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 PAGB 
 PREFACE 5 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 JOHN WICLIF 9 
 
 BOOK II. 
 ox god's law 85 
 
 ON THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIP- 
 TURE 90 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 OF THE SUFFICIENCY OF HOLY SCRIP- 
 TURE 96 
 
 ON THE ENGLISH BIBLE ... 98 
 
 ON PREACHING IOI 
 
 ON THE FREE PREACHING OF GOD'S 
 
 LAW 105 
 
 ON THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT 107 
 
 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CIVIL POWER I08 
 
 ON THE RIGHT OF ENGLISH KINGS . 1 10 
 
 ON THE AUTHORITY OF PARLIAMENT III 
 
 OF PAPAL BULLS . . . . 113 
 
 ON THE GRACE OF GOD . . . 115 
 
 OF PREDESTINATION . . . 117 
 
 OF FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY. . Il8 
 
 OF CONFESSION .... 122 
 
 ON ABSOLUTION 1 24 
 
 OF INDULGENCES .... 125 
 ON THE LORD'S SUPPER . . .127 
 
 OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION . . 1 35 
 OF THE HEAVENLY REWARD . -137 
 
 OF THE MERITS OF SAINTS . . 139 
 
 ON SAINT WORSHIP . . . . I42 
 
 ON VOWS I44 
 
Contents, 
 
 PACE 
 
 <»\ I UK SOLDIERSHIP OF CHRIST . I46 
 
 ON 1 III. MINI -I. AN r ORD1 . 149 
 
 ON THE MANNERS OF PRIARS . . 151 
 
 ON THE LETTERS OF FRATERNITY . 156 
 
 ON THE WORLD] I HE CLERGY 160 
 
 ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 1G2 
 
 gfcjjyro 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 HE present little volume 
 merely seeks — on the 
 Quincentenary of John 
 Wiclifs death — to recall 
 to the memory of England one of her 
 greatest sons, and to press home the 
 thought of how much she owes to the 
 advocate of her political and religious 
 freedom, the translatjarf of her Bible, 
 and the maker of her language. De- 
 signed for wide circulation and popular 
 
 ■jV 
 
preface. 
 
 use, it does not affect originality or new- 
 research as to the Reformer's life and 
 doctrine. It is based on the works of 
 Lechler, Shirley, Vaughan, Burrows, 
 and Matthew, and on the Introduction 
 to Wiclif's Polemical Works, issued last 
 year by the present editor. 
 
 RUDOLF BUDDENSIEG. 
 
BOOK I. 
 
 r 
 

 
 
 £EJ 
 
 JOHN WICLIF. 
 
 •HERE is in the University 
 I ibrary of Prague a mag- 
 nificent; old Bohemian 
 Cantionale written in the 
 year 1572, and adorned 
 with a number of finely illuminated 
 miniatures. One of the most character- 
 istic of these little works of art stands 
 above a hymn in memory of John Hus, 
 the Reformer. It consists of three me- 
 dallions rising one above another, in the 
 
io gioljn Wiitlit 
 
 first of which John Wiclif, the English- 
 man, is represented striking sparks out 
 of a stone. In the second, Hus, the 
 Bohemian, is setting fire to the coals ; 
 while in the third, Luther, the German, 
 is bearing the fierce light of a blazing 
 torch. 
 
 The trilogy of these miniatures is a 
 fine illustration of the Divine mission 
 of the three great Reformers. 
 
 John Wiclif, the Englishman, is the 
 true, original spirit, the bringer of a 
 new light, another Prometheus in the 
 realm of spiritual things. Modern re- 
 search at least testifies in a singular 
 manner to the truth of the miniature, 
 and is bringing about a great change 
 of opinion. Quite recently it has been 
 shown by a German writer that the 
 whole Bohemian movement of the 
 fifteenth century was simply an imita- 
 tion of the movement that had stirred 
 England — and more particularly Oxford 
 ■ — under the influence of John Wiclif 
 thirty years before. It has been proved 
 
Joljn Witltl ii 
 
 conclusively that, as far as doctrine is 
 concerned, Hus borrowed nearly all 
 his reforming ideas from the strong- 
 minded Yorkshireman. In the works 
 of the Oxford professor a rich fountain 
 of new thought had been opened to 
 him, by means of which he became 
 the national and religious leader of a 
 great people, the martyr of a great 
 cause. The whole Husite movement -^ 
 is mere Wiclifism. It should, therefore, 
 never be forgotten, at least by English- 
 men, that those mighty ideas which at 
 one time seemed to strike the death 
 blow to the Church of Rome, and made 
 a whole empire tremble before their 
 spiritual supremacy, did not originate 
 with a Czech, but had an Englishman 
 for their parent. 
 
 But it was not only by the generations 
 following YViclif that his overpowering 
 influence was felt. lie was also the 
 first who, at a period of general help- 
 lessness, when the Church, lost in world- 
 liness, was unable to satisfy the spiritual 
 
12 giflljit MMclif* 
 
 and national aspirations of her adhe- 
 rents, gave utterance to new ideas which 
 seemed fully to replace the fading tra- 
 ditional forms of life and thought ; and 
 who thus made England to become the 
 glorious leader of the greatest spiritual 
 movement of modern times — the Re- 
 formation of the Western branch of the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 He it was who first dared to face the 
 system of corruption and tyranny which 
 had overspread all Europe, who first 
 showed in his own person how much 
 could be done against a whole world of 
 foes by one single-hearted man, who 
 had made himself the champion of 
 truth. 
 
 At the same time it was he who 
 brought a thorough change over medi- 
 eval Christianity by sweeping away 
 through his influence all its peculiar 
 forms of life and teaching — pardons, 
 indulgences, the merits of Saints, pil- 
 grimages, images, and absolutions. He 
 was the first who denied transubstanti- 
 
gioijn aaticiif* 13 
 
 ation in the Holy Eucharist ; he rejected 
 
 the doctrine of purgatory and the alleged 
 
 infallibility of the" Church of Rome. 
 He proved the sufficiency of Holy 
 Scripture, rejected the claims of tra- 
 dition as opposed to Biblical teach- 
 in,, and opened to his countrymen, 
 learned and simple, the fountain of a 
 new spiritual life by translating the 
 Bible for the first time into their 
 mother tongue. 
 
 England owes to him her Bible, her 
 present language, the reformation of the 
 Church, her religious and, to a very large 
 degree, her political liberty. He is not 
 only the acknowledged father of her 
 prose, his claims to our thankfulness 
 and admiration are greater; and the 
 more we learn of him, the more painful 
 does it appear that his most important 
 works should have been until now al- 
 lowed to lie buried in manuscript. 1 
 
 1 Two volumes have recently been published, 
 as a first instalment, by the Wyclif Society, 
 containing the Polemical Works, and others 
 will follow in due course, as funds permit. 
 
14 3|ofin':affl!rtff* 
 
 Dean Hook said, "John Wiclif 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." With 
 Chaucer, Shakspere, and Milton he is 
 one of the makers of the English lan- 
 guage, and his influence in English 
 religious life is unparalleled by any later 
 man. He must, therefore, be pro- 
 nounced to be the first, and by far the 
 greatest, Reformer preceding the 16th 
 century. 
 
 Great as was this leader of a new 
 intellectual life, he is not so well known 
 or understood by the present generation 
 as he should be. England in particular 
 has been ungrateful to his memory, and 
 seems to have forgotten the claims to 
 which he is justly entitled as the de- 
 fender of her national liberties, the re- 
 former of her religious life, and the 
 translator of her Bible. So it comes 
 to pass that his image looks down on 
 
jfoljn IB(dfC 
 
 many of his countrymen without per- 
 sonality or individual expression — as 
 the dim portrait of a man half forgotten, 
 though his spiritual influence had once 
 been felt to a remarkable degree by the 
 nation for more than a century. 
 
 We should, therefore, not allow the 
 Quincentenary of his death to pass 
 without bringing before our minds the 
 personal history and the far-reaching 
 influence of one in whom the charac- 
 teristics of the Englishman and the 
 Christian are united in like manner as 
 those of the German and the Christian 
 in Luther. 
 
 I. 
 
 Strangely enough, we find that the 
 place and the date of the Reformer's 
 birth are alike unknown. What little 
 we know of either we owe to the old 
 antiquarians and chroniclers of the 
 1 6th century. Leland says that Wiclif 
 "drew his origin" from the little York- 
 shire village of Wycliffe, situated on the 
 
16 gofiii Mitlit 
 
 banks of the Tees. He belonged to 
 the old Wiclif family, which since the 
 Norman Conquest had held the manor 
 of the place and the patronage of its 
 cure. Whether he was bom there is 
 still doubtful, and no remark of his own 
 has yet been found in his works that 
 throws any light upon the question. 
 
 There is also no certain date fixed 
 for his birth as yet. In all probability 
 the date given by Leland — a.d. 1324 
 — is wrong, and the real date is most 
 likely a few years later — somewhere 
 about a.d. 1330. Of his earlier years 
 there is likewise nothing known. When 
 fifteen years of age — as was usual at 
 that time — he entered the University of 
 Oxford, then at the height of its fame. 
 Here for nearly a century the foremost 
 men of intellect in Europe — Grosseteste, 
 Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, Occam, 
 Bradwardine, and Richard Armagh — 
 had been working among, and lecturing 
 to, crowds of students, the number of 
 whom once rose to upwards of 30,000. 
 
3!ojn aaiiciif. 17 
 
 In this golden age of intellectual ac- 
 tivity young Wiclif went through the 
 " Trivium " — grammar, rhetoric, and 
 logic — and the " Quadrivium " — arith- 
 metic, music, geometry, and astronomy 
 — and took in due course the usual de- 
 grees in philosophy and theology. After 
 having studied for some time in Bailiol 
 e, he became (from 1354-135 6) 
 an inmate of Merton, and after a time 
 its seneschal, until in 1361 the Master- 
 ship of Bailiol was conferred upon him. 
 
 So prominent had his influence in 
 the University by this time become 
 that from this date we never lose sight 
 of him. 
 
 Shortly afterwards he resigned his 
 post, accepted the little cure of Fyling- 
 ham, in Lincolnshire, and in 1365 was 
 offered in very friendly terms by Arch- 
 bishop Islip the Wardenship of the 
 newly founded Canterbury Hall, which 
 was afterwards incorporated with Christ 
 Church. In him the Primate had dis- 
 covered '" a man of learning and good 
 
18 31oIjn ffliiclif* 
 
 character," whose "previous fidelity, 
 circumspection, and diligence fitted 
 him exactly for the delicate position in 
 the Hall," the constitution of which had 
 just been altered by the founder in 
 favour of the Seculars. Wiclif had 
 scarcely entered upon his post when 
 the Regulars (Dominican Friars) pro- 
 tested against the infringement of the 
 old rules, and a year later, with the 
 influence of the new Primate, himself a 
 monk, on their side, they triumphed 
 over the Warden; for notwithstanding 
 an appeal to the Pope himself, he did 
 not succeed in averting an unfavour- 
 able decision of the authorities. Three 
 years later he gave up Fylingham, and 
 accepted the rectory of Ludgershall, in 
 Buckinghamshire, which, being much 
 nearer to Oxford, enabled him to keep 
 up his old connection with the Uni- 
 versity. In 1374 he was presented by 
 the crown to the rectory of Lutterworth, 
 in Leicestershire, which cure he held 
 until his death ten years later. During 
 
Jofjn O&liclif. 19 
 
 all this time, however, Oxford con- 
 tinued to be the scene of his personal 
 influence. A voluminous series of 
 works was written by him "while stay- 
 ing in the schools," and in the Univer- 
 sity Registers his name is frequently 
 met with in connection with Queen's, 1 
 where he resided, in rented rooms, in 
 
 i3 6 3-5, 1374-5* and in J 38o. The 
 attempts of his adversaries, who once 
 and again had seized the reins of 
 office in the University, to silence him 
 in his lecture-room, and to undermine 
 his influence among the students, 
 finally resulted in a failure, as is proved 
 by the facts and dates already cited. 
 
 1 I must not omit to mention, with reference 
 to Queen's, that it is in the college bills that 
 Wiclif's name for the first time appears in an 
 official document. Eleven years later, in the 
 Royal mandate of July 26, 1374, nominating the 
 Commissioners of the Bruges embassy, it first 
 appears in a public and authoritative docu- 
 ment : in both it is spelt Widif. In fact this 
 form should settle the much-disputed ortho- 
 graphical question of his name. 
 
20 gioljti culitclit. 
 
 By his opposition to the Regulars in 
 the Canterbury Hall affair the eyes of 
 the national anti-Papal party in the Uni- 
 versity had been directed towards him. 
 In a personal matter he had risen to 
 destroy the influence of the monkish 
 party, which, at a time when Oxford had 
 taken the place of Paris, had become 
 a real danger to the great national in- 
 stitution, and thus to the country. So 
 it happened that this personal quarrel 
 grew into an affair of national import- 
 ance, and so far it is the true begin- 
 ning of the English Reformation. 
 The unflinching though unsuccessful 
 opposition of Wiclif to the partisans of 
 the existing Papal system had made 
 him the advocate of national liberty, 
 and had pushed him into the fore- 
 ground to do battle with a foreign 
 power that openly denied to English- 
 men the privilege of their freedom : 
 Wiclif had indeed become a public 
 character. 
 
 In consequence of a new quarrel 
 
joi)ii wituz 21 
 
 with a monk, concerning the right of 
 the king to punish delinquent priests 
 by fining them, he had likewise won 
 the sympathy of Edward the Third. 
 This great and chivalrous monarch 
 had, after the shameful humiliation of 
 John Lackland, set before himself the 
 glorious aim of recovering the position 
 won for the English people by Edward 
 the First. After his wars with the 
 French King he had to fight a still 
 harder battle against the French Pope 
 in Avignon ; but by arousing a truly I 
 national spirit he succeeded. 
 
 There had been continual quarrels 
 about the tribute to be paid by the 
 English King to the Papal Court. 
 Edward the Third, with a good Parlia- 
 ment assisting him, succeeded in check- 
 ing the system of the Papal Provisions, 
 i.e., the privilege of the Pope to bestow 
 rich English benefices, the "seignories," 
 on foreigners who never set foot in 
 England, especially the Cardinals of 
 the Papal Court, who never came 
 i a 
 
22 3|oljn ffiiicltf* 
 
 near their cures. How deeply this 
 system was rooted may be inferred 
 from the fact, that upwards of 20,000 
 marks of the whole English Church 
 revenues had to be paid to ecclesiastics 
 residing in Avignon. From con- 
 temporary writers we know that one 
 French Cardinal was Dean of York, 
 another Dean of Salisbury, a third 
 Dean of Lincoln, three others Arch- 
 deacons of Canterbury, Durham, and 
 Suffolk, and three others again Pre- 
 bendaries of Thane, Massingdon, and 
 York. 
 
 The first signs of a national awaken- 
 ing in 1350 had been followed in 
 1353 by "the noble statute Prae- 
 munire," which condemned " all who 
 should plead in the Papal Court to 
 forfeiture, outlawry, and imprisonment," 
 and which had thus become " the 
 foundation stone of religious liberty in 
 England." 
 
