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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Bought with the income
ofthe
RICHARD S. FELLOWES FUND

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John Wycliffe.
From a Mezzotint by G. White in the Print Room of the
British Museum ; after the Knole Portrait. Engraved
BY E. Whymper.

Note on Wycliffe's Portraits. — The Life by Lewis (ed. 1820) has an en
graving of the well-known portrait with the pastoral staff, in the possession of the Earl
of Denbigh. There is a copy of the picture in the Lutterworth vestry. Dr. Vaughan's
Mo7iograph (1853) has a frontispiece from a painting by Sir Antonio More (Henry
VIII.'s time), preserved as an heirloom in the rectory at Wycliffe, Yorkshire. Theso
two, with that engraved above, are the best existing portraits, and well correspond
with the descriptive hints of the Reformer's personal appearance that have come down
to us.

John Wycliffe

AND HIS

English Precursors.

PROFESSOR LECHLER, D.D.,
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG,

®tanslatcn ftoin tl&e ©ermait,
WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES,

BY THE LATE

PROFESSOR LORIMER, D.D.

A NEW EDITION, REVISED;
with chapter on the events after wycliffe's death.

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY,
56, Paternoster Row ; 65, St. Paul's Churchyard ;
AND 164, Piccadilly.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

SCIENCE is an international good. It is not confined by territorial
boundaries, nor restricted by the ties of nationality. Nowhere does
it stand written that only an Englishman can suitably write the history
of England, or a portion of it. It may easily happen that a German may
have access to sources of English history from which the Englishman
may have less opportunity to draw. It is from such sources that I believe
myself able to offer not a little which may serve to supplement and enrich,
and even to correct, the knowledge which has hitherto been current
respecting the history and the characteristic genius of Wycliffe.
All the men whose Wycliffe-researches have hitherto acquired import
ance and authority have in every instance been able to bring to light, and
make use of for the first time, fresh documentary materials. It was so
with John Lewis in the last century, who wrote the first independent
biography of Wycliffe. The chief value of that book — a value still fully
recognised at the present day — lies not in its style of execution, but purely
in the mass of materials which it brought together and pubhshed. In the
present century. Dr. Robert Vaughan, by his works upon the same subject,
increased our historical knowledge of Wycliffe to such a degree, that these
works have been everywhere recognised as authorities, and used as a
storehouse of information. The chief distinction of these writings was
the extensive use made in them, by quotation and otherwise, of Wycliffe's
manuscript Tracts and Sermons. More recently, at the suggestion of the
late Professor Shirley, these English writings of the Reformer have been
published by the Clarendon Press, which had already, in 1850, given to
the world a model edition of the Wycliffe Translation of the Bible. The
Select English Works of John JVzclzf, edited in excellent style by Thomas
Arnold, M.A., of University College, Oxford, contains a complete collec
tion of the Reformer's English sermons, and a selection of his English
tracts, popular pieces, and fly-leaves — a service to literature and religious
history which calls for the warmest acknowledgments.
It was as an integral part of the same projected collection of Select
Works of Wiclif, that the author of the present work brought out in 1869
a critical edition of the Trialogus, upon the authority of a collation of
four Vienna MSS. of the work, accompanied by the Suppletnentuin
Trialogi, which had never been in print. It was the treasures of the

vi author's PREFACE.
Imperial Library of Vienna which put him in a position to execute that
critical task. When, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Wycliffe
spirit took so strong a hold of Bohemia and Moravia, Bohemian hands
were busily employed through several decades of years in multiplying
copies of the books, sermons, and tracts of the Evangelical Doctor.
Hence there are still to be found at the present day, not only in Prague
itself, but also in Vienna and Paris, and even in Stockholm, MSS. of
Wycliffe's works, of which little use ha« hitherto been made. In par
ticular, the Imperial Library of Vienna, owing to the secularisation of the
Bohemian monasteries under Joseph II., is in possession of nearly forty
volumes, which consist either entirely or chiefly of unprinted Latin works
of Wycliffe, of which, in some instances, not a single copy is to be found
in England. By the kind mediation of the Saxon Government with the
Imperial Government of Austria, I obtained from the latter the leisurely
and unrestricted use of all those volumes of the collection which I
required, and which were sent to me from Vienna as I needed them with
the utmost liberality — a gracious furtherance of literary labours, for which,
I trust, I may be allovifed in this place to express my most respectful and
most sincere thanks.
When I compare the two groups of Sources which serve to elucidate
the personality and the entire historical position of Wycliffe, I come in
sight of the fact that the English sermons and tracts most recently printed
belong, almost without exception, to the last four years of his life (1381-
1384). They serve, therefore, to throw upon his latest convictions and
efforts — however comparatively well known these were before — a still
clearer and fuller documentary light. The Latin works, on the other
hand, so far as they only exist in MS., were for the most part written at
earlier dates; some of them, indeed, going back as far as the year 1370.
These latter, therefore, have a specially high value, because we learn from
them the thoughts and doings of Wycliffe during an earlier stage of his
life ; and, what is most important of all, they open up to us a view of
his gradual development— of the progress of his mind in insight and
enlightenment. I cannot allow the present opportunity to pass of expressing my convic
tion how much it is to be wished that several of these earlier Latin
writings of Wycliffe were printed and published. Not only would they
be made thereby more accessible to learned investigators ; they would
also be secured against the possibility of destruction, in view of the fact
that some of them continue to exist only in a single copy. It is alarming
to think what an irreparable loss might be caused by fire in a library rich
in manuscripts. Should the Clarendon Press determine to include in the
series of the Select Works an additional number of Wycliffe's Latin
writings, I would, with all submission, advise that works of an earlier
date than 1381 should be the first to be selected. Most of all, the publi
cation of the De Veritate Sanctae Scripturae is to be recommended ; and
next to this a collection of forty Latin sermons, preserved in the Vienna
MS. 3928, and which reflect an earlier stage of Wycliffe's opinions. The

author's PREFACE. vii
book De Ecclesia— the best MS. of which is the Vienna MS. 1294— and
the De Dominio Civili, would also be worthy of being sent to press.'
In the summer of 1840, I studied in the University Library of Cam
bridge the MS. of Repressor— X\\e interesting polemical treatise of the
rationalising Bishop Pecock, directed against the Wycliffite ' Biblemen '
about the middle of the fifteenth century. Twenty years after I had made
acquaintance with it, it was published by Babington. By that perusal I
was conducted into the history of the Lollards ; and from them I saw
myself thrown back upon Wycliffe himself It was thus by a retrogressive
movement that the present work gradually took shape, the main impulse
to undertake it having come from my good fortune in obtaining access to
the Vienna MSS. As I continued to be thus occupied with Wychffe's
life and writings, my respect and love for the venerable man — ' the evan
gelical doctor,' as his contemporaries were wont to call him — went on
ever growing. He is truly, in more than one respect, a character of the
genuine Protestant type, whose portraiture it may not be without use to
freshen up again in true and vivid colours in the eyes of the present
generation. In the present English edition, several portions of the original work
have been omitted which did not appear likely to interest English readers
so much as what relates directly to England and Wycliffe himself
The Author can only congratulate himself that he has found in Pro
fessor Lorimer a translator who, along with a perfect acquaintance with
German, combines so rich a knowledge of the subject, and, what is not
the smallest requisite for the task, so enthusiastic a love for the personality
of Wycliffe. He has given a special proof of his love to the subject of
this book, and of his learned knowledge of it, in a number of ' Additional
Notes.' In these, with the help of mediaeval records and chronicles which
have appeared since the publication ofthe German original (1873), he h'a.s
been able sometimes to confirm, and sometimes to correct, the investiga
tions of the Author. And as, in my esteem, the truth is above all else,
I am able, without jealousy, to rejoice in every rectification which the
views I set forth may receive from later researches among documents
which were not accessible to me at the time of my own investigations.
May the Father of Lights, from whom cometh down every good and
perfect gift, be pleased to make His blessing rest upon this English edition
of my work, to His own glory, to the furtherance of evangehcal truth, and
to the well-being of the Church of Jesus Christ.

GOTTHARD LECHLER.

Leipzig, 1878.

' Since the above was written, the first Treatises have already appeared, under
steps have been taken by the Wychf the masterly editorship of Dr. Rudolf
Society towards the ptiblication of the Buddensieg, and other works are in pro-
Reformer's Latin works. His Polemical gress. 1884.

Wycliffe ! strong soul nursed as in eagles' nest
In upper air, it needed breath of Alps,
The keen invigorative air which girds
The Maiden, Monk, and Eiger, with their zones
Of thick-ribbed ice, to give me strength to cope
With the new history of thy mighty thoughts,
And deeds and giant strife with Papal Rome — ¦
From fountains fresh deduced, in Teuton speech
Of Lechler's learned page, and to give back
Thy thoughts, full rendered, to thine own dear land.
Sire of our English tongue ! Translator once
Thyself of God's own Word. — Immortal work !
A well of truth and English undefiled !
Accept, Great Shade ! my toil, humble itself.
Yet noble made by thee — to whom 'twas given
In love and laud, unbought, spontaneous.
P. L.

Lauterbrunnen,
August 22, 1B76.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

PROFESSOR LECHLER'S work is not only a Biography of Wycliffe,
but also a preliminary history of the Reformation ; beginning far
back in the mediseval centuries, and carried down along the parallel
lines of the LoUards and the Hussites, to the first decades of the six
teenth century. The two volumes extend to 1400 closely printed pages ;
and it was found impracticable to carry out the original idea of publishing
a translation of the whole work.
My design was then reduced to the reproduction of the Biography, and
of so much of the preliminary history as concerned Wycliffe's English
Precursors. From the English point of view, it seemed perfectly fitting
that the life and teaching of Wycliffe should be presented as a subject
complete in itself, without implication with the general history of the
Church, either earlier or later ; and it was found that a single preliminary'
chapter would suffice to communicate all that the Author had written
respecting Grossetete, Occam, and the rest of Wycliffe's forerunners
upon English soil. Professor Lechler at once acceded to this reduced
programme of the translation, and not only prepared for my use a new
arrangement of the original text, so far as this was called for, but also
made a careful revision both of text and notes for the present edition.
The whole original work is of much value and well worth translation,
but its chief importance lies in the Biography of Wycliffe himself. In the
execution of this kernel portion of his work, the Author had the immense
advantage of free and leisurely access to the Wycliffe MSS. of the Imperial
Library of Vienna ; and he has used this advantage to the utmost, and
with the best effect. Never before has the whole teaching of the Reformer
— philosophical, theological, ethical, and ecclesiastical, been so copiously
and accurately set forth ; and never before has so large a mass of classified
quotations from all his chief scientific writings been placed under the eyes
of scholars.
It is a singular fact that five hundred years should have passed away
before it became possible to do this service of justice to the memory of so
great a man — the very 'Morning Star of the Reformation ;' and it is
much to be wished that the University of Oxford, Wycliffe's Alma Mater,
should complete the service, by carrying out to the full her own noble

X translator's PREFACE.
design, already considerably advanced, of a collection of the ' Select
Works' of Wycliffe — in the direction of the suggestions offered by
Professor Lechler in the foregoing Preface. PETER LORIMER.
English Presbyterian College,
London, March, 1878.

*,* The present Edition is a complete reprint of Dr. Larimer's trans
lation, with such close revision as he himself might have given to it had
his life been spared. The numerous and valuable notes have been printed
in a form more convenient for reference : marginal summaries of the
paragraphs have been introduced, and a copious index has been added.
The long quotations from Wycliffe's Latin works, which formed a large
part of Dr. Lechler's Appendix, have been omitted as hardly necessary, in
view of the probable publication of the Reformer's whole works. A
chapter has, however, been added, containing a compendious summary
of parts of Dr. Lechler's second volume. Die Nachwirkimgen Wiclif s,
with other matters bearing on the diffusion of his doctrines. — S. G. G.
56, Paternoster Row,
October, 1884.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Portrait of Wycliffe
Ludgarshall Church
Lutterworth Church
Facsimile of Wychffe Bible MS.
Chair in Lutterworth Chancel
The River Swift at Lutterworth
Wycliffe Church, Yorkshire .

Frontispiece p. xxiv ib.
220
• 438
¦ 467 500

CONTENTS.

INTROD UCTION.

"Writers on Pre-Reformation History
In the Sixteenth Century
In the Seventeenth Century
In the Eighteenth Century .
In the Present Century
The Wycliffite Versions of the Bible

I'AGE I2
6 6

CHAPTER L
ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE.
I. — Mixture and Consolidation of Races in the
English People  13
Mixture of races in the English people ; the German element.
Changes in religion. Height of Rome's power over England under
John Lacldand. Revolt of public opinion as expressed by Magna
Charta ; consolidation of the nation on the basis of the Saxon
element ; steps towards establishing the mdependence of the
Anglican Church.

2. — Robert Grossetete, Bishop of Lincoln .
His mental endowments. His course of life and development.
Appointed Bishop of Lincoln ; his labours and aims. Estimate of
his character. The kernel of his work : care for souls. Memorial
on the abuses of the Church. Protest against the nomination of a
relative of Innocent IV. Grossetete's death, 1253. Veneration of
his memory.

xii CONTENTS.

PACK

3._Henry Bracton and William Occam . . .40
The State in opposition to the Church. National feehng ofthe
monarch and the people ; opposed to the claims of Boniface VIII.
Influence of Occam : controversy on apostolic poverty : protest
against papal absolutism.
4.— English Church Politics in the Fourteenth
Century  49
Growth of English patriotic feeling. Papal nominations and
provisions. Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire. Early awaken
ings of the Reformation spirit in England and abroad.
5.— Richard of Armagh and the Mendicant Orders . 54
His career and writings. He takes a stand against the Mendi
cant Monks, and especially against their encroachments on the
pastoral office. Comparison of Richard of Armagh with Robert
Grossetete and Wycliffe. Polemic treatise of the Franciscan,
Roger Conway, against Richard of Armagh. The treatise. Of
the Last Age of the Church.
6. — Thomas Brad'wardine, his Teaching and Spirit . 64
His doctrine of grace. Doctor Profundus. His early life and
conversion. 'H.is \vork. Of the Cause of God. Its leading thought
developed nnd criticised. His moral and religious spirit.
7. — 'The Vision of Piers Plowman' . . .70.
The feeling of the English people in the middle of the four
teenth century finds its expression in this poem. Its author and
spirit. Its language and form ; time of its appearance. Sketch
of its contents. Tendency of the poem. Predictions of reform.

CHAPTER II.
WYCLIFFE'S YOUTH AND STUDENT LIFE.
I. — Birthplace and Family  7^
Spreswell, near Old Richmond, his birthplace. Character of
the population of that district. The Wycliffe family. Date of
Wycliffe's birth.

CONTENTS. xiii

PAGE

2. — W^yclifFe's Course of Study  84
His childhood and early youth in Yorkshire. As scholar at
Oxford. Colleges and ' Nations ' in the University. Wycliffe's
studies; general course of study in the Universities ofthe Middle
Ages. The artes liberales. Wycliffe's theological studies. Length
of time covered by his student life.

CHAPTER III.
QUIET WORK IN 0A"/?V9i?Z»— 1345-1366.
I. — Wycliffe as a Member of Balliol and of Merton 97
Wycliffe as Fellow of a College in Oxford : which College was
this .' Probably Balliol. Wycliffe becomes Master of this College,
1360; having already been Fellow of Merton ; 1361 he was ap
pointed by Balliol to the parish of Fillingham, and gave up his
Mastership. His earnest work.
2. — Wycliffe as Head of Canterbury Hall and
Doctor of Theology-  102
Archbishop Islip appoints Wycliffe in 1365 to the Wardenship
of Canterbury Hall, founded by himself; his successor. Archbishop
Langham, replaces Wycliffe by the former Warden, Woodhall ;
proceedings in consequence end in the rejection of Wycliffe and
his friends. Critical examination of the question whether the
Warden of Canterbury Hall was really John Wycliffe or some
other member of the family. Decision in favour of the former.
Discussion as to whether the deposition of Wycliffe from the
Wardenship was contrary to the laws of foundation, or not.
Wycliffe's promotion as Doctor of Theology.
CHAPTER IV.
WYCLIFFE'S FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE IN
THE ECCLESIASTICO-POLITICAL AFFAIRS
OF ENGLAND.
I. — Wycliffe as a Patriot  118
The quiet student steps out into public life ; declares himself
as a patriot. That his first appearance in public was in a contro
versy with the Mendicant Orders has no historical foundation.

xiv CONTENTS.
PAGE
2.'— Wycliffe's Concern in the Rejection of the
Papal Claim to Feudatory Tribute . .122
Pope Urban V. claims anew in 1365 the feudal tribute. Edward
III. lays the matter before the Parhament, and the Pope is defied.
Wycliffe's participation in this affair ; his account of the speeches
of seven lords. Supposition that Wycliffe himself had a seat and -
voice in the Parliament then assembled.
3. — Events after 1366 ... ... 134
Political events of 1367. Pariiament of 1371. Prelates in State
Offices. Resistance to Papal exactions. Wycliffe's criticism on
the oath taken by the Papal commissioner, Garnier,
4. — Wycliffe as a Royal Commissary in Bruges, 1374,
and his Influence in the ' Good Parliament ' of
1376 • •  141
Topics of the conference. Wycliffe's relations with the Duke of
Lancaster. Result of negotiations. Fresh complaints against
Rome from the ' Good Parliament,' 1376. Memorial to the King.
Evidence of Wycliffe's influence. Court intrigues ; court politics.
Wycliffe's attitude.

CHAPTER V.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE HIERARCHY AGAINST
WYCLIFFE IN lz^^ and 1378.
I. — Wycliffe summoned before the Convocation -156
His influence at its height. Successive preferments. Rector
of Lutterworth, 1374. Attack of the hierarchy, 1377. Political
motives prompting his summons. The Duke of Lancaster pro
tects him ; scene in St. Paul's. Excitement of the citizens against
the Duke. Results of the citation.
2.— Papal Bulls against Wycliffe  162
Accusations brought against Wycliffe by English bishops in
Rome. Five bulls in consequence issued against him. The
doctrines of Wycliffe condemned in them. Nineteen, articles of
accusation.

CONTENTS. XV

PAGE

3-— First Effects of the Five Bulls in England . 167
Delay in publishing them. Death of Edward III. Proceedings
of the Papal commissaries. Wychffe cited to London. Attitude
of the University of Oxford.

4- — The Process against Wycliffe  171
He appears before the commissaries at Lambeth. Interference
of the Princess of Wales and the citizens on his behalf A glance
over the two plans of attack on Wycliffe by the hierarchy. Death
of Pope Gregory XI. and the Papal Schism.

CHAPTER VL
WYCLIFFE AS A PREACHER. HIS EFFORTS FOR
REFORM IN PREACHING AND FOR THE ELE
VATION OF THE PASTORAL OFFICE. ¦
I. — Wycliffe as a Preacher; his Homiletical Prin
ciples  176
He considers the pulpit a means of reform ; his English and
Latin sermons. His views of the sermon and its mission ; his
opinion of the manner of preaching in his time. Principles laid
down by him on the subject of what and how a man should preach.
Wycliffe himself in the pulpit ; what he preached, and how he
preached it. Chaucer's ' country priest,' a portrait of Wycliffe.

2  -W^ycliffe's Itinerant Preachers . .189
Wycliffe as Rector of Lutterworth. Sends out itinerant preachers.
In 1382 itinerant preaching is in full activity. Reasons for be
lieving that Wycliffe began to send out itinerant preachers while
still. in Oxford (and at Ludgarshall). Purpose and spirit of the
institution! The itinerant preachers themselves ; at first only
priests, afterwards laymen as well. Oxford the first, Leicester
the second starting-point. Subject and form of their sermons.
Wycliffe's writings relating to the itinerant preachers.

xvi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.

WYCLIFFE AS^ BIBLE TRANSLATOR; AND HIS
SERVICE DONE TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
PAGE
I.— The Novelty of the Idea of an English Trans
lation of the whole Bible  202
Wycliffe, convinced that the Holy Scriptures should be acces
sible to all alike, translates the whole Bible into English : he is
the first to undertake the work. Older translations of separate
books in Anglo-Saxon, in Anglo-Norman, and in Old English.
2. — How Wycliffe came to engage in this Under
taking  208
Certain that Wycliffe was the originator of the idea, and the
first to carry it into effect. Early steps towards the work.
Translations of single books of the New Testament in particular,
3. — The Wycliffe *rranslation  215
Made from the Latin Vulgate. The New Testament translated
first. Prefaces to the several Books. Wycliffe's fellow-labourers ;
Hereford and Purvey. Completion of the work. Its revision after
Wycliffe's death.. The Wycliffe Bible and the English language.

CHAPTER VIII.
WYCLIFFE AS A THINKER AND WRITER; HIS
PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM.
I.— His Gradual Development as a Thinker and
Reformer  22-5
2.— Wycliffe as a Philosophical Thinker and W^riter 225
Lack of extant printed writings. Wycliffe's logic. Metaphysics :
his realism and its meaning ; its basis on Scripture. Idea of the
Logos. Ethical aspect of his philosophy.

3.— Wycliffe's Theological System ....
Reason and Revelation, the sources of Christian Truth. Deci
sive authority of the Bible. Apphcation of the principle. Wycliffe
the Doctor Evangelicus. His independence in asserting his Scrip
tural principle. His opinions on the interpretation of Scripture.
Relation between the Old and New Testaments. The ri?ht of all
Christians to the Bible.

232

CONTENTS. XVM
PAGI!
4. — Doctrine of God and the Divine Trinity . 250
Proofs of the existence of God. The Divine Attributes. Doc
trine of the Trinity.
5.— Doctrine of the World, of the Creation, and of
the Divine Dominion  254
The creation of the worid in itself a necessary act of God.
Finiteness and mutabihty of the world. The Divine dominion.
Wycliffe's central thought. His writings on the subject. Fun
damental principles. Acts resulting from dominion, e,g,, giving
and granting. . Idea, of m?rit. Doctrine of good and evil angels.
6. — Doctrine of Man and of Sin  261
Wycliffe's anthropology generally. Doctrine of the human will ;
of the evil in man. Wycliffe's view of sin as a free act. The
negativity of evil. State of innocence, and the Fall.
7. — Doctrine of the Person of Christ and the W^ork
of Redemption  267
The Person of Christ, the God-man. Christ the centre of
humanity ; the only Head of the redeemed. Work of Christ.
(i) As Prophet (Lawgiver) in His doctrine and example. (2) As
everlasting Priest, in His work of reconciliation ; (3) As King of
kings. Wycliffe's views respecting the Virgin Mary.
8. — Doctrine of the Order of Personal Salvation . 275
(i) Conversion, consisting of repentance and faith. Faith, partly
a knowledge and recognition of truth, partly moral feeling and
action. Wycliffe seized neither the evangelical idea of faith nor «
that of justification by faith alone. (2) Sanctification. Wycliffe's
doctrine of good ; 4nd of virtue. Humility the principal virtue.
Love of God and one's neighbour the kernel of Christianity.
Christ's example. The difference between command and counsel.
Wycliffe's views respecting merit ; his reasons for them. Melanc
thon's judgment upon Wycliffe's doctrine ofthe way of salvation,
9.— Doctrine of the Church as the Communion of
the Saved  287
Three divisions of the Church. Idea of the Church ; her
eternal basis ; Divine election. Wycliffe repudiates the identifica
tion of the Church with the clergy and hierarchy. His idea of the
Church as 'the whole body ofthe elect' draws a hne of distinction
through the mass of mankind, which docs not keep without the

PAGE

xviii CONTENTS,
- -so-called Church, but penetrates within it, separating the elect
from the members of Antichrist. Uncertainty appertaining to
the condition of grace ; moral standard.
10  The Worship of the Church  296
The sermon. Images and pictures. Worship of saints. Canoni
sation. Moral benefit or uselessness of devotions and feasts in
memory of saints. Relics and pilgrimages. Masses for the dead.'
Wycliffe's conviction of the low and sinking condition of Chris
tendom ; corruption of the clergy.
II. — Constitution of the Church  305
Wycliffe rejects the Roman Catholic division of the Church
into clergy and laity. Rights of the latter. The universal priest
hood of believers. The pastoral office : what it is, and what it
should be. Celibacy of the clergy. The higher grades of the
hierarchy. Primitive identity of presbyter and bishop. The
manner in which the bishops became superior. The Papacy ;
stages of development in Wycliffe's ideas. First stage, to 1378 :
conditional recognition of the Pope. Second stage, to 1381 :
emancipation in principle from the Pope. Third stage, from 1 381
onwards : decisive conflict with the Pope as Antichrist. Wy
cliffe's opinions on the monastic orders : mistake in the supposi
tion that he combated the Mendicant Orders from the first : on the
contrary, he was against the Endowed Orders, and praised the
Mendicant Friars in his earlier years. Not till 1381 did he begin
to attack them. Once he thought it possible that the Mendicant
Orders would reform the Church. Wycliffe's thoughts on the
reform of the Church. Necessity for reform. Advance of corrup
tion in the Church. Means of reform. Who shall begin the
reform ? The State ; true Christians ; the Spirit of God.
12. — Doctrine of the Sacranients  332
(l) Of the Sacraments generally ; their fundamental idea ; their
number ; their efficacy. Does Wycliffe make the efficacy of the
Sacraments dependent upon the moral worthiness of the minis-
trant ? (2) Of the Lord's Supper. Why, did Wycliffe especially
attack the doctrine of Transubstantiation ? His reasons against
it. His positive views concerning the presence of the Body and
; Blood of Christ in the Supper. There is present in the sacra
ment of the altar real bread and wine, but also the Body and Blood
of Christ ; not, indeed, visibly and corporeally, but sacramentally.
Only spiritual enjoyment of these is possible ; therefore only
believing cornmunicants can partake of Christ's Body and Blood.
Survey of Wycliffe's doctrine of the Lord's Supper and his con
troversy on Transubstantiation.

CONTENTS. XIX

CHAPTER IX.
THE EVENTS OF THE LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S
LIFE, 1378-1384- Page
I. — The Papal Schism, and its Effect upon Wycliffe 362
Urban VI. and the great schismin the Papacy. Impression made
upon Wycliffe. For some time he remains neutral towards both
Popes ; afterwards opposes the Papacy entirelyj Meanwhile he
continues his Bible translation, and sends out itinerant preachers.
2. — Wycliffe's Attack upon the Doctrine of Tran
substantiation ........ 367
Wycliflfe's twelve theses against the doctrine. Proceedings of
the University against him.
3. — The Peasants' Revolt in 1381 . . . .371
Are there any reasons for blaming Wycliffe as the cause of
this revolt ? Course of the insurrection. Confessions of John
Ball. Facts which are opposed to any connection between
' Wycliffe. and the rising.
4. — Preparations for Persecution on the part both
of the Church and the State  378
The new Archbishop, Courtenay : he begins proceedings
against Wycliffe ; condemns his doctrines, and attempts to attack
his followers. Synod at Blackfriars, sometimes called the
' Earthquake Council.' The doctrines condemned. The Arch
bishop's appeal to Parliament. Its failure. The royal ordinance.
5. — The Wycliffe Party .intimidated by the Measures
of the Archbishop  388
The state of parties in Oxford ; their action. Hereford's sermon
on Ascension Day, 1382. Repyngdon's Corpus Christi sermon.
Menacing measures and continued disputations. Measures of
the Archbishop. Submission df the Chancellor. Excommunica
tions. Aston, Hereford, and Repyngdon. Further action against
Wycliffe's party. Persecution of the itinerant preachers. Repyng^
don and Aston recant. Nicholas Hereford appeals to the Pope
and goes to Rome.

XX CONTENTS.
PAGE
6.— The Cautious Proceedings of the Hierarchy
against Wycliffe himself  4°i
Wycliffe remains for a time free from personal attack. Sum
moned before the Council at Oxford, November, 1382, but
permitted to retire unmolested, and without having recanted.
Motives of such mildness.
7.— The Last Two Years of Wycliffe, and his
Death  406
Wycliffe at Lutterworth. Pastoral labours and literary activity
during the last two years of his life. Crusade in Flanders against
the adherents of Clement VIL, under the conduct of Bishop
Spencer, of Norwich. Preparations. Wycliffe's opinion ; his
tract, Cruciata. The crusade itself and its ignominious end.
Supposed citation of Wycliffe to Rome, and his letter to Urban
VI. Unhistorical story of Wychffe's exile and stay in Bohemia.
He spent his last years at Lutterworth, retaining his position in
the Church, honoured by many. Year and day of his death
determined (December 31, 1384). Circumstances of his death.
8. — Character of W^ycliffe, and his important place
in History  423
His scholastic attainments ; the many sides of his character ;
his critical spirit. The strong point in his character was not,
however, his knowledge, nor his literaiy power, but his will and
moral earnestness, with which was blended a certain humour. In
spite of his marked individuality, he does not assert himself, but
always aims to serve Christ. Character of his efforts for reform.
Wycliffe the first to devote himself to such endeavours.

CHAPTER X.
THE SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE; AND SUR
VIVAL OF HIS INFLUENCE.

I.— The Lollards 
Origin of the designation. Two sections of the Lollard party in
England ; an outer and an inner circle. Hereford, Aston, and
Purvey, the 'first three.' Other noteworthy names. Extent of
the movement. Life and work of the Lollards. Results.

439

CONTENTS. xxi
2 — Controversies between the Lollards and their """'
Opponents before 1399  445
The defensive attitude of the Lollards changed for an aggressive
course. Appeal to Parhament. The 'Fifteen Conclusions' of
1395. This date marks the culmination of the Lollards' power.
' Piers Plowman's Creed ' and ' The Plowman's Tale.'
3-— Position of the Lollards at the close of the
Century  450
Archbishop Arundel, a more determined opponent of Wycliffe's
doctrines than Courtenay himself The Trialogus synodically
condemned. Woodford's treatise. Deposition and assassination
of Richard I L
4. — Persecution of the Lollards  451
Accession of the House of Lancaster, and beginnings of perse
cution. The Act de haeretico combicrendo. Sawtree the first
martyr. Purvey recants. Badby the martyr, Thorpe the con
fessor. Other sufferers.
5. — Proceedings at Oxford, 1406-1414 .... 455
A declaration in favour of Wycliffe, under the University seal.
Question as to its genuineness. A change in the spirit of Oxford,
and decadence of the University.
6. — The Lollards in the Reign of Henry V. ; Lord
Cobham  457
Another King, and another Primate. The persecution becomes
more bitter, being complicated with political animosities. The
Lollard party accused of disaffection to the Government. Gather
ing in St. Giles's Fields. The ' Good Lord Cobham,' an illus
trious martyr. Accession of Henry VL and relaxation of perse
cuting measures, only to break out with new fury. The conflict
gradually exhausts itself, but the Lollard testimony continues.
7. — Wycliffe, Huss, and the Council of Constance . 460
Anne of Bohemia, consort of Richard II. Intercourse of Eng
land and Bohemia. Wycliffism spreads from Oxford. John
Huss in the University of Prague. Eager and bitter controversies
ensue, in all of which Wycliffe's name is mixed up. A council

xxix CONTENTS.
summoned at Constance ; Huss condemned and burned, in spite
of tlie safe-conduct given. Posthumous condemnation of Wycliffe ;
carried out after long delay. ' The Swift, the Avon, and the Sea.'
Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, and the Reformation.

APPENDIX.

Note on The Last Age ofthe Church and The Poor Caitif
I.— Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh
2. — The Vision of Piers Plowman

468
469
470 472

3.— BalUol College in Wycliffe's Time
I. Illustrations of its Educational Discipline. 2. Provisions of
the Statutes of Sir Philip de Somerville for the Study of Theology.
3. Disputes among Philosophical University Sects. 4. Wychffe's
College contempoi-aries.
4. — Identity of John Wycliffe the Reformer with John
Wycliffe the Warden of Canterbury Hall . . 475
5. — On the Late Date at which Wycliffe began his
Attacks upon the Mendicant Orders . . . 476
6. — The Popularity of Wycliffe and his earliest Dis
ciple's as Preachers in London . ' . . . 478
*«* These six chapters are by Dr. Lorimer, the next is by Dr. Lechler.
7. — Wycliffe's Writings  480
I. The chief Wycliffe catalogues : Bale, Lewis, Baber, Vaughan,
Shirley, Arnold. 2. Language of Wycliffe's writings. 3. Classi
fied list. Note {by Dr. Lorimer) on the Vienna MSS. of Wycliffe's
Works. Comparison between Lechler's Catalogue and Shirley's.

i v.^#^

.* -s

i>*-.

Ludgarshall Church.
The Scene of Wycliffe's Ministrations, 1368-1374.

If • t'^''* ' 111* "'.

,'i^r;!*^.^* its'

\ " "¦fl^<

Lutterworth Church.
The Scene of Wycliffe's Ministrations, 1374-1384.

INTRODUCTION.

THERE lies between the commencement of the Reformation
and our own day an interval of more than three hundred and
sixty years," a period of time considerable enough to allow of our
taking a tolerably free aud comprehensive survey. We are thus
placed in a position to embrace in one view the whole effects of
the Reformation, in so far as these have as yet developed them
selves. It has also become possible for us to attain a right under
standing of the conditions under which the movement took its rise,
and of the manner in which its way was prepared in the preceding
centuries. Our power of insight, indeed, in this matter as in others, must
have its limits. Beyond all doubt, a later time will command a-
wider horizon and gain deeper reaches of insight. For what the
poet says of the past is not true of it in every respect —
' Still stands the past for evermore. '
On the contrary, the image of the past is for ever shifting and chang
ing with the conditions of the present in which it is reflected. 'The
living man, too, has his right : ' he has a right to the inheritance of
the generations which have gone before ; he has also the right to put
the history of the past in relations to the present — to study it in con
nection with the events and the needs and the questions of his own
time — and thereby to arrive at a clear vision and comprehension of it
for himself. Nothing but our own experience can give us the interpre
tation of history. As a general truth, the actual knowledge which
we are able to acquire is commensurate with our experience ; and
the more thorough and comprehensive the experience which any
man has acquired, the deeper and more correct is the understanding
of the past which he is in a condition to attain.
On this ground, the period of more than three centuries and a half
¦ [Luther affixed his Theses to the 1517. He burned the Pope's bull, Decem
church door at Wittenberg, October 17, ber 10, 1520.]

2 THE LIFE OF WVCLIFFE. [introduction.
which has elapsed since the commencement of the Reformation,
both enables and calls us, in a much higher degree than
Beformers . , . , , , , •
before the the generations which have preceded us, to attain to a
thorough understanding of its preliminary history, or
the long series of events and transactions by which its advent was
prepared. A beginning of such studies, indeed, was made as early
as the sixteenth century ; and even while the Reform.ation itself
was still in progress, there were historical inquirers who cast back
their eyes to men and religious brotherhoods of the past who ap
peared to bear some resemblance to the Reformers and Reformed
Churches of their own generation. These researches into com
parative pre-Reformation history were of course of very different
kinds, and issued in the most opposite results, according as they
were undertaken by friends or foes of the Reformation itself.
When Luther received from the Utraquists of Bohemia one of
Huss's writings, and studied it, he was lost in astonishment, for all at
Xuther on his once the light dawned upon him that he and Staupitz
i>reaeoeBBors. j^jjd the rest had been Hussites all the time, without being
aware of the fact.' A few years later, he became acquainted with the
writings of John Wessel, which filled him with sincere admiration of
the man, and with a wondering joy ; so much so that he felt himself
strengthened as Elijah was when it was revealed to him that he was not
left alone, for there were seven thousand men still living who had not
bowed their knees to Baal. ' If I had read Wessel before now, my
enemies might have thought that Luther had taken all his ideas from
Wessel, so much are we of one mind.' = At a later date the Re
former gave his judgment on the subject in a quieter tone, but not
more correctly, when he remarked that Wycliffe and Huss had
attacked the life ofthe Church under the Papacy, whereas he fought
not so much against the life as the doctrine.' 3 Still he saw in these
men his fellow-combatants of an earlier time, and men of kindred
spirit and principles to his own. When Luther, in 1522, wrote an
Anthology from John Wessel, and in 1523 prefixed an appreciative
preface to Savonarola's commentaries on the 31st and 37th Psalms;
,and when again, in 1525, the Trialogus of Wycliffe was published in
Basel, the meaning of all these incidents was to justify the Reformers
- 'i^tt ^VJ° ^J"''^''"„i^^*'-, '520), way. He mentions him at considerable
^^^^''¦^^'^Letters.hyVle^etie (Berlin, length in his Pastils, in the following
1826). Vol 1., No. 208, p. 425. Comp. terms, among others : • De plerisaue
°- Lmherf Sl". ^^V\'H- ?¦ 3"^"- "^^"f"^ ^^"Sionis evangelice sensit d™
Luther sH'«-,5j, by Walch, Vol. XIV., quod a nobis nunc traditur, postquam
p. 220. In the preface to one of the nostra fetate repurgatio ecclesise facta
¦earhest editions of WesseVs Farrago est.' ecclesiae tacta
Rerum Theologicarum (Basel, 1522), Me- 3 Luther's Taile Talk, Bv Foerste-
lancthon speaks of Wessel in the same mann. 1845. n., 441 ; iv.^ ggj.

jo^TRODucTioN.] CRITICISMS ON EARLY REFORMERS. 3
ofthe sixteenth century by the testimony of men of eariier ages who
had fought the same battle.
The case is altered, of course, when writers opposed to the Refor
mation direct their inquiries to the same class of facts, the results at
which they arrive being always unfavourable to the testimony of
Reformers. In comparing the latter with their pre- enemies.
cursors, the uniform aim of these writers is to throw them and
their doctrines into shadow, either by identifying Luther's prin
ciples with those of earlier heretics, so as to place them under
a like condemnation, or by attempting to prove that Luther was
even worse than his precursors of like spirit. The former was
what was aimed at, when the Theological Faculty of Paris, in
1523, decided that the great work against Wycliffe, of the English
Carmelite, Thomas of Walden (died 1431), The Antiquities of the
Catholic Faith, was worthy to be printed and published, 'because
the same is of great use for the refutation of the destructive Lutheran
errors ; ' for herein the Parisian doctors declared the doctrines of the
Refomiers to be essentially the same as those of Wycliffe and the
Lollards. John Faber, on the other hand, the South German polemic,
who died Bishop of Vienna in 1541, drew a comparison in a con
troversial work of 1528, between Luther on the one hand, and John
Huss and the Bohemian Brethren and John Wessel on the other, in
which he reached the conclusion that the latter were all more Christian
and less offensive than Luther. He even went so far at the close of
his treatise as to say that if it were possible for all the heretics v/ho
lived in the Apostles' days and afterwards, to rise from the dead
and to come together face to face with Luther in a general council or
otherwise, they would no doubt damn him as a godless arch-heretic,
and refuse to have any fellowship with him ; so unheard-of, dread
ful, and abominable was the false doctrine which Luther had put
forward."^ These first attempts to bring into view the historical parallels of
earlier times, whether proceeding from the Reformers or their adver
saries, were all partial and incomplete, and possessed no Later
value beyond that of occasional pieces. A more com- ^^esearohes.
prehensive treatment of the Reformers before the Reformation, their
doctrines and their lives — a treatment under which the different
' This rare tract bas the title, Wie Under the name 'Pickards,' the author
-sich jokannis Huss, der Pickarder, mid no doubt refers to the Waldenses ; but,
Johan7Usvon Wessalia Leren mid Biicher in fact, he treats in this part of his tract,
m-it Martina Luther vergleicheii, Besch- without knowing it, of the Bohemian
rieben durch Doctor Johann Fabri. Pre- Brethren, for he founds his remarks upon
face dated, 'Prag, i Sep., 1528.' There the Confession presented by the latter to
is a copy in the Royal Library at Dresden. King Wladislaus.

4 • THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. (introduction.
individualities were exhibited in the light of their unity of principle
and spirit-became possible only after the Reformation had, in some
measure at least, been brought to a close, and admitted of being
taken into one view as a completed work. And this point was not
reached till the middle of the sixteenth century.
From that date important works of such a character began to
appear on the evangelical side. On the side of Rome only one work
omish has a claim to be mentioned in this connection, viz., the
vtewi^r'^uB. Collection of Documents, Controversial Tracts,^ and the-
like, relating to Pre-Reformation Persons and Parties, published by
Ortuin Gratius of Cologne in 1535, in prospect of the general
council which had then been announced. He was himself one of
the Cologne ' Obscuri Viri,' but was favourable to Church Reform
in the Catholic sense ; and it was with this view that he selected
and published these pieces in the well-known Fasciculus.'^
The corresponding works on the evangelical side divide themselves.
into two groups, according to the point of view from which they
Protestant regard the particular facts which they embrace. The-
views. first group — and this is by far the most numerous — views-
its subject as a history of persecution, or of evangelical martyrs. The
second group deals with the personalities whom it introduces as wit
nesses of the truth, who in earlier times opposed themselves to the
Papacy and its ' superstition.' The first group may be correcdy
described as more or less belonging to the sphere of the history of
the Church, and the second as belonging to the history of doctrine.
The most important, and indeed almost the only representative of
the latter group, is Matthias Flacius of Illyricum, property called
Matthias Vlatzich Frankowitsch. This greatest of the
Fiacms. historians belonging to the Lutheran Church of the six
teenth century, the founder of The Magdeburg Centuries, published
in 1556 his Catalogue of Witnesses to the Truth who opposed themselves
to the Pope before our Age, as a work preliminary to the Centuries,
which appeared in repeated editions, and continued to receive con
siderable enrichments even in the seventeenth century."
The lead of the first group is taken by an Englishman, the venerable
John Foxe. The experiences of his own life and of the
Church of his native country suggested to him the plan
of a Church History, arranged under the leading idea of the persecu-
^ Fasciculus rertim expetendarum ac ^ Catalogus testium Veritatis qui ante-
fugiendarum. Colon, 1535, fol. It was nostram aetatein reclamarunt Papae.
not difficult for the Englisli theologian, Basel, 1556, Bvo. 1562, fol. Geneva,
Edward Brown, to revise, with additions, 1608, fol. Frankf., i656, 410., with a.
this collection in the interests of Protes- supplement, printed in Cassel, 1667.
tantism. London, 1690, fol. 2 vols.

INTRODUCTION.] FOXE'S MARTYROLOGY. 5
tions directed in successive ages against the friends of evangelical truth.
During the bloody persecutions which took place under Queen Mary,
many faithful men fled to the Continent and found an asylum in the
Rhinelands and Switzeriand— tf.^-., in Frankfort and Strasburg, in Basel,
Zurich, Geneva, and elsewhere. Among others John Foxe repaired
to Strasburg, and here appeared in 1554 the first edition of the first
book of his History of the Church and its Chief Persecutions in all
Europe from the times of Wycliffe down to the Present Age, a work
which he had proceeded with thus far before he left England, and
which he dedicated to Duke Christopher of Wiirtemberg.' He
commenced the history with Wycliffe, parriy, no doubt, from patriotic
feeling, but partly also because he regarded the measures adopted
against Wycliffe as the beginning of the storm of persecution which
had continued to rage in England, Bohemia, and Scotland down to
his own day. Nor must we omit to mention here that at the end of
the sixteenth century and in the first half of the seventeenth, Foxe's
Book of Martyrs was a favourite family book in many godly Eng
lish households. Ladies were wont to read it aloud to their chil
dren, and to their maidens while at work; and boys as soon as
they could read took to the much-loved book. It helped in no
small degree to steel the Protestant character of the English people
in the seventeenth century.
Foxe's work gave the key-note, and became a model for many similar
works in the German, French, and Bohemian tongues ; and in most
cases these writings, under the title of Martyrologies, did European
not confine themselves, any more than Foxe had done, to Martyrologies.
the domestic persecutions of the countries of their several authors, but
included Germany, France, and England, and went back also to the
centuries which preceded the Reformation. When a new edition of
Foxe was in preparation in 1632, the Bohemian exiles then living in
the Netherlands were requested to draw up an account of the perse
cutions which had fallen upon their native church, with a view to
its being incorporated with the English Book of Martyrs. But the
new edition was finished at press before the narrative was ready,
and the Bohemian work remained in manuscript till it appeared
I Commentarii rerum in Ecclesia and, after his death, in 1587, a second
gestarum, .inaxlviaruTnque per totaTn English edition came out in 1610. But
Europam ferseciitionum a Wiclivi tern- the completest edition was that of 1684,
paribus ad haiic usque actatem Descriptio. in three large folios, with the title. Acts
Liber I. Autore Joanne Foxo, Anglo. and Monuments of these latter andpcritous
Argentorati, MDLIV. Small 8vo. 221 pp. days, etc. Several editions have also ap-
The second Latin edition, considerably peared in our own time, the best being
enlarged, appeared at Basel, in folio, in that edited, with copious and valuable
1559. After his return to England Fo.^ce notes, by the Rev. Josiah Pratt and the
published his work in English in 1563 ; Rev. Dr. Stoughton.

6 THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. [introduction-.
in 1648 at Amsterdam or Leyden, under the title, Historia Persecu-
tionum Ecclesice Bohemicce, which was subsequently translated into
German and Bohemian.
During the polemical period which reached from the last quarter
of the sixteenth to nearly the close of the seventeenth century, all
Seventeenth that was done in the field of pre-Reformation history
"rhomas" ^""^ research was deeply tinged with a controversial
James. character — a remark which applies equally to Germany,
France, and England. The first Bodley librarian at Oxford, Thomas
James, was an instance in point. This indefatigable scholar, one of
the most learned and acute controversialists against Rome, published
in 1608 An Apology for J^ohn Wyclif.^ It was written with a polemical
view — but at that date it needed a learned and historical interest to
be uppermost in the mind even of a polemical writer to induce him to
take up the subject of a precursor of the Reformation. Most men
were so completely engrossed by the controversies of their own time,
that they had neither inclination nor leisure to make researches into
the history of the past.
It was not till the storm-waves of controversial excitement subsided
that the early Reformers began to awaken a purer and more unpre
judiced historical interest. From that time, about the beginning of
the last century, two classes of works claim attention. Some writers
occupied themselves with the lives and labours of individual men of
pre-Reformation times, and generally in the way of collecting and
publishing materials which might serve the purpose of making our
knowledge of them more assured and complete ; while others dealt
with the different ways and means in and by which the pre-Refor
mation movement had been carried on as a whole.
The first of these functions was undertaken by men such as the
industrious collector, John Lewis, a clergyman of the Church of
Eighteenth England, who published in 1720 the eariiest complete
JotoS^s. biography of Wycliffe,^ a work full of material, which he
had brought together from public archives and manu
script sources. His subsequent monograph on Bishop Pecock was
designed to be a sequel to the biography of Wycliffe, and had the
same general character.3 Both works leave much to be desired in
' An Apology for John Wikliffe, show- " The History of the Life and Suffer
ing lus conformity -with the no-w Church ings of ihe liev. and Learned John
of England. Collected chiefly out of Wiclif, D.D. London, 1720 New
diverse luoris of his in written hand, by Edition, Oxford 1820
Gods especiall providence remaining in 3 The Life of the Learned and Right
the Pubhke Library at Oxford, of the Rev. Reynold Pecock, faithfully collefted
Honorable Foundation of Sir Thomas from records and MSS. London 172 ¦;
Bodley, Knight. Oxford, 1608. 410. and 1742. New Edition, Oxford, i82o.

introduction.] the PRE-REFORMATION PERIOD. 7
point of literary execution ; but for their wealth of original docu
ments they are still of no little value.
Among German scholars, the man who rendered the most meri
torious services in the collection and publication of pre-Reformation
documents was Professor Hermann Von der Hardt of Helmstadt.
His vast and masterly collection of monuments, in illustration of the
history of the Council of Constance,' had for its chief ^^^^^
object to establish by documentary proof the necessity waioh. '
for Reformation which existed at the time of that reforming council.
The excellent example set by Von der Hardt served as a spur to
others, and stimulated, in particular, the younger Walch to publish
his Monuinents of the Middle Age, which began to appear in Gottin
gen in 1757.= The work consists entirely of documents relating to
Church reform, and all belonging to the fifteenth century, being in
part speeches which were delivered in the Council of Constance,
and partly treatises and tractates of John of Goch, John of Wesel,
and others.
On the other hand, we find that since the commencement of the
eighteenth century, -ivorks began to appear conceived in a purely
historical and unprejudiced spirit, containing studies or reflections on
the Reformation movements viewed together as a whole;
on the v.orious means and ways which were chosen ° ° °° >
to promote them; and on the different groups of the Reformers.
Walch calls attention in one place to the fact, that there are two classes
of witnesses to the truth — those who complain of the vices of the
clergy of all degrees, and those who complain of the errors of the
teachers. It is well known that the number of writers belonging to the
second class is a small one ; but all the more highly must the fe'vf
works be valued in which Roman doctrines are confuted. Among
writings of this category Walch rightly reckons John of Goch's
tractate on Errorf in reference to the Evangelical law.
This distinction among the Reformers was not new ; it rests, at all
events, upon the saying of Luther before mentioned, that Wycliffe
and Huss mainly attacked the life of the Popish Church, while he,
on the cohtrary, attacked chiefly its doctrine. But, though not new,
this reflection, together with others of a similar kind occurring in
different writers of that period, indicates a mode of regarding the sub
ject from a purely historical point of view, far removed from the
bitterness of polemical feeling.
In the second and third decades of the present century, when
I Rerum Concilii Constantiensis ' Monimenta medii aevi. Vol. i., fasc.
Tomi l.-vi. Fol. 1696-1700. 1-4 (1757-1760). Vol. 11., fasc. i, 2
(1761-1764).

8 THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. [introduction.
Protestant writers applied themselves to the production of historical
monographs with so much interest, and in such a masterly style both
of research and composition, it is at first sight surprising
MoSern , , , . , ^ i • ._ r
historioai that no One, for a long time, took for a subject of por-
en encies. J.J.^J^.^Jg g^^y gf jjjg Reformation figures of the middle
age. Chrysostom and TertuUian, Bernard of Clairvaux, and even
Gregory VII. and Innocent III., all found at that time enthusiastic
biographers ; but no one had an eye for Huss, for John of Wesel, and
least of all, for Wycliffe. This is explained in some measure by the
circumstance that the historical branch of theology had to take a share
in the general aim of those years, and was called upon, before every
thing else, to contribute to the regeneration of Christian feeling, and
the new upbuilding of the kingdom of God, after a long period of
negation and deadness. This situation determined the choice which
was made of subjects for fresh historical portraiture. Both writers and
readers felt an inferior degree of sympathy for men in whom the critical
spirit had prevailed, and who had taken up a position of antagonism
to the Church-institutions and teaching of their age ; and perhaps,
too, both writers and readers were less capable of understanding them.
It was not till the commencement of the second quarter of our
century that due attention began again to be directed to ' the Re
formers before the Reformation;' and as, once before,
interest in in the middle age itself, England was the country where
Dr. Vaughan. the first important precursor ofthe Reformation arose,
so also, in our century, England led the way in re
calling the memory of her own great son by the appliances of
historical science, and thereby setting an example which other
countries followed. Dr. Robert Vaughan published, in 1820, his
Lt/e of Wycliffe, a work founded upon a laborious study of the manu
script writings of Wycliffe, especially of his English sermons and
tracts.' The way was now opened up, and other explorers soon
I Life and Opinions of John de into the series of Wycliffe's writings — acir-
WycUffe, D.D., illustrated principally cumstance of much importance, because
from his unpublished Manuscripts, 2 thereby it became possitile to follow, in
vols. London, 1828. The second im- some degree, the gradual progress of the
proved edition appeared in 1831, and Reformer's opinions ; and a comparison of
in 1853 Dr. Vaughan published a new the dates of his numerous writings served
work in one volume, entitled, John de to exhibit his character for consistency
Wycliffe : A Monograph. The merits of and firmness in a more honourable light.
Vaughan's labours on Wycliffe consist "I'he chief defects of Vaughan's work -were
of two things : (i) In the copious infor- that he manifested less interest in the
mation touching Wycliffe obtained from speculative and strictly theological element
manuscript sources. Vaughan was, in ofWycliffe'swritingsthan in their practical
particular, the first who communicated and religious bearing, and that he left
a fuller knowledge of Wycliffe's Enghsh almost entirely out of consideration his
sermons. (2) In a certain degree of Latin works, being of opinion that they
chronological order, which he introduced were scholastic treatises of comparatively

uNTRODucTioN.i REFORMERS BEFORE THE REFORMATION. g
followed, partly at first under the influence of national and provincial
interest; for the first writers, so far as I can find, who followed
Vaughan's example, as early as 1829 and 1830, were Netherlanders,
-who chose for their subject the history of their countrymen, Gerhard
¦Groot and the Brethren of the Common Life.
But now German historical research appeared upon the field, and
without confining itself to its own nationality, devoted to the precur
sors of the Reformation a series of investiarations which
11 • ,- , . , Works on
were equally conspicuous for thoroughness and success. early
First in time, and most distinguished in merit as a labourer ^ 0=^™®''^-
in the field, was Carl UUmann, with his monograph on John Wessel,
which appeared in 1834, a work which he expanded so much in the
second edition by the addition of accounts of John of Goch, John of
Wesel, the German Mystics, and the Brethren of the Common Life,
that he could give to the whole the title of Reformers before the Ref or-
fnation.^ The first edition of Ullmann's work was speedily followed by
two works on Savonarola, by German scholars, Rudelbach and Meier. ^
And here I may be allowed to add the remark, that in i860 a third work
on Savonarola was published by an Italian, Pasquale Villari, a Roman
Catholic, which discovers able research, earnest feeling, and deep
veneration for his great and noble countryman.^ This instance of im
provement in the manner of treating such subjects, on the side of the
Roman Catholic Church, does not stand alone. It is a gratifying fact,
Tvhich we are here very happy to acknowledge, that much has been
done in our own time by writers of that Church to put the Reformation
efforts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in their true light. As
instances, we may mention the work on the Refo7-ming Councils, by
Herr Von Wessenberg,+ and the monograph of Dr. Schwab of
Wiirzburg, on John Gerson, a work of solid merits It cannot of
little worth. But, notwithstaiMing these jnation, vorndhmlich in Deutschland mid
defects, Vaughan's work must always take den Nicderlanden. English translation
a foremost place as the basis of all accu- by Rev. Robert Menzies. Clark, Edin-
Tate knowledge of Wycliffe, and it has, in burgh, 1855.
fact, been drawn upon by many later = Rudelbach, Savonarola tend Seine
writers, e.g., in England, by Le Bas, in Zeit. 1835. Fredr. Karl Meier, Giro-
his Life of Wycliffe, 1853 ; in the Nether- lamo Savonarola, aus sum grossen T/uilc
lands, by DeRuever-Gronemann,Z5;a/?-yfo Imndschriftlichen Quellen dargcstellt,
in Johannis Wiclifli Vitam, Ingenium, 1836.
JScripta, Utrecht, 1837 ; in Germany, by 3 Paschalis Villari, Geschichte Giro-
Engelhard, Wycliffe als Prediger, 'Eila.n- lamo Savonarola's und seiner Zeit. Nach
gen, 1834 ; by Neander and Gieseler, in neuen Quellen dargestellt. Two volumes.
their histories of the Church, published i860 and 1861.
in English by T. and T. Clark, of Edin- '> Die grossen Kirchenversammhmgen
burgh ; and, further, in my Essay on des fiinfzehnten und sechzentcn Jahrhun-
Wiclif and the Lollards, 1853. derts, in Beziehung aiif Kirclienverbcs-
I Johann Wessel, ein Vorgdnger seriing, geschichtlich mid kritisch darges-
.Luther's. Gotha. 1834. The second tellt. In four volumes. Constanz, 1840.
•edition, in two volumes, appeared in 1841, i Johannes Gerson, Eine Mouo-
.wa6.eTXhe\.\'deRefor7natorenvor der Refor- graphic. Wurzburg, 1858.

10 THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. [inteoductior.
course astonish any one that there should be other writers of that
Church who still treat all Reformers with undisguised aversion, as in
the case of John Huss.'
Returning to Protestant Church historians, the example of Ullmann
has stimulated many to similar researches in the same field. On the
subject in particular of the German mystics of the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth centuries, the labour of investigation during the last thirty
years has been so widely extended, that in order not to lose ourselves,
in a useless enumeration of names and writings, we must content
ourselves with mentioning one man instead of many, namely, Charles
Schmidt, of Strasburg.^ Nor would it be just to pass over here in
silence the services of Dr. Palacky of Prague, in elucidating the
history, not only of Huss, but his precursors and successors. Not
only as a historian, but also as a collector and editor of original
documents of history, Palacky has undeniable merits.? His collec
tion of documents for the history of John Huss, in point of com
pleteness, criticism, and orderly arrangement, is a veritable model.*
It is a fact which applies generally to the third quarter of our
century, that the labours of research among the original sources of
history, have been such as to result in the discovery and publication
of a multitude of hitherto concealed or scarcely accessible original
documents, and in the re-issue of several others which were known
before, in a more critical and trustworthy form. To these belong,
for example, the writings of Eckart, the speculative mystic, edited by
Franz Pfeififer, the edition of the v/orks of John Staupitz, commenced
by Knaake, and the publication of the collected Bohemian sermons
and tracts of Huss, by Karl Jaromir Erben.s In addition, Con-
stantin Hofler, in Prague, has published a series of The Historians
of the Hussite Movement in Bohemia.^
Nor has England remained behind. Her most important achieve-
PubUoation of ™^"'- '^^ *^^ ^^^'^' ^""^ '^'^^ ^''^'^ °f '^^ industry and critical
the WyoUfflte labour of many years, is the complete critical edition of
the Wycliffite versions of the Bible, edited by the Rev.
Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden.7 Among the numerous
chronicles and documents bearing upon the mediaeval history of
England, which for a series of years back have been published at
' Von Helfert, Hus und. liieronymus, 4 Documenta Joannis Plus vitam
1853. Hofler, Magister Johannes Hus. doctrinamque illustraniia. Prague, 1869.
Prague, 1864. 5 Published in Prague in three-
= Johann Tauler von Strassburg. volumes, 1865-8.
Hamburg, 1841. Nicolaus von Basel. ^ Pubhshed in Vienna, 1856, in 3 vols.,
Vienna, 1866. (FontesrerumAustriacarum,&\i.\.Yo\.2).
3 Geschichte von BSlimen. In five 7 The Wycliffite Versio?is of the Holy
parts. Prague, 1836-1867. Bible. Infourvoluines,4to. Oxford,i8so.

INTRODUCTION.] WYCLIFFITE LITERATURE. II
the cost of the State, some of them never before in print, and
others in improved critical editions, there are found many writings.
in the department of ecclesiastical history, and especially such as;
have a bearing upon pre-Reformation subjects.
To mention only some of these, the Political Poems, edited by
Thomas Wright, contain a whole series of polemical and satirical
poems, which appeared for and against the Wycliffe movement in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. ^ Further, of important -works in the
interest in connection with our subject is the correspon- ' koUs series.*
dence of Grossetete, the celebrated Bishop of Lincoln, edited by the Rev.
H. R. Luard, of Cambridge.^ A highly rich and acceptable new source
for the history of Wycliffe and his followers, has been opened up in the
Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri yo/iannis Wychf, collected without
doubt by the controversialist, Thomas Netter, of AValden, and pub
lished for the first time in 1858, by Professor Walter Waddington
Shirley, of Oxford, with an Introduction and Notes full of very
valuable matter.s At Shirley's suggestion, recommended on the
strongest grounds, the curators of the Clarendon and University Press;
resolved to publish a selection of Wycliffe's works. Of „ ,.
'¦ ¦' WyohfTe's
this collection first appeared the Trialogus, with a text English
critically amended from four Vienna MSS. of the work ; ¦*
and next followed Wycliffe's English sermons, with a large number of
his short English tracts, edited by Mr. Thomas Arnold,^ son and
namesake ofthe illustrious 'Arnold of Rugby.'
[More recently still, the publication of Wycliffe's English works has
been completed by the issue of a volume, edited by Mr. F. D.
Matthew, in the series of the ' Early English Text Society.' The
' Wyclif Society ' has made a beginning with the Latin works by
the publication of the Polemical Tracts, in two volumes, edited by
Dr. Rudolf Buddensieg, of Leipsic, other works being promised
to follow. A remarkable monograph on Wiclif and Hus, showing in
a way hitherto unattempted the connection between the later and the
earlier Reformers, has been published in German by Dr. Johann
Loserth, Professor of History in the University of Czernowitz. An
I Political Poems and Songs relating by the Rev. Walter Waddington Shirley,
to English History. Composed during M.A. London, 1858. (Rolls Series.)
ihe period from the accession of Edward * Joannis Wiclif Trialogus, cum
III. to that of Richard III. Edited by Supplemento Trialogi. Edidit Gott-
Thomas Wright. London, 1859. 2 vols. hardus Lechler. Oxonii, 1869.
(Rolls Series.) 5 Select English Works of John
" Roberti Grossteste Episcopi quondam Wycliffe. Edited by Thomas Arnold,
Lincolniensis Epistolcs. Edited by H.R. M.A., Oxford. Vol. I. (1869) Sermons
Luard. London, 1861. (Rolls Series.) on the Gospels for Sundays and Festivals.
3 Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Vol. n. (1871) Sermons on the Ferial
Johannis Wyclif, cum Tritico. Ascribed Gospels and Sunday Epistles. Treatises.
to Thomas Netter of Walden. Edited Vol. HI. (1871) Miscellaneous Works.

12 THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. [introduction.
English translation has appeared (1884) by the Rev. M. J. Evans.
References will be made to this important work in another part of the
present volume.]
Thus much has been done since the middle of the present century
to elucidate Reformation history, partly by the opening up of new
historical sources and the publication of original documents, and
pardy by the monographic elucidation of single parts of the subject
We venture to come forward as fellow-labourers in the same field, in
undertaking to set forth anew the life and teaching of Wycliffe,
Importance of according to the original sources. John Wycliffe appears
¦wyoiiffe's life, jq ^g (-q j-^g ^^ centre of the whole pre-Reformation
history. In him meet a multitude of converging lines from the
centuries which preceded him ; and from him again go forth manifold
influences, like wave-pulses, which spread themselves widely on every
side, and with a force so persistent that we are able to follow the
traces of their presence to a later date than the commencement of
the German Reformation. Such a man deserves to have an historical
portraiture which shall aim to do justice to the greatness of his
personality, and to the epochal importance of his work.

