The village of Wiclif, distant about six miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, had long been the residence of a family of the same name, when it gave birth, about the year 1324, to its most distinguished native. The family possessed wealth and consequence; and though the name of the Reformer is not to be found in the extant records of the household, it is probable that he belonged to it. Perhaps the spirit of the times, and zeal for the established hierarchy, may have led it to disclaim the only person who has saved its name from absolute obscurity.

John Wiclif was first admitted at Queen’s College, Oxford, but speedily removed to Merton, a society more ancient and distinguished, and adorned by names of great ecclesiastical eminence. Here he engaged in the prescribed studies with diligence and success. In scholastic learning he made such great proficiency as to extort admiration from some who loved him not; and the direction in which his talents were turned is indicated by the honourable appellation, which he early acquired, of the Evangelic or Gospel Doctor. The terms, “profound,” “perspicuous,” “irrefragable,” were applied to mark the respective peculiarities of Bradwardine, of Burley, and of Hales; and so we may infer, that the peculiar bent of Wiclif’s youthful exertions was towards the book on which his subsequent principles were founded, and that he applied the ambiguous fruits of a scholastic education, not to enlarge the resources of sophistry, but to illustrate the treasures of truth. And on the other hand, in the illustration of those oracles, and in the accomplishment of his other holy purposes, it was of good and useful service to him that he had armed himself with the weapons of the age, and could contend with the most redoubtable adversaries on the only ground of argument which was at all accessible to them.

In 1356 he put forth a tract on ‘The Last Age of the Church,’ which was the first of his publications, and is on other accounts worthy of mention. It would appear that his mind had been deeply affected by meditation on the various evils which at that period afflicted the world, especially the pestilence which had laid waste, a few years before, so large a portion of it. He was disposed to ascribe them to God’s indignation at the sinfulness of man; and he also believed them to be mysterious announcements of the approaching consummation of all things. Through too much study of the book of the Abbot Joachim, he was infected with the spirit of prophecy; and, not contented to lament past and present visitations, he ventured to predict others which were yet to come. All however were to be included in the fourteenth century, which was to be the last of the world. That Wiclif should have been thus carried away by the prevalent infatuation, so as to contribute his portion to the mass of vain and visionary absurdity, was human and pardonable: but in his manner of treating even this subject, we discover the spirit and the principles of the Reformer. Among the causes of those fearful calamities, among the vices which had awakened to so much fierceness the wrath of the Almighty, he feared not to give the foremost place to the vices of the clergy, the rapacity which ate up the people as it were bread, the sensuality which infected the earth with its savour, and “smelt to heaven.” Here was the leaven which perverted and corrupted the community; here the impure source whence future visitations should proceed. “Both vengeance of sword, and mischiefs unknown before, by which men in those days shall be punished, shall befal them, because of the sins of their priests.” Thus it was that in this singular work, of which the foundation may have been laid in superstition, Wiclif developed notwithstanding a free and unprejudiced mind, and one which dared to avow without compromise, what it felt with force and truth.

The mendicant orders of friars were introduced into England in the year 1221; and they presently supplanted the antient establishments in the veneration of the people, and usurped many of the prerogatives, honours, and profits of the sacerdotal office. As long as they retained their original character, and practised, to any great extent, the rigid morality and discipline which they professed, so long did their influence continue without diminution, and the clamours of the monks and the priests assailed them in vain: but prosperity soon relaxed their zeal and soiled their purity, and within a century from the time of their institution, they became liable to charges as serious as those which had reduced the authority of their rivals. Accordingly, towards the middle of the following century, the contest was conducted with greater success on the part of the original orders; and some of the leading prelates of the day took part in it against the Mendicants. Oxford was naturally the field for the closest struggle, and the rising talents of Wiclif were warmly engaged in it. About the year 1360 he is generally believed to have first proclaimed his hostility “against the orders of friars;” and he persisted, to the end of life, in pursuing them with the keenest argument and the bitterest invective, denouncing them as the authors of “perturbation in Christiandome, and of all the evils of this worlde; and these errors shallen never be amended till the friars be brought to freedom of the Gospel and clean religion of Jesu Christ.”