 At last, when in 1365 Pope Urban 
 demanded from the English King the 
 
3!oljn WiitliL 23 
 
 arrears of thirty-three years' annual 
 tribute (of 1000 marks) as a feudal 
 acknowledgment of Papal supremacy 
 in England and Ireland, Edward, who 
 had not for a moment thought of 
 bowing to these priestly encroachments, 
 submitted the question to the decision 
 of the Parliament of 1366. 
 
 This claim of the Pope it was that 
 brought forward the warden of Canter- 
 bury Hall as a writer on a great public 
 subject, and made him the champion 
 of national rights. The ability he had 
 displayed in former University dis- 
 cussions had recommended him to the 
 favour of the King, who by this time 
 had conferred upon him the dignity 
 of a Royal chaplain, and if we are 
 to believe Dr. Lechler's arguments, 
 Wiclif had a seat in the "Good Parlia- 
 ment " of 1 366 as a clerical expert, or, as 
 it is now termed, as a Government Com- 
 missioner. The Lords vehemently op- 
 posed Urban's claim, and finally rejected 
 it unanimously, adding, that if the Pope 
 
24 3lof)it Htttclifc 
 
 should insist on his claims, they were 
 prepared to resist by force with all their 
 might. 
 
 In this quarrel Wiclif had drawn 
 upon himself the attacks of an anony- 
 mous writer. In a pamphlet still ex- 
 tant, which was issued in the form of 
 a Report of the parliamentary debate, 
 he answers his opponent by intro- 
 ducing six Lords as speakers, and 
 making them the mouthpieces of his 
 own opinions on the great doctrine of 
 the relation of Church and State. 
 Amongst the doctrines which some 
 months later were embodied by him 
 in his book "On the Divine Dominion," 
 is to be found the famous theory of 
 government, which furnishes the key 
 to all the labours he had to undergo 
 at this period of his life, when he had 
 become the defender of national 
 liberty. They are characteristic enough 
 to be adduced here in a short extract. 
 Wiclif maintained that " God Himself 
 is the chief Lord of all things or 
 
Toljn MitUL 
 
 possessions. From Him every man 
 holds, as far as any true rights of 
 ownership are concerned, and to Him 
 he must do service. If he fail in this 
 service — that is, if he fall into mortal 
 sin — he forfeits his rights. For there 
 are two titles by which a man holds 
 temporal goods : the title of original 
 justice, and that of cartJily justice. ]>y 
 the title of original justice Christ pos- 
 sessed all worldly goods, as Augustine 
 often says; by that title — the title of 
 grace — all things belong to the just, 
 but civil possession has little to do 
 with that title. For all men sin, and by 
 breaking the obedience to God such a 
 title is forfeited." In actual practice, 
 of course, this forfeiture could not 
 always be enforced, God Himself per- 
 mitting to the wicked power. God 
 thus, as it were, submits to the evil, 
 or, in Wiclifs own scholastic phrase, 
 so strangely misunderstood afterwards, 
 "God must obey the devil." All 
 rulers and owners, therefore, hold 
 
26 giotjn Mlfclif. 
 
 direct from God, as their " dominus 
 capitalis," or, to use Wiclifs own ex- 
 pression "Dominion is founded in 
 Grace." " In Him alone dominion in 
 its highest sense rests ; He is the suze- 
 rain of the universe, who has delegated 
 His own power to no vicegerent, but 
 deals out His rule, in fief as it were, 
 to man on condition of obedience 
 to His commandments. If, therefore, 
 God Himself has allotted portions of 
 dominion to man, it is not granted 
 to one man, His vicar on earth, as the 
 Pope alleged, but to all. The King is 
 as truly God's vicar as the Pope, and 
 his power as sacred as the ecclesiastical, 
 and as complete over temporal things — 
 even the temporalities of the Church — 
 ■pir-vW-SV^as that of the Pope over temporal 
 things." The sovereignty, therefore, 
 derived by the Pope over all earthly 
 authorities has never been delegated 
 by God to any man, and if any one 
 were to be held to be Christ's vicar on 
 earth — and Wiclif was prepared to 
 
illoljn daiiclif. 27 
 
 allow this title to the Pope — the title 
 is equally applicable to the temporal 
 
 as to the spiritual chief. " The King 
 is as much bound by his office to see 
 that temporal goods are not wasted or 
 misapplied by the clergy, as the latter 
 is to direct the spiritual affairs of the 
 King ; and, while the King and the 
 Pope are indeed supreme each in his 
 own department, every Christian man 
 holds directly of God — the final and 
 irreversible appeal is therefore to the 
 court, not of Rome, but of Heaven." x 
 If this doctrine of Dominion — the 
 denying to the Pope the right of con- 
 trol over all earthly things — could be 
 proved, the old quarrel between the 
 temporal and spiritual power of West- 
 ern Christianity would be set at rest, 
 for neither Pope nor King could any 
 
 1 For more particulars on this point and 
 the following, see Matthew, English Works, 
 pp. xxxii. flf. ; Burrows, Wiclifs Place, 
 pp. 14 ft".; Vaughan, John de Wycliffe, Monogr. 
 pp. 460, 529 ff. ; and Lechler, Johann von 
 Wiclif, pp. 500 ff., to whom I owe much. 
 
28 3|of)tt BHfcUt 
 
 longer be looked upon as a fountain 
 of temporal authority. But there were 
 other and even greater consequences 
 rising out of this new doctrine ; on the 
 one hand, the emancipation of the in- 
 dividual conscience from the authority 
 of King or Pope, and on the other, the 
 independence of the Church of Christ 
 from the State, and, as a consequence, 
 her restoration to her former purity. 
 
 Principles of this ideal kind, brought 
 forward by Wiclif with a surpassing 
 amount of learning and acumen, which 
 even his opponents acknowledged, 
 deeply moved the minds of his own 
 and succeeding generations. That his 
 enemies should resent them as revolu- 
 tionary was only natural. We must, 
 therefore, not wonder that the fear, 
 the hatred, and the persecutions of a 
 degenerate hierarchy rallied against 
 the Reformer who in such an outspoken 
 manner opposed its exorbitant demands 
 — temporal as well as spiritual — on 
 the nation. 
 
 On the other hand, a more powerful 
 
Jofjn WltliL 
 
 champion of the national and Royal 
 privileges could scarcely be conceived 
 in the struggle on which Edward and 
 his Parliament had entered against the 
 long continued extortions of the Pope. 
 By his manful resistance to foreign 
 encroachments of any kind Wiclif had 
 become the advocate of the national 
 aspirations and one of the foremost poli- 
 tical leaders of the day. Where the op- 
 portunity of asserting the national right 
 presented itself, he would unhesitatingly 
 step into the front rank of warriors. 
 Thus in 1372, when the Pope had 
 sent one Arnold Gamier into England 
 as his nuncio and receiver of the 
 Papal dues, Wiclif in a public paper 
 violently attacked this agent. Gamier 
 had been subjected to an oath " to be 
 true and loyal to the King ; to keep 
 the council informed of all letters, 
 Papal or other, that he received, and 
 neither to send money out of the 
 realm, nor himself to leave it without 
 special license; that he would neither 
 
3 o goljn OBlfclff* 
 
 himself, nor permit other, to do any- 
 thing which could possibly be dis- 
 pleasing or prejudicial to the King's 
 royal majesty, his royal laws and 
 rights, or to any one of his subjects." 
 Though having taken this oath in the 
 most formal and emphatic manner, 
 Gamier did not care to keep it in its 
 literal sense, and thus enabled Wiclif 
 to show that again by this man's agency 
 the interests of the King and the nation 
 had been grossly interfered with ; that 
 the oath " had been broken in almost 
 every particular j the poor have been 
 robbed of their money; the Church 
 stripped of the alms given for its sup- 
 port ; the prosperity of the kingdom 
 seriously diminished ; God Himself 
 dishonoured ; Church services crip- 
 pled ; and the very nature of an oath 
 depraved." He then goes on to ex- 
 pose the usual prevarication on this 
 point, the Papal extortions and claims 
 to foreign money, and winds up by 
 styling the Pope " errabilis." 
 
3oIjn WLitlit 31 
 
 Two years after this literary struggle, 
 in 1374, Wiclif was commissioned by 
 
 Royal command to a legation sent out 
 by Edward III. to Bruges, in Flanders, 
 to meet the agents of Gregory XI. and 
 to treat with them on the practice of 
 Papal Provisions and a number of other 
 abuses of a similar kind. In this em- 
 bassy he took the second place, the 
 Bishop of Bangor being its leader. 
 The main object, however, for which 
 the commission was sent was not at- 
 tained ; the old system continued, and 
 in later years gave rise to repeated 
 remonstrances on the part of the 
 English Parliament. 
 
 Nevertheless this embassy to Bruges 
 became in more than one respect of 
 momentous import to YViclif. Every- 
 thing in this visit was fitted to ripen 
 in such a mind the process that made 
 Wiclif gradually the fiercest antago- 
 nist of Rome. Here opportunity was 
 given him for watching the intellectual 
 forces which then moved Christianity. 
 
32 31oIjn tti&itlit. 
 
 Coming into personal contact with the 
 Papal envoys, all leading ecclesiastics 
 of France, Spain, and Italy, he gained 
 a closer insight than he had previously 
 possessed into the motives and the cor- 
 rupt practices of the Court of Avignon. 
 On the other hand, it was this stay at 
 Bruges, where at this very time a Royal 
 Commission, with the Duke of Lan- 
 caster at its head, was negotiating for 
 peace with the French ambassadors, 
 that brought him into near relation to 
 John of Gaunt, who, more on political 
 than on religious grounds, became 
 afterwards his protector. 
 
 From the old King, who by this 
 time had become nearly imbecile, and 
 from the good Prince of Wales, whose 
 health was entirely broken, Wiclif had 
 nothing to expect ; soon he was to 
 find that he needed influential friends 
 to join him. On his return to England 
 from Bruges, with deepened aversion 
 to the prevailing ecclesiastical system, 
 he began to speak in the tone of a Re- 
 
Ifolju SSlfclff, 33 
 
 former. He is plain, homely, vigorous, 
 sometimes rough, but always to the 
 point. In one of his tracts of this 
 period, he styles the Pope the "Anti- 
 christ, the proud, worldly priest of 
 Rome, and the most cursed of clippers 
 and cut-purses." 
 
 It could not, therefore, be wondered 
 at that the hierarchy began to be 
 stirred by the challenge of his audacious 
 language and doctrine. The prelates 
 resolved to move against him, and the 
 more so as some new conclusions which 
 he published went in the old track 
 " that the Pope has no more power in 
 binding and loosing than any other 
 simple priest ; that endowments cannot 
 be given in perpetuity, it being always 
 right to withdraw them from unworthy 
 holders ; and that temporal lords may 
 take away the possessions of the clergy 
 if pressed by necessity/' 
 
 This doctrine was boldly preached 
 by the Reformer himself in Oxford 
 and London, and by his disciples in 
 
34 Ijoljit MitliL 
 
 other places of the country. The 
 sympathy and support of many knights 
 who " savoren myche />e gospel," and 
 of men of high rank, such as the Duke 
 of Lancaster and the Earl Marshal, 
 Lord Henry Percy, was on his side 
 when his bold challenge was taken up 
 by the clerical party. With the ener- 
 getic Bishop of London (Courtenay) 
 at their head, the ecclesiastical digni- 
 taries stirred up the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, who sent Wiclif a summons 
 to appear before Courtenay on February 
 23rd, 1377, in S. Paul's Cathedral. 
 Wiclif consented to make his appear- 
 ance there, and, accompanied by the 
 Duke, Lord Percy, and a great retinue, 
 they came up through Fleet Street and 
 Ludgate Hill to crowded S. Paul's 
 Churchyard. When the party reached 
 the door of the cathedral a grand 
 scene ensued. 
 
 The approach of the Reformer to 
 the presence of his judges had become 
 difficult, the cathedral being filled with 
 
K'aljll SOifClif* 35 
 
 the populace, and when the ducal 
 
 party made their way in a noisy and 
 violent manner through the assembly, 
 the fury of the proud Courtenay broke 
 out into storm. 
 
 " Lord Percy," he said, " if I had 
 known what maistcries you would have 
 kept in the Church I would have 
 stopped you out from coming hither." 
 
 Duke of Lancaster — " He shall keep 
 such maisteries here though you say nay. "' 
 
 Lord Percy — "Wiclif, sit down, for 
 you have many things to answer to, and 
 you need to repose yourself on a soft 
 seat." 
 
 Courtenay — " It is unreasonable that 
 one cited before his ordinary should 
 sit down during his answer. He must 
 and shall stand." 
 
 Duke of Z.— "The Lord Percy's 
 motion for Wiclif is but reasonable. 
 And as for you, my Lord Bishop, who 
 are grown so proud and arrogant, I 
 will bring down the pride, not of you 
 alone, but of all the prelacy in England." 
 
36 gojn mm. 
 
 Courtenay — " Do your worst, sir." 
 
 Duke of Z. — "Thou bearest thyself 
 so brag upon thy parents, 1 which shall 
 not be able to help thee. They shall 
 have enough to do to help themselves." 
 
 Courtenay — " My confidence is not in 
 my parents nor in any man else, but 
 only in God, in Whom I trust, by 
 Whose assistance I will be bold to 
 speak the truth." 
 
 Duke of Z.— "Rather than I will 
 take those words at his hands I will 
 pluck the Bishop by the hair out of 
 the Church." 
 
 These violent words of the Duke 
 were spoken in an undertone, never- 
 theless they had been heard by some 
 bystanders and had caused an extra- 
 ordinary excitement among the citizens 
 present. In the tumult which followed, 
 the Court broke up in confusion and 
 without having decided anything in the 
 cause of the Reformer, who was safely 
 
 1 The powerful Hugh Courtenay, Earl pf 
 Devonshire, was the Bishop's father. 
 
loiin CCticliT- 37 
 
 accompanied home by the noblemen 
 through the crowded streets. 
 
 The first blow that came from the 
 hierarchy had thus failed ; the heretic 
 had not been silenced, and his position 
 remained as strong as before the attack. 
 A second step made by the prelates in 
 the same direction was accompanied 
 by a similar result. Soon after the 
 scene in S. Paul's, fifty conclusions 
 taken from Wiclifs works had been 
 sent to the Pope, then in Pvome, and 
 of these nineteen were selected to form 
 a new charge of heresy against the 
 Reformer. By means of no less than 
 five bulls issued at once and directed 
 to the King, the Primate, the Bishop of 
 London, and the University, the Pope 
 made an attempt to bring the matter 
 finally to an issue. Put the bulls met 
 with an ambiguous reception in England. 
 The king had died in the meantime, 
 so his bull had missed its purpose ; the 
 University treated its own with con- 
 tempt ; the citizens of London had 
 
38 3|o!jn mitlit. 
 
 returned to their former regard for 
 Wiclif ; and by a new judgment as to 
 the right of the Parliament to withhold 
 money from the Pope when required 
 for the defence of the realm, Wiclif 
 had also recovered the confidence and 
 sympathy of Parliament. 
 
 A synod assembled in Archbishop 
 Sudbury's Chapel at Lambeth was 
 broken into by the Londoners, and a 
 message arrived from the Princess 
 Regent prohibiting procedure against 
 the defendant ; this shook the Prelates 
 as a reed in the wind, and they became 
 soft as oil in their speech. With such 
 fear they were " struck that they became 
 as a man that heareth not, and in whose 
 mouth are no reproofs." 
 