CHAPTER I.
ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE.
I. — Mixture and Consolidation of Races in the
English People.
IT is impossible to take a rapid survey of the course of English
history during the middle ages, without being struck with the
observation how many foreign elements mingled with it in ever
varying succession, and how violent were the collisions and deep-
reaching the contests which sprang from this cause.
We leave out of view, of course, the Romans who had quitted the
soil of Britain before the close of ancient history, and had left the
country to itself. In the middle of the fifth century, the successive
Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, all sea-going tribes of Lower immigrations.
Germany, effected a conquest of the land, and drove back the Celtic
inhabitants to its western borders. That was an immigration of pure
Geraian races. Five centuries later the predatory and devastating expe
ditions of the Danes broke over the country. That was the Scandi
navian invasion, which in the end took the form of a personal union
between England and Denmark. But when, after two more centuries,.
the long-settled Saxon population stirred itself again and bestowed
the crown upon one of its own race, Duke William of Normandy
intervened with a strong hand : with the Conquest the Franco-
Norman nationality gained the ascendency in England ; and it was
not till two more centuries had passed away that the Saxon element
¦RTought itself again into prominence and power.
What a piebald mixture of peoples ! What changes of fortune
among the different nationalities ! And yet the result of all was not
a mere medley of peoples, without colour and character, but, on the
contrary, a nation and a national character of remarkable vigour,
and extremely well defined. For the numerous collisions and hard
conflicts which occurred among the different races served only to
strengthen and steel the kernel of the Saxon element of the popula-

14 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [cH.i.§r
tion. This effect can be clearly seen and measured in the language
¦and literature of the country, which are the first things upon which
¦every people stamps its own impress.
It is a fact that after the first and earliest efflorescence of the Anglo-
Sa-xon language, in the age immediately succeeding the conversion of
Successive ^he people to Christianity, a second took place in the
^^^of tS™*^ days of Alfred the Great— not without a deep connec-
language. tJon with the elasdc reaction of the Saxon nationality
against Danish despotism. And it is a circumstance of the same
kind that the new Anglo-Saxon dialect developed itself from about the
year iioo — a fact unquestionably owing to the Conquest which had
taken place not long before, and an indication that the old Saxon
stock was once more gathering up its strength in reaction against the
new Norman-French element. On the other hand, the first develop
ment of the language which is called ' English,' in distinction from
Anglo-Saxon — old English, we mean- — belongs to the period in which
a fusion began to take place between the Norman families and the
Saxon stock, and that in the direction of an approximation of the
Norman nobility . to the Saxons — not the converse. The former
ceased to feel as Frenchmen, and learned to think and speak as
Englishmen. We shall soon have an opportunity of convincing ourselves what
¦an important share the religious interest had in producing this change.
Meanwhile so much as this is clear, that the introduction of the
Norman-French element, like the Danish invasion of an earlier time,
did not in the least hinder, but on the contrary gave a stimulus to,
the development of a compact and independent Saxon nationality.
It was in conflict with foreign elements and their usurped power that
the Saxon nation first of all maintained its own individuality, and
'next developed itself into the English people.
When we turn our attention to the faith of the nation and the reli-
.gious side of their life, the antagonisms and the successive changes
Keugious which they present to view are scarcely less abrupt. The
development. British inhabitants of the country had received the
Gospel during the Roman occupation, but apparently not from Rome,
but rather, in the first instance, from the shores of the Levant. When
the Roman domination of the island came to an end, the Britons had
already for the most part been converted to Christianity. On the
other hand, the Saxons and Angles, the Frisians and Jutes, when
they established themselves in the country, were entirely ignorant of
the Gospel. They brought with them the old German Paganism,
they drove back the British population and Christianity along with it,

S97-755.1 THE BRITISH AND SAXON CHURCHES. 15
and they stamped again upon the land, as far as they might, a heathen
impress. Then arrived, at the end of the sixth century, at the instance of
¦Gregory the Great, a completely organised Christian mission ; and
within the comparaUvely brief period of less than a hun- conversion ot
•dred years this mission accomplished the result of *^® saxons.
•carrying over to Christianity the whole of the related kingdoms of
the Saxon Heptarchy. And now the old inhabitants of Celto-British
descent and the Saxons (as the Britons called the others) might have
joined hands as Christians, had it not been for an obstacle which
could not be taken out of the way.
The social and liturgical form in which Christianity was planted
among the Saxons in England was essentially different from the
ecclesiastical order and usage of the old British Chris- „^ „
° The Saxon
tians. Among the latter, to say nothing of smaller church
. . . Roman.
liturgical differences, the ecclesiastical centre of gravity
¦was in the monasteries, not in the episcopate, in addition to which
they were under no subjection to the Bishops of Rome — their church
life was entirely autonomous and national. The missionaries to the
Saxons had been sent forth from Rome, and the Anglo-Saxon Church
was, so to speak, a Roman colony ; its whole church order received,
as was to be expected, the impress of the Church of the West : in
particular, the government of the church was placed in the hands of
the bishops, who in their turn were dependent upon the See of Rome.
The difference, or rather the opposition, was felt on both sides vividly
enough, and led to severe collisions — to a struggle for victory, the
prize of which on the one side was exclusive domination by the
Roman Church, on the other, if not the dominancy, at least the con
tinued existence of the old British ecclesiastical constitution. On
-which side lay the better hope of victory it is not difficult to estimate.
A like contest repeated itself somewhat later upon the German soil,
¦where a missionary who went forth from the young Anglo-Saxon
Church opened fight against the church which had been planted
among the Germans in part by old British missionaries, and at last
bound the German Church so closely and tightly to Rome, that it
too was converted by Boniface very much into a Roman colony.
It would be an error, nevertheless, to believe that Rome obtained
in England an absolute victory, or that the old British Church, with
its peculiar independent character, disappeared in the Romish Anglo-
Saxon Church without a trace. It is nearer the truth to Moderating
say, that the Bridsh Church made its influence felt in the influences.
Anglo-Saxon, at least in single provinces, especially in the north of

l6 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [Ch. i. § r
England; and perhaps it was dtie in part to this influence that a'-
certain spirit of church autonomy developed itself at an early period
among the Anglo-Saxon people. It was not long after this develop
ment began to manifest itself that the Danes invaded the country,
and transplanted into England the heathenism of Scandinavia.
The threatening danger woke up the Saxon elasticity to a vigorous.
resistance. The wars of freedom under King Alfred were animated
by a Christian inspiration, and by the feeling that not only the exis
tence of the nation, but also of the Church of Christ in the land was
at stake.
But what a new spirit prevailed in church affairs after the Norman
Conquest ! It was a genuine adventure of the Norman type — an
enterprise of bold, romantic daring, when Duke William,,
The Norman ... ,. . , ' , ... , . ,,.,-,. .
Conquest aud With a show of right, and availing himself of favouring
°^' circumstances, seized upon the English crown. But he
took the step not without the previous knowledge and approval of
the Pope. Alexander II. sent him, for use in the enterprise, a con
secrated banner of St. Peter. The Duke was to carry it on board
his own ship. With the conquest of England by the Normans, Rome
hoped to make a conquest for herself, and not without reason. In
the noble families of Normandy the knightly lust of battle and con
quest was most intimately blended with knightly devotion to the
Church and the Pope. In point of fact, from the moment of the
conquest, the bond between Rome and the English Church was
drawn incomparably closer than it had ever been under the Saxon
dynasty. The clergy, partly of Norman-French, partly of pure Roman
descent, to whom the English sees were now transferred, could have
no national sympathies with Anglo-Saxon Christianity. Strangers,
they passed into the midst of a strange church. It was natural that
they should take up the position of abstract ecclesiastical right.
We may recall the instance of Lanfranc, an Italian, who, in 1070, four
years after the battle of Hastings, from being Prior of Bee, was pro
moted to be Archbishop of Canterbury. At the same date a Norman
became Archbishop of York. As a general rule, the highest dignities
of the English Church fell to Normans ; and these priests of the
Continent were all supporters of the new hierarchical movement,
which began in the middle of the same century — of those ideas touch
ing the supremacy of the Pope over the Church, and of the Church
over the State, of which Hildebrand himself had been the deliberate
and most emphatic champion. William the Conqueror, indeed, was
not the man to suffer in silence any encroachments of the Pope upon

II06-I2I3.] ENGLISH KINGS AND THE PAPACY. ly
the rights of his crown, to say nothing of the pretensions of any
ecclesiastical dignitary in his own kingdom. A serious discord, which
took place between the crown and the Primate, now Anselm of Can
terbury, arising out of the investiture controversy, was only composed
by the prudent concessions of Paschal II. to Henry I. in 1106.
All the more formidable was the conflict between the royal and
ecclesiastical powers under Henry II., exactly a hundred years after
the conquest. The quarrel in the main concerned the Henry 11.
limits of the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions — the ^^^ Beoket.
right of exemption, e.g., from the jurisdiction of the municipal courts,
which was claimed for the clergy by Archbishop Thomas Becket ;
and it may suffice to remind the reader in passing how in the end the
Archbishop was assassinated (1170) by several knights, not without
the indirect complicity of the king, and how, in consequence of that
evil deed, Henry had to bow himself down in most humiliating
penance (July 12, 1174) at the grave ofthe now canonised champion
ofthe Church's rights and liberties — a penance far more ignominious
even than that of Canossa. The hierarchy obtained a great victory,
which indeed had been in prospect ever since the Norman Conquest.
And yet this was not the culminating point to which the power of
the Church attained in England. It did not reach that till forty
years later. Innocent III. accomplished what Gregory innocent iii.
VII. had striven for in the Conqueror's day in vain. ^"'^ •'^°'™-
King John, son of Henry IL, finding himself in the greatest danger,
both from without and within the realm, had recourse to a desperate
step. On May 15, 1213, he surrendered his kingdom, in favour of
the apostles Peter and Paul and the Church of Rome, into the hands
of Innocent III. and his successors. He received it, indeed, im
mediately back again from the Pope in fief, but not before taking for
himself and his successors, in all due form, the oath of fealty to the
Pope as his liege lord, and binding himself to pay an annual tribute
of one thousand marks sterling, in addition to the usual Peter's pence.
Thereby England became literally a portion of the ' Estates of the
Church,' the King a vassal of the Pope, and the Pope liege lord and
sovereign of England. England entered into and became a member
of the Papal state system, which already included Portugal, Arragon,
the kingdom of Sicily, Hungary, Bulgaria, and other Stales — a rela
tion to the Papacy which was turned to practical account to the
utmost of the Church's power, by the levying of imposts from the
kingdom, as well as by the accumulation of English Church offices
and dignities in the hands of Italians.
But from the moment when King John made over to the Papal
3

l8 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. ,. 5 1
See a feudal supremacy in England, the moral influence of the Papacy
in the country began to stoop towards its overthrow. The English
nobility were the first to feel the humiliation most deeply, and com
plained indignantly to the king that he had brought what he had
found a free kingdom into bondage.' Within two years the condi
tion of things for a considerable time was such that the revolted
barons held the chief power of the State in their hands. And then
it was that Magna Charta, the fundamental charter of the nation's
liberties, was negotiated between John and his subjects (June 15,
12 15). In this document, the importance of which was even then
universally felt, not a word was said of the liege-lordship of the Pope,
although only two years had passed since this relation had been
entered into. No doubt this omission was intentional on the part of
the barons.
Still the whole movement which had been called forth in ever
growing force against the despotic rule of the distrusted prince, was
Eeaotion ^^^o aimed, in the second instance, against Rome. The
against Eome. King himself, in a letter to Innocent IIL (September
13, 12 15), assures him that the earls and barons of the kingdom
publicly alleged as the chief cause of their revolt, his own act of
submission to the Pope ; " and the Pope, on his side, considered the
insurrection as directed in part against himself. An important
reaction in the spirit of the Anglican Church, 3 and in its attitude
towards the Roman See, could not fail to be produced by the fact,
that in that celebrated state-treaty there was a guarantee given for all
the liberties and rights of the national church, as well as for all those
of all other classes and corporations in the kingdom. While, in the
first instance, the great nobles and hierarchy, the lower nobility and
the municipalities, all learned to feel their oneness as a nation, and
to be sensible of their interests in common, there was no less a
development in the ecclesiastical body of a national spirit. The
spirit of insular independence began to make itself felt also in the
religious sphere.
It had a powerful influence in the same religious direction, that
from the beginning of the thirteenth century the Saxon element of
oro-jrth of the the nation was again steadily coming to the front, and
Baxon element, pressing the Norman element more and more into the
background. Already, in 1204, Normandy had fallen to the crown
' The complaint against King John, ' Rymer, Foedera. Vol. I., Part i,
made by the barons, ' quod suo tempore p. .138.
ancillavit regnum quod invenit liberum,' 3 So the Church was called even thus
is given by Abbot William in his C^ra»«<:/c early — e.g., in Magna Charta itself 
j>f the Monastery of St. Andrew, in Rymer, i, 132. Comp. Pauli, Geschichte
D'Achery's Spicilegium, Vol. 11., p. 853. von England, Vol. in., pp. 898, 909.

I204-1S40.] NATIONAL ANTI-PAPAL INFLUENCES. 19
of France. This loss had naturally the effect of first diminishing the
immigration from Normandy, and then, in time, of stopping it
altogether. On the other hand, the families which had previously
immigrated — to say nothing of the decimation which they had
suffered in consequence of the political movements under King John
and his successor, Henry III. — had in process of time drawn closer
in many ways to the Saxon population. The arbitrary oppression
which the nobles suffered at the hand of the kings brought up the
memory of the earlier rights and privileges of the nobility under the
Saxon kings. The Barons began to claim the like for themselves,
and appealed to them in support of their claim in their struggle with
King John. The nobles no longer felt themselves to be Normans,
but Englishmen ; and all the more so, the more clearly men became
conscious how much in questions of freedom and popular right was
owing to the support of the lower nobility, and even to the munici
palities, especially to the citizens of London.
This consolidation of the nation, in which the Saxon population
constituted the kernel, could not remain without influence upon the
self-consciousness and the hereditary independent genius Auti-Roman
of the Anglican Church. A symptom of this appeared I'^ooeedings.
in the secret combination of noblemen and priests, which, in 1231
addressed threatening letters to the capitular bodies and the abbacies,
demanding of them to refuse payment to the agents of Rome of all
imposts in money and kind. Not only so ; but things, in fact, went
so far that a Roman cleric, who was in possession of an English
prelacy, was captured by the conspirators, and not set at liberty again
for five weeks, after the loss of all his goods ; while in country districts
the fuU corn lofts of Roman parish priests were plundered and
emptied.' In 1240 the cardinal legate Otho himself was menaced
most seriously by an insurrection of students in Oxford. Such
tumultuous proceedings were of course not suffered by the govern
ment. But neither were there wanting lawful measures directed
against the Roman usurpations. The nobles, in a letter to Gregory
IX., put in a protest in support of their violated rights of church
patronage; and even, bishops and prelates submitted complaints,
sometimes to the papal legates, and sometimes to the Pope himself
I Rocker of Wendover, Flores Histori- Roberti Grosseteste Epistolm, by Henry
.arum -"in Matthew of Paris, Historia R. Luard. (Rolls Series.) Lond., 1862, 3,
Major. London, 1686, p. 313. Compare p. 22.

20 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. i. § 2-
2. — Robert Grossetete, Bishop of Lincoln.
Of this state of feeling the most important and venerable representa
tive was indisputably the learned and courageous Bishop of Lincoln,
Robert Grossetete— a man who was held in exceprionally high
admiration by his contemporaries, to whom England in the following:
centuries also deferred as a high authority, and who was ever regarded
by Wycliffe in particular (who refers to him on innumerable occasions)
with the highest respect. To such a man it is due that we should
here present at least in outline a sketch of his character and career.
Robert Grossetete (in Latin Capito, in EngUsh Greathead) was
one of those rare men who so harmoniously combine mastery in
Character of scicnce with mastery in practical life, that they may be
Grossetete. termed princes in the domain of mind. As to science,
he united in himself the whole knowledge of his age to such an
extent that a man so eminent in genius as Roger Bacon, his junior
contemporary and grateful friend, said of him that ' The Bishop
of Lincoln was the only man living who was in possession of all
the sciences.' ' But, however comprehensive and independent his
knowledge was, it would be a great error to think of him as a man
who was more than everything else a man of learning. On the
contrary, with all his scientific greatness, Grossetete was still pre
dominantly a man of action — a man full of character in the highest.
sense, a churchman such as few have ever equalled ; and, from the
day of his elevation to the episcopate, every inch a bishop.
But when I ask myself what was the moving-spring, the innermost.
kernel of his aims and actions, I am able to name nothing but his.
godly solicitude and care for souls. When he carries on for years
a law-suit with his chapter for the right of episcopal visitation ; when
he contends for ' the freedom of the church,' apparently in a hier
archical spirit ; when he repels with decision the encroachments of
the Pope and his legates ; when he brings sharp discipline to bear
upon careless and worldly monks and priests, and labours to put
a stop to the desecration of churches and churchyards ; when he
forms and draws out the young Orders of the Franciscans and
Dominicans — in all this he has nothing else in view but the good
of souls. That is his last and highest aim, in the pursuit of which
the consciousness of his heavy responsibility attends him at every
step, while a sincere fear of God imparts such strength to his mind.
as to give him victory over all the fear of man.
How did Grossetete become the man he was ? Let us glance at.
' Opus tertium, Ed., Brewer, 1869, pp. 31, 91.

"7S-I253.] GROSSETETE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 21
the course of his outer and inner life. There are at least some
original materials from which we can attempt to obtain an answer
to this inquiry.'
It is an accepted date that Grossetete was born in 1175, or one
or two years earlier. For it is certain that at his death, in 1253, he
was a man of great age ; and when the learned Giraldus ^jg gg^^jy
Cambrensis recommended him to the Bishop of Here- years.
ford, A\'illiam de Vere, which took place at latest in 11 99 (for in
this year the bishop just named died), he gave him the title of
Magister, so that he was already a Master of Arts, and must have
been a young man of from twenty to twenty-five years ; and this
takes us back for his birth to nearly the same date as before. He
was a native of Stradbrooke, in the county of Suffolk, and according
to some chronicles, of humble extraction. The chronicle of Laner-
cost has a notice, which is credible enough in itself, and significant
of his character,^ that on one occasion Grossetete replied to an
earl, who had expressed some astonishment at his noble bearing
and manners, that it was true he was sprung of parents in humble
station, but from his earliest years he had made a study of the
characters of the best men in the Bible, and that he had formed
himself upon their model.
Of his student and travelling years we know little. Only so much
is certain, that he studied in Oxford. It is less clearly established,
' Of Grossetfite's numerous works lish Government, under the title, ¦ Roberti
nothing more than a few pieces have as Grosseteste, Episcopi quondam Lincolni-
vet been published. At the beginning of cnsis, Epistolce. London, 1862.' This
the sixteenth century his Commentaries valuable correspondence is the most trust
or y4Wrfo//<;, and on the AO'rf/tfl/ jTAco/ofJ' worthy source for learning the develop-
ofthe Pseudo Dionysius, were printed, the ment of the man and his character.
latter in Strasburg in 1502 ; but these Repeated attempts have been made to
subjects have very little interest for the furnish a Biography of GrossetSte, but
present a<>-e In the seventeenth century several of these never got beyond the
one of his successors in the See of Lin- stage of the collection of materials. So
coin Tohn WUIiams (1612-1641), who it befell Bishop Barlow of Lincoln,
died' Archbishop of York in 1649, con- Samuel Knight, Anthony Wood, and
ceived the design of publishing his col- Edward Brown. It was not till the end
lected works in tliree folios, and he had of last century that a biography of the
already made collections and preparations venerable man was prepared and sent
with that view ; but the outbreak of the to the press— Samuel Pegge s Life of
civil war prevented the execution of the Grosseteste. Lond., 1793. But the book
desi-'n Towards the end of the same was an ill-starred one ; most of the copies
centmv Edward Brown published in his are said to have perished in a fire which
Attendix to Xh& Fasciculus Rerum Expe- broke out in the printing office. The
tendarum etc., several pieces of Grosse- fact is certain, that the book is a very
t?te esoeciallv several of his sermons, rare one even in England, and that there
theolo-ical thoughts, and a portion of is hardly a single copy of it to be found
hiscoi?espondence. This correspondence m all the libraries of Germany. Luard
has recently been edited more critically m his preface, has thrown some fresh
-indinacompleteformbytheRev.H. R. light upon the life of Grossteste. See
I uard MA, of Cambridge, in the coUec- preface, pp. i.-<. -xciv.
tTon of Rerunt Britannicarum Medii aevi ' In Luard s Roberti Grosseteste s Efis-
S°A^,'«-^^,publishedatthecostoftheEng- tolcB. Preface, p. x.'^.xii.

22 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. i. § 2
but not in itself improbable, that he completed his studies in Paris.
Later, as already stated, he was introduced by Giraldus to the Bishop
of Hereford as a young man who would be of service to him, not
only in his manifold public employments and judicial decisions, but
also in the care of his health. In addition to theology, therefore,
Grossetete must have prosecuted successfully the study of medicine
and canon law. But Bishop de Vere died in 1199, and Grossetete
betook himself again to Oxford, where he remained for the next
thirty-five years, in the course of which he became Doctor of
Theology and Rector scholarum. Several of his writings, including
his Commentaries on Aristotle and Boethius, besides several theo
logical works, no doubt had their origin in lectures which he delivered
in the University. Several church preferments were also conferred
upon him, such as a stall in the Cathedral of Lincoln, the Arch
deaconry of Leicester, etc.
Towards the close of his residence in Oxford, he seems to have
experienced a religious awakening. In the end of October, 1231 or
Hisconsoien- 1232, he had a dangerous illness. On his sick-bed and
tiousness. during his recovery his heart appears to have been
deeply moved. He took counsel wi£h his conscience, particularly
on the question whether it was right before God for him to hold
several livings at the same time.'^ It was, without doubt, at this
time that, by the medium of a pious man whose name has not come
down to us, he submitted to the Pope the question whether he could,
with a good conscience, retain the parochial charge which he held,
along with his sinecure prebends. The answer which was orally
communicated to him was thoroughly Roman — by no means could
he retain such a plurality without a dispensatioyi. But this was a
mode of arrangement which his awakened conscience forbade him
to make use of, and without more ado he resigned the whole of the
benefices which he possessed, with the sole .exception of his stall at
Lincoln. We learn this from a letter of the year 1232 to his sister
Inetta — a nun.= The sister by no means approved of her brother's
self-denying step. She feared that by his act of renunciation of
income he had reduced himself to penury. But his only feeling
was one of relief from a burden on his conscience, and he endeavours
to remove her anxiety on that score, and to reconcile her to the
resolution to which he had already given effect. The conscientious
ness and the concern for his own soul, of which we have here a
• Grossetete alludes to this question know of no incident in his life with which
having been put by him in a letter to the I can more suitably connect it than witlu
Cardinal-Legate Otho, written in 1239, — that given in the text.
Ep. 74 of Luard's Coll., p. 242 ; and I " Epistolce, by Luard, 8, p. 43.

1=35.] GROSSETETE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.

23

glimpse, awakened in Grossetete an earnest concern for the cure
of souls at large, of which from that time forward he gave ever
stronger proofs.
After the death of the Bishop of Lincoln, Hugh of Wells, with
whom he was on terms of personal friendship, Grossetete, in the
spring of 1235, was elected by the chapter to the Bishop of
bishopric. As Chancellor of the University of Ox- Lincoln.
ford, as Archdeacon of Leicester, and in other positions, he had
already been successful in carrying out many measures of a practical
kind ; and now he was advanced to a post in which his action as
an ecclesiastical ruler shone out conspicuously far and wide.
This was in part owing to the importance of this particular see.
The diocese of Lincoln was then, and for some centuries afterwards,
by far the largest and most populous in the whole of England.
More than once in his letters Grossetete refers to its immense extent
and numerous inhabitants.' It included at that day eight arch
deaconries, of which only two may here be mentioned, Oxford and
Leicester — the former, because the University was subject to the
Bishop of Lincoln as its ordinary, and the latter, because to the
archdeaconry, a century later, Wycliffe, as parish priest of Lutterworth,
belonged. The cathedral, built at the commencement of the
Norman period, stands, with the older portion of the city, upon a
height, while the newer portion of the city descends the hill to the
plain watered by the river Witham. None of the EngUsh cathedrals
has so splendid a site as that of Lincoln ; with its three towers it is
seen at a distance of fifty miles to the north and thirty to the south,
and is considered one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the
kingdom.'' As soon as he was installed, Grossetete grasped the helm with
a firm hand, and took immediate steps for the removal of abuses
which had found their way into the diocese. His Eeforming
first act was to address a circular letter to all his measures.
archdeacons, in which he instructed them to admonish the parishes
of various evil customs which were on the increase, by which Sundays,
festivals, or holy names were desecrated. This missive goes right
into matters of practical life, and is inspired by a high moral
earnestness, by a conscientious solicitude for the good of souls, and
by a burning zeal for the House of God. 3 Nor was it only in
writing or by intermediaries, but also directly and personally, that
the new bishop intervened. In the very first year after his admis-
I EiistolcB. 40, p. 132; 41. P- 134; ' See Dugdale, Monast. Anglicamtm.
SO, p. 146: 88, p. 275. 3 /,J. 22, p. 72.

2i\. ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. .. § 2
sion to office he commenced a personal visitation of the monasteries
of the diocese, which resulted in not fewer than seven abbots and
three priors being immediately deprived.
Nor was it Grossetete's intention only to interfere in cases at a
distance, and to shut his eyes to disorders which lay nearer home.
He took steps to visit and reform the chapter of his own cathedral.
But now his troubles began. The chapter, consisting of not fewer
than twenty-one canons, took a protest against his proceedings,
alleging that the bishop was allowing himself in unexampled en
croachments of authority, and was touching their immemorial rights.
The chapter had an autonomy of its own, and was subject only to
its own dean ; only if the dean neglected his duty, or himself appealed
to the bishop, had the latter a right to say a single word."^ In 1239
the matter grew to a quarrel between bishop and chapter. The
dispute became known all over the kingdom, and could not be
healed either by the Archbishop of Canterbury or by Otho, the
Pope's legate. Bishop Robert made a journey in November, 1244,
to Lyons, where Innocent IV. was then residing. A commissioner
of the chapter was already there before him. The Pope's decision
on the main point — the right of visitation — was soon obtained, and
was entirely in favour of the bishop ; and, this gained, Grossetete
lost no time in making use of his right now finally established,
although he had still to encounter difficulties in carrying it into
effect. Along with this business he carried forward with zeal his visitation
of parishes and cloisters. As the effect of this, several unworthy
parish priests were removed, and many priors who had been guilty of
acts of violence resigned their offices. Other bishops also were
stimulated to do the like by the persistency and emphasis with which
Grossetete prosecuted this visitorial work. It even appears as though
the estimation and influence of the vigorous bishop rose higher and
higher in proportion to the amount of conflict which it cost him to
carry through his plans for the well-being of the Church. In fact,
his episcopal career was an almost unbroken succession of collisions
and conflicts. Long before the affair with his own chapter had been
brought to a settlement, he became involved in differences with
powerful spiritual corporations — with the Abbot of Westminster, and
with the convent of Christ Church in Canterbury. Nay, the heroic
opposition to wrong which he was compelled from time to time to
undertake, rose higher still. In repeated instances, sometimes single-
handed, sometimes along with other bishops, he stood forward in
' Efistolce, 73, p. 235.

•1=33-1244.1 GROSSETi:TE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 25
resistance to King Henry III. himself; and what for a man in his
position, and in view of the spirit of his age, will be seen to amount
to a vast deal more — he remained true to his own convictions of
duty and to his own resolves, even against the Pope himself, and
that Pope a man like Innocent IV. But of this more in the sequel.
In view of this multitude of spiritual conflicts we can easily under-
istand that his opponents accused him of a want of heart and a love of
strife. Even at this distance of time, after the lapse of ^is niiing
rsix centuries, upon a superficial consideration of a life motive.
-SO full of contention, one might easily receive the impression that
this energetic man was all too fond of strife, if not even a hierarch of
haughty and imperious temper. But on a closer inspection the case
stands quite otherwise. A careful examination of his correspondence
.has forced upon me the conviction that in entering into these
Jiumerous contentions Grossetete was influenced, not by a violent
temperament, but by the dictates of conscience. On one occasion
he '\\Tites as follows to the Abbot of Leicester : — ' You accuse us of
iron-heartedness and want of pity. Alas ! would that we had an iron
heart, steeled against the flatteries of tempters, a strong heart, proof
.against the terrors of the wicked, a sharp heart, cutting off sins and
.hewing in pieces the bad when they oppose themselves.' '
From this single utterance we may perceive that what he did could
.not have been the outflow of mere natural temperament, but must
thave been the result of principle and conviction. It was in this
sense he replied to the dean and chapter of Sarum, who admonished
him to live in peace with his own chapter. That peace, he said, was
what he aimed at beyond everything else, but the true peace, not the
false ; for the latter is only a perversion of the true God-appointed
¦ order.2 But that he was not led by a determination to have every
thing his own way is plain, from the circumstance that what he laid
the whole stress upon in his conflicts was not to have success in
.them, but to preserve in all of them a good conscience. While he
was still Archdeacon of Leicester he had a difference with the
Benedictine Convent of Reading — but he was prepared to submit
himself unreservedly to the decision of an umpire whom both parties
.might be able to agree upon.3 And on a later occasion when he
had expressed himself at full length against an appointment which
Cardinal Otho had desired for a favourite of his, he contented him-
.self with having thus referred the matter to the Cardinal's own
•conscience, and left it in quiet to his own decision.* It is his
I Epistola, ss. P- 170. I f 4. p- 32.
^ 16. 93, p. 2I0. " ^^- 74. P. 241.

26 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [chi. §,2
abiding sense of responsibility, and his fear of ' Him who is able to
destroy body and soul in hell,' which moves him in all cases when
he is compelled to place himself in opposition to personages of high
influence and place.
But does not, at least, the suspicion of hierarchical pride still
remain attached to him ? The answer to this is, that however little
Grossetete was inclined at any time to abate aught of his, episcopal
right, whether in dealing with his subordinates or his superiors, with
the great men of the realm, or with the supreme Head of the Church
himself, in every case the episcopal dignity and power was looked
upon by him not as an end but a means. The last end to him was
the good of souls. To that end, and to that alone, behoved to be
subservient both priestdom and patrondom, bishopdom and pope
dom, the Church's liberties and the Church's wealth, each in its own
measure and after its own manner. When in his official journeys he
gathered around him the parochial clergy of a rural deanery, and
preached before them, he had in his thoughts the whole of the
congregations of these parish priests, and used to say that ' it was his
duty to preach the Word of God to all the souls in his diocese ; but
it was impossible for him to do so personally, considering the multi
tude of parish churches and the immense population of the diocese ;
and he could think of no other way of helping himself than to preach
God's Word to the priests and vicars and curates of each deanery,
assembled around him in the course of his visitations, in order to do
through them, at least to some extent, what he found himself entirely
unable to do for the people in person.' ^
It is surprising, indeed, to hear a man of such sentiments as these
laying down, at an earlier period of his life, to an officer of State, the
principle that civil legislation behoves to conform itself
drossetSte on ' -^ .. , °, , , , .
Church to the laws 01 the Church, because temporal princes
receive from the Church all the power and dignity whicli
they possess; that both swords, material and spiritual, belong to St.
Peter, with only this difference, that the princes of the Church handle
only the spiritual sword, while they wield the material sword through
the hands of temporal princes, who, however, are bound to draw it
and sheathe it under their direction.^ That is quite the language of
an Innocent III.
It looks as if Grossetete, in his later life, must have passed over to
' Epistols, so, p, 146, The Serm ones ad the clergy of the different rural deanr
Clerum, published by Edward Brown in eries. See note, p. 21.
1690, were no doubt made use of by the = Ib, 23, p. go. Comp. his Letter to.
bishop in his visitations in addressing King Henry III. No. 124, p. 348.

"33-1=53.1 GROSSET&TE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 27
the Other camp. But that is not the true state of the case.' Even in
his earlier life it was not the deepest meaning of his thoughts to sur
render up all unconditionally to St. Peter's successor, or to claim
plenary powers for the episcopate for its own sake. It is true that he
puts the law of the Church on a footing of full equality with the
commandments of God. It is true also that he puts the State de
cidedly under the Church, and denies its autonomy. But he sees
these things through the spectacles of his own century, and is unable
to set himself loose from its ideas. Still, neither the episcopate nor
the papacy exists in his view for itself; both exist for the glory of
God and for the good of God's kingdom. The whole conduct and
action of the man, not only in later but also in earlier life, justifies us
in so interpreting his innermost thoughts. We can see from the
rejoinder which he made to the statesman's reply, which would appear
to have been couched in a tone of cutting irony, that our bishop had
had no intention in his first letter to mount the high horse of hier
archical pride.^
If we look for the innermost kernel of all the thought and effort of
this man who had an incredible amount of business to get through,
we can find it in nothing else than in his earnest solid- ^-jg aoUoituae
tude for souls. To this end he laboured with special *°^ ^''"^^¦
zeal for the moral and religious elevation of the pastoral office. A
doctor of theology, William of Cerda, having been appointed to a
pastoral charge, found much more pleasure in carrying on his lectures
in the University of Paris than in taking personal charge of his
parishioners in England. But Grossetete reminds him with equal
tenderness and warmth that he should choose rather to be himself a
pastor, and to feed the sheep of Christ in his own parish, than to read
lectures to other pastors from the chair.3 AVe see here how high a
place he assigned to the pastoral office, and that though at the summit
of the science of his time, he did not look upon science as the highest
thing, but upon life, and especially the devoted cure of souls. What
else but the reform of the pastoral office was the drift of all the visi
tation work which Grossetete undertook and carried through with
such peculiar zeal ? And the sermons which he was accustomed to
preach in his visitation tours — at ordinations and consecrations of
churches before the assembled pastors of one or other of his seventy-
two rural deaneries, were nothing else but appeals of the chief pastor
of the flock to the under shepherds, designed to quicken their con
sciences and to press the duties of their office close upon their hearts.
I Comp. Brown's Appendix ad Fasci- = Epistola, 24, p. 9s.
culum, p. 322. 3 J''- 13. P- 57- Comp. SL p. 147.

28 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. ,. § j
Some of these addresses which have come down to us, form in fact a
pastoral theology in nuce.^ When, in the course of his visitations,
he made use of his disciplinary powers to depose unworthy priests
upon the spot, and when he used his patronage to fill vacant benefices
with active, well-educated men, accustomed to preach, he did his
utmost to raise the character of the pastorate. Add to this the
watchful eye which he kept upon the appointments made to parishes
in his diocese by private patrons and corporations, and even by the
crown and the papal court. In how many instances did he put off
the canonical admission of a presentee ! and what a multitude of un
pleasant conflicts were brought upon him by his conscientious vigilance
in this respect ! A considerable portion of his correspondence is
taken up exclusively with this subject.
Grossetete had scarcely taken possession of his see when an officer
of State, William of Raleyer (Raleigh), presented to a parish a youth
Episcopal called William of Grana. The bishop refused to confirm
discipline. ^^^ appointment, partly on account of his being under
age, and partly on account of his inadequate attainments ; and the
refusal was highly resented by the patron. We have still the letter
in which the bishop stated his reasons for the act, and he does so
in a way which fills us with high appreciation of his conscientious
ness and piety.^ And there were numerous other instances of a
similar kind, in which he withheld his consent to appointments on
account either of deficient age or inadequate scholarship, or both
together, or on the ground of conduct and deportment wholly un
becoming the priestly office. 3
With no less vigilance did this faithful and watchful chief pastor
take heed to the manner in which parish priests after their appoint
ment fulfilled the duties of their office. As may be easily conceived,
he looked with no friendly eye upon the accumulation of livings in
the same hands — a practice in which personal revenue was the only
thing considered, and the interests of parishioners were treated as
quite a secondary affair. More than once he opposed himself to this
pluralitas beneficiorum.''
At the time of his awakening, about 1232, he had been strict with
himself in this respect, and now he was also strict with others. In
repeated instances he insisted that every one who was entrusted with
' E.g, Scrmo ad Clerum, in Brown. 3 lb. 26, p. 102. Epp. 19 and 71, pp.
Monitio et persuasio pastorum, on the text, 68 and 204.
' I am the Good Shepherd,' p. 260 f. * Epistolcs, 74, p. 241 f. With special
^ Epistolcs, 17, p. 63 f. Comp. 11, earnestness he appeals in this matter to
p. s° f- . where his feeling of responsi- the conscience ofa certain Hugo of Pate-
bility for the salvation of the souls com- shuU (Ep. 25, p. 97 f.), who died in 1241,
mitted to his episcopal charge is strikingly Bishop of Lichfield.
•expressed.

"35-1253-] GROSSET&TE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. zq
the care of souls should be resident in his parish. One of these was
the case of a Magister Richard of Cornwall, to whom he had given a
living on the recommendation of the Caidinal Egidius, and who had
manifested a preference for Rome as a residence, to the neglect of
his cure. The bishop sent to him, through the Cardinal, a very
peremptory injunction to reside in his parish, begging him sarcastically
not to refuse ' to let himself down from the height of Rome to the
level of England, in order to feed the sheep, as the Son of God had
descended from the throne of His majesty to the ignominy of the cross
in order to redeem them.' "^
Another matter which from time to time gave the bishop much
trouble, had a like bearing upon the elevation of the spiritual offices
of the Church, viz., the resistance which he offered to the
.,, ,,. .,..,,. . Eoolesiastlos
appointment of abbots and clencs to judicial functions, in secular
and his efforts to bring back all offices ordained for the ^'^^ °y™en s..
good of souls to their purely ecclesiastical and religious destination
and use. In the year 1236 the King appointed the Benedictine
Abbot of Ramsey to be a Judge in Council, an appointment which
gave great distress to the conscientious chief pastor. That an abbot
should undertake such a function appeared to him to be irreconcilable
with the vows of his order, and with the clerical office in general ; and
this all the more that a judge might easily find himself in the position
of having to pronounce sentences of death. He therefore addressed
himself to the Archbishop of Canterbury to request him to use his
influence with the King to obtain, if possible, a recall of the appoint
ment. The archbishop was of opinion that the question of principle
involved in the case ought to be referred for decision to the next
general council. But for the bishop it became more and more
urgently a question of conscience, whether it was not sin in a monk
to undertake the office of judge. It seemed to him clear that the
question could only be answered in the affirmative. But, if so, then
it was also certain that the bishop, who allowed this to be done, was
likewise in sin. In a second letter, therefore, he begs and conjures,
the Archbishop to give a plain and clear answer to the question —
whether, yea or nay, it is sin in a monk or cleric to accept a judge's
commission, and whether, yea or nay, it is a sin in a bishop to allow
this to be done.^ What the issue of the matter was cannot be learnt
from the correspondence, and is of less interest to us than the fact
that Grossetete laboured in this direction as well as in others for
the restoration of good order in all the spiritual offices of the Church.
• Ftistols, 46, p. 138. " '^- 27 and 28, pp. los and 108, and
¦^ still more fully m Ep. 72, pp. 205-213.

30 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. i. § 2
But that both church and church-office did not appear to him to
be their own end and object, that in his eyes the cure and the salva
tion of souls held a higher place than the pastoral office
Mendicant taken by itself, is manifest beyond all doubt, from the
circumstance that Grossetete brought forward the new
Mendicant orders to the work of preaching and cure of souls. Already,
in his earlier days while he still worked in Oxford, he had entered
into close relations with the Franciscans, and had done his best to
bring them forward in the University.' When he became bishop he
associated with himself both Franciscans and Dominicans as his
coadjutors in his episcopal office.^ And not only so — he gladly
welcomed, protected, and promoted their activity throughout his
diocese at large, and did not shrink from openly expressing his
opinion, that by preaching and the confessional, by their example and
their prayers, they were doing an inestimable amount of good in
England, and compensating for the shortcomings and mischievous
influence of the secular clergy.s In this matter Grossetete differed
widely in judgment from many of his clergy, who looked upon it as
an encroachment upon the pastoral office when a Dominican or
Franciscan preached or heard confession in their parishes, ¦* and did
their utmost to keep back their flocks from listening to such sermons,
or confessing to a begging friar. Bishop Grossetete, on the contrary,
wrote on one occasion to Pope Gregory IX. as follows : — ' O, if your
Holiness could only see with what devotion and humility the people
flock together to hear from them (the Mendicant monks) the word of
life, and to make confession of their sins, and how much advantage
the clergy and religion have derived from the imitation of their
example, your Holiness would certainly say the people who walked
in darkness have seen a great light.' s Accordingly he sought to
induce the parochial clergy of his diocese to stir up their parishioners
to frequent the sermons and the confessionals of the friars ^ — a pro
ceeding which shows clearly enough that however highly he valued
the pastoral office, and however zealously he laboured to further and
to elevate it, he was still far from exalting it only for its own sake.
In his view, the fear of God and the salvation of souls, as the ultimate
ends which the spiritual office was designed to subserve, were of
immeasurably higher account.
' Comp.Pa.vL\i'sProgramm on Grossteste 3 Epistolcs, 34, p. 121.
and Adam of Marsh. Tubingen, 1864. 4 /^. 107, p. 317.
, = Epp. 40 and 41, pp. ijr, 133— the s Ib. 58, p. 180.
former addressed to the Dominican Gene- ^ In the ¦ Circulars ' to the Arch-
ral, the latter to the Franciscan, both in deacons above referred to. Ep. 107, p.
very similar terms. 317.

«35-t253.] GROSSETkTE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 3 1
Grossetete's whole views, religious and ecclesiastical, are to be seen
in their purest and truest expression in a Memorial, in which he set
down all his complaints concerning the disorders of the Appropria-
Church of his time, and which he submitted in a personal iione.
audience to the Pope. The occasion of the Memorial was this. The
practice of what was called 'appropriation' was becoming increasingly
common, i.e., the practice of transferring church tenures, tithe-rights,
and glebe-lands, into the possession of monasteries, knightly orders,
&c. This was a loss to local church property — an impoverishment
of the parochial churches concerned. The parish lands were no
longer in a condition to secure a living to the parish priest. The
consequence was that a priest could no longer reside on the spot.
The charge was only supplied from without, either from a cloister or
at the cost of a knight commander, sometimes by one, sometimes by
another priest or monk. In short, the office was neglected — the
parish was spiritually orphanised. In his later years. Bishop Grosse
tete observed in his visitations that this evil was always on the in
crease. He saw in it an injury, not only to the pastoral office, but
to the souls entrusted to it, which called for the most serious atten
tion. The first step he took to remedy the mischief was to obtain a
Papal authorisation, enabling him to declare all transferences and
compacts of this kind to be null and void.
As soon as these full powers reached his hands, he called before
him all the monks of his diocese who had been provided with these
livings, and produced and read to them the Papal rescript. He was
resolved, he said, to take over immediately into his own administra
tion all those parish church-lands, the acquisition of which, with the
consent of the cathedral chapter, the monasteries might not be able
to establish by written documents. But experience proved that the
Papal authorisation was of little avail. It was only too easy to obtain
exemptions by means of corruption at the Papal Court, and the well-
meant intentions of the Bishop were frustrated. But Grossetete was'
not the man to give way before such an obstacle. Regardless of his
advanced age, he determined to make a second journey to Lyons,
¦where Pope°Innocent IV. was still residing, as he had been six years
before. In the year 1250 he crossed the Channel with a numerous
¦spiritual train. Arriving in Lyons, he experienced from the Curia a
much cooler reception than he had done on the previous occasion
and in the main business which brought him he accomplished as
good as nothing. He remained, however, the whole summer .in
Lyons, occupied with various affairs.
In an audience obtained by him, 13th May, he handed to the Pope

33 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch, i. § j
himself, and to three of the Cardinals in attendance, copies of the
Memorial to Memorial referred to, in which he gave utterance to all
the Pope. ^^.jj^j. ^Yas in his heart. It was immediately read in the
Pope's presence by Cardinal Otho, who had Uved in England for
some time as legate, and had come much into contact with Grosse
tete. This Memorial has come down to us under the incorrect title ofa,
sermon.' It is full of earnest moral zeal, and of fearless frankness of
speech. We confine ourselves to the simplest outlines of the course
of thought. The way in which he gives expression to his thoughts,
while making use of the most powerful rebukes of the inspired
prophets, is sometimes such as must have made the hearers tremble.
Grossetete begins with the observation that zeal for the salva
tion of souls — the sacrifice most well-pleasing to God — had brought
down to earth and humiliation the eternal Son of God, the Lord of
glory. By the ministry of His Apostles and the pastors appointed
by them, among whom, above all others, the Pope bears the image of
Christ, and acts as His representative, the kingdom of God came,
and the house of God was made full. But at the present day, alas !
the Church of Christ is sorely diminished and narrowed ; unbelief
prevails in the greatest part of the world ; in Christendom itself a
considerable portion of it has been separated from Christ by division,^
and in the small remainder heresy goes on increasing in some quarters,
and the seven deadly sins prevail in others ; so that Christ has had
for ages to complain, 'Woe is me, for I am as when they have gathered
the summer fruits, as the grape- gleanings of the vintage. There is
no cluster to eat, my soul desireth the first ripe fruit. The good man
is perished out of the earth, and there is none upright among men.'
' But what is the cause of this hopeless fall of the Church ? Un
questionably the diminution in the number of good shepherds of
souls, the increase of wicked shepherds, and the circumscription of
the pastoral authority and power. Bad pastors are everywhere the
cause of unbelief, division, heresy, and vice. It is they who scatter
the flock of Christ, who lay waste the vineyard of the Lord, and
desecrate the earth. No wonder, for they preach not the Gospel of
Christ with that living word which comes forth from living zeal for
the salvation of souls, and is confirmed by an example worthy of
Jesus Christ ; and to this they add every possible form of transgres
sion — their pride is ever on the increase, and so are their avarice,
' Sermo Roberti Lincolniensis Episcopi, The state of the text of this memorial
etc., in Brown, Appendix, pp. 250, 257. leaves much to be desired.
= An allusion to the Greek Church,

''250.] GROSSETETE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.

33

luxury and extravagance ; and because the life of the shepherds is a
lesson to the laity, they become thus the teachers of all error and all
evil. Instead of being a light of the worid, they spread around, by
their godless example, the thickest darkness and the icy coldness of
death. ' But what, again, is the cause of this evil ? I tremble to speak of
it, and yet I dare not keep silence. The cause and source of it is the
Curia itself ! Not only because it fails to put a stop to these evils as
it can and should, but still more, because, by its dispensations, pro
visions, and collations, it appoints evil shepherds, thinking therein
only of the living which it is able to provide for a man, and, for the
sake of that, handing over many thousands of souls to eternal death.
He who commits the care of a flock to a man in order that the latter
may get the milk and the wool, while he is unable or unwilling to
guide, to feed, and protect the flock, such an one gives over the flock
itself to death as a prey. That be far from him who is the represen
tative of Christ ! He who so sacrifices the pastoral office is a perse
cutor of Christ in His members. And since the doings of the Curia
are a lesson to the world, such a manner of appointment to the cure
of souls, on its part, teaches and .encourages all who have patrons
rights to make pastoral appointments of a like kind, as a return for
services rendered to themselves, or to please men in power, and in
this way to destroy the sheep of Christ. And let no one say that
such pastors can still save the flock by the ministry of middlemen.
For among these middlemen many are themselves hirelings who flee
when the wolf cometh.
' Besides, the cure of souls consists not only in the dispensation of
the sacraments, in singing of " hours," and reading of masses, but in
the true teaching of the word of life, in rebuking and correcting vice ;
and, besides all this, in feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty,
clothing the naked, lodging the strangers, visiting the sick and the
prisoners — especially among the parish priest's own pari'shioners — in
order, by such deeds of charity, to instruct the people in the holy
exercises of active life ; and to do such deeds is not at all in the
power of these middlemen, for they get so small a portion of the
church's goods that they have scarcely enough to live upon.' In the
midst of such evils men might still have the consolation of hoping
that possibly successors might follow who would better fulfil the
pastor's calling. But when parish churches are made over to monas
teries these evils are made perpetual. All such things end not in the
I Here he comes to speak of the evil sion of his undertaking the journey to
state of matters which was the occa- Lyons.
4

34 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. i. «
upbuilding, but the destruction of the Church. God forbid that even
the Holy See and its possessor should act against Christ, and thereby
incur the guilt of apostacy and division ! Further, the pastoral office,
especially of the bishops, is at the present time circumscribed and
restrained, particularly in England, and this in three ways. First, by
the exemptions and privileges of monasteries, for when the inmates
of these addict themselves outside their walls, to the worst vices, the
bishops can take no action against them — their hands are tied by the
privileges of the convents. Secondly, the secular power puts obstacles
in the way, in cases where investigations are made into the sins of
laymen, in order to prevent other laymen from being sworn as wit
nesses. To which are to be added, thirdly, appeals to the. Pope or
Archbishop ; for if the bishop takes steps according to his duty to
punish vice and depose unworthy pastors, protest is taken, the
¦" liberty " of the Church is appealed to, and so the matter is delayed
and the action of the bishop lamed.'
In conclusion, Grossetete invokes the Holy See to put a stop to all
disorders of this character, and especially to put a check upon the
excesses of its own courtiers, of which there were loud, complaints,
to leave off the unevangelical practice of using the interposition of
the sword, and to root out the notorious corruption of the Papal
Court. It was to be feared that the Holy See, unless it reformed
itself without delay, would draw upon itself the heaviest judgments —
yea, destruction itself. The Holy Father would not interpret as pre
sumption what the author of this Memorial had ventured to lay before
him in all devotion and humility, under many misgivings and tears,'
and purely at the bidding of dread of the prophet's 'Woe,' and of a
•longing desire to see a better state of things.
This utterance can only call forth the deepest respect for the godly-
mindeduess of the author and for his burning zeal for God's house.
Practical fo^ the salvation of souls, and the reformation of the
measures, Qhurch. But, On the other hand, it can easily be under
stood that such unheard-of freedom of speech was not likely to obtain
•for the strong man who uttered it ^ny favour or influence at the Papal
Court. When Grossetete left Lyons in September, and arrived again
at home at Michaelmas, 1250, he was for some time so much out of
heart that he had some thoughts of resigning his episcopal office.
However, matters did not go that length. He gathered up his
¦strength again, and from that day forward acted only with all the
more emphasis, and with all the less reference to the Pope and the
Crown. His visitation of convents and parish churches was taken
up again with, if possible, still greater strictness than before. Un.

1252,1253.] GROSSEtAtE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.

35

worthy pastors were set aside, and in all places where there was need
for it he appointed vicars in their room, who were supported out of
the revenues, in virtue of an authorisation to that effect, which he at
last obtained from the Pope.
In Parliament his voice carried with it decisive weight In a
letter of 1252 which he addressed to the nobles of the realm, to the
citizens of London, and to the ' Community ' of England, he ex
pressed himself strongly on the subject of the illegal encroachments
¦of the Apostolic See, by which the country was drained.
But in the year of his death there occurred an incident which
raised the name of the Bishop of Lincoln to the highest celebrity.
Innocent IV. had conferred upon one of his grandsons, controversy
Frederick of Lavagna (the Pope was himself a Count of '""'^ *^® ^°p^-
Lavagna), a canonry in the Cathedral of Lincoln, and taken steps to
have him immediately invested with it by a cardinal. From Perugia,
on January 26, 1253, an apostolic brief was addressed, not to
the Bishop, but to an archdeacon of Canterbury, and to Magister
Innocent, a Papal agent in England, with the distinct injunction to
put the young man before named, in the person of his proxy, into
actual possession of that dignity and living. And, that there might
be no delay, much less any obstacle put in the way, the Papal brief
expressly set aside, for tliis occasion, all and sundry opposing rights
and statutes, even such as had received apostolic confirmation,
nay, even all direct apostolic concessions to whomsoever given, and
howsoever worded.' Nor was this enough. In case any one should
¦oppose himself to the carrying out of this injunction, either by word
or deed, the Pope authorised his agents immediately to summon any
•such person within two months to apjiear in person before the Pope
and answer for himself to the challenge of Frederick of Lavagna.
This, it was thought, had made failure impossible ; every imaginable
means of escape was cut off", every bolt was made sure ; and yet
the measure issued in failure after all.^
The Bishop of Lincoln, though now eighty years old, was not
accustomed to allow himself to be frightened. With all the energy
which a sense of right, springing from the holy feeling of duty, in
spires, he stood forward to object to the proceeding, and to withstand
it ¦ and the document in which he couched his opposition had not
¦only an electric effect upon the English nation at the time, but its in-
' Non obstantibus privilegiis, etc. — the of a special case, or in behalf of some
clause so often made use of when the Pope favoured individual.
of the day evaded, or rather set aside, ad = The Papal Brief has been prmted in
.hoc, the ordinances of his predecessors or full by Brown in his Appendix, p. 399,
-even his own, still in legal force, in favour and in Luard, p. 432, note.

36

ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE.

[ch. I. §, z

fluence continued to be felt for centuries afterwards ; and, more than
all his learning, more than all the services of his long, active, and
fruitful life, it made the name of the God-fearing, upright, and
inflexible man popular and illustrious.
Grossetete had no thoughts of writing direct to the Pope himself;'
and this was not prudent merely, it was also due to his own dignity.
Innocent had intentionally passed bythe Bishop, though the question
related to a canonry in his ovm cathedral ; and it was therefore in.
every way suitable and well considered, that the Bishop on his side
should leave the Pope entirely out of the game. He addressed him
self exclusively to the Archdeacon of Canterbury and to Magister
Innocent.^

' This is indeed the view commonly
taken. Even Luard in his Preface, p.
l.xxix., and Pauli in his Programm on
GrossetSte, and Adam von Marsh, p. 24,
assume that the letter was addressed to
the Pope. The superscription, also, which
Luard has given to the letter, no doubt
on MS. authority, indicates the same.
Nevertheless, this superscription is, in my
judgment, erroneous and ungenuine. For,
in the first place, the address, Discretio ves-
tra, is quite unsuitable to the Pope. Grosse
tSte himself makes use of Sanctitas vestra
in the two Epp. no and 117, pp. 328 and
338, which were certainly addressed to
the Pope — a circumstance which was not
unnoticed by Brown. But next, the fact
is a decisive one that toward the end of
the letter, the address, reverendi domini
occurs, which undeniably presupposes a
plurality of persons addressed. Besides,
ihe tone of the letter, on the supposition
that it was addressed to the Pope, would
have been quite unaccountable. The fact
is not ignored by Luard, that the style of
this letter differs greatly from that of the
two which were, without doubt, intended
for the Pope, Preface Ixxix. But what
he brings forward to account for this
difference is not quite satisfactory. Still
Brown is right in maintaining that the
letter was intended for the eye of the
Pope, whether it came to his hands
directly or indirectly. Undoubtedly so,
and for this reason it required no httle
courage and good conscience to write to
both the Pope's commissaries in such a
strain ; whereas we should be compelled
to think far otherwise of the tact and
good taste of the writer, if it were certain
that he had meant his words directly for
the eye of the Pope himself The mis
take, however, is explained in some mea
sure by the circumstance that the Pope's
agent. Innocent, bore the same name as
the Pope himself.

= This celebrated letter is to be found!
in Brown, p. 400 ; in Oudin's Commen—
taria de Scriptoribus Eccles. Antiquae,
Vol. III., p. 142 ; and in Luard, Ep..
128, pp. 432. Luard tells us that it
occurs times without number in the MSS.
Among those who have referred to it, I
have to name Wycliffe himself. He was.
not only well acquainted with its contents,
but he has also in one place reproduced
it almost entire — I mean in his still un
printed work, De Civili Dominio, Lib. I.,
c. 43, MS. 1341, of the Imperial Library
of Vienna, side by side with the Pope's.
two letters. And Wychffe not only in
corporated the letter with his own work,
but also added to it a kind of com
mentary in the way of justifying its con
tents, in which he states precisely its,
principal thoughts, and adopts them as.
his own. Huss also knew the Bishop's
Epistle, and cited it in part in his work,
De Ecclesia, c. 18 (Opera, 1558, v. i., p.
235. ) As to the state of its text, it is by-
no means free from errors in the Wycliffe'
MS. just named ; but still in some places,
this MS. supplies readings materially
superior to those of Brown and Luard.
May I add in this place one more remark.
in conclusion ? Luard has observed, p.
xli., that it is not known when or by
whom the collection of Grossetete's letters
was made. Now, as the MSS. used by
Luard, which comprise the whole coUec--
tion or the greater part of it, are of no,
higher age than the fifteenth century, and
as only single letters were found in copies
dating from the fourteenth century, I do-
not think it superfluous to mention that
I find in Wycliffe — who more than once
gives accurate citations from other letters
of GrossetSte besides the one mentioned
above — exactly the same ordering or num
bering of the letters which Brown gives,
and which is retained also by Luard.
Now as those writings of Wycliffe, whiclK

^-53.1 GROSSETETE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.

37

^ In this celebrated paper he takes up the position, that in opposing
himself to the demand in question, he is giving proof of his veneration
and obedience to apostolic mandates, and of his zeal „, ,a, ,
tor the honour of the Roman Mother Church. For this letter ana its
demand is not an apostolical one, inasmuch as it is in ''®^"""
contradiction to the teaching of the apostles and of Christ Himself.
It is also totally irreconcilable with apostolic holiness, and this upon
a double ground— first, because the ' notwithstanding ' (non obstante) of
the brief, carries along with it a whole flood of inconsistency, reck
lessness, and deception, undermines truth and faith, and shakes to the
centre all Christian piety, as well as all intercourse of confidence be
tween man and man. In the second place, it is a thing entirely
unapostolic and unevangelical, abhorred by Christ Himself, and in the
eyes of men nothing less than a sin of murder, when men's souls,
¦which should be brought unto life and salvation by means of the
pastoral office, are destroyed by being deceived and defrauded in the
matter of that very office. And this is what is done, when those who
are appointed to 3. pastoral charge only use the milk and the wool of
the sheep to satisfy their own bodily necessities, but have no wish or
purpose to fulfil the ministry of their office for the eternal salvation
of the sheep of Christ. The most holy Apostolic See, to which
Christ has given all power, ' for edification, not for destruction '
{2 Cor. x. 8), can command nothing which has such a sin for its issue.
And a truly devoted subject of the Holy See can in no wise give
heed to such a command, but must rather resist it with all his might.
Such thoughts as this contemplated appointment are in fact inspired
by ' flesh and blood, and not by the Father which is in heaven.'
Such was the substance of this memorable writing. The installation
of the Pope's grandson into the canonry and prebend of Lincoln
came to nothing, and the resolute Bishop remained unmolested. So
much we know for certain ; and it may well be supposed that the men
who were entrusted with the execution of the Pope's mandate, in the
Jatal difficulty into which they were thrown by the redoubtable pro
test of Grossetete, knew of no better plan than to forward it to
Italy for the consideration of the Pope, without a moment's delay.
Matthew Paris, the Benedictine Abbot of St. Albans, who cannot, it
is true, be accepted as an unprejudiced authority, says in his chronicle
contain accurate quotations from the the letters by their numbers, and assumes
letters of GrossetSte belong to the years this order to be already known, we may
1370-78, the fact becomes certain that very well infer that the collection is at
even as early as that date the collection least fifty years older, and may even be
existed the same in extent and order as carried back in dat? to the thirteenth
we now know it. And as Wycliffe quotes century.

38 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. i. § 2.
that Innocent IV. was almost beside himself with rage when he saw
the letter. ' Who,' he exclaimed, ' is that crazy, foolish, and silly old
man who has the effrontery to sit in judgment thus upon my doings ?
Is not the King of England our vassal, yea, slave, who at a wink
from us can shut him up in prison and send him to ruin ? ' But the,
cardinals, and especially the cardinal deacon, Aegidius, a personal
friend of the bishop, are said to have quieted the Pope by repre
senting to him 'that it was of no avail to take severe measures.
against Grossetete, for, to speak candidly, he was in the right, and no-
man could condemn him. The bishop was orthodox, and a very
holy man ; he was a more conscientious and holy man than they,
the cardinals, were themselves. Among all the prelates he had not
his match.' '
Whatever may be the truth of this account, it is certain that the
bold answer of the bishop was ignored, and he was left in peace.
Death of Perhaps it was also remembered that he was now an old
Grossetete. man. and that he could not much longer give any
trouble. And so, in fact, it befell. In October of the same year,,
1253, Grossetete had a serious seizure at Buckden, and on the 9th
of the same month he died. On the 13th he was buried in the
Cathedral of Lincoln.
Soon after his decease, it began to be reported that on the night
of his death, sounds of bells, indescribably beautiful, had been heard
high in the air, and ere long men heard of miracles taking place at
his tomb. Fifty years later it was proposed that he should be
canonised, and the proposal came at one and the same time from the
king, from the University of Oxford, and from the Chapter of St.
Paul's. It was Edward I., in the last year of his reign, 1307, who
made the suggestion,^ and, in so doing, gave utterance to what was
in the heart of the whole kingdom. But, as may easily be supposed,,
the proposal did not meet with the most favourable acceptance at the
Papal Court. The nation's wish was never complied with by the
Curia ; but none the less did the venerable bishop remain unforgotten
in England, and his memory continue to be blessed through long
centuries. His image was universally revered by the nation as an
ideal — as the most perfect model of an honest Churchman. ' Never
from the fear of any man had he forborne to do any good action which
belonged to his office and duty. If the sword had been unsheathed
against him, he stood prepared to die the death of a martyr.' Such
' Matth. Paris, Hist. Maj. Angliae. V., of May 6, I307, is to be found in,
Edit., W. Watts, p. 872. Rymer,Fo«(f«ra,n.,p. ioi6,and inWood,
¦2 The letter of Edward I. to Clement Hist. Univ. Oxon,, Vol. i., p. 105

12531 GROSSEtEtE, bishop of LINCOLN. 39
¦was the solemn testimony borne to him by his own University of
Oxford, when it pleaded for his canonisation.'
In the public estimation of England, Grossetete v;as, in point of
fact, a saint In the following century he appears to have been so
regarded by ¦\^'yclitfe, who in numberiess passages refers his memory
to him under the name of Lincolniensis.'' And there is cherished.
reason to think that this estimate was one not at all personal to
Wycliffe himself, but in harmony with the feeling of his countrymen
at large. AA'e have the testimony of Thonxas Gascoigne, who died in
1457, that Grossetete was commonly spoken of by the people as St.
Robert.3 It was natural, too, that when, at a later period, the whole
of AVestern Christendom came to be strongly convinced of the
necessity of a ' Reformation in Head and Members,' the memory of
the bold and outspoken Bishop of Lincoln should have flamed up
again brightly among the English friends of Church Reform.
At that period an Anglican member of the Council of Constance,
the Oxford divine, Henry Abendon, in a speech which he delivered
before the Council, October 27, 1415, repeatedly referred as an
authority to dominus Lincolniensis ; -t and on one occasion made ex
press mention of the Memorial to the Pope which is mentioned above.
As late as the year 1503, an English monk, Richard of Bardney, sung
of Grossetete's life in some indifferent Latin distichs, which conclude
with an invocation of him in form as a canonised saint.s A fact hke
this — that Grossetete, in spite of the Papal refusal of his canonisation,
continued to live for centuries in the mouth and the heart of the
English people as ' St. Robert,' is a speaking proof of the change
which had already come over the spirit of the age ; that the absolute
authority of Papal decrees was already shaken; that the nimbus
which surrounded the Holy See itself was paling.^
' Wood, Hist, et Antiquit. Univ. 5 Precor, O pater alme, Robcrie, etc.
Oxon., Vol. I., p. 105, from a MS. of The whole is printed, with a few omis-
Gascoigne. The Oxford Declaration does sions, in Henry ^h^iaX-ons, Anglia Sacra.
not belong to the year 1254, as Luard Lond., 1691. Vol. II., pp. 325-341.
seems to suppose, p. lx.xxiv., but was first « During the period when the Papal
made in 1307, in connection with the power was at its zenith, we can as little:
proposal for the canonisation of the imagine the case of a man being vene-
Bishop. Wood introduced this subject rated as a saint in a considerable portion
vmder the year 1254, merely because of Western Christendom, where canonisa-
GrossetSte's death had occurred imme- tion had been positively refused by the
diately before. Curia, as the converse case of a design 011
2 Especially in the passage quoted the part of Rome to canonise a church-
above from De Civili Dominio, Wycliffe man being upset by the opposition of a
calls the Bishop of Lincoln a Saint, ex portion of the Catholic Church— an event
istis . . istius sancti. . . . primo which actually occurred when, in 1729,
senuitur etc. Benedict XIII. proposed to canonise Gre-
3 Wood Vol. I., p. 106, as cited above. gory VII., but was compelled to give up
4 Printed in Walch, Monimenta medii the idea out of regard to the decided
ae-ji,Vo\. I., Fasc. 2, p. 181 f. Comp. declanations of France and Austria.
especially pp. 190, 192.

