Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, February, 1885

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