwardine (1350),

_Doctor Profundus_,—were all bred in Merton College. John Wycliffe

seems to have early entertained and cherished the ambition to add

his name to the number of those renowned doctors who as students had

preceded him in Merton College. If this was his ambition, he attained

to the object of his desire when, by his contemporaries, he was

recognised as _Doctor Evangelicus_. It would appear that, at an early

period in his life, he had, after much deliberation, made choice of

the Bible or the Gospel as his great theme. To be a “Biblicist,” or

Bible student and interpreter, was not considered a high or honorable

distinction by the schoolmen—the men of “culture” of that age.

But to think for himself and to choose for himself was a notable

characteristic of the young Yorkshireman, John Wycliffe. In making his

choice and in linking himself indissolubly to the Word and “cause of

God,”[12] he seems to have been much influenced by the example and by

the teaching of Bradwardine. But he made it his aim to be a proficient,

and, if possible, a master in all attainable science and learning.

That he had been a thorough student of the Trivium and Quadrivium is

proved by his works, for they all bear the impress of the disciplined

scholastic and the skilful dialectician. In all respects he was a

worthy successor of the distinguished band of men who had been his

predecessors in Merton. The writings of Wycliffe show that he had

studied very carefully the works of Roger Bacon, of Duns Scotus, and of

William of Ocham. But the same writings show that he had early learned

to call no man master—for while he accepts much from Duns Scotus, he

also accepts much from William of Ocham. Truth seems to have been the

object of his early, eager, and constant pursuit.

The first notable and formal recognition of Wycliffe’s eminence within

the university, is found in his appointment to be Warden or Master

of Balliol. In this honorable office he continued only for a few

years—1360-1362. From Balliol he received nomination to the rectorship

of the parish of Fylingham, in Lincolnshire. Soon after his appointment

to a pastoral cure, he resigned his position as Master of Balliol.

Wycliffe’s connection with the diocese of Lincoln, through his being

rector of Fylingham, seems to have had an important influence on the

progressive development of his ecclesiastical and religious life. A

former Bishop of Lincoln—1235-1254—Grossetête (Greathead), was spoken

of by Roger Bacon as “the only man living” in that age “who was in

possession of all the sciences.” The writings of this great and good

bishop are continually quoted or referred to by Wycliffe.

A most significant testimony to the standing influence and reputation

of Wycliffe in the university was given in 1365 by Simon Islip,

Archbishop of Canterbury, who appointed him Warden of Canterbury Hall.

In the Archbishop’s letter of institution, Wycliffe is described, “as

one in whose fidelity, circumspection, and prudence his Grace very

much confided, and on whom he had fixed his eyes on account of the

honesty of his life, his laudable conversation, and his knowledge of

letters.” The significance and worth of this testimony can hardly

be overestimated. It is all the more significant because of the

circumstances in which it was given, and the nomination to which it

was designed to give effect. In founding Canterbury Hall, Islip had

appointed Woodhull—a monk of Canterbury—to be Warden. With him three

other monks and eight secular scholars were associated in the

government of the hall. After a trial of four years of this mixed

administration, finding that it did not work well, more particularly

because of the jealousies, contentions, and collisions between the

monks and the secular associates, Islip, in the exercise of a right

which he had reserved to himself, displaced the Warden and the

three other monks, and appointed Wycliffe in the place of Woodhull;

and three secular priests, Selby, Middleworth, and Benger, to be

associates or fellows in the room of the three monks. This action

on the part of the Archbishop gave great offence to the monks of

Christ Church and to the whole order of the Friars. It was regarded

as virtually and in effect an act by which the Archbishop of

Canterbury gave the weight of his high position and great authority

to those who in Oxford were the resolute and strenuous opponents

of the mendicant friars. Consequences that could not have been

foreseen by any concerned in this action flowed from it. For not

long after Wycliffe’s appointment to the Wardenship of Canterbury

Hall, Archbishop Islip died on the 26th April 1366, and was succeeded

in November by Simon Langham, who had been monk, prior, and abbot

of Westminster. By this Archbishop, Wycliffe and the three secular

priests who had been so recently appointed to govern Canterbury

Hall were removed. Woodhull and his associates were reinstated in

the position from which they had been expelled by Islip, and, in

violation of the founder’s will, the eight secular scholars were

ejected. The hall thus became virtually a monastic institution.

Wycliffe’s appeal to the papal court at Avignon was of no avail.

After a protracted process and long delay, the Pope gave judgment

against him in 1370. We cannot better conclude this chapter in

Wycliffe’s life than by quoting the words of Godwin. They will

prepare us for what comes next in the order of events:—

“From Canterbury College, which his predecessor had

founded, he (Langham) sequestered the fruits of the

benefice of Pageham, and otherwise molested the

scholars there, intending to displace them all and to

put in monks, which in the end he brought to pass.

John Wycliffe was one of them that were so displaced,

and had withstood the Archbishop in this business

with might and main. By the Pope’s favor and the

Archbishop’s power, the monks overbore Wycliffe and

his fellows. If, then, Wycliffe were angry with Pope,

Archbishop, monks, and all, you cannot marvel.”[13]

Nothwithstanding the very reasonable remark of Godwin that we need

not wonder much if Wycliffe, considering the treatment which he had

received at the hands of the Pope, the Archbishop, and the monks,

should be angry against them all, there is no proof or evidence

whatever in support of the allegation of his adversaries, that his

antagonism to the friars and his attitude towards the Pope proceeded

from irritated feeling, discontent, and disappointed ambition. On

the contrary, the absence of all such feelings is one of the most

remarkable and characteristic distinctions of his numerous writings.

Wycliffe’s nomination by Islip to the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall

is dated the 9th of December 1365. In that year Pope Urban V. revived

and urged a claim against Edward III. which had been in abeyance for

thirty-three years. This was the demand that Edward should pay the

feudal tribute or annual fee which for the crown of England he owed to

Urban the Fifth of that name, exercising the functions of Bishop of

Rome in the place of the papal captivity at Avignon. The Servant of

servants at Avignon—moved by that necessity which knows no law, or by

an equally lawless covetousness and ambition—demanded of Edward III.

of England payment of the feudal tribute-money alleged to be due by

that monarch to the Holy See. The demand of the Pope was for payment

of the sum of a thousand marks annually due, and for payment of the

arrears that had accumulated for thirty-three years, or since Edward,

ceasing to be a minor, had exercised his sovereign rights as monarch

of England. This papal claim was accompanied with an intimation to

the King of England that, in case of his failing to comply with the

pontifical demand, he should appear to answer for his non-fulfilment of

this duty in the presence of his feudal lord and sovereign, the Pope

of Rome, at Avignon. It is difficult to say whether the arrogance or

the folly of Pope Urban V., in reviving and urging this claim at this

time was the greater of the two. Edward III., even in his decrepitude,

and in the midst of the reverses which marked his declining years, was

not likely to crouch, like John, under the ignominious burden laid

on him in the time of his adversity by the Papacy. The Pope’s claim

proved the occasion of uniting the King and the nation in a common

assertion and vindication of the national independence, and of the

inalienable rights and prerogatives of the English Crown. It was the

occasion of Wycliffe’s first public appearance as the champion of

the royal supremacy and national independence against the usurpation

and arrogance of the Court of Rome. The papal claim was submitted by

Edward to the Parliament which met at Westminster in May 1366. After

deliberation, the answer of the Parliament—the Lords and Commons of

England—to the demand of the Pope, concluded with these weighty and

well-measured words:—

“Forasmuch as neither King John nor any other king

could bring this realm and kingdom in such thraldom

and subjection but by common consent of Parliament,

the which was not done; therefore, that which he did

was against his oath at his coronation, besides many

other causes. If, therefore, the Pope should attempt

anything against the King, by process or other

matters in deed, the King, with all his subjects,

should with all their force and power resist the

same.”[14]