40 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. .. § 3
As Protestants, we have both a right and a duty to hold in honour
the memory of a man like Grossetete. His creed, indeed, was not
His high the pure confession of the Evangelical Churches ; but
character. ]-^jg fg^^ ^f qqjJ ^^s SO earnest and upright ; his zeal for
the glory of God was so glowing ; his care for the salvation of his own
soul and of the souls committed to him by virtue of his office was so
conscientious ; his faithfulness so approved ; his will so energetic ;
his mind so free from man-fearing and man-pleasing ; his bearing so
inflexible and beyond the power of corruption, — that his whole
character constrains us to the sincerest and deepest veneration.
When, in addition, we take into view how high a place he assigned
to the Holy Scriptures, to the study of which, in the University of
Oxford, he assigned the first place as the most fundamental of all
studies,' and which he recognises as the only infallible guiding star of
the Church ; " when we remember with what povver and persistency,
and without any respect of persons, he stood forward against so many
abuses in the Church, and against every defection from the true ideal
of church-life ; when we reflect that he finds the higiiest wisdom to
stand in this — ' To know Jesus Christ and Him crucified ' 3 — it is
certainly not saying too much when we signalise him as a vener
able witness to the truth, as a churchman who fulfilled the duty
-which he ov/ed to his own age, and in so doing lived for all ages ;
and who, through his whole career, gave proofs of his zeal for a sound
reformation of the Church's life.

3. — Henry Bracton and William Occam.
A MAN of kindred spirit to Grossetete, though differing from him in
important points, was Henry of Bracton, a younger contemporary of
the celebrated Bishop of Lincoln.
Bracton, the greatest lawyer of England in the Middle Ages, was a
practical jurist, but also a learned writer upon English Common Law.+
Both as a municipal judge and scientific jurist, he maintained the
rights of the State in opposition to the Church, and sought to define
as accurately as possible the limits of the secular and the spiritual
jurisdictions. In particular, he treated as encroachments of the
" Epistolcs, 123, p. 346. 4 His work in five books, De Legibus
= Hac sola ad portuin salutis dirigitur et Consuetudinibus Anglics, written in the
Petri navicula. Ep. 115, p. 336. The liac years 1256-59, ranks among jurists, not
sola answers completely to the Reforma- only as the earliest, but also as the ,fore-
tion principle — verbo solo — which consti- most scientific treatment of EngUsh law
tutesthey&rwia/ principle of Protestantism. in the middle ages.
3 Epistolcs, 85, p. 269.

'25S-1377-1 CROWN, BARONS AND CHURCH. 41
•spiritual jurisdiction its claims of right in questions of patronage. On
this point, it is true, Bracton and GrossetSte would hardly have been
¦of one mind; but none the less they both stood upon common ground,
in being decidedly national in their spirit and views, and in offering
•strenuous opposition to the aggressions of the Court of Rome.
Only a few years after Grossetete's death, contests arose on consti
tutional questions, in which the opposition of the barons was for
.some time in the ascendant. At the head of this party iheBaronsand
:stood Simon of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had *^^ onuioii-
been a friend of Grossetete. In the year 1258, the Parliament of
Oxford appointed an administration, which, while Henry III. con
tinued nominally to reign, was to wield all the real power of the
State ; and it was by no means only the great barons of the kingdom
who had a voice in this government. Earl Simon was the champion
and hero ofthe lower clergy and the Commons, who stood behind him
a,nd his allied barons. The object in view was to put an end to arbi
trary and absolute government, and to put in its place the rule of the
Constitution, of Law, and of Right. The movement found its most
powerful support in the Saxon population of the country. It was
•directed not least against the undue influence of foreigners upon
public affairs. Lender the powerful Edward I. (1272-1307) the
kingdom again recovered its strength ; and after the feeble, unfor
tunate reign of Edward IL, national feeling was again roused by the
French war of succession in the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377),
when the nation gathered up its strength for the long wars with
F"rance — a struggle which had a powerful effect in developing both
the national character and language.
What the kingdom had chiefly stood in need of was a higher
authority and a more concentrated strength- than had prevailed under
Henry IIL, and Edward I. was exactly the man to remedy that
•defect. He had made many concessions, it is true, to the estates of
his kingdom in the matter of Parliamentary rights, under the repeated
pressure of his undertakings against Wales, Scotland, and the Conti
nent ; but he had done this without any loss to the Crown. On the
¦contrary, the Crown had only been a gainer by the freedom and
rights which had been guaranteed to the nation. It was now, for the
first time, that the Crown entered into a compact unity with the
nation, acquired a full national character, and became itself all the
stronger thereby.
This immediately showed itself when Boniface VIII. attempted to
interfere with the measures of the King against Scotiand, as he had
Klone a few years before in the transactions between England and

42 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. i. § 3.
France. In a bull, dated June 27, 1299, Boniface not only asserted
Eivai claims his direct supremacy over the Scottish Church as a,
on Scotland, church independent of England, but also put himself
forward, without ceremony, as arbiter of the claims which Edward I.
was then advancing to the Scottish Crown. 'If Edward asserted
any right whatever to the kingdom of Scotland, or any part thereof,
let him send his plenipotentiaries with the necessary documents to
the Apostolic See ; the matter will be decided there in a manner-
agreeable to right.' '
In resisting such assumptions the King found the most determined
assistance in the spirit of the country itself. He laid the matter,
with the necessary papers, before his Parliament, which met at.
Lincoln on January 20, 1301 ; and the representatives of the
kingdom took the side of their King without reserve. The nobles.
of the realm sent, February 12, 1301, a reply to that demand of
Boniface VIIL, in which they repelled, in the most emphatic man
ner, the attempted encroachment. No fewer than 104 earls and
barons, who all gave their names at the beginning of the document,
and sealed it with their seals at the end, declared in it, not only in
their own name, but also for the whole community of England,,
' that they could feel nothing but astonishment at the unheard-of
pretensions contained in the Papal brief The kingdom of Scotland
had never been a fief of the Pope, but, from time immemorial, of the
P3nglish Crown ; they had therefore, after mature consideration, with
one voice resolved that the King should in no way acknowledge the
Papal jurisdiction in this affair ; yea, they would not even allow the
King to acknowledge it, if he were himself disposed to do so. In.
conclusion, they implored his Holiness, in the most respectful
manner, to leave untouched the rights of their King, a monarch who.
was entirely devoted to the interest of the Church.' ^
It was not till later that Edward himself addressed a letter of
great length to Boniface, in which he confined himself to a historical
Papal preten- proof of his alleged rights to the Scottish Crown, and
sions repelled. i.eferred to the Pope's claim of jurisdiction in the matter-
only in the briefest way, and only to decline and protest against it ;.
and, in point of fact, the King went forward in his measures affecting-,
Scotland without troubling himself further in any way about the-
claims ofthe Papal Court.
It was thus that the English Crown, by an appeal to the nation,,
successfully repelled the unrighteous aggression of the Roman Curia ;,
' Rymer, Foedera, Vol. I., p. 907. ^ Rymer, Foedera, Vol. I., p. 928.
Dated Anagni, June 27, 1299.

-I302-I32I-] WILLIAM OF OCCAM. 43
and I know not if the fact has hitherto been sufficientiy recognised
by historians that England set an example in this business, which
Philip the Fair of France only imitated a year later in his dispute
with Boniface VIIL, when, in April, 1302, he assembled a national
Parliament. It was also in imitation of the example of the English
barons that the French nobles and the Third Estate protested, in a
letter to the cardinals, against the Papal pretensions. If in this case
the leaning of the King upon the nation issued in benefit to the
Crown, no less, on the other side, did the national attitude of the
Government lend strength and emphasis to the patriotic spirit of the
people. When Edward I., in the last year of his reign, proposed
the canonisation of the universally venerated Bishop of Lincoln,
he was only giving utterance to what was in the heart of the
whole country ; and the efiect of the movement could only be to
heighten and strengthen the interest of the nation in ecclesiastical
affairs. The ablest and most strongly-marked representative of this state
of feeUng in the first half of the fourteenth century was a man who
was born in England, and trained under the influence ,^.„,
°. . ' . WilUamof
of the Enghsh spirit, but who spent the later portion of oooam, i-ran-
1 • Tr 1 >. • , ¦ 1 TT • ¦ ,- oiscanfriar.
his lite on the Continent, partly in the University of
Paris, and partly at the Court of the Emperor Louis of Bavaria. We
refer to William of Occam, a man who, as a scholar, as a copious
writer, as a dignitary of the Franciscan Order, and finally, as a
strenuous leader of the opposition against the absolutism of the
Papacy, took a position of great prominence in his day. His philo
sophical nominalism had a prophetic and national significance,
inasmuch as it prepared the way for that inductive method of philo
sophising which was put forward several centuries later by able
countrymen of his own, such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes,
and John Locke.
But what chiefly concerns us here in Occam was his character as a
keen and independent thinker on ecclesiastical matters. It is not
a little remarkable that along with several other men, his personal
friends of Italian birth, he was brought into a position of bold oppo
sition to the Papacy, and came in sight of many great and free ideas,
entirely through his standing as a member and provincial of the
Franciscan order. It was a trifling question of the Order, but out of
it was developed a grand world of thoughts.
In the year 132 1 it came to the knowledge of a Dominican
Inquisitor in Narbonne, in the south of France, that it was an
opinion held by some that neither Christ nor His apostles had

44 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. ,. § 3
ever, either as individuals or as a society, been in possession of
Controversy property. This proposition appeared to the Dominican
™pSltou? to be heretical; but a learned Franciscan in that
poverty. ^ity, Berengar Taloni, maintained it to be perfectly
orthodox, and, ere long, the whole Franciscan order, at a general
chapter held in Perugia in June and July, 1322, declared for the
same view. Thus the point became a question of controversy
between the two great Mendicant orders.
On an appeal being carried to the Papal See in Avignon, a decision
was given on the side of the Dominicans. John XXIL (1316-1334)
in truth was as far removed from apostolic poverty as the east is from
the west. He kept his eye so steadily upon the interest of the
Papal treasury, that twenty-five millions of gold crowns in coin and
jewels were found in it after his death. Of course such a chief of
the Church could not be suspected to look upon absolute poverty as
a requirement of Christian perfection. He would have preferred,
indeed, to avoid giving a decision ori the question which was at issue
between the two orders. But that was impossible. The controversy
would admit neither of silence nor delay. A decision clear and
round — yea or nay — was unavoidable.
In the years 1322-1324, the Pope pronounced against the Francis
cans in a series of bulls. The two first ( Quia nonnunquam, and Ad
Papal decision Conditorcm Canonum), published in 1322, were only of
against the a preparatory character. The third constitution of 1323
I'rancisoans. ' ' •' . . . -' "^
{Cum inter nonnullos) contained the decision upon the
principle involved, declaring the proposition that Christ and His
apostles were never, either singly or collectively, holders of property
to be contrary to Scripture and erroneous. And, last of all, in 1324
followed two more bulls ; in the constitution. Quia quorunda7)i, the
Pope pronounced sentence of excommunication upon the opposers
of his determination ; and in the bull, Quia vir reprobus, he rejected
the appeal of Michael of Cesena, the General of the Order of
Franciscans. The majority of the Franciscan order now bowed to the decision,
and after some years elected another general. But those who had
Occam stood forth as the firmest defenders of the doctrine of
banished. apostolic poverty withheld their subm.ission. They left
Avignon; and WiUiam of Occam, Michael of Cesena, and Bona-
gratia of Bergamo attached themselves, in 1328, to the service of
the Emperor Louis of Bavaria.
Out of this conflict between the Papal Court and the Minorites ideas

13=2-13=4-] WILLIAM OF OCCAM. 45
which made their influence felt in succeeding centuries ; and of all
the polemical writings produced by the repulsed and banished Fran
ciscans, those of Occam were by far the richest in substance. While
Michael of Cesena confined himself chiefly to personal polemics of
defence and attack, Occam's writings, published several years later,
though not altogether silent on topics of this nature, are in the main
occupied with the substance of the great objective questions in
dispute ; and his investigations possess, in this way, a value and
\vidth of bearing which far transcend what was of mere ephemeral
interest. This discussion, indeed, makes a highly mixed impression upon an
evangelical reader who follows it after the lapse of more than 500
years. Who can miss seeing that the Franciscan, in his Occam's
deep contemplation of the life of Jesus and the apostolic principles.
age, unconsciously looks at the Redeemer and His apostles from the
standpoint of the begging friar, and conceives of them in a thoroughly
monkish and ascetic manner? In opposing such a view, John XXIL
was not without good ground to stand upon. But unquestionably
the Pope feU into an error very much greater himself Not so
unconsciously, perhaps, as his opponent, he carried over to primitive
Christianity the conditions of his own age ; and, influenced by his.
own interests, he allowed himself to justify, by the example of the
Redeemer and the precedent of the apostles, the whole hierarchical
system of his own time, richly endowed and secularised in spirit as it
was, including even the territorial possessions of the Holy See, and
its well-filled treasury. And therein, no doubt, the Pope was in the
wrong, and Occam, his adversary, in the right.
The deepest ground, however, of the unsparing antagonism of the
Roman Court to the stringent principles of the Franciscans was, in
truth, no other than this — that the Popes felt that the spirit of worid-
abnegation which animated these men was a tacit censure of their
own spirit and habit of life ; from which again sprang ' the hatred of
the evil conscience.' But it was the very persecutions which this
hatred prompted which served, in the course of time, to bring to full
light and ripeness aU'the principles touching the spirituaUty of
Christ's kingdom, which at first still lay in a deep slumber, and had
only revealed themselves from afar to the prophetic sense of a few men
of a larger mind than their contemporaries. Occam's whole exposi
tion on the subject of the kingdom of Christ being not an earthly,
but a heavenly and eternal kingdom— that Christ is indeed, as to His
Godhead, King and Lord over all, but, as God-man, only King of
His believing people, and in no respect the administrator of a worldly

46 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. (ch. ,. §3
•government — is an indirect but Scriptural criticism of the medieval
hierarchy — an unconscious evangelical protest against the Papacy in
that form which it had assumed since the days of Gregory VII.
But, on the other hand, Occam's protest against Papal absolutism
— against the assertion of an unlimited plenitude potestatis of the
Pope — is the result of clear, self-conscious, profound
Jrotest against / . ,..,,, . ; ,, ' ,
Papal reflection. He declares it to be totally erroneous, here-
' tical, and dangerous to souls, to maintain that the Pope,
by the ordinance of Christ, possesses unlimited power, both spiritual
and temporal. For if this were so, he might depose princes at his
pleasure — might at his pleasure dispose of the possessions and goods
of all men. We should all be the Pope's slaves ; and in spiritual
things the position would be the same. In that case the law of
Christ would bring with it an intolerable slavery, much worse than
the Old Testament ever knew ; whereas the Gospel of Christ, in
comparison with the old covenant, is a lav? of liberty. In this con
nection Occam opposes, in the most emphatic manner, the assertion
of some flatterers of the Roman Court, that the Pope has power to
make new articles of faith ; that he is infallible ; that into no error,
no sin of simony, can he possibly fall. He starts from the general
principle, that the whole hierarchy, including the Papal Primacy, is
not an immediately Divine, but only a human order. In one place
he even gives expression to the bold thought, that it would, to the
general body of believers, be of more advantage to have several pri
mates or chief priests {summi pontifices), than to have one only ; the
unity of the Church does not depend upon there being only one
summus pontifex ; the danger of moral corruption of the whole body
is much greater with only one head than with several.
In the event of a Pope becoming heretical, every man must have
the competency to be his judge, but his ordinary judge is the Em
peror. But the Church at large also has jurisdiction over the Pope
in such an event, and hence also a General Council, as the repre
sentative of the whole Church ; the bishops, in case of need, may
even depose him. Here we have a practical question anticipated,
which some sixty years later became a burning question in Christen
dom, and not only raised but determined precisely as it was one day
to be solved in actual fact.
Further, in solving the doubt, whether a Council, in case of
necessity, could assemble without Papal sanction, Occam came upon
Pope and thoughts entirely his own. Every society {communitas)
Council. j^jj(j corporation can enact laws for itself, and elect indi
viduals to act for the whole body {vice gerant). Now, all believers

i3=4-i347-l WILLIAM OF OCCAM. 47
are one body and one society (Rom. xii. 5) ; it is competent for
them, therefore, to choose representatives of the whole body. When
those thus elected meet together, they form a General Council of the
whole of Christendom. He conceives of the carrying out of such a
Council in this manner — that from every parish one or more should
be sent to the synod of the diocese, or to the Parliament of the
prince. This assembly proceeds to another election, and the meet
ing of all those chosen by the Diocesan Synods, or the Parliaments,
constitutes the General Council. That is not a Papal Curial Synod,
neither is it a church assembly constituted upon hierarchical prin-
¦ciples ; it is a Synod framed upon the parochial principle.
And yet it is not Occam's meaning to advise a leap from the
ground of the absolute and sole domination of the Papacy to that of
an unconditioned parochial principle, as if this latter contained in it
all the safeguards of truth and weal. No ; only to the Church itself
as a whole, but not to any part of it (and every council is only a part
of it), is the promise given that it can never fall into any error con
tradictory to the faith. Although all the members of a General
Council should fall into error, the hope would not need on that
account to be surrendered, that God would reveal His truth unto
babes (Matt. xi. 25), or would inspire men who already knew the
truth to stand forth in its defence. And such an occurrence must
issue in glory to God, for thereby He would show that our faith does
not rest upon the wisdom of men, such as are called to a General
Council, but upon the Power who has sometimes chosen ' the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise ' (i Cor. i. 27). In another
place Occam expresses the thought that it is even possible that
on some occasion the whole male sex, clergy as well as laity, might
err from the faith, and that the true faith might maintain itself only
among pious women. We see where aU this is tending to. High
above the Pope, and high above the Church itself, in Occam's view,
stands Christ the Lord. ' The Head of the Church and its founda
tion is one— Christ alone.' Occam is conscious that his contention
is for Christ and for the defence of the Christian faith.
It makes a touching and deeply mournful impression, to look into
Occam's heart, as he opens it in the following confession : —
'The prophecy ofthe Apostie, 2 Tim. iv. 3, is now being fulfilled.
•Chief Priests and Elders, Scribes and Pharisees, are acting now-a-
days exactly as they did then when they put Jesus on the ^^^^^.^ ^^^_
cross. They have banished me and other honourers of fidenoe ana
Christ to Patmos. Yet we are not without hope. The ^°^°"
hand of the Lord is not shortened yet. We live in trust in the Most

48 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. i. § 3
High that we shall yet one day return with honour to Ephesus.
But should the will of God be otherwise, still I am sure that neither
death nor life nor any other creature shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, or draw us away from the defence of the
Christian faith.'
By the side of this testimony of pious, joyful trust in God, we
place a passage where Occam speaks of the value of his own writings
and their importance for the future. This occurs in his Dialogue, at
the point where he passes on to a discussion which we may describe
as a piece of political philosophy. Here he puts into the mouth of
the scholar in the Dialogue the following words addressed to his
master : — ' Although we are unable at present to produce a complete
work on the subject, as no treatise upon it, to my knowledge, has.
ever hitherto been attempted by any other writer, still it was useful
not to be altogether sUent upon a subject of so much importance,
that we may stir up others who have the command of books, to pro
duce complete works upon it. My meaning is this, that by means of
our essay men of future times who are zealous for truth, righteous
ness, and the common weal, may have their attention drawn to many
truths upon these matters which, at the present day, remain concealed
from rulers, counciUors, and teachers, to the loss of the common .
weal.' Nor, in point of fact, was this saying too much. For Occam,
along with the small group of like-minded independent thinkers with
whom he was associated, represents a high flight of
against the human thought which did not pass uselessly overhead,
apacy. jjj,^ ^ transient meteor, but worked upon the minds of
men with a kindUng power. Out of a mere question affecting a
religious order developed itself an unimagined life-force, an antagonism
to the Papacy as a centralising world-power, still blended, it is true,
with ascetic convictions, and even deriving its moral strength from
these, and still only half conscious of the extent of its own bearings,
but none the less an antagonism to the Papacy, which in its positive
kernel was a contention for Christ as the alone Head of the Church.
In this conflict of minds by thrust and counter-thrust there were
kindled sparks of evangelical thought and feeling, and there were
struck out new lights of political .truth, which proved of use and
advantage to succeeding generations, and rendered essential service
to progress in the direction of an evangelical renovation of the
Church.

49
4. — English Church Politics in the Fourteenth
Century.
It wiU be easily understood that ideas and sentiments like these,
so far outrunning the current century, could not pass at once into
the blood of the existing generation. In the first in
stance, only what concerned the autonomy of the State, English patri-
in opposition to the Curia, was grasped and realised °''°*^*""S.
by the English nation during the fifty years' reign of Edward IIL
(1327-1377). Even the foreign wars, which fiU up so large a portion
of this period, were constrained to help to this end : — not, indeed,
so much the expeditions against Scotland, which followed one after
another during the first seven years, but mainly the French wars of
succession which Edward III. commenced in 1339. These foreign
relations had a reaction upon the domestic : the wars rendered
increased subsidies necessary, and these were voted by the estates of
the realm represented in Parliament, only at the price of guaranteed
political rights and franchises, as, e.g., in the Parliament of 1341.
But the more closely Crown and Parliament held together, the more
resolutely they opposed themselves to all foreign attempts. This the
Papal Court was compelled to feel acutely, and all the more that the
Court at Avignon was seen to be dependent upon the same France
with which England was at war.
^Vhen Clement VI. , immediately after his accession to the Holy
See, endeavoured to make peace between Edward III. of England
and PhiUp VI. of France, he succeeded, indeed, so far as to bring
about a truce for a time; but as early as Easter, 1343. with the full
assent of his Parliament, Edward roundly declined all official inter
vention of the Pope as head of the Church ; only as a private indi
vidual and personal friend should Clement attempt a mediation.
But still more deeply felt than this refusal was the determination
with which King and Parliament repudiated the Pope's Aominations'
to English livings in favour of foreign prelates and ^^ ^ jio,ojj,a.
oriests. It is well known that the Popes of Avignon tions and pro-
, . ,. T, • J • • il vlsionB.
went far beyond the earUer Popes in draining the
finances of the national churches. But, on the other side, there had
also been no smaU growth of courage and resolution in opposing such
abuses. In England, at least, the Provisions granted by the Pope to
foreign clergy were barred in the most effectual manner. When
Clement VI. had granted to two newly-made cardinals — one of them
his own grandson— provisions to English dignities and incomes
worth in aU two thousand marks yearly, the barons, knights, and
5

50 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.i.§4
burgesses of the realm, in Parliament assembled at Westminster,
May i8, 1343, joined in an open letter to the Pope, in which they
respectfully, but in a firm tone, begged for the removal of the scandal
which was given by reservations, provisions, and nominations to
English dignities and livings, and which had become greater under
Clement than- ever before. They urged that the numerous rich
endowments of their country had been designed for the maintenance
of God's service, for the furtherance of the Christian faith, and for
the benefit of the poor parishioners, and were intended only for men
who had been thoroughly instructed for their office, and who were able,
in particular, to hear confessions in the mother tongue. On the other
hand, by the appointment of strangers and foreigners, in some cases
even of enemies of the kingdom, ignorant of the language of the
country, and of the conditions of those among whom it was their duty
to exercise the pastoral care, the souls of the parishioners were put
in jeopardy; the spiritual cure was neglected; the reUgious feelings
of the people impaired ; the worship of God abridged ; the work of
cliarity diminished ; ,the means of bringing forward young men of
merit crippled; the wealth of the kingdom carried off to foreign
parts; and all this in opposition to the design ofthe founders.'
Nor did men stop at mere representations of the case. When the
cardinals referred to sent their agents to England to exercise their
new rights and coUect the revenues, these men fared badly enough;
The population laid violent hands upon them ; the king's officers put
hindrances in the way of their proceedings ; they were thrown into
prison ; and in the end were driven out of the country with insult and
shame. The Pope with his own hand wrote to King Edward from
Villeneuve, near Avignon, August 28, 1343, complaining of these
proceedings, and requiring the King to interfere to put a stop to what
was so ' unreasonable.' ^
But Clement had ill success in this step. The King sent a reply
¦which was by no means conciliatory, but called upon the Pope
ciementTi ^^''^ ^^^^ cmphasis to do away with the practice of
and ' ' Provisions.' He referred to an urgent petition which
he had received from the last Parliament, praying that a
speedy stop might be put to ' impositions ' of that kind, which were
intolerable to the country; it was no more than the fact, he remarked,
that these measures were fitted to inflict injury upon the kingdom in
more ways than one, which he pointed out in terms partly borrowed
' John Foxe, Ads and Monuments. = The Brief is printed in Walsingham's
Vol. II., 689. Historia Anglicana. Ed., Ridley, 1863,
I-, 259.

»S5o-i353-] STATUTES OF PROVISORS AND PRMMUNIRE. 31
from the Pariiament's petition. In addition, he brings into view the
violation of right which was involved in these provisions and reserva
tions of the Curia : the right of patronage and collation belonging to
the Crown and its vassals is thereby infringed ; the jurisdiction ofthe
Crown in questions of patronate right is ignored ; by the export of
money, as well as by the deterioration of the priesthood, the kingdom
is weakened ; — on all which accounts he turns himself to the successor
of the Prince of the Apostles, who received from Christ the command
to feed the Lord's sheep, and not to fleece them, to, strengthen his
brethren, and not to oppress them, with the urgent entreaty that this
burden of provisions may be taketi away ; that the patrons may
have the use of their patronate rights ; that the chapters may exercise,
without hindrance, the right of election; that the rights ofthe Crown
may remain without injury; and that the former long-descended
devotion of England to the holy Roman Church may again revive.'
But in Avignon mea did not readily give ear to representations of
this sort, let them be ever so well grounded. The abuse went on as
before, as far as was practicable, and the nation was at „^ , ^
' _ f ! _ Statutes of
last convinced that the Papal Court was not in the least Provisors and
. . Praemunire.
disposed to abandon a practice which was so profitable
to itself. A resolution was come to to take the matter into their own
hand, and to put a stop to these usurpations by the legislature of the
kingdom. In 1350, the King, with consent of his Parliament, en
acted a severe penal law against all who in any way should take part
in the filling up of church-offices, injuriously to the rights of the
King, or of the chapters or private patrons concerned. Every act of
this kind was declared null and void ; all offenders in this sort were
threatened with fines and imprisonment ; and all appeals against the
same to foreign tribunals prohibited. This was the ' Statute of
Provisors ; ' = which was followed three years later by another penal
act, which is commonly called simply the ' Prsmunire ; ' ? which
among other things was directed against the abuse of carrying appeals
to the Pope from the English courts on questions of personal
property. The law threatened offenders in this kind for the future
¦with fine and imprisonment.
In connection with this legislation against 'Provisions,' we naturally
recall again to mind the form of the venerable Bishop of Lincoln, who,
exactly one century earlier, had manfully resisted the like encroach-
' The King's reply is also in Walsing- '' The word pnsmunire (instead of
iham, I. , 255. pmmonere) does not stand in the text of
- = A Statute of Provisors of Benefices, the law itself, but used to be employed in
in Ruffhead, 'The Statutes,' 1786, 410, the writ of the sheriffs appointed bythe
pp. 260-64. ^^^ '° issue.

52 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch...§4
ments, and whose spirit seemed now to inspire the whole nation. It
was the same spirit, in fact, which animated Wycliffe from the com
mencement of his public career — who attained to manhood just at
this time — the spirit of national independence boldly opposing a
course of proceeding which made use of church affairs as a handle for
other ends. It was no unchurchly spirit which lay at the bottom of
this opposition. The very contrary was the truth. It was no mere
phrase-making, still less any hypocritical dissimulation, when Edward
III., at the close of the document quoted above, said of himself and
his subjects, ' We all desire to render to your most holy person and
to the holy Roman Church the honour which is due from us.' Only
this honour rendered to the Church was not blind and unconditioned:
it was manly and dignified, and was prepared, in case of need, to
oppose the head of the Church himself, not only in word but in deed,
in matters affecting the Church's temporalities.
In reference to this church-spirit of England, it is a significant and
important circumstance, that up to a period later than the middle of
Heretical the thirteenth century no sects and divisions had ever
movements, arisen in the National Church, nor any departures of any
sort from the characteristic form of the Church of the West. We find
no certain trace- to show that during all the medieval centuries, down
to that time, any form of native heresy had ever sprung up upon the-
English soil' Nor even were foreign heretical sects ever able to-
find a footing in England, however much, in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries especially, these sects spread and propagated themselves on
the Continent. Only two instances are mentioned by the chroniclers;
of such heretics appearing in England, and in both cases they were
immediately put down and extinguished.
In the first instance, under the reign of Henry II. , in the year 1 159,.
there arrived in the country a party of thirty persons of both sexes^
FoUowers of apparently Low Germans, under the leadership of a.
Gerhard. certain Gerhard ; but having soon fallen under suspicion-
of heresy, they were imprisoned and tried before a Synod in Oxford,
by which they were found guilty, and delivered over to the secular
arm. Their punishment was to be branded upon the forehead, to be
flogged through the streets, and then, in their wounds and half-naked,
• A letter, numbered 113, in Vol. XXIV., heretics referred to were a little more
p. 1208, of the Biblioth. Maxima Patrum, exact. These are manifestly described.
Irom Peter de Blois, Archdeacon of Bath, as Cathari, but as to their doings and.
to the Archbishop of York, calling upon proceedings nothing definite whatever
him to arrest the progress of the enemies is stated. It is possible that the refer-
of the Church by Councils and severe ence may be to imported Catharism,
penalties, might seem to prove a different of which mention is to be made imme-
state of matters, if the description of the diately.

II59-I200.] PERSECUTIONS : THE WALDENSES. 53
to be driven out in winter into the open fields, where, without food
and shelter, outcasts from aU society, and by all men unpitied, they
were left miserably to perish. But they met their fate with joy not
withstanding ; they sang aloud, ' Blessed are ye that are persecuted
for righteousness' sake, for yours isthe kingdom of heaven.' But the
monkish chronicler, heartlessly enough, makes the following comment
upon the incident: — 'This pious severity not only purified the
kingdom of the plague which had already crept into it, but, by striking
terror into the heretics, guarded against any future irruption of the
evil' ' Between forty and fifty years later, however, at the beginning
of the thirteenth century, under the reign of John, as a later writer
briefly informs us, several Albigenses came into England and were
burnt alive. ^^
That such m.erciless procedure should in the end act as a deterrent
may be easily understood ; and, in particular, to the Waldenses, who
never seem to have made their way into England. At tj<j^e
least, Peter of Pilichdorf, who wrote in 1444 against the ¦^ai^™^^^.
Waldenses, attests that, with some other countries, England had
always remained entirely pure and free from the Waldensian sect. 3
And I find an indirect confirmation of this in the circumstance, that
in aU the -writings of Wycliffe which I have searched through in
manuscript, I have never come upon a single trace to indicate that,
either in his own time or in earUer centuries, heretics of any kind
had made their appearance in England. Even the Waldenses are not
once historically referred to by him, or so much as named. It is
without all support, therefore, from original sources, when some
writers put forth the conjecture that there were secret disciples of the
Waldensian doctrines in England in Wycliffe's time, who only came
pubUcly into view when emboldened by his movement and the
number of his followers.
If there had been any foundation for this conjecture, the opponents
of Wycliffe and his party would certainly not have omitted to make
use of such a fact, which they could so easily have turned to their
own advantage. They would in that case have piUoried the Lollards
I Chronicle ofthe Augustinian Canon, Waldensium Tractatus in Biblioth. Max-
-William of Newbury, in Yorkshire, 1208. ima Patrum, Lyon 1677, xxv., especiallyc.
Historia Rerum Anglicarum Willelmi i5,p.28i. Here the author's drift is to show
Parvi, ad fidem codd. MSS., rec. Lond., to the -Waldenses a number of ' peoples
1856., Bvo., Vol. I., 120 f. and races and tongues,' where, by God's
'.' Henry of Knighton, Canon of Leices- grace, all are orthodox in the faith, and
ter, in the second half of the fourteenth have remained utterly untouched by this
century. Chronica de eventibus Angliae, sect, ubi omnes homines sunt immunes a
in Twysden's ' Historiae Anglicae Scrip- tua secta penitus conservati; and among
Xores.' Lond., 1652. Vol. ill., coL 2418. these he inentions England first of all,
3 Petri de Pihchdorf Contra Sectam then Flanders, etc.

54 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.i. §-5
as the adherents of a sect already long ago condemned by the Church.
But of this, too, there is not a single trace. On the contrary, one of
the earliest opponents of the LoUards, in a polemical poem written
soon after Wycliffe's death, freely admits that England, which now
favours the Lollards, had hitherto been free of all stain of heres)',
and of every form of error and deception.' In a word, it is irrecon
cilable with the known facts of history to attempt to bring the inner
development of Wycliffe or his followers into connection with any
earlier manifestation of heresy on the European continent. And, in
England itself, the history of the centuries before Wycliffe has not a
single manifestation of the heretical kind to show which was of any
continuance or of any importance.
It is no doubt true that in the intellectual, moral, ecclesiastical,
and political character of the period in which Wycliffe's youth and
early manhood fell, there were elements which exercised
Eeformation influence Upon him, and received from him in turn a.
further development. These, however, were all elements
which were compatible with true zeal for the existing Church, and
with a sincere devotion to the Papal See ; being, on the one hand,
a certain national self-inclusion, favoured by insular position, but
fostered still more by the spirit of Saxon nationality, which was
evoked so powerfully during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
tUl it stood out conspicuously in the compact, united consciousness
of the whole nation ; on the other hand, a spirit of independence
which did not shrink from defending the rights and interests of the
nation and the National Church, even against all the power of the
Papal See, and to wage open war against the abuses of the Church.
In a word, there awoke in the Anglican Church of the thirteenth,
and still more of the fourteenth centuries, ' the true Reformation
spirit which can never die out in the Church, but must rather from
time to time break forth afresh with rejuvenescent strength, in order
to remove the ever recurring rust of abuses and mischiefs.' =
5. — Richard of Armagh and the Mendicant Orders.
We must at this point recall the name of an important personage in
whom this Reformation spirit had a vigorous vitality — an older con-
' The poem is printed in the collection O terra jam pestifera.
Political Poems and Son^s relating to dudum eras puerpera
English History,' ed. Thomas Wright , omnis sana;scientias,
(Rolls Series) V^l. i., pp. 231-249: un§er l^TSr'^^'^lZ'
the title added by the editor. Against the exsors omnis fallacia;.
Lollards. The date assigned to it, 1381,
I cannot for weighty reasons regard as = Dollinger, Kirche und Kirchcn, Pafs~
correct. In the seventh strophe, says thum und Kirchenstaat. Miinchen, 1861,
the author, xxx. f.

1347-] FITZRALPH, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 55
temporary of Wycliffe, to whom, as to Grossetete, he often refers, and
with whom he has sometimes been placed in a closer connection
than can, in our judgment, be historically justified. We refer to
Archbishop Richard of Armagh, Primate of Ireland, who had a high
celebrity in his day.
Richard Fitzralph studied in Oxford, under Dr. John Bakonthorpe,
who was an opponent of the Mendicant Orders, and in whose steps
his disciple is alleged to have walked.' Fitzralph was career of
recommended to Edward III. as a man of high abUity, s'itzraiph.
and was promoted to be Archdeacon of Lichfield; in 1333 he be
came Chancellor of the University of Oxford ; and finaUy, in July,
1347. Archbishop of Armagh. The only side on which he is still
known at the present day is as the practical Churchman, especially
in connection with his opposition to the encroachments of the Men
dicant Orders. But in his own age and in following times he was also
held in high honour as a master of theological science. The reason
why nothing is now known of him in this character is, that none of
his dogmatic and polemical writings have ever been sent to the press.
But in addition to theological lectures delivered in Oxford, he
left important wTitings behind him. Among these we are told not
only ofa commentary on the sentences of Peter Lombard,
...... j; , , His -writings.
origmating in his Oxford lectures, but also of several
apologetico-polemical works, directed partly against Judaism — De
intentionibus jFudcBorum — partly against the Armenian Church. The
latter work, his nineteen books against the errors of the Armenians,
called also his Su?ntna, was the principal dogmatic work of ' Richard
of Armagh,' as he was commonly called, or simply 'Armachanus ;'
and Wycliffe himself cites the books against the Armenians with
extraordinary frequency. Richard composed this work under Pope
Clement VI. , about 1350, at the request of several Armenian Bishops.
For since 1 145 the Armenian Kings had entered into transactions
and connections with Rome, which had for their aim a union of the
National Church of Armenia with the Roman Church of the west.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century several synods of the
Armenians were held in Sis, the ancient Issus, in 1307, and in Atan
(Adana) in 13 16, with a view to this union. In this connection the
learned Englishman wrote the extensive work referred to,^ at the
' See Appendix i. , by Dr. Lorimer. schedule of these errors was appended to
= When King Leo IV. of Lesser Ar- the Brief, extending to the number of 117.
menia applied to Pope Benedict XII. for From that time attention was directed in
assistance against the Saracens, the latter the west of Europe to the differences in
replied, in 1341, that before he could do doctrine and usage of the Armenian
anything for this object, the Armenians Church. Hence the subject and title of
must renounce their many errors. A Ricba.Td's\fOT\i,DeErroribusArmenorum.

¦56 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. .. § s
instance of the Armenian John, bishop-elect of Khelat, and his
brother Nerses, Archbishop of Manaz-Kjerd. Richard accordingly
threw his book into the form of a dialogue. John, the bishop-elect,
proposes questions, and brings forward objections. Richard himself
answers and solves them. In the first six books are handled the
Christological and Trinitarian doctrines ; the seventh defends the
Primacy of Rome ; four books — 8 to i r — are devoted to the Doctrine
of the Sacraments ; the twelfth and following to the Doctrine of the
Last Things ; the five remaining books closing with phUosophico-
theological investigations of a general kind, which form the basis of
the whole work.'
We are told that Richard left behind him a translation of the Bible
in the Irish tongue, which would have been an important fact if it had
been well attested, but the allegation rests upon insufficient evidence.^
But we have trustworthy information on thfe position taken up by the
Irish Primate against the Mendicant orders. The following circum
stances gave rise to this incident as related by himself :
the Men- Having, occasion to come to London on the business of
dioants. j^j^ Archbishopric, he found that learned men there were
engaged in animated discussions upon the question of the poverty of
the life of Jesus, and whether He had even begged. This was no
doubt an after effect of the debate formerly maintained between Pope
John XXII. and a party of the Franciscans. The Archbishop was
repeatedly asked to preach in London upon the subject, and in the
Church of St. Paul he delivered seven or eight sermons in English,
in which he set forth and maintained the propositions following : —
I. Jesus Christ, during His sojourn upon earth, was indeed always
a poor man ; but
2. He never practised begging as His own spontaneous choice.
3. He never taught any one to beg.
4. On the contrary, Jesus taught that no man should practice
voluntary begging.
5. No man can either prudently or holily determine to follow a
life of mendicancy.
6. Mendicancy forms no part of the rule of the Franciscans.
7. The Bull of Alexander IV. (of the year 1255) against a certain
book (the Introductorius in Evangelium aeternuiri) is not directed
against any of the above propositions.
8. For the purposes of confession, the parish church is always
¦ Vid. Dr. Karl Werner's Geschichte 1864. in., 409. Comp. Hefele's Con-
der apologet. mid polemisch. Literatur ciliengeschichte, IV., p. 569 f., p. 425.
der Christi. Theologie. Schaffhausen, ^ Joh.Bale, Scriptorum Britannicorum
Centuries, p. 246.

:t357.1 FITZRALPH, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 57
more suitable for the parishioner than any church or chapel of the
begging monks.
9. For hearing confessions the parish priest is always preferable to
the begging monk.
These nine propositions evidently fall into two groups. The first
group, I to 7, treats entirely of the moral question, in what
' Apostolical Poverty ' consists ; in particular, whether begging, in its
proper sense, is permitted to Christian men, and is in itself a virtue
— yea or nay. The second group, consisting of the last two proposi
tions, relates to the ecclesiastical question, whether it is advisable
and right that parishioners should confess in a conventual church to
a mendicant monk, instead of going to their parish church and parish
priest. In both respects the high-placed dignitary expressed himself
in opposition to the Mendicants, to their principles, and to their
privileges. No wonder that he was attacked in consequence. The
Mendicant Orders raised accusations against him at the Papal Court,
and he found himself obliged to undertake a journey to Avignon in
1357, and to prosecute his defence in person before Innocent VI.
It is not improbable that the Irish Primate acted not only for himself,
but in name and by commission of several English bishops ; at least
WycUife mentions the rumour that the bishops in general had con
tributed to defray his travelling charges, etc' The address which
he delivered at a solemn sitting of the Council, November 8, 1357,
in presence of the Pope and Cardinals, affords us some insight into
his ecclesiastical views.^ His contention is simply one for the rights
of the pastoral office as against the privileges of the Begging Orders,
by which these rights were infringed — a contest which was renewed
in France about fifty years later, in 1409 and following years.
The first and by far the larger half of the discourse must be
regarded as containing the main gist of the whole. It is this part
which has procured for it the title, ' A Defence of the _, . .
_ .tliS 0.6X61108
Parish Priests ; ' for the second part, only a fourth of the before the
whole, is taken up with the proof and justification of the
first seven propositions quoted above. The preacher lays the main
-.stress of his argument against mendicancy upon the fact, which he
proves in a very convincing manner, that the Redeemer, during His
life on earth, was neither a mendicant Himself nor ever taught His
I Trialogus, iv., c. 36. Ed. Lechler, 466-486. This speech, however, is said
p^ C75. to have been printed in Lyons as early as
'» Defensorium curatorum contra eos, 1496, and in Paris in 1511, along with a
.qui privilegiatos se dicunt, printed in tract in reply to it, to be mentioned further
Goldast's Monarchia, II., pp. 1392-1410, on ; vid. D'Argentr^, Collectiojudiciorum
with a better text in Brown's Appendix ad de novis erroribus, I. , 379.
¦Fascic. rerum expetend, etc.. Vol. 11., pp.

58 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFEi ten. i. § y
disciples to be such. His most weighty objection against the prin*
ciples which he opposes lies, if we are not mistaken, in the assertiort,
that the notion of voluntary mendicancy rests only upon ignorance of
the Scriptures, or upon the covetous pretext that the practice is con
formable to the life of Christ.' But he takes up first the last two of
those nine propositions, i.e., the question of Confession and of the
privileges of the Begging Orders, and he gives his reason for doing-
so at the beginning of his discourse. He does so, because a matter
which is of common interest to the whole priesthood, yea, to all
Christendom, takes precedence of a matter of private interest, whereas
the principle of mendicancy is only a private affair of the Begging
Orders. To guard himself, however, against misapprehension, as if
he meant to assail the Begging Orders on principle, he not only
enters a caveat at the very commencement of his discourse against
any possible suspicions of his orthodoxy, but also against the surmise
that his aim was to attack the whole position of the Orders which
had received the sanction of the Church. What he aimed at was no
more than this, that these orders should be restored to the purity of
their original foundation. In other words, it was their reformation
he sought, not their suppression. =
With regard to confession, the archbishop shows most convincingly
that it is much more suitable, and, on moral grounds, much more
advisable, that confession should be made to one's own
Mendicants . , . ,
and parish parish priest {sacerdos ordinarius) than to a begging
pries B. i^onk ; for the former stands much nearer than the
latter to any member of his own parish coming to confess, and has
personal knowledge both of the man and his previous sins ; and
naturally such a man has more feeUng of shame before one whom
he sees every day, than before a stranger whom perhaps he sees
face to face only once a year. It may also so easily happen, for
want of personal knowledge of people, that a monk receiving con
fessions may absolve persons who are under the ban of excommuni
cation. The speaker attests that in his own diocese, where perhaps
there are not fewer than two hundred persons under excommunica
tion for murders, fire-raisings, thefts, and such-like crimes, there-
are only forty at most of these who come for confession to him, or
the confessors under him. People of this description prefer to
confess to the begging friars, and are at once absolved and admitted
to communion by them.
^ Unde non video, qualiter ista opinio de ut per ipsam qucsstus amplior haberetur ,-
ohservantia m-endicitatis spontanecs fuerit vid. Brown, Fasciculus, etc., p. 486.
introducta, nisi ignorandoscripturam, aut = Brown's Fasciculus, etc., pp. 466-
fingendo eam esse Chrisii vitce conformem, 468.

1357-1 ' FITZRALPH, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 59
On the other hand, the archbishop urges that the parish priest
is a more righteous judge, and less subject also to suspicion of
avaricious motives, for he has his parish living, which the begging
monk has not Let it only be remembered that the Mendicant
orders, since the time when they obtained the privilege of hearing
confessions, have built everywhere the most beautiful monasteries
and truly princely palaces, which, before that time, they were in no
condition to do. It is never heard that they impose alms upon
those who confess to them, for the repairs of a parish church or
a bridge, or for the upholding of a country road; they prefer to
impose them entirely for their own benefit and that of their order.
But he goes still farther. It is not only the abuse of their privi
leges which is the cause of manifold moral mischiefs, but the very
existence and normal effect of these rights viewed by themselves,
and apart from all their misuse. These rights are injurious to those
who go to confession, because such persons are less ashamed of their
sins before strangers, and pay no regard to contrition, which is the
chief part of the sacrament of penance, and are led besides to under
value their parish priests. They are injurious to the parish priests,
by estranging from them their own parishioners to such a degree
that the latter soon cease to have any personal knowledge of them.
The mischief even extends to the spiritual order at large. For the
begging monks know how to draw to themselves young insidious
men at the universities and elsewhere by means of the the M^ndi-
confessional ; they entice them into their orders, and cants.
never allow them to leave again ; even during the years of noviciate
they permit them to have interviews with parents at most only in
presence of a brother of the monastery. One day not long ago, on
going out from his inn to the street, the archbishop met with a
respectable English gentleman who had made a journey to Avignon
for no other purpose but to obtain from the Curia the surrender
of his son, whom the begging friars of Oxford had inveigled last
Easter, though yet only a boy thirteen years old. When the father
hurried to Oxford to rescue him, he was only permitted to speak
with his son under the eyes of several monks. ' What is this but
man-stealing, a crime worse than cattle-stealing, which is a penal
offence?' And this with mere chUdren, before theyhave come to
years of discretion !
And let it not be said such youngsters will serve God afterwards
with all the more devotion, and therefore it is allowable to gain
them by promises and lies. People ' must not do evil that good
may come ' (Rom. iii. 8). No lie, in particular, is allowable for

¦6o ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. i.§5
a good end, and no man, for any reason of his own invention, is
at liberty to set aside any of the commandments. The
¦iS^oughtby theft, and the teaching which helps to it, are both
**'^'°" mortal sins. Things have come to such a pass in Eng
land that laymen no longer send their sons to the universities, but
prefer to make farmers of them, rather than run the risk of losing
them in that fashion ; and hence it is that, whereas in the preacher's
time there where thirty thousand students in Oxford, there are now
no more than six thousand. And this is a great mischief for the
-clergy in particular, though in every faculty alike the secular students
(/.«., non-monks) are constantly on the decrease, while the begging
orders have been making no end of gains, both in the number of
their converts and their members.
Add to this that it is now almost impossible to purchase good
books at the universities, for they are all bought up by the Mendi
cants ; in all their convents are to be found large and valuable
libraries. The Archbishop himself had sent three or four of his
parish priests at a time to the university, but in every instance One
at least of these had left and come back again, because they found
it impossible to get a Bible to buy, or any other theological book.
And thus, in the end, he thinks, there wiU cease to be any clergy,
and faith will entirely die out in the Church.
How injurious the rights ofthe begging order were to the Christian
people, the preacher depicts from the life. Already, says he, neither
great nor small can any more take a meal without the friars being
ofthe party; and not standing at the door, as might be supposed,
to beg for alms, but pushing into the houses without ceremony.
Yes ! and they not only eat with the guests, but carry off bread,
and meat, and cheese along with them; and quite in the face of
Christ's express command, they go from hall to hall, from house to
house. But lastly, these privUeges work mischief even to the Mendicant
friars themselves. For they lead them into disobedience of their
own Rules, and cause them to fall into greed and avarice and
ambitious aspiration after vain honours and dignities. As to the
first, the preacher instances several violations of the original Fran
ciscan Rule, which had all arisen from their later-obtained privileges
and exemptions. But the friars are also guUty of avarice, for they
have acquired only such rights as enable them to accumulate wealth.
If it were not their aim to make money, they would at least hand
over the burial dues, when funerals occur among them, to the parish
churches and the parish priests ; but this is what they never do, and

I3S7.1 FITZRALPH, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 6l
their covetousness must be to blame for it. The right of hearing
confessions, too, they exercise with the same view. They receive
the secret confessions of women, even of princesses ; and there are
even instances of their finding their way into the boudoirs of the
most beautiful women of noble rank. Scandals enough, which come
of the abuse of the Confessional !
Although these privileges have been conferred upon them by
Papal authority, they cannot continue to make use of them without
mortal sin. Neither can they sincerely repent of these sins without
making restitution, as far as they can, of the rights which they have
taken away from the parish priests. In this connection, as in support
of all his other representations, Richard of Armagh repeats the
Bible-text which he has prefixed to his whole discourse, ' Judge not
according to the outward appearance, but judge righteous judg
ment ' (John vii. 24).
The good man spoke out with frankness and courage. He dis
plays in his sermons much dialectical skiU and culture, and 'a solid
and ripe theological erudition. But more than all, he spirit of Fitz-
is penetrated by a spirit of intense moral earnestness raiph.
and of true manhood. Richard of Armagh has the spirit of a
Reformer, in the noblest sense ; he is a man who fights against
modem degeneracy and ecclesiastical abuses with combined wisdom
and zeal ; with eye upUfted to Christ, and with the sword of the
Spirit, which is the Word of God.'
From this point let us cast a look backwards to Grossetete, and
another forward to WycUffe. Richard of Armagh and Robert of
Lincoln were in many respects men of kindred spirit, comparison
and yet in reference to the Mendicant orders all but ^*st?and
antipodes ; for the former attacked them and the wyoUffe.
latter patronised and promoted them. But let the times in which
they lived be distinguished, and the two men come nearer in
character to each other. At the time when Grossetete became a
bishop — in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, the Fran
ciscans (with whom he came into the nearest connection) were in
their first period, and were animated by their first love; they
' Ofcourse, the Mendicant orders them- bouring convent of the Order, and when
selves, as a deeply interested party, could this was refused him , and the magistrates
not be expected to give an impartial judg- of Armagh had taken the monks and their
ment on the proceedings of the archbishop. rights under their protection, the arch-
We learn from the History of the Fran- bishop conceived a mahcious feeling
ciscans, by Lucas (Wadding, how they against them, and did all he could to in-
sought to explain such an opposition on crease the opposition which had already
his part. The archbishop, it was alleged, begun to be stirred up against the Order
had set his heart upon getting for his own in England. — Annales Minorum, vi., p.
palace an ornament belonging to a neigh- 62.

62 .ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.,. §s
numbered among them many men who were zealous and active
for the good of souls. The Bishop of Lincoln rejoiced to find in
them instruments and fellow-workers, full of insight and power.
That was why he honoured them with his confidence, availed himself
of their services, and extended to them his support.
A century passed away, and Richard of Armagh had experiences
of the Order of quite another kind. The Mendicants were caressed
by the Bishops and Popes ; it fared with the'm as with children who
are the pets of their families — they were spoiled. Distinguished
by privileges, they became more and more pretentious and encroach
ing ; the Order and its honour, its interests, and its revenues,
became now the chief objects of their aims, instead of the honour
of God, the good of the Church, and the salvation of souls. De
generacy, the moral corruption of both the Mendicant orders, was
an accomplished fact. In such circumstances, a man who was an
honest lover of goodness, and had a clear eye for the real state of
matters, must of course take up quite a different position toward
these Orders from a man of the same gifts and of like spirit who
had lived a hundred years earlier, when they were in their moral
bloom and glory. The difference of spirit, therefore, between the
two men is more apparent than real
But we also cast a look forward from Richard of Armagh to John
of Wycliffe. It has been conjectured that the latter, in the matter
of the Mendicant orders, followed immediately in the footsteps
of the former. This conjecture was favourably received, and for a
long time has passed as a historical fact,. What led to this was the
circumstance that Wycliffe, in several of his writings, made repeated and
very severe attacks upon these orders. But the writings referred to
belong not to the earliest, but precisely to the latest which he pro
duced. In his earUer and earliest pieces I find none of this severe
antagonism to the Mendicant monks, but, on the contrary, in many
places a sentiment of recognition and high esteem. This will be
pointed out more fully hereafter. We have no warrant, therefore, to
suppose that Wycliffe took up immediately the threads which had
dropped from the hands of Richard of Armagh, when, after more
than two years' residence in Avignon, he died there in December,
1359. One thing only is certain, that Wycliffe, in his earnest and
presistent warfare against church evils and corruptions — a warfare
which he too carried on from love to Christ the Church's Lord,
and with the weapons of God's Word — had Richard Fitzralph, in
particular, as one of his nearest precursors.
This discourse of the Archbishop of Armagh called forth a reply

T3s6-t362.] " THE LAST AGE OF THE CHURCH." 63
from a Franciscan doctor of theology in Oxford, Roger Conway,' which
appeared at latest in 1362, but probably some years
earlier, in the Archbishop's lifetime. This production reply to"
is a very different one from the Archbishop's, both in ^"^'^"iph.
form and in spirit, for it is not a spoken discourse, but a treatise of
twice the bulk, and the whole gist of the monkish doctor is the exact
opposite of the Prelate's. The Franciscan's standpoint is entirely
that of the scholastic divine and the Church lawyer. In his mode of
treating his subject, the throb of personal emotion is scarcely ever
perceptible, which makes so pleasing an impression in the Arch
bishop. He asserts over and over again that the discourse of the
Archbishop, whom he treats, however, with great respect, is nothing
but a bill of accusation against the begging orders : so much the more
vigorously does he himself take up the ground of Law and Right. It
is more the ' decretalist,' the master of Church law, whom we listen
to than the theologian ; whereas in Richard Fitzralph the feeling
of the devout Christian, of the true pastor, of the zealous Church
prince pulsates throughout. But this purely legal posture of the
defender of the Mendicants makes the inevitable impression that,
however unconsciously, yet in substance and effect it is only the
selfish interests of the orders that he undertakes to defend.
Here, too, we think we ought to mention another writing which
dates from this century, more precisely from 1356, and which, so far
at least, deserves to be put side by side with Richard
T^. , 1 , -1- > T ¦ T J • Treatise on
Fitzralph s discourse, as both pieces are directed against the 'Last Age
the evils and abuses of the Church. We refer to the
much-discussed, but, as it seems to us, more discussed than known
tract, Of the Last Age of the Church, which was long ascribed to
Wycliffe himself, and given out as a juvenile piece of his, but upon
inadequate grounds, and in disregard of weighty reasons which make
against his authorship.^ The short essay is in substance nothing
more than an indictment against the sins ofthe priests, and particularly
against their trafiSc in offices (simony). This abuse the author con
siders to be the Third Trouble which comes upon the Church. The
first consisted in the Persecutions, the second in the Heresies, the
third in Simony. There is now only one more trouble to follow, viz.,
the DevU at broad noonday — i.e., the Antichrist. This view, and a
great deal more in the tract, the author borrows from the writings of
Abbot Joachim of Flore ; but he bases it as Bernhard of Clairvaux
' His name is written Connovius or in Goldast's Monarchia, pp. 1410-
Chonoe. The piece is entitled Defensio 1444-
Religionis Mendicantium, and is printed ? 'fide Article II. in the Appendix.

64 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.i. ?&
also does in his sermons, on the Song of Songs (33) and upon Ps.
xcv. 5, 6.
It is not difficult to discover that the author views the Church
disorders of the time in a very narrow manner. He has an eye only
for abuses and sins attaching to those of the clergy who are in pos
session of tithes and landed endowments. This shows that his
position in the Church is one different from theirs — a position from
which this particular side of the Church's evils comes directly under
his view; that is to say, he seems to belong to one or other of the
Mendicant orders, like the above-named Roger Conway. The author,
besides, in his whole style of mind, is a man of contracted views ; his
mode of thinking is apocalyptic, in the meaner not the grander sense ; .
and he hangs entirely upon authorities such as Abbot Joachim, or rather
the pseudo-Joachim writings. This last circumstance helps us to
trace with certainty his connection with the Franciscans, particularly
with that portion of the Order which was attached to Joachimisra,
and specially to the apocalyptic views of the so-called 'Eternal Gos
pel.' At all events, this production was entirely destitute of any
strong, living germs of principle from which any future development
could spring.
6.— Thomas Bradwardine — His Teaching and Spirit.
Very different is, the case with the teaching of an important contem
porary of the foregoing writer, who, Uke him, belongs to the period
immediately preceding Wycliffe's public career.
We refer to Thomas of Bradwardine, a Christian thinker, who
knew nothing higher and holier than to do battle for ' the cause of
_ ^. God,' and especially to bring into recognition the free ¦
Bradwardine's . '^ ,. ^ , -,
doctrine of and Unmerited grace of God as the one only source of
salvation, in the face of an age whose strong leaning,
on the contrary, was to buUd salvation upon human merit. Nor
did he entirely fail in gaining the age's concurrence in his teaching.
His contemporaries held him in high esteem ; they gave him the
honourable title of the ' Profound Doctor ' {Doctor Profundus).^ The
lectures delivered in Oxford, in which he expounded his doctrine,
found such high acceptance that many of his auditors, including
men of high position, made repeated requests to him to embody his
views in a work for publication. And Wycliffe in particular, who
could scarcely have known him personally, was full of esteem for
Mt seems to me very probable that word profound, to denote the mysteries of
this epithet may have been suggested to truth, e.g., profundissima haec abyssus..
his admirers by his frequent use of the De Causa Dei, p. 808.