 Soon afterwards the news of the 
 Pope's death arrived in England. This 
 caused the Bishops to stop the persecu- 
 tion, and no further action was taken 
 upon the five Papal bulls. 
 
II. 
 
 REFORMER. 
 
 HE critical condition of 
 Western Christendom at 
 this time exercised a mo- 
 mentous influence upon 
 "Wiclif. It made him in 
 some ways a new man and determined in 
 a great measure the character of his sub- 
 sequent action. Hitherto he had come 
 forward as a national leader repelling 
 Papal encroachments on English privi- 
 . He had attacked the corrupt 
 politics of the Church, while the person 
 of the Pope continued to be venerated 
 by him. Put in 1378 the spectacle of 
 
40 gioljn MitliL 
 
 two rival Popes excommunicating and 
 preaching crusades against one another, 
 pushed him forward in the line of op- 
 position, and made him now pass from 
 political to theological ground. 
 
 The Great Schism taught him that 
 he must appeal to the world in a wholly 
 different manner. His labour as a 
 political writer he saw had been success- 
 ful, but he must not stop short here ; 
 for he was aware that professors and 
 politicians before him had done so and 
 failed to strike at the root of the evil. 
 His experience in the schools of Oxford 
 and in his political struggles had shown 
 him that the Church system of his time 
 was corrupt to its very core : so the 
 doctrine of the Church becomes now 
 the object of his attacks. 
 
 Shortly after the elevation of Urban 
 VI. to the Papal dignity at Rome, the 
 French Cardinals at Avignon had made 
 Clement VII. anti-pope. The two rivals 
 were at once at war ; they excommuni- 
 cated each other; a crusade was prp- 
 
goljn iOfdfCi 4 1 
 
 claimed ; and the Mendicants who had 
 deeply plunged into this deadly contest 
 of the two spiritual leaders of Western 
 Christendom, promised numerous in- 
 dulgences to those who were on the 
 point of taking up the causes of their 
 respective patrons : the Gregorian idea 
 of the unity of the Church was irre- 
 vocably gone. 
 
 Now when England, and indeed all 
 Christendom, was again overrun by 
 pardon-mongers, and difficulties arose 
 as to who was the right Pope, Wiclif, 
 who had hitherto acknowledged the 
 necessity and primacy of the Papal see, 
 began to proclaim that the Church 
 would be better off without a Pope. 
 By this conclusion he enters into the 
 theological field, and begins his new 
 battle against the numerous abuses of 
 the Church, which had hitherto formed 
 the main hindrance to a purer and 
 more evangelic life among the common 
 people. His first blows were directed 
 against the Papacy itself and its agents ; 
 
42 gioijn aaiftiif. 
 
 he then proceeded to attack the whole 
 Church system of the time. Once 
 freed from the trammels of unquestion- 
 ing belief, " his mind worked fast in its 
 career of reformation." The magnifi- 
 cence and worldliness of Prelates and 
 Friars, who lived in " Cain's Castles " a 
 luxurious life ; the prevalence of un- 
 worthy influences and simony in the 
 presentation to benefices; the extortions 
 and abuses of the bishops' and arch- 
 deacons' courts, especially the practice 
 of enacting fines for incontinence and 
 other sins, instead of requiring amend- 
 ment ; pilgrimages to the shrines of the 
 Saints; worship of their images; worship 
 of the Saints themselves — all these 
 things were successively denounced by 
 him. 1 At the same time, the privilege 
 of the Church to grant indulgences, and 
 to fill, by the money thus obtained, the 
 purses of the numerous pardon-sellers ; 
 
 1 In the second part of this little volume the 
 reader will find some of Wiclifs arguments 
 against these teachings, contained in short 
 extracts from his works. 
 
Ifoljn Witlil 43 
 
 the fiction of a spiritual treasure in 
 heaven collected by the Saints and put 
 
 at the disposal of the Pope ; and, in 
 connection with this false doctrine, the 
 Letters of fraternity, special prayers, and 
 still masses, offered him a wide scope 
 for his denunciation. " To enforce 
 private confession," he declared, "is a 
 practice novel as well as mischievous ; 
 it is by the penitence and confession to 
 God Himself, that pardon of our sins 
 is granted. All merit is in the hands 
 of God, who keeps to Himself the dis- 
 tribution of it. Not only so, but the 
 Pope cannot know the real state of a 
 man, and may grant pardon to one who 
 is in mortal sin and unable to profit by 
 the gift." 
 
 All this was new language, plain 
 fearless, trenchant, that went home to 
 the heart of the people. There had 
 been some men before Wiclif who had 
 been fully awake to these abuses, and 
 to the evil that threatened the religious 
 life of the people ; stricter discipline, 
 
44 31 ofi n WitliL 
 
 they had thought, and the withdrawal 
 of privileges, indulgences, provisions, 
 and the like, should be applied to heal 
 the wound. There had also been men 
 who were staunch believers in the Pope 
 and his authority, and who, at the 
 same time, had bitterly complained of, 
 or boldly inveighed against, the evil 
 discipline then in existence. Side by 
 side with them in this spiritual battle 
 fought Wiclif, armed, however, to 
 advantage with the keenness of his 
 language and with the sharpness of his 
 deeper insight. But what made his 
 attacks appear in a new light was his 
 attempt to strike the system at its root, 
 by falling back on the institutions and 
 teaching of the Divine Gospel, and by 
 attacking not the individual, but the 
 government and the constitution of the 
 Church. It was the principle he was 
 at war with. No one before him had 
 striven with such unreserved deter- 
 mination to bring back the Church 
 from the outward lifeless forms, to urge 
 
lolm fcllicliT- 45 
 
 her regeneration in accordance with 
 1 1 Ay Scripture, and thus to renew the 
 foundation on which it stood. In him 
 the essential ideas and the evangelical 
 aims of all those who before him had 
 found themselves in opposition to the 
 Church had their representative; in 
 the " doctor evangelicus " the currents 
 of the reforming spirit of the Middle 
 s meet, and by his fundamental 
 opposition to the doctrine of the 
 Church he becomes the greatest of 
 the Pre-reformers. 
 
 He entered upon the dangerous 
 ground of doctrine when he struck at 
 the evil principles that were underlying 
 the corrupt practices of the Church. 
 By his former attacks he could appeal 
 to the moral sense of laymen, and the 
 spiritual instincts of his audience were 
 on his side. Into the subtleties of a 
 doctrinal question, however, the popu- 
 lar mind, that did not care for scholastic 
 distinctions, such as of substance and 
 accidents, was not able to follow him, 
 
46 gofin mitliL 
 
 and the sympathies which the English 
 people had entertained for the main- 
 tainer of their national liberties began to 
 cease. 
 
 On the other hand, his attack on 
 Transubstantiation aroused his old ad- 
 versaries, the Bishops and the Mendi- 
 cants, against him. In a great many 
 tracts in English and Latin he had 
 exposed the evil doings of the latter, 
 and had now to find that the Friars 
 made the best of the opportunity 
 offered to them of playing the part of 
 the defenders of Church doctrine, 
 rather than of their own evil practices. 
 
 In the spring of 1381, while his 
 great work of translating the Bible into 
 English, and of organizing the institute 
 of his " Poor Priests " was probably 
 going on, he published in Oxford a 
 paper of twelve propositions, deny- 
 ing that great doctrine upon which the 
 supremacy of the priestly Church ot 
 the Middle Ages rested — the Romish 
 theory of Transubstantiation. 
 
3|oljn aaiichf. 47 
 
 It is by this discussion on the prin- 
 cipal doctrine of the whole Romish 
 system that Wiclif became the Leader 
 of that great spiritual movement which 
 ended more than a hundred years after- 
 wards by establishing for every Pro- 
 testant Christian freedom of conscience, 
 and by which " the great mass of the 
 Teutonic peoples was severed from the 
 general body of the Catholic Church." 
 
 This new act was the bolder in that 
 Wiclif undertook it quite alone, and 
 supported by none of his former 
 friends. In the University also the 
 influence of the Regulars had become 
 victorious, and its Chancellor was com- 
 pelled to take measures against the 
 heretical preacher. His conclusions 
 were condemned. 
 
 Wiclif was just engaged in some 
 disputations on the truth of his teach- 
 ing in the schools of the Augustines, 
 when the academical condemnation 
 was published in his presence. If we 
 are to believe Walden, his opponent, 
 
48 gioijn aaiciix 
 
 he was startled a moment when he 
 heard the condemnation, but soon 
 rallied, and declared that neither the 
 Chancellor nor any one of his party 
 could refute his opinions. A few days 
 later the Duke of Lancaster came down 
 to Oxford and confirmed the Chan- 
 cellor's sentence by forbidding Wiclif 
 to speak any more on the subject. 
 This prohibition of the Duke he met 
 with an open avowal of his views on 
 the matter, and published his " Con- 
 fession," which he closes with the 
 proud and famous words, " I trust that 
 in the end Truth will conquer." In 
 this "Confession" the main points of 
 his view on the matter are given. 
 Turning against the blasphemy of the 
 received doctrine that the body of 
 Christ is made by the priest, the 
 Creator by His creature, he neverthe- 
 less maintains that while the substance 
 of the bread remains bread after being 
 consecrated by the priest, it becomes 
 in some sense, as bread, the body of 
 
T M)ii CCliclu. 
 
 Christ. The words, u This is my 
 body," have their meaning, the bread 
 remaining to the last true bread in the 
 natural^ sense, while in the figurative 
 sense it is the body of the Lord, as 
 when Christ said to St. John, " This is 
 Elias." Thus the body and the blood 
 of Christ are really and indeed present^ 
 the elements being no mere signs, but 
 "signa efficacia," i.e., we receive the 
 body not corporeally, substantially, but 
 spiritually, not by reason, but by faith. 
 " It is the Spirit that quickeneth." 
 Christ, although everywhere present, is 
 in the Blessed Sacrament "distinctively, 
 that is sacramentallv, present," not 
 locally, as His body is in heaven, yet 
 as the bread itself is there in the sacra- 
 ment, the body of Christ is likewise 
 present for the believer. By this 
 teaching the difficulty of explaining he 
 mode of the presence is not met, some 
 may say; but "it is not greater," has 
 been truly replied, M in this system 
 than it is in the Bible itself, or in the 
 3 
 
50 3|oijn aaiiciff. 
 
 teaching of our great divines, as, for 
 instance, Hooker and Waterland, or in 
 the Articles of our own Church. In- 
 deed, the doctrine to be found in 
 the Church formularies is wonderfully 
 similar to that of Wiclif, if not identi- 
 cal with it." 
 
 A flood of denunciation in the form 
 of theological pamphlets now descended 
 upon him from the Regulars. But, 
 when the tide was highest, the Secular 
 party in the University came forward 
 and turned it in his favour. Their 
 common enmity against the Regular 
 monks told in the University elections 
 of the annual officers, and the most 
 influential members — Chancellor and 
 Proctor — were selected from those pro- 
 fessors who favoured Wiclif s teachings. 
 Thus by tacitly adopting his cause the 
 University once again withdrew its per- 
 secution, and troubled him no more. 
 
 But Wiclif by this time did not 
 expect further support from the wealthy 
 and learned men from whom he had 
 
Joljii Wlitlit 
 
 si 
 
 hitherto received assistance He ven- 
 tured on quite a new step that in the 
 whole history of England had never 
 been attempted by any political or in- 
 tellectual leader before him : he ap- 
 pealed to the nation at large. In 
 the tongue of the people tract after 
 tract on the Eucharist, the Friars, the 
 Prelates, the Pope, the crusade to 
 Flanders, were issued with amazing 
 rapidity. He had addressed his acade- 
 mical hearers in Latin. This he now 
 set aside, and " by a transition which 
 marks the wonderful genius of the 
 man, the schoolman was transformed 
 into the pamphleteer." He stepped in 
 at Chaucer's side as the father of later 
 English prose, and brought about by 
 these tracts, in which the speech of 
 the peasant and the trader of the 
 day is embodied, a new epoch in the 
 history of the English language. The 
 pathos of his rough, clear, homely 
 speech, coloured with the picturesque 
 phraseology of the Bible, the terse, 
 
52 gioljn Mitlit. 
 
 vehement sentences, the stinging sar- 
 casm, the fine antitheses, went home to 
 the heart of the people who could read 
 or hear, and "roused the dullest mind 
 like a whip." 
 
 But the more his influence on the 
 people made itself felt and the more 
 the Londoners and the University 
 became infected with " Lollardism," 
 the more angry grew the Regulars, 
 now led by Wiclil's old ' adversary 
 Courtenay, who after Sudbury's sudden 
 death at the hands of Wat Tyler's 
 rebels had become Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury. " Pontius Pilate and Herod 
 are made friends to-day" — so he com- 
 mented bitterly on the new union 
 which for the purpose of resisting their 
 common foe had sprung up between 
 the Prelates and the Mendicant Orders, 
 who had so long been at variance with 
 each other. " Since they have made a 
 heretic of Christ, it is an easy inference 
 for them to count simple Christians 
 heretics." 
 
Jolm Mitlit 53 
 
 In May, 138-% a provincial council 
 was convened by the new primate at 
 
 Blackfriars, in London, a council made 
 memorable by the incident of an earth- 
 quake, which shook the whole city and 
 frightened every prelate but the reso- 
 lute and ready Courtenay. He gave 
 a different meaning to the incident, 
 saying that the dispersion of ill-hu- 
 mours produced by such convulsions 
 of the earth was a good omen, signify- 
 ing the expulsion of ill-humours from 
 the Church. Thus the courage of the 
 wavering members was quickly restored, 
 and without summoning the Reformer 
 into its presence, the " Council of the 
 Earthquake" condemned after " the 
 good deliberation of three days," twenty- 
 four conclusions which had been taken 
 for the purpose out of WicliPs writings. 
 Ten of the doctrines were condemned 
 as heretical, the remaining as erroneous. 
 The former, according to Wilkins, 
 related to the Sacrament of the Altar, 
 as being perfected without any change 
 
5 4 31oIjn (H Hictlf. 
 
 in the substance of bread and wine ; 
 to priests and bishops, as ceasing to be 
 such on falling into deadly sin ; to 
 auricular confession, as unnecessary; 
 to ecclesiastical endowments as unlaw- 
 ful ; and to the claims of the Pope, 
 when he shall happen to be a depraved 
 man, as being derived solely from the 
 edict of Caesar, and not at all from the 
 authority of the Gospel. The erro- 
 neous propositions are those which de- 
 clare that " a prelate excommunicating 
 any one, without knowing him to be 
 condemned of God, is himself a heretic 
 and excommunicated ; that to prohibit 
 appeals from the tribunal of the clergy 
 to that of the King is to withhold from 
 the Sovereign the allegiance due to him ; 
 that priests and deacons all possess 
 authority to preach the gospel, without 
 waiting for the license of popes or 
 prelates ; that to abstain from preach- 
 ing the gospel for fear of clerical 
 censure must be to appear in the day 
 of doom under the guilt of treason 
 
Joljn Ccliclu. 55 
 
 against Christ ; that temporal lords 
 may deprive a delinquent clergy from 
 their possessions ; that tithes are simply 
 
 alms to be offered as the judgment or 
 conscience of the laity may determine, 
 and only as the clergyman shall be 
 devout and deserving ; and finally, that 
 the institution of the religious orders 
 is contrary to Holy Scripture, and being 
 sinful in itself tends in many ways to 
 what is sinful." 
 