At the time when this resolution was come to, Wycliffe was Warden

of Canterbury Hall. At this time, also, he stood in some very

special relation to the King, as the King’s private secretary or

chaplain—“Peculiaris Regis Clericus.” And his argument—“Determinatio

de Dominio”—in vindication of the Crown and the national independence,

consists mainly of a statement skilfully compiled by him out of what,

according to the report which he had heard, had been spoken by the

secular lords in a certain meeting of council—“Quam audivi in quodam

consilio a Dominis secularibus esse datam.” Soon after the decision

of Parliament to repudiate the Pope’s claim, a monastic and anonymous

doctor, writing in support of the papal demand, challenged Wycliffe

by name—singling him out from all others—to refute, if he could,

the argument urged by him on the part of the Pope; and to vindicate,

if he could, the action of the English Parliament in refusing to pay

the feudal tribute demanded by Urban the Fifth. Wycliffe showed no

hesitation in accepting the challenge of this anonymous doctor. And it

must be confessed that he conducts his argument with consummate skill,

moderation, and ability. His challenger had laid down the position that

“every dominion granted on condition, comes to an end on the failure of

that condition. But our lord the Pope gifted our king with the kingdom

of England, on condition that England should pay so much annually to

the Roman See. Now this condition in process of time has not been

fulfilled, and the King, in consequence, has lost long ago all rightful

dominion in England.” Wycliffe’s answer is, briefly, that England’s

monarch is King of England, and has dominion there, not by the grace of

the Pope, but by the grace of God. Two other positions were maintained

by this polemical monk—namely, that the “civil power may not under

any circumstances deprive ecclesiastics of their lands, goods or

revenues; and that in no case can it be lawful for an ecclesiastic to

be compelled to appear before a secular judge.” Against these claims

of exemption and immunity, Wycliffe urges with irresistible force the

argument, that as the King is under God supreme in his kingdom, all

causes, whether relating to persons or to property, must be under his

dominion, and subject to his jurisdiction. Wycliffe, in beginning

his reply, says: “Inasmuch as I am the King’s own clerk, I the more

willingly undertake the office of defending and counselling _that the

King exercises his just rule in the realm of England when he refuses to

pay tribute to the Roman Pontiff_.” Wycliffe constructs his argument

out of what, as reported to him, had been spoken at a conference or

council of the barons or the lords temporal of the realm. It is not

Wycliffe but the noblemen of England who refute the monk and repudiate

the Pope’s illegitimate and arrogant demand. An abstract of the

speeches of seven of the barons met in council is so given as to be an

exhaustive and unanswerable argument against the papal claims, “Our

ancestors,” said the first lord, “won this realm, and held it against

all foes by the sword. Julius Cæsar exacted tribute by force; but force

gives no perpetual right. Let the Pope come and take it by force; I

am ready to stand up and resist him.” The second lord thus reasoned:

“The Pope is incapable of such feudal supremacy. He should follow the

example of Christ, who refused all civil dominion; the foxes have

holes, and the birds of the air their nests, but He had not where to

lay His head. Let us rigidly hold the Pope to his spiritual duties,

boldly oppose all his claims to civil power.” In support of this the

third lord said: “The Pope calls himself the Servant of the servants of

the Most High: his only claim to tribute from this realm is for some

service done; but what is his service to this realm? Not spiritual

edification, but draining away money to enrich himself and his Court,

showing favor and counsel to our enemies.” To this the fourth lord

added: “The Pope claims to be the suzerain of all estates held by the

Church; these estates, held on mortmain, amount to one-third of the

realm. There cannot be two suzerains; the Pope, therefore, for these

estates is the King’s vassal; he has not done homage for them; he may

have incurred forfeiture.” The fifth argument is more subtle: “If the

Pope demands this money as the price of King John’s absolution, it is

flagrant simony; it is an irreligious act to say, ‘I will absolve you

on payment of a certain annual tribute.’ But the King pays not this

tax; it is wrung from the poor of the realm: to exact it is an act of

avarice rather than salutary punishment. If the Pope be lord of the

realm, he may at any time declare it forfeited, and grant away the

forfeiture.” Following up this view of the case, the sixth lord says:

“If the realm be the Pope’s, what right had he to alienate it? He has

fraudulently sold it for a fifth part of its value. Moreover, Christ

alone is the suzerain; the Pope being fallible, yea, peccable, may be

in mortal sin. _It is better as of old to hold the realm immediately of

Christ._” The seventh lord concluded the argument by a bold denial of

the right of King John to surrender or give way the sovereignty of the

realm: “He could not grant away the sovereignty of England; the whole

thing—the deed, the seals, the signatures—is an absolute nullity.”[15]

It cannot now be known how far Wycliffe’s conduct in connection

with the claim for the payment of the feudal tribute influenced the

papal decision in his appeal; but that decision was given after the

publication of Wycliffe’s treatise, “De Dominio.” And there can be no

doubt that from May 1366, Wycliffe was marked at Avignon as a dangerous

man. To be nearer to Oxford he exchanged, in 1368, the rectory of

Fylingham for that of Ludgershall in Buckinghamshire, and he became

Doctor in Divinity about the year 1370. The ability, prudence, and

courage with which Wycliffe had vindicated the action of the Parliament

and of the Crown against the papal claim, as asserted and defended

by the anonymous monk, recommended him as singularly qualified to be

one of the Royal Commissioners appointed in 1374 to meet with the

papal Nuncios at Bruges, to negotiate a settlement of the questions in

dispute between England and the Papacy. In this Commission the name

of Wycliffe holds the second place, being inserted immediately after

that of the Bishop of Bangor. The negotiations terminated in a sort of

compromise, according to which it was concluded “that for the future

the Pope should desist from making use of _reservations of benefices_,

and that the King should no more confer benefices by his writ _Quare

impedit_.” Although this was but a very partial and unsatisfactory

settlement of the matters in dispute, yet the part taken by Wycliffe in

the negotiations at Bruges appears to have met with the approbation of

the King and his advisers. For in November 1375, he was presented by

the King to the prebend of Aust, in the Collegiate Church of Westbury,

in the diocese of Worcester. He had previously, in April 1374, received

from the Crown, in the exercise of the patronage that devolved on it

during the minority of Lord Henry Ferrars, nomination to the rectory of

Lutterworth, and had resigned his charge of Ludgershall.

In the same year in which the treaty was concluded (1376), a most

elaborate and detailed indictment against the usurpations and exactions

of the Papacy and its minions was submitted to Parliament, and after

being considered, was passed in the form of a petition to the King,

craving that measures of effective redress and remedy should be

taken against the notorious and intolerable evils complained of. The

Parliament which presented this complaint and petition to the King so

commended itself to the people of England that it received the singular

designation of “The Good Parliament.” Although the royal answer to

the petition was far from being satisfactory or encouraging, yet the

Parliament that met in January 1377 presented another petition to the

King, craving that the statutes against _Provisions_ passed at former

times should be put into effective operation, and that measures should

be taken against certain cardinals who had violated those statutes,

and against those who in England collected the papal revenues, and by

so doing oppressed and impoverished the English people. So vividly do

the propositions of these two Parliaments express and represent the

ideas and opinions of Wycliffe, that Dr. Lechler concludes that he was

a member of both of these Parliaments. But there is no necessity for

this inferential assumption. Wycliffe’s doctrines respecting the kingly

sovereignty and national independence, and his sentiments regarding

the intolerable abuses of the papal officials, were by this time the

doctrines and the sentiments of not a few among the lords and commons

of England. And without being himself a member of Parliament, Wycliffe

had ample opportunity and means for using his influence to stimulate,

direct, and guide those who in the National Assembly gave voice to the

complaint and claim of the English people as against the usurpation

and exactions of the Papacy. To this sort of influence on the part of

Wycliffe, as also to the weight attached to his judgment in a case

involving a knowledge of canon and civil law, significant testimony

was borne by the action of the first Parliament of Richard II., which

met at Westminster on the 13th of October 1377. By this Parliament the

question was referred to the judgment of Dr. Wycliffe, “Whether the

kingdom of England, on an imminent necessity of its own defence may

lawfully detain the treasure of the kingdom, that it be not carried

out of the land, although the lord Pope required its being carried

out on the pain of censures, and by virtue of the obedience due to

him?” As might be expected, Wycliffe answered that it was lawful, and

demonstrated this by the law of Christ, urging at the same time the

common maxim of divines, that alms are not required to be given but to

those who are in need, and by those who have more than they need. “By

which,” says Lewis, “it appears that Dr. Wycliffe’s opinion was, that

Peter-pence paid to the Pope were not a _just due_, but only an _alms_,

or charitable gift”[16]

The action of the English Parliament referring this question to the

judgment of Wycliffe, is all the more interesting and significant

if respect be had to the time and circumstances in which Wycliffe’s

opinion was required by Parliament. It was not only after the death

of Edward III., which occurred on the 21st of June 1377, but also

after the almost tragical though picturesque incident in Wycliffe’s

life, when, accompanied and protected by the Duke of Lancaster and

Lord Henry Percy, he appeared in the Ladye Chapel of St. Paul’s

Cathedral on the 19th of February in the same year, to answer for

himself and his doctrines before a convention of ecclesiastics,

presided over by Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by

Courtenay, the Bishop of London. It was, also, after no fewer than

five papal bulls, dated at Rome on the 22d of May, had been sent forth

against Wycliffe. These things give great significancy to the action

of Richard II.‘s first Parliament, when for its guidance it desired to

have the opinion of Wycliffe respecting the lawfulness of refusing to

comply with certain papal exactions.