'325.1 THOMAS BRADWARDINE. 65
him, which he manifests upon every mention of his name, although
he strongly opposes some of his dogmatic views. We beUeve that
we are not mistaken in maintaining that the principles which lay at
the basis of Bradwardine's teaching were not without important in
fluence upon Wycliffe. In the fifteenth century, also, his credit still
stood very high. A man Uke John Gerson (died 1429) often quoted
him as an authority in his work on The Spiritual Life of the Soul.
At the period of the Reformation he seems to have been little
known, but at the beginning of the seventeenth century George
Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury (161 0-1633) revived the memory
of his celebrated predecessor, and had the merit of suggesting and
promoting the publication of his principal work, which was prepared
for the press by Henry Savile, Warden of Merton College, upon the
basis of a collection of six manuscripts.' But this service to his
earlier fame came too late, for Bradwardine and his work have never
obtained, in later times, the high consideration to which they are
entitled.^ Thomas of Bradwardine 3 was bom near the end of the thirteenth
century, but where and in what year cannot be determined with
certainty.* , He takes notice himself, on one occasion, hib
that his father lived in Chichester.s As, however, it ^^''^^ ^®-
appears, from Oxford documents ofthe year 1325, that he then held
the office of a Proctor of the University, it is concluded, on good
grounds, that he must have been born in 1290 at the latest. Further,
we have certain knowledge that he went to Oxford as a student, and
was there admitted into Merton College, which had been founded in
1274. Here he studied not only scholastic philosophy and theology,
but also mathematics and astronomy, with such success as to obtain
the highest reputation in all these branches of learning.
It was at this period, also, that an incident occurred to him which
' ThomcB Bradwardini Archiepiscopi passed over Bradwardine in profound
olim Cantuariensis De Causa Dei, ct de silence ; while Gieseler, though he gives
Virtute CausarumLibritres.'Lond.,z6iZ, several important passages from him
fol. Edited by Henry Savile, Head ofthe (Lehrbuch der KirchengescMchte, 3 edit.,
same College in Oxford (Merton) where II., p. 239), has entirely misconceived the
Bradwardine had once been a student and fundamental principle of his teaching ; as
fellow. Baur also does, in his Christliche Dogmcn-
= In Germany, Schroeckh; it is true, in geschichte, p. 265, 2 edit.
h\s Kirchengeschichte, ga.\e' a. preUy long 3 The most authentic account of his
extract from the Causa Dei, v. 34, pp. life is contained in Savile's Preface to the
226-240. But from his time down to the Causa Dei.
present day, if I am not quite mistaken, ^ The small village in the county of
our most learned Church historians have Hereford, not far from the border of
bestowed little attention upon the work, V/ales, from which Thomas took his
or as good as none at all. Neander, surname, is still called Bredwardine.
at least, in his General History of the 5 De Causa Dei, in., c, 22.
Christian Religion and Church, has

66 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.i. §6
gave a decisive turn to his inner life, and which we fortunately learn
Spiritual from his own pen. His narrative is as follows : — ' I
p,wakening, ,^^^g ^^ q^q time, while StiU a student of philosophy, a
vain fool, far from the true knowledge of God, and held captive in
opposing error. From time to time I heard theologians treating of
the questions of Grace and Free Will, and the party of Pelagius
appeared to me to have the best of the argument. For I rarely
heard anything said of grace in the lectures of the philosophers,
except in an ambiguous sense ; but every day I heard them teach
that we are the masters of our own free acts, and that it stands in
our own power to do either good or evil, to be either virtuous or
vicious, and such like. And when I heard now and then in church
a passage read from the Apostle which exalted grace and humbled
free-will, — such, e.g., as that word in Romans ix., " So then it is not
in him that willeth, nor in him that runneth, but in God that
showeth mercy," and other like places, — I had no liking for such
teaching, for towards grace I was still unthankfiU.' I beUeved also
with the Manicheans, that the Apostle, being a man, might possibly
err from the path of truth in any point of doctrine. But afterwards,
and before I had become a student of theology, the truth before
mentioned struck upon me like a beam of grace, and it seemed to
me as if I beheld in the distance, under a transparent image of truth,
the grace of God as it is prevenient both in time and nature to all
good deeds — that is to say, the gracious wUl of God which pre-
cedently wills, that, he who merits salvation shall be saved, and
precedently works this merit of it in him, God in truth being in all
movements the primary Mover. Wherefore, also, I give thanks to
Him who has freely given me this grace {Qui mihi hanc gratiam
gratis dedit).' '^
From this interesting testimony from his own lips, it appears that
Bradwardine, while still a student, and even before he had begun the
regular study of theology, had experienced a spiritual awakening
which brought him off from the Pelagian way of thinking, and led
him to the conviction that the grace of God is prevenient to all God-
pleasing action, instead of being acquired by such action preceding.
This awakening had evidently occurred in connection with such
utterances of St. Paul as that in Romans ix. i6, which had suddenly
struck upon the young man's soul with a clear light and arresting
force, insomuch that from that day forward the all-determining power
-of grace became the central truth of his Christian thinking.
' Ihgratio mihi gratia displicebat. = De Causa Dei, Lib. I., t. 35, p.
'The word-play Here cannot be imitated in 380,
Lnglish,

^3=3-1349-] THOMAS BRADWARDINE.

07

It has been already mentioned that Bradwardine held a University
office in 1325. We next hear of him delivering lectures for some time
as a Doctor of Theology in the University, by which
he laid the foundation of his theological renown, and °''?oyai™'*
at a later date he became Chancellor of St. Paul's in o^apiai"'
London. When the war with France broke out, and Edward III.
made the campaign in person, John Stratford, Archbishop of Can
terbury (1333-1348) proposed him to the King for war chaplain and
confessor. In this capacity he accompanied the King in his cam
paigns in 1339 and subsequent years, and so great was his religious
and moral influence upon Edward and his army, upon whom he
knew how to press the claims of humanity, that many historians
of those wars were convinced that the English victories were more
due to the holiness of this priest than to the warlike virtues of the
King and the valour of his troops.
In 134S Archbishop Stratford died, and the chapter of Canter
bury chose Bradwardine to be his successor ; but the King's attach
ment to him was such that he could not make up his Arohbish
mind to release him from attendance on his person. Canterbury.
But upon the death of John Ufford, who was nominated in his stead
in May, 1349, before receiving consecration, and the chapter having
a second time made choice of Bradwardine, the King at length gave
his consent to the arrangement. Thomas of Bradwardine was nomi
nated Archbishop by King and Pope, was consecrated in Avignon
in the beginning of July, and returned immediately to England to
assume his office. But only a few weeks after, August 26, 1349, he
•died in the Palace of Lambeth.
Bradwardine's theological views are exhibited in a systematic form
in the work already named. It bears the title Of the Cause of God,
for the author has the consciousness of appearing like Bradwardine's
an advocate in defence of God's honour, in standing ' *^^"ant?^^ ' '
forward to oppose Pelagianism, and to exalt the agency Pelagian.
of God's free and unmerited grace in the conversion and salva
tion of man. He by no means conceals from himself that in so
¦doing he is swimming against the current of prevailing opinion, for it
is his own remark that ' the doctrine is held by many either that the
free will of man is of itself sufficient for the obtaining of salvation ;
or if they confess the need of grace, that still grace may be merited
by the power of the free will, so that grace no longer appears to be
-something undeserved by men, but something meritoriously acquired.
Almost the whole world,' he says, ' has run after Pelagius and fallen
into error.' But Bradwardine does not aUow himself to be dis-

68 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. ,. § &
heartened by this state of things. He knows for certain that one-
man, if the Lord is with him, will be able to chase a thousand foes,,
yea to put twelve thousand to flight (i Sam. xviii. 7).
This joyful courage in conflict, this devout confidence of victory
in pleading the cause of God's grace as the only source of salvation,
cannot fail to remind us of the Reformers, who were essentially heralds
of the same grace, and opposers of the delusion that salvation
can be earned by human merit. The method, it is true, which the
scholastic divine foUowed was different from theirs, owing to the
peculiar character of mediseval culture. The Reformers went to-
work theologically, Bradwardine philosophically. He gives as his.
reason for adopting this method, that the later Pelagians had asserted
that Pelagius had been overcome purely by church authority and by-
theological proofs, but in a philosophical and rational way it had
never been possible to confute him. Bradwardine's design, therefore,,
is to make use mainly of philosophical arguments and authorities.
In regard to authorities he adheres, in fact, so closely to his declared
design, that he gives more space to the sayings of phUosophers, old
and new, and attaches more stress to them, than he does to his own
independent reasonings. However, he also elucidates the question
theologically, namely by arguments of Scripture and appeals to the
Fathers and Scholastics, with the view, as he says himself, of showing
the right sense of many passages of Holy Scripture and the Fathers,
which had often been misunderstood and perverted by the Pelagians,
of ancient and later times.
Waiving, for want of space, any analysis of the doctrinal contents
and reasonings of a work so bulky and profound, it may be observed,
in general terms, that the scientific success of the
Scientific ^ . . .
defects perlormance is less satisfactory than the religious-
ewor . ^^^ moral spirit with which it is imbued. For the
absolute determinism which Bradwardine sets forth, labours under an
inappropriate mixing up of metaphysical and physical ideas with an
ethical question, and thus rests the doctrine that salvation is grounded
exclusively, upon grace upon an insecure foundation.
But the spirit which animates him is worthy of all recognition. He-
is filled with a moral pathos — a lofty earnestness of Christian piety.
Its s irit ¦^^l^ich cannot fail to make the deepest impression.'
His drift is to exhibit grace as a free and unmerited
gift of God, and to strike down every imagination of human merit:
' In proof of this, I point to the fervent deemer thus :— ' Good IVIaster— Thou, my ¦
prayer with which Bradwardine, towards only Master— my Master and Lord, Thou,
the close of the work, begins cap. 50 of who from my youth up, when I gave:
Book HI., p. 80S. He invokes the Re- myself to this work by Thy impulse, hast.

^3=5-1349.] THOMAS BRADWARDINE. 69
in the work of conversion. It is for this reason that he controverts
in particular the favourite dogma of the Scholastics that man can
qualify himself to receive grace, in other words, that he can deserve
grace, if not to the strict extent of full worthiness {de condigno), still
in the sense of raeetness and suitableness {de congruo). To acquire
merit before God, Bradwardine holds to be impossible for man in
any sense whatsoever.' He who affirms the contrary turns God, in
eff"ect, into a poor trafficker ; for he who receives grace on the footing
¦of any kind of merit, has purchased the grace and not received it as
a free gift.
Bradwardine sets out, in fact, as pointed out above, from his own
experience — from actual life — and he keeps actual experience ever in
his eye. And in regard to the authorities for the doctrine of un
merited grace to whom he cares most to appeal, he is thoroughly
alive to the fact that it was by their own living experience that they
too were brought to the knowledge of that grace. The Apostle Paul,
for example, was 'a chosen vessel of grace,' inasmuch as, at a time
when he was not thinking of good works at all, nor was even standing
aloof from deeds of wickedness; at a time when he was thirsting for
Christian blood, and was even persecuting the Lord Himself, sud
denly alight from heaven shone round about him, and the grace of Jesus
Christ at the same instant preveniently laid hold upon him. He speaks
¦of the Apostle as emphaticaUy a child of grace, who, in gratitude for
the same, makes devout and honourable mention of this grace — his
mother — in almost all his epistles, vindicating her claims, particularly
in his Epistle to the Romans, where he makes grace the subject of a
large and acute investigation^ which fills the Epistle almost from
taught me up to this day all that I have the door of truthpi For now when Thou
«ver learned of the truth, and all that, as liftest the light df Thy countenance upon
Thy pen, I ha-/e ever written of it, — send Thy servant, I believe I see the right
down upon me, also now, of thy great understanding of Thy Word,' etc. In
g^oodness. Thy light, so that Thou who one place, after he had been warmly de-
hast led me into the profoundest of depths fending Augustine against a misinterpreta-
mayest also lead up to the mountain height tion of Peter Lombard, and had subjected
of this inaccessible truth. Thou who hast thescholastic to asomewhatsharp critique,
brought me into this great and wide sea, maintaining that the latter interpretation
bring me also into the haven. Thou who is in direct opposition lo the meaning of
hast conducted me into this wide and that Father (Lib. 11., c. 10; p. 502), he is
pathless desert. Thou my Guide, and almost alarmed at his own boldness, and
Way, and End, lead me also unto the pleads in excuse for himself ' the zeal for
-end. Show me, I pray Thee, Thou most the house of God and catholic truth, which
learned of all teachers, show to Thy little fills him with a vehement ardour against
child, who knows no outlet from the diffi- the error of the Pelagians ; for it is not
culty, how to solve the knpt of Thy Word against Lombard himself that he has said
,0 hardly knit. . . . Biit now I thank a word, but against his error, because it
.fhee, serenest Lord, wliat to him who is so nearly akin to the false teaching of
asketh. Thou hast giran ; to him that Pelagius.'
I seeketh. Thou hast shown the way ; and ' De Causa Dei, 1., u. 38. p. 319.
to hini that iLnrrlrnth, Thir hfi"-*- "p""^' Compare c. 39, p. 347.
the door of piety, the door of clearness, ° Ib. i., 0.43, p. 392.

,IT

79 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. ..
beginning to end. And quite in- a similar spirit he remarks upon
Augustine that, 'like the Apostle, he was at first an unbeUever, a
blasphemer, and an enemy of the grace of Jesus Christ, but after the
same grace had converted him with like suddenness, he became,
after the apostle's example, an extoUer, a magnificent and mighty
champion of grace.'' And like the Apostle Paul, like Augustine
the great church-father of the west, Thomas Bradwardine too became,
by the light from heaven which shone upon hira in his youth, an
extoUer and champion of the grace of God, in opposition to the
Pelagian and self-righteous spirit which prevailed in his time.
It was by no means his intention, indeed, in so doing, to place
himself in antagonism to the Church of Rome. On the contrary, he
Bradwardine declares expressly his steadfast belief in the doctrinal
and Eome. authority of the Church. He submits his writings to
her judgment; it is for her to determine what is orthodox in the
questions which he has investigated ; he wishes with all his heart to
have her support where he does battle with the enemies of God;
where he errs, to have her correction; where he is in the right, to
have her confirmation. = But stUl, in the last resort, he consoles
himself with the help of God, who forsakes no one who is a defender
of His cause. 3
7. — ' The Vision of Piers Plo-wman.'
While the learned Doctor was defending God's cause with the weapons
of science, and seeking to bring back his age from the paths of
Pelagian error into the one only way of salvation, the same cry for
grace was also heard from the conscience of the common people, in
their feeling of the urgent need of a better state of things.
About twelve years after Bradwardine's death, this feeling of
society found expression in a great popular poem, which yet remains
Authorofthe to be noticed by us as a speaking sign of the times. We
'Vision.' j.g£gj. (.Q 27^^ Vision of Piers Plowman, which reveals to
us, not so much by the social position of its author, as by the circle
of readers for whom he wrote and the spirit of which the work is-
full, the deep ferment which at that time was spreading through the
lowest and broadest stratum of the English people. The author
himself undoubtedly belonged to the educated class, or rather to
the learned class, which was then almost identical with it. He is
famUiar with the whole learning of his time ; he knows the Classics
' De Causa Dei, I., c. 35, p. 311. — ° Ib, Preface, p. 7. Also the end.
Factus est gratics laudator, graticB magni- of the work, HI., c. 53, p. 872.
ficus ac slreiiuus propugnator. 3 lb. p. 8.

1362.] THE AUTHOR OF ' PIERS PLOWMAN.' yt
and the Fathers, the Scholastics and the Chroniclers, and also the
Canon Law ; he quotes the Bible according to the Vulgate and the
' Glossa ; ' quotes likewise Latin Church hymns in the original ; in
short, he was a scholar, and probably a monk. In the sixteenth
century the tradition existed that his name was Robert Longland or
Langland, born at Cleobury Mortimer, in Shropshire) educated in
Oxford, and then admitted a monk in the Benedictine Priory of
Great Malvern, Worcestershire.
Several allusions to localities such as the Malvern Hills and the
like, point to the fact that he must have lived in the west of England,
on the border of Wales. Perhaps he sprang from the agricultural
population ; at all events, he shared their feelings, and wrote for
them and from their point of view ; and this he did to such good
purpose, that his poetry went straight to the people's hearts, and
continued to be loved by them and committed to memory, and
frequently imitated, for several generations, down to the middle of
the fifteenth century.
From the first appearance of this poem, the figure of Piers
Plowman became, and long continued to be, a favourite one with
the friends of moral and religious reform. The great popularity of
popularity of the work is attested by the very considerable *^® Poem.
number of manuscripts of it which still exist, most of them written
towards the end of the fifteenth century.' Add to this the cir
cumstance that these manuscripts are seldom written in a beautiful
hand, and are scarcely ever adorned with illuminated initials, which
is a pretty plain proof that they were not intended for the higher
ranks of society, but for the middle class. A highly remarkable
document ofthe time of the Peasants' War, under Richard IL, viz.,
the ' Call ' of the ringleader, John Ball, to the people of Essex,
contains several manifest reminiscences of Piers Plowman.^ The
poet himself, however, was as Uttle a sower of sedition as he was
a heretic. He preaches constantly the duty of obedience to the
higher powers. But the pleasure he takes in lowering the great in
the estimation of the people, and in raising the credit of the lower
classes, could not fail to make him a great favourite with the multi
tude. And although he did not attack a single doctrine of the
Church, yet his unsparing exposure of the sins of the clergy must
have aided the growing public sentiment in favour of reform.
In view of the oppression which prevailed among the nobiUty, the
• In the British Museum there are eight = In Walsingham's Historia Angli-
of these MSS., from ten to twelve in the cana, under the year 1381, Ed., Riley,
different libraries of Cambridge, and as 11., p. 33 f.
many in those of Oxford, etc.

72 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. ¦. § 7
corruption among the clergy, and the dishonesty among the trades-
, men, the simple heart of the peasant appears to the poet
Form and ' ' .. ^ 'j-
language of to be the Only remaining seat of integrity and virtue. It
is the husbandman in his mean position, not the Pope and
his proud hierarchy, who exhibits upon earth an image of the humble
Redeemer. In its language and poetical form, too, the work has quite
a popular cast. With the exception of the Latin citations, and some
Norman-French phrases which occasionally occur, the language is
pure Middle-English ; while in form it is the most beautiful example
extant of old Anglo-Saxon verse. For it is not rhyme, properly so
called, which is here used, but what is called aUiterative rhyme.
Instead of the Anglo-Saxon alliteration, the Normans, since the
twelfth century, had introduced the romaunce rhyme, which con
tinued in prevailing use till the middle of the thirteenth century.
Later, we find in use a combination of rhyme and alliterative in one
and the same line. Still, it is not improbable that during the whole
of that time the pure Saxon alliterative continued to maintain itself
along with the Anglo-Saxon tongue among the lower strata of the
population. Its coming up again to the surface, about the middle
of the fourteenth century, appears to be only one aspect of the great
social and national movement before referred to which took place at
that period. -Seen from this point of view, in the literary history
of the country, Langland's poem has a special claim upon our
attention. The old Saxon alliterative verse was now so much again in favour
that it was used in long romances like William and the Werewolf, a
position which it continued to hold as late as the fifteenth century,
at which date it found imitators even in Scotland. The author of
Piers Plowman is well acquainted indeed, it is true, with common
rhyme, and he introduces it occasionaUy, but only in Latin of the
ecclesiastical type. But in his own English composition he employs
exclusively alliterative rhyme ; his constant usage being the following,
that in every connected couplet of lines (each line having two rising
and tvco falling accents), the two most important words of the first
line begin with the same letter, while in the second line the first
accented word also begins with it.'
The poem belongs to the allegorical class, and consists of a long
series of visions, in which the poet has revelations made to him in the
¦ E.g. Vs. 1901 f. The command of •
God to Saul in his war with the Amale- Burnes and bestes,
Ktes, to put every man, woman, and child tTdw'e^iS w^vS,
to death, as well as the cattle, is expressed women and children.'
thus : —

^36=.] THE ' VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN.' 73
way of dreams, ofthe condition of human society, and of various truths
relating to it. The date of the composition admits of
, ¦ 7. . Its date.
being fixed pretty exactly. That dreadful plague, which,
¦under the name of the Black Death, laid waste the half of Europe in
1438 and following years, was already several years past. Mention is
made more than once of the ' Pestilence ; ' it forms, so to speak,
the dark background from which the figures stand out. But a
:second ' sickness ' is also referred to which raged in England in
1360-62, and with this agrees the circumstance that the lines,
beginning with number 1735, contain an undoubted allusion to the
peace of Bretigny, which was concluded in the year 1360, and formed
an important incident in the history of the English and French war.
Further, the poet touches in vv. 2499 seq. upon a great storm from the
south-west, which occurred on a ' Saturday evening,' to which he
alludes also in vv. 4453 seq. We know from chronicles that this
tempest, which threw down tovifers and high houses, and almost
all the great trees, took place on January 15, 1362,' and the
exactness with which the date of that event is fixed by the poet
warrants us in assuming that the poem must have been written no
long time thereafter, perhaps at the end of 1362.^
The poet goes forth, in the warm summer time, to wander into
the wide world. On a May morning, already fatigued by his walk,
he lays himself down on the Malvern HUls beside a well, „
. Summary of
and falls asleep. There, in a dream, he sees wonderful the first
things — upon a hill in the east a tower, built with great
art, the tower of truth ; in the west the fortress of care, where
dwells the wicked fiend. Upon a charming plain between the two
he sees a multitude of men of all ranks and conditions, rich and
poor, going about their different works and ways. Clergy, too, are
not wanting, begging friars, preachers of indulgences, priests in the
.service of the King or the nobles, and so forth. With this begins
the first of the poet's visions, of which the work, closely examined,
'- Walsingham, Historia AngUcana. — the first, published in 1550, was edited
-Ed., Riley, i., 296. by Crowley, and went through three
= Our citations are from the edition of editions in a single year. Crowley be-
ithe poem, 1856, by Thomas Wright, 2 longed to that estimable class of publishers
vols. 8vo, London. This is properly a who in the sixteenth century united in
-second edition, following upon that which themselves the character of the scholar
was prepared by Pickering. The Intro- and author with that of printer and book-
duction, from which we have derived seller, and who deserved so well of litera-
several of the facts mentioned above, was ture. The other edition, which appeared
.drawn up by Pickering, after whose death in 1561, was also published in London by
Thomas Wright, the well-known historian a famous printer, Owen Roger. In 1813
of literature, tookchargeof the newedition. Whitaker published an edition of the
As early as the sixteenth century two book, upon the authority of a MS. which
-different editions of the Vision appeared exhibits a peculiar recension ofthe text.

74 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.-i.§7.
is found to contain ten, although this number does not at once-
meet the eye; for the usual division of the text into twenty passus-
taken from the manuscript copies is rather a superficial one. The
visions have a tolerable amount of connection with each other,
though by no means a very close one.
A variety of allegorical figures step upon the scene ; some talking,
some acting, and occasionally a sort of drama developes itself. First
appears an honourable lady — the Church — and instructs the poet in
the significance of the spectacle before him, and especially on the
point that truth is the truest of all treasures, and that the chief
subject of truth is nothing else but love and beneficence. Then
enters in dazzlingly rich array the lady ' Reward,' i.e., earthly reward.
To her all ranks and conditions of men do homage. She is on the
point of being betrothed to 'Falsehood,' instead of to 'Truth.''
Then 'Theology' puts forward his claim to her hand, and all parties,
repair to Westminster to bring the matter to a judicial decision ; but
' Truth ' hurries on before to the king's palace, and speaks in the
ear of the knight ' Conscience.' The knight speaks with the king,
and the king gives command to put ' Reward ' in prison as soon as
she arrives. But in prison she fares by no means amiss. The
judges in Westminster themselves pay court to her, a begging friar
visits her, hears her confession, and gives her absolution. At last
the king sends for her to his presence, gives her a reprimand, and sets.
her at liberty upon her promises of amendment ; he even proposes
to wed her to his knight ' Conscience,' but the knight, while thank
ing him in the most courtly terms, draws a picture of her character in
the blackest colours. She defends herself in a way to win for her
the king's grace, whereupon ' Conscience ' appeals to ' Reason,' and
in the end the king takes ' Conscience ' and ' Reason ' to be his
councillors. The poet awakes, but soon falls asleep again, and now begins the
second vision. He sees again the same plain full of people, to
Second whom ' Reason ' is preaching a sermon, in which he
vision. j-gjjg every rank and condition of people his mind.
The sinners before him are seized with remorse. They fall upon
their knees, and ' Penitence ' gives them absolution. And now
thousands rise to their feet and set out on a pilgrimage to 'Truth.'
But nobody knows the way. At last a ploughman caUs out that he
knows the way. It is here that Piers Plowman comes upon the
scene. He offers to show the pUgrims the road in person if they
will only wait till he has ploughed and sown a bit of ground, and
in the meantime several help him at his work. When it comes.

1362.] THE ' VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN.' 75,
however, to the ears of ' Truth ' that Piers purposes to make a
pilgrimage to her, she sends him a letter of indulgence, desiring him
to stay at home and work, and informing him that the indulgence
is applicable to all who assist him in his work, a message which
awakens among all the greatest joy. But, in the end, nothing raore
is found in the brief of indulgence than these two lines : ' And those
who have done good shall go into everlasting Ufe, but those who
have done evil, into everlasting fire.' Then the poet awakes again ;
he reflects upon his dream, and he is convinced that ' Do Good '
-wUl be better in the last judgment than a whole pocketful of in
dulgences, or letters of fraternity.
From the third to the tenth vision the representation principally
turns upon the three aUegorical persons, 'Do Good,' 'Do Better,' and
'Do Best.' The allegorical action passes over more and Third to
more into didactic poetr}', 'the Plowman' coining re- tenth visions.
peatedly upon the scene, but in such a way that under the trans
parent veil of that figure the Redeemer Himself is here and there to
be recognised.
The whole drift of the poem is to recommend practical Christianity.
The kernel of its moral teaching is the pure Christian love of our
neighbour — love especially to the poor and lowly; a love Meaning of
of our neighbour reaching its highest point in patient for- *^° auegory.
bearance, and love towards enemies — a love inspired by the voluntary
passion of Christ for us. As the ' Luxemburgers ' ( a false coin then
circulating widely in England) resemble a 'sterUng' in the stamp, but
are of base metal, so many nowadays bear the stamp of the heavenly
King and His crown, but the metal — the soul — is alloyed with sin.
The poet accordingly lays bare, on the one hand, tlie evil works and
ways of all ranks and conditions of men, dealing castigation round
among all classes with the lash of his satire ; while, on the other hand,
he commends the good wherever he finds it. That he is by no means a
heretic has already been remarked. He assumes without quesUon the
whole body of Church doctrine; the doctrine of transubstantiation,
e.g., he takes for granted as something self-evident; and however much
value he attaches to the conscience and the natural understanding
of man, he is by no means a despiser of learning, and especially of
theology. But what he demands is, that the seven liberal arts and
every science should be cultivated in no selfish spirit, in order to
acquire wealth ; nor from a motive of vanity, in order to be styled
' Magister ; ' otherwise men only lose their time in them ; but from
love to our Lord and to the people. In other words, learning has
value in his eyes only when benefit accrues from it to mankind ; and

76 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.i. §7
therefore he thinks it a practice to be censured when mendicant
friars and masters of arts preach to the people about matters above
human comprehension, instead of speaking to them of the Ten
Commandments and the seven sins. Such men only wish to show
off their high learning, and to make a boast of it ; they do not act
from sincere love to their neighbour.
On the other hand, he commends all princes and nobles, bishops
and lawyers, who in their dignified places are useful to others, and
render real service to the world. But 'Truth' gives her 'brief and
seal,' not only to men of learning and rank, but also to men of trade
and traffic, to assure them that they shall not come short of salvation, if,
with all their diligence in trade and money-making, they give out of
their gains for the bmlding of bridges, the feeding ofthe poor, to help
in sending children to school, or teaching them a trade, or in setting
but poor young women in marriage, and in promoting the cause of
religion. Industrious and honest married people are also highly
commended ; it is they who hold the world together, for from mar
riage spring both kings and knights, emperors and servants, father-
confessors, holy virgins and marytrs. Evidently Piers the Plowman
is made the chief figure of the poem, not merely on account of his
humble condition in life, but also to do honour in his
democratic person to labour, joined with the fear of God. Both
en ency. pQijjj-g Qf yjg^ ^re inseparably connected in the poem.
Undoubtedly there is something of a democratic spirit in the teach
ing of the author, but it is a Christian democracy, like that word of
the Redeemer, ' To the poor the gospel is preached.' More than
once it is remarked by the poet how much better off" in that respect
people in low condition are than the high-placed and the educated.
The seven sins are far more dangerous for the rich than for the poor.
Augustine himself (the most enlightened doctor and the greatest of
the four, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great) is
appealed to as a witness for this, for the poet has read in one of his
sermons the passage, ' Behold the ignorant themselves take the
kingdom of heaven by violence.'
That none come into the kingdom of God sooner than the poor
and lowly is a thought which he dwells upon in several parts of the
poem. For the Church the poet cherishes deep venera-
Its -view of the .,,., ,..,.
ohuroh and tion, but this by no means prevents him from speaking
openly of her faults. In one place he makes the
general remark, that while uprightness and holiness spring from the
Church by the instrumentality of men of pure character and Ufe, who
are the teachers of God's law, all sorts of evil, on the other hand,

1362.1 THE ' VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN.' 77
spring from her, when priests and pastors are not what they ought to
be. AVhat he has chiefly to censure in the priesthood of his time is
their worldUness, their sins of selfishness and of simony. Other
shortcomings and failings, indeed, are also mentioned, as when the
ignorance of many priests is satirised by the introduction of a curate
who knows nothing of the ' cardinal virtues,' and never heard of any
'cardinals' but those of the Pope's making, or when 'Indolence' owns
frankly that he has been priest and parson for more than thirty
winters, but can neither sing by notes nor read the lives ofthe saints.
He can hunt horses better than tell his parishioners the meaning of
a clause in Beatus Vir, or Beati Omnes in the Psalter.
But it is the worldliness of the clergy that the satirist chiefly
lashes. His complaint of the abuse that foreign priests should have
so much office and power in England, reminds us vividly of Gros
setete's demands, as well as of the measures which King and
Parliament, twenty years before, had adopted against Papal provi
sions and reservations. Hardest and bitterest of all are his com
plaints ofthe self-seeking and avarice which prevail in the Church.
' Conscience ' complains before the king's tribunal of the Lady
'Reward,' on this as well as other grounds, that she has infected the
Pope with her poison, and made evil the holy Church. She is in
the confidence of the Pontiff, for she and ' Master Simony ' seal his
bulls; she consecrates bishops, be they ever so ignorant; and she
takes care for the priests to let them have liberty to keep their
mistresses as long as they live. Time was when men lived in self-
denial and privation, but nowadays men value the yellow gold piece
more than the cross of Christ, which conquered death and sin.
When Constantine endowed the Church with lands and lordships,
an angel was heard to cry aloud in Rome, This day the Church of
God has drunk venom, and the heirs of St. Peter's power 'are
a-poysoned all' ' , ..^ ¦ ^ •
'- •' 'If possessions be poison.
And imperfect them make,
Good were to discharge them
For holy Church sake,
And purge them of poison
Ere more peril befall.'

' Passus XV V 10 607 • 10 659. The * A hi Costantin, di quanto mal fa matre
poet proceeds upon the me'diseval tradition Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote,
li the Donation of Constantine. Comp. Che de te pere il primo ricco patre !
Dollinger, the Pope-Fables of the Middle
A<re. Munich, 1863, p. 61. Like the The legend in particular of the angel's
poet of our 'Visions,' Dante, in the wo\c&, Hodie effusum vcnenum in ecclesia,
' Inferno, ' canto xix., v. 115, curses that is found in the scholastic divines, chroni-
Donation as the source of all the avarice clers, and poets of the thirteenth century.
and simony in the Church— See Dollinger, as above.

78 ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. i. § 7
The suggestions of this passage take the form in another place of
irediotions of a prophecy — the prophecy of a coming king, who will
jcetoxm. punish with heavy blows all monks and nuns and canons
who have broken their rules, and, in league with his nobles, will
reform them by force. ' And yet shall come a king
And confess you all
And beat you, as the Bible telleth.
For breaking of your rule.
And amend you monks and monials,
Aud put you to your penance,
Ad pristinum statum ire.
And barons and their bairns.
Blame you and reprove.'
If it is the ' monks possessioners,' or landed orders, who are here
meant, neither are the Mendicant orders spared in other places, as,
^.g., in the passage where a begging friar visits the all-fascinating Lady
' Reward ' in person, and gives her absolution in return for a horse-
load of wheat, when she begs him to be equally obUging to noble
lords and ladies of her acquaintance who love to wanton in their
pleasures. 'And then,' says she, 'will I restore your church for you,
and build you a cloister-walk, and whiten your walls, and put you in
painted windows, and pay for all the work out of my own purse ; so
that all men shall say I am a sister of your house.'
It is thus that the Visions of Piers the Plowman attack, not indeed
the doctrine of the Church of that age, but in the most outspoken
manner, all the prevailing sins of the clergy from the highest to the
lowest, and in so doing, render distinguished service in helping
forward the work of reform.'
' See Appendix iii., by Dr. Lorimer.

CHAPTER II.
WYCLIFFE'S YOUTH AND STUDENT LIFE.
I. — Birthplace and Family,
WE are more accurately informed of Wycliffe's birthplace than
of the date of his birth, and we owe this information to a
learned man of the sixteenth century, John Leland, who has been
called the father of English antiquaries.'
In his Itinerary he has inserted a notice of Wycliffe's birthplace,
which, though Only obtained from hearsay, yet as the earliest, and
recorded only^about 150 years after the great man's death, must
always be regarded as of high authority. Leland's remark runs as
follows : — ' It is reported that John Wiclif, the heretic, was born at
Spresswell, a small village, a good mile off from Richmond.' =
This notice, it is true, has its difficulties. The first is, that Leland
bimself appears to contradict his present statement in another of his
-works, for he says in his Collections in mentioning wyciiire and
'Wigclif in the county of York, that 'Wigclif the Spresaweu.
heretic sprang from that place.3 These two statements appear, at
first sight, to contradict each other, and yet, when looked at more
narrowly, they are easily reconciled; for in the first-named vi-ork
Leland is speaking of Wycliffe's birthplace proper; while, in the
-other, he is rather making mention of the seat of his family. But
'^ Leland was commissioned in 1533, by = Itinerarium V., 99. [They say] that
Henry "VIII., to examine the libraries John Wyclif Hcsreticus [was borne at
¦jind archives of all cathedrals and monas- Spreswcl, a poore village a good my le from
teries, colleges, and cities ; and he em- Richemont.'] I quote from Lewis, History
ployed six years in travelling all over of Wiclif, p. i, note a. The words be-
England and Wales, in order to collect tween brackets do not stand in Leland's
materials for a history of the kingdom. original MS., but only in a transcript of
He spent other six years in working up Stowe. Vide Shirley, Fasc. Zizau. In-
these collections into an account of the trod. .v. , note 3.
antiquities of England, but the work was 3 Unde Wigclif hcsreticus originem
never finished, for his excessive labours duxit. Collectanea, I., 2, 329. Cited by
broughton disease of the brain, and he -Vaughan, Life and Opinions, i. , 232,
died in 1552. His Itinerarium, hov/ever, note 8.
¦in nine volumes, was pubhshed in Oxford
1710-1712.

8o wycliffe's youth and STUDENT LIFE. [ch. n. § r
there a still greater difficulty arises from the fact that in the neighbour
hood of the town of Richmond, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, nO'
village ofthe name of Spresswell has'ever been known to exist. This
fact has given rise to various conjectures, e.g., that Leland, in the
course of his inquiries, had heard of a place called Hipswell or
IpsweU, and had mistaken its name for Spresswell, or that Spresswell
may have been the name of some manor-house or estate of the
Wyclifles. It is also thought by some that Leland could not have
personally travelled through that district of the county ; for, in
giving its topography, he has fallen into many mistakes.'
But very recently Leland's credit for accuracy on this point has
been vindicated, and his account has received a confirmation which
sets the matter in the clearest light. Dr. Robert Vaughan, the
scholar, who, since 1828, has rendered important services to the
history of Wycliffe, has, by means of correspondence with other scholars
in the north of England, estabUshed the following facts :
Not far from the River Tees, which forms the boundary between
the North Riding of Yorkshire and the county of Durham, there was
formerly a town of the name of Richmond, of higher antiquity than
the existing Richmond, and which is to be found in old maps under
the name of Old Richmond.
About a mile from Old Richmond, there was still in existence in
the eighteenth century, close to the Tees, a small vUlage or hamlet
called Spresswell or SpessweU. An old chapel also. stood there, in
which were married the grandparents of a man living in that neigh
bourhood, who vouched for the truth of this information. These
were, however, the last pair married in the chapel, for it fell down
soon after, and now the plough passes over the spot where it stood. ^
Only half a mile from Spresswell lies the small parish of Wycliffe,3
the church of which still stands on the level bank of the Tees, without
tower, and partly overgrown with ivy. Upon an eminence, not far
from the little church, stands a manor-house, which formerly belonged
to the family of Wycliffe of Wycliffe. From the time of William the
Conqueror down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, this
family were lords of the manor and patrons of the parish church. In
1606 the estate passed, by marriage of the heiress, to the family of
Tunstall. Another branch of the family, however, carried on the
name, and it is hardly more than half a century since the last repre
sentative of the family, Francis Wycliffe, died at Barnard Castle on
' Shirley, Introd. xi. ; Vaughan, Life " Athcncsvm, April 20, 1861, p. 529.
and Opinions, I., 233 ; and John Wy- 3 In 1853 the population of the little-
cliffe, a Monograph, 1854, p. 5 f. village did not reach 200 souls.

CIR. 1320.] THE NORTH RIDING. 8r
Tees. The tradition both of the locality and the Wycliffes of Wycliffe
has always been, that it was from this family that the celebrated fore
runner of the Reformation sprang.
It no longer, then, admits of a doubt that Wycliff"e was born at
SpressweU, not far from Old Richmond, His birthplace belongs to
the district which, though not a county itself, but only scenery and
part of one, is commonly called Richmondshire, forming people.
the north-western portion of the great county of York, or, more
exactly, the western district of the North Riding, a hilly, rocky high
land, with valleys and slopes of the greatest fertility. The valley of
the Tees, in particular, and especially that part of it where Spresswell
was situated, is a region of great and various beauty, presenting
landscape scenery of equal grandeur and softness.'
It was, then, a country of strongly marked character upon which
the eyes of Wycliffe rested in his childhood and boyish years ; but
we should lose ourselves in the domain of poetry if we endeavoured
to describe the influences which the surrounding scenery exerted
upon the opening mind of our hero. We have a surer foothold for
the history of the man, in the peculiar character of the population of
those northern counties of England. In Yorkshire especially, though
also in other counties of the north, as Northumberland, Westmore
land, and Cumberland, the Anglo-Saxon element has maintained
itself in greater purity, tenacity, and force, than in the south of
England. In the centuries next succeeding the Norman invasion,
much more of the old English nature continued to keep its hold in
these parts of the kingdom than in the midland and southern counties.
It is said that there are famUies there to the present day, who have
remained in uninterrupted possession of their estates from the time
of the Norman invasion, and almost even from the period of the
Saxon immigration ; these old Saxon families, it is added, belonging
not to ' the nobility,' but to ' the gentry.' The country people at the
present day, in the whole of Yorkshire, and most of all in the remote
dales of the interior, still speak an ancient dialect, which, like the
Scottish tongue, bears an unmistakable German impress.^ The
whole nature of the Yorkshire people has an antique cast about it.
In the rest of England, the Yorkshireman passes for a robust, stout
hearted, honest personage — one who is every inch a man.
It was from the bosom of this tenacious old Saxon people that
Wycliffe sprang ; and the more it holds true that it was precisely the
' Dibdin, Observations on a Tour ^y(^/^J¦, i84r, II., 50, 123, 165, 178. E.g.,
through almost the whole of England. ptopXes&y lig instead o{Xie; to speerany-
London, 1801, 4to, I., 261. body (aufspiiren), instead of to ask or in-
2 Kohl, Journeys in England and quire ; / do not hen, instead of know.

82 wycliffe's YOUTH AND STUDENT LIFE. [ch. ii. § i
German element of the EngUsh population which formed the strength
The Wycliffe °f '•^^ national movement of the fourteenth century, the
family, more important, unquestionably, is the circumstance that
a man like Wycliffe, who rendered, in particular, such important
services to the development of .the EngUsh language, should have
belonged to a province and people who had always been distinguished
by 'faithful and persistent adherence to the old Saxon nature and
"tvays. And it appears that the Wycliffes belonged precisely to those
families of the Yorkshire gentry who have persistently preserved for
centuries, not only their estates, but also the characteristics of their
Saxon descent.
The family of the WycUffes must at one time have been numerous,
and of many branches ; for documents of the second half of the
fourteenth century give information of several different men of this
name.' In 1368 we find mention of Robert of Wycliffe, as priest of
a chapel in Cleveland, in the diocese of York, probably the same
priest who, in 1362, was made parish priest of Wycliffe, and in 1363
made an exchange of this office for another. Besides him, we know,
from church documents, of another priest of the same period, who
bore the same name as our Reformer, written ' John Wyclyve,' who,
on July 21,' 1361, was appointed parish priest of Mayfield by Arch
bishop Islip, that being an estate of the See of Canterbury. He
remained priest there for nearly twenty years, and in 1380 was made
rector ofthe parish of Horsted Keynes, where he died in 1383, one
year before his more illustrious namesake.^ We shall have occasion,
below, to return to this second John Wyclyve.
It is, moreover, a remarkable fact, that the WycUffes, after the
•death of their most celebrated member, and in particular from the
Their adiie- Reformation down to their extinction, were always dis-
enoe to Borne, tinguished for their fidelity to the Church of Rome. In
1423, a certain Robert Wyclyf, parish priest of Rudby, in the
¦diocese of York, made a will which leaves no room for doubt that the
testator was very far from sharing the views of John Wycliffe. At the
•commencement ofthe document he commends his soul to 'Almighty
God, to Saint Mary, and to all the Saints ; ' he passes over the
Redeemer in entire silence ; he makes more than one provision for
' In 1362 a certain Robert of Wycliffe conjecture, was the son, now come to his
•was made parish priest of Wycliffe by majority, of Catherine, and her deceased
Catherine, widow of Roger Wycliffe ; and husband, Roger Wycliffe.
in the following year we find a William = -Whitaker, History of Richmondshire,
of Wycliffe presented to the same place. i., 197, quoted by Vaughan, Monograph,
In the interval, however, the patronage p. 5 ; and Register of the Archbishop of
had changed hands, for the patron in Canterbury, also quoted by Vaughan, p.
1363 is John of Wycliffe, who, we may 548.

CIR. 1320.] THE WYCLIFFE FAMILY. 83
masses for die repose of souls ; and leaves several legacies in favour
of nuns and Mendicant monks, etc. From the fact that such soul-
masses are to be said, not only for himself, but also for the souls of
his father, mother, and all his benefactors, it is plain that the parents
of the testator must also have been strict Romanists. Among the
four churches, for the repair of each of which he left forty shillings,
is named the church of ' Wyclyf,' and to the poor of the same parish
is also left a sum of forty shiUings. These two latter dispositions are
unquestionable indications that the testator was connected by birth
with that locality.'
It seems as if Wycliffe's family, feeling themselves exposed to
danger by his keen assault upon the Church of Rome, had become
all the more devoted to the Papacy on that account. At aU events,
even after the English Reformation, the Wycliffes remained Roman
CathoUc, and with them about half the inhabitants of the viUage — a
division which continues to the present day. The old church on the
bank of the Tees belongs to the Anglican Establishment, while the
Roman Catholic inhabitants of Wycliffe until recently repaired to a
chapel built at the side of the manor house on the neighbouring
height. They have now a chapel of their own at some little distance.
Touching the date of Wycliffe's birth,'' no direct documentary
information has come down to us. John Lewis was the first who
fixed upon the year 1324 ; and he has been followed in
,. , . , '^ ' . . ^ . ., Dateof birth.
this date by the great majority of writers without
further inquiry, although he never even attempted to produce docu-
^ Vide the Documents firom the Epis- the same author or copyist allowed him-
copal Register of Durham, in Vaughan's self unbounded liberty and caprice in the
Monograph, p. 545. writing of the same name, as Walsing-
= On the orthography of the family ham, the chronicler, who writes the name
name Wycliffe, I may here introduce the of Wycliffe in atleast eight different forms.
following remarks : There was an endless Vide the edition of Riley, i., 335 ; 11., 50,
variety of ways of spelling it in the four- 52, 57, etc.
teenth and fifteenth centuries, and some [Mr. F. D. Matthew, in the Academy
of this variety has reappeared among for June 7, 1884, has proved that the most
English writers in recent times. Vaughan usual spelling of the first syllable was
states that the name is written in nearly Wy, not the Wi which German writers
twenty different forms ; but this is far from (as Buddensieg) generally give, on the
being a high enough estimate. I have authority of some early documents. The
found as many as twenty-eight varieties in former also better consists with the ety-
Ibe usage of these centuries. They divide mology of the local name (Gwy, Wy,
'.themselves into two chief classes, accord- ' water,' or ' stream '). We therefore
ing as the vowel used in the first syllable adopt it without hesitationin this edition.
is 2 ocy. The e.xplanation is to be found For the last syllable, clif or cliffe is im-
in the generally wretched condition of or- material : the latter has the advantage of
thography in the Middle Ages, which pre- being usual, .and in accordance -with ana-
vailed specially in the names of places, and logy. While on the subject of etymology,
in surnames taken from these. It was not it may be added that the spelling Wick
merely that every author adopted at his is decidedly objectionable, as suggesting
•own pleasure his own way of spelling the Saxon wick, or 'village,' which has
.such names, while preserving uniformity no part in the formation ofthe word.]
•of usage after choosing it, but one and

84 wycliffe's YOUTH AND STUDENT LIFE. [ch. ii. § 2
mentary evidence in support of it. Probably he proceeded upon the
supposition that when Wycliffe died, at the end of 1384, he may have
been a man of sixty ; and counting back from that year, he arrived at
1324 as the approximate year of his birth. But we have nothing to
authorise the surmise that WycUffe at his death was exactly sixty
years of age. Younger than that he could hardly have been, but he
might easUy have been older. We know that during the last two years
of his life he suffered from the effects of a paralytic attack, and that
he afterwards died from a repetition of the shock. If we assume that
1324 was his birth-year, he must have had a stroke at fifty-eight, a
comparatively early age ; whereas the notices which we have of his
latest life by no means give the impression that his vigour had been
impaired at an unusually early period. This circumstance taken
alone makes it probable that when Wycliffe died he had reached a
more advanced age than is usually supposed, and was, at least, well
on towards seventy. But besides this, there are some expressions in his
writings, where he speaks of his earlier years, which could only have
come from a man pretty well advanced in life. Thus, he says in one
of his Saints' Days' sermons, ' When I was still young, and addicted
myself to a great variety of favourite pursuits, I made extensive col
lections from manuals on optics, on the properties of light,' etc'
That does not sound like the speech of a man of only fifty-four or
fifty-six ; yet as those sermons, by sure marks, could not have been
delivered later than 1380, nor earlier than 1378, Wycliffe could not
have been more than from fifty-four to fifty-six years of age at the-
time, if the common date of his birth is correct. All these indications-
make it appear probable to us that when Wycliffe died he must have
been considerably older than is usually supposed. He must, in that
case, have been born at least several years earlier than 1324; but we
have no positive data to enable us to fix the precise year.
2.— Wycliffe's Course of Study.
We have as little historical information on the subject of Wycliffe's.
earliest education as on that of his birth-year ; and it would answer
Training in HO good purpose to fill up this blank with the suggestions
boyhood. ^^ ^^j. ^.^^^ fancy. But so much is implied in the nature
of the case, that in the years of his childhood and early youth he grew
up vigorously into the old Saxon pith of the famUy stem to which he
belonged, and of the whole people among whom he was brought up.
' Sermons on Saints Days ( ' Evangelia perial Library of Vienna. Denis, No..
de Sanctis '), No. 53, MS. 3928 of the Im- CD., fol. 106, col. 1.

13=0-1335-] HIS EARLY STUDIES. 85
No doubt, also, the historical recollections and folk-lore of the
Yorkshire people, especially in connection with certain localities, had
very early made a deep impression on the susceptible mind ofthe boy,
and had become a part of himself. For I find the writings of Wycliffe
so full of allusions to and reminiscences of the early times of his
fatherland, as to justify the assumption that from his youth up he had
been familiar with patriotic scenes and pictures. The boy, no doubt,
received the first elements of instruction from some member of the
clerical body. Probably the parish priest of Wycliffe was his first
teacher, and taught him the rudiments of Latin grammar; and
doubtless, too, the youth, who must from childhood have had a lively
and inquisitive genius, spent his whole time at home tUl he went to
O.xford. For as yet there were no schools in existence to prepare
lads for the universities, except the cloister and cathedral schools.
The universities themselves had rather the character of public schools
and gymnasia than universities proper ; at least a multitude, not only
of young men, but even of mere boys, were to be
found in Oxford and Cambridge, not as the pupils of university
schools collateral to the university, but as members of ^^° °"''
the university itself We know, for example, from the loud complaints
of Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, that many boys under
fourteen years of age were already considered to be members of the
university. The functions of the universities in the Middle Ages were far
more comprehensive than in modern times. While the continental
universities of the present day are generally of use only to young
men above eighteen in acquiring for several years the higher edu
cation, — mature men ordinarily belonging to the academic body
only as teachers or officials, and in comparatively small numbers, —
the mediseval universities included in their structure two additional
storeys, so to speak, above and below, — an upper storey, that we
might call an 'Academy' in the narrow sense — and a lower storey, a
species of grammar school and gymnasium. As to the former, the
number of grown-up men who belonged to the mediaeval universities,
not exclusively as teachers of the student youth, but in the general
character of men of learning, and as members of the self-governing
corporation (Magistri Regentes), was very large and important. The
English universities are now the only ones in Europe which have
preserved this feature to a great degree unimpaired, in the fellows of
their colleges, whose numbers are considerable. On the other hand,
in the lower storey, the mediaeval universities included a number of
lads who for the present could only enjoy the benefit of preparatory

86 WYCLIFFE'S YOUTH AND STUDENT LIFE. fen. n. § 2
training. This latter circumstance must especially be kept ¦ in view,
when we meet with statistical notices of the attendance at universities
like Oxford, which astonish us by their enormous figures.
It would, then, be in itself quite conceivable that Wycliffe might
have gone to Oxford even as a boy. This is not, however, probable.
For his home, close on the northern boundary of York-
Enters ozfora, , . ' ,. „ , __ . -, ,.1 . ,,.1
shire, was so far distant from the University that the
journey, in the fourteenth century, must have been an affair of no
inconsiderable time and fatigue and even danger ; and prudent and
conscientious parents would hardly be able to bring themselves to
send a son upon such a journey before his fourteenth or sixteenth
year ; and, in effect, to let him pass away for ever from their parental
oversight' It is more probable that Wycliffe was at least fourteen,
perhaps as much as sixteen, years old when he went to Oxford.
Positive testimonies as to the exact date are wholly wanting ; but,
assuming that he was born in J320, and that he did not repair to the
University before his fifteenth year, we are brought to 1335 as the
approximate year.
At that time, of the twenty colleges and more which exist to-day
in Oxford, there were five already founded, viz. , Merton, founded in
Be Ave 1274; BalUol, 1260-82; Exeter, 1314; Oriel, 1324;
colleges. ^^^ University CoUege, 1332. These foundations were
originally designed purely for the support of poor scholars, who lived
under the oversight of a President, according to a domestic order
fixed by the Statutes of the Founders. It was only at a later period
that they became, in addition to this, boarding-houses for students in
good circumstances. Queen's College was not erected before 1340.
It took its name from Philippa, Queen of Edward IIL, who contri
buted towards its foundation ; Robert Egglesfield, one of her court
chaplains, being the real founder. It has been commonly accepted
as a fact that when Wycliflfe went to Oxford he was immediately
entered at Queen's College. This he could only have done on the
supposition that he did not come up to the University till the year
1340 ; but we have already shown that an earlier date for that inci
dent is more probable. Apart from this chronological consideration,
there is a want of all sure grounds for the assumption that Wycliffe.
entered into any connection with Queen's College at so early a date.
The oldest records of the CoUege go no farther back than the year
1347 ; and the name of Wycliffe does not occur in them earlier than
' Comp. Vaughan, Monograph, p. 16, centuries are graphically described on the
where travelling and intercourse in Eng- authority of ancient sources.
land during the fourteenth and fifteenth

Ol--- I33S.1 AT OXFORD. 87
1363 ; and even then he appears, not properly as a member of the
CoUege, but only as a renter of some rooms in the bmlding ; ' a
relation to it which appears to have continued for nearly twenty years
— down to the time when Wycliffe's connection with the University
as a corporation entirely ceased.
If the question thus recurs, into what college Wycliffe was received
when he first came to O-xford, we must confess that, in the absence
of all documentary evidence, we are unable to answer it ¦wyoUffe's
with any distinctness or confidence. We know that in college. ,
the course of years he became a member, and sometimes head of
several colleges or halls. Merton and Balliol, in particular, are
named in this connection, to say nothing at present of a third hall of
which we shall have to speak hereafter. But all the notices we have
of this kind relate to a later period — not to WycUffe as a young
scholar, but to his mature years. If mere conjectures might be.
allowed, nothing would appear to us more probable than that he was
entered at Balliol on his first coming to the University. For this
college owed its foundation (1260-82) to the noble family of BaUiol
of Barnard Castle, on the left, or Durham, bank of the Tees, not
more than five miles from Spresswell, Wycliffe's birthplace ; and
that there existed a connection of some kind between the Wycliffe
family and BalUol CoUege,^ appears from the fact that two men,
who were presented to the parish of Wycliffe, by John Wycliffe of
AVycUffe, as patron, in 1361 and 1369, were members of BaUiol
College — the one AVilliam Wycliffe, a fellow, and the other John
Hugate, then Master of the CoUege.s >
But we acknowledge that we are here only hinting at a possibility,.
which, however, will be raised to a probability in the course 'of an
investigation upon which we shall have to enter at a subsequent
stage. But if the college into which Wycliffe entered as a scholar does
not admit of being determined with certainty, there is no doubt, on
the other hand, as to the ' nation ' in the University to Division into
which from the first he belonged. It is well known that 'nations.' ,
all the universities of the Middle Ages divided themselves into
' Vide Extracts from the Bursars' Ac- Shirley, who lived in Oxford, gives the
counts of Queen's College, as given by most positive assurance that no list of
Shirley in an Excursus to the Fasciculi members of so early a date exists among
Zizaniorum, p. 514. Vaughan, indeed, the papers of the college, p. xiii.
maintained in his Life and Opinions of ^ [See Appendix III., by Dr. Lorimer :
John de Wycliffe, and also in his more ' Balliol College in Wycliffe's Time.']
recent Monograph, that Wycliffe's name ^ Comp. Wycliffe, his Biographers and
occurs in a Est of the original members Critics, an article by Vaughan in The
of the college, who entered it in 1340, British Quarterly Review, Oct., 1858.
immediately after its foundation. But

88 WYCLIFFES YOUTH AND STUDENT LIFE. [ch. ii. § 2
' nations,' according to the countries and provinces, sometimes even
the races, to which their members belonged. Thus, in the Univer
sity of Paris, from a very early period, there were four nations — the
French, the English (at a later period called German), the Picard,
and the Norman. The University of Prague had, in like manner,
from its foundation, four nations — the Bohemian, Bavarian, Polish,
and Saxon. In the University of Leipzig, the division into the
Meissnian, Saxon, Bavarian, and Polish nations, with which it started
at its foundation in 1409 as a colony from the University of Prague,
continued untU the year 1830;' and even at the present day this
ancient arrangement continues to be of practical importance in many
respects, especially in relation to particular endowments. It was the
same vi'ith the English Universities in the Middle Ages ; but in Oxford
there were only two such ' nations,' the northern and the southern
{Boreales and Australes). The first included the Scots, the second
the Irish and Welsh. Each nation, as in the universities of the Con
tinent, had its own elected president and representative, who bore
the title of Procurator (hence Proctor).
That Wycliffe joined himself to the northern ' nation ' might of
course be presumed ; but there is express testimony to the fact that
he was a Borealis.'^ This is not without importance, inasmuch as
this ' nation ' in Oxford, during the fourteenth century, was the chief
representative, not only of the Saxon or pure Germanic folk-character,
but also of the principle of the national autonomy. But this con
nection of Wycliffe with the ' northern nation ' produced a double
effect. It had a determinative influence upon Wycliffe's own spirit
and mental development; while, on the other hand, as soon as
Wycliffe had taken up an independent position, and began to work
upon other minds, he found within the University, in this nation of
the Boreales, no inconsiderable number of men of kindred blood and
spirit to his own, to form the kernel of a self-inclusive circle — of a
party. And now, as respects the studies of Wycliffe in the years of his
student-life, the sources here also fail to give us as full information as
¦Wycliffe's we could have wished. We are especially left in the
teachers. ^^j.]^ ^g (.^ ^^ jj^gjj ^^Jjq wexe his teachers. It would
have been very helpful to know whether he was personally a hearer
of Thomas Bradwardine and of Richard Fitzralph. Judging from
' The Book of Statutes of the Univer- Wycliffe under the year 1377, with the
sity of Leipzig for the first x^o years after words : ¦'Per idem tempus sitrrexit in
its foundation. Edited by Friedrich Universitate Oxoniensi quidam Borealis,
Zarncke. Leipzig, 1861, 4to, 3, 42. dictus Magister Joannes Wyclef,' etc.
= TheChroniclerof St. Albans, 'Thomas Riley's ed., I., 324.
Walsingham, commences his account of ^

^335-1345.1 HIS OXFORD STUDIES. 89
dates, it is quite possible that he did come in contact with the latter,
for Fitzralph was, in 1340 and for some years afterwards, resident in
Oxford as Chancellor of the University, and was still, without doubt,
¦delivering theological lectures, for it was not till 1347 that he was
made Archbishop of Armagh. On the other hand, it seems very
•doubtful whether, at the time when Wycliffe was a student, Thomas
Bradwardine was still in Oxford, and not rather already in France, in
the train of Edward IIL, as military chaplain. Wycliffe, indeed, more
than once makes mention ofthe doctor profundus, but in a way which
decidedly leads us to infer only a knowledge and use of his writings,
not a personal acquaintance with the man.
But if we are left in the dark on the subject of Wycliffe's principal
teachers, we are not altogether without light on the question as to
what and how he studied. The knowledge which we
possess at the present day of the character of the
medieval universities, and of the scholastic philosophy, is sufficient
•of itself to give us some insight into these points. For one thing, it is
beyond all doubt, that although the Middle Ages made exclusive use
of the Latin tongue (not, indeed, in its classical form) as their scientific
organ, they were not at all familiar with the Greek language and
literature. It may, with full warrant, be maintained that the scholastic
philosophers and divines were, as a rule, ignorant of Greek, and at
tained to any knowledge they had of its Christian and classical litera
ture only by means of Latin translations, and sometimes only through
Latin tradition. Men like Roger Bacon, who had some acquaintance
with Greek, are rare exceptions.' It was only during the fifteenth
century that, in consequence of certain well-known events, the
.study of the Greek language and literature became more general.
But even at the beginning of the sixteenth century Greek scholars
and teachers like Erasmus and Philip Melancthon were rare enough.
Manifestly the revival of HeUenic speech and culture in Western
Europe was one of the chief causes of the advent of the modern
¦epoch ; as, on the other hand, the prevailing ignorance of the Greek
language, and the impossibility of any direct acquaintance with Greek
Uterature, was one of the most essential momenta which conditioned
the onesidedness and narrowness of mediseval science.
This want we recognise also in Wycliffe. His writings supply
manifold proofs of his total ignorance of Greek. This is shown, not
¦only by very frequent mistakes in the writing of Greek proper names
' It has been usual to ascribe to Ger- in his Johannes Saresberiensis, 1862, p.
bert in the tenth, and to Abelard and 108, has proved convincingly that they
John of Salisbury in the twelfth century, had no claim to this praise.
a knowledge of Greek, but Schaarschmidt,

go wycliffe's youth and student LIFE. [CH. II. §3
and other words which might be attributed to the copyists rather
Ignorance of than to the author himself, but also by the etymo-
Greek. logical explanations of Greek terms which Wycliff"e hot
seldom introduces, which for the most part are beside the mark and
erroneous.' He is always more successful when, on questions
which presuppose a knowledge of Greek, he leans on the authority
of others, as, e.g., on Jerome, as linguarum peritissimus, De Civili
Dominio in., c. ii. When Wycliffe quotes a Greek writer, it is his
custom, quite frankly, to give at the same time the name of the Latin
source from which he derived his knowledge of the Greek work. In
short, it is quite plain that in all cases he looked at the Greek only
through Latin spectacles. But this defect was, no doubt, entirely
owing to the education which WycUffe had received in his youth,
especially as a student at Oxford ; for if there had been any possibihty
at that time of acquiring a knowledge of Greek at the University,
Wycliffe was just the man who would certainly not have neglected
the opportunity. For how ardently he thirsted after truth, and with
what unwearied industry he sought to obtain a many-sided mental
culture, we shall presently have occasion to show.
Another point is the course of study which was pursued in the
Middle Ages. This differed from the course of modern university
The 'Liberal training, as the latter has developed itself on the Con-
¦'^'^¦' tinent, in one very important respect. Much greater
stress was laid upon, and, in consequence, much more time was;
devoted to, general scientific culture ; whereas, in the present day,
professional studies have the preference, certainly more than is wise
and good. At that time a large space was occupied by the study of
the 'Liberal Arts.' And these seven artes liberales, from which the
Faculty of Arts took its name, had to be studied in strict order and
course : first, the Trivium, including grammar, dialectics, and rhe
toric ; then the Quadrivium, embracing arithmetic, geometry, astro-
" Greek proper names are often written crisis=secretum, because the subject is
in the Bohemian MSS. of Wycliffe's works the secrets of the Church ; or, according
so erroneously as to be almost unrecog- to others from i7;>i7,r=large, and crisis=
msahle, e.g., Pictagerus ms,iiii\.doiPyt.hz.- judicium. De Veritate Scriptures, c. 2.
goras. De veritate Sacra Scriptures, c. Another etymological attempt is no tjetter.
12. And who would guess that cassefa- Elemosnia is alleged to be compounded
turn in the same MS. was meant to be of elemonia^miseiicordia., and sina ; or
nothing else but KaKoijiaTOv 1 But the of c/m, which comes from £/i=God, and
false writing of a Greelc word is not al- j/«(z=mandatum ; it signifies, therefore^
ways to be put to the account of the God's command. De Civili Dominio,
copyist, for in one place, e.g., the mis- iii., c. 14, MS. [The name MichaeU
written word apocrisus (instead of apo- again, is apparently derived by Wycliffe
cryphus) is immediately followed by an from /id;^?/, ' battle,' which he writes
etymological remark which presupposes J micha, and ^/=God. Trial, ii. 10, p-
to have been written instead of/. The 109.]
word, it is said, comes from apo=de, and

'335-1343.1 HIS OXFORD STUDIES. gr
nomy, and music. The Trivium was also named compendiously
the Artes Sermocinales or ' Logic,' and not without reason, inasmuch
as Xiiyoe designates equally speech and thought ; the students in this
part of the curriculum being called Logici. To the Quadrivium, on
the other hand, was given sometimes the collective name of ' Physics,'
in the old comprehensive sense of science of nature, and sometimes
the name ofthe 'Mathematical Arts.' '
That Wycliffe possessed a special faculty and taste for natural
philosophy we shall presently point out ; but first let us dwell a little
longer upon his logical studies. We know from the
testimony of John of Salisbury, who died in 1180, that dialectical
•in the twelfth century many who devoted themselves to
the sciences never got beyond the Trivium, to the majority of whom
dialectics was the chief stumbling-block ; = and we can understand
this the more readily when we remember that it was usual in the
scholastic age to look upon dialectics as the science of sciences, and
even, in a certain degree, as the philosophy of all science (Wissen-
schaftlehre). In the logic and dialectics of the Middle Ages the
formal schooling and discipUne of scientific thought joined itself
partly to a kind of philosophy of speech, partly to a metaphysical
ontology, or to what Hegel has called speculative logic. If we con
sider, however, the imposing role which was played in the scientific
life and action of the Middle Ages by the Public Acts of Disputation,
those tournaments of the learned world, we may well conceive what
an indescribable charm dialectics, as the art of disputation, must
have had for the men of that time. How close to hand lay the
temptation to forget or disdain everything compared with this art,,
and to look upon it as a world in itself, revolving round itself as its
own absolute self-end !
To these logical and dialectical studies Wycliffe, without doubt,
devoted himself in his student days with the greatest zeal, as is
attested by the numerous writings of this character produced in his
mature age. Indeed, we may say that all his writings, upon whatever
subject, not excepting even his sermons, confirm this attestation, inas
much as all of them are stamped throughout with the dialectic genius
of the author. But even if this testimony had not been forthcoming,
we know that it was the unchallenged and universally admitted
^ £.^., Wycliffe, Tractatus de statu in- ' Comp. Renter, Johannes von Salis-
nocentice, c. 4, quoad artes mathematicas bury. Berlin, 1842, p. 9, and Schaar-
quadruviales. Vienna MS., 1339 f, 244, schmidt, Johannes Saresberiensis. Leip-
col. 2-245. Roger Bacon is also wont to zig, 1862, p. 61.
include the sciences of the Quadrivium
under the general term of Mathematics.

g2 wycliffe's youth and STUDENT LIFE. [ch. ii.
brilliancy of his dialectical genius alone which acquired for Wycliffe
his high scientific fame.
But he was still far from overvaluing the arts of logic, as if these
alone constituted science. The mathematical sciences of the Quad
rivium had also an extraordinary attraction for him, and
Mathematical .. , . ., . , . .,¦
and aoientiflo it IS worthy of consideration how often m his writings,
and with what predilection, he refers to this department.
At one time it is arithmetic or geometry which must do him service
in illustrating certain truths and relations ; at another time it is
physical and chemical laws, or facts of optics or acoustics, which
he applies to illuminate moral and religious truths ; and not only
in scientific essays, or in sermons preached before the University,
but even in his English sermons he makes unhesitating use of such
illustrations.' But it was not in his riper years that Wycliffe first
began to apply himself to the study of natural science ; he had begun
to do so in his youth, while a student in Oxford, as he himself tells
us, in words quoted on a preceding page. The reference there,
indeed, is limited to collections which he had made in his younger
days from works upon optics, but we may obviously infer that
he had occupied himself with other branches of natural science
as well, quando fuit junior. No doubt it was under the instruc
tions and by the personal example of some teacher in the Uni
versity that his taste for these studies was first awakened and
encouraged; but who this teacher was we ask in vain. Neither
contemporaries nor men of later times, nor Wycliffe himself, afford
us any knowledge upon the subject. It may, however, with some
reason be conjectured that at the time of Wycliffe's student life some
disciples of the great Roger Bacon, who lived long in Oxford, and
survived till 1292, may still have been working there, and thatthe
enthusiasm for natural science, which -we are so often sensible of in
Wycliffe, was derived by him through this medium and from that
illustrious man, who was called, not without reason. Doctor Mirabilis,
and who, anticipating his namesake, Francis Bacon, had already, ih
the thirteenth century, grasped and exemplified the experimental
method of science. It is matter of fact that among the learned men
who adorned the University of Oxford in the first half and in the
middle of the fourteenth century, not a few were distinguished by
mathematical, astronomical, and physical knowledge. Thomas
¦ So in the 26th of his Sermons on eluded in the same MS. vol. Explanations
Saints' Days ('Evangelia de Sanctis'). of this kind are not uncommon in his
Vienna M.S. , 3928 ; also in the Sist ser- learned treatises, e.g. , in the De Dominio
mon of the same collection, and in the Divino, II., c. 3 ; De Ecclesia, c. 5,
24th sermon of another collection, in- etc.