 The condemnation having been pub- 
 lished in London and Oxford, the fierce 
 Archbishop turned his anger upon the 
 University as the fount and centre of 
 the new doctrine. There a struggle com- 
 menced, the issues of which have proved 
 for more than one reason memorable 
 in the whole history of the great school. 
 The author of the heretical proposi- 
 tions was compelled to withdraw from 
 Oxford, where a search for copies of 
 his works was ordered. He retired to 
 the rectory of Lutterworth and devoted 
 his time, so far as his bodily health 
 
56 goljlt mtUL 
 
 allowed him, to his parish work, being 
 troubled no more by the action of so 
 bold an antagonist as Courtenay. 
 "Nothing marks more strongly," has 
 been truly said, " the grandeur of 
 Wiclifs position as the last of the 
 great schoolmen than the reluctance 
 of this proud and energetic primate to 
 take, even after his triumph over Oxford, 
 extreme measures against the head of 
 Lollardy." Against his party in the 
 University, however, the strictest mea- 
 sures were taken, this time without 
 being objected to by John of Gaunt 
 and the Royal Court. 
 
 Here in Oxford Hereford had main- 
 tained the truth of his Master's teach- 
 ing in an English sermon at S. Frides- 
 wide's, and Repyngdon had declared 
 the Lollards to be "holy priests." 
 " The clerical order," he had cried, 
 " was better when it was but nine 
 years old than now that it has grown 
 to a thousand years and more." " There 
 is no idolatry," a third, James William, 
 
7ol)!i CUiclif 57 
 
 had ej presence of the 
 
 Chancellor. ge, "save in the 
 
 Sacrament of the Altar." "You speak 
 like a wise man," Rigge had replied. 
 
 This perversity of opinion had made 
 the Regulars take the matter in hand. 
 The proceedings of Hereford, Repyng- 
 don, Aston, and Bedeman, Wiclifs 
 first " Poor Priests," by whose agency 
 Wiclifism had now become a power 
 through town and country, were com- 
 plained of by the Regulars in a paper 
 which they presented to the king;. 
 The proud Courtenay himself now 
 turned his action against the suspected 
 Chancellor Rigge. Not willing to bear 
 defmnce tamely, he summoned him to 
 Lambeth, wrested from him, after a 
 short resistance, complete submission, 
 and enacted from him a pledge to 
 suppress Lolhrdism in the University. 
 When the letters condemning the tenets 
 of Wiclif were handed to Rigge, he 
 objected : " I dare not publish them 
 in the Univer.-ity, on fear of death;" to 
 3 ::: 
 
5 s gio&ii muuu 
 
 which the Primate replied : " Then is 
 your University in open favour with 
 heresy, if it does not suffer the Catholic 
 truth to be proclaimed within its walls." 
 
 Rigge knew his University. The 
 publication of the episcopal injunction 
 set Oxford in a blaze, the bulk of the 
 students siding with the Lollards, and 
 exclaiming against the friars that " they 
 wished to destroy the University." But 
 the Crown supported Courtenay's de- 
 crees by issuing a royal writ, which 
 ordered "the instant banishment of all 
 favourers of Wiclif, with the seizure of 
 all Lollard books, on pain of forfeiture 
 of the University privileges." 
 
 Thus the suppression of Wiclif and 
 his party in the University was com- 
 pleted through the agency of the monks 
 and prelates, and his cause " received 
 a blow from which it seems never to 
 have thoroughly recovered." But, it 
 should be added, the religious freedom, 
 the intellectual independence, and the 
 privileges of self-government had like- 
 
Totjn CCIiclif. 59 
 
 wise been lost. The constitution of 
 the great school had been broken into 
 by the clerical party, and the University 
 authorities had lost the battle. In the 
 University itself, along with the death 
 of religious freedom, "all traces of in- 
 tellectual life suddenly disappear. The 
 century which followed the triumphs of 
 Courtenay is the most barren in its 
 annals, nor was the sleep of the Univer- 
 sity broken till the advent of the New 
 Learning restored to it some of the life 
 and liberty which the Primate had so 
 roughly trodden out." 
 
 K51&OS9 
 
 HILE thus Wiclif— having 
 retired to the quiet cure 
 of Lutterworth — was 
 doing the work of a sim- 
 ple priest, the seeds of 
 his teaching and writing began to be dis- 
 persed throughout the country through 
 the agency of his " Travelling Poor 
 Priests." 
 
6o g|o^n MiitliL 
 
 Before our mind's eye the picture of 
 these sturdy, freespoken, and popular 
 preachers of the fourteenth century 
 arises : barefooted, clothed in long habits 
 of red colour, in their hands the pilgrim's 
 staff, the sackcloth being the emblem 
 of hard work and poverty, they travel 
 from town to town, from market to 
 market, from village to village ; and in 
 churches, chapels, mass-houses, wher- 
 ever an audience may be gathered, to 
 merchant, trader, mechanic, and peasant, 
 -they preach "Goddislawe." No name 
 could be more suited to them than that 
 of ""Poor Priests." To prelates and 
 abbots, rectors and curates, monks and 
 friars, they became objects of hatred, 
 while with the people their favour and 
 influence were ever on the increase. 
 It is to the father of English poetry 
 that we owe the picture of the new type 
 of parson : 
 
 " A good man ther was of religioun, 
 That was a poure persone * of a toun : 
 1 Parson. 
 
John aaifcuf, 61 
 
 l>ut riche he was <.f holy thoughl and work - 
 He was also a lerned man, a clerk, 
 That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche. 
 Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, 
 And in adversite ful patient 
 Ful loth were him to cursen for his titlic 
 But rather wolde he yeven out ofdoute 
 
 are parishens aboute, 
 Of his ofiring, and eke < >f his substance. 
 He coude a litel thing have suffisance. 
 Wide was hi> parish, and houses fer asondcr, 
 But he ne left nought for no rain ne thunder, 
 In sikenesse and in mischief to visite 
 The ferre.it in his parish, moche and lite, 1 
 
 his fete, and in his hand a staf. 
 This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf, 
 That first he wrought, ana afterwards lie 
 
 to* 
 ( htt o ' ! \t gospel he the wordes caught. 
 Fur if a preest be foule, on whom we trust, 
 No wonder is a lewed man to rust : 
 And shame it is, if that a preest take kepc, 
 To see a shitten shepherd, and clene sheep. 
 He was a shepherd, and no mercenarie 
 He was to a sinful men not dispitous 
 Ne of ne digne, 3 
 
 But in his teching discrete and benigne 
 Tu drawen fulk to heven, with fairenesse, 
 By good ensample, was his besinesse ; 
 Uut it were any persone obstinat, 
 
 1 High and low. 2 Proud. 
 
62 3| of) it Mlicltf* 
 
 What so he were of highe, or low estat 
 Him wolde he snibben sharply for the nones " 
 A belter preest I trowe that nowher non is. 
 For Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, 
 He taught, but first hefolwed it himselve" 
 
 What was the origin of this new 
 order of religious agents, who, in the 
 whole of English history, were with- 
 out precedent? As often happens 
 in history, great spiritual movements 
 come under our notice, not indeed as a 
 full-developed product, but when their 
 organization is in full activity; often 
 their origin remains hidden in the mist 
 of past years. 
 
 It is in Archbishop Courtenay's 
 mandate to the Bishop of London 
 (1382) that these men appear for the 
 first time. He denounces them as 
 'unauthorised itinerant preachers, who 
 teach erroneous, yea, heretical asser- 
 tions publicly, not only in churches, 
 but also in public squares, and other 
 profane places ; and who do this under 
 
 1 Occasion. 
 
joim Witlit 63 
 
 the guise of great holiness, but without 
 having obtained any episcopal or papal 
 authorisation." From these expressions, 
 
 which show the system in full opera- 
 tion, we may gather that the formation 
 of the order must lie some years back. 
 There is evidence, though not quite 
 unimpeachable, that as early as 1375, 
 Wiclif superintended the training of 
 some such preachers; in 137S, when 
 some parts of the English Bible had 
 been finished, the order seems to have 
 reached its full development; in 13S0, 
 at least, it may be inferred from 
 Knighton's chronicle, that the priests 
 were travelling over a great part of 
 England. 
 
 Wiclifs aim in sending forth these 
 "good priests," who were formed on 
 his ideal of the Christian ministry, and 
 taught in God's law, was to supply the 
 defects of the regular parson of the 
 time, who, instead of preaching the 
 Word of God, and devoting himself to 
 the spiritual care of his flock, contented 
 
6 4 gio^ti mikiiu 
 
 himself with the formal reading of 
 Church services. A former attempt to 
 meet the prevailing want by founding 
 the Mendicant's Order had proved a 
 failure ; for the Dominicans, by their 
 very constitution " preachers/' as well 
 as the Franciscans, to whom the edu- 
 cation of the rich and the mission work 
 among the poor had been entrusted, 
 had degenerated into an avaricious set 
 of men, whose unworthy efforts to gain 
 the popular favour had won for them 
 the unenviable reputation of furnishing 
 the most assailable butt for popular 
 satire. So the task had still to be 
 done; and Wiclifs "Poor Priests," 
 though no reproduction of the Mendi- 
 cants, succeeded in fulfilling what the 
 friars had so completely failed to 
 perform. 
 
 They formed no monkish order ; 
 they were not bound by irrevocable 
 vows, but while abstaining from all 
 worldly occupation, as trading, hunting, 
 ploughing, &c, they devoted them- 
 
Jo\)\\ Witlif. 65 
 
 selves entirely to the preaching of the 
 I I in English, and to prayer. In 
 
 the fust stage of the institution they 
 were taken from the order of secular 
 priests, graduates and undergraduates 
 
 of Oxford. Later on, laymen also were 
 sent out, and if we read aright some 
 passages in Wiclifs unpublished works 
 
 in the Vienna collection, the Reformer 
 himself had sanctioned the mission of 
 the lay-priest before his death. From 
 its beginning Oxford had been the 
 centre of their mission ; afterwards, 
 when Wiclif had retired to Leicester- 
 shire, the town of Leicester appears, in 
 contemporary chronicles, as another 
 cradle of the mission. Numerous tracts 
 have been left to us by the Reformer 
 which refer to the M priests," either by 
 giving them advice on the mode of 
 their preaching, or by defending their 
 labours against their adversaries. Thus 
 Wiclif had become the founder of a 
 new order whose members combined 
 the priest with the layman, and resem- 
 
66 3|of)ti l&itUL 
 
 bled in all practical points "Wesley's 
 lay-preachers as they were when his 
 strong hand was upon them." 
 
 While thus by the institution of his 
 " Poor Priests " the Reformer had suc- 
 ceeded in bringing the popular mind 
 into closer contact with the pure Gospel, 
 he had secured to himself another means 
 of meeting the spiritual wants of the 
 layman by his translation of the Bible 
 into English. 
 
 There can be no doubt that, while 
 w r e are not able to determine the exact 
 share Wiclif had in this vast work, the 
 first conception, as well as the practical 
 scheme of translating the Bible, is due 
 to him. We now know that he himself 
 took part in the translation, and that 
 the accomplishment of the whole work 
 must be attributed to his zeal and 
 encouragement, to his intense energy, 
 and to the extraordinary power of his 
 resolute will. 
 
 Down to the middle of the four- 
 teenth century (1360), in natural conse- 
 
Joljn CLcLlicliT. 67 
 
 quence of the priestly efforts to with- 
 hold the Seriptures from the layman, 
 no part of the Bible, with the single 
 exception of the Psalms, had been 
 translated into English. On the other 
 hand we know for certain that from 
 thirty to forty years later a prose ver- 
 sion of the whole Bible, including the 
 apocryphal books, had not only been 
 completed, but was in circulation 
 among, and eagerly read by, English 
 laymen. 
 
 It is to Wiclif that England owes 
 this invaluable gift, the outcome of a 
 noble and novel conception ; novel in 
 two respects, for it had for its object 
 the literal translation of the whole 
 Bible, without gloss or commentary, 
 and it was meant to be in every man's 
 hand. For many reasons which need 
 not be adduced here, an undertaking 
 of this kind could not be expected from 
 the Papal Church, which had reserved 
 for itself sole and infallible authority in 
 determining the meaning of the Word 
 
68 gioljn Wiitliu 
 
 of God. To this duty of the clergy to 
 withhold the Bible from their flock, 
 Knighton, the chronicler of this period, 
 bears testimony, which at the same 
 time is decisive as to the part Wiclif 
 had taken in placing the English Bible 
 in the hands of the people. " Christ," 
 he says, " delivered His Gospel to the 
 clergy and doctors of the Church, but 
 this Master John Wiclif 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 
 
3oljn Mtfclfc 69 
 
 amon to the laity." Id the face of 
 this evidence there can be no doubt 
 
 that the translation is Wiclifs w< 
 
 To the same effect is a letter addressed 
 by Archbishop Arundel to the Pope 
 
 John XXIII. in 1412, in which Wiclif 
 is said to have "impugned with all his 
 power the creed and the teaching of 
 the Church, and, in order to fulfil the 
 measure of his wickedness, to have 
 invented the translation of the Bible 
 into the mother tongue." John Hus 
 also, in his reply to John Stokes, is 
 witness that u Wyclif translated the 
 whole gospel from the Latin into the 
 English language." 
 
 As to the date, however, when the 
 work was taken up, no certainty can as 
 yet be arrived at. The evidence we 
 have is of merely a negative kind ; in all 
 the charges brought forward against 
 Wiclifs obnoxious teaching in 1377, 
 1381, and 1382, no mention of the 
 translation is made. Only in 138 1, when 
 the Reformer was silenced in Oxford 
 
70 gioijn muut 
 
 in some of his own numerous tracts 
 he poured forth from his solitude, posi- 
 tive allusions to the subject occur. In 
 one of his sermons he speaks of " a 
 great bishop of the P^nglish being 
 deeply incensed because God's law is 
 written in English to lewd men (lay- 
 men). He pursueth a certain priest, 
 because he writeth to men this English, 
 and summoneth him, and traveleth 
 him. And thus he pursueth another 
 priest by the help of Monks and Friars, 
 because he preacheth Christ's gospel 
 freely and without fables." Bishop 
 Courtenay and the two priests, Here- 
 ford and Aston, in all probability are 
 meant here. By this time, therefore, 
 Wiclif had the impression that Cour- 
 tenay was incensed to prosecute the 
 priests by a suspicion of their intention 
 to put " God's law written in English " 
 into the hands of the laymen ; in any 
 case, Wiclif knew that as early as 
 1 38 1 Hereford was engaged in the 
 labour of translating. 
 
Jji)n Kttfelff. 
 