The position and influence of Wycliffe, his standing in the University

and among the representatives and leaders of the people, may be judged

of by the elaborate and complicated measures taken against him. One

of the Pope‘s missives was addressed to the King, another to the

University of Oxford and no fewer than three to the Archbishop of

Canterbury and the Bishop of London. These documents were accompanied

by a schedule or syllabus of nineteen articles which had been reported

to the Pontiff, “erroneous, false, contrary to the faith, and

threatening to subvert and weaken the estate of the whole Church,” said

to be held and taught by Wycliffe. Acting on these instructions, and

proceeding in the business with the greatest wariness, the Archbishop

summoned Wycliffe to appear before a synod to be held in the chapel

at Lambeth early in the year 1378.[17] On this occasion the Duke of

Lancaster and Lord Percy were not with him to protect him, but he

received effective though tumultuous and boisterous help from the

citizens, who might be heard by the bishops shouting such sentences

as, “The Pope‘s briefs ought to have no effect in the realm without

the King‘s consent;” “Every man is master in his own house.” But even

more effective help than that of the angry citizens was at hand. “In

comes a gentleman and courtier, one Lewis Clifford, on the very day of

examination, commanding them not to proceed to any definitive sentence

against the said Wycliffe.” “Never before were the bishops served with

such a _prohibition_; all agreed the messenger durst not be so stout

with such a _mandamus_ in his mouth, but because backed with the power

of the prince that employed him. The bishops, struck with a panic-fear,

proceeded no further”[18]—or as a contemporary historian (Walsingham)

says: “Their speech became soft as oil; and with such fear were they

struck, that they seemed to be as a man that heareth not, and in whose

mouth are no reproofs.” Wycliffe passed as safely out of Lambert Chapel

as on a former occasion he had passed out of the Ladye Chapel of St.

Paul‘s. Not long after the sudden conclusion of this Lambeth synod,

intimation of the Pope‘s death, on the 27th March 1378, was received in

England. This so arrested the process against Wycliffe, that no further

action was taken under the five elaborate bulls of Pope Gregory XI.

A new chapter in the life and work of Wycliffe begins with the great

papal schism of 1378.

Till recently it was supposed that Wycliffe had early assumed the

attitude towards the friars which had been taken by Richard Fitzralph,

who, after he had been Chancellor of Oxford in 1333, and Archbishop of

Armagh in 1347, died at Avignon in 1359. This supposition now appears

to be historically without ground; and Dr. Lechler‘s researches tend

to show that Wycliffe‘s controversy with the friars belonged not to

the earlier but to the later period of his life. This view agrees with

all that we know of the method according to which Wycliffe conducted

and developed his great argument against the Papacy. Wycliffe‘s study

of the papal claims, pretensions, usurpations, and exactions, led him

to investigate the grounds and foundations not only of the political,

but also of the ecclesiastical and spiritual, power and authority of

the Popedom. In his reply in 1366 to the anonymous monk champion of the

Papacy, he had represented or reported, with manifest approbation, the

statement of one of the secular lords, declaring that the Pope was a

man and peccable (_peccabilis_), and that he might be in mortal sin,

and liable to what that involves. After he had taken his degree of

Doctor in Divinity in 1370 or 1371, he expounded and vindicated from

the Scriptures the doctrines which, by his long study of the Divine

Word, he had been led to receive as articles of faith founded on the

written Word of God. These views, derived directly and immediately from

Holy Scripture, he illustrated by quotations from the early

fathers—more particularly from the writings of Ambrose, Jerome,

Augustine, and Gregory, the four fathers of the Latin Church. From the

time when he became Doctor in Divinity, “he began,” says a contemporary

opponent, “to scatter forth his blasphemies.” And as we know, it was

after his return from Bruges in 1376 that he began to speak of the

Pope not merely as peccable—fallible, and liable to sin—but as

“Antichrist, the proud, worldly priest of Rome.”

It has been said that the language of Wycliffe in his tract entitled

“De Papa Romana et Schisma Papae” was too strong, too vehement and

sweeping; and that his work was, in tendency and effect, destructive

rather than constructive. So far is it from being true that his

language is that of passion, or of vehemence proceeding from passion,

that, on the contrary, it is the language of a reflective, circumspect,

and keen-eyed observer of the evils and abuses of the papal system,

which he contrasted with the primitive and apostolic model of the

Church. When compared with the language of some other assailants

of the Papacy, Wycliffe‘s fiercest invectives are but the calm,

measured, and temperate declaration of truth and reality, spoken by

one who so loved the truth, and was so earnest in his endeavors for

the reformation of the Church and the morals of the clergy, that he

avowed himself willing, if need be, to lay down his life, if by so

doing he could promote the attainment of this end. If the portraiture

of the Papacy and of the papal dignitaries, officials, and underlings,

given by Petrarch, in his “Letters to a Father,” be compared with the

statements of Wycliffe, we shall be constrained to say that the Oxford

professor uses the language of reserve characteristic of the well-bred

and well-disciplined Englishman who means to give practical effect

to his words, as distinguished from the language used by Petrarch,

who neither intended, nor had the courage, to add deeds to his words.

Historically, Wycliffe‘s work appears to have been more destructive

than constructive. But this was not because Wycliffe set himself to

root out, to pull down, and to destroy, without, at the same time

setting himself to build and to plant. The reason why Wycliffe‘s work

appears historically defective or incomplete as a constructive work

is that, by the malice, ingenuity, and power of his adversaries,

his work in planting and in building—that is to say, his work as

constructive—was to the utmost impeded, pulled down, or rooted up.

“And,” says Milton, “had it not been the obstinate perverseness of

our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wycliffe,

to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the

Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had

been ever known; the glory of reforming all our neighbors had been

completely ours.”[19]

* * * * *

The last six years of Wycliffe‘s life—1378-1384—were packed full

with work. For in these years, besides developing and expounding his

ideas of the Church, the Papacy, and the hierarchy, and prosecuting

his controversy with the mendicant friars, he trained and sent forth

evangelists, “poor priests” to preach the Gospel in all places of the

land; he expounded and taught the doctrine of Scripture concerning

the Eucharist or the “real presence” in relation to the bread and

the wine in the sacrament of the Lord‘s Supper; he professed and

taught theology in Oxford; he preached and discharged the duties of

an evangelical pastor in Lutterworth; and with the assistance of a

few fellow-laborers, who entered into his purpose and shared with him

in the desire for the evangelisation of the people of England, he

translated the Scriptures out of the Latin Vulgate into the English

tongue. “His life,” and more especially this part of it, “shows that

his religious views were progressive. His ideal was the restoration

of the pure moral and religious supremacy to religion. This was

the secret, the vital principle, of his anti-sacerdotalism; of his

pertinacious enmity to the whole hierarchical system of his day.”[20]

Hence as his views of truth became deeper, wider, and more fixed,

instead of attacking Popes and prelates, he assailed the Papacy and

the hierarchy; and instead of attacking friars, he attacked mendicancy

itself—denouncing it in common with the Papacy as contrary to

the doctrines of the Word of God, and inconsistent with the order

instituted by Christ within the Church, which is the house of God,—the

pillar and ground of the truth.

When Wycliffe appeared to answer for himself before the Pope‘s

delegates at Lambeth, in 1378, he is said to have presented a written

statement explanatory of the articles charged against him. The first

sentence of that documentary confession is: “First of all, I publicly

protest, as I have often done at other times, that I will and purpose

from the bottom of my heart, by the grace of God, to be a sincere

Christian, and, as long as I have breath, to profess and defend the law

of Christ so far as I am able.”[21]

A document of a somewhat similar kind, called by Wycliffe “A Sort of

Answer to the Bull sent to the University,” was presented by him to

Parliament.

It is as a true and sincere Christian, and as a faithful and laborious

Christian pastor and evangelist, that Wycliffe appears before us in the

closing period of his truly heroic life. The written word of God is now

to him the supreme, perfect and sufficient rule of faith and morals:

it is what, in his protestation, he calls “the law of Christ.” The

watchword of his life—the standard test, rule, directory, and measure

of faith and duty—is the Word of God written. His appeal is, first and

last, to that Word—“To the law and to the testimony; if men speak not

according to that Word, there is no light in them;” they are but blind

guides of the blind. He had evidently made progress in his study of the

writings of Augustine, and had so profited by the study that he is bold

to say that “The dictum of Augustine is not infallible, seeing that

Augustine himself was liable to err”—“Locus a testimonio Augustini non

est infallibilis, cum Augustinus sit errabilis.” The Bible is a charter

written by God; it is God‘s gift to us: “Carta a Deo scripta et

nobis donata per quam vindicabimus regnum Dei.” This is what a

pre-eminently illustrious poet denotes by the words—“Thy gift, Thy

tables.” “The law of Christ is the _medulla_ of the laws of the

Church.” “Every useful law of holy mother Church is taught, either

explicitly or implicitly, in Scripture.” It is impossible that the

dictum or deed of any Christian should become, or be held to be, of

authority equal to Scripture. He is a _mixtim theologus_—a motley or

medley theologian—who adds traditions to the written Word. He is

_theologus purus_ who adheres to the Scripture. “Spiritual rulers

are bound to use the sincere Word of God, without any admixture in

their rule or administration. To be ignorant of the Scriptures is to

be ignorant of Christ.” “The whole of Scripture is one word of God.”