1335-1345-] HIS OXFORD STUDIES. 93
Bradwardine, for example, who died in 1349, mentioned above as a
theological thinker, was held in high estimation as a mathematician
and astronomer ; John Estwood, at one time a member of Merton
College, was celebrated about 1360 for his astronomical attainments;
as was also WUliam Rede, who built the library of that coUege, and
in 1369 became Bishop of Chichester.' These are only a few names
selected out of a great number of contemporaries who were all
members of the University of Oxford as scholars, or masters and
doctors. We are not, then, too bold if we conclude from these facts
that in the first half of the fourteenth century there prevailed in that
University a special zeal for mathematical and physical studies, which
also laid hold of Wycliff'e.
But the natural sciences had as Uttle power to enchain him,
exclusively and for ever, as logic and dialectics ; and Wycliffe passed
from the seven liberal arts to Theology. This was, no theological
doubt, the design which his parents had in view when studies.
they destined him for a life of study. He was to become a cleric,
for the priestly calling was, in the public opinion of that age,
the highest in human society. If the Wycliffe family cherished any
ambitious wishes for the gifted scion of their house, it was a course
of theological education and the standing of priesthood, which in
that age, and especially in England, formed the surest stepping-
stones to the highest dignities of the State. But we find no warrant
either in his life or in his writings for attributing such ambitious
designs to himself. What drew him as a young man to theology was, in
our judgment, neither an ambition which looked upon the science
only as the means of attaining selfish ends, nor a deep religious need
aheady awakened and consciously experienced, which sought the
satisfaction of its own cravings in the Christian theology. It rather
appears to us, judging from those self-revelations, scattered here and
there in his writings, which give us an insight into his student life,
that the motive which impelled him, apart from all external con
siderations, to devote himself to theology, was entirely intellectual and
scientific. His passion for knowledge and thirst for truth drew him to
theology as the highest science of all, 'the queen of sciences.' From
his own writings it is evident that he entered upon the new study
with the untiring zeal which had characterised his former pursuits.
The scholastic theology, it is true, was entirely wanting in the
various historical discipline of our modern theology, and it knew
only a small part of practical and exegetical theology, or the wide
• Lewis, History of the Life of Wiclif, following Leland's De Scriptoribus Bri-
taiinicis.

94 • wycliffe's youth and STUDENT LIFE, [ch.ii. §2
field of Biblical science. Almost the whole body of theological
science took the form of systematic theology. That had been the
case since the second half of the twelfth century — i.e., since the
Sentences of ' the Master,' the Lombard, Peter of Novara, had become
the manual of dogmatic instruction.
But we should greatly err if we were to suppose, on this account,
that the theological studies of the Middle Ages comprehended, as a
general rule, only a small amount of scientific matter. On the
contrary, they extended themselves to large fields of knowledge, of
which Protestant theology, at least in later times, has taken little or
no account. In particular, the Canon Law, since the time when it
was collected and sanctioned, formed an extremely comprehensive
and important subject of the theological course. Nor must we
undervalue the reading of the Fathers, e.g., of Augustine, and of the
Doctors, i.e., the Scholastics, which at the same time occupied in
some degree the place of dogmatic history. Nor was the practice
amiss of dividing the theological course into two stages, which we
may briefly describe as the Biblical and the Systematic. The former
came first in order. It consisted in the reading and interpretation
of the Old and New Testaments. The interpretation took the form
of Glosses. The whole of medieval science, ih fact, developed itself
from Glosses; Dialectics from Glosses on the writings of Aristotle ;
Law from Glosses on the Corpus J^uris ; and so also Theology from
Glosses first on the Bible, and then on the Sentences of Peter Lom
bard. That the original text of the Bible, through all this process,
remained a book sealed with seven seals, and that only the Latin
Vulgate was the subject of translation, need not be dwelt upon after
what has been said above. To interpretation proper {expositio),
which consisted in explanations more or less short, verbal, or sub
stantial, sometimes aphoristic in form, and sometimes running on
at large, succeeded learned discussions, in the scholastic manner
{qucBstiones), in the form of disputational excursus.
As already hinted, the prefixing of the Biblical to the dogmatic
course was, besides being commendable in itself, also suitable to the
Course of object in view, for the students were in this way taken,
theology. before everything else, to the fountain-head, and ob
tained a knowledge of sacred history and Bible doctrine — if only this
Biblical instruction had been of the right kind ! But there was
lacking itnmediate contact with the original. Men looked into the
Bible text only through the coloured spectacles of the Latin version.
And that was not all : men were, at the same time, so fettered and
prejudiced by the whole mass of ecclesiastical tradition, that the

1335-1345.] , BIBLICAL and theological STUDIES. 95
possibility of a fair interpretation of the Scriptures was out of the
question. The Biblical course, besides, was looked upon, not as
the necessary foundation of all that was to follow, but rather as an
entirely subordinate and preparatory discipline to Theology properly
so called. This appeared in the division of labour which was made
in the matter of theological lectures ; for bachelors of theology of the
lowest degree were allowed to deliver lectures on the Bible, and
usually this work was left to them alone ; whereas bachelors of the
middle and highest degrees {baccalaurei sententiarii and for matt), ^
as well as the doctors of theology, lectured on the Sentences of Peter
Lombard, and sometimes on Summce of their own. The ' doctors '
would have thought it beneath their dignity to lecture on the Biblical
books ; the bachelors who were relegated to this work were called in
a depreciatory tone only biblici, in contrast to setitentiarii. When
Wycliffe, therefore, went forward from this stage to what was con
sidered the higher one, in which he studied what is now called
systematic theology, it was chiefly lectures on the Sentences of the
Lombard to which he had to listen. And here, too, that mode of
treatment prevailed which began by glossing the text of the master,
and followed this up with different ' quaestiones.' In addition, the
numerous ' disputations ' which were always held, served to promote
the culture of the students. To these was added the reading of
patristic and scholastic works. x\mong the latter, in the time of
Wycliffe, the works chiefly in favour, at Oxford at least, were the
Summa of Thomas Aquinas, the writings of Bishop Robert Gros
setete {Lincolniensis), and the comprehensive work of Archbishop
Richard Fitzralph {Armachanus) against the errors of the Armenians.
Beyond aU doubt, AVycUffe, in his student years, was a dUigent reader
of all these works, of which he makes so frequent use in his writings.
Further, as no one could have the credit of being a true theologian
who was not at home in Canon Law, Wycliffe fulfilled , this last
requirement in a degree which is best evinced in his yet unprinted
works, where he shows himself to have been quite a master of
Canonical Jurisprudence ; and that he had laid the foundations of
this learning, even as a student, we assume -with all confidence.
Lewis adds that Wycliffe also studied Roman Law,^ and the
Canonical Law of England ; and the assumption is indeed probable
that he was no stranger to either ; as is shown, not only by many
of his writings, but also by the practical share which he took at a
later period in ecclesiastico-political affairs; but whether he had
1 Comp Thurot, De V Organisation de au Moyen-age, 1850, p. 137.
I'Enseignement dans V University de Paris ' Lewis, Life of Wiclif p. ij.

gG wycliffe's youth and student life. [ch. n. §^
thrown himself into the study of these subjects in his youth is a
point which we must leave in a state of uncertainty.
We have no positive data to show to what length of time Wycliffe's
student course extended, and can only arrive at a probable estimate
with the help of our general knowledge of university
•Wycliffe's customs in that age. AVe know that in England, as
student course. , _ . , . . . ,
well as on the Continent, the university course in the
Middle Ages occupied a far longer period than at present. It has
been truly said that 'men were not then misers with their time.' To
study for ten years was by no means uncommon. Two years, at
least, were allowed to the Trivium, and as many to the Quadrivium, so
that four years, to begin with, were taken up by the general sciences in
the Faculty of Arts. The study of theology in its two stages lasted, as
a rule, for seven years, frequently even longer, although in some
cases not so long, but even then for five years at the least.' A\'e
shall, therefore, scarcely err if we suppose that AA^ycliffe gave six
years to the study of theology ; and it can scarcely be too high an
estimate if we reckon up his whole term of study to a decade of
years. So if we were right in our conjecture, that he entered the
LTniversity about the year 1335, the end of his curriculum would
faU about the year 1345. Later data of his life afford nothing to
contradict this computation. At all events, we must assume that
he had already taken all the academic degrees in order up to that
time, with the single exception of the theological doctorship. Thus,
without doubt, he had become baccalaureus artiitm, and two or three
years later magister artiu7n. And again, after an interval of several
years, he must have become bachelor of theology, or, as it was then
expressed, ' bachelor of the sacra pagina ; ' but whether he became
licentiate of theology before or after the year 1345 must be left
undetermined. Herewith we leave AVycliffe's student years, and
pass to his manhood.
' See article Sorbonne, in Herzog's 'Theol. Realencylopadie.' Eng. ed. by Dr.
Schaff, vol. III.

CHAPTER III.
QUIET WORK IN OXFORD— i^AS-^Z^^-
I. — 'Wycliffe as a Member of Balliol and of Merton.
IN commencing this period of AA^ycliffe's life with the year 1345,
we have before us two full decades of years during which he in
no way appeared upon the stage of public life, either in Church or
State. For in those chronicles which record the history of England
in the fourteenth century, there does not occur the slightest mention
of his person during these years. In fact, it is not till ten years later
StiU, that the chroniclers mention him for the first time (1377). For
this reason, we designate this stage of his life the period of his quiet
work ; and of that work during all these twenty years Oxford was
the exclusive field.
We have to think of AVycUffe at this time as a member of a college
in full standing {socius, fellow), as one of the Regent Masters {magistri'
regentes), i.e., as a man taking an active part in the inde- AEegent
pendent, and in some sense republican government of Master.
his own college and of the whole academic body — a position to
which he had been in due order admitted, after passing through
certain stages of academic study, and after he had acquitted himself
of certain learned tasks (disputations and the like).
The coUege, indeed, of which Wycliffe became a Fellow, is a
question which lies under as much uncertainty as that other which
has been discussed in the last chapter, viz. : what college it was with
which he had been previously connected as a scholar.
Since the appearance of Lewis's Ufe in 1720, the view has been
commonly accepted that he was first a Fellow of Merton College,
and afterwards, about the year 1360, was promoted to Master of
the presidency of BaUiol College.' In support of the Bauioi.
first point, there exists a single documentary proof, which, however,
' John Lewis, History, etc. , i, 4. Vaughan, Life and Opinions, I. 241. Monograph,
P- 39-

gS QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — I345-I366. [ch. iii.§i
is not absolutely unquestionable. It consists of an entry in the Acts
of Merton College, according to which, in January, 1356, 'John
Wyklif ' held the office of seneschal or rent-master of the college.'
This has hitherto been unhesitatingly understood of our Wycliffe ;
but Shirley maintains, on the contrary, that that notice probably
refers to his namesake and contemporary, 'John WicUf or 'AVyclyve,'
who, according to trustworthy documents, was parish priest of May-
field. The grounds upon which this scholar relies are the following : —
The fact is certain beyond challenge, that the Reformer Wycliffe
and no other was Master of BaUiol in 1361. Now, the relations
-which existed between this college and the Wycliffe family, make
it natural to presume that he belonged to Balliol from the first ;
¦while, on the other hand, it is in the highest degree improbable that
the members of this college would have chosen for their Mastera
man who was member of another college (Merton).^ The difficulty
presented by this last remark will find its solution in an inquiry upon
which we shall enter presently ; and as to Shirley's ground of doubt,
jt is obvious to reply that John Wycliffe of Mayfield was also a
Wyclifre,3 and therefore stood as nearly related to Balliol College
as our Wycliffe, and to Merton College no nearer than he. Thus
the most important element of the question still continues to be the
established fact, that our Wycliffe was Master of Balliol in 1362.
We are unable, for our part, to recognise any decisive weight in
Shirley's argument in opposition to the view which has hitherto
prevailed, that Wycliffe was for some time a member of Merton.
On the other hand, we believe that we are able to throw some nevir
light on this hitherto somewhat obscure subject, and that not by
means of bare conjecture, but of documentary facts!
The difficulty lies chiefly in explaining the frequent change of
¦colleges through which WycUffe is alleged to have passed, inasmuch
as according to the older tradition, he was first admitted to Queen's,
then transferred .to Merton, and was soon afterwards made Master
of Balliol ; or even if we set aside Queen's College (the mention
of it in connection with , Wycliffe's student-life being unhistorical),
and assume that he began his course as a scholar of Balliol, then
it seems stranger still that he should have left this college and become
.a member of Merton, only tp return to Balliol, and that too in the
¦capacity of Master. But precisely here is the point upon which we
think we are able to throw light, from a document which, till now,
' The Wycliffite Versions of the Bible, 3 [But possibly of another family, and
vol. I. , p. vii. even of another part of the country. The
= Shirley, Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. names may have been originally different,
311. White-cliff &nd VFy-cliff.]

'345-1359-] FROM BALLIOL TO MERTON. 99
has hardly been considered in relation to the subject. AVe refer to
the Papal Bull of 1361, first pubUshed by Lewis, not, indeed, in the
original, but in extensive extract, in which the incorporation of the
parish church of Abbotesley with BaUiol HaU (so the college was
then called) is approved and sanctioned.' This document makes
reference, at the same time, to the representation which the members
of Balliol had submitted to the Papal See in support of their petition
that the incorporation might be confirmed. From this representation
we see pretty clearly what had been the financial condition of the
college up to that time. For it states that by means of the pious
beneficence of the founder of the college, there are indeed numerous
students and clerics in the hall, but aforetime each of them had
received only eight farthings weekly ; attd as soon as they became
Masters of Arts, they had. immediately to leave the Hall, so that, on
account of poverty, they were no longer able to continue their studies,
and found themselves, in some instances, obUged to have recourse
to trade for the sake of a living. Now, however. Sir William Felton,
the present benefactor of the foundation, formerly patron of Abbotes
ley, but who had already, in 1341, transferred his right of collation
to BalUol College,^ has formed the design, out of sym- poverty of
pathy with its members, to increase the number of BaUioi.
scholars, and to make provision for their having the common use of
books in all the different faculties ; and also, .that every one of them
shall have a sufficient supply of clothing and twelve farthings a-week ;
and further, that they shall be at liberty to remain quietly in tlie Hall,
whether they are masters and doctors or not, until they obtain a suffi
cient church-living, and not till then shall they be obliged to leave.
From this it is as clear as possible, that up to the year 1360 the
extremely limited resources of Balliol had made it necessary that
every one belonging to the foundation should leave as soon as he
obtained his Arts degree, and that the incorporation of the Church
of Abbotesley was intended by the benefactor to help in providing that
members of Balliol, even when they became masters or doctors,
might in future continue to live in the college as they had done
before. If then Wycliffe, as we have reason to presume, was received
into Balliol as a scholar, the circumstances of the college at that
time must have obliged him to leave it as soon as he had graduated.
And now, far from finding objections to identifying this WicUf,
mentioned in the Merton papers as seneschal of that college in 1359,
with our own Wycliffe, we are glad to learn from this source what
'• Lewis, History, etc., p. 4. Dictionary, sth ed., Lond. 1842 ; 410.
» Comp. Samuel Lewis, Topographical ' Abbotesley."

lOO QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — 1345-1366. [ch.iii.
had become of him since the time when, as we may now presume,
he was obliged to leave BaUiol as a master. And as it was customary
in the colleges that every one behoved to be for some considerable
length of time a Fellow before he could undertake such a function
as that of seneschal, we may infer that Wycliffe had been for several
years, probably since his graduation as a master, a member of Merton
before he entered upon the office. The circumstances just mentioned
serve to show, in addition, how easily it might come to pass that
WycUffe, although he had left Balliol, might yet at a later period be
caUed back again to that coUege, and even be placed at its head ;
for as his leaving was by no means a spontaneous act of his own,
but was entirely due to the financial situation of the college, it is
impossible that it should have given rise to any feeling to his dis
advantage, whereas, under other circumstances, such a feeling might
have existed, and have stood in the way of his subsequent promotion.'
We beUeve that we have thus been able to clear up a point which
has hitherto been obscure. But however this may be, the fact that
Wycliffe was Master of Balliol in the year 1361, is in any case com
pletely established. This appears from four different documents
which are preserved among the archives of this college, and which
have all a bearing upon the fact that Wycliffe, as ' Magister seu
Gustos Aulas de BalUolo,' ^ took possession, in the name of the college,
of the already mentioned incumbency of Abbotesley in the county
of Huntingdon, which had been incorporated with the foundation.
From these documents it appears that Wycliffe had become Master or
Warden of Balliol before this date ; and yet it cannot have been long
before, since in November, 1356, the name of Robert of Derby occurs.
' [A valuable paper by the late Pre- time and before, to elect northern scholars-
bendary Wilkinson appeared in The into tlieir society.' In Wycliffe's time.
Church Quarterly Review for October also, the finances of Balliol were in a,
1877, on the connection of Wycliffe with better condition, from the benefactions of
the three Oxford Colleges, and is chiefly Sir William Fenton and Sir Philip de-
directed against Professor Shirley's views Somerville (1341). Prebendary Wilkinson
on the same subject. The author agrees is much more successful in his argumen-
with Dr. Lechler in maintaining the tation on the question of the Reformer's
identity of the Reformer not only with Wardenship of Canterbury Hall, and he
John Wiclif, Warden of Canterbury Hall, claims, upon good grounds, ' to have
but also withjohn Wichf, Fellow or Post- established that Dean Hook was prema-
master of Merton. On the latter point ture in regarding the question as con-
his arguments can scarcely be regarded clusively settled in the negative by Pro
as satisfactory. That Wycliffe was Mas- fessor Shirley's arguments.' — Note by Dr.
ter of Balliol in 1361 proves that he was Lorimer, abridged.']
previously a Fellow : and the two colleges, = Shirley gives an exact account of these-
BaUiol and Merton (the head-quarters of documents in notes 4 and 5 on p. xiv. of
the Boreales and Australes respectively) Introduction. [Several of them are tran-
were bitter rivals. Wood in his History scribed in ' Riley's Report to the Royal
and Antiquities of Oxford, referring to Commission on Historical MSS. on the;
the time of Wycliffe, says; 'The mem- Archives of Balliol College.' — Lorimer.']
bers of Merton College refiised, at this

^3«i-] NOMINATED TO FILLINGHAM. lOI
as Master; nor was even he AA^ycUffe's immediate predecessor, but one
AVilliam of Kingston. Three of these documents, dated April 7, 8,
and 9, 1361, have immediate relation to the Act of Incorporation itself,
while in the fourth, dated July in the same year, Wycliff'e, as Master,
transmits to the Bishop of Lincoln, John Gynwell, the Papal Bull
wherein the incorporation was sanctioned. But before this last date
AVycUffe had been nominated by his coUege, May 16, Rector of
1361, as Rector of Fillingham. This is a small parish I'lUingiiam.
in the county of Lincoln, lying ten miles north-west of the city of
Lincoln. But the fact of this appointment does not imply that
Wycliff'e immediately left the University, and lived entirely in the
country in order to devote himself to pastoral duties. This does not
appear to have been contemplated in the nomination. According to
law and custom, he stUl retained his membership in the University,
with all its powers and privileges ; and without doubt he continued to
reside at O.xford. AATiat provision he made for the work of the parish,
by the appointment of a curate or otherwise, and whether during the
University vacations he resided regularly in FUlingham, in order to
discharge his pastoral duties in person — cannot be decided. But it
is matter of fact that an entry exists in the Acts of the See of
Lincoln, to which diocese Fillingham belonged, showing that Wycliff'e
appUed for and obtained in 1368 the consent of his bishop to an
absence of two years from his parish church of FiUingham, in order
to devote himself to the studies of Oxford.' It maybe conjectured
that he had obtained similar leave of non-residence for a similar period
on previous occasions.
On the other hand, his nomination to the rectorship of a country
parish made it necessary that he should relinquish the Mastership of
Balliol. That this really took place, may be inferred from an entry
in the account-books of Queen's CoUege, to the effect that AVycUffe,
in October, 1363, and for several years afterwards, paid rent for an
apartment in the buildings of that college.^ We know besides, from
other sources, that in 1366 a certain John Hugate was Master of
BallioL • The entry in the Episcopal Register upon what I consider to be an erroneous
of Lincoln, Bishop Bokyngham's, 1363- interpretation ofthe entries in theaccount-
97, is as follows : — ' Idibus Aprilis, anno books of Queen's College, quoted by
Domini millesimo CCCmo.LXVIII.apud Shirleyinthe Fasciculi, p. 514 ; for these
parkum Storweconcessa fuit licent iamagis- entries manifestly refer, not to short stays
iro Johanni de Wyclef e, rectori ecclesice in the college rooms, but to rents of rooms
de Filyngham, quod posset se absentare ab paid by the year, with which sense alone
ecclesia sua insistendo Hterarum studio in agrees the recurring mention of Wycliffe's
Universitate Oxon. per biennium.' camera. Inapassageof his paper further
= [The remarks made by Buddensieg in on, Buddensieg himself understands all
opposition to this view (Zeitschrift fiir the entries in question of a two years'
Historische Theologie, 1874, p. 316) rest rental.— Zw«««;-.]

102 QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — I345-I366. [ch. in. § 2
During the twenty years which we have in view in the present
chapter, AVycliffe's work in Oxford was twofold — partly scientific, as a
'Work in ^^^ ^f Scholastic learning, and partly practical, as a
Oxford. member, and for some time president of a college, and
also as Magister regens in the general corporation of the University.
That he did not apply himself exclusively to pastoral duties in
Fillingham may be assumed with certainty. With respect to his
scientific labours, he began while only a Master in the faculty of
Arts to give disputations and lectures on Philosophy and Logic.
From many passages in his extant manuscript works it appears that
he gave courses of such lectures with zeal and success. But from
the time when he became Bachelor of Theology, he was at liberty
to deliver theological lectures in addition ; but only, in the first instance,
on the Biblical books, not on the Sentences of the Lombard, as
already shown. But the Biblical lectures which he delivered proved
to be of the greatest use to himself In teaching the Scriptures to
others, he first learned the true meaning of them himself {docenda
discimus) ; so that these lectures unconsciously served as a preparation
for his later labours as a Reformer.
But Wycliffe had also the opportunity of acquiring practical ability,
and of making himself useful, by taking part as a Fellow of Merton
College in the administration of that society ; and doubtless his
popular and beneficial activity in this position contributed essentially
to bring about his appointment to the headship of Balliol. The
qualities for which he was especially valued in this relation are evident
from the document by which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon
Islip, an earlier fellow-student, appointed Wycliffe to the Presidency
of Canterbury HaU. The Archbishop gives as his reason for this
nomination, apart from Wycliffe's learning and estimable life, his
practical qualifications of fidelity, circumspection, and dUigence.'
2. — ¦'WyclifFe as Head of Canterbury Hall and
Doctor of Theology.
In the meantime, as has just been mentioned by anticipation, Wycliffe
had been appointed Warden of Canterbury Hall, a small newly-
founded college; but this position also, without any blame on his
part, proved to be of only short duration. This point in his bio
graphy, however, is attended with more than one historical difficulty,
although till 1840 it was universally believed that Wycliff'e was for
some time head of this new hall.
' Lewis, Life of Wiclif, Appendix No. 3, p. 290.

1365-1367-] WARDEN OF CANTERBURY HALL. 103
Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, founded a Hall in Oxford
which should bear the name of the Archiepiscopal See. Its first
warden was a monk of violent character named Wood- canterbury
hall, under whom there were incessant contentions among ^*"-
the members. To remedy this scandal, the Archbishop removed
AA^oodhall from the headship, and replaced three other members,
who were monks, by secular priests. In 1365 he appointed
'John of AA'iclif to be second warden, and intrusted to him the
oversight of the eleven scholars, now all seculars. But in the
foUowing spring (AprU 26, 1366), the active Archbishop Islip died,
and was succeeded as Primate of England early in 1367 by Simon
Langham, a man who had previously been a monk, and continued
to cherish a thoroughly monastic spirit. By him Wycliffe was deposed
from his wardenship, and the three members who had been intro
duced with him were removed from the college. Langham also
restored AA'oodhall to the headship, and re-installed the three monks
who had been deprived with him. AVycUffe and the three FeUows
appealed from the Archbishop to the Pope, but the process proved
uncommonly protracted, and ended in 1370 with the rejection of
AVycUffe and his fellow-appellants, and the confirmation of their
opponents in their several places.
The termination of this affair exceeds by several years the limit
of that period of AVycliffe's life with which we are now con
cerned ; but for the sake of connection we shall dispose of the whole
subject here. From the fourteenth century to our own time, this
chapter of AVycliffe's history has been turned to use against him by
his literary adversaries. They knew how to attribute his antagonistic
tendencies, and especially his attacks upon the Pope and the monastic
system, to motives of petty personal revenge for the losses which he
had incurred on this occasion, and thus to damage his character
and fame. We shall, therefore, have to inquire whether this imputation
is well grounded or not, keeping before us, here as always, the truth
as our highest aim.
We might, indeed, at once dispense with such an examination, if
it could be shown that this whole stoiy has been interwoven with the
biography of the precursor of the Reformation only 51^0
through confounding him with another person of the same 'WyoiiffeB.
name. This view of the subject has, in fact, been recently entertained
and defended with no littie skUl and learning by competent scholars,
whose aim, it is only fair to state, was by no means to defend Wycliff'e
against imputation, but simply and solely to bring to light the
historical facts of the case.

104 QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — 1345-1366. [ch. m. g i
The historico-critical difficulties which have here to be solved may
be comprised in two questions : —
I. Is ' John of Wiclif,' the Warden of Canterbury HaU, identical
with AVycUffe, the precursor of the Reformation, or is he not ?
2. Was the appointment, of Wycliffe to the headship of the Hall,
and of those three secular priests or members of the same, contrary
to the terms of the foundation, or not ?
We shall be obliged to distinguish these two questions, but we
cannot keep them separate in our inquiry.
In August, 1 84 1, there appeared an article in the Gentleman's
Magazine, known afterwards to be by Mr. W. J. Courthope, a member
of the Heralds' College. This article first made the attempt to show
that ' John Wyclyve,' the Warden of Canterbury Hall, was a person
to be carefully distinguished from the celebrated Wycliffe.' The
writer had been led to this conclusion in the course of drawing up a
The Beotor lo^al history of the Archbishop's Palace of Mayfield, in
of Mayfield. gugggx. He discovered, that is to say, in the archives of
Canterbury, that on July 20, 1361, a ' John Wyclyve,' or ' Whytclyve,'
was appointed parish priest of Mayfield by Archbishop Islip — the
same prelate who, four years later, nominated ' John AVyclyve, to the
presidency of Canterbury Hall ; and it is very remarkable that the
deed of this later nomination is dated Mayfield, December 9, 1365.
Islip seems to have had his ordinary residence there since the time
when he appointed ' John of Wyclyve ' to the parish. Further, the
tone in which the Archbishop speaks in the deed of the learning
and excellent personal qualities of the man whom he nominates
to the wardenship presupposes intimate acquaintance, and seems more
Uke the praise of a friend than a merely formal commendation.^
Another circumstance urged as worthy of consideration is that the
name itself in both documents is written clyve in the second syUable,
whereas the name of our Wycliffe and the Warden of Balliol is
found in all the documents written with clif or clife. Last of all,
the critic lays stress upon the fact that the Archbishop, in April,
1366, was taking steps to aUocate the income of the parish church
of Mayfield to the support of the AVarden of the HaU, which,
however, was prevented by his death. But all this appears decidedly
" The substance of the article is given quibus personam tuam in artibus magis-
in the appendix to Pratt and Stoughton's tratam (sic, no doubt for magistratum)
edition of Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Altissimus insignivit, mentis nostrcs
vol. II., p. 943, and in -Vaughan's Mono- oculos dirigentes', ac de tuis fidelitate,
graph, Appendix, p. 547. In the latter, circumspectione et industria plurimum
however, 1844 is printed by mistake for confidentes, in custodcm Aulce nostrcs
1841. Cantuar, — te praeficimus,' etc. — Wood's
= 'Advitaetuaeetconversationislauda- History and Antiquities, Oxon., I. p.
bills honestatem, literarumaue scientiam, 184 ; Lewis, Life of Wiclif, p. 290.

:i365-i367-] , WARDEN OF CANTERBURY HALL. I03
to imply that it was the parish priest of Mayfield who was promoted
to the AA'ardenship ofthe Hall: he was, however, in 1380 transferred
to the neighbouring parish of Horsted Keynes, and received a pre
bend in the cathedral church of Chichester. He died in 1383 — only
¦one year before our AA'ycliffe.
This learned and acute investigation attracted much attention.
On the one hand, it commended itself to many, and there were not
wanting men of learning who went even farther, undertaking to
prove that three, or even four men of the name of John AVycUffe, all
belonging to the clerical order, were living at the same time. These
assertions we leave out of account, as resting upon a misunder
standing. But still we ought not to accept, untested, the view that
it was John AA'yclyve, parish priest of Mayfield, and afterwards of
.Horsted Keynes, and not the celebrated AA'^ycliffe, who was promoted
by Islip to the AVardenship of the new Hall in Oxford, deposed by
the Archbishop's successor, and thereby led to carry on a process
before the Roman Curia. This view has been accepted and sup-
jiorted with additional arguments by other investigators besides Mr.
Courthope, especially by the late Professor of Ecclesiastical History
in Oxford, AA'alter AVaddington Shirley.' The latter also is of
opinion that that John Wyclif who is mentioned as member and
seneschal of Merton College in 1356, must likewise have been the
AVyclyve of Mayfield, and not our Wycliffe. To this last point,
which we beUeve we have already disposed of, we shall have
•occasion once more to return. But the question whether John
AVyclyve, the head of Canterbury Hall, was, or was not, one and
the same person with our Wycliffe remains, as we believe, to this
day undecided. Shirley and others answer it in the negative, while
Vaughan and the learned editors of the WycUffe Bible, the Rev. Josiah
JForshall and Sir Frederic Madden, affirm it most decidedly.^
Let us first examine the grounds which are alleged against the
¦identity of our Wycliffe, and in support of that of the
less celebrated Wyclyve of Mayfield, with the Warden Mayfield not
of Canterbury Hall.
I. The argument founded upon the form of the name is converted,
upon closer examination, into an argument in favour of the identi
fication of our Wycliffe with the Warden of Canterbury Hall. By
¦careful investigation among documents of the period, the late Pre
bendary Wilkinson estabUshed the fact that the name of the parish
priest of Mayfield is always written Whitcliff, or Whytclyfe, etc., i.e.,
1 In a long Excursus to his edition of ^ It may now however be regarded as
Ithe Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 513-528. settled in the affirmative.

I06 QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — I345-I366. [ch. in. § 3
is uniformly written with t in the first syllable, while the name of our
AVycUffe and of the Warden of that Hall never appears with t in the
first syllable.' ' 2. The argument founded upon the circumstance
that the Archbishop's deed of appointment is dated at Mayfield is a
precarious one, for this fact, taken by itself, by no means necessarily
leads to the inference which has been drawn from it. 3. This
second ground is combined with a third, viz., that the terms of the
deed imply a personal acquaintance of the Archbishop with his
nominee. This is undoubtedly the case. But it does not follow-
that the Archbishop's nominee was the parish priest of Mayfield,
with whom, of course, from his residence there for several years, he
was perfectiy well acquainted. ¦ It is quite possible that the Arch
bishop was also personaUy acquainted with our WycUffe ; for if it is
true that the AVycUffe known to fame was for several years after his
student course a member of Merton College, it is extremely probable
that he and the said Archbishop, who was also of the same college,
were from that time on a footing of mutual acquaintance and regard.
— The other points alleged in support of this view we leave aside, as
of less importance ; but the observations already made justify us, we
believe, in maintaining that the grounds which have been alleged
against the identity of our Wycliffe with the head of Canterbury
Hall prove absolutely nothing.
On the other hand, if we are not quite mistaken, the positive
testimonies in favour of the identity are entirely decisive. 1. The
oldest testimony in support Of it is that of a younger contemporary
of Wycliffe. The learned Franciscan and Doctor of Theology,
Testimony of William Woodford, — who wrote against Wycliffe while
-Woodford, hg ^^s Still Uving, and of whom Wycliffe, so far as I cart
find, speaks with genuine respect,'^ — mentions, in a controversial
treatise dated 1381, entitled Seventy-Two Questions concerning the
Sacrament of the Altar, as a well-known fact that Wycliffe was driven
from his position at Canterbury Hall by prelates and endowed monks.
Still further, AVoodford connected Wycliffe's subsequent antagonism
to the endowed orders with that incident of his life. 3 This testi-
' [This statement is too sweeping. See ejus exercitaiione modesta multas mihi'
Wiclif's Place in History, by Prof. notabiles veritates. '
Burrows, p. 51. We must fall back on 3 Of this writing, which has never been>
the extreme uncertainty of mediseval printed — Septuaginia duo Qumsiiones de
spelling.] Sacramento Altaris — there is preserved a
' Wychffe calls him Doctor meus Reve- MS. in the Bodleian, No. 703. Harl. 31,
rendus Mr. Willelmus Wodford in his fol. 31. Under Quaestio 30 the author
workZ>e CiviliDominio, III. c. 18, "Vienna speaks ofthe polemic of Wycliffe against
MSS., 1340, fol. 141, col. 2. He says of the monks in the following style : — ' Etr
him — * Arguit contra hoc compendiosc et licsc contra religiosos insania generata est
subt inter .more suo. Et revera obligacior ex corruptione. Nam priusquam per reli
ct amplius huic doctori meo, quoin diversis giosos possessionatos et prcslatos expulsus
gradibus et actibus scolasticis didici ex fuerat de aula monacliorum Cantuarics,

1365-1367.] WARDEN OF tANTERBURY HALL. 107
mony, coming as it does from a contemporai-}', seems scarcely to
leave room for any remaining doubt. It has been attempted, not
withstanding, to diminish the weight of AVoodford's testimony by
arguing that he could not have had any personal recoUection of that
incident, for as his latest work was written so late as the year 1433,
he must have been still a boy at the time of the event in question ;
besides which, these Seventy-Two Questions were written, itis alleged,
in great haste, and at a time of strong excitement and zealous
controversy, when every story to the discredit of Wycliffe might be
expected to find wiUing ears. Last of aU, Woodford never repeated
this aUegation in his later writings; and his scholar, Thomas of
AValden, never once touches upon it in his great polemical work — ¦
from which it may be concluded that the latter had no belief in its
truth.' To all which we reply that though Woodford was a younger
man than AA'ycliffe, he must have lived in Oxford with him for some
considerable time, as is manifest from the language of Wycliffe quoted
in note i on the preceding page. Woodford, therefore, might very
well have had an exact and certain knowledge of the whole affair ;
and his manner of referring to the subject corresponds well with this.
supposition, for it is no more than an incidental allusion, as to a
well-known fact, introduced chiefly because of Wycliffe's polemics
against the endowed orders. Nor can the circumstances that Wood
ford does not recur to the subject in his later writings, and that
Thomas of AValden, who wrote after him, never once mentions it, be
of any avail as proof against the truth of a fact vouched for by such
testimony. It is well known how precarious arguments a silentio are
wont in general to be. AA^e are, therefore, still prepared to assign to
the testimony of Woodford a decisive weight in support of the fact
that our Wycliffe was nominated to the headship of Canterbury
Hall, but before two years had passed away was driven from his
position. 2. It is remarkable that in AVycliffe's own writings a passage is
found where he treats fully of the whole affair ; = but he handles the
matter so much upon its own merits, and so little as a personal
affair, that at first sight it might admit of a doubt whether he had
nihil contra possessionatos attemptavit ' Shirley, as above.
quod esset alicujus ponderis. Et prius- ' Shirley was the first to call attention
quam per religiososmendicantesreprobatus to this passage, and he has given it,
fuit publice de lieresibus in Sacramento though not at full length, in the 'Note on
altaris, nihil contra eos attemptavit, sed the two John Wichfs,' at the end ofthe
posterius multipliciter eos diffamavit ; ita Fasciculi, p. 526. I had found the pas-
quod doctrina; sues malm et inf'.sta contra sage before I observed that he had already
religiosos et possessionatos et mcndicanles given an extract from it. But I found it
generates fuerunt ex putrefactionibus ct necessary to reproduce the context with
melancoliis.' — Shirley, p. 517. somewhat greater fulness.

lo8 QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — 1345-I366. [ch. m. §2
himself really taken any part in the business. In fact, his manner of
speaking has even been thought by some to prove that
Testimony ,' , . ° .. , . . -.tt.,, ,, ,
of Wyoiifi-e he himself was not the person in question. With all the
more exactness must we look into the language which
he employs, having regard to the whole connection of the passage.
In the section of his book, De Ecclesia, containing the passage, he is
treating of the property of the Church, and the question in ch. 16 is
whether the provision of landed property for the Church is really a
necessity and a benefit to her, and not rather a mischief. In par
ticular, the author discusses the question, assuming the ' Donation of
Constantine ' to be a historical fact, whether Silvester did right in
accepting that Donation. This question Wycliffe answers in the
negative. But he also examines all the arguments adduced by the
opposite side against this negative. Among others, he reviews the
fifth objection brought against his opinion, viz., that if Bishop
Silvester in Rome committed a sin in accepting the permanent
endowment of the Church with lands, then in like manner the
colleges in Oxford had sinned in accepting gifts of temporal estates
for the support of poor clerics, and it must consequently be the
duty of the members of those colleges spontaneously to forego the
continued possession of such gifts ; yea, that they ought in strict
propriety to solicit their promoters and patrons to recall these
dangerous endowments. But by such a course essential injury would
be done to the religious liberality of the people, and not onlyto the
income of the clergy derived from such foundations, but also to the
provision made for the poor. It will be seen that the indirect mode
of proof used by Wycliffe's opponents takes the form of reasoning
per deducens ad familiare inconveniens, i.e., they are fain to deduce
from his contention a consequence which touches very nearly the
interest both of himself and the corporation to which he belongs
{familiare), the intolerableness of which or its practical hurtfulness
{inconveniens) must be obvious.
In his reply Wycliffe denies the pretended logical exigency of this
reasoning, as if it followed from his premises that all endowments for
the benefit of the University were sinful. He urges that it is possible
for a sin of inadvertence to creep in, not only in a thing which is good
in itself, but also in a transaction which is morally good in respect to
the personal motive from which it springs. And this he proceeds to
make plain infainiliariori exemplo, by an example touching himself still
more closely.' This example is none other than the incident of the
' The words in familiarlori exemplo The comparative here points back to the
cannot be understood in any other sense. pr&cQd\ngpo.sitive, familiare inconveniens.

1365-1367.1 WARDEN OF CANTERBURY HALL. 109
foundation of a college in Oxford, by Archbishop Islip. He does not-
mention Canterbury HaU by name, but that this col-
1 1 1- ,.,,,., Archbishop
lege and no other is meant cannot admit of the slightest isup's mten-
doubt. AVycUffe mentions two chief particulars in '
relation to this Hall : first, its original foundation by Simon
Islip, and its endowment with landed property; and next, the
upsetting of that foundation by Archbishop Simon Langham, whom
he caUs Anti-Simon, because, with the same baptismal name as
Islip, his way of proceeding was antagonistic to the Archbishop's.
To the founder he ascribes a purer motive in his provision for-
the college even than had found place in the endowment of any
English monastery ; yet Wycliffe was of opinion that Islip had acted
in the matter not without sin, for the incorporation of a parish
church, or the alienation of an estate in mortmain, can never take
place without sin, both in the giver and the receiver.' But as to.
Islip's successor in the primacy, Wycliffe maintains most distinctly
that he sinned much raore than Islip himself in upsetting the arrange
ments in reference to the college. Now, the circumstance that
AVycUffe in this passage does not expressly and unmistakably speak
of himself as one concerned in the college and the change which it
underwent, is insufficient to shake our conviction that he had this
personal concern in it notwithstanding. His mode of speaking of"
himself in the third person we are familiar with in other instances ;,
and that the incident had a special relation to his own person, he
gives us clearly to understand in his use of the words familiarius
exemplum. At the time when he wrote thus fully, ten years had passed away
since his removal from Canterbury Hall, for this book De Ecclesia
was finished, as we undertake to show with precision, in the year
1378. The affair had long ceased to give pain ; and although at the-
time he had felt it keenly, the author was now able to speak of it
with perfect coolness, and simply as a matter of fact. Like his,
opponent AVoodford, however, Wycliffe speaks of the incident in a
Opponents had pointed to the endow- which the Archbishop had incorporated
ments of the University and its colleges with the foundation of his hall, as appears.
as matters nearly affecting Wychffe's from several documents which have come
interest ; but Wycliffe replies by pointing down to us. ( Vide Lewis, pp. 285, 293.)
to something which touched his personal Shirley is right in referring the alleged
interest more nearly and more directly sin of Archbishop Islip to this act of in-,
still ¦ and it is this comparative fami- corporation, whereas Dr. Vaughan, in an
liar'iori exemplo — not Shirley's reading of article in The British Quarterly Review,
the yiS. familiari—vhich is of decisive October, 1858, erroneouslyrefers Wycliffe's
importance for our inquiry. censure to the circumstance that the
I Wycliffe here no doubt alludes, in Primate had, in the first instance, intro-
addition to the estate of Woodford, to duced into his foundation both monks,
the church of ' Pageham ' (Pagham in and seculars.
Sussex, on the coast of the Channel),

no QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — I345-I366. [ch. m. § 2
manner which implies that it was one well known to all; for, with the
exception of the founder himself, he does not mention a single name
-^neither that of the college nor that of Langham, nor even a single
name of any of the raembers of the college, earlier or later ; and he
dwells only upon such points as were of substantive importance. On
the one hand, he notes that the design of the endowment of the foun
dation was a truly pious one ; that the statutes and arrangements of
the house were worthy of praise, and fitted to benefit the Church;
and that by the Archbishop's appointment only secular clerics
— ie., learned men not belonging to any of the monastic orders —
were to devote themselves therein to science. On the other hand,
Wycliffe mentions how after Islip's death his instructions were frus
trated, the raerabers who were in the enjoyraent of the foundation
dispossessed, and several introduced who were by no raeans in need
of such a provision, but, on the contrary, in very comfortable circum
stances. But he does not expressly say that the latter were monks,
and members of the Benedictine foundation of Canterbury, although
this can be gathered from the context ; while it is plainly avowed
that all the changes in the membership of the college had been
¦carried through by means of false representations {commenta mendacii,
fucus), and not without simony besides {symoniace).
This occurrence, Wycliffe thinks, ought to be a warning to the
Bishop of Winchester, to watch carefully lest a similar fate should
¦Wycliffe and befall his own foundation. William of Wykeham, one of
¦Wykeham. ^].jg leading prelates and statesmen of England in the
fourteenth century (died 1404), had occupied himself since 1373 with
the foundation of a great college in Oxford ; he had already formed
a society in that year, for whose maintenance he provided; in 1379
he concluded his purchases of ground as a site for the house ; and
¦on April 13, 1386, several years after Wycliffe's death, there took
place the solemn consecration of ' St. Mary's College of Winchester
in Oxford,' which soon afterwards received the name of ' New Col
lege,' under which it flourishes at the present day. The way in
¦which Wycliffe speaks of Wykehara's foundation shows clearly that
the fact was not yet an accomplished one, but was stUl only in the
stage of preparation. Otherwise, the advice which he modestly gives
the Bishop {consulendum videtur domino Wyntoniensi, etc.) would have
'come too late.'
Let us now proceed to examine the second question. Was the
appointment of Wycliffe as Warden of Canterbury Hall, and of the
' Robert Lowth, Life of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, 1758, pp,
•93, 176.

TI36I-I372.] CONSTITUTION OF CANTERBURY HALL. Ill
three secular priests, William Selby, AViUiam Middleworth, and Richard
Benger as members of the same, contrary or not to the
-, ^, - J .- -^ , Questions be-
provisions of the foundation ? ' tween monks
-1,7 i-rr 5 , ... . ,. and seculars.
W ycline s opponents answered this question, ofcourse,
in the affirmative. They asserted that the statutes of the college had
prescribed, as a fixed principle, that a Benedictine of the chapter of
Canterbury should be warden, and that three other monks from the
same chapter should be members ; implying that AA^ycliffe and those
associated with him had put forward unwarrantable claims in demand
ing that the government of the college should lie in the hands of
secular priests, and that AA^ycliffe should be made head. It was
actually AVycUffe and his friends, they alleged, who had excluded
from the College Henry AA'oodhall, the existing warden, and those
members, who, like him, were Benedictines of Canterbury.'^
According to AA^ycliffe's showing, the exact opposite of all this was
the truth, viz., that Archbishop IsUp had ordained that secular priests
alone should study in the college ; and it was only after the death of
the founder that members of the archiepiscopal chapter, contrary to
his wUl, had placed themselves in possession. These two statements
are so directly contradictory as to nullify each other. We must look
for information from other sources in order to arrive at a satisfactory
conclusion on the subject. And fortunately such information is
available in the eight documents relating to these events, which
Lewis obtained from the archiepiscopal archives, and published in
the Appendix to his Life of Wiclif. Two royal edicts in particular
are here of importance. In the first, dated October 20, 1361, Edward
III. grants his consent to the proposal of Archbishop Siraon Islip to
found a Canterbury Hall in Oxford, and to attach to and incorporate
-with this haU, as soon as it should be erected, the church, i.e., the
church revenues of Paghara in Sussex. The second royal ordinance,
dated AprU 8, 1372, contains the confirmation ofthe Papal judgment
of 1370, by which Wycliffe and his associates were finally excluded
from Canterbury Hall. In both these decrees mention is made of
two classes of members of the college, who, according to the inten
tion of the founder, were to live there together — monks and non-
' [The identity of our Wycliffe with the stood in a certain connection. — Vide Bud-
Warden of Canterbury Hall is indirectly densieg, Zeitschrift (comp. p. loi, note 2),
confirmed by the circumstance that Ben- p. 336.— Zcri'm^n]
ger, Middleworth, and Selby, who were = We learn that this was the represen-
members of the hall under John Wycliffe, tation of the case made in the complaint
1365-66, had previously been members of addressed by Wycliffe's opponents to the
Merton ' College, like Wycliffe himself. Papal See, from the mandate of Urban
and were afterwards, with the exception V. of May ir, 1370, by which the process
of Benger, members of Queen's College, was decided.— Vide Lewis, p. 292 f, for
¦with which Wycliffe also, as is well known, the documents.

112 QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — I345-I366. [ch. m. § z
monks ; ' and in the second decree, consistently with this, a charge of
departure from the terms of the original royal confirmatioh is laid
equally against the founder himself, for having subsequently set aside^
the monkish members in favour of the seculars, and against the Papall
decision, in virtue of which, in all time coming, monks alone from
the Benedictine Convent of Canterbury should be members.^ But
notwithstanding this charge, Edward III. in the latter edict grants-
remission for these violations of the fundamental statute of Islip, but
not without requiring the Prior and Convent of Canterbury to pay
into the King's treasury 200 marks,3 a naive condition, which con
firms in the fullest manner AVycliffe's allegation, that simony had had
a part in the game. Thus, it appears that the royal confirmation of the
foundation originally proceeded on the assumption that two classes of
members should be united in the college, monks and non-monks.
This confirmation, however, was set forth before Canterbury Hall
was actually founded, when the Archbishop had first determined
statutes of upon its plan, and was desirous of paving the~way for
the coUege. carrying it out by obtaining the necessary consent on the
part of the State. The document, therefore, allows conclusions to be
drawn from it only in regard to the original intentions of the founder,,
but does not prove that when Islip, a year later (1362), actually com
pleted the foundation and carried it into effect, this twofold description
of membership was established by statute. In this connection it is 'va>
the highest degree noteworthy that the Archbishop himself, in his deed!
of April 13, 1363, wherein he endows the hall with his estate at Wood^rf
ford, although referring to the number of the members as twelve, does
not, by a single word, give it to be understood that some of them
must be monks.'* Yet that this was indeed his intention would appear
from the deed of nomination, March 13, 1362; the Prior and Chapter
of Christ Church in Canterbury propose to Archbishop Islip for the
headship of the new-founded Canterbury Hall in Oxford three of
their brethren of the Benedictine Abbey (Henry Woodhall, Doctor of
Theology, Dr. John Redingate, and William Richmond), from whom.
he may himself appoint the warden. In this document, in fact, they
refer to an order made by the Archbishop himself, in virtue of which
this noraination should be made by them.s There is no room,.
^ 'Aula {Cantuariensis) in qua certus -oentus nobis solverunt in hanaperio nostros,
erit numerus scolarium ta-m religiosorum perdonavimusomnestransgressionesfactas,'-'
quam secularium,' etc. — No. i, in Lewis, etc. — Lewis, p. 229. .
p. 285 ; No. 8, pp. 297, 301. ^ 'Quam{aulam)produodenariostuden-'
^ ' Prcster licetttiam nostrajn supradic- tium numero duxiinus ordinandam.' —
tam. Contra formam licentics nostrcs Lewis, p. 287, No. 2.
suprtidictce.' — Lewis, pp. 298, 299. S 'juxta formam eteffectumordinationis:
3 ' De gratia nostra speciali, et pro vestrcs fades in hac parte. ' — Lewis, p. 291.,
dvcentis marcis, quas dicti Prior et con- No. 5.

1365-1367-] CANTERBURY HALL. II3
therefore, to doubt that the Archbishop, in the first instance, desired
that at least the head of his college should be taken from the Bene
dictine order, and more specifically from the Chapter of Christ Church
in Canterbury, and that he secured this by his statutes. But it does
not appear that any provision was made by the deeds of foundation
that, in addition to the dignity of the headship, three places of the
membership must also be filled with monks ; ' still, as a matter of
fact, there were found in the hall, during the first stage of its exist
ence, in addition to Henry Woodhall, who was its first warden, three
other monks from the Benedictine monastery of Canterbury.
How it came to pass that a change in this respect was introduced
does not clearly appear. The monk party represent the course of
events in this manner : that Wycliffe and his associates .„ „
¦' . Allegations of
(Selby, Middleworth, and Benger), in an overbearing the monkish
spirit, and without warrant, put forth the claim that the
government of the college ought to be in the hands of secular
priests, and in particular that John Wycliffe ought to be warden ;
and they had accordingly expelled the said warden, Henry AVoodhall,
and the other Benedictines, from the college, and taken possession
of the property of the foundation.^ But that this representation is in
contradiction to the actual course of affairs is evident, beyond doubt,
from the royal edict of April 8, 1372, before mentioned, ^ ^
in which it is plainly stated, that it was the Archbishop
himself who displaced the existing warden and those members who
were monks, allowing only those scholars who were not monks to
remain, and appointing a man of this class to the wardenship.s
The testimony of this royal warrant ' is all the more trustworthy
from its apparent impartiality, for with these words is immediately
connected the inculpatory remark, that this measure of the Arch
bishop was in contradiction to the original authorisation which had
been conferred on the part of the State. How the Archbishop had
influenced this alteration is not intimated. But the words of the
document give the impression that Islip had not merely intervened
in a passing act, but had intended an essential alteration of the
statute. It is at this point that the remark of AVycUffe {De Ecclesia,
' Thelatterwasraaintainedby Wycliffe's Monachos de ipso collegia excluserunt.'^
opponents in their representation to the Lewis, ib.
Curia; but that the matter was not placed 3 ' A'motis omnino per pimdictum archir
beyond doubt is plain from the language episcopum — Custode et cateris monachis
of the deed, which intentionally left it scolaribus — ab aulapnsdicta, idem archi-,
indeterminate. Compare Lewis, No. 7, episcopus quendam scholarem [secularem f)
p 2Q2. custodem dictcs aulcs, ac ccsteros omnes
'= • False asserentes, dictum collegium per scolares in eadem seculares {so to be read
clericossecularesregi debere, dictum Johan- instead of scolares) duntaxat constituerit,'.
nem fore custodem collegii supradicti, etc.— Lewis, No. 8, p. 298.

114 QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — 1345-I366. [ch. m. § z
Ch. 16) comes in, that IsUp had appointed that secular clerics alone
should study in the college, which also took effect. Taken by them
selves, his words might, indeed, lead one to think that WycUffe is
speaking of the original statute. But this is not his meaning. The
reference is rather to the last ordinance of the Archbishop, making
an alteration from the first statute ; and the term ordinance can un
doubtedly have this meaning. If we so take the words, the contra-.
diction which at first sight ^seems to exist between AVycliffe's
representation of the proceeding and that contained in the royal
edict entirely disappears. But the statement of the opposite party
laid before the Papal Curia, as gathered from the mandate of
Urban A?"., is irreconcilable with both these representations, and
must be characterised as a manifest perversion of the facts and a
malicious calumny. The result of our investigation, therefore, is the
following: — That the appointment of WycUffe to the headship of
Canterbury Hall was contrary to the original foundation-statutes as
approved by the State, but that it proceeded upon an alteration of
the first statutes subsequently made by the founder himself
On December 9, 1365, Wycliffe was nominated AVarden of Canter
bury Hall by Archbishop Islip : not quite five months frora that date
WycUffe the worthy Archbishop died (April 26, 1366). His
dispossessed. gQccessor, Simon Langham, was enthroned March 25,
1367, and on the sixth day thereafter he nominated John Redingate
to be Warden of the Hall. WycUffe, of course, must have been
previously deposed. The new warden was a Benedictine of Canter
bury, and one of the original members of the hall. Three weeks
later, however, April 22, 1367, the Archbishop recalled this nomina
tion, and re-appointed Henry Woodhall, the former head of the hall,
to the wardenship. To the authority of the latter Wycliffe would
now, with the other members, be subject.' But even so much as
this reduced position in the coUege was not allowed to him. On
the contrary, the reorganisation of Canterbury Hall intended by the
monkish-rainded Archbishop led to the exclusion of all the secular
members. Wycliffe and his fellows appealed from the Archbishop to
the Pope ; but as Langham, in the next year after his being appointed
Archbishop, was made Cardinal, and went to Avignon, the issue of
the appeal was a judgment by which Wycliffe and his fellows were
definitively expelled ; and the college was thenceforward exclusively
filled with monks from Christ Church at Canterbury. =^
' Lewis, No. 6, p. 292. An extract ° 'Decrevitetdeclaravit, solos Monachos
from a document of the archiepiscopal pradicta ecclesits Cant. , secularibus ex-
archives. clusis, debere in dicto collegio perpetuo
remanere.' — Lewis, No. 7, p. 295.

=367.] CANTERBURY HALL. II5
This was at all events still more opposed to the original meaning
and intention of the foundation than the exclusive occupation of the
hall by seculars. For from the first the secular element had far
outweighed the other, even if we assume, what is by no means
proved, that the original statutes ordained that four members of the
twelve should be monks ; stUl more, if the only point fixed by the
statutes was that the head of the house should be a Benedictine of
Canterbury, the introduction of three other Canterbury monks not
being prescribed in the statutes, but proceeding from the free deter
mination of the founder. AVycUffe himself, as we have seen, uses
very strong language respecting the contrast between the new Arch
bishop's measures and the decree (more accurately the last decree) of
his predecessor {ei'ersum est tam pii patroni propositum. Anti-Simon,
etc.). And the royal edict itself appears to look upon Langham's re-
constitution of the college as a much more serious contradiction to
the original foundation approved by the State than the
alteration which was made by Islip himself; for of this on the pro-
latter it is only said that it was done prceter licentiam "^^ ^'
nostram supradictam — ' beyond or in excess of our foresaid licence' —
whereas the exclusion of all secular members is declared to be contra
formam licentice nostrcB sufradictcz — ' in the teeth of our licence,' and
not merely beyond or in excess of it. This difference of language is
plainly intentional; and it wUl certainly be allowed that the latter
expression is the stronger and more decisive of the two. Here the
¦original statute is the only standard of judgment, for in this edict,
issued by the Government, it is only the legality of the different acts
in question which is dealt with.
But AVycUffe does not apply to the question this low formal
standard only, but forms his judgment of the last organic change
which had been made upon its substantive merits in point of con
gruity with the ends contemplated by the foundation. And here his
judgment is one of entire disapproval, because the newly-appointed
members, being already richly provided for, -were by no means in
need of the bounty of such a foundation. He is here thinking
-Of the extensive landed possessions belonging to the Benedictine
monastery of Canterbury, which was organically connected with the
archiepiscopal cathedral, while the colleges in Oxford, as in Paris
and other universities, were originaUy and principally intended for
the support of the poorer class of students, and of masters without
independent means. Wycliffe is here speaking, however, as before
remarked, in a purely objective manner, and by no means in such a
tone as would warrant us to assume that the painful experiences

Il6 QUIET WORK IN OXFORD — I345-I366. [ch. m. § ^
which he had had to endure in his relations to the oft-mentioned
college, had a determining influence upon his ecclesiastical views and
work. It is only, however, a thorough exhibition of his public
conduct that can throw light upon the question whether there is any
truth in the reproach against Wycliffe, that the position of antagonism
taken up by him against the Church, especially against prelates and
monastic orders, arose from a sense of injury to his own private
interests, and was thus inspired by low motives and personal
revenge. Canterbury Hall no longer exists in Oxford as an independent
foundation, for after the Reformation the buildings of the hall were
incorporated with the stately College of Christ Church, founded by
Cardinal AVolsey.
We now return to the year 1366 — the limit of the period assigned
to the present chapter, which time we have been led to exceed by
four or six years, in order to finish- the topic now dis-
Bootor of cussed. This year was possibly the date at which
Wycliffe reached the highest degree of academic
dignity, that of Doctor in the Theological Faculty. Since the six
teenth century it has been assumed, on the authority of a statement
of Bishop Bale, that Wycliffe became Doctor of Theology in 1372.'
In assigning this date. Bale, it raay be conjectured, proceeded upon
the fact that in the royal ordinance of July 26, 1374, which nominated
commissioners for negotiations with the Papal Court, Wycliffe is
introduced as sacrce theologice Professor, and therefore must have
been already doctor.^ And here let me remark, bythe way, that the
tide of professor of theology given to Wycliffe has generally been
misunderstood, as though it meant that he had been appointed to
a professorial chair. But this rests upon an anachronism. The
mediseval universities, down at least to the fifteenth century, knew
nothing of professors, in the sense of modern universities. The tide
sacrce pagincB, or theologies Professor, denotes, in the fourteenth
century, not an university office, to be thought of in connection with
particular duties and rights, and especially with a fixed stipend, but
only an academic degree; for it is synonymous with Doctor of
Theology. Such an one had the full right to deliver theological
lectures, but was under no special obligation to do so, nor, apart
from some trifling dues as a member of the Theological Faculty, had
he any salary proper, except in cases where, along with the degree,
some church living might be conferred upon him.3
' So Vaughan in his latest work on 3 Comp. Thurot, De l Organisation de
Wycliffe, the Monograph, p. 138. I'enseignement dans t University de Paris
" Lewis, in Appendix No. 11, p. 304. au Moyen age, p. 158.