In the year 1365 Urban V. renewed the papal claim of sovereignty over the realm of England, which was founded on the submission rendered by John to Innocent III. The claim was resisted by Edward III., and the decision of his parliament confirmed, in the strongest language, the resolution of the monarch. A zealous advocate of papacy ventured to vindicate the pretension of the Vatican, and challenged Wiclif to reply to his arguments. He did so; and his reply has survived the work which gave it birth. It is not however remarkable for any power of composition, still less can it be praised for grace or accuracy of style; but it stands as a rude monument of his principles, and proves that even then he was imbued with that anti-papal spirit which more splendidly distinguished his later years. Still, he was not yet committed as the adversary of Rome; and in a dispute, in which he was engaged with the Archbishop of Canterbury at this very time, he appealed from the decision of the Primate to the authority of the Pope.

Seven years afterwards, at the age of forty-eight, Wiclif was raised to the Theological Chair at Oxford; and from this period we may date the most memorable of his spiritual achievements. For it is a question whether, had he died before that time, his name would have come down to us distinguished by any peculiar characteristic from those of the other divines and doctors of his age; but when he turned this eminence into a vantage-ground for assailing the corruptions of his church, and thus recommended the expressions of truth and justice by the authority of academical dignity, his language acquired a commanding weight, and his person a peculiar distinction, which the former would never have possessed had he remained in an inferior station, nor the latter, had he not employed his station for the noblest purposes: purposes which, though they were closely connected with the welfare and stability of the Roman Catholic communion, were seldom advocated from the pulpits of her hierarchy, or the chairs of her professors. Had Wiclif been no more than an eminent and dignified theologian, he would have been admired, perhaps, and forgotten, like so many others. Had he been only a humble pleader for the reformation of the church, his voice might never have been heard, or it might have been extinguished by the hand of persecution: but his rank removed him above the neglect of his contemporaries; and his principles, thus acquiring immediate efficacy, have secured for him the perpetual respect of a more enlightened and grateful posterity.

At this time the various profitable devices, by which the Vatican turned into its own channels the wealth and patronage of the church, were come into full operation. By its provisions and reservations, and other expedients, it had filled many valuable benefices with foreign ecclesiastics; these, for the most part, were non-resident, and spent in other countries the rich revenues which they derived from England. This system had been vigorously opposed both by kings and people, but with little effectual success; for the Pope commonly contrived to repair the losses which he had sustained in the tempest during the interval which succeeded it. In 1374 Edward III. dispatched an embassy to Avignon to remonstrate on these subjects with Gregory XI., and procure the relinquishment of his pretensions. The Bishop of Bangor was at the head of this commission, and the name of Wiclif stood second on the list. The negociation was protracted, and ended in no important result; and the various arts of the Vatican triumphed over the zeal of the Reformer, and, as some believe, over the honesty of the Bishop. Howbeit, Wiclif obtained on that occasion a nearer insight into the pontifical machinery, and beheld with closer eyes the secret springs which moved it. And if he carried along with him into the presence of the vicar of Christ no very obsequious regard for his person, or reverence for his authority, he returned from that mission armed with more decided principles, and inflamed with a more determined animosity. At the same time his sovereign rewarded his services at the Papal Court by the prebend of Aust, in the Collegiate Church of Westbury, in the diocese of Worcester; and soon afterwards by the rectory of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire.

After this period, his anti-papal opinions were more boldly declared, and he became more and more distinguished as an advocate for the Reformation of the Church. The suspicions of the hierarchy were aroused; and whatever reasons the Prelates might have had for sometimes siding with their sovereign against the usurpations of the Pope, they were ill-disposed to listen to the generous remonstrances of a private Reformer. Accordingly, at a Convocation held Feb. 3, 1377, they summoned him to appear at St. Paul’s, to clear himself from the fatal charge of holding erroneous doctrines. Had Wiclif trusted to no other support than the holiness of his cause—had he thrown himself, like Huss and Jerome of Prague, only on the mercy and justice of his ecclesiastical judges—it might have fared as ill with him as it did with his Bohemian disciples. But his principles, recommended as it would seem by some private intercourse, had secured him the patronage of the celebrated John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, under whose protection he presented himself on the appointed day before the assembled bishops. A tumultuous scene ensued: and after an undignified and indecent dispute between the Duke and the Bishop of London, the meeting dispersed without arriving at any conclusion, or even entering on any inquiry respecting the matter concerning which it was convened. The process against Wiclif was however suspended; and this good result was at least obtained, though by means more in accordance with the violent habits of the age, than with the holiness of his cause.