“The whole of the law of Christ is one perfect word proceeding from

the mouth of God.” “It is impious to mutilate or pervert Scripture,

or to wrest from it a perverse meaning.” The true preachers are _Viri

evangelici_, _Doctores evangelici_. Ignorance of Holy Scripture, or

the absence of faith in the written Word of God, is, he says, “beyond

doubt, the chief cause of the existing state of things.” Therefore

it was his great business, in life or by death, to make known to

his fellow-countrymen the will of God revealed in the Scriptures of

Truth. The highest service to which man may attain on earth is to

preach the law of God. This is the special duty of the priests, in

order that they may produce children of God—this being the end for

which Christ espoused to Himself the Church.”

Next to the exclusive supremacy of Scripture, the truth which is set

forth with perhaps the most marked prominency in the teaching of

Wycliffe, is the truth concerning the Lord Jesus Christ as the one

Mediator between God and man. Christ is not only revealed in the Word;

he is Himself the Mediating Word—the way, and the truth, and the life.

And what Wycliffe says of the Apostle Paul, that he lifts the banner of

his Captain, in that he glories only in the cross of Christ, admits, as

Dr. Lechler remarks, of being justly applied to Wycliffe himself;

for his text is the evangel, and his theme is Christ. Like Luther

afterwards, Wycliffe lived through the truth which he proclaimed.

In his case the order was, first the Word, then Christ. In Luther‘s

it was, first the Word, then justification by faith. The German‘s

experience implied the logical order of the Englishman‘s experience.

For the logic of this faith is the Word of grace, the Christ of grace,

the righteousness of grace. Luther‘s work implies, develops, and

completes the work of Wycliffe, so that it holds true that the one

without the other is not made perfect.

In the year 1380, after recovery from a severe illness, Wycliffe

published a tract in which he formulated his charges against the

friars under fifty distinct heads, accusing them of fifty heresies;

and many more, as he said, if their tenets and practices be searched

out. “Friars,” says he, towards the conclusion of this tract, “are the

cause, beginning, and maintaining of perturbation in Christendom, and

of all the evils of this world; nor shall these errors be removed until

friars be brought to the freedom of the Gospel and the clean religion

of Jesus Christ.”

Wycliffe did not indulge in mere denunciation. His invectives were

with a view to the work of reformation. Accordingly, at the time when

he published the fifty charges against the friars he was actively

training, organising, and sending out agents—“poor priests” to

instruct the people in the knowledge of the Gospel, and by so doing

undo the works of the friars, and promote evangelical religion and

social virtue. At first these itinerant preachers were employed in

some places, as in the immense diocese of Lincoln, under episcopal

sanction.[22] But so effectively and extensively did they propagate

the evangelical doctrines of Wycliffe, that in Archbishop Courtenay‘s

mandate to the Bishop of London in 1382, they are denounced as

“unauthorised itinerant preachers, who set forth erroneous, yea,

heretical, assertions in public sermons, not only in churches, but also

in public squares, and other profane places; and who do this under

the guise of great holiness, but without having obtained any

episcopal or papal authorisation.” It was against Wycliffe‘s

“poor priests” or itinerant preachers that the first royal

proclamation in 1382 (statute it cannot be called), at the instance

of Courtenay, for the punishment of heresy in England, was issued.

The unprecedented measures taken against the “poor priests” bear

most significant testimony to the effect produced by their teachings

throughout the kingdom. It would be interesting to know how far,

if at all, Wesley‘s idea of itinerant preachers was founded on, or

proceeded from, the idea and the experiment of Wycliffe. At any rate,

these poor priests were not organised, nor was their action modelled,

according to any of the guilds, fraternities, or orders that had been

formed or that had been in operation before the time of Wycliffe. The

idea was truly original, and “the simplicity of the institution was

itself a stroke of consummate genius.”[23]

Having acted out his own principles that the student who would attain

to the knowledge of the meaning of Scripture must cultivate humility

of disposition and holiness of life, putting away from him all

prejudicate opinions, and all merely curious and speculative theories

and casuistical principles of interpretation, Wycliffe opened and

studied the Bible with the desire simply to know and to do the will of

God. It is no wonder if, with these sentiments, Wycliffe in his later

years, when engaged continually in reading, studying, expounding, and

translating the Scriptures, should come to perceive the contrariety of

the papal or mediæval doctrine concerning the Eucharist to the doctrine

of Scripture.

Wycliffe‘s views respecting transubstantiation having undergone

a great change between the years 1378 and 1381, he felt bound in

conscience to make known what he now came to believe to be the

true doctrine concerning the Eucharist. For, as he says in the

“Trialogus,” “I maintain that among all the heresies which have ever

appeared in the Church, there was never one which was more cunningly

smuggled in by hypocrites than this, or which in more ways deceives

the people; for it plunders the people, leads them astray into

idolatry, denies the teaching of Scripture, and by this unbelief

provokes the Truth Himself often-times to anger.”[24] In accordance

with all this, Wycliffe in the spring of 1381 published twelve

short theses or conclusions respecting the Eucharist and against

transubstantiation.”[25]

All Oxford was moved by these conclusions. By the unanimous judgment of

a court called and presided over by William de Bertram, the Chancellor,

they were declared to be contradictory to the orthodox doctrine of

the Church, and as such were prohibited from being set forth and

defended in the university, on pain of suspension from every function

of teaching, of the greater excommunication, and of imprisonment. By

the same mandate all members of the university were prohibited, on pain

of the greater excommunication, from being present at the delivery

of these theses in the university. When this mandate was served on

Wycliffe, he was in the act of expounding the doctrine of Scripture

concerning the Lord‘s Supper. The condemnation of his doctrine came

upon him as a surprise; but he is reported to have said that neither

the Chancellor nor any of his assessors could refute his arguments or

alter his convictions. Subsequently he appealed from the Chancellor to

the King. In the meantime, finding himself “tongue-tied by authority,”

he wrote a treatise on this subject in Latin,[26] and also a tract in

English entitled “The Wicket,” for the use of the people. Wycliffe‘s

doctrinal system may be said to have attained to its completeness when,

rejecting the idea of transubstantiation, he accepted those simple

and Scriptural views of the Eucharist which, apart from papalism or

medievalism, have in all ages prevailed within the Catholic Church—

that is, within the society or congregation of believers in Christ,

irrespectively of name, place, time, ceremony, or circumstance. While

this is so, “it is impossible,” as Dr. Lechler truly says, “not to be

impressed with the intellectual labor, the conscientiousness, and the

force of will, all equally extraordinary, which Wycliffe applied to the

solution of this problem. His attack on the dogma of transubstantiation

was so concentrated, and delivered (with so much force and skill) from

so many sides, that the scholastic conception was shaken to its very

foundations.”[27] He anticipated in his argument against the medieval

dogma, and in favor of the primitive and catholic faith concerning the

Eucharist, the views of the greatest and best of the Reformers, leaving

to them little more to do than to gather up, expound, develop, and

apply his principles.

Soon after the proceedings which we have noted were taken against

Wycliffe, the country was threatened with anarchy by what is known as

the Wat Tyler and Jack Straw insurrection. It is enough to say that

Wycliffe had nothing whatever to do with the exciting of that reckless

uprising. All his studies, meditations, and labors were designed to

promote righteousness and peace, truth and goodwill, order and liberty,

in England and all over the earth.

In the tract, “A Short Rule of Life, for each man in general, for

priests and lords and laborers in special, How each shall be saved in

his degree,” addressing the “laborer,” he says:—

“If thou art a _laborer_, live in meekness, and

truly and willingly, so thy lord or thy master, if he

be a heathen man, by thy meekness, willing and true

service, may not have to grudge against thee, nor

slander thy God, nor thy Christian profession, but

rather be stirred to come to Christianity, and serve

not Christian lords with grudgings, not only in their

presence, but truly and willingly, and in absence;

not only for worldly dread, or worldly reward, but

for dread of conscience, and for reward in heaven.

For God that putteth thee in such service knoweth

what state is best for thee, and will reward thee

more than all earthly lords may if thou dost it truly

and willingly for His ordinance. And in all things

beware of grudging against God and His visitation in

great labor, in long or great sickness, and other

adversities. And beware of wrath, of cursing, of

speaking evil, of banning man or beast, and ever keep

patience, meekness, and charity, both to God and man.”

As we cannot afford space to give what is said to “lords,” whom he

counsels to

“live a rightful life in their own persons, both in

respect to God and man, keeping the commandments of

God, doing the works of mercy, ruling well their

five senses, and doing reason, and equity, and good

conscience to all men,”—

we merely give here his concluding words:—

“And thus each man in the three states ought to life,

to save himself, and to help others; and thus should

life, rest, peace, and love, be among Christian men,

and they be saved, and heathen men soon converted,

and God magnified greatly in all nations and sects

that now despise Him and His law, because of the

false living of wicked Christian men.”