 -.rally the New Testament was 
 
 first taken in hand. That this translation 
 is Wiclifs own work is proved not 
 only by the similarity between the style 
 of the Gospels and that of other genuine 
 Wiclifian parts, but likewise by the 
 evidence furnished by Hus's reply to 
 Stokes (" Whole Gospel," p. 94). Pro- 
 logues agreeing with those commonly 
 found in Latin transcripts of the 1 4th 
 century were added perhaps by another 
 hand. While the New Testament was 
 in progress, or shortly after its comple- 
 tion, the Old Testament was taken in 
 hand by Nicholas Hereford, one of 
 Wiclifs disciples, whose original MS. 
 is still preserved in the Bodleian 
 library. A second MS., likewise in 
 the Bodleian, which was copied from 
 the former before its correction, con- 
 tains Hereford's name (" explicit tran- 
 lacon nicholay herford"), and the cu- 
 rious coincidence that bothMSS. run on 
 to Baruch iii. 20, where the text sud- 
 denly breaks off, shows that the trans- 
 
72 3|o5n aztticiff. 
 
 lator was stopped in the midst of his 
 work. Now Hereford, who after Wic- 
 lif's condemnation in May, 1382, had 
 come to the front in Oxford, was 
 silenced in June by a Provincial Coun- 
 cil, excommunicated, and after having 
 appealed to the Pope he went, accord- 
 ing to Knighton, to Italy to defend 
 himself before the Pontiff. Thus the 
 breaking off of the text may be con- 
 veniently explained. At the same time 
 we may infer that the translation of the 
 New Testament had been finished by 
 Wiclif in June, 1382, when Hereford 
 had advanced already to the apocry- 
 phal books of the Old Testament. 
 Very probably the continuation of 
 Hereford's work is by Wiclifs own 
 hand. 
 
 The translation of the whole Bible 
 having been thus completed, the next 
 care was to make it known as far, and 
 to render it as useful, as possible. For 
 this end " A Table of the Portions of 
 Scripture read as the Epistles and 
 
Ihijn KBfcUf, 73 
 
 pels of the Church Service on the 
 
 Sundays, Feasts, and Fasts of the Year," 
 was framed. This table was inserted 
 in certain copies of the newly translated 
 Bible, and the passages were marked 
 in the text by letters placed in the 
 margin, over against the beginning and 
 end of the several portions ; or some- 
 times the margin contained a rubric, 
 stating at length the service for which 
 the lesson was appointed. To some 
 copies of the New Testament such 
 portions of the Old were annexed as 
 were used in the Church service instead 
 of the Epistles. In order also to ren- 
 der those parts of Scripture in most 
 frequent use accessible at less cost, 
 books were written containing nothing 
 more than the Gospels and Epistles 
 read in the service of the Mass." 
 
 All this being done without the basis 
 of clear principles of translation, within 
 comparatively short time, by different 
 hands and under unfavourable circum- 
 stances, it was only natural that the 
 4 
 
74 loljn mitUL 
 
 work was not faultless. But Wiclif 
 was not the man to stop short when 
 the task was only half done. We now 
 know that Hereford's books differed 
 in style from the rest, his translation 
 being extremely literal, occasionally 
 obscure, and sometimes incorrect. We 
 cannot be surprised, therefore, that 
 Wiclif had under consideration a re- 
 vision of the whole translation. Whether 
 he lived to see this revision completed 
 is not quite certain. While it owed its 
 execution to his suggestion and en- 
 couragement, it seems to have been 
 finished only four years after his death, 
 in 1388, by his friend John Purvey, 
 who was at the same time his curate 
 in Lutterworth. By this time numer- 
 ous copies of both versions, in par- 
 ticular of the New Testament, were in 
 circulation. That this revised trans- 
 lation found many readers may be 
 gathered from the fact that we still 
 have upwards of a hundred and fifty 
 copies of it preserved in English 
 
3oljn CCIichf. 75 
 
 libraries. This wide circulation must 
 
 also account for the fact that for a long 
 time obscurity lay on Wiclifs own 
 labour, the first translation, and that 
 through the frequent publication of 
 Purvey \s work, for which the name 
 "Wiclifs Bible" was in general use 
 until about 1850, the genuine work of 
 the Reformer had fallen into oblivion. 
 
 From Forshall and Madden's inves- 
 tigations we now know that the vast 
 scheme of procuring an English Bible 
 for the English reader is not only due to 
 Wiclif in regard to its original concep- 
 tion, but also in the actual execution 
 of the most important section, and in 
 the supervision of what had been done 
 by others. It was a deed which stands 
 for more than it seems, and, we may 
 add, which has performed more than 
 it first promised. For the translators 
 saw " no more all that was involved in 
 what they did than our ancestors saw 
 all th.it was included in the provisions 
 of the Magna Charta." And indeed, in 
 
76 3|oIjn aflliclif* 
 
 more than one respect, the English 
 Bible has become for the English 
 people the great charter of its reli- 
 gious freedom. For the execution of 
 Wiclif s idea became a historical fact 
 pregnant with principles which a hun- 
 dred and fifty years later proved the most 
 powerful agents in influencing the 
 thought of Europe. These principles 
 were the liberation of the individual 
 from the hands of the priest, the Right 
 of Private Judgment, the Sufficiency of 
 Holy Scripture with regard to salva- 
 tion, and the transfer of the ultimate 
 authority in religious matters from the 
 Papal Church to the single believer. 
 
 In bringing forward these grand 
 principles on which the spiritual as 
 well as the intellectual life of our 
 present generation rests, Wiclif over- 
 stepped the bounds of his own country 
 and age, and as a prophet and a reli- 
 gious genius, anticipated that new spiri- 
 tual life to which his own generation 
 was only gradually awakening. Com- 
 
TMjn IBfcltt 77 
 
 pared with the great men of his time, 
 ands before us veiled in a sort of 
 lonely grandeur and mystery, which is 
 now slowly passing away, as we learn 
 more of him, of his doings and teach- 
 ings, by the publication of his writings. 
 Nor should his translation of the 
 Bible be commented upon merely from 
 the religious standpoint. Like Luther's 
 Bible in German literature, it marks 
 an era in the English language; 
 Luther's translation opening the period 
 of the New-HigMjerman, Wiclif s that 
 of Middle English ; for it is no longer 
 Geoffrey Chaucer that we must regard 
 as the sole founder of our modern 
 English. Wiclif's life work secures 
 to him a claim of similar grandeur. 
 Chaucer's amusing and graceful stories, 
 illustrating the life and the manners of 
 his time, and told with a freshness and 
 joyousness of feeling that even Shake- 
 speare does not surpass, are inestimable 
 in their historical and social value. 
 Wiclif's Bible influenced in quite a 
 
78 3|oIjn mitUL 
 
 singular manner the religions feeling, 
 the inmost soul of the reader; Chau- 
 cer appealed only to the cultured class, 
 Wiclif to all, to the educated as well 
 as to the simple man. By thus intro- 
 ducing a new form of religious and 
 moral truths into all classes of society, 
 he opened the way for the new language 
 to far wider circles than Chaucer, 
 whose influence was more or less con- 
 fined to the few literary men of his 
 time. 
 
 F the last few years of his 
 life which he spent at 
 Lutterworth only little re- 
 mains to be told. Here 
 he lived the quiet life of 
 a parish priest, no longer troubled by 
 his old enemies, who did not dare to 
 persecute him further. 
 
 From one of his polemical tracts re- 
 cently published by the Wiclif Society, 
 an incident of this period of his life 
 
Jojjn Bft'Clff* 79 
 
 which hitherto lias been doubted is 
 clearly established : he was summoned 
 to appear before the Pope ID Rome. 
 ]>ut failing health hindered the " feeble 
 and lame priest cited to Rome," because 
 M the King of kings forces him and will 
 not that he go." From this passage we 
 see that the words were spoken by a 
 man who was drawing near to the 
 presence of a Judge higher and juster 
 than he by whom he had been cited. 
 
 The terrible strain on his health, 
 together with the exertions of con- 
 tinued studies and the feebleness of 
 old age, at last had told on his powers : 
 when hearing Mass in his church on 
 Holy Innocent's day, 1384, he was 
 struck for a second time with para- 
 lysis, and peacefully entered "into his 
 fatherland" on December 31, 1384, 
 " having lit a fire which should never 
 be extinguished.'' 
 
 So John YViclif died, the greatest 
 Pre reformer and one of the greatest 
 men England has ever produced, a 
 
8o gioSrt WLitliL 
 
 religious genius whose vestiges are to 
 be found not only in the history of his 
 own country, but in the spiritual history 
 of mankind. Modern research proves 
 that the Reformation neither of Ger- 
 many, nor of England, nor of Bohe- 
 mia, was a sudden outburst, but that 
 its origin must be traced back into the 
 past, and from no one can it with 
 greater truth be said to have emanated 
 than from John Wiclif the Englishman. 
 In the spirit of this wonderful man 
 Protestantism arose. By the greatness 
 of his soul, the depth of his religious 
 and national feeling, and the keenness 
 of his intellect, he had become the 
 leader of his people. When in Eng- 
 land, towards the end of the Middle 
 Ages, the new power of a national and 
 religious awakening was struggling into 
 existence, it was in Wiclif that it found 
 its truest personification. Of him 
 therefore in a singular manner is true 
 what has been said of Luther, that 
 11 he held the mind and the spirit of 
 
3 oljii UBfclft m 
 
 his countrymen in bis hand, and 
 seemed to be the hero in whom his 
 nation had become incarnate." 
 
 To renew and to bring home to our 
 present generation the memory of so 
 great a mind appears to me at this 
 Quincentenary of his death a true 
 national duty. Five hundred years 
 ago the great English Doctor breathed 
 his last ; and surely after having bene- 
 fitted for more than five hundred years 
 from the spiritual blessings that went 
 forth from this great genius, the people 
 of England, otherwise so proud of its 
 grand political and religious history, 
 should at last awake to a sense of 
 thankfulness towards the memory of 
 one of her noblest sons. In truth Eng- 
 land may be proud of him, who at the 
 same time was the founder of her later 
 prose, a national politician, an un- 
 sparing assailant of abuses, a bold and 
 indefatigable controversialist, the foun- 
 der of a new religious order, the great 
 Reformer who did not shrink from 
 4 
 
82 
 
 3ioljit Bflliclifc 
 
 questioning the truth of the Roman 
 dogma, who broke through the tradi- 
 tions of the past, and who, while bound 
 in his whole teaching by the Word of 
 God, became the great advocate of the 
 freedom of religious thought. 
 
BOOK II. 
 
 r 
 
ON GOD'S LAW.* 
 
 IIRISTIAN men should 
 stand to the death for the 
 nee of Christ's 
 Gospel, and the true 
 understanding thereof, 
 obtained hx holy life and great study , 
 and not set their faitH nor trust in sinful 
 
 1 The following extracts have been taken 
 from Wirlifs unpublished Tract, Dc V 
 Scripture Sacra (Cod. 1294 of the Vienna 
 Library) from the Tria/o^its (Oxford Edition), 
 the U'ykctt, and from Vaughan, Tracts and 
 Trcatiics of John Wykliffc. 
 
86 flDit (Bony Haft* 
 
 prelates and their clerks, nor in their 
 understanding thereof. 
 
 Then they say that no man can 
 know what is the Gospel but by the 
 approving and confirming of the Church, 
 But true men say that to their under- 
 standing this is full of falsehood. For 
 Christian men have certainty of belief by 
 the gracious gift of Jesus Christ, that 
 the truth taught by Christ and His 
 apostles is the Gospel, though all the 
 clerks of Antichrist require men to be- 
 lieve the contrary, on pain of cursing, 
 poisoning, and burning. And this be- 
 lief is not founded on the Pope and his 
 Cardinals, for then it might fail and be 
 undone, but on Jesus Christ, God and 
 Man, and on the Holy Trinity, and so 
 it may never fail, except from his de- 
 fault who should love God and serve 
 Him. The Christian's faith failethnot, 
 and plainly because they are not the 
 
Cn CotT-j lata, 
 
 ground thereof, but J"esus Christ is the 
 ground thereof i who is our Clod and our 
 best Masterj and ready to teach true men 
 ail things profitable and needful 'to their 
 souls. 
 
 N o Christian man is to a dmit that 
 I loly Scripture be in any way false ; nor 
 is he who understands Holy Scripture 
 wrongly or badly, to allow that it is false. 
 For its falsity does not lie in the Holy 
 Scripture but in him who falsely inter- 
 prets it. For if ever Holy Scripture 
 had an impossible meaning, God Him- 
 self would have given it, and conse- 
 quently it could not be called Holy. 
 
 If a son is not allowed to break the 
 testament of his earthly father by con- 
 travening it or putting a wrong mean- 
 ing into it, much less a Christian man 
 
88 fiDti (15015*0 Hato. 
 
 1 isa llo wed iM to varv from, or to dissolve 
 
 the incorrigible testament of God the 
 Father. 
 
 We believe the authors of the Old 
 Testament to have spoken out of an 
 inner inspiration coming from God's 
 mouth, not simply out of an inspiration 
 of faith or the sanctity of their life, nor 
 as authorized by the Church. 
 
 I wonder that some moderns put 
 calumny on those who say that they 
 have the Holy Spirit, while they them- 
 selves assert to know that nobody 
 honours more the Holy Scripture than 
 they do. I for my part constantly 
 assert that, if a Christian man honours 
 the Holy Scripture merely like another 
 worldly man, he makes himself a god, 
 and consequently puts himself above 
 other Christian men. 
 
C\\ (BoW lato. 
 
 The law of Christ must be loved in 
 proportion as He who has givenit,and, 
 jiientlv, it is infinitely more to he 
 honoured than human traditions. It is 
 given to men by the uncreate Wisdom 
 as the best suited means to bring peace 
 among the people. 
 
 Looking on the present state of the 
 Church, we find that it would be better 
 and of greater use to the Church if it 
 were governed purely by the law of the I 
 Scripture than by human traditions | 
 mixed up with evangelical truths. 
 
 God's law is the foundation for every 
 catholic opinion, the example and 
 mirror for to examine and to extin- 
 guish every error or heretical pravity. 
 Therefore, even a slight error in this 
 matter might bring about the death of 
 th$ Church. 
 
i§ 
 
 
 /^S3S 
 
 *rti)w»y 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 \m 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 li 
 
 Ti 
 
 
 YfWA 
 
 ^t3k 
 
 ON THE AUTHORITY 
 OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 r 
 
 HAVE learnt by expe- 
 rience the truth of what 
 you say (with reference 
 to my appeal to the 
 Scriptures). The chief 
 cause, beyond doubt, of the existing 
 state of things is our want of faith in 
 Holy Scripture. We do not sincerely 
 believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, or we 
 should abide by the authority of His 
 Word, in particular that of the Evan- 
 
atttfjorftj of Ooh> fectfptuce, 91 
 
 : infinite!;. 
 than any other . Inasmuch as it is 
 
 •.ill of the Holy Spirit that our at- 
 tention should not be dispersed over a 
 
 large number of objects, but concen- 
 trated on one sufficient source of in- 
 struction, it is His pleasure that the 
 books of the Old and New Law should 
 be read and studied, and that men 
 should not be taken up with other 
 books, which, true as they may be, and 
 containing even Scripture truth, as they 
 may by implication, are not to be con- 
 fided in without caution and limitation. 
 Hence St. Austin often enjoins on his 
 readers not to place any faith in his 
 word or writings, except in so far as 
 they have their foundation in the Scrip- 
 tures, wherein, as he often sayeth, ail 
 truth either directly or implicitly is 
 contained. Of course we should judge 
 in this manner with reference to the 
 writings of other holy doctors, and 
 much more with reference to the 
 writings of the Roman Church, and of 
 
92 #utljoritp of ^olp Scripture* 
 
 her doctors in these later times. If we 
 follow this rule, the Scriptures will be 
 held in due respect. 
 