In the course of the same year, while the Pope was endeavouring to re-establish and perpetuate his dominion in fiscal matters over the English, and the Parliament struggling to throw it off altogether, Wiclif was again called forth as the advocate of national independence; and he argued with great force and boldness against the legality of the papal exactions. In this Treatise, he entered more generally into the question, as to what were the real foundations, not only of papal but of spiritual pretensions; he pressed the Gospel of Christ as the last appeal in all reasonings respecting the Church of Christ; and he contrasted the worldliness and rapacity of his Vicar with the principles of the religion, and the character of its Divine founder. The name and example of Christ were never very pleasing objects of reflection to the hierarchy of that age; and the argument with which they loved to repel such ungrateful suggestions was, the personal oppression of those who ventured to advance them. Accordingly, the storm gathered; and four Bulls were issued forthwith against the doctrines and person of Wiclif. “His holiness had been informed that John Wiclif, rector of the church of Lutterworth, and Professor of the Sacred Page, had broken forth into a detestable insanity, and had dared to assert opinions utterly subversive of the Church, and savouring of the perversity and ignorance of Marsilius of Padua, and John of Ganduno, both of accursed memory.” It was then ordained that he should be apprehended and imprisoned; and in an address to Edward III., the arm of the flesh was invoked to co-operate with the spiritual authorities for the suppression of this monstrous evil. One of these Bulls was addressed to the University of Oxford; and what may seem singular, it found there a spirit so far in advance of the bigotry of the age, that a question was raised whether it should be received, or indignantly rejected. After long hesitation, it was received; but still no readiness was shown to comply with its requisitions, nor were any measures taken to punish or degrade the Reformer.

Howbeit, in the beginning of the year following, Wiclif presented himself at Lambeth, before the Tribunal of the Papal Commissioners, to meet the various charges of heretical pravity. We have no room to doubt the wishes and intentions of his judges. But on this occasion he was rescued from them, for the second time, by extraneous circumstances. The populace of London, among whom his opinions may have made some progress, and by whom his name was certainly respected, interrupted the meeting with much clamour and violence, and showed a fierce determination to save him from oppression. And at the same time, while the delegates were confounded by this interference, a message was delivered to them from the Queen Mother, prohibiting any definitive sentence against Wiclif. Thus unexpectedly assailed, and from such different quarters, the Prelates immediately softened their expressions, and abandoned their design; and Wiclif returned once more in safety to the propagation of his former opinions, and to the expression of others which had not yet been broached by him.

The sum of those opinions might be given with tolerable accuracy, though some of them were not perhaps propounded with perfect distinctness, and others have been made liable to consequences which were disclaimed by their author. In the first place, he rejected every sort of pretension, tenet, or authority, which did not rest on the foundation of Scripture: here he professed to fix the single basis of his whole system. Accordingly he denounced, with various degrees of severity, many of the popular observances of his church. He rejected auricular confession; and declared pardons and indulgences to be no better than antichristian devices for augmenting the power and wealth of the clergy, at the expense of the morality of the people. He paid no respect to excommunications and interdicts; he pronounced confirmation to be an unnecessary ceremony, invented for the aggrandizement of the episcopal dignity; he reprobated the celibacy of the clergy, and the imposition of monastic vows. And in his contempt for the outward ceremonies of the church, even to the use of Sacred music, he anticipated by more than two centuries the principles of the Puritans. In like manner, he maintained that bishops and priests, being one and the same order according to their original institution, were improperly distinguished; and that the property claimed by the clergy, being in its origin eleemosynary, was merely enjoyed by them in trust for the benefit of the people, and was disposable at the discretion of the secular government.

So long as Wiclif confined himself to the expression of these opinions, though he ensured the hatred of the hierarchy, he might reckon on a powerful party both at the Court and among the people. The objects for which he contended were at least manifest, and his arguments generally intelligible. But he was not content with this limited field. In his solicitude to assail all the holds of papacy, and denounce all its pernicious errors, he entered, in the year 1381, into a controversy respecting the nature of the Eucharist. His opinion on this mysterious question seems to have approached very nearly to that of Luther. He admitted a real presence; but though he did not presume to determine the manner, he rejected the doctrine of Transubstantiation in the Roman Catholic sense. This was ground sufficient for a new clamour, louder and more dangerous than all that had preceded it: not that there was stronger argument on the side of his opponents, but because the subject, being more obscure, was more involved in prejudice; it was more closely connected with the religious feelings and deepest impressions of his hearers; it affected, not their respect for a sensual and avaricious hierarchy, but their faith in what they had been taught to consider a vital doctrine essential to salvation. And thus it proved, not perhaps that his enemies became more violent, but that his friends began to waver in their support of him. The lower classes, who had listened with delight to his anti-sacerdotal declamations, trembled when he began to tread the consecrated ground of their belief. His noble patrons, if they were not thus sensibly shocked, perceived at least the impolicy of contending in that field; and John of Lancaster especially commanded him to retire from it.