These are not the sentiments or utterances of a man in fellowship with

John Ball, Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, or any other such demagogues, rebels,

or sowers of sedition.

The truth, as stated by Milman,[28] is, that this spasm or “outburst”

of “thralled discontent” was but a violent symptom of the evils

which it was the aim and design of Wycliffe to uproot and remove, by

disseminating and inculcating everywhere the principles and precepts

of the Gospel. Writing in defence of the “poor priests” or evangelists

whom he had trained and sent out, Wycliffe says:—

“These poor priests destroien most, by God‘s

law, rebelty of servants agenst lords, and charge

servants to be sujet, though lords be tyrants. For

St Peter teacheth us, Be ye servants suget to lords

in all manner of dread, not only to good lords, and

bonoure, but also to tyrants, or such as drawen from

God’s school. For, as St. Paul sieth, each man oweth

to be suget to higher potestates, that is, to men of

high power, for there is no power but of God, and

so he that agen stondeth power, stondeth agenst the

ordinance of God, but they that agenstond engetten

to themselves damnation. And therefore Paul biddeth

that we be suget to princes by need, and not only

for wrath but also for conscience, and therefore we

paien tributes to princes, for they ben ministers of

God.” But “some men that ben out of charity slandren

‘poor priests’ with this error, that servants or

tenants may lawfully withhold rent and service fro

their lords, when lords be openly wicked in their

living;” and “they maken these false lesings upon

‘poor priests’ to make lords to hate them, and not to

meyntane truth of God’s law that they teachen openly

for worship of God, and profit of the realm, and

stabling the King’s power in destroying of sin.”[29]

Among the victims of the rage of the rabble in the Wat Tyler

insurrection was Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury. “He

was,” says Godwin, “a man admirably wise and well spoken.” But “though

he were very wise, learned, eloquent, liberal, merciful and for his

age and place reverend, yet might it not deliver him from the rage

of this beast with many heads—the multitude—than which being, once

incensed, there is no brute beast more cruel, more outrageous, more

unreasonable.”[30]

William Courtenay, Bishop of London, succeeded Sudbury as Archbishop

of Canterbury. Courtenay, a high-tempered, haughty, and resolute man,

lost no time in bringing the powers of his new and high position to

bear against the doctrines and adherents of Wycliffe. His pall from

Rome having been delivered to him at Croydon on the 6th of May 1382,

he summoned a synod to meet in the Grey Friars (mendicants) in London,

on the 17th of May, to deliberate and determine on the measures to be

taken for the suppression of certain stranger and dangerous opinions

“widely prevalent among the nobility and commons of the realm.” During

the sittings of this synod a great and terrible earthquake shook the

place of meeting and the whole city. Many of the high dignitaries

and learned doctors assembled, interpreting this event as a protest

from heaven against the proceedings of the council, would fain have

adjourned the meeting and its business. But the Archbishop, with ready

wit, interpreting the omen to suit his own purpose, said, “the earth

was throwing off its noxious vapors, that the Church might appear in

her perfect purity,” With these words Courtenay allayed the fears of

the more timid members of the synod, and the business went forward.

Of four and twenty articles extracted from Wycliffe’s writings, ten

were condemned as heretical, and the other fourteen were judged

erroneous. It is unnecessary to say that among the articles condemned

as heretical were the doctrines of Wycliffe concerning the Eucharist,

and more particularly his denial of transubstantiation. Among the

condemned tenets there are some which Wycliffe never held or affirmed

in the sense put upon them by the “Earthquake Council.” Some of the

determinations of this synod were so framed as to imply or insinuate

that Wycliffe was implicated in the insurrection of the previous year,

and that he was an enemy to temporal as well as to the ecclesiastical

authority—in other words, that he was a traitor as well as heretic. An

imposing procession, and a sermon by a Carmelite friar, served to give

solemnity and publicity, pomp and circumstance, to the decrees of the

synod.

Dr. Peter Stokes, a Carmelite preacher, furnished with the Archbishop’s

mandate and other artillery, was sent to bombard Oxford or to take it

by storm. But neither the scholars nor the Chancellor (Rigge) were

disposed to surrender the university without a struggle in defence

of its rights and liberties. The reception given to Dr. Stokes was

not at all satisfactory or assuring to the mind of the Archbishop of

Canterbury, who indignantly gave expression to his sorrow and his

anger in the words: “Is, then, the University of Oxford such a fautor

of heresy that Catholic truths cannot be asserted within her walls?”

Assuming to himself the ominous title of “Inquisitor of heretical

pravity within his whole province of Canterbury,” he proceeded to

deal with Oxford as if it were nothing more than one of the outlying

parishes of his episcopal province. The chancellor and several members

of the university were summoned to appear before him and to purge

themselves of the suspicion of heresy. But Chancellors like Rigge,

although courteous, are not readily compliant with what seems to invade

the privileges and prerogatives of their office. If Chancellor Rigge,

after his return to Oxford from London, gave formal effect to the

injunctions of the Archbishop, by intimating to Nicolas Hereford and

Philip Repington that he was under the necessity of suspending them

from all their functions as members of the university, he promptly

resented the insolence of Henry Cromp, who in a public lecture had

applied the epithet “Lollards” to those who maintained the views of

Wycliffe, by suspending him from all university functions.[31] Against

this sentence Cromp sought and found refuge in an appeal to Courtenay

and to the Privy Council. Hereford, Repington, and John Aston were

summoned to appear before the Archbishop. Aston was declared to be

a teacher of heresy, and he afterwards recanted. Repington also

recanted after a time, and was promoted to great honors in the Church.

Hereford, having gone to Rome to plead his case before the Pope, was

there imprisoned; but it would seem that some time afterwards he

managed to escape from prison, for in 1387 he is mentioned as the

leading itinerant preacher of the Lollards. Thus within a few months

after Courtenay entered on the discharge of the functions of his high

office, he had greatly intimidated the adherents and fellow-laborers

of Wycliffe in the university. But opinion rooted in conviction is

not easily suppressed. While the more prominent representatives of

Wycliffe’s adherents were either driven out of the country or coerced

into submission, and to the recantation of opinions which they had held

and taught, Wycliffe himself stood firm and erect amidst the tempest

that raged around. As if in calm defiance of the Archbishop and his

commissaries, he indited a petition to the King and the Parliament,

in which he craves their assent to the main articles contained in his

writings, and proved by authority—the Word of God—and reason to be

the Christian faith; he prays that all persons now bound by vows of

religion may have liberty to accept and follow the more perfect law of

Christ; that tithes be bestowed according to their proper use, for the

maintenance of the poor; that Christ’s own doctrine concerning the

Eucharist be publicly taught; that neither the King nor the kingdom

obey any See or prelate further than their obedience be grounded on

Scripture; that no money be sent out of the realm to the Court of Rome

or of Avignon, unless proved by Scripture to be due; that no Cardinal

or foreigner hold preferment in England; that if a bishop or curate

be notoriously guilty of contempt of God, the King should confiscate

his temporalities; that no bishop or curate should be enslaved to

secular office; and that no one should be imprisoned on account of

excommunication.[32]

This is Wycliffe’s petition of right to the King and to the Parliament

of England. We know nothing exactly like this document in the history

of the past five hundred years. In one or two of the claims set forth

in it, the document which bears to it the greatest resemblance is an

anonymous petition addressed to King James in 1609, being “An Humble

Supplication for Toleration and Liberty to enjoy and observe the

Ordinances of Christ Jesus, in the administration of His Churches in

lieu of human Constitutions.” But compared with Wycliffe’s petition,

that other is narrow and restricted in its range. This of Wycliffe is,

like his work, for all time. In it he seems to have gathered up the

principles that governed his life, and to have expressed them so that

this document may be regarded as a summary of principles, a sort of

Enchiridion for the use of the statesmen and people of England.

It is more than doubtful whether Wycliffe appeared before the

Archbishop at Oxford in 1382; and it is certain that no recantation

ever proceeded from his lips or pen. In the absence of any adequate

reason hitherto assigned for Wycliffe’s immunity or personal safety in

a time so perilous, may the reason have been that, silenced in Oxford

by the decree of the preceding year, Wycliffe left the university, and,

retiring to his rectory of Lutterworth, enjoyed there the protection

of the Bishop of Lincoln, John Bokingham? Within the very extensive

diocese of Lincoln, we know that for a time Wycliffe’s “poor priests”

enjoyed the episcopal protection. Is it too much to suppose that John

Bokingham, who protected and gave episcopal sanction to Wycliffe’s

preachers, extended his protection to Wycliffe himself? This “John

Bokingham if this were the Bishop of Lincoln accounted of some very

unlearned, was a doctor of divinity of Oxford, a great learned man in

scholastical divinity, as divers works of his still extant may testify,

and for my part, I think this bishop to be the man. The year 1397, the

Pope bearing him some grudge, translated him perforce from Lincolne

unto Lichfield, a bishopric not half so good. For curst heart he would

not take it, but, as though he had rather have no bread than half a

loaf, forsook both, and became a monk at Canterbury. He was one of

the first founders of the bridge at Rochester.”[33] Our conjecture if

probable or true to fact, would explain not a little that has hitherto

perplexed the biographers of Wycliffe.