 [As they ought to be, the Papal Bulls 
 will be superseded by the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, j The veneration of men for the 
 laws of the Papacy, as well as for the 
 opinions of our modern doctors, which 
 since the loosing of Satan they have 
 been at liberty freely to preach to 
 the people, will be restrained within 
 due limits. What concern have the 
 faithful with writings of this sort, 
 except that they are honestly deduced 
 from the fountain of Scripture? By 
 pursuing such a course it is not only in 
 our power to reduce the mandates of 
 Prelates and Popes to their just place, 
 but the errors of these new religious 
 orders also might be corrected and the 
 worship of Christ well purified and 
 elevated. 
 
flto tfroritg of feoty Scripture, 93 
 
 Men do not now believe sincerely 
 in our Lord Jesus Christ, for it' we 
 believed aright in Him, we should 
 acknowledge that to the Holy Scripture 
 an infinitely greater authority is due 
 than to any other book. For Christ, 
 our Lawgiver, lias given us a law which 
 in itself is sufficient for the whole church 
 militant. To be ignorant of the Scrip- 
 ture is the same thing as to be ignorant 
 of Christ. In the Bible the salvation 
 of men is contained. 
 
 We ought to believe in the authority 
 of no man, unless he say the Word of 
 God. It is impossible that any word or 
 any deed of the Christian should be of 
 equal authority with Holy Scripture.} 
 The right understanding of Holy Scrip- 
 ture is being taught to us by the Holy 
 Ghost just as the Scriptures were 
 opened to the Apostles by Chribt. 
 But while Holy Scripture includes in 
 
94 #utljoritg of ^olp &ccfptuue+ 
 
 itself all truth, partly mediately, partly 
 immediately, reason is indispensable 
 to the right understanding. ^ 
 
 The Holy Scripture is the faultless, 
 most true, most perfect, and most holy 
 law of God, which it is the duty of all 
 men to learn, to know, to defend, and 
 to observe, inasmuch as they are bound 
 to serve the Lord in accordance with 
 it, under the promise of an eternal 
 reward. 
 
 • 
 
 The whole Scripture is one word of 
 God ; also the whole Law of Christ is 
 one perfect word proceeding from the 
 mouth of God; it is, therefore, not 
 permitted to sever the Holy Scripture, 
 but to allege it in its integrity according 
 I to the sense of the author. 
 
 If God's Word is the life of the 
 
\ltirl)onn> of Uolj fecrfpture, 
 
 world, and every word of God is the 
 f the human soul, how may any 
 Antichrist, for dread of God, take it 
 away from us that he Christian men, 
 and thus suffer the people to die for 
 
 hunger ID heresy and blasphemy of 
 
 men's laws, that corrunteth and slayeth 
 the soul ? 
 
 1 / ■■55 >\a> j > vi.- \ 
 
OF THE SUFFICIENCY 
 OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 HE fiend seeketh many 
 ways to mar men in 
 belief and to stop them 
 by saying that no books 
 are belief. For if thou 
 speakest of the Bible, then Antichrist's 
 clerks say, How provest thou that it is 
 Holy Writ more than another written 
 book ? Therefore men must use cau- 
 tion, and ask the question whether 
 
&ttffitfent]> of Ijolp fecrfpture, 97 
 
 Christ left His Gospel here in order to 
 comfort His Church. And if tl, 
 
 that He did, ask them which are these 
 Gospels? These we call Holy Writ. 
 But as Christian men should speak 
 plainly to Antichrist, we say that Holy 
 Writ is commonly taken in three man- 
 ners. On the first manner Christ 
 Himself is called in the Gospel Holy 
 Writ. On the second manner Holy 
 Writ is called the Truth, and this truth 
 may not fail. On the third manner 
 Holy Writ is the name given to the 
 books that are written and made of ink 
 and parchment. And this speech is not 
 so proper as the first and second. But 
 we take by belief that the second Writ, 
 the truth written in the Book of Life, 
 is Holy Writ, and God says it. This 
 we know by belief, and this our belief 
 makes us certain that these truths are 
 Holy Writ. Thus though Holy Writ 
 on the third manner be burnt or cast 
 in the sea, Holy Writ on the second 
 manner may not fail, as Christ sayeth. 
 5 
 
ON THE ENGLISH 
 BIBLE. 
 
 IS the faith of the Church 
 is contained in the Scrip- 
 tures, the more these 
 are known in their true 
 meaning, the better; and 
 inasmuch as secular men should as- 
 suredly understand the faith they pro- 
 fess, that faith should be taught to them 
 i?i whatever language it may be best 
 known to them. Forasmuch also as the 
 doctrines of our faith are more clearly 
 
Cn rlje Cmjlicfl) Bible. 99 
 
 and exactly expressed in the Scriptures, 
 
 than they may probably be by priests :' 
 seeing, if I may so speak, that many 
 Prelates are too ignorant of Holy Scrip- 
 ture, while others conceal many parts 
 of it ; and as the verbal instruction of 
 priests have many other defects, the 
 conclusion is abundantly manifest, that 
 believers should ascertain for themselves 
 what are the true matters of their faith, 
 by having the Scriptures in a language 
 which all may understand. For the 
 laws made by Prelates are not to be 
 received as matters of faith, nor are we 
 to confide in -.their public instructions, 
 nor in any of their words, but as they 
 are founded in Holy Writ, since the 
 Scriptures contain (according to St. 
 Austin) the whole truth, and the trans- 
 lation of them into the English language 
 
 1 This doctrine of "Wiclif was at the time 
 vehemently opposed by the Romish party. In 
 Walden, one of his bitterest opponents, we read 
 that "the decrees of the bishops in the Church 
 are of greater weight and dignity than the 
 authority of Scripture.'' 
 
ioo flDn tlje (Enfflfjsfi Bible. 
 
 should therefore do at least this good, 
 viz., placing bishops and priests above 
 suspicion as to the parts of it which 
 they profess to explain. 
 
 Other means (to convert the people), 
 such as Friars, Prelates, the Pope, may 
 all prove defective ; and to provide 
 against this, Christ and His Apostles 
 evangelized the greater portion of the 
 world, by making known the Scriptures 
 to the people in their oivn language. To 
 this end, indeed, did the Holy Spirit 
 endow them with the gift of languages. 
 Why then should not the living dis- 
 ciples of Christ do in this respect as 
 they did in former times ? 
 
OX PREACIIIXG. 
 
 r i 
 
 [HE highest service to 
 which man may attain 
 on earth is to preach the 
 law of God. This duty 
 falls peculiarly to priests, 
 in order that they may produce children 
 of God, and this is the end for which 
 God has wedded the Church. And 
 for this cause Jesus Christ left other 
 works, and occupied himself mostly in 
 preaching, and thus did the Apostles, 
 
102 £Dr 9ctacfjfns« 
 
 and on this account God loved them. 
 But now priests are found in taverns 
 and hunting; and playing at their 
 tables, instead of learning God's law and 
 preaching. 
 
 The service of preaching is the best 
 having the worst opposed to it. 
 Preaching, if it be well done, is the 
 best of all. Jesus Christ, therefore, 
 when he ascended into heaven, com- 
 manded it in particular to all His 
 Apostles to go and preach the Gospel 
 freely to all men. In this stands the 
 office of the spiritual shepherd. As the 
 bishop of the temple hindered Christ, 
 so is He hindered now by the free 
 preaching being prohibited. Therefore 
 Christ told them at the day of doom, 
 Sodom and Gomorrah should better 
 fare than they. Thus, if our bishops 
 and prelates do not preach in their 
 own persons and hinder true priests 
 
flDn IDfcacljintj. n \ 
 
 from preaching God's law, they are in 
 
 the sin of the bishops who killed the 
 Lord Jesus Christ 
 
 Prayer is good, but not so good as 
 preaching ; ana accordingly, in preach- 
 ing and also in praying, in the ad- 
 ministering of the Sacraments, and the 
 learning of God's law, and the render- \ 
 ing of a good example by purity of life, \ 
 in these should stand the life of a good I 
 priest. 
 
 In the first law of the Pope it is 
 stated that each man coming to the 
 priesthood takes on him the office of a 
 beadle, to go before doomsday, and to 
 cry to the people their sins and the 
 vengeance of God ; and since those are 
 holden heretics who trespass against 
 the Pope's laws, are not those priests to 
 
104 flPn ^reacljing:. 
 
 be holden heretics who refuse to preach 
 the Gospel, and compel true men to 
 leave the preaching of God's law ? All 
 law opposed to their service is opposed 
 to God's law, and to reason and 
 charity, and is for the maintenance of 
 pride and covetousness in Antichrist's 
 laws. 
 
ON THE FREE PREACH- 
 ING OF GODS LAW. 
 
 to 
 f 
 
 |RIARS say plainly that it 
 is apostasy and heresy for 
 a priest to live as Christ 
 ordained a priest to live 
 by the Gospel. For if 
 there be any priest cunning in God's 
 law, and able to travel and to SOW 
 God's word among the people ; if he 
 do this office freely, going from coun- 
 try to country where he may most 
 profit and cease not, and charge not 
 singular habit, and beg not, but be 
 5 * 
 
106 S>n jfrce preaching;* 
 
 paid with common meat and drink, as 
 Christ and His Apostles were, they will 
 pursue Him as an apostate, and draw him 
 to prison, and say that he is cursed for 
 his deed. For if this free going about 
 and free preaching is lawful to such a 
 friar, since it is exampled and com- 
 manded by Christ, and not to be shut 
 up in a cloister, as it were in Cain's 
 Castle, so then it should be needed of 
 friars to cease their living in cloisters 
 and false obedience, and to dwell 
 among the people whom they may 
 most profit spiritually. For charity 
 should drive friars to come out amongst 
 the people, and leave Cain's Castles, 
 that are so needless and so burdensome 
 to the people. 
 
OX THE RIGHT OF 
 PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 
 
 I. are not careful to ex- 
 plain how it has come to 
 pass, but manifest it is 
 that the Church has erred 
 in this matter (the sole 
 authority of the Church in spiritual 
 5); and we claim accordingly to 
 be exempt from its authority in tins re- 
 spect, and to be left to the guidance of 
 reason and Scripture. Surely while it 
 is permitted to others to choose mere 
 men as their patrons, it might be | er- 
 mitted to us to choose Him as our 
 patron who is very God and Man. 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY 
 OF CIVIL POWER. 
 
 r 
 
 IHOULD an abbot and 
 all his convent be open 
 traitors, conspiring unto 
 the death of the King 
 and Queen, and of other 
 Lords, and enforce them to destroy all 
 the realm, there may not be taken from 
 them a halfpenny or farthing worth, 
 since all these be temporal goods. Also 
 though other clerks send to our ene- 
 mies all the rents they have in Eng- 
 land, and whatever they may steal from 
 the King's liege men, yet our King 
 may not punish them to a farthing's 
 
&upttmacg oCCffcfl Potoec. 109 
 
 by the argument of the 
 friars or other clerks, whatever they may 
 
 be, should they slay Lords' tenants, the 
 
 King's liege men, and defile Lords' 
 
 wives, yea the Queen (that God for- 
 bid) or the Empress — yet the King 
 may not punish them to the loss of one 
 farthing. Also should they make one 
 of themselves King, no secular Lord 
 may hinder him to conquer all the 
 secular lordships in this earth ; and so 
 they may slay all Lords ami Ladies, 
 and their blood and affinity, without 
 any pain in this life, or in body, or in 
 substance. Ye Lords, see and under- 
 stand with what punishing they de- 
 serve to be chastised, who thus un- 
 warily and wrongfully have damned 
 you for heretics. For the chief lord- 
 ship of all temporalities in the land, 
 both of secular men and religious, per- 
 tains to the King of his genera] govern- 
 i ._ : f : else he were n<>t King of Eng- 
 and, but of a little part thereof. 
 
ON THE RIGHT OF 
 ENGLISH KINGS. 
 
 ¥ 
 
 INCE Christ is the chief 
 Lord, and the Pope is a 
 sinner who, according to 
 the theologians, if in 
 mortal sin lacks domi- 
 nion, and cannot consequently transmit 
 to the English any right to the king- 
 dom, all we need for a true dominion 
 over the realm is to keep ourselves 
 from mortal sin, and give our wealth 
 rightly to the poor, and so hold our 
 kingdom as hitherto immediately from 
 Christ, since he is the chief Lord, 
 giving of Himself full and sufficient 
 authority to all dominion of creature. 
 
OX THE AUTHORITY 
 OF PARLIAMENT. 
 
 r 
 
 APPEAL to the Church 
 ofthe first thousand years 
 since our Lord's time. I 
 challenge the existing 
 Church to dispute these 
 questions (on the supreme authority of 
 the Pope) with me. My adversaries 
 reply that the Church has settled the 
 matter, and have, in fact, condemned 
 me beforehand. I cannot expe< t at 
 their hands anything else than to be 
 silenced, and what is more, according 
 to a new Ordinance, imprisoned. I 
 know what that means. I demand, 
 therefore, that the lay voice be heard. 
 
H2 #ut!)oritp of parliament* 
 
 I have appealed to the King against 
 the University ; I now appeal to the 
 King and Parliament against the Synod 
 which is about to use the secular arm 
 — the arm of Parliament. If I am to 
 be tried, let me have a fair trial, and 
 argue my case before the world. If 
 that is not to be, I will at least have 
 care that Parliament shall understand 
 the ecclesiastical points at issue, and 
 the use that is to be made of its power. 
 That very thing is a mark of the 
 corruption of the Church : but the laity 
 are responsible for its purity. They 
 only conserve the endowments and in- 
 stitutions of the clergy under the con- 
 dition of that purity. And it has now 
 become a personal matter for them ; it 
 affects their lives and fortunes. If they 
 see their way to clearing off some of 
 its most open corruptions, the English 
 people who have by this time the Bible 
 in their hands, will speedily perceive 
 that I am now no heretic, but the truest 
 Churchman in the land. 
 
OF PzlPAL BULLS. 
 
 
 9 
 
 |LL those who falsify the 
 Pope's bulls, or a 
 
 Bishop's letter, are cursed 
 grievously in all churches 
 four times in the year." 
 Lord, why was not Christ's Gospel put 
 in this sentence by our worldly clerks ? 
 Here it seems to magnify the Pope's 
 bull more than the Gospel ; and in 
 token of this, they punish more the 
 men who trespass against the Pope's 
 bulls, than those who trespass against 
 Christ's Gospel. And hereby men of 
 this world dread more the Pope's lead 
 (seal) and his commandment, than the 
 Gospel of Christ and His commands. 
 
ii4 £Dn Papal Still** 
 
 Also a penny clerk, who can neither 
 read nor understand a word of his 
 psalter, nor repeat God's command- 
 ments, bringeth forth a bull of lead, 
 witnessing that he is able to govern 
 many souls against God's doom, and 
 open experience of truth ; and to 
 procure this false bull, they incur costs 
 and labour, and oftentimes fight, and 
 give much gold out of our land to 
 aliens and enemies. Also the proud 
 priest of Rome getteth images of Peter 
 and Paul, and maketh Christian men 
 believe that all which his bulls speak 
 of is done by authority of Christ ; and 
 thus as far as he may, he maketh this 
 bull, which is false, to be Peter's, and 
 Paul's, and Christ's, and in that maketh 
 them false. And by this blasphemy 
 he robbeth Christendom of faith, and 
 good life, and worldly goods. 
 