1365-1374-] DOCTOR OF DIVINITY. II7
So mucb as this we know from the royal document just mentioned
— that AA'ycliffe was a Doctor of Theology in the year 1374. But it is
only the latest possible date which is thus fixed; and Bale con
jectured with good reason, that AVycUffe must have become a doctor
some considerable time before, and suggested the year -1372.
Shirley, on the other hand, believes that he is able to make out, with
some probability, that AA'ycliffe was promoted to this degree as early
as 1363, a view which he supports by several controversial pieces of
the Carmelite John Cunningham, directed against AVycUffe, which he
has himself pubUshed. And it is, indeed, worthy of note that that
monkish theologian, in his first essay, as well as in the introduction to
it, speaks of AVycUffe exclusively under the title of magister, whereas
in the second and third he uses the titles magister and doctor iiiter-
c'nangeably.' Now the first of these essays, where the latter title
never once occurs, has reference to a tract of Wycliffe, in which he
mentions that it is not his intention to go, for tlie present, into the
question of the right of property {de dominio) ; " while a fragment
upon this question, which Lewis gives in his appendix to the Life of
Wiclifi was probably written in 1366, and the larger work of
AA'ycliffe, De Dominio Divino, from which that fragment was probably
taken, was written at latest in 1368. Hence Shirley believes that he
may indicate the year 1363, as that in which AVycUffe received his
degree. AVe are unable, however, to concur in this conjecture, because we
have positive testimony to show that in the end of the year 1365,
Wycliffe was only Master of Arts, and not yet Doctor of Theology.
For Archbishop Islip describes him in the document of December g,
1365, in which he nominates him to the headship of Canterbury Hall,
as magister in artibus,'' whereas the whole connection shows that he
would certainly have laid stress upon the higher academic degree, if
Wycliffe had already possessed it.
The fact then stands thus, that Wycliffe was a Doctor of Theology
in 1374, but not in 1365. He must thus have taken that degree some
time during the intervening period ; but in the absence of documen
tary authority it is impossible to fix the precise date.
' Shirley, Fasciculi, etc., pp. 4, 14, 43, '' Lewis, No. 3, p. 290. Personam
particularly pp. 73 and 88. Comp. Intro- tuam in artibus magistratam • — so it
duction, p. xvi. should be read with Anthony Wood, not
a /^. p. 456. magistratum, as Lewis has it. [The above
3 Lewis, No. 30, p. 349. argument of course assumes Wychffe's
headship of Canterbury Hall.]

CHAPTER IV.
WYCLIFFE'S FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE IN
THE ECCLESIASTICO-POLITICAL AFFAIRS OF
ENGLAND.
I. — ¦Wycliffe as a Patriot.
AFTER having followed with attention the course of AVycliffe's
purely academic career up to the present point, we can only
be astonished to behold him all at once upon the stage of public life.
Hitherto we have known him only as a man of science — as a quiet
scholar. From his youth to the flower of his manhood, he had only
seldom left, so far as we can see, the precincts of the university city
of Oxford. He seeras even to have visited but rarely his parish of
FUlingham, to which he had been presented in 1361, and on each
occasion only for a short time. We know, in fact, that he obtained
a dispensation from his bishop to enable hira to remain at the
University, and devote himself without interruption to science.
It is true that as FeUow and Seneschal of Merton College,' as
Master of BaUiol, and as Warden of Canterbury Hall, he had had
The student practical problems of many kinds to solve, and had been
the m^ of much occupied with business of an economic, legal, and
action. administrative description. The judgment of his patron
in high place. Archbishop Islip, when he entrusted him with the
government of Canterbury HaU, is assurance to us that WycUffe had
already, both in Merton and Balliol, proved himself to be a man of
practical talent, and upright, circumspect, and energetic in matters of
business. StiU, all this activity had been exerted within a narrow
circle, and one more or less closely connected with properly scientific
life. But now we see the scholar step out frora the quiet scenes
of the University to take part in public affairs. For it was not
merely that Wycliffe began to manifest his interest in the affairs of
the kingdom in a Christian and literary way, which he might have
[' It will be remembered that this is hardly substantiated. See note, p. 100.]

1366.] WYCLIFFE THE PATRIOT. Iig
done without quitting his chamber in the cloistered buildings of his
college; but he came personaUy forward to take an active part in
the public business of Church and State. This change of position
comes upon us with surprise; but yet we are not to imagine that
AVycliffe had altered, but only that he now began to reveal another
aspect of his character. For AA^'cliffe was a many-sided raan; one of
high mark, who not only entered deeply into all that influenced, on
many different sides, his own people and times, but who, in some
things, was far in advance of his age — a prophet and type of what was
still in the future. And it is only when we study separately the many
different qualities which were combined in him, and then again survey
them in their innermost unity, that we shall be able to draw a true
and faithful picture of his powerful personality.
At this moment it is AA'ycliffe the patriot whom we have to de
pict. He represents in his own person that intensification of EngUsh
national feeling which was so conspicuous in the four-
teenth century, when, as we have seen above, Crown national
and people, Norman population and Saxon, formed a ** ^'
compact unit}-, and energetically defended the autonomy, the rights
and the interests of the kingdom against external influences, and
especially in opposition to the Court of Rome. This spirit lived in
AA'ycliffe with extraordinary force. His great works, still unprinted,
e.g., the three books De Civili Dominio, his work De Ecclesia, and
others, leave upon the reader the strongest impression of a warm
patriotism — of a heart glowing with zeal for the dignity of the Crown,
for the honour and weal of his native land, for the rights and the
constitutional liberty of the people. How often in reading his works
do we come upon passages in which he recalls the memories of
English history ! The different invasions of the country by 'Britons,
Saxons, and Normans,' all stand before his mind's eye (the Danes
alone seem already forgotten). Augustine, the ' Apostle of the
EngUsh,' as he caUs him in one place, he mentions repeatedly in his
treatises and sermons; he frequently touches upon the later Arch
bishops of Canterbury, especiaUy Thomas Becket; of kings too, as
Edward the Confessor and John, he speaks ever and anon; he refers
to Magna Charta with distinguished consideration as the fundamental
law of the kingdom, binding equally king and nobles.' That Wycliffe
had made the law of England a subject of special study, in addition
' De Civili Dominio, II., c. 5; MS. In of the passage do not exactly correspond
Maana Carta, cui rex et magnates Anglics to those of the document now regarded as
ex "juramento obliganiur, cap. 15, sic the original authority. Wycliffe has a
habetur : Nulla ecclesiastica persona — second reference to Magna Charta in the
censum. This wording and numbering same chapter.

120 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. Uh. iv. § i
to canon and Roman law, has been known since the days of Lewis ;
and we have come upon several confirmations of this fact. In
the same context with the reference to Magna Charta, AA''ycliffe speaks
of the Statutes of AVestminster and Statutes of Gloucester ; in another
place he contrasts, in connection with a particular question, the
Roman law {lex Quirina), and the English law {lex Anglicana),
giving preference to the latter.' But, so far from taking merely an
academical interest in these subjects, and showing only a historical
knowledge of them, he manifests a deep concern for the present con
dition of the nation, and a primary care for its welfare, its liberties,
and its honour. Let it not be thought, however, that his intellectual
horizon was bounded by the national interests of his own island-
people. On the contrary, he had at heart the welfare of all Christ
endom, and indeed of the vifhole human race ; but the strength of his
cosmopolitanisra was to be found in his deep and earnest patriotism.
It is not wonderful that such a man — a churchman and distin
guished scholar on the one hand, and a thorough patriot on the
other — rich in knowledge, full of insight, and inspired with zeal for
the public good — should have been drawn into the career of the
statesman and the diplomatist. Yet he never lost himself in purely
political affairs ; it was only where questions and measures combined
the ecclesiastical and the political that he gave his co-operation;
and, in the end, his undivided strength was concentrated upon the
ecclesiastical domain.
But. before we foUow hira into public life, it is necessary to get rid
of an impression which has hitherto almost universally prevailed. As
AUeged early as the sixteenth century the literary historians,
then?e?(UoMit J^'^"^ Leland and John Bale, put forward the view —
orders. which, in the eighteenth, Lewis fully developed in his
History, and which was, in substance, maintained by Vaughan him
self — that Wycliffe commenced his exertions for a reform of the
Church with attacks upon the monastic system, especially upon the
Mendicant Orders.
The view which is commonly taken is the following : — As early as
the year 1360, immediately after the death ofthe celebrated Archbishop
of Armagh, Richard Fitzralph, WycUffe opened an attack in Oxford
upon the Dominican and Franciscan Orders, the Augustinians and
the Carmelites, on the ground of their fundamental principle of
living upon the alms of the people. Indeed, it has even been repre
sented that when Richard of Armagh died, his mantle descended
upon Wycliffe, by whom his work was immediately taken up and
^ De Ci-oili Dominio, I. , c. 34.

1366.] ALLEGED ATTACKS ON MENDICANT ORDERS. 121
•carried farther. Critical investigation, however, is unable to find any
confirmation of this common opinion.
Vaughan, in 1S31, had followed Anthony AA^ood in the confident
statement that A\'ycUffe publicly censured the errors and failings of
the Mendicant Orders as early as 1360, and became the object of
-:their hostility in consequence.' But in his later work, as the fruit of
more careful investigation of the subject, he is no longer able to
-arrive at the same confident result upon the point. He remarks, with
truth, that there is no direct evidence to show that AVycliffe began
that controversy at the precise date which he had previously as
signed. But he continued to the last, notwithstanding, to be of
opinion that AA'ycliffe began his work as a Reformer with attacks
upon the Monastic, and especially upon the Mendicant Orders ; he
believed, besides, that while the exact date at which AVycliffe began
the controversy could not be ascertained, it must yet be fixed at a
period not much later than 1360.= But on this subject we are unable
to agree with him, not only because, like himself, we are unaware
-of any direct and decisive proof that AVycliffe began his attacks upon
the monks even in the years next following 1360, but because,
on the contrary, we have in our hands direct proofs that Wycliffe
continued to speak of the Mendicant Orders with all respectful
recognition during the twenty years which elapsed between 1360
-and 1380. AVe content ourselves here with stating, in anticipation,
so much as this — that the reading of the unpublished writings of
AVycliffe, among others, yields the most weighty confirmation to the
statement of his opponent Woodford, that it was in connection with
the controversy opened by AVycliffe on the subject of Transubstan
tiation, and therefore after 1381 at the earliest, that he began on
principle to oppose himself to the Mendicants, who had come
¦forward as his antagonists on that fundamental question. 3 But to this
point we shall return hereafter, and we leave it now, in order to fix
our attention upon the part which Wycliffe took in the public affairs
¦ of England in Church and State. '^
I Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, I., 262. Shirley is quite correct in maintaining in
= John de Wycliffe, a Monograph, his edition of the Fascic. Zizan xiii. that
1853 ; p. 64, especially p. 87. Comp. also the view hitherto held upon this point of
Brit. Quart. Rev., 1858, October. Wycliffe's biography is an unfounded
3 Woodford, Septuaginia duo Qucss- one.
.Hones de Sacramento Altaris. Prof. 4 See Appendix by Dr. Lorimer.

123 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 2,
2. — 'Wycliffe's Concern in the Rejection of the Papal
Claim to Feudatory Tribute.
In the year 1365, Pope Urban V. had renewed his claim upore
Edward III. for the annual payment of one thousand marks, under
the name of Feudatory Tribute ; he had even demanded the payment
of arrears extending over a period of no fewer than thirty-three years.
For so long a time had the payment of the tribute been discontinued,
without any remonstrance frora the Papal Court. In case the King
should decline to comply with this deraand, he was-
CCliB PoiDe'3 .
claim summoned to present himself in person before the
Pope as his feudal superior, to answer for his proceed
ing. The payment in question was imposed in 12 13, as we before
saw, by Innocent III. upon King John, for himself and his suc
cessors ; but, in point of fact, it had been paid from the first with
the greatest irregularity, and King Edward IIL, from the time of
reaching his majority, had never allowed it, as a matter of principle,
to be paid at all. When Urban claimed the payment, this prince
acted with the greatest possible prudence; he laid the question before
his Parliament. He had often enough been obliged, in order to
meet the cost of wars, to ask Parliament to consent to increased
burdens of taxation; and aU the more acceptable to him was the
opportunity of giving into the hands of the representatives of the
country the repudiation of an impost which had been in abeyance
for more than a generation. Should Parliament adopt this resolution,
the Crown was covered by the country. But the burden of taxation
was not the principal point of view from which the Parliament looked
at the Papal demand; much more than that, the honour and in
dependence of the kingdom was the deterraihing consideration for its
representatives ; and this all the more, because, on the one hand, the
war with France, and the victories obtained in it, had given a powerful
stimulus to the national spirit, whUe, on the other hand, the political
rights and liberties of the people had been heightened and secured
in proportion to the sacrifices which they had been called to raake of
property and blood.
The Parliament assembled in May, 1366, and the King immediately
laid before it the Papal demand, desiring its opinion thereon. As,
Eesoiution of ^lay well be conceived, the prelates were the party who
ParUament. .^^g^g placed in the greatest diflSculty by this question,
and they begged therefore a day's time for consideration and counsel
araong themselves. The result was, that they came to a unaniraous.
conclusion, concurring herein with the other estates of the realm.

1366.] PAPAL CLAIM TO TRIBUTE. 123
Thus the Lords spiritual and temporal, together with the Commons,
arrived at the decision to the effect that King John had acted entirely
beyond his right in subjecting his country and people to such a feudal
supremacy without their own consent ; and, moreover, that the whole
compact was a violation of his coronation oath. Further, the Lords
and Commons declared that, in case the Pope should carry out his
threatened procedure against the King, they would place the whole
powers and resources of the nation at the disposal of the King for the
defence of his crown and dignity. This language was as intelligible
- as it was forcible : Urban quickly yielded ; and since that day not
one word more has ever been said on the part of Rome of her feudal
superiority over England, still less of a payment of feudal tribute.
In this momentous national affair AA^ycliffe also bore a part. That
this was the case has long been known, but in what form or way he
took his share in it is less clear. Since Lewis wrote his ..„ ,.„ ,
Wycliffe's
History of the Reformer, it has been known that -vindication of
. Parliament.
AVycliffe published a polenucal tract upon that question
of political right, entirely siding with the Parliament; and that he
did so in consequence of a sort of challenge which had been addressed
to him by name by an anonymous Doctor of Theology, belonging to
the Monastic Orders. ' But how came it to pass that the gauntlet was.
thrown down to AA'ycliffe, and to no other? Wycliffe himself, in
replying, expresses his astonishment at the passionate heat with which
the challenge to answer the arguments of his opponent had been
addressed personally to him. Nor is the explanation of the puzzle,
which he mentions as having been suggested to himself by others, one
which is at all satisfactory to ourselves. Three grounds, he says, had
been named to him upon which the man had so acted — (i) in order
that AVycliffe might be personally compromised with the Court of
Rome, and that he might be heavily censured and deprived of his
church benefices ; (2) that the opponent himself with his connections
might conciUate for themselves the favour of the Papal Court ; and
(3) that, as the effect of a raore unlimited dominion of the Pope over
England, the abbeys might be able to grasp in greater numbers the
secular lordships of the kingdom, without being checked any longer
by brotherly hindrance and control. We may leave untouched the
I A considerable portion of this tract,. after the May Parliament of 1366, and
which is of the highest interest, was in- perhaps still earlier in that year rather
eluded by Lewis in the Appendix to his than in 1367, is the impression which it
Hist, of Wiclif, No. 30. The text is leaves upon me as strongly as upon the
unfortunatelyinaveryimperfectcondition, editors of the Wycliffe Bible, vol. i., p.
owing, in part at least, to the state of the vii., note 10, and Prof. Shirley, Fasc. Ziz.
MS. from -which it was derived. But that xvii., note 3.
the tract may have been written vefy soon

124 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. =
last two reasons, as self-evident ; but with regard to the first we must
of necessity ask again. How are we to account for the hostility which
seized upon AVycliffe's person on this occasion, for the purpose of
blackening his character at the Court of Rome, and to bring upon
him individually censure and material loss ? The controversy between
AVycliffe and the Mendicant Orders, alleged to have been commenced
at an earlier date, cannot be used for the explanation of this fact,'
because documentary history knows nothing of such a controversy
carried on at that date. Besides, Wycliffe has here to do, beyond
question, with a member of the endowed Orders, whose interests were
by no means identical with those of the Mendicants, but often enough
ran counter to them.'^ And when it is urged that Wycliffe must
already before that time have signalised himself as an upholder of the
independence and sovereignty of the State in relation to the Church,
we acknowledge, indeed, that this is extremely Ukely ; but it is still
only a conjecture, without any positive foundation, and therefore of
no real service to us in solving the difl!iculty.
Let us look more narrowly at the contents of the tract itself, and
see whether it does not itself supply us with a solution of a more dis
tinct and trustworthy kind. The anonymous doctor had
Claims on .
hehaif of the taken his Stand upon the absolutely indefeasible right of
the hierarchy. He had maintained, as regarded per
sons, that under no circumstances could the clergy be brought
before a ciyU tribunal; and, in regard to Church property, he
had laid down the proposition that temporal lords must never, nor
under any conditions, withdraw their possessions frora churchmen.
And with respect to the immediately pending question, touching the
relation of the English Crown to the Papal See, he had maintained
that the Pope had given the King the fief of the government of
England, under condition that England should pay the yeariy
tribute of 700 marks to the Papal Court ; 3 but that as this condition
had remained for a time unfulfilled, the King of England had forfeited
his right of monarchy.
In addressing himself to the task of exhibiting this latter assertion
in its true light, Wycliffe begins by assuring his readers that he, as a
humble and obedient son of the Church of Rome, would assert
nothing which could be construed into unfairness towards that Church,
or which could give any reasonable offence to a pious ear. He then
' As it has been used by Vaughan, 7<7fc 3 The tribute amounted to seven hun-
de Wycliffe, a Monograph, 1853, p. 105. dred marks for England, and three
= This latter fact had been already re- hundred for Ireland, making together the
marked upon by "Vaughan in his earlier sum of one thousand marks, as usually
work. Life and Opinions, etc., I., p. 283. given.

1366.] A PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE. 125
refers his opponent, for a refutation of his views, to the votes and
declarations of opinion which had been given in the Council of
temporal lords.'
The yirst lord, a valiant soldier, had expressed himself thus : ' The
kingdom of England was of old conquered by the sword of its nobles,,
and with the same sword has it ever been defended Answer of
against hostile attacks. And even so does the matter seven Barons.
stand in regard to the Church of Rome. Therefore my counsel is,
let this demand of the Pope be absolutely refused, unless he is able
to compel payment by force. Should he attempt that, it will be my-
business to withstand him in defence of our right.'
The second lord had made use of the following argument : — 'A tax.
or a tribute may only be paid to a person authorised to receive it ;,
now the Pope has no authority to be the receiver of this payment,
and therefore any such claim on his part must be repudiated. For it
is the duty of the Pope to be a prominent follower of Christ ; but
Christ refused to be a possessor of worldly dominion. The Pope,
therefore, is bound to make the same refusal. As, therefore, we
should hold the Pope to the observance of his holy duty, it foUows
that it is incumbent upon us to withstand him in his present demand.'
The third lord observed — ' It seems to me that the ground upon
which this demand is rested admits of being turned against the Pope ;
for as the Pope is the servant of the servants of God, it follows that
he should take no tribute from England except for services rendered.
But he serves our land in no sense whatever, either spiritually or
temporaUy ; his whole aim is to turn its possessions to his own per
sonal use and that of his courtiers, while assisting the enemies of the
country with gold and counsel. We must, therefore, as a matter of
common prudence, refuse his demand. That Pope and Cardinals
leave us without any help either in body or soul is a fact which we
know by experience well enough.'
The fourth lord — 'I ara of opinion that it is a duty which we owe to
our country to resist the Pope in this matter. For, according to his
principles, he is owner-in-chief of all the property which is gifted to
the Church or alienated to her in mortmain. Now, as one-third of
the kingdom at least is so held in mortmain, the Pope is head over
the whole of that third ; but in the domain of civil lordship, there
cannot be two lords of equal right, but there must be one lord
superior, and the other must be vassal ; from which it follows that
during the vacancy of a church either the Pope must be the vassal of
¦ In quodam concilio. The Parliament signedly makes use of a general expres-
is-no doubt intended, but Wycliffe de- sion.

125 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 2
the King of England, or vice versa. But to make our King the
inferior of any other man in this respect, we have no mind, for every
donor in mortmain reserves to the King the right of feudal superiority.
During that interval, therefore, the Pope behoves to be the inferior
or vassal of the King. But the Pope has always neglected his duty
as the King's vassal, and, therefore, he has forfeited his right.'
The ffth lord puts the question, ' What then may have been
originally the ground upon which that undertaking (of King John)
was entered into? Was that annual payment the condition of the
King's absolution and his reinstalment in. the hereditary right to the
crown? For a pure gift, intended as a mere beneficence for all
coming times, it could not in any case have been. On the former
supposition (viz., that the payment was a condition of absolution),
the agreement was invalid on account of the simony which was com
mitted therein ; for it is not allowable to bestow a spiritual benefit in
consideration of the promise of temporal gains to be bestowed —
*' Freely ye have received, freely give." If the Pope imposed the
tax upon the King as a penitential penalty, he ought not to have
applied this alms-gift to his own uses, but should have given it to the
Church of England, which the King had wronged, as a compensation
for the wrong. But it is not in accordance with the spirit of
religion to say — " I absolve thee under condition that thou payest
me so much in all time coming.'' When a raan in this way breaks
faith with Christ, other men may also break faith with hira, if the
treaty be immoral. In all reason a punishment should fall upon the
guilty, not upon the innocent ; and as such an annual payment falls
not upon the guilty King, but upon the poor innocent people, it bears
the character of avarice rather than of a wholesome penalty. If, on
the other hand, the second case be supposed, viz., that the Pope, in
virtue of his concordat with King John, became feudal superior of the
Royal House, it would then logically follow that the Pope would have
power at his will and pleasure to dethrone a King of England, under
pretext of having forfeited his right to the throne, and to appoint, at his
discretion, a representative of his own person to occupy the throne.
Is it not, then, our duty to resist principles like these ? '
The sixth lord — ' It appears to me that the act of the Pope admits
of being turned against himself. For if the Pope made over England
to our King as a feudal fief, and if, in so doing, he did not usurp a
superiority which did not belong to hira, then the Pope, at the time of
that transaction with King John, was the lord of our country. But
-as it is not allowable to alienate Church property without a correspond
ing compensation, the Pope had no power to alienate a kingdom..

1366.] A PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE. IT.J
possessed of revenues so rich for an annual payment so trifling ; yea,
he might at his pleasure deraand our country back again, under the
pretence that the Church had been defrauded of more than the fifth
part of the value. It is necessary, therefore, to oppose the first
beginnings of this mischief. Christ Himself is the Lord-Paramount,
and the Pope is a fallible man, who, in the opinion of theologians,
must lose his lordship in the event of his falling into mortal sin, and
therefore cannot make good any claim to the possession of England.
It is enough, therefore, that we hold our kingdom as of old,
immediately from Christ in fief, because He is the Lord-Paramount,
who, alone and by Himself, authorises, in a way absolutely sufficient,
every right of property allowed to created beings.'
The seventh lord — ' I cannot but greatly wonder that you have not
touched upon the over-hastiness of the King, and upon the rights of
the kingdom. And yet it stands to reason that a hasty, ill-considered
treaty, brought on by the King's fault, without the country's consent,
can never be justly allowed to operate to its permanent mischief
According to the law of the land {consuetudo regni), it is necessary,
before a tax of this kind is imposed, that every individual in the
country, either directly or by his lord-superior, should give his con
sent Although the King and some few misguided persons gave their
consent to the treaty, they had no warrant to do so, in the absence of
the authority of the kingdom, and of the full number of consenting
votes.' To these utterances of several lords in Parliament, Wycliffe, in the
tract referred to, adds little more, so far as it is known frora the copy
furnished by Lewis. He points out, with reason, that the treaty in
question was proved, by the arguments developed in these speeches,
to be both immoral and without authority. The speeches constitute
the chief bulk of the tract, both in matter and space.
Before we proceed to a closer examination of the speeches which
the tract communicates, let thus much be observed in a general way,
that Wycliffe in this piece, in opposition to the censures
cast by the monks upon the recent legislative action of main
.the kingdom, takes up the defence of that action with °°° ^^ ™'
warmth and emphasis. The question was, whether the State, in
certain cases, is entitied to call in Church property, or whether such
.an act would, in all circumstances, be a wrong. The latter view was
¦maintained by his opponents, the former is the contention of
WycUffe ; and this view, we shall find below, he systematically
-developed and fully estabUshed. ¦
Returning to the above speeches, it immediately appears upon an

128 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch, iv. § ^
attentive examination, that the question of State-right, whether the
payment demanded by the Pope, as feudal superior of the Kings of
England, ought to be made without delay, or ought to be
Summary a ? n j > o
of the Barons' decidedly repudiated, is treated m these speeches from
^ ' the most manifold points of view. The first lord — a soldier
— takes for his standpoint the right ofthe strongest,' trusts to his own
good sword, and reckons the amount of material force on either side.
If this first speech is the outcome of a warrior-like realism, the second
is inspired by a Christian idealism ; for the speaker grounds his
argument upon the ideal of a Pope as the foUower of Christ, and
would carry back the existing Pope to the condition of evangelical
poverty. The third lord takes the standpoint of the country's'
interests, which it behoves the Pope, as ' servant of the servants of
God,' to promote, in order to acquire a right to corresponding
services; but this he does neither spiritually nor materially. The
fourth lord applies to the question the standard of positive law,
especially of the feudal law. The Pope, upon his own principles, is
the owner of all Church property in England : now lord-paramount of
all this he cannot be, for such alone is the King ; he must therefore
be a vassal, but as he has always disregarded his feudal duty to the
throne, his right is forfeited. The fifth speaker enters into an exami
nation of the different motives which raay have led to the concordat
in question under King John, which he finds in any conceivable
view so objectionable as to nullify the concordat ; for the transaction
was either an unchristian siraony, or a moral wrong, or an act of
usurpation intolerable to England. The sixth speaker, like the fourth,
takes the feudal law for his starting-point, but seeks to prove, that
not the Pope, but Christ alone, is to be regarded as Lord-Paramount
of the country. Last of all, the seventh lord applies to the question
the standard of the constitution of the kingdom, and arrives at the
conclusion that the concordat between King John and Innocent III.
was invalid frora the very first, by reason of its lacking the consent
of the country in the persons of its representatives in Parliaraent.
If we corapare, further, the leading ideas of these speeches with
the decision of the Parliament of May, 1366, of which, however, only
the most general features have come down to us, we immediately see
that the two in all essential respects agree. The argument of the seventh
lord in AVycliffe's tract is, indeed, entirely identical with the first ground
given by Parliament in its Act of Repudiation, and the declaration of
' We would not say, with Boehringer, was that of natural right, for there is cer.-
in his Vorrefor^natoren, I,, Wycliffe,!^. 6^, tainly a distinction to be taken between
that the standpoint taken up by this lord natural right and the right of the strongest.

'366.] A PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE. I2g
the first lord with the Parliament's concluding declaration. The con
jecture, indeed, has been made, that the whole of these speeches may
very well have been merely free compositions of Wycliffe
1 • ,.r , . ^ , 1 , , , , , . , , -Was ¦W-yoliffe
himself, preferring to put the bold thoughts which he author or
wished to express into the mouths of others, rather than "? the''
to come forward with them directiy in his own person ; weeches p
and in doing so he has kept to the Act of Parliaraent and to the views
of its most distinguished members, but not in the sense of reporting
speeches which were actually delivered.' But why it should not be
believed that we have here a report of speeches actually delivered,
we fail to perceive. If the ancient accounts of the proceedings in
Parliament, notwithstanding their extreraely summary character, are
nevertheless in remarkable agreement with some, at least, of Wycliffe's
somewhat fuller speeches, in respect to the grounds assigned, and the
whole tone of confident defiance with which they' conclude, this fact
is in itself a weighty reason for thinking that Wycliffe here introduces
actual Parliamentary addresses.
Independently of this argument, it deserves to be taken into
account that the whole effect of this polemical piece of Wycliffe
depended essentially upon the fact that these speeches had been
actually delivered. It raay be thought, indeed, that the earls and
barons of the kingdom at that period can hardly be credited with the
amount of insight, and even occasionally of learning, which is con
spicuous in these addresses. But the Parliamentary life of England
at that day had already held on its course for more than a century,
and could not fail to bring with it an amount of practice in political
business by no means to be under-estimated, as well as a development
of interest in public affairs, arising frora constant participation in their
management. The only thing which can be alleged, with some
appearance of force, against the view here taken, is the circumstance
that some of the thoughts referred to are just such as might have come
from the soul of Wycliffe himself, e.g., what the second lord says of
the Pope — that before all others it behoves Jiim to be a follower of
Christ in evangelical poverty, and the like. But at the present day
men often fail to have any correct idea of the wide extent to which,
since the thirteenth century, the idea of ' Evangelical Poverty ' had
prevailed. And it may well be conceived that ideas of Wycliffe's own,
too, may at length have penetrated into those circles of English society
to which the language now in question was attributed. So much,
indeed, as this must be conceded, that the speeches, as they lie before
' De Ruever Gronemann, Diatribe in Joh. Wiclifi Vitam. Traj. ad Rhen.,
1837. P- 93- 10

130 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch.iv.§.2
us, were grouped together by Wycliffe, and in sorae particulars so
raoulded by him as to bear unmistakably here and there the personal
impress of the reporter. But this concession need not hinder our
belief that the main substance of the several speeches was taken from
actual proceedings in Parliament.'
If this is so, we cannot avoid the question, Frora what source did
Wycliffe learn so accurately these Parliamentary proceedings ? This
answer would be very simple, if the opinion expressed
memher of by some were well grounded, that Wycliffe was personally
ParUament p pj.gggj^(. ^^^ jj^g^^ scssion of the Legislature as a hearer.^
But it is in the highest degree doubtful whether the proceedings of
Parliament were at that day open to the public. The Pariiament
was rather regarded as an enlarged Privy Council of the King, and if
we are not mistaken, aU traces are lacking of any man who was neither
a member of Parliament nor a commissioner of the King, being
permitted to be present at its sittings. On the other hand, it has been
thought that WycUffe had received accurate information from one or
other of those lords who were personally acquainted with him, and
with whom he was associated by simUar patriotic sentiments, and that
he reported the speeches upon the good faith of his informant. This
conjecture is worth listening to ; but what if Wycliffe was himself a
member of that Parliament ? If he was, it would at once be plain how it
came to pass that he and no other man was made the object of attack
in reference to that Parliament.
At first sight, this raay seem to be a conjecture more bold than
probable. But, however little known, it is a fact estabUshed by
documentary evidence, that, from the end of the thirteenth century,
elected representatives of the inferior clergy were summoned to serve
in ParUament.3 It is also an ascertained fact, that to the Parliament
of 1366, besides bishops, abbots, and lords, six masters of arts were
sumraoned by royal order.-* With these facts in view, it is quite
conceivable that AVycliffe might have had a seat and voice in that
• We entirely agree with Vaughan on tion with these, at once exclude this under-
this point, who, both in his earlier and standing of them.
later works on Wycliffe, considers the 3 The piece entitled Modus tencndi
speeches of the lords to have been actually Parliamentum, dadng, according to re-
spoken in Pariiament. [So Prof. Shirley cent investigations, from before 1295, ed.
(Fasc. Zizan. preface, p. xix. ) speaks of Hardy, mentions, p. 5, that the bisliops
Wychffe's tract as ' the earliest instance, were to appoint for every archdeaconry
I believe, of a report of a Parliamentary two experienced men as representatives,
debate.'] adveniendum etinteressendum adParlia-
' VecaghB-n, Life and Opinions, etc., I., mentum. Comp. Pauh, Geschichte von
2gi, drew this conclusion from the words England, iv., p. 670, note i.
in Wychffe's tract, Quam audivi in * Comp. Parry, Parliaments and Coun-
quodam consilio a dominis secularibus; cils of England, Lond., 1839, p. 129.
but the words esse datam, used in connec-

1366.] MEMBER OF THE PARLIAMENT. 13!
Parliament as an elected representative of the inferior clergy, or in
virtue of a royal summons. The step, it is true, from abstract
possibihty to probabUity, is still a long one. But now I find, in the
unprinted works of Wycliffe, one passage at least, from the wording
of which it appears clearly enough that he was at one time in
Parliament, although some years later. In his book, De Ecclesia, he
has occasion to remark that the Bishop of Rochester (this, without
doubt, was Thomas Trillek) had told him under great excitement, in
open sitting of ParUament, that the propositions which he had set
forth in controversy had been condemned by the Papal Court.' It
is true that in this passage we must understand the reference to be to
a later Parliament than that of 1366. I conjecture that the incident
took place in 1376 or 1377, namely, before the Papal censure of
Gregory XI. upon several of AVycliffe's theses was pubUcly known.
But though no more than this is established, that AVycliffe was ten
years later a member of Parliament, it becomes not only possible but
probable that he may already have been in Parliament some time
before that date.
However, I find elsewhere in his own -writings a hint that Wycliffe
belonged to the May Parliament of 1366. If otherwise, what could
be the sense and bearing of his words, when in the same tract which
contains his speeches of the Lords, he says in one place,^ ' If such
things had been asserted by me against my King, they would have
been inquired into before now, in the Parliament of the EngUsh
Lords.' If Wycliffe had only published his views in lectures or writings,
it would be most improbable that these should become the subject of
inquiry in Parliament. At least he could not himself have entertained
such a thought, to say nothing of giving it utterance, without betraying
an amount of vanity and excessive self-esteen quite foreign to all we
know of his character. The case bears a different aspect, when we
infer from the above words the seemingly logical conclusion, that
Wyclifie was himself a member of the Parliament which was called to
discuss that highly important question ; and that he had there fully
1 De Ecclesia, o. 15. MS. 1294 of the parliamentum do not presuppose pub-
Vienna. Library, f. 178, col. 2. Unde /2C2V_y, in the modern sense of the term, but
episcopus Roffensis dixit mihi in publico only lay stress upon the circumstance that,
parliamento stomachando spiritu, quod instead of a private communication, the
concludones mecs sunt dampnatcs, sicut charge was made pubhcly in the hearing
testificatum est sibi de Curia per instru- of many witnesses.
mentum notarii. The words dixit mihi ^ Si autem ego assererem talia contra
forbidustounderstandthattheBishophad regem meum, olim fuissent in parliamento
only spoken of him in his absence ; rather dominorum Anglics ventilata, in Lewis,
he must have spoken to him and launched p. 350. According to the connection, the
his charge against him face to face. Let emphasis appears to lie not on ego, but
me only add that the words publicum upon contra regem meum.

132 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 2
and emphatically unfolded his views. For indeed, in that case, if the
view he took had touched too nearly the honour and the rights of the
Crown, it would not have been aUowed to pass without decided
contradiction on the part of men so patriotic as those speakers were.
Last of aU, I believe that there is still another utterance of Wycliffe
which should be appUed to this incident, although hitherto, indeed, it
has been otherwise understood. At the very beginning
Kegis of the remarkable tract stUl before us, Wycliffe declares
"" ¦ his readiness, in consideration of his being peculiaris
regis clericus, i.e., in a peculiar sense a king's cleric, to accept the
challenge of the opponent, and to defend the law of the land.' Lewis
and Vaughan, and aU who follow the latter,have understood this aUusion
to mean that Edward III. had nominated AA''ycliffe to the office of King's
Chaplain.' But we do not find elsewhere a single trace of evidence
by which this conjecture is confirmed. For this reason, it has been
thought necessary to give the words another meaning — this, namely,
that Wycliffe meant by that expression to distinguish himself as a
cleric of the National Church, in opposition to a cleric of the Papal
Church.3 But this explanation does not quite satisfy us, on account
of the ' talis qualis ' of the passage. For this expression of modesty
is only in place if the three words quoted above denote a certain
function or social position, but not so if they indicate only a certain
tendency and mode of thought. What sort of distinguished position
are we, then, to think of under the title of peculiaris regis clericus? I
hold it to be not only possible but probable, that under this tide the
summoning of Wycliffe to Parliament by the act of the King is
indicated ; that is to say, that the King required his presence in that
ParUament as a clerical expert, or, in modern phrase, as a Government
commissioner. At least this view raay be worth examination as a
suggestion, seeing that the meaning of the tide used by Wycliffe is
still so far frora being settled.
But that WycUffe had a seat and vote in the Parliament of 1366,
I venture to maintain as a fact, for which I have produced sufficient
grounds. The only adverse consideration which raight be aUeged
against it rests upon the way in which Wycliffe introduces his account
of the speeches of the Lords. For his language at first conveys the
impression that the author's knowledge of the matter is only by
' Ego autem cum sim peculiaris regis John de Wyclife, io6 ; Shirley, Fasc.
clericus talis qualis, volo libenter induere Zizan. xix. ; Bjornstrom, John Wiclif,
Aabitumresponsalis, etc., in Lewis, p. 349. Upsala, 1867, p. 36.
= Lewis, 20 ; Vaughan, Life, I., 284 ; 3 Boehringer, as above, p. 32.

1366.] MEMBER OF THE PARLIAMENT. 1 33
hearsay. To this circumstance, however, no decisive weight can be
assigned, for the reason that AA''ycliffe probably wished to
. J , ./ ^ J Part of
avoid the appearance of boasting of having been himself wyoUffe in
an ear-witness of the speeches, and that he preferred to ^ ^° ^ °°-
appeal to the matter as one which was well known and talked about
{fertur). But if the real state of the case was that which we think we
have shown to be probable, we have then an easier explanation, not
only of the detailed character of the report of several of the speeches,
but also of two additional points — first, of the agreement of several
ideas in those addresses with certain favourite views of Wycliffe ; for
if AA''ycliffe was a member of that ParUament he would be able to find
all the easier access to men in high position, so as to inspire them
with his own convictions upon the great question of the day. And
secondly, if AVycUffe was then in Parliament, and had exercised some
influence upon the decision arrived at, it will then become obvious why
he in particular should have been singled out for challenge by the
unnamed monk to whom the action of that Parliament was a thorn
in the flesh. It has at least been made clear that AVycliffe took part,
in a powerful and influential way, in the great Church and State
questions of the day, and this in the direction of having much at
heart the right and honour of the Crown, and the liberty and welfare
of the kingdom.
If in this matter he was compelled to oppose hiraself to the clairas
of Rome, we are still without the slightest reason for regarding as
mere phraseology his solemn declaration that, as an obedient son of
the Church, he had no wish to dishonour her, or to injure the
interests of piety. We are unable, however, to concur in the opinion,
that Wycliffe's dauntless courage and disinterestedness come out all
the more conspicuously from his conduct in this business, -w-yoiiffe stm
because the question touching the headship of Canterbury c^^terb?iy
Hall was at that time pending before the Roman Court. s=-"-
For if it is true, as with other scholars we believe it to be, that the
controversial tract before us was drawn up after the May Parliaraent of
1366, ie., in the year 1366 itself, orat latest, in the first months of the
following year, Wycliffe was still at that date in undisturbed possession
of that position. For though Islip had died on April 26, 1366,
Simon Langham was not installed Archbishop of Canterbury till March
25, 1367, and it was on March 31 that he transferred the Wardenship
of that HaU to the Benedictine, John Redingate. It appears, there
fore, more than doubtful whether Wycliffe was, at the date of the
composition of this tract, already deposed from his position in the
hall ; on the contrary, precisely this dignity may have been included

134 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 3
among the ' Church benefices ' of which he was to be deprived, if
things went agreeably to the wishes of his adversaries.

3. — Events after 1366.
Wycliffe manifested the same spirit on another occasion, sorae years
later. Unfortunately the sources of history are not here so abundant
as to enable us steadUy to follow the course of his inner development
and his external action ; and we are obliged at this point to pass over
an interval of six or seven years. The years following these were ill-
fated for England in her foreign relations.
Ih May, 1360, after the war with France had lasted for twenty-one
years, the Peace of Bretigny had been concluded. In this treaty, the
whole south-west of France, with several cities on the north coast,
was unconditionally surrendered to the English Crown. On the
Peace of Other hand, England expressly renounced all claims to
Bretigny. ^j^^ French Crown, and to any further acquisitions of
French territory. What was ceded to her, however, was a magnificent
acquisition in itself But the Peace of Bretigny became only a new
occasion of discord. Soon enough there sprang from it first a tension
of feeUng between the two nations, then a misunderstanding, and
at last an open breach. The brilliant, but fruitless, expedition of
Edward the Black Prince to Spain in 1367, with the view of restoring
_ .... Pedro the Cruel to the throne of Castile, led to a
Expedition . , ' ,
to Spain. renewed outbreak of hostility with France, who had given
her support to the usurper of the Castilian Crown, the Bastard Henry
of Trastamara. This expedition brought upon the heir-apparent of
the EngUsh throne an attack of dysentery, as the effect of the Spanish
climate, under which he continued to suffer till, in 1376, he died.
When the war with France broke out again in 1369, it was an irrepar
able misfortune for England that the great general (who had developed,
indeed, more military than administrative talent in the government of
Eenewed-war ^^^ principalities of Aquitaine and Gascony) wasincapa-
with France, citated by bodily disease to resume the post of com
mand. Insurrection burst forth into flames in the ceded provinces
of France, and was never again subdued. One fortress after another
fell into the hands of the enemy. In August, 1372, the city of
Rochelle again became French. The English rule over a great
part of France was gradually broken up. But this was not all.
The English fleet, too, could no longer maintain its superiority ; on
the contrary, the English coasts were left a defenceless prey to
every attack by the eneray's ships. Public opinion in England,

1371.] TAXING CHURCH PROPERTY. 135
as may readily' be supposed, became much disconcerted and dis
turbed. So long as successes and martial glory had been the
harvests of war, the nation had willingly borne the necessary sacri
fices, both of money and of blood. But when the successes thus
obtained vanished away like shadows, when disaster was heaped upon
disaster, and when the country itself was menaced by the enemy,
complaints became louder and louder, and grievances more and more
bitter, tiU it was at last resolved to take action against the Govern
ment itself
A Parliament met during the Lent of 1371; and when Edward
III. laid before it a demand for a subsidy of fifty thousand silver
marks in aid of the war, the proposal led, as it would appear, to very
animated debates. On the one side, a motion was made, and was
also eventually carried, that the richly-endowed Church should be
included, to a substantial amount, in the incidence of the new tax ;
and on the other, the representatives of the Church, as
' ,. , ,. ., ,.,. . . -War taxes on
was to be expected, did not fail to offer opposition to Church
such a proposal They used every effort to accomplish '^''°^^'' ^•
the exemption of the clergy, the rich monasteries, foundations, etc.,
from the new burden of taxation. It was very probably in that
Parliament that one of the lords replied to the representations of some
raembers of the endowed Orders in the form which Wycliffe has
preserved in one of his unpubUshed works. ' The far-seeing peer, in
the course of the discussion, told the following fable : — ' Once upon a
time there was a meeting of many birds ; among them was an owl,
but the owl had lost her feathers, and made as though she suffered
much frora the frost. She begged the other birds, with a trembling
voice, to give her sorae of their feathers. They syrapathised with her,
and every bird gave the owl a feather, till she was overladen with
strange feathers in no very lovely fashion. Scarcely was this done
when a hawk carae in sight in quest of prey ; then the birds, to escape
from the attacks of the hawk by self defence or by flight, demanded
their feathers back again from the owl ; and on her refusal each of
them took back his own feather by force, and so escaped the danger,
while the owl remained more miserably unfledged than before.'
' Even so,' said the peer, ' when war breaks out, we must take from
the endowed clergy a portion of their temporal possessions, as pro
perty which belongs to us and the kingdom in common, and we must
wisely defend the country with property which is our own, and exists
¦ Wycliffe, De Dominio Civili, 11., c. gives it), f. 155, col. i. Shirley has given
I, Vienna MS., No. 1341 (Dinis, the passage in the Introduction to Fasc.
cccLXXXii., not cccLxxx. as Shiriey Zizan., p. xxi.

136 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 3
among us in superfluity.' The hint as to the origin of all Church
property was plain enough as well as the menace —
' And art thou not willing,
Then use I main force.'
The result was that the clergy had the worst of it. Taxes of
unexampled weight were imposed upon them for all lands which had
come into their hands by mortmain for the last 100 years, and even
the smallest benefices, which had never been taxed before, were sub
jected to the new war impost.
It cannot be doubted that there was an intimate connection
between this financial measure and a new proposition which the same
.„ , . , Parliaraent submitted to the Crown. The Lords and
Prelates in
State offices. Commons proposed to the King to remove all prelates
from the highest offices of State, and to appoint laymen in their
places, who could at all times be brought to answer for their proceed
ings before the temporal courts. This proposal of Parliament was in
fact accepted by Edward III. At that time the highest office in the
State, that of Lord Chancellor of England, was filled by the Bishop ;
of Winchester, William of Wykeham. The Bishop of Exeter was
Treasurer, and the Lord Privy Seal was also a prelate. It does not
appear, indeed, that Parliament had any personal objection against
Wykeham and his colleagues — the proposal was made upon its own
merits, and its chief object was to secure ministerial responsibility.
But as early as March 14, the Bishop of Winchester laid down the
dignity of Chancellor, and was succeeded by Robert Thorp : at the
same time, the offices of Treasurer and Keeper of the Seal were
bestowed upon layraen. In February, 1372, we find the whole
Privy Council constituted of layraen.' This change of ministers
derived its chief importance frora its distinctly anti-clerical character.
Apart frora its bearing upon questions of home administration,
especially financial, the aim of the measure was also to place the
Government in an attitude of emphatic opposition to the encroach
ments of the Papal Court.
Under such circumstances, it is no wonder if the demands of the
Papacy excited decided resistance on the part of a country ex-
Be ist n hausted by an unfortunate turn of the war, and even gave
to Papal occasion to measures of precaution on the part of the
exactions. Government. No doubt it was felt by very many to be
an expression of what lay deep in their own hearts, when Wycliffe
^ Compare the signatures of all the the oath taken by .Arnold Gamier, in
King's ministers under the protocol on the Appendix.

137=.] PAPAL EXACTIONS IN ENGLAND. 137
stood forward against one of the Papal agents who were traversing the
land to collect dues for the Curia, and in the form of a commentary
on the obligations which these men took upon theniselves by oath,
opened an attack upon the doings and trafifickings of the Pope's
Nuncio as dangerous to the kingdom.
The occasion was this. In February, 1372, there appeared in
England an agent of the Papal See, Arnold Garnier by name
(Garnerius, Granarius), Canon of Chalons in Champagne, Arnold
and Eicentiate of Laws. He bore written credentials from oamier, Papal
Gregory XI . (who had ascended the Papal Chair in 1 3 7 o), Eeoeiver.
as Papal Nuncio and Receiver of Dues for the Apostolic Chamber. The
man travelled with a train of servants and half-a-dozen horses. He
remained for two years and a half in the country, and during that time
probably collected no inconsiderable sums. In July, 1374, he made a
journey to Rome with the reserved intention of returning to England,
for which purpose he was furnished with a royal passport, dated July
25, available until Easter, 1375 ; and frora a letter of Gregory XI. to
Bishop AVykeham of Winchester, it appears that Garnier returned to
England in due time, to carry forward his work as Nuncio and
Receiver.' When this agent of the Roman Court arrived, in the
first instance, he obtained the consent of the Government to his
coUectorship only under condition of swearing solemnly beforehand
to a form of obligation in which the rights and interests of the Crown
and kingdom were guarded on all sides. The Frenchman acceded to
this condition without the slightest scruple, and on February 13,
1372, at the royal palace of Westminster, in presence of all the
counciUors and oflScers of the Crown, he formally and solemnly took
the oath.=
But this formality by no raeans set at rest the misgivings of all
patriotic men. AVycliffe was one of these, and by-and-by he wrote a
paper on the sworn obligations of the Papal Receiver, M^janse-a
the drift of which was to inquire whether Garnier was Paper.
not guilty of perjury, in so far as he had taken an oath never to violate
the rights and interests of the country, while yet such a violation was
entirely unavoidable, if, in fulfilment of his commission, he collected
in England a large amount of gold and carried it out of the kingdom.^
1 The royal passport is printed in The Latin text was prefixed by Wycliffe
Rymer's Foedera, ed. 4. London, 1830, to the inquiry of which we are to speak
vol. III. , 2, f. 1007. "The Pope's letter immediately ; and as the latter would not
of introduction is printed by Lowth in the be intelligible without the former, I have
Appendix, of original documents, to his also given the form of the oath in the
Life of Wykeham. Appendix.
= The textual form of the oath isprinted 3 This paper, which has hitherto been
in Norman French in Rymer, in., f. 933. known only by its title, is preserved in

138 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 3
The aim of the inquiry appears to have been to show that there was
an irreconcUable contradiction between the permission given by the
State to collect moneys for the Court of Rome on the one hand, and
the intention to guard the country against all wrong to its interests
on the other.
That this short paper was written not later than 1374, is certain,
because it speaks of Garnier as being still in England plying his
business, and it may have appeared as early as 1372.' As to its
genuineness, no doubt is to be entertained. Its title, indeed, is not
to be found in the catalogues of Wycliffe's writings given by Bishop
Bale and other literary historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, but it stands in a pretty full list of the works and tracts of
Wycliffe which is found at the end of a Vienna manuscript (Cod.
3933) fol. 19s). An additional testimony to its Wycliffe authorship,
not to be undervalued, is the fact, that the paper forms part of
another Vienna MS. (Cod. 1337) which contains in all no fewer than
fifty pieces, most of them short ones, which are all productions of
Wycliffe. This little tract, besides, in thought and style, bears
unmistakable features of Wycliffe's characteristic manner. In
particular, we observe a remarkable agreement between this tract and
the piece last examined, dating several years earlier, in respect to the
point of view taken by the writer, and in the sentiment which forms
the basis of both. In both tracts, which in modern phrase we
raight caU ' political articles,' WycUffe stands before us as a patriot,
who has the honour and interests of his country very deeply at
heart. In both also, especiaUy in the latter, we learn to recognise
him as a Christian patriot, and see in the patriotic defender of his
country's interests those qualities which in their development were to
shape the ecclesiastical Reformer. The difference between the two
tracts is partly in form and partly in matter. In form the earlier is
defensive, the later aggressive. In substance the later piece goes
deeper into Church questions than the earlier, owing to the difference
of the two occasions which called them forth.
To elucidate more exactly the peculiar character of the tract at
two MSS. of the Imperial Library to have fallen away, for the text terminates
of Vienna, namely. No. 1337 (D^nis, in an ' etc'
cccLXXviii.), f. ii5,andNo. 3929(D^nis, ' Constat ex facto ejus notorie, quod sic
CCCLXXXV.), f. 246. From the latter MS., facit. Art. 5. [But that this memorial can-
-vvhich leaves much to be wished for not have been written before 1377 is clear
in point of accuracy, I give the text in from the circumstance that near its end
full, with the exception of a portion at the reference is made to regi nostro, licet in
beginning, which is of inferior importance, estate juvenili florenti, which can only
in the Appendix. The conclusion seems apply to Richard II., not to Edward III.,
who died in June, 1377. — Lorimer^

137=-] ESSAY ON PAPAL EXACTIONS. I39
present before us, we bring into notice, before everything else, this
feature of it — that it recognises the domestic prosperity oharaoteriBtios
of the country, the wealth of the public purse, and the "^ *^^ :Pa,pez.
military strength of England, as valuable blessings, which must be
defended against all enemies. This mention of the enemies of the
kingdom shows clearly enough how much at that time the actual and
possible incidents of the French war were occupying all minds, and
filling them with earnest anxiety.
A second characteristic feature which strikes the reader of these
pages is the decidedly constitutional spirit which pervades them. The
Parliament is spoken of as occupying a most important ^^^ oonstitu-
position as the representative of the nation, possessing tionai spirit.
authority to sit in judgment upon the question of what would be
injurious to the national interests. And in the same spirit the author
expresses a desire to see the State take under its protection the time-
honoured civil rights of the priests and clerics of the National
Church, in opposition to the encroachments of the Papal Receiver.
Further, it is not to be overlooked that Wycliffe is conscious of
giving expression in the main only to what is felt and thought by no
small portion, perhaps by the majority of the population.' But
equally strong, and still more important than the national
and patriotic feeUng of the author, is the religious and ^™pSLr
moral, and even the evangelical spirit which he raani- feeimg.
fests in dealing -with this matter. When Wycliffe puts forward the
principle that the assistance of God is far more valuable than the
help of man, and that reraissness in the defence of Divine right is a
more serious sin than negligence in the duty of defending a human
right, he raakes his reader feel that he is not merely repeating a tradi
tional maxim, but giving utterance to a great truth from the deepest
conviction, and with the most intense sympathy, of his heart and con
science. And it is only an application of this general principle when,
as if to complete and give the right interpretation of what he has said
on the subject of the national welfare, WycUffe raakes the remark that
the welfare of the kingdom depends upon the religious beneficence
of its people, particularly upon pious foundations in behalf of the
Church and the poor. We also feel the moral earnestness of his tone,
arid especially the conscientiousness with which he insisted on the
duty of truthfulness, when, in allusion to the sophistical speeches and
excuses employed either by the Papal agents themselves, or by their
^ Ut a multis creditur — executio sui jam sensibiliter percipiens illud gravamen
officii — si non fallor, displiceret majori de ipso conqueritur.
parti populi Anglicani ; regnum nostrum

140 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. §j
friends and defenders, he emphatically denounces a species of craft
and guUe, which, by means of mental reservations, would bring things
to such a pass that even the oath would no longer be ' an end of all
strife.' Again, we find the principle expressed by Wycliffe with
pecuUar emphasis in this piece, as often elsewhere, that a common
participation in sin and guilt is incurred when one knows of the evil-
doings of a second party, and might put a. stop to them if he would,
but neglects to do it. And it is only thepositive side of this thought-
when it is asserted that the command to inflict brotherly censure
(Matthew xviii. 15), makes it a duty to resist a transgressor whose
conduct raight influence others for evil.
But more characteristic than all else is what Wycliffe says in this
tract respecting the Pope and the pastoral office. That the Pope
may corarait sin had been already asserted, in one of the Parlia
mentary speeches of the earlier piece : and in the present one that
proposition is repeated raore strongly still.' In con-
regard to nection with this view, Wycliffe also declares himself
°^^' opposed to the theory which maintains that absolutely
everything which the Pope thinks fit to do must be right, and have
force of law simply because he does it. In other words, we here find
Wycliffe already in opposition to the absolutism of the Curia. He is
far removed, however, from a merely negative position. On the
contrary, he puts forward a positive idea of the Papacy, according to
which the Pope is bound to be pre-eminently the follower of Christ
in all moral virtues — especially in humility, patience, and brotherly
love. And next, the views which he expresses respecting the pastoral
office are well worthy of observation. Whilst severely censuring the
Papal collectors for compelling, by help of ecclesiastical censures,
those priests who had to pay annates { primi fructus) to the Curia, to
make their payments in coin instead of in kind {in naturct), he brings
into special prominence, as a crying abuse, the fact, that by this
undue pressure put upon them, the priests found themselves under
the necessity (as they must have the means of living) of indemnifying
themselves at the expense of their poor parishioners, and of neglecting
the services of public worship which they were bound to celebrate.
From this passing allusion thrown out only in passing, we perceive
what a watchful eye he must have kept upon the pastoral oflSce and
upon its conscientious execution — a subject to which, at a later period,
he gave all the fulness and energy of his love. Last of all, we will
only call attention to this further point, that already, in this sraall and
essentially political paper, the principle makes its appearance which
' Cum dominus papa sit satis peccabilis.

I374-] ROYAL COMMISSIONER AT BRUGES. 141
Wycliffe afterwards asserted with 'epoch-making' force, viz., that
Holy Scripture is for Christians the sole guide and stan- supremacy ot
dard of truth. There is a hint, at least, of this principle scripture.
when AVycliffe says of the payments in question to the Court of
Rome that they are obtained by begging, in a fnanner contrary to the
gospel {elemosina prceter evangelium mendicata).
From all this, this small piece, which has till the present time
remained unknown, appears to us to be not without value, inasmuch
as, on the one hand, it shows us the manner of AVycliffe's intervention
in an affair of weighty public importance, and, on the other, lets us
clearly see in the undaunted zeal of the patriot the earliest germs of
the later strivings of the Church Reformer.
4. — 'Wycliffe as a Royal Commissary in Bruges, 1374, and
his Influence in the " Good Parliament" of 1376.
In the year 1373 the Parliament had once raore raised loud complaints
that the rights of patrons were ever more and more infringed and
made Ulusory by Papal provisions. To a petition of the
Parliament drawn up to this effect, the King gave answer, with the Pope
that he had already sent coraraands to his ambassadors, °" p'^°'"°'°''^-
who were at that very time engaged in peace negotiations with France,
to negotiate also upon this business with the Roman Court He had
in this behalf given a commission to John Gilbert, Bishop of Bangor,
with one monk and two laymea' These commissioners proceeded
to Avignon, and treated with the representatives of Gregory XI.
for the removal of various causes of complaint on the part of the
kingdom, especially of the Papal reservations in the filling of English
Church offices, encroachments upon the electoral rights of cathedral
chapters, and the like. The commissioners received conciliatory
promises, but no distinct and definite answer. The Pope reserved
himself for further consultation with the King of England, and for a
decision at a subsequent date.°
The further negotiations thus held out in prospect were opened in
1374, in connection with the peace conferences, which were still going
on in Bruges between England and France. At the Negotiations
head of the peace embassy stood a prince of the blood, ** Bruges.
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, third son of Edward III., with
the Bishop of London, Simon Sudbury. For treating with the
commissaries of the Pope on the pending ecclesiastical questions, the
' [The monlc was one Bolton of Dun- = Walsingham, Hist. Anglicana, Ed.
holm : the lay commissioners were William Riley, i., 316.
of Barton and John of Shepey.]

143 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 4
King coraraissioned the before-named John Gilbert, Bishop of Bangor ;
and in addition John Wycliffe, Doctor of Theology ; Magister John
Guter, Dean of Segovia;' Simon of Multon, Doctor of Laws; WiUiam
of Burton, Knight; Robert of Belknap ;'' and John of Kenyngton.
The commission, dated July 26, 1374, invested the King's commissaries
with plenary powers to conclude such a treaty with the Papal nuncios
on the pending points, as should at once secure the honour of the
Church, and uphold the rights of the English Crown and realm.3
It is, on the one hand, characteristic of the views by which the
Government of England at that time was guided, that a man like
Wycliffe should have been appointed a royal commissioner for these
diplomatic transactions with the Roman Court. On the other hand, it
was a high honour for Wycliffe that he, and that too as first in order after
the Bishop of Bangor, was selected to protect the rights of the Crown
and the interests of the kingdom in a treaty with the plenipotentiaries
of the Pope. This fact shows us what confidence was felt in his
opinion and insight, in his courage and power of action, on the part
both of the Government and the country.
On the very next day after the commission had been issued,
namely, July 27, 1374, Wycliffe embarked at London for Flanders.'*
¦Wycliffe a ^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ '^™s i'l ^is lif'^ ^^ ^^^ heeu abroad.
commissioner. Bruges was at that time a great city of 200,000 inhabi
tants, which, from its important industries, its widely extended
trade, the wealth of its burghers, its municipal freedom, and its
political power, offered numerous points of attraction to foreigners;
especially at a time when an important congress was assembled within
its walls. On the side of France two royal princes, the Dukes of
Anjou and Burgundy, brothers of the reigning king, Charles V.,
^ Boehringer, Vorreformatoren, i. , 45, in opposition to the absolutistic designs
makes Guter Dean of Sechow, although of the King. — Vide Walsingham, Ed.
in all England no town orany other place Riley, 11., 174 ; Knighton, 2694.
of residence so named exists. It is rather 3 Rymer, Foedera, in., 2, f. 1007;
the city of Segovia, in Old Castile, that is Lewis, 304.
meant. The EngUsh priest, John Guter, * Under date July 31 he acknowledged
had no doubt obtained a Spanish prebend receipt of £,(>o, at the rate of twenty
through the Duke of Lancaster, who, after shillings per day paid to him out of the
the death of his first wife, Blanche of Royal Treasury for the costs of his journey
Lancaster, had married Constance, a and maintenance abroad. See Oxford
daughter of Peter the Cruel, King of editionof theWycliffeBible, i.,p.vii.,note
Castile, and afterwards put forward claims 13. It is a mere misunderstanding when
to the crown of Castile and Leon in her Charles Werner, in his History of Apolo-
right. Compare John Foxe, Acts and getic and Polemical Literature, . III.,
Monuments, Ed. Pratt and Stoughton, 1864, p. 560, speaks of Wycliffe makinga
II., 916, Appendix. journey to Rome. He was never even in
» When Richard II. ascended the Avignon, to say nothing of Rome, where
throne in 1377, Robert Belknappe was indeed he could have had no business to
chief judge on the Bench of the Common transact at this time, for it was not till
Pleas, but was deposed in 1388, and 1377 that Gregory XI. left Avignon for
banished to Ireland, for having set himself Italy.