But apart from this conjecture and all similar guesses and suggestions,

perhaps the real cause of Wycliffe’s safety was the regard cherished

for him by many of the nobility and leaders of the people, and the

esteem in which he was held by the King’s mother—“the fair maid of

Kent”—whose message, conveyed by Sir Lewis Clifford, brought the

proceedings of the Lambeth Synod to an abrupt termination. Nor must the

protecting influence of Richard’s wife, the Queen—Ann of Bohemia—be

ignored. For in his book “Of the Three-fold Love” Wycliffe says: “It

is possible that the noble Queen of England, the sister of Cæsar, may

have and use the Gospel written in three languages—Bohemian, German,

and Latin. But to hereticate her on that account would be Luciferian

folly.” But after all the circumstances of the case have been

considered, we may say with Fuller: “In my mind it amounted to little

less than a miracle, that during this storm on his disciples, Wycliffe

their master should live in quiet. Strange that he was not drowned

in so strong a stream as ran against him, whose safety under God’s

providence is not so much to be ascribed to his own strength in

swimming as to such as held him up by the chin—the greatness of his

noble supporters.”[34] It would appear as if King Richard himself must

be reckoned one at least among Wycliffe’s “noble supporters.” This

seems to be implied in what appears to be a reference to himself,

made in one of his last-written treatises, the “Frivolous Citations,”

being the citations addressed by the Popes to those who were offensive

to them. In that remarkable treatise the arguments in favor of papal

citations are shown to be untenable and sophistical, and the assumption

of temporal power by the Pope, as exercised in the citation of those

not subject to his jurisdiction, is shown to be unjustifiable. From all

this the conclusion is, that the Church should return to primitive and

apostolic simplicity—the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ without

the Pope and his statutes. In the fourth chapter he maintains that

three things warrant any one cited to refuse obedience to the citation:

necessary business, illness, and the prohibition of the sovereign

of the realm: “Primum est gravis necessitas, quæ videtur maxima in

custodia Christi ovium, ne a lupis rapacibus lanientur. Secundum est

infirmitas corporis, propter quam deficit citato dispositio data a

domino ad taliter laborandum. Et tertium est preceptio regia, quando

rex precepit, sicut debet, suo legio, ne taliter extra suam provinciam

superflue evagetur. Et omnes istæ tres causæ vel aliqua earum in

qualibet citatione hujusmodi sunt reperte, et specialiter cum rex

regum prohibeat taliter evagari.” All this he applies to his own case,

in language implying that he had been cited to appear to answer for

himself before the Pope: “Et sic dicit, quidam debilis et claudus

citatus ad hanc curiam, quod prohibitio regia impedit ipsum ire, quia,

rex regum necessitat et vult efficaciter, quod non vagat. Dicit etiam

quod domi oportet ipsum eligere Pontificam Iesum Christum, quod est

gravis necessitas eo, quod cum ejus omissione vel negligentia non

potest Romanus Pontifex vel aliquis angelus dispensare.”[35] The words

seem to imply not only that he was cited to appear before the Pope,

but that in declining to obey the papal summons, he could plead bodily

infirmity, the will of the King of kings, and also the prohibition of

the only earthly sovereign to whom he owed a subject’s duty. Shirley,

writing in 1858, says—“From his retreat at Lutterworth they summoned

him before the papal court. The citation did not reach him till

1384.”[36] If so, then his tract “De Citationibus Frivolis” was one of

the last of the many writings that proceeded from his pen.

Before we make the briefest possible reference to the last and greatest

work of Wycliffe—his translation of the Bible—we may here allude to

the marvellous productiveness of the mind of this great Englishman of

the fourteenth century. In this respect, as in other characteristics

of his genius, there is only one other name in English literature that

is entitled to take rank and place beside John Wycliffe, and that is

the name of William Shakespeare. Chaucer and Langland and Gower, the

contemporaries of Wycliffe, wrote much, and wrote so as not only to

prove the previously unknown capabilities of the half-formed English

language for giving expression to every variety of poetical conception,

but these illustrious poets also so wrote as to be the forerunners and

the leaders of those who, since the time when the English mind was set

free by the Reformation, have marched, and continue to march, as the

poets of England in splendid equipage in their proud procession through

the ages. But the intellectual and literary productiveness of Chaucer

and Langland and Gower comes far short of the truly extraordinary

productiveness of the genius of Wycliffe. Nothing but ignorance of what

Wycliffe did for the highest forms of thought in the University, for

the dignity and independence of the State, for truth and freedom in

the Church, and for virtue and godliness among the English people, and

through them among all the nations of the world, can account for the

indifference to the name and memory of Wycliffe, which prevails not in

Oxford alone, but throughout the country:—

“To the memory of one of the greatest of Englishmen,

his country has been singularly and painfully

ungrateful. On most of us the dim image looks down,

like the portrait of the first of a long line of

kings, without personality or expression. He is the

first of the Reformers. To some he is the watchword

of a theological controversy, invoked most loudly

by those whom he would most have condemned. Of his

works, the greatest, ‘one of the most thoughtful of

the middle ages,’ has twice been printed abroad, in

England never.[37] Of his original English works,

nothing beyond one or two tracts has seen the light.

If considered only as the father of English prose,

the great Reformer might claim more reverential

treatment at our hands. It is not by his translation

of the Bible, remarkable as that work is, that

Wycliffe can be judged as a writer. It is in his

original tracts that the exquisite pathos, the keen

delicate irony, the manly passion of his short

nervous sentences, fairly overmasters the weakness

of the unformed language, and gives us English which

cannot be read without a feeling of its beauty to

this hour.”[38]

The mind of Wycliffe was constitutionally of large capacity—strong,

many-sided, intense. The strength and the luminousness of his

understanding, operating through an emotional nature of great

tranquillity and depth, found for themselves unimpeded expression in

the force and energy of a self-determining and resolute will. His

deliberations, not his passions, prompted, directed, and controlled

his actions. Hence the decisiveness of his conclusions; hence also

the heroic pertinacity with which he adhered to his convictions, and,

whether amidst compliments or curses, prosecuted his work. For to him

personally, _dominion_ signified the lordship of the intellect over the

emotions, the sovereignty of conscience over the intellect, and the

monarchy of God over all. The “possessioner” of rich and varied mental

endowments, he put forth all to use. For in all the departments

of learning and science, John Wycliffe was second to none whose

names adorn the annals of Oxford University and are the glory of

England. Wycliffe’s works, when known in Oxford and in this country

will not only vindicate what we have said, but will show that if

his constitutional abilities were singularly great, his industry

was indefatigable, and his studious course splendidly progressive.

“Proscribed and neglected as he afterwards became, there was a time

when Wycliffe was the most popular writer in Europe.”[39] Contact with

his mind through his works, seems to have had a remarkably infectious

influence on the men of his time and on the following generation. Hence

the unexampled measures taken not by William Courtenay alone, but by

successive Popes and by the Council of Constance (1415), to suppress

the heresies of Wycliffe. This influence of contact with his spirit in

his writings, shows itself very notably in the case of the able and

critical historian, Milman. Milman’s own mind was of great capacity

and force. But the vigor and enthusiasm of that mind seem to reveal

themselves more in the chapter on Wycliffe than in any other section of

his great work. There is an unusual glow—one might say fervor—as of

sympathetic appreciation, in the greater part of that chapter.[40]

Shirley’s statement that “Wycliffe is a very voluminous, a proscribed,

and a neglected writer,” is verified by the catalogue which Shirley

himself, at the cost of considerable labor scattered over a period of

some ten or twelve years, compiled, and published in 1865. By compiling

and publishing this catalogue, Professor Shirley rendered great service

not only to the memory of Wycliffe but also to English literature.

Bale, Bishop of Ossory (1563), the author of many most valuable but now

little appreciated, because little known, works, in his “Summarium,”[41]

first published in 1547, gives a list of 242 of Wycliffe’s writings,

with their titles. Lewis, in 1820, by some modifications and additions

of Bale’s list, extends the number to 284. A catalogue was also

prefixed by Baber to his reprint of Wycliffe’s New Testament (Purvey’s

amended edition) in 1810. And Dr. Vaughan (who has got but scrimp

justice at the hands of some), in his “Life and Opinions of Wycliffe,”

1828 and 1831, and in his “John de Wycliffe: a Monograph,” 1853, gave

catalogues which had the effect of setting a few others to work in

the endeavor to determine with certainty the number of the genuine

writings left by Wycliffe. This work was undertaken and prosecuted

with no little labor and critical ability by Professor Shirley; but

death at an early time arrested the progress of the work which he had

projected—the editing and publishing of “Select Works of Wycliffe.”