With the sincerity of a zealot he persisted, and in the course of May, 1382, a Synod was held by Courtney, who had been just promoted to the primacy, and the heresies of Wiclif became, for the third time, the subject of ecclesiastical consultation. We have no space to pursue the details of these proceedings. The result was, that he was summoned to answer, before the Convocation at Oxford, respecting certain erroneous doctrines, the most prominent of which was that regarding the Eucharist. He prepared to defend them. And it was then that the Duke of Lancaster, who had been his faithful protector throughout all his previous troubles—whether it was that he sincerely differed with Wiclif on that particular question, or whether he was unwilling to engage in a struggle with the whole hierarchy, supported by much popular prejudice, for the sake of an abstract opinion, which might appear to him entirely void of any practical advantage—withdrew his support, and abandoned the Reformer to his own resources. Yet not then was his resolution shaken. In two Confessions of Faith, which he then produced, he asserted his adherence to his expressed doctrines. And though one of them is so perplexed with scholastic sophistry, as to have led some to imagine that it was intended to convey a sort of retractation, yet it was not so interpreted by his adversaries, six of whom immediately entered the lists against it. Neither did it persuade his judges of his innocence. He was condemned—but not, as the annals of that age would have led us to expect, to death. And whether the praise of this moderation be due to the Prelates who forbore so far to press their enmity, or to the State, which might have refused to sanction the vengeance of the Prelates, Wiclif was merely condemned to banishment from the University of Oxford. He retired in peace to his rectory at Lutterworth, and there spent the two remaining years of his life in the pursuit of his theological studies and the discharge of his pastoral duties.

The greater part of the opinions by which he was distinguished were so entirely at variance with the principles and prejudices of his age, that our wonder is not at their imperfect success, but at their escape from immediate extinction. Having thus escaped, however, and taken root in no inconsiderable portion of the community, they were such as to secure by their own strength and boldness their own progress and maturity. Neither was their author neglectful of the methods proper to ensure their dissemination. For in the first place, by his translation of the Sacred Book on which he supposed them to rest, he increased the means of ascertaining their truth, or at least the spuriousness of the system which they opposed. In the next, he sent forth numerous missionaries, whom he called his “Poor Priests,” for the express purpose of propagating his doctrines; and thus they acquired some footing even in his own generation. In succeeding years, the sect of Lollards, in a great measure composed of his disciples, professed and perpetuated his tenets; and by their undeviating hostility to the abuses of Rome, prepared the path for the Reformation.

Nor were the fruits of his exertions confined to his native country. It is certain that his works found their way, at a very early period, into Bohemia, and kindled there the first sparks of resistance to the established despotism. The venerable Huss proclaimed his adherence to the principles, and his reverence for the person, of the English Reformer; and he was wont in his public discourses to pray, that “on his departure from this life, he might be received into those regions whither the soul of Wiclif had gone; since he doubted not that he was a good and holy man, and worthy of a heavenly habitation.” The memory of Huss is associated by another incident with that of his master. The same savage Council which consigned the former to the flames, offered to the other that empty insult, which we may receive as an expression of malignant regret that he had been permitted to die in peace. It published an edict, “That the bones and body of Wiclif should be taken from the ground, and thrown far away from the burial of any church.” After a long interval of hesitation, this edict was obeyed. Thirty years after his death, his grave was violated, and his ashes contemptuously cast into a neighbouring brook. On this indignity, Fuller makes the following memorable reflection:—“The brook did convey his ashes in Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblems of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.”

The date of Wiclif’s death renders the authenticity of his portraits in some degree uncertain, and we are not able to trace the history of any which exist. But that some memorials were preserved in his features, in illuminations or otherwise, we may conclude from the general resemblance which is to be traced in two different pictures of him—that from which our print is engraved, and that at King’s College, Cambridge, engraved in ‘Rolt’s Lives of the Reformers,’ and Verheiden, ‘PrÆstantium Theologorum Effigies, &c.,’ 1602.