ON THE GRACE OF GOD, 
 
 AI'l'II is a gift of 
 and we should therefore 
 know that it may not bo 
 | iven to men except 
 graciously. Thus, indeed, 
 all the good which man have is of God, 
 and accordingly when God rewardeth 
 a good work of man, he crowneth His 
 own gift This then is also of grace, 
 even as all things are of grace that men 
 have according to the will of God. 
 i goodness is the first cause why 
 He confers any good to man ; and so 
 
n6 £Dn tfje (Brace of (ISotu 
 
 it may not be that God doeth good on 
 men, but if He do it freely, by His own 
 grace ; and with this understood, we 
 shall grant that men deserve of God. 
 
 The doctrine of Pelagius and others 
 who affirm that nothing may be unless 
 it be of itself, as are mere substances, 
 is to be scorned and left to idiots. 
 
 Men who love this world, and rest 
 in the lusts thereof, live as if God had 
 never spoken in His word, or would 
 fail to judge them for their doings. 
 To all Christian men therefore the 
 faith of Christ's life is needful, and 
 hence we should know the Gospel, for 
 it telleth the belief of Christ. 
 
OF PREDESTINATION. 
 
 ? 
 
 |F the Pope asked me 
 whether I were ordained 
 to be saved or predesti- 
 nate, I would say that I 
 hope so, but I would not 
 swear it nor affirm it without condition 
 though he greatly punished me ; nor 
 deny it nor doubt it, would I no way. 
 
OF FAITH, HOPE, AND 
 CHARITY. 
 
 t 
 
 'HERE is a faith which is 
 incomplete, as that of 
 devils who believe and 
 tremble ; and another 
 kind of faith is perfect 
 as being inwrought by charity. This 
 charity belongs necessarily to all who 
 are true believers, and all men destitute 
 of it are in a sense unbelievers. The 
 believer is a man who has bestowed 
 upon him by God a faith which is 
 unmixed with doubting. Every man, 
 
 
f iiiri), Oopc, anH Cfearftp* n i 
 
 theref imitting sin doeth 
 
 an unbeliever, for had he been mindful 
 of the punishment to be inflicted on 
 the sinner, of the eye of God being 
 constantly upon him and his d< 
 he would not have done so. 
 
 Hope is distinguished from faith 
 in three respects. First, hope has re- 
 gard only to the attainment of some 
 future good, but faith has respect to 
 truth universally, and simply as such. 
 Secondly, hope falls short of that evi- 
 dence and knowledge concerning its 
 object which belong to faith, but rests 
 half-way between doubt and credulity. 
 Thirdly, hope has respect only to a 
 good possible to the person hoping. 
 Faith, on the contrary, has respect to 
 things which may be of advantage or 
 disadvantage to the person who believes, 
 as well as to things with which he has 
 no concern at all. 
 
i2o jfaftlj, i£ope, anti Cljaritp* 
 
 The virtue especially necessary to 
 the Christian pilgrim is charity. With- 
 out charity no man can enter heaven. 
 It is the wedding garment, the want 
 of which must bring condemnation 
 at the last judgment. True charity 
 consists in loving God with all the 
 heart, the soul, and the mind ; but 
 this command is but poorly observed 
 by our fallen and unhappy race. The 
 second command is like the first : that 
 we love all the works of God, and 
 especially that we love our neighbours 
 as ourselves. The things to which we 
 attend most we love most; now, who 
 is there in our present day who does 
 not think more of that which may 
 bring him money than of that which 
 may fit him for becoming obedient to 
 God's law? But is this to be in charity? 
 Is it not written, ''Charity seeketh not 
 her own " ? 
 
 Let us see whether the man calling 
 himself a Christian pilgrim is more 
 anxious about his own private advan- 
 
j : .mi), i?opr, ant) Charity, 121 
 
 than about obedience to the law 
 
 tL When so judged it is plain 
 that the greater portion of mankind are 
 
 wanting in charity ; and if a man be so 
 rooted in this habit of perverseness, 
 who can doubt whether that man should 
 be held a heretic or not? Who can 
 doubt to say that not only the laity, but 
 still more our Prelates, show much 
 greater concern to guard their private 
 interests than to uphold the law of 
 Christ ? How false is the word of such 
 men when they pretend that they love 
 God with all their heart ! In truth, all 
 or the greater part of our religious 
 orders will fall under condemnation on 
 the day of the Son of Man. Christ 
 claimed to have His law observed will- 
 ingly, freely, that in such obedience 
 men might find happiness. Hence He 
 appointed no civil punishment to fall 
 on transgressors of His commandments, 
 but left the persons neglecting them to 
 a suffering more severe, that would 
 come after the Day of Judgment. 
 6 
 
3jf 
 
 W^^aMSlWE^ 
 
 nwwu 1 1 
 
 [%1 
 
 r A^P 
 
 
 
 
 
 LeS^J^ 
 
 
 
 ^s^ 
 
 
 OF CONFESSION. 
 
 r 
 
 HE confession that is 
 made to man has oft- 
 times been varied in the 
 varying of the Church. 
 For first men confessed 
 to God and to the common people, 
 and this confession was used in the 
 time of the Apostles. Afterwards men 
 were confessed more especially to 
 priests, and made them judges and 
 counsellors of their sinful life. But in 
 the third time since the fiend was 
 
 
fl% Cont'cooion. E23 
 
 loosed, Pope Innocent ordained a law 
 -ion that each man of dis- 
 cretion should once in the year be 
 privily confessed of his own priest, and 
 added much to this law that he could 
 not ground And although this Pope's 
 ordinance do much good to many men, 
 nevertheless many men think that it 
 harmeth the Church. 
 
ON ABSOLUTION. 
 
 r 
 
 HERE is no greater heresy 
 for a man than to believe 
 that he is absolved from 
 sin if he give money, or 
 because a priest layeth 
 his hand on his head and saith, " I 
 absolve thee;" for thou must be sorrow- 
 ful in thy heart, else God does not 
 absolve thee. 
 
OF INDULGENCES. 
 
 T is plain to me that our 
 Prelates in granting in- 
 dulgences do commonly 
 blaspheme the wisdom of 
 God, pretending in their 
 avarice and folly that they understand 
 what they really know not. They 
 chatter on the subject of grace as if it 
 were a thing to be bought and sold like 
 an ass or an ox ; by so doing they learn 
 to make a merchandise of selling par- 
 
126 S)n 31ntmlg:ence0* 
 
 dons, the devil having availed himself 
 of an error in the schools to introduce 
 after this manner heresies in morals. 
 
 I confess that the indulgences of the 
 Pope, if they are what they are pre- 
 tended to be, are a manifest blasphemy, 
 inasmuch as he claims a power to save 
 men almost without limit, and not 
 only to mitigate the penalties of those 
 who have sinned by granting them the 
 aid of absolutions and indulgences, that 
 they should never come to purgatory, 
 but to give command to the holy angels 
 that, when the soul is separated from 
 the body, they may carry it without 
 delay to its everlasting rest. 
 
OX THE LORD'S 
 SUPPER. 
 
 to 
 
 ANY are the errors into 
 which we have fallen with 
 regard to the nature of 
 the Lord's Supper. Some, 
 for example, say that it 
 is a quality without a substance. 
 Others say that it is a nonentity, since 
 it is an aggregate of many qualities 
 which are not all of one genus. Against 
 these opinions I have many a time in- 
 veighed, both in the language of the 
 schools and of the common people. 
 
128 flDti tlje TLovW Supper* 
 
 As the words of Holy Scripture tell 
 us that this sacrament is the body of 
 Christ, not that it will be, or that it is 
 sacramentally a figure of the body of 
 Christ, — so accordingly, we must admit 
 without reserve, on this authority, that 
 the bread which is the sacrament is 
 truly the body of Christ. But the 
 simplest layman will see that it follows 
 that, inasmuch as this bread is the body 
 of Christ, it is therefore bread, and 
 remains bread — being at 07ice both 
 bread and the body of Christ. 
 
 The nature of the bread is not de- 
 stroyed by what is done by the priest, 
 it is only elevated so as to become a 
 substance more honoured. Do we 
 believe that John the Baptist, when 
 made by the word of Christ to be Elias, 
 ceased to be John ? — or ceased to be 
 anything that he was in substance before? 
 In the same manner, the bread while 
 
Cn rljc lort'0 Scupper, 129 
 
 becoming by virtue of Christ's words the 
 
 body of Christ, does not cease to be 
 bread. When it lias become sacra- 
 ment ally the bodyjof Christ, it remains 
 1 Head substantially. Further Christ says, 
 " This is my body," and these words 
 must be taken as, s.e. 9 in the same sense 
 as, the words referring to the Baptist 
 
 If bread consecrated and uncon- 
 secratcd be mixed together, the heretic 
 cannot tell the difference between the 
 natural bread and his supposed quality 
 without a substance, any more than any 
 of us can distinguish in such case 
 between the bread which has been 
 consecrated and that which has not. 
 Mice, however, have an innate know- 
 ledge of the fact. They know that the 
 substance of the bread is retained as 
 at first But our unbelievers have not 
 even such knowledge. They never 
 know what bread or what wine has 
 6* 
 
130 (Bn tljc 1LovW& Supper. 
 
 been consecrated, except as they see it 
 consecrated. But what, I ask, can be 
 supposed to have moved the Lord yesus 
 Christ thus to confound and destroy all 
 natural discernment in the senses and 
 minds of the worshippers ? 
 
 It is as if the devil had been scheming 
 to this effect saying, If I can by my 
 vicar Antichrist so far seduce the be- 
 lievers in the Church, as to bring them 
 to deny that this sacrament is bread, 
 and to believe it a contemptible quality 
 without a substance, I may after that, 
 and in the same manner, lead them to 
 believe whatever I may wish, inasmuch 
 as the opposite of such a doctrine is 
 plainly taught, both by the language of 
 Scripture, and by the very senses of 
 mankind. Doubtless, after a while 
 these simple-minded believers may be 
 brought to say, that however a prelate 
 may live, be he effeminate, a homicide, 
 
©n rijc Ijrti'g feupper, 131 
 
 a simonist, or stained with any other 
 vice, this must never he believed con- 
 cerning him, by a people who would be 
 accounted duly obedient. ' But, by the 
 grace of Christ, 1 will keep clear of the 
 heresy which teaches that, if the Tope 
 and Cardinals assert a certain thing to 
 be the sense of Scripture, therefore so 
 
 it is — for that would be to set them up 
 
 1 
 above the Apostles. ' 
 
 Therefore let every man wisely, with 
 much prayer and great study, and also 
 with charity read the words of God in 
 the Holy Scriptures. But many are 
 like the mother of Zebedee's children, 
 to whom Christ said, " Thou wottest 
 not what thou askest." Christ saith, u I 
 am the true vine." Wherefore do ye 
 not worship the vine for God, as ye do 
 the bread? Wherein was Christ a true 
 vine? or, wherein was the bread Christ's 
 body? It was in figurative speech, 
 
132 fiDn tljc Eocti'g Scupper* 
 
 which is hidden to the understanding 
 of the sinners. And thus, as Christ 
 became not a material nor an earthly 
 vine, nor a material vine the body of 
 Christ, so neither is material bread 
 changed from its substance to the flesh 
 and blood of Christ. 7 
 
 Should some idiot demand how the 
 bread may be the body of Christ, and 
 still remain the same, according to its 
 own substance and nature — let him 
 bear in mind his faith in the Incarna- 
 tion, and see how two different natures 
 may be united, and still both may not 
 be the same nature.: Would God that 
 men took heed to the speech of Paul 
 on this matter, then they would hear 
 God's word gladly, and despise fables, 
 and err not in the sacred host, but 
 grant that it is both things, both bread 
 and God's body. 
 
Cn r{)c lotb'jS feuppcr. 133 
 
 I Live you not read that, when Christ 
 
 came into the temple, he answered those 
 asking him, "Cast down this temple 
 and in three days I will raise it again ? n 
 Which words were fulfilled in his rising 
 from the dead. But when he 
 " Undo this temple/' they were deceived 
 in that he so meant, for they under- 
 stood it fleshly, and thought that he 
 had spoken of the temple of Jerusalem. 
 But he spake of the temple of His 
 . 1 body, which rose again on the 
 third day. And just so Christ spake of 
 His holy body, when he said, u This is 
 my body, which shall be given for you." 
 But just as they accuse him falsely 
 about the temple at Jerusalem, so now- 
 adays they accuse falsely against Christ, 
 and say that he spake of the bread 
 which he brake among the Apostles. 
 For in that Christ said this figuratil v/r, 
 they are deceived, taking it fleshly, 
 turning it to the material bread, as the 
 Jews did in the matter of the temple. 
 Now, therefore, pray we heartily to 
 
134 S>n tljc Hoctrtf Supper. 
 
 God that this evil time may be made 
 short, for the sake of the chosen men, 
 and that the large and broad way that 
 leadeth to perdition may be stopped, 
 and that the straight and narrow way 
 that leadeth to bliss may be made 
 open by the Holy Scriptures, that we 
 may know what is the will of God, to 
 serve him with truth and holiness. So 
 be it. 
 
OF TRANSWBSTAN- 
 TIA TION. 
 
 r 
 
 F all heresies that have 
 ever sprung up in the 
 Church, I think none 
 was ever more cunningly 
 brought in by hypocrites, 
 or cheats the people in more ways than 
 this ; for it robs the people, it makes 
 them commit idolatry, it denieth the 
 faith of Scripture, and in consequence 
 by unbelief provokes the Truth in 
 many ways to anger. 
 
136 fiPf '(Erangubgtantiation. 
 
 It seems enough for the Christian to 
 believe that the body of Christ is in 
 a certain spiritual and sacramental 
 manner at every point of the conse- 
 crated host, and that honour should 
 in particular be attributed to that body- 
 next after God, and in the third place 
 to that sensible sacrament as to an 
 image or tomb of Christ. ' 
 
OF THE HEAVENLY 
 
 REWARD. 
 
 |H0 would not willingly 
 suffer in Scotland for the 
 law and the rights of the 
 King of England if cer- 
 tain of returning alive and 
 unhurt to England, to be rewarded by 
 the King in proportion to what he had 
 undergone ? Such a man, I say, would 
 willingly undergo trouble in Scotland, 
 in the hope of obtaining a reward in 
 England. Much more, then, should a 
 
138 ®t tlje l&eatienlp IRetoarti* 
 
 man in trouble in this vale of misery 
 manfully strive in faith, hope, and in 
 charity, after the reward of blessedness 
 to be obtained on being translated to 
 his own country. 
 
OF THE MERITS OF 
 SAINTS. 
 
 
 HE Pope and the Friars 
 pretend that there is laid 
 up in heaven an infinite 
 number of supererogatory 
 merits belonging to the 
 Saints, above all the merit of Christ, 
 and that Christ has set the Pope over 
 all this treasure, that he may dispose 
 of it at his pleasure, and distribute 
 therefrom to an infinite extent, since 
 the remainder will still be infinite. All 
 
140 flDf tlje 9£erit# of feaint& 
 
 this is wild blasphemy. Neither the 
 Pope nor the Lord Jesus Christ can 
 grant indulgences to any man except 
 as the Deity has eternally determined 
 by His just counsel. But we are not 
 taught that the Pope or any other man 
 can have any colour of justice to adduce 
 for so doing ; therefore the Pope has 
 no such power. 
 