Men die, but the work dies not. To the third volume of “Select English

Works of John Wycliffe,” 1871, edited by Thomas Arnold, there is

prefixed a “List of MSS. of the Miscellaneous Works,” and a “Complete

Catalogue of the English Works ascribed to Wycliffe, based on that

prepared by Dr. Shirley, but including a detailed comparison with

the list of Bale and Lewis”[42] Of Dr. Lechler’s services in this as

in every other respect we do not speak: they are inestimable. The

example set by him, and by Dr. Buddensieg of Dresden, and Dr. Loserth

of Czernowitz, ought to stimulate Englishmen, and more especially the

graduates, fellows, and doctors of Oxford, to vindicate the University

against the charge so justly and repeatedly made against it, of having

treated with indifference and neglect the name and memory of one of her

most illustrious sons. It is anything but creditable to Oxford that

German scholars and princes should do the work which ought to be done

by Englishmen—and of all Englishmen by the men of Oxford. Do these

learned men know that in English literature there is a short treatise

bearing the title “The Dead Man’s Right?”[43] It is time that they

should study it, and give to it such effect as only the men of Oxford

can give, in relation to the memory of the man who asserted and

maintained, in perilous and most hazardous times, the rights of Oxford

University against those who would reduce that noble institution, that

renowned seat of learning, to the level of one of the outhouses of the

Vatican Palace or of the Pope’s privy chamber, at Avignon or at Rome.

From the lists or catalogues of Wycliffe’s works, it is evident that

his writing was like his mind—steadily, splendidly progressive. To

the earlier period of his life belong the works on logic, psychology,

metaphysics, and generally what may be called his philosophical

writings. To the second period of his life belong his applied

philosophy in the form of his treatises on politico-ecclesiastical

questions. To the third period belong his works on scientific theology;

and to the fourth and concluding period belong his works on applied

theology, or practical and pastoral divinity.

“The earliest work to which, so far as I know, a tolerably exact date

can be assigned, is the fragment “De dominio,” printed by Lewis, and

which belongs to the year 1366 or 1367. We may confidently place the

whole of the philosophical works, properly so called, before this date.

About the year 1367 was published the “De Dominio Divino,” preluding to

the great “Summa Theologiæ,”—the first book of which, “De Mandatis,”

appears to have been written in 1369; the seventh, the “De Ecclesia,”

in 1378; the remainder at uncertain intervals during the next five

years. The “Trialogus” and its supplement belong probably to the last

year of the Reformer’s life.”[44]

In a letter of Archbishop Arundel, addressed to Pope John XXIII. in

1412, it is said of Wycliffe that, “In order to fulfil the measure of

his wickedness, he _invented_ the translation of the Bible into the

mother tongue.” Of this, the great and crowning work of Wycliffe’s

life, Knighton says:—

“Christ delivered his Gospel to the clergy and

doctors of the Church, but this Master John Wycliffe

translated it out of Latin into English, and thus

laid it out more open to the laity, and to women who

could read, than it had formerly been to the most

learned of the clergy, even to those of them that had

the best understanding. In this way the Gospel-pearl

is cast abroad, and trodden under foot of swine, and

that which was before precious both to clergy and

laity, is rendered, as it were, to the common jest

of both. The jewel of the Church is turned into the

sport of the people, and what had hitherto been the

choice gift of the clergy and of divines, is made for

ever common to the laity.”[45]

It was for this very end that the “Word of God written” might be

forever common to the people, as accessible to them as to the most

privileged orders, that Wycliffe seems at an early time in his life to

have entertained the great idea and formed the purpose of giving to his

countrymen a version of Holy Scripture in the English language. For,

although we cannot here enter into details, it would appear from the

careful, learned, and elaborate preface to the magnificent edition of

Wycliffe’s Bible by Forshall and Madden,[46] that the progressiveness

characteristic of Wycliffe’s views and work was apparent in the

translation of the Bible. With all deference to the opinions of those

who believe that man’s works spring full-formed from the human brain,

like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, there is reason for believing

that so early as 1356, or about that time, Wycliffe began his work

of translating the Scriptures, and that, with many interruptions or

intermissions, he continued to prosecute his great enterprise till

he had the joyful satisfaction of seeing the translation of the New

Testament completed in 1380. The idea had grown in his mind, and the

work grew under his hand. He could now put a copy of the Evangel into

the hands of each evangelist whom he sent forth. Up to this time he

could but furnish his poor preachers with short treatises and detached

portions of Scripture. But now he could give them the whole of the New

Testament in the language of the people of England. It was a great

gift, and it was eagerly desired by multitudes who had been perishing

for lack of knowledge. And but for the opposition of the hierarchy, the

book and the evangelist might now have had free course in England. The

work of translating the Old Testament was being prosecuted by Nicolas

Hereford, when he was cited to appear before the Archbishop. Two

MS. copies of Hereford’s translation in the Bodleian Library

“end abruptly in the book of Baruch, breaking off in the middle of a

sentence.[47] It may thence be inferred that the writer was suddenly

stopped in the execution of his work; nor is it unreasonable to

conjecture, further, that the cause of the interruption was the summons

which Hereford received to appear before the synod in 1382.”

“The translation itself affords proof that it was

completed by a different hand, and not improbably by

Wycliffe himself. Hereford translates very literally,

and is usually careful to render the same Latin words

or phrases in an uniform manner. He never introduces

textual glosses. The style subsequent to Bar. iii.

20 is entirely different. It is more easy, no longer

keeps to the order of the Latin, takes greater

freedom in the choice of words, and frequently admits

textual glosses. In the course of the first complete

chapter the new translator inserts no less than

nine such glosses. He does not admit prologues. The

translation of this last part of the Old Testament

corresponds with that of the New Testament, not only

in the general style, but also in the rendering of

particular words.”[48]

Wycliffe’s work was really done when the whole Bible was published in

the English language. And although he set himself to improve, correct,

and amend his own and Hereford’s translation, yet he could now, as at

no previous time, say, “Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.”

Not long after this he died in peace at Lutterworth, in Leicestershire,

on the 31st of December 1384. And notwithstanding the ridicule of

all who snarl at Mr. Foxe for counting him a martyr in his calendar,

he really lived a martyr’s life, and died a martyr’s death: he lived

and died a faithful witness of the truth. If he was not in spirit a

martyr, there never was a martyr in the history of the Church; and if

his persecutors were not in spirit tyrants whose purpose was to add

Wycliffe’s name to the roll of martyrs, there never were those who

persecuted the saints unto bonds, imprisonment, and death. What else

means the decree of the Council of Constance in 1415, which not only

cursed his memory, as that of one dying an obstinate heretic, but

ordered his body (with this charitable caution, “if it may be discerned

from the bodies of other faithful people”), to be taken out of the

ground and thrown far off from any Christian burial? In obedience to

this decree—being, as Godwin says, required by the Council of Sena so

to do[49]—Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutterworth

in 1428, sent officers to ungrave the body of Wycliffe. To Lutterworth

they come, take what was left out of the grave, and burning it, cast

the ashes into the Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. “Thus

hath this brook conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn

into the narrow seas, and these into the main ocean. And thus the ashes

of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all

the world over.”[50]

With Fuller’s graphic record of the action of the servants of Bishop

Fleming of Lincoln we might conclude our review of the work of this

truly great and good man; but we cannot conclude without saying that

the decree of the Constance Council and the action of the Lincoln

bishop reveal at the same time the power of Wycliffe’s doctrines and

the impotence of the papal opposition to Wycliffe and to Lollardism.

Truth dies not: it may be burned, but, like the sacred bush on the

hillside of Horeb, it is not consumed. It may fall in the street; it

may be trodden under foot of men; it may be put into the grave; but

it is not dead,—it lives, rises again, and is free. The bonds only

are consumed; and the grave-clothes and the napkin only are left in

the sepulchre. The word itself liveth and abideth forever. It has in

it not only an eternal vitality, but also a seminal virtue. It is the

seed of the kingdom of God. Some of the books of Wycliffe were put

into the hands of John Hus in the University of Prague. Of Hus it may

be said that, like the prophet, he ate the books given to him. He so

appropriated them, not in the spirit only, but also in the letter,

that the doctrines, and even the verbal expressions, of Wycliffe, were

reproduced and proclaimed by him in Bohemia. This is demonstrated by

Dr. Loserth in his recent work, “Wycliffe and Hus.”[51]

The story of the Gospel in Bohemia is really a record of the work

of Wycliffe in a foreign land, where he was regarded as little less

than “a fifth evangelist.” The heresies of Wycliffe, condemned by the

Council of Constance, were the Gospel for which John Hus and Jerome of

Prague died the death of martyrs. But not only so.