1374-] ROYAL COMMISSIONER AT BRUGES. 143
were present, in addition to many bishops and notables of the
kingdom. As EngUsh plenipotentiaries appeared, in addition to the
Duke of Lancaster, the Bishop of London and the Earl of Salisbury,
the Pope sent in behoof of the treaty between France and England
the Archbishop of Ravenna and the Bishop of Carpentras; and
commissioned several other prelates, with full powers to negotiate
¦with England on still-pending questions of ecclesiastical right.
These nuncios were Bernard, Bishop of Pampelona; Ralph, Bishop
of Sinigaglia; and Egidius Sancho, Provost of the archiepiscopal
chapter of Valencia.' There was no lack, therefore, in Bruges of men
in high place and of great political or ecclesiastical importance, with
whom AVycliffe, as a prominent raan among the English envoys, must
have come more or less into contact in the transaction of public
business, and no doubt also in social intercourse.
We may be sure that the opportunities that he had on this occa
sion of transacting business and cultivating intercourse with Italian,
Spanish, and French dignitaries of the Church — all of Kesuitof
them men who enjoyed the confidence of the Pope and ¦'"^ ^^"^
the cardinals, were of lasting value to Wycliffe. Here he had it in
his power to take many observations on a field of view which could
not easily be laid open to his eye among his own countrymen, even
among those of them who were most conspicuous for their devotion
to Rome. For ' the Anglican Church ' (this name is no anachronism)
had -within the preceding century attained to a certain degree of
independence in regard to principles and views of ecclesiastical law,
to which the life and spirit of the Italian and Spanish Churches of that
period formed a marked contrast. Upon a personality like WycUffe,
of so much independence of mind, and already inspired with so much
zeal for the autonomy of his native Church, this residence in Bruges,
and the lengthened negotiations with the plenipotentiaries of the
Curia, must have made impressions similar to those which Dr. Martin
Luther received from his sojourn in Rome in 15 10.
But even apart from his relations to foreign notabilities, Wycliffe's
sojourn in Bruges had important consequences for hira, through the
nearer relations into which it brought hira with the Duke priendsMp
of Lancaster. This prince at that time already possessed ^^k^^^ °^
great and decisive influence upon the Governraent. He
was usually caUed 'John of Gaunt,' for he was born in Ghent, when
Edward HI., at the beginning of the French war, was in alliance
with the rich cities of Flanders, and, with his Queen PhUippa, was
I According to Bsctnes— History of I^ing Ediaard III,, p. 866 — referred to by
Lewis, p. 33.

144 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. Jv. § 4
keeping his court in that city in 1340. The prince's first titie was Eari
of Richmond, but after his marriage with Blanche, a daughter of the
Duke of Lancaster, he became, on the death of the latter, the heir of
his titie and possessions. After the death of his first wife, in 1369,
he entered into a second marriage in 1372, with Constance, the
daughter of Peter the Cruel, of CastUe and Leon, and assumed by
hereditary right the title of ' King of Castile.' But this was never
more than a title. He never himself wore a crown ; but in the fol
lowing century three of his descendants ascended the English throne,
viz., his son, his grandson, and his great-grandson — Henry IV.,
Henry V., and Henry VI. — the House of Lancaster and the Red
Rose reigning from 1399 to 1472.
Already, however, the father of this dynasty manifested ambition
enough to awaken the suspicion that he was aiming at the EngUsh crown
for himself. In military talent he stood far behind his eldest brother;
for the Black Prince was an eminent mUitary genius, whereas John of
The Duke's Gaunt was a brave swordsman, and nothing more. But
ambition. jn political and administrative capacity he was indis
putably superior to the Prince of Wales. When the latter found
himself obliged to return to England at the beginning of 1371, on
account of the obstinate disease which he had contracted in the
Spanish campaign, instead of recovering his vigour on his native
soil, he had fallen into a chronic condition of broken health and low
spirits, which unfitted him for taking any active part in the business
of government ; whilst his father, too, Edward IIL, had become old
and frail. Lancaster had known how to utilize all these circumstances
for his own ambitious ends, and had acquired since his return in the
sumraer of 1374 frora the south of France the raost decided influence
over the King, and the conduct of public affairs. The second prince
of the blood, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, had died in 1368. For the
present, indeed, Lancaster undertook only the lead of the peace nego
tiations in Bruges ; but it almost appears as if even from Flanders he
had governed both the King and the kingdom.
That it was first in Bruges that the Duke became acquainted with
Wycliffe, or entered into closer relations with hira, i^y no means r^
( jm) probable. It was he, no doubt, who was the "cause of *
''shSeto AVycliffe^ being appointed to take part in these ecclesi-
ap^tatalnt. astical negotiations. In regard, at least, to John Guter,
Dean of Segovia, who had perhaps accompanied the
Duke to the Spanish campaign in the capacity of Field-Chaplain, it
was undoubtedly to the Duke that he was indebted for his nomina
tion upon the commission, as well as for his Spanish prebend ; and it

1374-] WYCLIFFE AND LANCASTER. 145
would have been truly surprising if a statesman like the Prince — a
zealous promoter of lay government, a persistent opponent of the
influence of the EngUsh hierarchy upon the administration — had not
already for years directed his attention and his favour to Wycliffe, as
a man whose gifts and bold spirit he might be able to use for his
own political objects. I quite concur, therefore, in Pauli's conjecture '
that it was probably Lancaster himself who had brought about the
employment of AVycUffe upon a mission of so great importance. But
be this as it raay, these two men could not fail to be much in con
tact, and to have constant exchange of ideas with each other, both
on matters of business and in social intercourse, during the time that
they were occupied with the congress in Flanders. The Duke,
indeed, in the first instance, was concerned only in the transactions
¦with France, and his business with the Papal plenipotentiaries was
liraited to gi-ving his consent to the conclusions arrived at. But,
nevertheless, he stood at the head of the whole English legation, and
on this account alone, as well as by reason of his personal tendencies
and way of thinking, he could not fail to take the liveliest interest in
the course of those negotiations which bore upon the ecclesiastical
gravamina of the country ; and among the members of the ecclesias
tical commission Wycliffe was at least one of the most free from
prejudice and of the deepest insight.
A few years later we see the Duke of Lancaster step forward pub
licly as Wycliffe's patron and protector. This favour, grounded upon
personal knowledge and esteem of WycUffe, no doubt increased
during the conference at Bruges, though it could scarcely have
commenced there.
Wycliffe returned to England after the close of the congress, before
the middle of September. Neither official documents nor any con
temporary or later chronicles have come down to us respecting the
proceedings of the congress in the matter of the Church grievances
of England, although, no doubt, some papers relating to the subject
lie concealed in the archives of Rome.
We can only draw some inferences as to the course of the transac
tions from the final result In this respect, indeed, it would seem that
the negotiations between the Papal Court and England
had reached a similar issue to those between France and ^nl^uation^*
England. The chronicler of St. Albans, AValsingham,
has nothing good to say of the behaviour of the French at the peace-
congress. 'Their thoughts,' he says, 'during aU that time were-
craftily running, not on peace, but on war; they were preparing again,
1 Pauli, Geschichte von England, IV., 487.
II

146 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch.iv.§4
their old weapons and forging new ones in order to have all the
requireraents of war in readiness ; while the English had no thoughts
of this kind, accustoraed as they are not to be led by prudence and
foresight, but only to be driven like unreasoning brutes by the goad.
But no doubt they trusted everything to the wisdom of the Duke,
and, thinking that his eloquence would suffice to obtain for them the
blessings of peace, they gave themselves up to carousals and all
manner of amusements. Thus it came to pass that the English were
deceived and baffled, the congress having been broken off without
the conclusion of peace.' The congress between England and the
Curia came to a like fruitless conclusion. The representatives of
the Roman See, like the plenipotentiaries of France, appear to have
busied themselves with the refurbishing of their old weapons,, while
they were at the same time preparing new ones. The Convention
in which the congress issued was not of a kind to secure for the
future a redress of the Church grievances of which the country com
plained. England undoubtedly fared the worst in the arrangements
arrived at; for, although the Pope made some concessions upon
single points, these concessions were more apparent than real, and
consisted more in matters of detail than in general principles.
On September i, 1375, Gregory XI. addressed to the King of
England six buUs relating to this business,^ which amounted briefly
The Pope's to this — to recognise accomplished facts, and to leave
concessions, ^jjg status quo untouched. Whosoever was in actual pos
session of a Church living in England should no longer have his
right of incumbency challenged on the part of the Curia ; whosoever
had had his right to a Church office disputed by Urban V. should
at once be confirmed in the office ; benefices which the same Pope
had ' reserved,' in the event of a vacancy, should, in so far as they had
not already become vacant, be filled up by the patrons themselves ;
and all ' annates ' or first-fruits not yet paid should be remitted. In
addition, it was conceded that the Church revenues of several cardi
nals who held prebends in England should be subject to impost,
to cover the costs of the restoration of churches and other Church
edifices belonging thereto, which the holders had allowed to fall into
ruin. At first sight these appeared to be numerous and important con
cessions, but when carefully examined they resolved themselves into
very Uttie, for they all related to matters which belonged to the past.
For the future the Pope remitted nothing of his claims, not even in
' Historia Anglicana, Ed. Riley, i., = Rymer, Fcedera, vol. III., p; ii., fol.
318- 1037.

137S.] RESULTS OF THE BRUGES CONFERENCE. 147
the smallest trifle. Besides, these concessions referred merely to
single cases — they regulated only matters of detail, and left the prin
ciple entirely untouched. The bulls, it is true, effected one important
change — the Pope abandoned for the future his claim to the reser
vation of English Church livings ; but the King was also bound, on
his side, to abstain in future from conferring Church dignities by
simple royal command. But, first, the Pope herein surrendered his
claim only in consideration of a corresponding concession on the
side of the Crown; and, secondly, the concession contained no
security whatever that the electoral rights of cathedral chapters
should remain thenceforward untampered with. And yet this had
been one of the chief points aimed at by the country, as represented
by Parliament, to obtain ecclesiastical reform. That this decisive
point had not been dealt with by the treaty of 1375 is noted with
censure by Walsingham himself, notwithstanding his disposition to
favour the Church.'
Whether the other raembers of the ecclesiastical commission had
fulfiUed their duty, may be fairly asked ; indeed, in regard to Bishop
John Gilbert, who stood at the head of it, it is a highly
. -r- ,. ' , , ,.,,'. ? , ¦^ Promotion of
Significant fact that eleven days after the drawing up of the Bishop
above bulls, September 12, 1375, he was promoted by
the Pope to a more important bishopric. He had plainly lost nothing
of Gregory's favour by his conduct at Bruges. Hitherto he had been
Bishop of Bangor ; his diocese embraced the most distant north-west
comer of the principality of Wales. But now, when the Bishop of
London, Simon Sudbury, was made Archbishop of Canterbury, and
the Bishop of Hereford, William Courtenay, was promoted to London,
Gilbert was nominated to the See of Hereford.
The ' concordat ' which had been concluded between England and
the Pope had little enough of importance. It would have been
incomparably better to advance on the same path which had been
trodden in 1343 and 1350, and to stem the evils of the
Church by raeans of national legislation, than to attempt Parliament,"
to find a remedy for them by diplomatic transactions
with the Papal Court. In the very next spring it became manifest
that the complaints of the country were by no means silenced. More
loudly and boldly than ever did the Parliament declare the national
grievances, when it assembled in the end of April, 1376 ; and that the
representatives of the country expressed the true feeUng of the people
is evident from the fact that this ParUament lived long afterwards in the
grateful memory of the nation, under the name of the Good Parliament.^
^Historia Anglicana, Ed. Riley,!., ' Quod bonum merito vocabatur. — Wal-
317. singham, i., 324.

148 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 4
The Parliaraent represented to the King, in a lengthy memorial,
how oppressively and perniciously the encroachments of the Roman
See operated.' The aggressions of the Pope were to blame for the
Memorial to impoverishment of the kingdom ; for the suras paid to
the King. j^jj^ £qj. jj^g Church dignities amounted to five times
as much as the whole produce of the taxes which accrued to the
King. There was no prince in Christendom so rich as to have in his
treasury even the fourth part of the sum which thus iniquitously was
taken out of the kingdom. Moreover, the Church brokers, in the
dissolute city of Avignon, promoted for money many ' caitiffs ' utterly
destitute of learning and character, to livings of one thousand marks
annual income ; whUe a Doctor of Theology or of Canon Law must
content himself with a salary of twenty marks. Hence the decay of
learning in the country. And when foreigners, yea, enemies of the
country, were holders of English Church livings, without ever seeing
their parishioners or giving themselves any trouble about them, did
they not bring the service of God into contempt, and do more injury
to the Church than was done by Jews or Saracens ? The law of the
Church prescribed that Church livings should be conferred and held
from pure love, without solicitation or payraent; and reason and
faith, as well as law, demanded that Church endowments which had
been founded from motives of devotion, should be bestowed for the
glory of God and in accordance with the founder's intention, and not
upon foreigners from araong the midst of our enemies. God had
entrusted the care of the sheep to the Holy Father, the Pope, to be
pastured, and not to be shorn. But if lay patrons witnessed the
avarice and simony of the churchmen, they would learn from their
example to sell the offices to which they have the right of collation,
to men who would devour the people like beasts of prey — ^just as the
Son of God was sold to the Jews, who thereupon put Him to death.
A considerable portion of the complaint of Parliament was directed
against the Papal Collector, = a French subject, who lived in the
country together with foreigners hostile to the King, and was ever
on the look-out for English offices and dignities, and seeking to spy
' Considerable extracts from this peti- him by Parliament applies to Garnier in
tion, although not in a satisfactory ar- every particular of chief "moment. He is
rangement, have fortunately been pre- a French subject, he has a head office in
served, and were printed by Foxe in the London, and has already been employed
Acts and Monuments, Ed. Pratt and in London for a series of years. The
Stoughton, II., 786. What Lewis com- only objection that can be taken is that
municated frora other MSS. is not free Garnier's commission in England dated
from errors. only from February, 1372, so that in the
° I do not for a moment doubt that the spring of 1376 he had only been four
Papal Collector here several times named years, not five, in the kingdom. But this
was the same Arnold Garnier already difference is too small to shake the identity
known to us, for the description given of which I have assumed.

1376] THE 'GOOD PARLIAMENT.' 149
out the secrets of the kingdom, to its great damage. This Receiver,
who was at the same time the collector of Peter's Pence, The Papai
had a great house in London, with clerks and ofiicers, ^«o«i™i'-
as if it were the custom-house of a prince, and from thence he was
accustomed to send to the Pope about twenty thousand marks a year.
This same man, in that year, had, for the first time, put forward a
claim to the first-fruits of all newly confirmed livings, a claim which
had hitherto been limited to offices which had become vacant in the
Papal Court. Even if the kingdom at that moment had as great a
superfluity of gold as it ever possessed, the Pope's collectors and the
agents of the cardinals would soon enough carry off the whole of this
treasure to foreign parts. As a remedy for this evil, it was suggested
that a law be laid down, that no Receiver or agent should take up his
residence in England upon pain of life and limb, and that upon a
like penalty no Englishman should become such a Receiver or
agent in behalf of others who were residing in Rome. For the better
investigation of the facts, especially in relation to the Papal Receiver,
inasmuch as the whole clergy were dependent upon the favour or
disfavour of the latter, and would not wiUingly run the risk of
drawing upon themselves his displeasure, it was suggested that it
would conduce to the end in view, if the Lords and Commons of the
present Parliament would call before them the priest of St. Botolph's,
John Strensale, resident in Holborn. He could, if strictly required
to do so, give them much information, as he had for raore than five
years been in the service of the said Receiver as clerk.
It was further set forth, that cardinals and other prelates, some of
them, it is true, natives of England, but most of them foreigners who
resided in Rome, were occasionally possessed of the
best prebends in England. One cardinal was Dean of in English
York, another of Salisbury, a third of Lincoln ; another
again was Archdeacon of Canterbury, one of Durham, one of Suffolk,
and so on ; and these cardinals caused to be remitted to them in
foreign parts a yearly revenue of twenty thousand marks. The Pope
would in time hand over to enemies of the kingdom all the lands
belonging to the prebends referred to, if he continued to deal as
arbitrarily with the kingdom and the regalia as he had hitherto
done. AVhen a bishopric became vacant by death or otherwise, he
would translate frora four to five other bishops, in order to obtain
from each of them the first year's fruits ; ' and the same sort of thing
' We had matter-of-fact proof of this Simon of Sudbury, to be Archbishop ; the
above. After the death of Archbishop Bishop of Hereford, William Courtenay,
William Whittlesey, in 1374, Gregory to be Bishop of London ; and the Bishop
XI. nominated the Bishop of London, of Bangor, John Gilbert, to be Bishop of

150 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 4
took place with other Church dignities in the realm. As to the abbeys
and convents, a loud complaint was made that all those of them
which had hitherto possessed the right of free election of their own
superiors had been deprived of this right by the usurpation of the
Pope, who clairaed it for himself Last of all, and to come back again
to the point of finance, the petition of Parliament called attention to
this fact, that the Pope was in the act of raising subsidies from the
English clergy in order to buy off Frenchmen who were taken
prisoners by the English, for the purpose of aiding him in carrying
on wars of his own in Lombardy. In addition to all this, the English
clergy were required to bear the cost of every mission which the
Pope sent to the country ; and all this is done purely out of love to
the kingdom and to EngUsh gold.
Such was the long array of grievances. Parliament emphaticaUy
assured the King that they brought them forward solely from an
honest zeal for the honour of the Holy Church ; for all the troubles
and disasters which had recently befallen the land were only just
judgments for the sin of allowing the Church to become so deformed
and corrupt. Great transgressions had always been followed by mis
fortune and ruin, and would always have the like consequences. Let
measures, therefore, be devised to provide a remedy, and this all the
more since the current year was the jubUee of the fifty years' reign of
the King, and therefore a year of grace and joy.' For greater grace
and joy for the kingdom there could not be, and none which would
be more well-pleasing at once to God and His Church than that such
a remedy should be provided by the King.
Some positive proposals were made touching the ways and means
of accomplishing the end in view. The first step must be to send
two letters to the Pope, the one in Latin under the King's
redress of Seal, the Other in French under the seals , of the high
grievances. jjobiUty, pressing for redress in the matters mentioned,
a course which had on a former occasion been taken at the instigation
of Parliament.^ Further, it was pressed upon the attention of the
Govemment that they raight renew all those ordinances which had
already been published against provisions and reservations on the
side of Rome. It would also be advisable to decree that no money
should be taken out of the kingdom by exchange or otherwise, on
Hereford. On this occasion, therefore, 1376 was therefore exactly the fiftieth of
he translated at the least three bishops, his long reign. It was a happy thought
and possessed himself of the first year's that the King's jubilee could not be better
revenues of four newly-filled sees. celebrated than by carrying out the
" Edward III. succeeded to the crown necessary ecclesiastical reforms.
after the dethronement of his father, " In May, 1343.
Edward II., January 23, 1327. The year

1376, 7-] PARLIAMENT, KING, AND POPE. 151
pain of imprisonment. What measures, in addition, were proposed
to be taken against the traffic of the Papal collectors have already
been mentioned.
To this representation the King sent for reply that he had already
on previous occasions provided a suflficient remedy by legislation
for the evils complained of; he was, besides, at that very time in
communication with the Papal See upon the subject, and would
continue to make such coraraunications from time to ,jy^^ King's
time until a remedy was secured. This answer sounded reply.
lukewarm enough, especially when contrasted with the petition of
ParUament, which was so warmly expressed, and adduced at length
so many grounds in support of its prayer. But though the patriotic
zeal of the latter must have been considerably cooled by this royal
decision, the ParUament ofthe next year, January, 1377, took up the
thread again at the point where the former Parliaraent had suffered
it to drop ; and, for the sake of connection, this incident may as well
be anticipated here. The Commons, in 1377, presented a petition
to the Iving to the effect that the statutes against ' provisions,' which
had from time to time been passed, should be strictly carried into
execution, and that measures should be adopted against those
cardinals who had obtained ' reservations ' for themselves in the
two provinces of Canterbury and York, with the clause anteferri,^
to the annual value of from twenty to thirty thousand gold crowns.
They also renewed their complaints against the Pope's Collector.
That office had always previously been held by Englishmen, but
now it was in the hands of a Frenchman, who lived in London and
kept a large establishment, which cost the clergy three hundred
pounds a-year ; and this man sent every year to the Pope twenty
thousand marks. It would be a means of resisting these innovations
and usurpations if all foreigners, so long as the wars lasted, were
driven out of the country, and if all Enghshmen were prohibited,
upon pain of outlawry, to farm these revenues for the Papal Court,
or to make remittances of money to the same without a special
Ucence.^ The proposals of the Good Parliament of 1376, the echoes of
which we stUl catch in 1377, are of such a character ^ ,^„ ,
¦J ' " . Wycliffe's
that I am bold to maintain that they afford strong evi- share in the
dence of the influence of Wycliffe. In proof of this I
point first of aU to the circumstance that the proceedings of the Papal
I [Anieferri, i.e., 'to have the prefer- the same benefices." See Foxe II., p.
ence or precedence of all other "reserva- 916.]
tions" which might have been granted on " Foxe, Acts, etc., 11., 789, from the
royal archives.

152 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch. iv. § 4
Collector of that time were one of the Parliament's chief subjects of
complaint. This collector was certainly no other than that Arnold
Garnier to whose doings and traffickings AVycliffe's tract of the year
1377 refers. Further, I bring into view the fact that in the petition
presented by Parliament various national calamities, including not
only the rapid impoverishment of the country, but also famine and
disease among men and cattie, are attributed to the raoral disorders
which had spread and prevaUed in the Church in consequence of
the Papal usurpations, and of the blameworthy negligence of the
Government and the people.' Now, exactiy this thought so re
peatedly recurs in different writings of Wycliffe that I must designate
it one of his favourite ideas. But independently of this, it is much
raore natural to think that an idea so peculiar was thrown out at
first by sorae personage of mark, and afterwards adopted by a whole
body, than that a political body first gave expression to it, and that
it was afterwards taken up and appropriated at second-hand by one
of the greatest thinkers of the age. Add to all this yet another
circumstance, viz., the incident already mentioned of the Bishop of
Rochester,'' in a solemn sitting of Parliament, casting in Dr.
Wycliffe's face the accusation that his Theses had already been
condemned by the Roman Court. This incident cannot possibly
have occurred in an earlier Parliament than that of 1376, for the
excited language of the Bishop could not have been uttered after the
Papal censure of Wycliffe's nineteen propositions had been pubUshed
to the world. The speaker's intention evidently was to make pubUc
a fact which up to that time had remained secret. Now, the censure
of Gregory XI. was formally signed on May 22, 1377. Accordingly
it may be thought possible that the scene referred to occurred in that
Parliaraent which asserabled January 27, 1377, the year of Edward
III.'s death; and in support of this view the consideration would
be of weight, that at this date the information of what had been
concluded in Rome against Wycliffe might have reached the ear of
a member of the EngUsh episcopate. But this conjecture does not
bear examination. For the language of the Bishop of Rochester
could not well have been made use of after Wycliffe's summons to
appear before the English prelates, and this summons was issued
February 19, 1377. Various circumstances, therefore, make probable
the supposition that the reproach of the Bishop against Wycliffe was
' Tit. 94. Against the usurpations of who became Bishop of Rochester in 1363,
the Pope, as being the cause of all the and was still in office at the accession of
plagues, murrains, famine, and poverty of Richard II. , in 1377. Compare Wal-
the realm. Comp. Tit. 100. singham. Hist. Anglic, Ed. Riley, i., 299,
" This must have been Thomas Trillek, 332.

1376, 7-] HIS INFLUENCE ON PARLIAMENT. 153
uttered in some sitting of the Parliament of 1376. This date need
not be thought too early for the Bishop's knowledge of what was
then going on in Rome against AVycliffe ; for it may well be presumed
that a step such as that which Gregory XI. took in the buUs of
May 22, 1377, must have originated in a suggestion from England
made a considerable time before that date, and must have been in
preparation in Rome during an interval of considerable length. All
this warrants the supposition that AVycliffe himself was a member
of the Good Parliament of 1376, by virtue, we may conjecture, of
royal summons. And presupposing this fact, we do not doubt for
a moment that he was one of the raost influential personalities in
the raixed affairs of Church and State which formed so conspicuous
a part of the business of that Parliament. If, at an earlier period,
he had shared strongly in the outburst of national feeling, and of the
constitutional spirit which was so characteristic of England in the
fourteenth century, still more had he become, in the course of years,
one of the leaders of the nation in the path of ecclesiastical progress.
This Parliament, indeed, was the culminating point of Wycliffe's
influence upon the nation. From that date it rather began to
decline, at least in extent of surface, or, so to say, in breadth. On
the other hand, the effects which he produced from that time went
deeper down into the heart of the English people than they had ever
done before.
There was still another direction in which the Parliament of 1376
employed its effort for the improvement of public affairs. In 137 1,
as before stated, under the influence of a prevailing anti-clerical
sentiment, the representatives of the nation had brought forward
and carried into effect a proposition that the highest ooaiition
offices of the State should be entrusted to laymen, LaiofstOT
instead of to bishops and prelates. But in the course of vaxty.
years there had spread a marked discontent with the manner in which
the Government was conducted. King Edward III. had become
almost worn out with old age. Since the death of his queen, PhUippa
(1369), one of her ladies, Alice Ferrers, had obtained the royal
favour in an extraordinary degree, and had not only taken a con
spicuous position in the Court, but had also unduly meddled in
many affairs of State. The influence of this lady the Duke of
Lancaster had now turned to his own account, in order to acquire
for himself a preponderating weight with his royal father in the
business of government He was credited, indeed, with designs
of a much wider reach. The Prince of Wales, diseased and near
his end as he was, was still able to perceive the danger, and, in spite

154 WYCLIFFE IN PUBLIC LIFE. [ch.iv. §4
of his forced retirement from the business of State, took into his
hand the threads of an intrigue by which the succession to the Crown
should be secured to his son Richard, a boy only nine years of age,
and the supporters of his younger brother, John of Gaunt, should
be thwarted in their designs. He found means to induce the House
of Commons and the clergy to form a coalition against the dominant
party of the Duke of Lancaster.
Foremost in the management of the affair was Peter de la Mere,
Chamberlain of the Earl of March, a nobleraan who, in virtue of the
hereditary right of his countess, had the nearest presumptive claim
to the Throne. This officer of the Court was, at the same time.
Speaker of the House of Commons. Upon occasion of the voting
of subsidies, the representatives of the counties complained, through
their Speaker, ofthe bad condition ofthe financial admini-
suooessof the stration, and even of embezzlement, fraudulent under
charges, and extortion. The persons who were accused
and convicted of these malpractices were the Treasurer, Lord
Latimer, a confidant of the Duke of Lancaster, and Alice Perrers
herself The former was put in prison, the latter banished from
the Court. The Duke himself, who was the party really aimed at,
no man was bold enough expressly to name ; on the other hand,
it was proposed, evidently with the view of preventing further mischief,
to strengthen the Privy Council by the addition of frora ten to twelve
lords and prelates, who should always be near the person of the
King, so that without the assent of six, or at least four of their
nuraber, no royal ordinance could be carried into effect. This
decisive action of ParUament against the party of the Duke of
Lancaster was so rauch after the- nation's own heart, that it was
principally for this service that the Parliaraent received the honourable
epithet of ' The Good.' ' While this raovement was in progress,
Edward the Black Prince died, June 8, 1376 — held in equally high
esteem as a warrior and as a man of upright and amiable character.
The last care of the deceased prince had been to secure the right
of his son and heir ; and the House of Commons, sharing the same
soUcitude, presented an urgent petition to the aged King that he
¦w-ould now be pleased to present to the Parliaraent his grandson,
Richard of Bordeaux, as heir-apparent to the Throne ; which was
done on June 25.
But scarcely was Parliaraent prorogued at the beginning of July,
when all the measures which it had originated were again brought
" Lowth, The Life of William of Wykeham, p. 81. Pauh, Geschichte von England,
4. 489-

1376, M HIS INFLUENCE ON PARLIAMENT. 155
to nothing; the Duke of Lancaster once more seized the helm of
the State ; Lord Latimer recovered again his share in
public affairs ; and another friend of the Duke, Earl power of
Percy, was named Lord Marshal. Even Alice Perrers ™°°'° ^''
came back again to Court. The cabal completely surrounded the
aged King. The leaders of the party of the deceased Prince of
AVales were compelled to feel the revenge of -the small but powerful
Court party. Peter de la Mere, Speaker of the House of Commons,
was sent to prison, where he remained for nearly two years. The
Bishop of Winchester was impeached, and banished twenty miles
from the Court, and the temporalities of his see were sequestrated.
The question arises, what share AA''ycliffe had in the efforts of the
Good Parliament to secure the rightful succession to the throne, and
to purge the Court as well as the administration from -wyouffe and
unworthy elements. Assuming that he was a member ""^^ poutios.
of that Parliament, and co-operated influentially in its ecclesiastico-
political proceedings, he could not have remained entirely without
a share in its endeavours to secure the succession to the throne, and
to reform the Court and the Governraent. He must have taken
his place either on one side or the other. It is true that we hear
nothing definite from hiraself upon the subject, nor very express
testimony concerning it from any other quarter. But we may be
sure at least of as much as this, that he could not in any case have
played a prominent part in the effort to drive the favourites of the
Duke of Lancaster frora the Court, and to deprive them of all influ
ence in State affairs ; for had this been the case, the Duke would
certainly not have lent hira his powerful protection only half a year
later (Febmary 19, 1377). But, on the other hand, it is scarcely
supposable that Wycliffe would join the party of Lord Latimer and
his colleagues ; especially as in this business the interests at stake
were of that moral and legal character for which, in accord with his
whole tone of thought, he always cherished a warm sympathy. , These
considerations taken together lead me to the opinion that while
Wycliffe did not actually oppose himself to the majority of the
Parliament who laboured to effect a purification of the Court and
Government, he took no prominent part in the discussion of the
subject ; a conclusion sustained by the fact that, as a general rule,
he was accustomed and called upon to take a personally active share
only in matters of an ecclesiastico-political character.

CHAPTER V.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE HIERARCHY AGAINST
WYCLIFFE IN i.'i'n AND 1378.
I. — Wycliffe summoned before th« Convocation.
AT the very time when WycUffe stood in the highest estimation
of his countrymen, and had reached a position of the greatest
influence, a storm burst suddenly upon his head.
As a resolute, far-sighted, and experienced patriot, he possessed the
confidence of the nation, as well as the favour of the King. Edward
III. had already bestowed upon him more than one pre-
dhurch^ bend, and, what was still more important as a mark of
pre ermen s. j^.^ royal grace, had, as we have shown good grounds
for believing, repeatedly summoned hira to serve in Parliament as a
man thoroughly conversant with ecclesiastical affairs. How the men
of Oxford had previously distinguished him by office and honours
has been already related. After being Seneschal of Merton College,
we have seen him in the position of Master of Balliol ; and in 1361
he was nominated by this college to the parish of Fillingham. Seven
years later he exchanged this parish for that of Ludgarshall, in Buck
inghamshire, for no other reason, doubtless, than that the latter was
situated in the neighbourhood of the University. On November 12,
1368, Wycliffe entered upon this pastoral charge. In 1375 he ob
tained a prebend at Aust, a place romantically situated on the south
bank of the Severn, and connected with the endowed church of West
bury, near Bristol, where, in 1288, a foundation in honour of the Holy
Trinity had been instituted for a dean and several canons.' It was
not a parish church, but a chapel ; the prebend was evidently regarded
merely as a sinecure and place of honour, the holder being at Uberty
to appoint a substitute to read the masses required by the terms of
the foundation. Wycliffe, however, seeras to have resigned the pre-
' Vaughan states that it was the King from documentary evidence, is that Ed-
who presented him to this prebend (;l/oK(7- ward III. confirmed the nomination,
graph, p. 180), but all that is certain, November 6, 1375.

1374-1377-1 WYCLIFFE NO PLURALIST. 157
bend immediately after obtaining it, for in November of the same
year, 1375, as appears frora an entry in the rolls of Chancery, the
prebend was bestowed upon a certain Robert of Farrington.'
His nomination to the rectory of Lutterworth, in the county of
Leicester, appears, from documentary evidence, to have been an
expression of the royal favour. The patronage of this Rector of
parish did not, indeed, belong properly to the Crown, Lutterworth.
but to the noble family of Ferrars of Groby, the owners of the land.
But as the heir. Lord Henry Ferrars, was still a minor, the right of
collation to the existing vacancy devolved on the Crown, and the
King presented John AA'ycliffe in April, 1374.^ We shaU return to
this subject in the sequel. At present we only remark further that
AA'ycliffe appears to have resigned his previous charge at Ludgarshall
immediately upon his being appointed to the Rectory of Lutterworth.
At least, as early after that appointment as May, 1376, a certain
AViUiam Newbold is named as the parish priest of that village. 3 On
more than one occasion Wycliffe expressed himself strongly on
the subject of the pluraUties held by many priests and prelates;
and he had good reason for doing so. The abuse raust have gone
very far, when even a Pope spoke of the accumulation of Church
offices in one and the same person as a mischief to the Church, as
Urban V. did in a bull of May, 1365 ; in consequence of which
Papal censure, a sort of statistical inquiry was set on foot, by requir
ing of every beneficed raan to raake an official return to his bishop
of all the different Church livings which he held.
Frora such a return made to the Bishop of London by WiUiara
AVykeham, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, but at that time Arch
deacon of London, it appears that he was the holder of -wyoUffeno
not fewer than twelve Uvings, some of them of very con- I'luraust.
siderable value, whereas he was not in a position to serve one of these
spiritual offices in his own person, being obliged to live continually
at Court in the capacity of the King's private secretary. ¦> This single
example speaks loudly enough of the state of things. Wycliffe, there
fore, was justified, as matters stood, in strongly censuring such an
abuse; but we should have been compeUed to chaUenge his per-
1 Rotuli patentes 49, Edw. III., i, m. preceding nomination had been made by
II. Wycliffe Bible, Pref. p. -vii. King Edward, by reason of the minority
' That this was the history of the affair of Lord Ferrars. Vide entry in Lewis,
is made certain by an entry in the register p. 44, with note ; and in Vaughan, Mono-
of the see of Lincoln, in the place where graph, p. 180, with note.
it records the nomination of Wycliffe's 3 According to entry in the Registrum
successor in the rectory. On this occa- Bokyngham of Lincoln.
sion Lord Henry Ferrars exercised per- ¦• Lowth, Life of William of Wykeham,
sbnally his right of patronage ; and it 1758, p. 31.
was stated at the same time that the last

158 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WYCLIFFE. [ch.v.§i
sonal moral right to complain of it, it he himself had been guilty of
the same ' practice. And doubtless his opponents in this case would
not have failed to cast in his teeth the reproach, that he blamed in
other men what he aUowed in himself But he never so acted.
Never in any instance did he hold, at the same time, two offices
involving the cure of souls.
But all this disinterestedness could not protect him from the oppo
sition of the hierarchy. In the course of a single year, 1377, he was
twice summoned to appear before the spiritual tribunals;
™°the™ in the first instance, before Convocation, and in the
y. second, before several prelates, as coraraissioners of the
Pope himself The reason of his summons before Convocation, and
the subjects on which he was required to answer, are involved in much
obscurity. We find nowhere any documentary information as to the
doctrines for which AVycliffe was required to answer before that tri
bunal. On the other hand, we have some information of the course
which the proceedings took on the occasion of this appearance of
Wycliffe before his spiritual judges, from which the conclusion is
plain that the hostile step now taken against him was closely connected
with the political partisanship of the day. The prelates were em
bittered against the Duke of Lancaster, who was labouring with all his
might to put an end to their political influence. For the moment
they were no match for him in the political arena ; and all the more
readily on this account they seized the opportunity of indirectly
humbling hira in the ecclesiastical province, in the person of a theo
logian who stood in intii-nate relations to his person.
The Parliaraent opened January 27, 1377. A few days later, on
February 3, the Convocation — the clerical parliament — also met.
Convocation and Summoned Wycliffe before them. The Bishop of
of 1377. London, WiUiam Courtenay, was no doubt the instigator
of this proceeding. He was a younger son of the Earl of Devon ; a
great-grandson of Edward I. on his grandmother's side, closely related
to several famUies of the high nobility, a raan of iraperious nature
and arrogant, hierarchical spirit. He had been promoted, in 1375
from Hereford to the important see of London, a position which he
maintained with far more energy than his predecessor, Siraon Sud
bury, now Archbishop of Canterbury. The nobleman and the hier
arch were united in him ; and he represented in his own person the
coalition of the nobiUty with the prelacy in opposing the ambitious
designs of Lancaster.
In view of the fact that political rather than ecclesiastical motives
had to do with the citation of Wycliffe, the Duke considered it his

1.177-] CONVOCATION IN ST. PAUL'S. 159
imperative duty to afford him his powerful protection. He resolved
to accompany him in person to the assembly of the pre
lates. On Thursday, February 19, 1377, the Convocation summoned to
assembled in St. Paul's, and at AVycliffe's side appeared ^*' ^'''^^'^'
the Duke of Lancester and Lord Henry Percy, the Grand Marshal
of England, followed by a band of armed men, and attended by
several friends of the learned divine, in particular, by five bachelors
of divinity of the five Mendicant Orders, who, by the Duke's desire,
were to stand forward in case of need as the advocates of Wycliffe.'
The Lord Marshal led the way, to clear a passage through the crowd
for the Duke and AA^ycUffe ; but even with his aid it proved a difficult
matter to get into the cathedral and to press through the church to
the Lady Chapel, where the bishops were assembled. This, of course,
was not effected without a considerable amount of disturbance in the
sacred building, upon which Courtenay declared to Lord Percy that
if he had known beforehand the style in which he was going to play
the master within the church, he would have barred his entrance.
AA^hereupon the Duke of Lancaster answered the Bishop, in a rage,
that he was resolved to be master there, in spite of the bishops.
After much pushing and hustling, they forced their way at last into
the Chapel, where dukes and barons were seated with the Archbishop
and other prelates. Here, then, stood WycUffe before scene tn the
his judges, awaiting his examination — a tall, thin figure, cathearai.
clad in a long, light gown of black, with a girdle about his body ; his
head, adorned with a full, flowing beard, exhibiting features keen and
sharply cut, his eye clear and penetrating, his lips firmly closed, in
token of resolution — the whole man wearing an aspect of lofty earnest
ness, and replete with dignity and character.^
The Grand Marshal now turned to Wycliffe, and requested hira to
be seated. ' He had need to rest himself, for he would have many
questions to answer.' 'No ! ' exclaimed the Bishop of London, beside
' This last circumstance Foxe (Acts And we have no good reason to doubt
and Monuments, II. , p. 800, Ed. Pratt the fact as stated by Foxe, especially as
and Stoughton) takes from the MS. he does not say that Wycliffe himself had
chronicle of a monk of St. Albans, which associated these four friars with him for
was lent to him by Archbishop Parker, his defence, but that the Duke had re-
and from which he derived the whole quired them to accompany him to the
detailed account of the incident. More tribunal ; and of Lancaster it is well
recent writers passed over the circum- known that he was as pronounced a
stance in silence, after Lewis had main- friend of the Mendicant Orders as he was
tained that it is in the highest degree a sworn enemy of the prelates.
improbable that the Mendicant Friars " This description of the personal
should have undertaken the defence of a appearance of Wycliffe is taken from
man who had exposed their superstitions several portraits of undoubted originality
and immoral practices. But this last still existing, all agreeing in the main.
assumption touching Wycliffe's relations [See note on Wycliffe's Portraits in the
to the friars at this date rests upon error. preface to this present volume.]

l6o PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WYCLIFFE. [ch.v. §i
himself with rage ; Wycliffe must not be seated there ; it was neither
lawful nor becoming that when summoned to answer before his judges
he should sit during his examination — he must stand ! The dispute
between them on this point became so violent as to end in the use of
abusive language on both sides, by which the raultitude of people
who witnessed the scene became greatly excited. And now the Duke
struck in, assailing the Bishop with angry words, the Bishop paying
him back in full with taunts and insults. The Duke, finding himself
overmatched in this line, passed to the use of threats, and declared
that he would chastise not only the Bishop of London, but all the
prelates of England, for their arrogance. To Courtenay, in particular,
he said : ' You talk boastfully of your family, but they will be in no
condition to help you ; they will have enough ado to protect them
selves.' To which the Bishop replied, that if he might be bold enough
to speak the truth, he placed his trust neither in his famUy nor in any
other raan, but singly and alone in God. Hereupon the Duke whis
pered to the person who stood nearest to hira, that he would sooner
drag the Bishop out of the church by the hair of his head than put
up with such an affront at his hand. But this was not spoken in so
low a voice but that several citizens of London overheard it. They
were highly incensed, and cried out that they would never consent to
see their Bishop so shamefully handled ; they would rather lose their
lives than he should be seized by the hair.
As the business, before it was well commenced, had degenerated
into a violent quarrel and tumult, the sitting of the court was
Popular suspended before nine o'clock in the forenoon. The
commotions. Duke and the Lord Marshal withdrew with WycUffe,
without the latter having spoken a single word. But the citizens of
London, who regarded themselves as insulted in the person of their
Bishop, were still raore enraged when, on the same day, a motion was
made in Parliament that the government of the city should no longer
be left in the hands of the Mayor, but should be handed over to a
royal commissioner, the imprisoned Lord Latimer. Thus a menace
to the municipal hberties and self-government of the capital was added
to the affront offered to their Bishop. No wonder that the wrath of
the citizens found vent for itself in action as well as in word. On
the following day they held a great meeting to deliberate upon the
double wrong which had been done them — the imperiUing of their
autonoray, and the insult to their Bishop. At the same moment it
came to their ears that the Lord Marshal had imprisoned one of the
citizens in his own house in the heart of the city ; they rushed
instantly to arras they stormed the house of the Marshal, and set at

1377.] TUMULTS IN LONDON. l6l
liberty their imprisoned fellow-citizen. They then searched the house
for Lord Percy himself, and not finding him there, rushed off to the
mansion of the Duke of Lancaster in the Savoy, where they thought
they should find both the lords. But they were a second time dis
appointed ; and to make amends, the crowd vented their rage partly
upon a priest, whom they mortally wounded on their way back to the
city, and partly upon the Duke's coat of arms, which they had pulled
down from his palace, and now hung up in a public place of the city
reversed, in token that the Duke was a traitor. They would even
have demolished Lancaster's palace had not Bishop Courtenay him
self interposed, and entreated thera to return to quietness and good
order.' The Princess of AVales, also, widow of the Black Prince, and
mother of Richard, the young heir to the throne, came forward to
mediate between the Duke and the citizens. A reconciliation was
at length effected, in which the Duke consented that the Bishop of
AA^nchester, who had been banished in disgrace from the Court, and
Peter de la Mere, formerly Speaker of the House of Commons, who
was still in prison, should be brought to trial before their peers ; while
on his side the Duke obtained from the citizens the concession that
the present Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city should be replaced
by others. And further, as the instigators of the riot, and the circu
lators of abusive rhymes against the Duke could not be found, it was
agreed, in satisfaction for these wrongs, that a colossal wax candle
should be bought at the expense of the city, and carried in solemn
procession, with the Duke's arras attached to it, to St. Paul's, and
there kindled before the image of the Virgin Mary.^
The citation of AVycliffe before Convocation had thus ended in a
totally unexpected manner. Wycliffe hiraself had never opened his
raouth. The incident seems to have passed away without affecting
him personally in any way. But the scene which took place in the
cathedral, and the popular uproar which resulted from Results of the
it, brought the already high-pitched irritation between citation.
Lancaster and the English bishops to an open rupture, in which
Wycliffe was by no means the chief person engaged. To AVycliffe
himself it must have been a source of sincere pain that he should
have been the occasion of such a scene, and that, too, in a consecrated
place. It would certainly have been more agreeable to him, had he
been allowed to answer to the accusations which were to be laid
against him. But who will hold him responsible for the fact that his
person was made use of for ulterior objects, both by his enemies and
' Walsingham, I., 325. ' Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 11., 804.
1 Comp. Walsingham, i., 325.
12

l62 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WYCLIFFE. [ch. v. § 2
his friends ? In citing him before Convocation, the prelates wished
to strike a blow, in his person, at the Duke ; while the Duke took up
the gauntlet as though thrown down to him, glad to have found an
opportunity of humbling the Bishop of London and the English
prelates as a body. But that the citizens were exasperated against the
Duke on account of his doings in St. Paul's, was no proof that they
were also opposed to Wycliffe and his case. Within less than a year
afterwards, they espoused his interest in the most earnest way ; but I
am not disposed to lay stress upon this, as the fact might easily be
attributed to the fickleness of the raultitude. More weight is due to
the circumstance that the sole cause which roused so powerfully the
feelings of the citizens was partly the heinous affront offered to their
Bishop, and partly their alarm for the safety of their municipal rights
and privileges ; and neither the one nor the other of these causes of
offence can with reason be laid to the charge of Wycliffe.
2. — Papal Bulls against Wycliffe.
Although the citation of Wycliffe before Convocation had been
entirely without effect, so far as regarded his own person, there was no
abandonment of the designs of his Church adversaries' against him on
that account. The political friends and patrons of the man were too
powerful to allow of the prelates carrying out their wishes for his
humiliation. His enemies therefore had recourse to the Papal Court,
in order to crush him by means of the highest authority
-W-ycliffe .
accused in existing in the Catholic Church. No doubt the first
steps in this direction had been taken some considerable
time before this, and the occurrence in St. Paul's would now afford an
opportunity for pushing the matter to a climax.
Who were the principal accusers of Wycliffe in Rome ? John
Foxe's answer to the question is, that they were some English bishops,
who coUected articles of his and sent them to the Pope.' But since
Lewis's time it has been regarded as pretty well established that it
was the monk party, and especially the Mendicant Orders, who
appeared in the Curia against him.^ We agree with Foxe. The
assumption that, so early as the period now before us, a controversy
had already broken out between Wycliffe and these Orders can only
spring from a confusion of dates. Even had such been the case, it
was not single Orders and their representatives who would have been
recognised as competent public accusers in matters of doctrine, but
• Acts and Monuments (Pratt and - Lewis, 46 ; Shirley, Fasc. Zizan.,
Stoughton), vol. in., p. 4. x.xvii. ; Bohringer, Wycliffe, SZ-

'377-1 FIVE PAPAL BULLS. 163
only the bishops of the English Church. AVe find, in point of fact,
that AVycliffe himself considered, not the monks, but the bishops, as
the parties who had agitated for a condemnation of his doctrine in
Rome.' The Anglican Episcopate, therefore, is, in our opinion, to be
regarded as the prime mover of the proceedings of the Roman Court
against AVycliffe, as an alleged teacher of heresy ; and they took care
tp prepare and manage the net in which they hoped to entangle him
with such skill and precaution, as to raake sure that the man whom
they dreaded, and who had hitherto been shielded by such powerful
protectors, should not be able to escape. They had collected the
requisite number of theological propositions which Wycliffe had
publicly propounded, either in lectures and disputations delivered in
the University, or in his published -writings, the dangerous tendency
of which, menacing the well-being of Church and State, raust, they
deemed, be manifest to every eye. But it was also pf importance so
to weave and intertwine the meshes of the net, that the game should
be snared, and finally secured. It seemed that this difficult problem
had been skilfully solved ; for no fewer than five bulls were issued on
one day, all aimed at one and the same point. On The five
May 22, 1377, Gregory XL, who had shortly before Papal bulls.
removed from Avignon to Italy, and on January 17 had made his
solemn entry into Rome, put his hand, in the magnificent Church of
St. Maria Maggiore, to five bulls against Wycliffe. One of the five,
and that which seems to contain the essence of the whole number,
is addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of
London.^ It conveys to the two prelates apostolic commission and
plenary powers, first of all to ascertain, by private inquiry, whether
the propositions contained in a schedule appended to the bull had
been actually put forth by John Wycliffe ; 3 and should this be the
case, then to cause him to be put in prison, and to be kept there until
they should receive further instructions from the Pope, to follow upon
the report made to him of their proceedings.
A second bull contains only a supplement to the principal bull.-*
It is also addressed to the Primate and the Bishop of London, and
appoints what course should be taken in case Wycliffe should get
secret intelligence of the process with which he is threatened, and
should save himself by flight from impending imprisonment. To
'^ De Ecclesia, c. 15; Vienna MS., 3 Walsingham, i., 353; Lewis, 316,
1294, f. 178, col. 2. No. 18 ; Vaughan, Life, etc., i.. 4.57.
= Walsingham, i., 350; Lewis, Ap- ¦* Walsingham, i., 348; Lewis, 308,
pendix, 15 ; Vaughan, Life and Opinions, No. 14. Nuper per nos, etc.
I., 429.

164 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WYCLIFFE. [ch.v. §2
meet this eventuality, the two prelates are commissioned and endowed
with full apostolic powers to issue a public citation to AVycliffe to
present himself in person before Gregory XI. within three months.
A third buU, also addressed to the same prelates,' requires them,
either personaUy, or by theologians of unsuspected orthodoxy, to
bring the condemned doctrines of Wycliffe to the notice of King
Edward, and his sons, the princes ; as also of the Princess of AVales,
Joan, widow of the Black Prince, and other great personages of the
realm, and privy councillors ; to convince them of the erroneous
character of these doctrines, and of the dangers which they threatened
to the interests ofthe State; and thus to engage them to assist with
all their might in rooting out these errors from the kingdom. The
fourth bull, addressed to the King himself,^ informs him of the
commission relating to Wycliffe conveyed to the Archbishop and the
Bishop of London ; and while warmly commending the zeal which he
and his predecessors upon the throne had ever displayed for the
Catholic faith, earnestly entreats and charges hira to extend his royal
grace and assistance to the Archbishop and Bishop in the execution
of their commission. Last of all, the fifth bull is addressed to the
Chancellor and the University of Oxford,^ requiring of them in the
most emphatic manner, and even upon pain of the loss of their
privileges,. not only to guard against the setting forth and maintaining
of erroneous doctrines, but to commit Wycliffe and his obstinate
followers to prison, and to deliver them over to the Pope's commis
sioners, the Archbishop and the Bishop of London.
The plan of operations, it is plain, had been ripely considered. The
attainment of the end in view seemed to be assured, by the promised co-
pian of operation of the King and the royal princes, of the Privy
procedure. Council, the chief nobility, and the University of Oxford
These, it was expected, would all contribute their aid to the two.
commissioners of the Roman Court in bringing Wycliffe under the
Church's power. For that was the point aimed at. It was not
meant that the Primate and Bishop Courtenay should conduct the
investigation in chief against Wycliffe, and pronounce judgment upon
him. To them only a preliminary inquiry was committed, viz., to
satisfy themselves, in a manner entirely secret and confidential, that
' Super pericu/osis admodum erroribus, 12 ; Vaughan, Life, etc., I., 425 ; Shirley,
etc., .Walsingham, I., 347; Lewis, 307, Fasc. Ziz., 2.\2.. That the date given in
No. 13 ; Vaughan, Life, etc., I., 427. this document (May 30, 1376) is false,
== Regnum Angliae quod Altissimus, was discovered by Shirley ; vide Intro-
etc. Walsingham, i., 352; Lewis, 312, duction, xxvhi., note i, after having
No. 16 ; Vaughan, Life, etc., I., 430. declared his preference for A.D. 1377,
3 Mirari cogimur ei dolere, etc. at p. 244, note 17, in the body of his
Walsingham, i. , 346 ; Lewis, 305, No. work.

1377.] ARTICLES OF ACCUSATION. 165
the Theses communicated to them from Rome had really been put
forward and maintained by AA'ycliffe. But the process for heresy
proper the Pope manifestly reserved for himself It was a well-con
sidered policy on the part of the Pope to make his appeal to England's
sense of honour, in order to gain the interest of all parties for the
object in view. To the King he represented what high reputation
England had ever borne for her piety and love to the truth, while both
he and his ancestors had always zealously defended the faith. The
University of Oxford he entreated to remember that its celebrated
name would be dishonoured were it to look on in inactivity while
tares were sown and grew up among the wheat in the renowned field
committed to its care. Even the two bishops whom Gregory entrusts
with plenary powers were not spared a word of admonition. They
were reminded that the English bishops of former times ever stood
upon their watch-tower, and took careful heed that no heresy should
spread around thera. But such was now the lack of watchfulness on
the spot, that men in far-distant Rome became aware of the secret
devices and open attacks of the enemies of the Church, before any
measures of defence against them had been taken in England itself.
Further, it appeared to the Pope advisable to point out to the
bishops the fact that some of Wycliffe's propositions agreed in sub
stance with the views of Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun,,
whose book had already been condemned by Pope John XXII.
Let us now examine the condemned articles for ourselves. They
are nineteen in number, but they are not arranged in a strictly logical
order. This, of course, is not Wycliffe's fault, for it was
not he who put them together as they appear in the articles of
^ *^ / 1 X accusation,
schedule attached to the Papal bulls, but his opponents.
The first five Theses were placed at the head of the collection, with
the calculated design that frora the very first of the series the states
men and nobles of the kingdom should receive the impression that
Wycliffe held revolutionary views, not only in Church matters, but
also in political and municipal affairs, and even called in question
the rights of private property and hereditary succession. For in
Theses 1-5 the subjects treated of have nothing to do with Church
life, but refer exclusively to legal and municipal matters, such as
property, right of possession, heritages, and so on. It has always,
indeed, been assumed hitherto that the topic here treated is the
temporal dominion of the Popes, and the political power and secular
property of the Church in general. But this view, generally as it has
been received, rests entirely upon misunderstanding and prejudice.
Upon an unprejudiced examination, it becomes clear that it is only

l65 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WYCLIFFE. [ch. v. § ^
municipal and legal relations which are here in question.' Wycliffe's
principle is, that all rights of inheritance and property are not to be
considered as inherently unconditioned and absolute, but as depen
dent upon God's will and grace. Then in Nos. 6 and 7 he lays down
the bold proposition, ' In the event of the Church falling into error,
or of churchmen persistently abusing the property of the Churcli,
kings and temporal rulers are entitled, both legally and morally, to
withdraw from them, in a legal and moral manner, the temporal
property.' However strongly the endowment may have been secured on the
part of the founder, it is still, in the nature of things, necessarily a
conditioned endowment, and one liable to be annulled by certain
derelictions of duty. Whether the Church was or was not, in point
of fact, in a condition of error, AVycUffe will not hiraself inquire. He
leaves it to princes to inform themselves upon that point ; and in the
event of the case being such, they may confidently proceed to take
action — they are even bound, under the pain of eternal damnation, to
withdraw, in this event, its temporalities frora the Church. Allied to
this, and only treating the subject raore as a question of principle,
is the last Thesis, the 19th, where he maintains that 'a raan of the
spirituality,' even the Roraan Pontiff hiraself, may lawfully be set right,
and even be accused, by his subjects and by laymen. The group of
Theses 8-15 is designed to guard against the abuse of the power of
the keys, in ' binding and loosing,' especiaUy in so far as Church
discipline and the ban of excommunication should be used to secure-
certain revenues to the Church, and to deter the laity from meddling
-with Church property. In the same sense, Wycliffe, in Thesis 14,
contests the pretended absoluteness of the Pope's power of the keys,
and makes the effective power of the same dependent upon its being
used in conformity with the gospel.^ He is only expressing the same
thought in another form as when he says (Thesis 9), ' It is not pos
sible for a man to be put under the ban unless he has before and
principaUy been put under it by himself In Nos. 10, 12, 13,-
Wycliffe declares that only in God's matters, and not in matters of
' Lewis set the example of referring unprinted works, of the name Petrus, as
these articles to ecclesiastical property also of the prsenomens Caius, Titus,
and jurisdiction, p. 46, and he is followed etc., in the way of example. But quite
in this by Vaughan and all later writers. decisive of the point is the fact that in the
The error attached itself to the words in book, De Civili Dominio, I., c. 35, from
the first article, Petrus et omne genus which I am convinced the article was
JKKOT— words which it was thought could taken, the connection clearly and neces-
only be understood of the Apostle Peter sarily leads to the general sense which I
and his successors in the Roman See. have indicated.
But,to say nothing ofthe extreme strange- " No. 15. Credere debemus, quod solum
ness of using the word genus for succes- tunc solvit vel ligat (sc. Papa) quando se
sores, Wycliffe often makes use, in his conformat legi Christi,

'377-1 PAPAL CONDEMNATION. 167
temporal goods and revenues, ought Church censures to the extent of
excommunication to be applied. AVith some appearance of isolation
from the rest of the propositions, and yet in a certain degree of con
nection with the Thesis touching the power of the keys, stands, last
of all, the 1 6th Thesis, which claims for every lawfully ordained priest
the full power to dispense every sacrament, and consequently to
impart to every penitent remission of aU manner of sin.
These nineteen Theses, according to their chief material, fall into
three different groups. L 1-5, concerning rights of property and
inheritance. IL 6, 7, 17, 18, concerning Church pro- A„angement
perty and its rightful secularisation in certain circum- °* '^^^ Theses.
stances, to which No. 19 is a supplement. III. 8-15, concerning the
power of Church discipUne and its necessary Umits, to which No. 16
also belongs. AA'e shall fix our attention below upon the connection
of thought running through these single Theses ; but first we follow
the course of external events.

3. — First Effects of the Five Bulls in England.
The Papal bulls, which were based upon these nineteen Theses of
Wycliffe as the corpus delicti, were signed in Rome by Gregory XL,
as before stated. May 22, 1377 ; but it was an unusually long time
before they were made public in England. Not till December 18,
i377> did the Pope's commissioners named in them — the Archbishop
of Canterbury and the Bishop of London — put their signatures to a
missive to the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, enclosing the
Papal comraission addressed to him in the matter ; this was seven
months, all but four days, after the date of the Papal bulls. How is
this delay to be explained ? Possibly the bulls had been
-' ' ¦' . Delay m pub-
a long time on their way from Rome. But, as is now ushing tue
well known, the intercourse between Rome and isngland
was at that time so constant, and, as a general rule, so rapid, that we
cannot think it probable that the arrival of those documents had been
really delayed by exceptional circumstances for more than half a year.
No doubt they reached their destinations at a much earlier date, and
that the delay in the publication and execution of the Pope's com
mission was entirely the act of the coraraissioners themselves. Nor is
it difficult to understand the reason why. These bulls of Death of
Gregory XI. arrived in England at a time when Edward Edward in.
IIL, given up by his physicians, was approaching his end. This state
of matters was known throughout the kingdora ; and on June 2 1,
1377, the aged monarch breathed his last in his palace at Sheen.

l68: PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WYCLIFFE. [ch. v. § 3
The bull addressed to the King thus became void ; and yet, without
the help of the State proceedings against Wycliffe could not take the
course which Rome desired. The weeks next ensuing, during which
all public interest was engrossed by the entry of the boy King into
London, and his solemn coronation as Richard II. in Westminster,
were of all seasons the least appropriate for bringing before the
public this business from Rome. Then, again, everything depended
Events of the tipon the spirit which was to animate the Government
new reign, during the King's minority, and upon the position which
the regency should take up in ecclesiastical affairs. To all this were
added, in August, attacks of the French upon the south coasts of the
kingdora, and threatening movements of the Scots in the north. In
October, the first Parliament of Richard II. assembled, and in the
House of Commons, at least, there prevailed so outspoken a feeling
of antagonism to Rome, that it appeared every way advisable to wait
till the prorogation of Parliament, which occurred on November 25,
before measures were put in operation against AVycliffe. As the most
pressing business in this Parliament was the raising of suppUes for
the war and, above all, for the defence of the kingdom, the attention
of the Legislature was once more drawn to the systematic draining of
the country for the benefit of the Roman Court and of foreign Church
dignitaries, and to all the questions connected therewith ; the effect
of which was, that the Commons addressed several petitions to the
King, in which they renewed their complaints against the Papal pro
visions and reservations. They proposed to put a stop to these
usurpations, which violated the Convention of 1374 between Gregory
XI. and Edward, by imposing severe penalties upon all persons who
should obtain any Church office through Papal provision, or who
should rent from any foreigner land which was an English Church
An anti ^^^" T^^^Y proposed that from February 2 of the ensu-
Bomish ing year, all foreigners alike, whether monks or seculars,
should leave the kingdom, and that during the continu
ance of the war all their lands and properties in the country should
be appUed to war purposes. The income of French clergy alone,
accruing from EngUsh Uvings, was estimated at ^^ 60,000 a year. In
this Parliament also, the question of the right of the State was mooted
and discussed with great earnestness. ' AVhether the kingdom of
England, in case of need, for the purposes of self-defence, is not com
petent in law to restrain the treasure of the land from being carried
off to foreign parts, although the Pope should demand this export of
gold in virtue of the obedience due to him, and under the threat of
Church censures.'

I377-] PAPER ON ALIENATED TREASURES. 169
Upon this question, if we are righdy inforined, Wyclifie drew up,
by command, an opinion for the young King and his Great Council.
In that paper he answered the question with a decided wyoiiffe's
affirmative, appealing to three different standards of laws, state-paper.
First, he takes his stand upon the la7i> of nature, in virtue of which
every corporate body, and therefore also such an incorporation as the
kingdom of England, possesses the power of resistance, for its own self-
defence. He appealed, secondly, to the law of the gospel, according
to which all almsgiving (and into this all Church property ultimately
resolves itself), in case of necessity, ceases of itself to be a duty
binding by the law of love. In support of which latter assertion,
he appealed to several expressions of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in
his memorial to Pope Eugene III., De Consideratione.^ Herein
AVycliffe also lays stress upon considerations of what is due to the
national welfare. If things went on as hitherto, England must be
impoverished, and her population decline, while the Curia, by the
superfluity of wealth flowing in upon it, would become arrogant and
profligate. The enemies of England, by means of her own gold,
would be put in a position to make her feel the effects of their malice,
while Englishmen would be laughed at by foreigners for their ' asinine
stupidity,' etc.= Last of all, he appeals to the laiv of conscience. In
the second part of the Opinion, he endeavours to remove the appre
hension of dangers which raight possibly arise from the adoption of
the measures in question.
After the Parliament, thus anti-Roraish in its temper, was prorogued,
no obstacle any longer stood in the way, and it seemed now high time
to carry out the Pope's commission, by taking steps against Wycliffe. 3
Accordingly, on December 18, the two commissioners issued a mandate
to the Chancellor of Oxford, in which the bull addressed to the
University was enclosed. The mandate, which Edmund -wyoUffe cited
Stafford presented in person, was to this effect, i. That to London.
the Chancellor, calling to his aid learned and orthodox doctors of
1 Fo.ve has incorporated an extract quaesitum ab eo per Dominum regem
from this memorial with his work, as Angliae Ricardum secundum, et magnum
well in its Latin as its English form. suum Concilium, anno regni sui primo.
Acts and Monuments, III., S4- Ihe ' Shirley, Fasc. Zizan., 263.
complete original is found in MS. in .a 3 That the commissioners had at their
volume made up of several pieces, in the own instance delayed the execution of the
Bodleian, from which it has been pub- Papal commission, which appears to have
lished by Shirley in the Fasc. Zizan. He reached their hands in due time, is evi-
has compared with it a second copy, dently presumed by Walsingham when
which is found in one of the Vienna he says, ' How disrespectfully, how neg-
Wycliffe MSS. (Dinis, 358, now num- ligently they acted in executing their
bered 1337, f. 175.) The title of it in the commission.isbetter passed over in silence
Oxford MS. is, Responsio Magistri Joan- than expressed.' Hist. Anglic. Ed. Riley,
nis W'ycliff ad dubium infra scriptum I., 356.