 Moreover, it appears that this doc- 
 trine is a manifold blasphemy against 
 Christ, inasmuch as the Pope is extolled 
 above His humanity and His deity, and 
 so above all that is called God. For 
 he possesses Csesarean power above 
 Christ, who had not where to lay His 
 head. In regard to spiritual power it 
 is evident that the Pope is above our 
 Lord Jesus Christ; for it behoved Christ 
 to suffer the most bitter passion for the 
 salvation of man ; and we believe that 
 by virtue of Christ's passion men attain 
 to whatever happiness may be theirs. 
 Now the Pope says that it is permitted 
 that he should live as luxuriously as 
 
Cf tiic 9$erft0 of S&afnttf. 141 
 
 he may choose, and that by the bare 
 writing of one of his s< ribcs, he can in- 
 troduce wonders without limit into the 
 Militant Church. Who, then, can deny 
 his being extolled above the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, in whose life we do not read 
 that Christ, or any one of His Apostles, 
 granted such absolutions or indul- 
 gences? 
 
ON SAINT WORSHIP. 
 
 r 
 
 HOEVER entreats a saint 
 should direct his prayer 
 to Christ as God, not to 
 the saint specially, but to 
 Christ. Nor doth the 
 celebration or festival of a saint avail 
 anything, except in so far as it may 
 tend to the magnifying of Christ, in- 
 citing us to honour Him, and increas- 
 ing our love to Him. If there be any 
 celebration in honour of the saints 
 which is not kept within these limits, 
 it is not to be doubted that cupidity or 
 some other evil cause has given rise to 
 
such services. Hence not a few think 
 it would be well for the Church if all 
 festivals of that nature were abolished, 
 and those only retained which stand in 
 immediate relation to Christ. Further 
 they say, the memory of Christ would 
 be kept more freshly in our mind, and 
 the devotions of the common people 
 could not be unduly scattered among 
 the members of Christ. (But, however 
 this may be, it is certain that the service 
 paid to any saint must be useless, ex- 
 cept as it incites to the love of Christ, 
 and is of a nature to secure the benefit 
 of His mediation. For as the Scripture 
 assureth us, Christ is the only mediator 
 between God and man. Hence many 
 hold that, if prayer were directed only 
 to that middle person of the Trinity 
 for spiritual help, the Church would be 
 more flourishing, and would make 
 greater advances than she now docs, 
 when many new intercessors have been 
 found out and introduced. 
 
ON VOWS. 
 
 r 
 
 jF men foolishly make a 
 vow to go to Rome, or 
 Jerusalem, or Canterbury, 
 or on any other pilgrim- 
 age, that we deem of 
 greater weight than the vow made at 
 our christening, to keep God's com- 
 mandments, to forsake the fiend and 
 all his works. But though men break 
 the highest commandments of God, 
 the rudest parish priest anon shall 
 
Cn Uotoft 145 
 
 absolve him. But of the vows made 
 
 of our own hood, though many times 
 against God's will, no man shall ab- 
 solve, but some great worldly bishop, 
 or the most worldly priest of Rome, 
 the fellow of God and the Deity on 
 earth. 
 
ON THE SOLDIERSHIP 
 OF CHRIST. 
 
 r 
 
 LL Christians should be 
 soldiers of Christ, and it 
 is plain how many are 
 chargeable with insensi- 
 bility to this duty, inas- 
 much as the fear of losing temporal' 
 goods and worldly friendships, and 
 apprehensions of the insecurity of life 
 and fortune, prevent so great a number 
 from being faithful either in setting 
 forth the cause of God, in standing 
 
vJjc &oltofec0f)fp of vlljncsr. 147 
 
 manfully for its defence, or, if need be, 
 suffering death in its behalf. From 
 
 such a source also comes that subter- 
 f Lucifer urged by our modem 
 , who say, that to suffer mar- 
 tyrdom cannot be a duty now as it was 
 in the primitive Church, since in our 
 time all men, or at least the great 
 majority, are believers, so that the 
 tyrant is no more who may persecute 
 Christ and his members to the death, 
 and this is the cause why there arc not 
 martyrs now as formerly. But it is 
 certain that this excuse has been de- 
 vised by Satan to shield sin ; for the 
 believer in maintaining the law of 
 Christ should be prepared as his soldier 
 to endure all things at the hands of the 
 proud rulers of the world, so as to 
 declare boldly to the Pope and Car- 
 dinals, to Bishops and Prelates, how 
 unjustly they serve God in their offices, 
 inflicting perilous injury on those com- 
 mitted to their care, such as must bring 
 on them a speedy destruction, one way 
 
148 ^Ije feoltnersrtjip of Cljiitft* 
 
 or the other. All this applies to tem- 
 poral lords, but not so much as to the 
 clergy ; for as the abomination of deso- 
 lation begins with a perverted clergy, 
 so the consolation begins with a con- 
 verted clergy. Hence we Christians 
 should declare with constancy the law 
 of Christ even before Cesarean Pre- 
 lates, and straightway the flower of 
 martyrdom will be at hand. 
 
ON THE MENDICANT 
 
 ORDERS. 
 
 r 
 
 ~|N such infinite blasphe- 
 mies (as granting of abso- 
 lutions and indulgences 
 to any extent) the infatu- 
 ated Church is involved, 
 the means of the tail of 
 that is, the sects of the 
 Friars who labour in the cause of these 
 illusions, and of other Luciferian se- 
 ductions of the Church. But arise, 
 soldiers of Christ, be wise to cast away 
 
 especially by 
 
 the dragon, 
 
150 d)it tijc ^entiicant dDrderjl 
 
 these things along with the other fictions 
 of the prince of darkness, and put ye 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ, and trust 
 undoubtingly in your own weapons, 
 and sever from the Church such frauds 
 of Antichrist, and teach the people that 
 in Christ alone and in His law they 
 should trust ; that in so doing they 
 may be saved through His goodness, 
 and learn above all things honestly to 
 detect the devices of Antichrist. 
 
ON THE MANNERS 
 
 OF FRIARS. 
 
 |HE Friars become ped- 
 lars, carrying with them 
 knives, purses, pens, and 
 girdles, and spices, and 
 silk, and precious furs 
 for women, and thereto small gentle 
 dogs, to get love of them, and to have 
 many great gifts for little good or 
 nought; they covet evil their neigh- 
 bours' goods. 
 
i52 <Dn tlje fllgannecg of jFriai% 
 
 If they become cake-sellers, giving 
 lords, ladies, and rich men a few pears, 
 apples, or nuts, to have huge gifts to 
 the convent, they will covet their neigh- 
 bours' goods. They covet unreason- 
 ably the houses, that are immoveable 
 goods of their neighbours, like lands 
 or rents, or perpetual alms of coffers, 
 as they bind themselves to the poverty 
 of Christ and His Apostles. And if 
 they lead away men's wives or maidens 
 in their new habits to do lechery as 
 they lust, they break the last command- 
 ment. If they make wives and other 
 women their sisters by Letters of Frater- 
 nity or other tricks, and get children 
 upon them to make them friars or nuns, 
 to hold up their vain sects by lordship, 
 they covet evil their neighbours' wives 
 and maidens. 
 
 So they charge more wrongful com- 
 mandments of sinful men than the 
 most rightful commandment of God ; 
 for if the Pope or a bishop sends a 
 letter for to receive a pardoner who is 
 
On rlje Stymnettl of jfnaro. 153 
 
 lo deceive the people by grant of many 
 thousand years of pardon, he will 
 always be a help. But if there comes 
 a true man to preach freely and truly 
 the Gospel, he will be hindered for 
 wrongful commandment of a sinful 
 man. And thus they dread more sin- 
 ful men than God Almighty. For 
 when there comcth a pardoner with 
 stolen bulls and false relics, granting 
 more years of pardon than come before J 
 doomsday for the giving of worldly 
 goods to rich places where there is no 
 need, he will be assisted and received 
 by curates in order to have part of 
 what he gets. But a true priest that 
 will tell the truth of the Gospel to all 
 men without glossing and begging from 
 the poor people will be hindered by 
 subtle cavillations of man's law. 
 
 They also teach false chronicles and 
 fables to colour their worldly life 
 
 - 
 
154 An tljc apannerg of tfriargK 
 
 thereby, and leave the true Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ. For they love well to 
 tell how their saint lived in gay and 
 costly clothes and worldly array ; and 
 so to teach the great penance and 
 sorrow that they did afterwards by 
 which they please God, and not by 
 their worldly life, and then they make 
 people to believe that worldly life of 
 priests, and waste of poor men's goods 
 pleaseth God and is virtuous life. 
 
 See now how Friars do openly 
 against the testament of God. In tak- 
 ing money they do it in many ways ; 
 for they lead with them an " Iscariot," 
 stolen from his parents by theft, to rob 
 poor men by begging. They will also 
 count gold and money, and touch it 
 with a stick or with gloves, and a great 
 cup of gold or piece of silver, worth 
 many marks, to drink noble wine, but 
 they will not touch (with the bare hand) 
 
On rijc 9$anntt$ of JFtfartf, 153 
 
 a halfpenny or farthing with the coin 
 and arms of the cross and of the 
 King, and this seemcth for contempt of 
 the (toss or of the King, for a wedge 
 of silver or a cup of gold they will 
 handle busily, and the money that they 
 rob of poor men by false begging they 
 will lay under their bed's head at 
 night. 
 
 Friars get commonly both Bishops 
 and Lords to hinder true preaching, so 
 that their false preaching be spread, 
 and thus the people is robbed of all 
 ghostly and bodily help. They turn 
 the end of their preaching to get them 
 such worldly goods ; and this intention 
 must needs make false the manner of 
 their preaching, for they shape their 
 sermons more to get them worldly 
 goods than to benefit the Church 
 thereby. * 
 
ON THE LETTERS OF 
 FRATERNITY. 
 
 AM willling to say of 
 these Letters in Latin 
 what I have formerly 
 said in English, for it is 
 important to know some- 
 thing of their history. If this be well un- 
 derstood, the simoniacal heresy of those 
 selling them will be immediately mani- 
 fest, for they do not issue such rules 
 except the expectation of realizing gain, 
 
Cn letter* of fraternity 157 
 
 and 1 : '.length to their unlawful 
 
 confederacy, B pond doubt, there is 
 implied in this practice a fraudulent 
 buying and selling ; and it is equally 
 certain that God must hate this hypo- 
 critical traffic 
 
 On many grounds it is evident that 
 : riars selling these letters have 
 fallen into a radical heresy, for they 
 pretend expressly in them that the indi- 
 viduals to whom they grant them shall 
 be made partakers of merits from them- 
 after death. But where can you 
 find a more presumptuous blasphemy? 
 For neither they themselves, nor the 
 men with whom they carry on this 
 traffic, can know whether they may 
 not be condemned in hell. How 
 blind, then, is their folly in making 
 assertions on a subject of which they 
 know so little ! But they are, it seems, 
 of such an innate tendency to falsehood, 
 
158 On %ttttt$ of fraternity 
 
 that they do not hesitate to assert, con- 
 trary to eternal judgment, that they can 
 do things which in reality they cannot 
 do. Again, if they promise to another 
 man that after death he shall be a 
 partaker of their merits, they mani- 
 festly imply, both that the man himself 
 will after death be worthy of such par- 
 ticipation, and that they themselves at 
 present merit future happiness ; be- 
 cause, if each party should be a fore- 
 doomed member of Satan, then such 
 a granting must be beyond the power 
 of these Friars. 
 
 The Friars by the letters which they 
 so assiduously display to the people, 
 give plain indication that they say unto 
 the people that they themselves are 
 holy and grave men in the Church, and, 
 what is more than the 'sounding of a 
 trumpet before them, they send forth 
 letters to confirm the impression ol 
 
C\\ letter* of Jftatetnfrg. 15., 
 
 their sanctity, which men arc to pre- 
 serve constantly in their chests. 
 
 Many simple people, however, con- 
 fide as much in these frivolous letters 
 as in an article of faith like that of the 
 Communion of Saints, or Salvation by 
 Christ. Will, then, a man shrink from 
 acts of licentiousness and fraud, if he 
 believes that soon after, by the aid of a 
 little money bestowed on Friars, an 
 active absolution from the crime he has 
 committed may be obtained? Ac- 
 cordingly this heresy is supposed to be 
 the cause why the faith of the laity is 
 found to be so wavering. 
 
ON THE WORLDLINESS 
 OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 r 
 
 MUST tell here how de- 
 votion wanteth in clerks, 
 as Popes take their state 
 here for a foul devotion 
 to be worshipped in this 
 world and have much of worldly wor- 
 ship. And so do the Cardinals and the 
 Bishops also. Curates take benefices for 
 the same cause, and priests take their 
 orders for devotion of ten marks (£6 
 13s. 4d.); religious possessioners for 
 devotion of their belly; and many 
 
991ortDUnt00 tf tijc Clergy. 
 
 Friars take their state to live lustly in 
 
 this world, for else they should he 
 labourers and live a hard life in a 
 layman's state. And so devotion of 
 clerks, from the first to the last, is 
 study of avarice, and no true devotion ; 
 and so Friars, in their states, are want- 
 ing right devotion, for they do not take 
 their degrees, neither in school nor in 
 . fur right devotion to run the 
 way that Christ has taught. And they 
 will not be confessors especially of 
 Lords and Ladies for the devotion to 
 make their souls clean, but for devo- 
 tion of worldly liking that they enjoy 
 with these folks, and of lusts that they 
 have with ladies, other than they should 
 have at home. 
 
ON THE IMMORTALITY 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 IOBER men entertain no 
 doubt that the soul of 
 man is immortal, and 
 since it is in the soul 
 that we find the identity 
 of the man, it follows that the man 
 must be immortal. For this reason it 
 was that the Apostles of Christ suffered 
 death with such courage and boldness. 
 To them the imprisonment and burden 
 
j mmorralitp of rljc &oul 163 
 
 of the flesh was an irksome restraint 
 and oppression, and they coukl there- 
 fore rejoice to undergo death for a just 
 
 But philosophers assign many 
 reasons whereby to make good this 
 opinion. In the first place we are 
 taught by Aristotle, and in truth by 
 common experience, that there is a 
 certain energy in the mind of man that 
 is imperishable. But no energy or 
 operation can have more prominence 
 than is in its subject; now the subject 
 in this case is the mind or the soul, 
 the soul therefore must be imperish- 
 able. Furthermore we place the human 
 intellect above all animal faculties. 
 For in those faculties the brute sur- 
 passed man, as the poet sayeth, who 
 showeth it from experience : "the boar 
 excelleth us in hearing, the spider in 
 touch, the vulture in scent, the lynx in 
 sight, the ape in the sense of tasting." 
 And since man does not surpass animals 
 in merely animal sense, we must con- 
 clude that his excellence lies in his 
 
164 3|mmottalitp o£tlje SouL 
 
 intellect. But where would be his 
 advantage, if at his death he must part 
 with it. In such case would God not 
 seem to cast contempt on His favoured 
 offspring? Our conclusion, therefore, 
 is that man is possessed of an under- 
 standing which he taketh away from 
 the body as a part of his self and which 
 abides for ever. Again, every man has 
 within him the natural desire to live 
 for ever, and the wiser men are, the 
 more they thus feel, and give their 
 testimony to this truth. Now, as nature 
 is not to be frustrated in a purpose of 
 such moment, it is manifest that there 
 is in man, according to nature, a certain 
 understanding that exists for ever— so 
 man is immortal. 
 
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