“When I studied at Erfurth,” says Martin Luther,

“I found in the library of the convent a book

entitled the ‘Sermons of John Hus.’ I had a great

curiosity to know what doctrines that arch-heretic

had propagated. My astonishment at the reading of

them was incredible. I could not comprehend for what

cause they burnt so great a man, who explained the

Scriptures with so much gravity and skill. But as the

very name of Hus was held in so great abomination,

that I imagined the sky would fall and the sun be

darkened if I made honorable mention of him, I shut

the book with no little indignation. This, however,

was my comfort, that he had written this perhaps

before he fell into heresy, for I had not yet heard

what passed at the Council of Constance.”[52]

Germany through Luther owes much to John Wycliffe. Germany acknowledges

the obligation, and through Lechler, Buddensieg, Loserth, and others,

it is offering its tribute of gratitude to the memory of the earliest

of the Reformers. For, although the fact is ignored by many, the

Reformation was but the exposition and developed application of

the doctrines of John Wycliffe. It was Shakespeare who said of the

great Lollard chief of England—Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord

Cobham—“Oldcastle died a martyr!”[53] But it is one of the most coldly

severe and critical of historians who says:—

“No revolution has ever been more gradually prepared

than that which separated almost one-half of Europe

from the communion of the Roman See; nor were Luther

and Zwingle any more than occasional instruments of

that change, which, had they never existed, would

at no great distance of time have been effected

under the names of some other Reformers. At the

beginning of the sixteenth century, the learned

doubtfully and with caution, the ignorant with zeal

and eagerness, were tending to depart from the faith

and rites which authority prescribed. But probably

not even Germany were so far advanced on this course

as England. Almost a hundred and fifty years before

Luther, nearly the same doctrines as he taught had

been maintained by Wycliffe, whose disciples, usually

called Lollards, lasted as a numerous though obscure

and proscribed sect, till, aided by the confluence

of foreign streams, they swelled into the Protestant

Church of England. We hear indeed little of them

during some part of the fifteenth century; for they

generally shunned persecution, and it is chiefly

through records of persecution that we learn the

existence of heretics. But immediately before the

name of Luther was known, they seem to have become

more numerous; since several persons were burned for

heresy, and others abjured their errors, in the first

years of Henry VIII.’s reign.”[54]

Corresponding with what is stated by Hallam, is the fact that John Knox

begins his history of the Reformation in Scotland by giving, in what

he calls “Historiæ Initium,” a chapter on the history of Lollardism in

Scotland:—

“In the scrolls of Glasgow is found mention of

one whose name is not expressed, that, in the year

of God 1422, was burnt for heresy; but what were

his opinions, or by what order he was condemned,

it appears not evidently. But our chronicles make

mention that in the days of King James the First,

about the year of God 1431, was deprehended in the

University of St. Andrews, one Paul Craw, a Bohemian,

who was accused of heresy before such as then were

called Doctors of Theology. His accusation consisted

principally that he followed _John Hus and Wycliffe

in the opinion of the Sacrament_, who denied that the

substance of bread and wine were changed by virtue

of any words, or that confession should be made to

priests, or yet prayers to saints departed.... He was

condemned to the fire, in the whilk he was consumed,

in the said city of Saint Andrews, about the time

aforewritten.”

Proceeding with his narrative, Knox gives a picturesque description

of what occurred in Court, when no fewer than thirty persons were

summoned in 1494 by Robert Blackburn, Archbishop of Glasgow, to appear

before the King and his great council. “These,” he says, “were called

the Lollards of Kyle. They were accused of the articles following, as

we have received them forth of the register of Glasgow.” Among the

thirty-four articles charged against them are many of the doctrines so

ably expounded and maintained by Wycliffe. “By these articles, which

God of His merciful providence caused the enemies of His truth to keep

in their registers, may appear how mercifully God hath looked upon this

realm, retaining within it some spunk of His light even in the time of

greatest darkness.” The Lollards of Kyle, partly through the clemency

of the King, and partly by their own bold and ready-witted answers, so

dashed the bishop and his band out of countenance, that the greatest

part of the accusation was turned to laughter. For thirty years after

that memorable exhibition there was “almost no question for matters of

religion” till young Patrick Hamilton of gentle blood and of heroic

spirit, appeared on the scene in 1527. “With him,” says Knox, “our

history doth begin.”[55]

“No friendly hand,” says Dr. Shirley, “has left us any even the

slightest memorial of the life and death of the great Reformer. A

spare, frail, emaciated frame, a quick temper, a conversation ‘most

innocent,’ the charm of every rank—such are the scanty but significant

fragments we glean of the personal portraiture of one who possessed, as

few ever did, the qualities which give men power over their fellows.

His enemies ascribed it to the magic of an ascetic habit; the fact

remains engraven on every line of his life.[56] His bitterest enemies

cannot refrain from involuntary tributes of admiration extorted

from them by the singular and unsullied excellence of the man whose

doctrines and doings as a reformer they detested. Like the “amiable

and famous Edward, by-named, not of his color, but of his dreaded acts

in battle, the Black Prince,”[57] Wycliffe was in nothing black save

in his dreaded doctrines and works of reformation. Apart from these,

“all tongues—the voice of souls”—awarded him the praise due to lofty

genius, exemplary virtue, and personal godliness. His heretical deeds

were the occasion of all the obloquy heaped upon his name and memory:—

“In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,

And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.”

If we cannot as yet cherish the hope that, besides erecting in Oxford

some visible monument to the memory of Wycliffe, the University

should, as an example to Cambridge and to the Scottish universities,

institute a Wycliffe Lectureship for the exposition of the works of

the great Reformer, it is surely not too much to expect that Oxford

should give all possible countenance and support to the project for the

printing and the publication of Wycliffe’s unprinted and unpublished

writings. This, in the meantime, is perhaps the best tribute that can

be offered to the memory of Wycliffe. For, as Dr. Shirley said, some

nineteen years ago, “The Latin works of Wycliffe are, both historically

and theologically, by far the most important; from these alone can

Wycliffe’s theological position be understood: and it is not, perhaps,

too much to say, that no writings so important for the history of

doctrine are still buried in manuscript.”[58] These neglected, unknown,

and hitherto inaccessible works, are being printed under competent

editorship by “The Wycliffe Society.”—They have more than a mere

theological interest. They are important in their relation to the

thought which developed itself in the reformation of religion, in the

revival of learning, and in the assertion, maintenance, and defence of

constitutional liberty in England.

For from the relation of his work to the University, to the

independence of the nation and the sovereignty of the Crown, to the

Church and to the people of England, a manifold interest must for

ever belong to the name, the life, and the work of John Wycliffe.

Corresponding with all this is the manifold obligation of the

University, the Crown, the Church, and the people of England. For

Wycliffe was the first of those self-denying and fearless men to whom

we are chiefly indebted for the overthrow of superstition, ignorance,

and despotism, and for all the privileges and blessings, political and

religious, which we enjoy. He was the first of those who cheerfully

hazarded their lives that they might achieve their purpose, which was

nothing less than the felicity of millions unborn—a felicity which

could only proceed from the knowledge and possession of the truth.

He is one of those “who boldly attacked the system of error and

corruption, though fortified by popular credulity, and who, having

forced the stronghold of superstition, and penetrated the recesses

of its temple, tore aside the veil that concealed the monstrous idol

which the world had so long ignorantly worshipped, dissolved the

spell by which the human mind was bound, and restored it to liberty!

How criminal must those be who, sitting at ease under the vines and

fig-trees planted by the labors and watered with the blood of those

patriots, discover their disesteem of the invaluable privileges

which they inherit, or their ignorance of the expense at which they

were purchased, by the most unworthy treatment of those to whom they

owe them, misrepresent their actions, calumniate their motives, and

load their memories with every species of abuse!”[59] While we look to

the men of Oxford for a thorough though tardy and late vindication

of Wycliffe’s name and services to the University and to learning,

we expect from the people of England a more effective and permanent

memorial of Wycliffe and his work than can be raised by any number of

scholars or members of the University. Wycliffe lived for God and for

the people. He taught the English people how to use the English tongue

for the expression of truth, liberty, and religion. He was the first to

give to the people of England the Bible in the English language. What a

gift was this! He was in this the pioneer of Tyndale, of Coverdale, and

of all those who have lived and labored for the diffusion of the Word

of God among their fellow-men. The British and Foreign Bible Society is

really Wycliffe’s monument. His Bible, as translated from the Vulgate,

was itself an assertion of that independence for which Wycliffe lived

and died. To him may be applied the words of Milton—

“Servant of God, well done! well hast thou fought

The better fight; who single hast maintained

Against revolted multitudes the cause

Of truth; in word mightier than they in arms:

And for the testimony of truth hast borne

Universal reproach, far worse to bear

Than violence; for it was all thy care

To stand approv’d in sight of God, though worlds

Judged thee perverse.”[60]

—_Blackwood’s Magazine._