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:—

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—

—Blackwood’s Magazine.