170 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WYCLIFFE. [ch. v. § 3
Holy Scripture, should ascertain whether, as a matter of fact, John
Wycliffe had set forth the Theses in question, which were contained
in the collection drawn up in Rome, a schedule of which was appended
to the Papal bull. The result of this inquiry he was instructed to
report to the commissaries in a sealed letter. 2. The Chancellor was
to cite Wycliffe to appear within thirty days before the Papal com
missaries or their delegates in St. Paul's Church in London, there to
answer -concerning his Theses, and to await consequences. Touching
the steps which should be taken in this direction by the Chancellor,
the commissaries expected to receive notice in an open letter.'
Two things are worthy of remark in this mandate : first, its essential
departure frora the terms of the Papal bull. Gregory XI. had in
structed his commissaries, as we have seen, that in the event of its
being found that Wycliffe had actually set forth the Theses in question,
they were to cause him to be put in prison, and thereupon wait for
instructions from Rome. The mandate, on the contrary, says not a
word about imprisonment, but only requires that Wycliffe should be
cited to present hiraself (upon the footing of a man at large) at the
bar, and then, it is true, to await what was to follow. This is quite a
different thing. But the commissaries must have had very good
reasons for departing from the stringent instructions which they had
received. Doubtless they were convinced that a prosecution of a man
who was in such high favour at Court, as well as araong the people,
would be not only dangerous, but, as matters stood, quite impossible.
They resolved, however, to do something, and so cited Wycliffe to
appear before them. Another thing in the mandate is worth con
sideration — the tone in which the commissaries address the Head of
the University. Once and again they impress upon him his duty, from
a motive of reverence and submission to the Holy See, punctually
and faithfully to carry out the instructions which they sent to him.
This sounds suspicious, and leaves the impression that they had some
reason to doubt beforehand the disposition of the University to
take part against AVycliffe.
In point of fact, the upshot proved that the state of feeUng in
Oxford was entirely unfavourable to the end contemplated. Thomas
Feeling at AValsingham informs us with great displeasure that the
Oxford. ]^gj^ ,^yjjQ ,^ygj.g ^j^gjj g^j. jjjg head of the University hesi
tated long whether to receive the Papal bull with honour or to discard
' The mandate is printed by Lewis in Cal., z.s., December 28, instead of Decem-
his Appendix, No. 17, p. 314, as also in ber 18. This is the solution of the dis-
Wilkins' Concilia Magnae Britanniae, crepancy remarked upon by Hoeffler,
III., p. 123 ; only in the latter the date in his Anna von Luxemburg, p. 53,
given is v Cal. Januarii, instead of xv note 3.

1377.8.], OXFORD AND. THE PAPAL BULL.

171

it with total disrespect. The chronicler pours out his feelings in an
apostrophe to the University, in which he laments how deeply she has
fallen from her former height of wisdom and learning, seeing that now,
under a dark cloud of ignorance, she is not ashamed to doubt con
cerning things which no Christian layman would hesitate for a moment
to beUeve.'
The representatives of the University resisted, it appears, for some
time the bull which Gregory hiraself had addressed to them. The
case was different with the archiepiscopal mandate which accompanied
the bull, for in this nothing was required of thera save an inquiry into
the question of fact, whether such and such propositions had been
actually set forth by AA^ycliffe, and his citation to appear before the
episcopal tribunal. Neither of these requirements touched too nearly
either the honour or the rights of the University. It was otherwise
with the Papal bull. This reflected upon the honour of tlie Uni
versity at its very onset, by sharply animadverting upon its re
missness in opposing the erroneous doctrines which had sprung up
within it. It appeared, besides, to be an infringement of the rights of
the corporation to require of them to take Wycliffe prisoner, and
deliver him up to the commissioners, and to do the Uke with several
of his followers, if they should manifest any conturaacy. No wonder,
if the heads of the University found it opposed to their dignity and
even to their rights, that they should be called upon to play, so to
speak, the part of constables who, at the bidding of a third party, were
to be compeUed to make prisoners of members of their own cor
poration, and deliver them over to a tribunal with which they had
nothing to do. Even apart, however, from the formal and legal point
of view, sympathy with AA'ycliffe and esteem for his person were no
doubt strong enough in Oxford circles (as the Pope himself pre
supposed) to have awakened an animated opposition to the Papal
demand. What conclusion was arrived at in the end has not been
expressly handed down to us ; but we may readily conjecture that the
University conformed its action to the demands formulated in the
more temperate mandate of the commissioners, and as much as
possible ignored the commands of the bull itself.
4. — The Process against Wycliffe.
By the mandate to the Chancellor, Wycliffe was cited to appear in St.
Paul's in London thirty days after the service of the citation. There
appears to have been a subsequent adjournment to a later date, and
• Walsingham, Hist. Anglic, i., 345.

173 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WYCLIFFE. [ch. v. § 4
to a different locality, viz., the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth.
Many councils have been held in the chapel of this palace
appears at since the days of Anselm of Canterbury, and here
Lambeth. -\Vyciiffe was appointed to appear before the Pope's
commissioners. When this took place cannot be exactly determined.
The month of April, 1378, has generally been assumed as the time,
since I^ewis attempted to fix this approximate date, which, however,
he himself regards as uncertain.' It is probable that the date was
somewhat earlier, for, according to AValsingham's account, Gregory
XI. must have been stiU alive at the time of this examination." But
Gregory died March 27, 1378. It follows that the transaction must
have taken place at latest in March, perhaps even in February. This
was not much later than the term for which Wycliffe was originally
summoned by the ChanceUor of Oxford. Wycliffe unhesitatingly
presented himself before the Archbishop, Simon Sudbury, and the
Bishop of London, William Courtenay. The Duke of Lancaster,
who had stood forward in St. Paul's as his defender, was no longer,
since the change on the throne, in possession of ascendant influence.
But AVycliffe stood in no need of high protection. He possessed
courage enough to place himself, without it, before the commissioners
of the Pope.
In defence of the nineteen Theses, condemned by the Curia as
erroneous, he put in a written answer, in which he set forth the stand
point which he had taken in these Theses, and at once expounded
and vindicated their several meaning. 3 This answer was meant to
be communicated to the Pope himself Such was AVycliffe's own
intention, at least, as may be seen from the manuscript passage
quoted in the note. Meanwhile, however, the business on this
His defence occasion, as before, did not pass over entirely without
and dismission, disturbance. Sir Henry Clifford, an officer in the Court
of the widowed Princess of AVales, appeared in the session, and
demanded of the commissaries, in name of the Princess, that they
should abstain from pronouncing any final judgment respecting the
accused. Citizens of London, too, forced a passage into the chapel,
' Life of John Wiclif, p. 58. Chronicler its title is Declarationes ; in
° Walsingham, Hist. Anglic, I., 356, Lewis, Proiestatio, I find that Wycliffe
says in reference to the upshot of the himself, in his work De Veritate S, Scrip-
transaction, 'Wiclif escaped, amplius turae, c. 14, f. 40, col. 4 (Vienna MS.,
non compariturus coram dictis episcopis, 1294), gives to this piece the latter title,
citra mortem Gregorii Papae.' , Proiestatio. Another justification of the
3 This short '.Defence ' is incorporated same nineteen articles, differing in point
by Walsingham in his Chronicle, i., 357- of form, and purporting to have been pre-
363. It is also given by Lewis in his sented to the Parliament, is given by
Appendix, No. 40, p. 382 ; and by Shirley, Fasc, Zizan,, p. 245.
Vaughan, Life, etc., I., 432. In the

r378.] CITATION TO LAMBETH. 173
and loudly and menacingly took part wilh the theologian, who was a
patriot so much beloved and honoured. This double intimidation,
from high and low, the spiritual tribunal was unable to withstand. To
save appearances, however, AA'ycliffe was prohibited any longer from
delivering in lectures and sermons the Theses in question, because,
as was pretended, they would give offence to the laity. It was not,
therefore, because they were in themselves erroneous. Such was the
impression, it would seem, which AA'ycliffe had made by his defence.
He was allowed to leave the tribunal as free as he had appeared
before it ; quite contrary to the intentions which had been formed in
Rome, and directly in the teeth of the instructions which had been
given to the commissaries.
No wonder that the zealous adherents of Rome were displeased in
the highest degree with this result of the process. AVe have still a
Hvely echo of this feeling in the utterances of the ,„,.,,, ,
¦' . ^ ^ walsingham's
chronicler AA''alsingham on the subject. In great wrath, comment.
he pours himself forth against the vain-glorious boastings with which
the prelates began the business, and the fear of man with which they
closed it. AVhen they were appointed the Pope's commissaries against
AVycliffe, they had declared, in the fulness of their courage, that by no
entreaties of men, by no threats or bribes, would they allow them
selves to be drawn aside frora the line of strict justice in this affair,
even if their own lives should be raenaced. But on the very day of
hearing, for fear of the wind which blew the reed hither and thither,
their words had becorae smoother than oil, to the public humiliation
of their own dignity and to the detriment of the whole Church. Men
who had vowed not to bend to the princes and peers of the realm
till they had punished the arch-heretic for his extravagances, were
seized with such terror at the sight of a certain knight of the Court
of Princess Joan, that one would have supposed that they had ' no
horns on their mitres more ; ' for ' they became as one that heareth not,
and who has no word to say against it in his mouth ' (Ps. xxxviii. 14).
Thus it was that the crafty hypocrite, by his written defence of those
godless Theses of his, had the better of his judges, and got clear off.'
1 Walsingham, I., 356; comp. 362. the account of Walsingham (which, how-
V/e may here find a place for the remark ever, is not entirely consistent with itself,
that the two examinations of Wycliffe and of other chroniclers of the period
before the Enghsh prelates, treated of in between Wycliffe and the Reformation.
this chapter, have not always been rightly But Lewis, pp. 46, 56, assumed that both
viewed by historians. Foxe, indeed, in the examinations, at St. Paul's and at
the sixteenth century, and his Romish Lambeth, took place in consequence of
contemporary, Nicolas Harpsfield, placed the Papal bulls, and not before, and that
the examinations in St Paul's in the not only the later, but the first also took
days of Edward III., and at a time ante- place under Richard 11., after King
cedent to the appearance of the five Edward's death. He was followed iii
Papal bulls. They follow, in this point, this not only by Mosheim, Schrbckh,

174 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST WYCLIFFE. [ch. v. § 4:
Thus, then, was a second attack upon Wycliffe happily repelled.
The first had been an independent attempt of the English Episcopate ;
The two '•^^ second had proceeded from the central power of
citations Rome itself, whose instruments for this occasion were two
compared. '
English prelates. On the first occasion, a prince of thfc
blood had made use of his influence in the Government to thwart, in
a violent way, the design of the prelates. On the second occasion,
a powerful sympathy from different circles in the country served to
shield the bold Reformer ; the learned Corporation of Oxford bestirred
itself to guard in his person its own independence ; the mother of
the young King put in a powerful word for him ; and the burghers of
London, although, it is true, in a tumultuous manner, manifested
their sympathy with the honoured patriot. AVe see how widely
among the higher and lower strata of the population, esteem for
Wycliffe and the influence of his spirit were then diffused. It is
true that, in the Chapel at Lambeth, the Papal commissaries formally
prohibited him from publishing any more in the pulpit or in the chair
the doctrine condemned by the Pope. No formal promise to that
effect was, however, given by AVycliffe ; and if he resolved to persevere
in his own path, in spite of this prohibition, the prelates were destitute
of power to arrest his progress.
All these considerations apart, the relations of the AVestern Church
at large were assuming such a form just at this time, that an earnest
The Pa al ^^^ ^^^^ Spirit like Wycliffe's could only be inflamed still
schism. more to press for reformation with all its strength. Not
long after the trial in Lambeth, Gregory XI. died, March 27, 1378 ;
and a few months later was developed that great and long-continued
Papal schism which exercised an influence of the greatest importance
Gieseler, and Neander, but also by Eng- the chronology and to the facts of the
lish scholars, such as Lowth, Baber, and case. The following facts are decisive
a writer in the Westminster Review, in support of this view : — i. The popu-
1854. The last-named author believed lar tumult in London, directed against
that he was able to bring positive proof the Duke of Lancaster and Marshal
that Walsingham must have been in error Percy, which was undoubtedly a con-
when he placed the appearance of Wy- sequence of what occurred in St. Paul's,
cliffe at St. Paul's at the beginning of is always and persistently placed in the
1377, instead of the year 1378. But year 1377, and not in the year following,
Vaughan, in the Life, etc., 2 ed. , I., 357, 1378. 2. Lord Percy, in the beginning
note 23, has proved, by weighty argu- of 1378, was no longer Marshal, but in
ments, that that event took place as 1377 he was, without doubt, invested
early as 1377 (February 19), and that with this dignity. 3. The day of the
the Papal bulls were not issued till a later week which is assigned by the English
date, so that the event cannot have been contemporary chronicler, viz., Thursday
a consequence of the bulls, but much before the Feast of St. Peter's, Feb-
rather the occasion of their issue on May ruary ig, corresponds with this day of
22, 1377. To Vaughan, undoubtedly, the month in the year 1377, but not in
belongs the merit of having placed this the year 1378.
subject in a clear light, in regard both to

I37S.] THE GREAT PAPAL SCHISM, 175
upon Wycliffe's inner and outer Ufe.' Thus the year 1378 forms a
turning-point in his career. A storm which menaced his safety had
been turned aside, and on this occasion it had become evident how
many hearts were beating in sympathy with him and his efforts.
Then befell the great Church schism which shook violently the raoral
prestige of the Roman Church, so far as it had any such still remain
ing, which paralysed its power, and stimulated every good man- to
do his utmost to help the necessities of the case, and to raise up
again the fallen Church. It is easy to understand that Wycliffe, after
having applied himself till now, almost exclusively, to matters of
mixed ecclesiastical and political interest, should henceforth devote
hiraself to interests of a purely ecclesiastical kind, without of course
renouncing the character of the patriot. From that time he first
stood forward in the specific character of a Church Reformer.
^ The Chronicler of St. .-\lbans appears falsos, ipsum Johannem { Wiclif) et ipsius
to have felt this himself, when he says of asseclas, animavit.' Walsingham, I.,
Gregory XL's death, ' Cujus obitus non 356.
modicum fideles contristavit sed in fide

CHAPTER VI.
WYCLIFFE AS A PREACHER. HIS EFFORTS FOR
REFORM IN PREACHING AND FOR THE ELE'
VATION OF THE PASTORAL 01 FICE.
I. — 'Wycliffe as a Preacher; his Homiletical Principles.
WYCLIFFE not only made use ot scientific lectures from his
chair in Oxford, nor only of learned works and small fugi
tive tracts; he also availed himself of preaching as a means of
battiing with the evUs which he saw in the religious condition of the
National Church, of implanting sound Christian life, and of thus
serving, according to his ability, the interests of his Church and
people. It is characteristic of the man and his way of acting, that in this
extremely important matter he comraenced by doing his duty at his
own personal post, from which he afterwards extended his influence
to wider circles.
This coraes out with the greatest clearness from his sermons that
have been handed down to us. These divide themselves into two
-Wycliffe's great groups — the Latin sermons and the English. The
Lato°and latter are partly sermons which he may be presumed to
EngUsh. have preached to his congregation at Lutterworth, as
parish priest, and partly outlines of sermons which he prepared as a
kind of model for itinerant preachers of his school ; we shall return
to these in the sequel. The Latin sermons were, without doubt,
delivered in Oxford before the University, perhaps in St. Mary's.'
This is antecedently probable, but it is also manifest from the form
and contents of the sermons themselves. Not unfrequently we find
learned matters referred to in them in a way which makes it certain that
the audience must have consisted of people of culture and scholastic
^ Comp. Shirley, Fasc. Zizan., 305. Ecclesia B. Virginis in lingua Latina
Cum Afagister Nicolaus (Hereford) in toto clero, etc.
Quadragesima praedicasset publice in

1360-137S.] HIS LATIN SERMONS. 177
learning — as, for example, when, in the first of the ' MisceUaneous
Sermons,' he speaks of the manifold interpretations then received of
the sense of Scripture, and, in particular, of the sensus tropologicus
and anagogicus ; when quotations are introduced, not only from the
Fathers, but from the Canon Law ; and when abstract questions of
logic and metaphysics are investigated, such as the relation of the
soul to the body, etc. AVhat sort of audience must a preacher have
before him when he speaks of the imitation of Christ, as AVycliffe
does in the third of his Sermons for Saints' Days, and asks. How does
it help us towards the imitation of Christ to pore over the pages of
the logicians ? or what aid comes from the knowledge of the natural
philosophers, acquired at such a cost of labour ? or from the well-
known method of reason, adopted by the mathematicians ? Plainly,
the preacher has people of learning before him — the professors and
students of the University. This was long ago correctly noted by a
reader of the Vienna manuscript of these sermons, who writes on the
margin, opposite this passage, the words, ' Magistri et studefites
notate.' ' The preacher, in fact, in one instance mentions Oxford by
name ; ^ and one of his sermons frora beginning to end is simply an
address delivered on the occasion of a doctoral promotion in the
University.3 The Latin sermons of AVycliffe known to us belong to many dif
ferent years, as may be gathered with tolerable certainty from several
internal marks. Most of these collections, indeed, belong ^atin
to the latest years of his life, but one of them, containing sermons.
forty miscellaneous sermons, consists of earlier discourses, all de
livered before the year 1378 ;'^ and these are all instructive and
valuable for the insight they give into the course of Wycliffe's
development. At present we will say nothing of what is to be learned
frora this source of the progress of his mind in the matter of doctrine ;
we will confine ourselves to what we are able to gather with respect
to the views he took of the object of preaching, and of the actual
condition of the preacher's office at that period.
In the last-named collection of Latin sermons, belonging to the
period of his academic life and work, he expresses himself in different
1 Evangelia de Sanctis, No. 3, fol. 5, Wycliffe's writings, found in two Vienna
col. 2 of the Vienna MS. 3928. (Denis MSS., dating from the beginning of the
CCCC.) fifteenth century, agree in giving this
= Twelfth Sermon, fol. 28, col. 4 of the collection the title XL, Sermones com-
same MS. : — Nam frater alienigena, de positi dum stetit in scholis, in contrast
regno suo portans pecuniam paucam, ut with another collection which is entitled
theologiam discat Oxoniae, etc. Sermones XX. compositi in fine vitae
3 No. 24 in the Twenty-four Miscella- suae. This confirms the correctness of
neous Sermons, fol. 185 of the same MS. an observation which I had made before
•• The two oldest extant catalogues of this notice was known to me.
13

178 WYCLIFFE AS A PREACHER. [ch. vi. § i
passages on the subject of preachers and preaching. Two sermons in
particular on the Gospel for Sexagesima Sunday — Luke viii. 4-15,
the Parable of the Sower — supply us with important information as
to his views on this point'
Before everything else AVycliffe lays stress upon the truth that
the preaching of the AVord of God is that function which serves,
in a degree peculiar to itself, to the edification of the
preacher's Church ; and this is so, because the AVord of God is a
seed (Luke viii. 11, 'The seed is the AVord of God').
In reflecting upon this truth, he is filled with wonder, and exclaims,
' O marveUous power of the Divine Seed ! which overpowers strong
warriors, softens hard hearts, and ' renews, and makes divine, men
brutalised by sin, and departed infinitely far from God. Plainly, so
mighty a wonder could never be wrought by the word of a priest, if
the Spirit of Life and the Eternal Word did not, above all things else,
work with it.'
But the grander and more exalted the view which WycUffe takes of
the preacher's office, so much the more severely does he condemn
the faults and deficiencies of the actual average preacher of his own
time. As the worst of these, he censures the evil practice of not
preaching God's Word, but reciting stories, fables, or poems that
were altogether foreign to the Bible. He refers again and again to
this subject in sermons both of his earlier and later years, as weU as
in treatises and tracts.^ We have no ground to assume that sermons
of the kind he censures were not preached from some Bible text. It
is rather to be supposed that the preachers, after giving out a text
frora the Scriptures for form's sake, were none the less accustomed
to draw the main contents of their sermons from other sources.
There were not even wanting instances of preachers who were bold
^ This collection of sermons stands poemata vel jabulas extra corpus Scrip-
beside a collection of Sermons for Saints' turae, fol. 208, col. i. He says the same
Days (written later), and of twenty-four thing in the sermon preceding, fol. 206,
Miscellaneous Sermons (also dating from col. 3. In a later collection of sermons,
Wychffe's last years), and also beside a 61 Evangelia de Sanctis — in sermon 56
few short essays, in tlie Vienna MS., 3928 he speaks of tragoediae vel comocdiae et
(Denis CCCC). The collection of ' forty fabnlae vel sententiae apocriphae, quae
sermons ' (which, however, number only sunt hodie populo praedicatae. And in
thirty-eight) begins at fol. 193 of the MS. , the work De Officio Pastorali, Leipzig,
and the two sermons on Luke viii. 4-15 1863, v. 11., c. 5, p. 37, he says of the
are the eighth and ninth in number of the Mendicant Monks, Et tota sollicitudo est^
collection, fols. 206-210. eoruin, non verba evangelica et saluti
^ In the sermon last mentioned (comp. subditorum utilia seminare, sed fraudes,
preceding note), Wycliffe reminds his joca, ?nendacia, per quae possunt populum
hearers of the exhortation of the Apostle facilius spoliare. Also in the 'Treatise,
Peter, ' If any man speak, let him speak De Veritate S. Scripturae, WycUffe lays
as the oracles of God;' and declares that down the principle: Theologus debet
men now-a-days in preaching do not seminare veritatem Scripturae, non gcsia
preach the Word of God, but gesta, vel chronicas mundialcs.

1360-137S.] HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 179
enough to dispense with a Scripture text, and to choose something
else. Even an Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Lang
ton, 1228, saw nothing offensive in taking for the text j.o,„u3 in oon-
of a short Latin sermon which still exists, a dancing- temporary
1 J -o 111 - 1 1 preaching.
song mold rrench, allegoncally applying, it is true, ' the
Fair Alice,' and aU that is said of her, to the Holy Virgin.' Things
of this sort, however, may have been of comparatively rare occur
rence ; but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it had become
almost a prevaUing pulpit-fashion, instead of opening up Bible
thoughts, and applying them to life to draw the materials of sermons
from civil and natural history, from the legendary stores of the
Church, and even from the fable-worid of the Middle Ages, and
heathen mythology. If a priest, on a Saint's Day, recounted the
miracles of the saint as narrated in his legend, this had some claim
to be listened to as a piece of sacred history. But the Gesta Romar
norum, and all manner of tales and fables taken from profane
sources like Ovid's Metamorphoses, ^ were made use of by preachers,
if not for the edification, at least for the entertainment of their hearers.
The taste for allegorical interpretations and applications, as these
gradually came into general use, helped men over every objection to
the practice ; and the craving for entertainment of this description
grew stronger, the less preachers were able to supply the souls of men
with wholesome refreshment from the eternal fountain of the AVord
of God. No wonder that sermons often became a web whose warp
and weft consisted of all other threads save those of Bible truth. It
was precisely those men of the fourteenth century who were specially
trained for the work of popular preaching — namely the Dominicans
and the Franciscans — who humoured the corrupt taste of Methods of
the time, and flavoured their pulpit addresses with such ^^^ friars.
stories and buffooneries. If the multitude were amused for the
moment, and the begging friar who tickled their ears got his reward
of a collection, 3 the end aimed at was gained, and the Penny-
' Sermo Magistri Stephani de Lange- an Oxford Doctor, John Bromyard, drew
duna, Archiep. Cantuar., de Sancta up a collection of histories, alphabetically
Maria, in the Arundel MSS. of the aranged under certain heads, which were
British Museum. Wright gives the whole all intended for the use of preachers
sermon in his Biographia Britannica (hence the title of the work : Summa
Lit., II., 446. Praedicant turn) ; but his histories are in
= An elder contemporary of Wycliffe, good part taken from the popular story-
Thomas Walleys, an Enghsh Dominican tellers. Hist, LitUr. de la France, XXIV. ,
(died 1340), published a book, entitled 372.
Metamorphosis Ovidiana moraliter ex- 3 Wycliffe— Z)^ Officio Pastorali, II. 5
//a«cfe, which wasprintedsixtimesatleast —thinks that the people should despise
onwards from the end of the fifteenth cen- such monies as preachers, for an additional
tury. Comp. Histoire Littiraire de la reason — viz. , because it was their custom
France. Quatorzieme slide. Tom. xxiv. , to make a collection immediately after
p. 371 and Li. And another Dominican, their sermons.

l8o WYCLIFFE AS A PREACHER. [ch. vi. § i
Preacher (as Brother Berthold of Regensburg, as early as the thir
teenth century, calls this set of preachers) could go on his way
rejoicing. It is nothing wonderful that even CathoUc literary historians, like
the learned continuators of the Histoire Litteraire de la France, con
demn a style of pulpit eloquence such as this; or that even in the
beginning of last century a Dominican like the learned Jacob Echard,
pronounced the stories with which the brethren of his Order were
accustomed to amuse their audiences to be ' stale and absurd.' ' But
if a contemporary like AVycliffe saw these serious evils in their true
light, and condemned them in so decided a tone, his judgment must
have been enlightened by the AVord of God ; since he himself shared
in other respects in many of the pulpit faults of his own time.
The second objection which he took to the prevailing pulpit
fashion of his age, was that even when the Word of God was preached
The Bible this was not done in the right way. Preachers were in
ignored. ^^ habit of breaking up the Bible thoughts into the
smallest and finest particulars, and of making moral apphcations of
them in a style so loaded with rhetorical ornaments, including even
the use of rhyme, that the language of Scripture was thrust into the
background, and the language of the preacher came alone to be re
garded, as if he were himself the author and discoverer of God's truth.
This practice, he remarks, comes from nothing else but the pride of
men, every one seeking his own honour, every one preaching only
hiraself, and not Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians iv. 5). On all such
preaching AVycliffe pronounces the judgment that it is a dead word,
and not the word of our Lord Jesus Christ — not the word of eternal
life (John vi. 68). It was this prevailing want of the true seed of the
word of life which, in his opinion, was to blame for the spiritual
deadness of the people, and for the wickedness which in consequence
prevailed in the world.
These were weighty truths, indicating the necessity for much more
than a mere reform of preaching, looking, indeed, in the direction of a
reformation of the Church at large, yea, of a regeneration of Chris
tendom from the life-seed of the AVord of God. MeanwhUe, let us
limit ourselves to the pulpit, and take a close view of the strictures
which Wycliffe makes on the prevalent preaching of his time. Even
in cases where the AA'ord of God is preached, and not matters of quite
' In 1719, the French Dominican, Jacob speaks strongly enough ofthe Dominican
Echard, published vol. I., and in 1722 style of preaching in the fourteenth cen-
vol. II., of a collection, in historical order, tury, and censures those historiolas ineptas
oi the works of his Order, Scriptores etinsulsas, II. 762.
Ordiuis Praedicatorum, etc., in which he

1360-1378.] CRITICISMS ON CURRENT METHODS. 181
another kind, he censures, as already remarked, the manner in which
this is done ; and what he disapproves of is twofold — first, the
scholastic form of preaching ; and, secondly, its rhetorical ornamenta
tion.' As lo the former, A^'ycliffe takes notice of the method of endless
logical distinctions and divisions. = This practice had found its way
into the pulpits from the lecture rooms of the scl-iolastics. Logical
It was connected with the universal dialectic habit of the subueties.
Middle Ages, a habit which appeared in frequent definitions, hair
splitting divisions and subdivisions, and in endless syllogistic pro
cesses of proof Hence arose a series of treatises on Method, in
particular of aids to the preparation of sermons, e.g., a treatise by an
anonymous author of the year 1390, under the title of The Art of
making Sermons, in which the syllogism is held up as the ground
form to which everything else is to be reduced. s
As to the other point — the rhetorical and poetical ornamentation
with which preachers thought they were bound to set off their
sermons. AA'ycliffe repeatedly returns to it.-* He goes Bhetorioai
into this subject very minutely, seeking to expose in aitifloes.
their true light the grounds upon which men tried to excuse if not to
justify the practice, in order to bring to light the self-conceit which
lay at the bottom of all, and to warn preachers against it.
The first ground which was alleged in support of the practice was
that there was a necessity to give up the old style of preaching and
introduce a new one, otherwise there would be no longer
any difference between a thoroughly schooled divine and such
a poorly educated mediocre priest. To this ground
AVycliffe allows no weight whatever. It savours, he justly remarks,
of nothing else but vainglory, and a desire to take precedence of
others. ' Not so, beloved. Let us rather follow the example of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who was humble enough to confess, " My doctrine
is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me. He who speaketh of
himself seeketh his own glory." '
1 In the sermon referred to, p. 178, note brevisetclaraficiendi sermones, secundum
I, fol. 208, col. I, it is said ofthe modern formam syllogisticam, ad quam omnes alii
preacher: Praedicando Scripturam divi- inodi suntreducendi. Co'cnp. Hist. LitUr.
det ipsam ultra minuta naturalia, et de la France, xxiv. 365.
allegabitmoralizandopercoloresrithmicos 4 He censures the ambitiousness which
quousque non apparcat textus Scripturae. aims to exalt itself by the use of grandia
= In the same sermon, fol. 208, col. 2— verba, and disapproves of the attempt to
Inanis gloriae cupidus est qui innititur give a more beautiful form to the sermon
divisionibus verborum, Illi invicem in- by the color rhetoricus and by colligantia
¦vident qui nedum divisiones thematis sed rithmica, i.«., rhymes; he goes the length
cujuslibet auctoritatis occurrentis inge- even of maintaining that by this decla-
minant. matio heroica, etc., God's Word is only
3 Ars faciendi sermones. The tract falsified.
begins with the proposition — Haec est ars

l82 WYCLIFFE AS A PREACHER. [cm, vi. § i
The second ground upon which men took their stand was this :
every subject treated of must have a form correspondent with itself
Now, theology is the most perfect of all subjects. It behoves, there
fore, to be clothed in the noblest and most beautiful form, and that
is the dress of oratory and poetry. AVisdom only becomes perfect
when adorned with eloquence. To these ideas Wycliffe opposes-
himself in the most decided manner. This ornamental style, upon
which men so plume themselves, is so Uttle in keeping with God's
Word that the latter is rather corrupted by it, and its power paralysed
for the conversion and regeneration of souls. God's Word, according
to Augustine, has a peculiar and incomparable eloquence of its own,
in its very simplicity and modesty of form.
The third ground relied upon was an appeal to the poetical form
of several books of the Old Testament, from which it was argued
that it is the duty of a theologian to be guided by this precedent,
especially as poetry has a charm of its own, and is further of advan
tage for helping the memory. To which WycUffe replies — 'It is one
thing to sing a spiritual song, and another to speak a word of warning.
The measure of verse has, it is true, a certain charm, but only a
sensuous charra, which rather draws off the soul of the hearer from
the spiritual and eternal subject of discourse, and destroys his
taste for spiritual nourishment.'
How sound and good, and worthy of being laid to heart even at
the present day, these thoughts of AVycliffe are, it is hardly necessary
¦What to for us to point out at any length. In his criticism of the
preach, grounds on which his contempor.iries sought to defend
the scholastic or rhetorical and poetical style of preaching, there is a
positive as well as a negative side, so that we may arrive at very
definite views as to AVycliffe's convictions on the true method of
setting forth the Word of God. We may here distinguish between the
two questions — what to preach, and how to preach it. To the first
AVycliffe replies, as is shown by his words above cited, it is Gods
Word that should be preached, for God's Word is the bread of
souls, indispensable and wholesome ; and therefore, he thinks, to
feed the flock spiritually without Bible truth, is the same thing as if
one were to prepare for another a bodily meal without bread.' God's
AVord is the seed which begets regeneration and spiritual life.'-' Now,
- the chief business of a preacher is to beget and to nourish raembers
' The twenty-second of the Sermons convivium corporate sine pane. Vienna
for Saints' Days (6i Evangelia de Sanctis). MS. , 3928, fol. 42.
Idem est spiritualiter pascere auditorium. ^ Miscell. Sermons, No. 8. Verbum.
sine sententia evangelica, ac si quisfaceret Dei habet vim regenerativam. In the
same MS., fol. 206, col. 3.

1360-137S.] HOW TO PREACH GOD'S WORD. 183
of the Church.' Therefore it is God's AVord he must preach ; then
only will he succeed. This was why the Church of Christ grew so
mighty when the gospel was preached by the apostles, whereas at
the present day the Church is continually decreasing for the want of
this spiritual seed.= If the prophets of the Old Testament preface
their prophecies with 'Thus saith the Lord,' and if the aposties
proclaim the AVord of the Lord, so must we too preach God's AVord,
and proclaim the gospel according to the Scriptures. 3 There is one
point in particular to which AA^ycliffe draws attention — that believing
Christian men, who are really preaching the gospel, must necessarily
give the first place to the preaching of the Gospel history, for in that
holy history lies the faith of the Church, which the congregation is
bound to learn and know.-* 'The priests learn and teach Holy
Scripture for this purpose, that the Church may learn to know the
walk of Christ, and raay be led to love Christ Himself s
To the question. How ought the AVord of God to be preached ?
AA'ycliffe replies; in general terms, that the truth which edifies ought
to be uttered aptly. Of course this, taken alone, does not h^,^ jq
amount to much. Coming close to the subject, he calls pisaoh.
to his aid the general rule, that every means subservient to an end is
the better adapted to that end, the shorter, and completer the way
in which it leads to it {compendiosius et copiosius). As now the
sowing of God's AVord is the appointed means for the glory of God
and the edification of our neighbour, it is plain that the Aptness and
sowing is all the more aptly done the more shortly and simplicity.
completely it fulfils that end. AVithout doubt, this is the case with a
plain and simple mode of address {plana locutio) ; and this raode
therefore ought to be chosen.* In another place Wycliffe expresses
his preference for a 'humble and homely proclamation of the gospel ; '
1 The twelfth sermon of the same col- Farther on he mentions that the whole
lection has these words — Praecipuum congregation testifies their veneration for
officium viri ecclesiastici est gignere mem- the gospel, 'for when the gospel is read
bra ecclesiae, etc., fol. 52, col. i. Again, the people rise to their feet and remain
in ninth sermon, p. 207, col. 4— Sacerdos standing— they remove their hats, cross
Domini missus ad gignendum el nut7-i- themselves, hsten with attention, and
endum populum verbo vitae. kiss the wall of the church ; while the
"^ Sermons for Saints' Days, No. 22. men of rank lay aside their swords. And
Quando praedicatum est ab apostolis evan- all this is done to show their devotion
gelium, crescit ecclesia in virtute ; sed before the gospel of Jesus Qhrist— while
modo, ex defectu spiritualis seminis, con- men ofttimes deny the gospel by their
tiniie decrescit, fol. 42, col. 3. deeds.' , . , _
3 In sermon 20 of Miscellaneous Ser- ^ In the twenty-second of the Sermons
mons — foh 176, col. 2 — Wycliffe says : for Saints' Days, fol. 42, col. 2.
Auditus tam praedicantis quam etiam 3 Sacerdotes ad hoc discunt et decent
ser'monem audientis debet fieri verbo Scripturam sacram, ut ecclesia cognoscat
Christi ¦ et hinc est, quod prophetae legis conversationem Christi et amet eum, fol.
veteris 'dixerunt, ' haec dicit Deus, ' et 202, col. 4, Sermon 6.
apostoli fraedicaveruni verbum Domini. * Sermon 9.

184 WYCLIFFE AS A PREACHER. [ch.vi.§i
and by this he no doubt meant nothing else than this plainness and
simplicity of language.' And he proceeds on the same principle
when he remarks : ' It was because a flowery and captivating style of
address cannot fail to be of Uttle account wherever the right substance
of preaching is present, that Christ promised to His disciples (Matthew
X. 1 9) no more than that it would be given to them what they should
say : the how would naturally follow.' " That the admonitions which
occur in a sermon should be suitable to the state of the audience, is
a self-evident deduction from the same principle ; 3 and the utterance
given to the truth ought to be apposite and fitting {apte loqui verita
tem). Only one thing must never on any account be wanting —
genuine devout feeling — the fidelis sermonis ministratio — from which
everything in the sermon should be the outcome. ' If the soul is
not in tune with the words, how can the words have power ? If
thou hast no love, thou art sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.' -t
StiU, there is nothing inconsistent with this in the requirement that
the preacher should use sharpness of speech {acuti sermones) upon
proper occasions. Wycliffe remarks that it must not be supposed
that sharpness includes in it malice or ill-feeling. Christ contended
sharply with the Pharisees, but He did so out of a pious heart and
-from love to the Church.s His last obseiTation on the subject is the
crowning one, that ' in every proclamation of the gospel the true
teacher must address himself to the heart, so as to flash the Ught into
the spirit of the hearer, and to bend his will into obedience to the
truth.' <>
Such are the positive requirements which Wycliffe lays down for
preaching and preachers. Let us see how far he complied with them
-Wycliffe's himself, by examining his Latin as well as his English ser-
topios. mons.7 JF/za/ does he preach? He strives to preach God's
Word, not man's ; not worldly things, but the saving truth. This is
what we feel to be his spirit everywhere. That he always takes his
texts from the Bible, either from the Church lessons or from other
parts, freely selected, according to circumstances, is a matter of slight
importance. But he is also fond of connecting one text with another —
' Sermons for Saints'' Days, No. 31, 7 Vaughan, in his Life and Opinions,
fol. 65, col. I. etc, published some extracts from Wy-
= lb., fol. 61, col. 4. cliffe's English sermons, upon the basis
3 No. 30 in the same collection, fol. 60, of which Engelhard wrote his Wykliffeas
col. 3. Verba exhortationis sunt con- a Preacher. Erlangen, 1834. But these
grueniiae auditorii applicanda. sermons, which, in their complete form,
". XL. Miscell, Sermons, No. 8, fol. had remained till lately in MS, , have been
2o5, col. 2. recently given to the world in an excellent
^ XXIV. Sermons, No. 4, fol. 138, form by Thomas Arnold from the Claren-
col. 4. don Press, forming three volumes of
' lb.. No. 20, fol. 176, col. I. 'WycWfie's Select English Works.

1360-1378.] HIS STANDARD OF APPEAL. 185
<r.^., he often combines one Sunday's Gospel with the Gospel for the
preceding Sunday, or with the Epistie for the same ; and in doing so
he dwells with admiration upon the excellencies of the AVord of God ;
observing, in one place, that Scripture truths stand in such an intimate
connection with each other, that every one of thera lends support to
every other, and all of them unite in the revelation of God.'
Further, in all cases where he pronounces a judgment upon any
doctrine, or upon any ecclesiastical custom and institution, it is
always the Bible which he employs as the standard of ^is standard
truth. He goes back to the teaching of the Redeemer ; °^ appeal.
he points to the apostles and their deeds ; the authority of the
Primitive Church is everywhere appealed to. To bring out the
doctrine of the Scriptures {fdes Scripturce) as of supreme authority,
is his highest aim. His sermons are saturated with Bible thoughts
and interwoven with Bible reminiscences. AVith reference to his
ad-vice mentioned above, that the Gospel history especially should be
preached to the people, we must not omit to mention that he very
frequently narrates, in a clear and simple style, the history contained
in the Gospel for the day, interweaving explanatory 'remarks with the
story. After doing so, it is true, he not unfrequently passes on to set
forth the ' mystical sense ' of the passage. On one occasion he justi
fies this with the words, 'To get at a meaning of this history, which
¦will be good for the edification of the people, its mystical sense has
to be considered.' ^ I find, however, that ' Wycliffe's mystical inter
pretation,' as he makes use of it in the Latin sermons, sometimes
consists in nothing more than a simple bringing out of religious
truths, and a moral application to his hearers, and to the present
time, of the features of the history which he takes for his text.
There are many things, indeed, freely handled in these sermons,
which are far frora being Biblical subjects, such as the Standing and
the Rights of the Papacy, the Landed Endov/ments of the Church,
Monachism, and particularly the Mendicant Orders, etc. In this way
much matter is brought into discussion, which is eccle- Ecclesiastical
siastical and even ecclesiastico-political ; and this seeras topics.
at first sight to be out of keeping with his own principle, that the
preaching should have to do with God's AVord alone. But when I
look into the scope and object of these discussions, I come to the
conclusion, that it i%lways the Bible which the preacher applies to
these questions as his rule of judgment, and that he has never any
other aim in view than to estabhsh Apostolic doctrines, and to realise
^ XL. Sermons, No. 11, fol. 213, ' Comp. XL, Miscell. Sermons, No. 5,
col. 1. ' fol- =31. col. i.

l86 WYCLIFFE AS A PREACHER. [ch. vi. § i
again, in the present, the conditions of the primitive Church. It
would be an injustice, therefore, to look upon all these parts of his
sermons as digressions, by which Wycliffe becars.e untrue to his own
principle. There is only one thing about his sei'mons which must at
once be conceded, namely, that the innermost kernel of the gospel,
according to the conviction of Evangelical Christendom in our own
time, i.e., the doctrine of reconciliation through Jesus Christ, and the
way of salvation, especially of the justification of the sinner through
faith, is not to be met with in them. This is, however, not the proper
place to go into this fact; we shall hereafter return to it in our
analysis of AVycliffe's doctrine.
AVhen we exaraine the sermons of Wycliffe in reference to their
form, their manner of presentation, style, and tone, we meet also
¦wycuffe's '^sre with appearances which cannot but seem strange
method. {q ^g^ when we think of the principles which he laid
down respecting the form of preaching. For we find scholastic
formulas, abstract ideas, formal definitions, learned investigations,
syllogistic and dialectical argumentation, all in a measure which we
should not have expected from him, in view of the homiletic maxims
which he himself expressed. There are, however, two points here
which we must not leave out of sight : first, the fact that the Latin
sermons, as remarked above, were probably preached in Oxford
before the University, or, at all events, before audiences composed of
men of learning. In such circumstances the preacher had no need
to descend to so plain a style as would have been necessary in
addressing a rural congregation. On the contrary, Wycliffe did
right to keep in view the requirements of a University
Scholasticism. , , , ,. , . , . ,
church, and the style of preaching to which such
hearers were accustomed. No wonder, then, that we find so much
in the form of these sermons which, to ourselves, appears more
suitable to the lecture-room than the church — to the chair of the
professor than to the pulpit. And, secondly, in order to form a just
judgment, we ought not to under-estimate the influence which
custom and prevalent forms of thought and style exercise, sometimes
unconsciously, even upon the most distinguished and independent
genius. On the other hand, however, we remark that even in these sermons
there is no lack of that plana locutio which AVydiffe recommended
to preachers. The style is very often simple and clear, the mode of
expression not without vividness, sometimes picturesque
and suited to popular taste, and here and there too,
especially in controversial passages, not without a touch even of

1360-138=.] HIS ENGLISH SERMONS. 187
banter and raiUery. The tone is by no means uniformly didactic ;
on the contrary, it rises ever)- now and then into considerable anima
tion — into moral pathos, as in a passage, where he speaks of prayer,
and commends general prayer in comparison with special petitions.
After referring to .in argument which was used on-the other side, he
exclaims, ' Oh ! if the Apostle had heard this piece of subtie hair
splitting, how much would he have despised it.' '
In the English sermons, we find still more frequently a plain and
popular, even a drastic style of speaking, and a moving, heart-felt
tone, especially when the preacher anticipates the judg- jjis English
ment-seat and the last account. In the sermon on the sermons.
Second Sunday of Advent we meet with this passage: 'Sad belief
(earnest faith) of this third Advent should stir men from sin and
draw them to virtue. For if they should to-morrow answer to a
judge, and win great rents or else lose thera, they would full busily
shape for their answer, and much m.ore if they should win or lose
their life. Lord ! since we be certain of the day of doom that it
shall come to us, and we wit not how soon, and there we shall have
judgment of heavenly life, or else of deep of hell that evermore
shall last, how busy should we be to make us ready for this ! Certes,
default of belief is cause of our sloth, and thus should we fasten in
us articles of the truth, for they will be loose in us as nails in a tree,
and therefore it is needful to knock and raake them fast.' ^
Lastly, as concerns the tone of these sermons, and the moral spirit
which dictates their whole contents, it will not be easy for any one
who allows thera to work upon him without prejudice, ^is eamest-
not to receive the impression that there is here a veri- ''®^^-
table zeal for the glory of God — a pure love to the Redeemer, and a
sincere concern for the salvation of souls. There reigns throughout
them an earnest striving after the life that is in Christ Jesus, a truly
godly mind, whose habit is to view all that is earthly in its relations
to a higher world, and to deal with all in the light of eternity. It is
impossible not to think that such a preacher, so full of earnest god-
Uness and Christian conscientiousness, must have made a deep
impression upon all men who 4id not deliberately stand aloof from
the sphere of his influence.
If AVycliffe's work as a preacher in the University was important,
it may be supposed that he also did a true and blessed work among
his flock at Lutterworth, as a parish priest. In the last years of his
life, as we shall see below, he was shut out from the University of
' XXIV. Miscell. Sermons, No. 10, fol. ' Sermons on tjw Gospels, ed. Arnold,
IS3, col. 3. vol- ¦-¦ Sermon xxvil., p. 70.

l88 WYCLIFFE AS A PREACHER. [ch.vi. §i
Oxford, and was thus able to devote to the pastoral office the whole
time and strength which yet remained to him.
First, let us be allowed to introduce here a picture whose original
has been conjectured, not without good grounds, to have been none
chauoer'3 Other than Wycliffe himself. Geoffrey Chaucer, the
' ^°°^ Priest.' father of English poetry, as he is commonly called, was
a younger contemporary of Wycliffe ; but, though he satirises the
sins and infirmities of his time without sparing even those of the
clergy, his spirit was certainly not congenial with Wycliffe's ; Chaucer
was entirely a man of the world, of aesthetic culture, enlightened, and
an enemy to all superstition, but also a stranger to all religious
earnestness. He knows, however, how to value what is good and
worthy of honour, wherever he-finds it. And so, in the prologue to
his Canterbury Tales, which are an imitation of Boccaccio's Decameron,
he has interwoven the following beautiful -description of a country
priest, which includes, at all events, some lineaments of AVycliffe : — •
' But rich he was of holy thought and work.
He was also a learned raan — a clerk.
That Christ's Gospel truely would preach,
His parishens devoutly would ]-ie teach.
Benign he was, and wondrous diligent.
And in adversity full patient ;
And such he was yproved often sithes (times),
Full loth were him to answer for his tithes,
But rather would he given, out of doubt,
Unto his poor parishioners about
Of his offering, and eke of liis substance.
He could in little thing have suffisance.
Wide was his parish, and houses far asunder,
But he ne left nought for ne rain nor thunder.
In siclviiess and in miscliief, to visit
The farthest in his parish, much and lit (great and small),
Upon his feet, and in his hand <i staff.
This noble example to his sheep he yaf (gave),
That first he wrought and afterward lie taught.'
There are several features of this portrait which agree with the
character of AVycUffe, and not a single trait can be detected in it
Application to which does not suit him. The humility, the content-
¦wyoiiffe. ment, and the unselfishness; the moral spotlessness, the
compassionate love, the conscientious and diligent faithfulness in his
office, and the Biblical character of his preaching — these lineaments
were all his. The learning of the man is also made prominent.
Pre-eminently like him also is the oneness of teaching and conduct
exhibited in the ' picture ; the doing ever went before the teaching.

i37c^i3S4-] HIS ITINERANT PREACHERS. l8g
The remark of Vaughan has, indeed, some force, that in these
characteristics of a country priest, the grand features of AVycliffe as a
Reformer are entirely wanting.' But this circumstance by no means
tells against the conjecture that the poet intended to paint AVycliffe
simply as a pastor. It is not merely doubtful, but in the highest
degree improbable, that Chaucer had any appreciation of the great
Reformation-thoughts and strivings of AVycliffe, or ever gave them
any recognition in a practical form. Chaucer took up a position in
reference to ecclesiastical matters which may most readily be com
pared with the raode of thought of many of the Humanists at the
beginning of the sixteenth century — an open eye and a mocking
laugh for all clerical failings and weaknesses, but no heart for the
earnestness and the sanctity of the subject. But undoubtedly he
had an appreciation of sterling moral excellence in humble life.
2. — 'Wycliffe's Itinerant Preachers.
If AA'ycliffe, by his conscientious faithfulness in the pastoral cure,
stood forth as a model preacher and pastor, he worked in this way
effectually for the elevation of his office, even had he 
¦' . . ' . Wycliffe's
done nothing more. But he did not confine himself itinerant
to this. Both by word and deed he laboured to pro
mote everywhere the right preaching of the gospel ; and the most
effective instrumentality which he used for that end was the institu
tion of a Preaching Itinerancy.
It has long been known that Wycliffe sent out itinerant preachers
of the gospel. Lewis, it is true, only touches upon the subject in
cidentally, in so far as he mentions one or another English tract in
which AA'ycliffe speaks of 'poor priests,' and in their defence.
"Vaughan, on the other hand, has gone fully into the subject, and has
given a clear and distinct picture of those diligent and devoted men.^
Shirley also has brought out several interesting details with regard
to the whole institution ; 3 and the subject is now to a certain extent
well understood. There are still, however, certain questions of im
portance relating to it which have never yet received an answer;
indeed, it has hardly yet occurred to any one to propose them. The
questions are these : — At what date did Wycliffe begin -y^gn first
to send out itinerant preachers ? How was he led to ^®''* °"*-
entertain the idea of such a step at all ? It happens in this case, as
1 Life and Opinions, vol. II., p. 139. marks there that this feature of Wycliffe's
"lb., II., 163. John de Wycliffe— a practical Church reform has engaged the
Mono'trraph. 1853, p. 273. attention of his biographers much less
3 In the preface to his edition of the than it ought to have done.
Fasc. Zizaniorum, p. xl. He justly re-

igo wycliffe's itinerant preachers. [ch.vi. §2
so often in history, that an important fact comes suddenly to Ught.
WhUe it was preparing itself in silence, no one thought of it ; all at
once it stands revealed before the world.
At the end of May, 1382, the Archbishop of Canterbury, AVilliam
Courtenay, in a i-nandate addressed to the Bishop of London, speaks
of ' certain unauthorised itinerant preachers who, as he had unhappily
been compelled to learn, set forth erroneous, yea, heretical assertions
in public sermons, not only in churches, but also in public squares
and other profane places,' and ' they do this,' as he adds with special em
phasis, ' under the guise of great holiness, but without having obtained
any episcopal or papal authorisation.' ' That the Primate means by
these men real AVycliffite itinerant preachers, appears with certainty
from the twenty-four articles of doctrine annexed to the mandate, all
of which, with hardly an exception, belong to Wycliffe. To this
same date also belong several English tracts, in which Wycliffe un
dertakes the defence of the proceedings of the itinerants.
It is clear that in May, 1382, the preaching itinerancy was already
in full swing ; but we should Uke to know its first beginnings, and
thus get an insight into the motives and causes frora which it arose.
On that subject Wycliffe himself could best have given us informa
tion ; but he was not the man to talk about a matter before he took
action in it. He contented hiraself with afterwards justifying and
defending what had been done.
It might be supposed that it was first at Lutterworth, in his quiet
rural charge, that Wycliffe began to send forth itinerant preachers.
In this case the presumption would have readily offered itself that he
had sought and found in this new institute a compensation for the
wider and more stirring sphere of work frora which he had been cut
off. To me, however, it appears, on more than one ground, that
Oxford was the cradle of the new institution. First of all, it lies in
the nature of the case that the sending forth of itinerants could only
Oxford the ^ave developed itself gradually, and in the course of
headquarters, ggveral years. Now, as in May, 1382, public attention
was already drawn to it, and the itinerant system had manifestly been
already for some time in full operation,^ this takes us several years
farther back, to a date when AVycliffe resided in the University for a
good part, at least, of every year. Besides, the work did not consist
merely in the sending out of the preachers ; they must be prepared
' The document is printed in Wilkins' Peter Stokes, in Oxford. Fasc. Ziz., p.
Concilia Magnae Britanniae, III. , fol. 158, 275.
Comp. the missive of the same prelate, = Sane frequenti clamors et divulgata
dated two days earlier, and couched in fama ad nostrum pei-venit audituin, etc.
about the same terms, to the Carmelite, Fasc. Zizan,, p. 275.

1370-1382,] TESTIMONY TO THEIR CHARACTER. 1 91
beforehand for their calling. This was the most important point, and
the preparation could not be effected in a hurry. In thinking of the
necessary course of study, we naturally turn to the University ; for in
the small town of Lutterworth we can hardly imagine a circle of
educated theologians being collected round the parish priest, even
though that priest -vvas AA'ycliffe. It is far easier to suppose that
AVycliffe, while still in Oxford, entered into close relations with a
number of young men, some of them graduates in Arts, and some
youths who were still in their undergraduate course. It is indepen
dently probable that a personality of such high distinction, as well in
the field of learning as in practical Church work, should have drawn
around hira not a few susceptible young men who desired to carry
on their culture under his guidance.
AA'hat we could not fail to conjecture beforehand is found to be
confirmed by positive proof An enthusiastic foUower of AVycliffe,
William Thorpe, in his examination before the Arch- Thorpe's
bishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, gave the follow- te=t™'>''y-
ing information concerning the course of his own studies and his
relation to AVycliffe : — ' I prayed my parents that they would give me
licence for to go to them that were named wise priests, and of
virtuous conversation, to have their counsel, and to know of them
the office and the charge of priesthood. And hereto my father and
my mother consented full gladly, and gave me their blessing and good
leave to go. And so that I went to those priests whom I heard to
be of best name, and of most holy living, and best learned, and most
wise of heavenly wisdom, and so I communed with them unto the
time that I perceived, by their virtuous and continual occupations,
that their honest and charitable works passed their fame which I had
heard before of them. Wherefore by the example of the doctrine of
them, and specially for the godly and innocent works which I per
ceived then of them and in them, after my cunning and power I have
exercised me then and in this time, to know perfectly God's law,
having a wiU and desire to live thereafter.' To the Archbishop's
further inquiry, 'Which are these men holy and wise? Thorpe
replied, ' Maister j John WycUffe was holden of fuU many men
the greatest clerk' that they knew then living ; and therewith he
was named a passing ruly ' man, and innocent in his living.' Be
sides AVycliffe hiraself, Thorpe names several of his admirers, such
as John Aston, Nicholas Hereford, John Purvey, and others, and
then- continues thus :— ' AVith all these men I was right homely, and
communed with them long time and oft ; and so, before all other
I I.e.. of strict principle ; the opposite oi unruly.

192 WYCLIFFE'S ITINERANT PREACHERS. [ch. vi. § 2
men, I chose wilfully to be informed of them and by them ; and
specially of AVycUffe himself, as the raost virtuous and godly wise man
that I heard of, or knew.' '
The whole account sounds as though Thorpe had enjoyed the
instruction of all these men at the same time. If this was so, we
can only suppose that O.xford, not Lutterworth, was the place where
Thorpe had cultivated his intercourse with those worthy men, and
especially with AVycUffe himself; and we are hereby led to the
assumption that AA^ycliffe had already begun in Oxford to train
younger men to the priestly office, and in particular to the office of
preaching. We shall scarcely err if we assume that Wycliffe, as long
Training of as he Worked in Oxford as a Doctor of Theology, and
Itinerants. .^,^,^^ jj,^ ^-^.^^ habit of preaching frequently, if not regularly,
before the University, formed there a training-school of preachers, a
sort of priest seminary, which, however, was of an entirely private
and voluntary character. I have not a moment's doubt that while
he was still in Oxford AVycliffe sent out as voluntary itinerant
preachers young men belonging to this circle, who" had attached
themselves so closely to his person, and had embraced his theological
views and convictions as well as his practical Church principles.
Perhaps the entrance which the first preachers of his school found
among the people, and the warm acceptance which their sermons
obtained in the country districts, gave fresh courage to himself and
his scholars, so that the first itinerants were followed by ever in
creasing numbers, and the whole undertaking gradually took root
and extended itself When AVycliffe at a later period withdrew entirely
to Lutterworth, he of course did not give up this agency, but carried
it on with all the raore zeal the raore painfully he felt that, by his
dismissal from the University, a field of richly blessed work had been
closed to his ministry.
But what was this agency meant to do ? and what were its practical
results? Was it intended that a systematic rivalry and opposition
should be made by the itinerants against the parochial clergy ? The
opponents of the movement naturally viewed it in this Ught; and
Itinerants and ^ven at the present day there are Roraan Catholic his-
parish priests, torians who have admitted this idea to their minds.^
But how can this view of the subject be even thinkable, seeing that
the itinerants, on this supposition, would have pronounced sentence
of condemnation upon the venerated master himself, who was never
^ Acts and Alonuments of John Foxe, IV. , maintains that the Wycliffe preachers
ed. Pratt and Stoughton, v. ill., 256-258. thought very meanly of the whole body
^ E.g., Lingard, History of England, v. of the parish priests.

1370-13S2.] THE PAROCHIAL CLERGY. 1 93
himself one of the itinerant preachers, but preferred to work precisely
in the character of a parish priest among his own flock ? More
over, the hierarchy would certainly not have omitted to accuse the
itinerants of hostUity to the parochial clergy and the calumniation
of their characters ; but of this I find not a single trace. All they
are accused of is that they promulgate erroneous doctrine, and that
they preach of their own will without episcopal sanction. This,
indeed, is only an argumentum ex silentio. But I am able to appeal,
in support of the opposite view, to express testimonies as well, and
these from AA^ycliffe's own mouth. In his little book. Of the Pastoral
Office, although he accuses the parochial clergy of much degenerac}',
of worldliness, of neglect in preaching the gospel, and of the evil
custom of non-residence in their parishes,' appearing also as the
advocate of 'the simple priests,' i.e., the evangelical itinerants, he at
t'ne same time stands up for the parish priests, if they only do their
duty in some sort. He defends their rights against the encroach
ments of the mendicant monks ; and also, in the face of the incorpo
ration of parish tithes with foundations and monasteries, he roundly
and clearly lays down the principle that all parishes should be able
to pay for the ministrations which their pastors in humility render to
thera.= In his Latin sermons, again, AVycliffe blames, it is true, those
parish priests who are 'dumb dogs, and cannot bark' (Isa. Ivi. 10),
or who preach only for selfish and ambitious ends ; 3 but he expects,
nevertheless, great things from true and prudent pastors, '^ and lays
upon the heart of the parochial clergy the Redeemer's admonition,
' Watch.' It is their duty to keep watch over their flocks.s At the
end of the tract, to be mentioned again below. Why Poor Priests
have no Benefices, Wycliffe expressly assures his readers that these
priests pronounce no condemnation upon those pastors who do their
duty and teach truly and steadfastly the law of God in opposition to
false prophets and the devices of the wicked fiend.,^ According to
all this, there is certainly no ground for assuming that the Wycliffite
itinerants allowed themselves to run down the parochial clergy as a
body ; although it cannot, of course, admit of a doubt that with regard
to unconscientious and worldly-minded pastors and preachers they
were in the habit of expressing themselves in no very measured
language. 1 In one place— -/?« Officio Pastorali, 1., 3 XL. Miscell. Serm. No. 29, fol. 283,
c. 17 — he reiers to ihem as pseudo-pastores. col. 3.
= In the same treatise, 11., 5, he says : ¦* Sermons for Saints' Days, No. 56 as
Appropriationes ecclesiarum cathedralium above, fol. 117, col. i.
defraudant parochias a praedicatoribus 5 XL. Miscell. Serm. as above, fol. 194,
legitimis verbi Dei. Deberet parochiis col. 2.
cunctis sufficere servitium, quod sacerdotes * Comp. Vaughan, Life and Opinions,
¦iiroprii humiliter subministrant. 11., 169.
14

194 wycliffe's ITINERANT PREACHERS, [ch. vi. § 2
The sending forth of these itinerant preachers was a measure
which, so far as I can see, passed through several stages of develop
ment. In its first stage, the preachers were exclusively
Successive 1 1 ¦
stages in the men who had already taken orders. This appears from
the title which AVycliffe is wont to apply to them. In
his work on The Pastoral Office, he calls them sometimes ' presby
ters,' sometimes ' priests,' and yet in such a way as to indicate
clearly by the connection, or by the use of epithets like faithful
or simple priests or presbyters, what description of clergy he means.
However much his opponents may have looked down upon such
men as ' uneducated ' and ' stupid ' — a reproach which AVycliffe
bravely takes as levelled against himself as well as others ' — they
must yet have been men who had received ordination, otherwise
AA''ycliffe would certainly never have applied to thera the name of
' priests.' Yet this designation occurs both in his Latin writings and
in his EngUsh sermons and tracts. ^^ With this also agrees the justi
fication of the free preaching of every priest, which WiUiara Thorpe
put forth in his exaraination before Archbishop Arundel, a quarter of
a century later, and which, without doubt, may be traced back to
the teaching of Wycliffe himself Thorpe expresses himself in the
following terms : — ' By the authority of the Word of God, and also
of many saints and doctors, I have been brought to the conviction
that it is the office and duty of every priest, faithfully, freely, and
truly to preach God's Word.s AVithout doubt it behoves every
priest, in determining to take orders, to do so chiefiy with the object
of preaching the AVord of God to the people to the best of his ability.
AA'e are accordingly bound by Christ's command and holy example,
and also by the testimony of His holy apostles and prophets, under
heavy penalties, to exercise ourselves in such wise as to fulfil this
duty of the priesthood to the best of our knowledge and powers. We
believe that every priest is commanded by the Word of God to raake
God's will known to the people by faithful labour, and to publish it
to them in the spirit of love, to the best of our ability, where, when,
and to whomsoever we may.'
Thorpe, who was an itinerant of AVycliffe's school, speaks in this
' De Officio Pastorali, II. , c. 10, p. 45. of curs expounded, c. 9, p. 293 ; comp.
Nobis rudibus, comp. II., c. 4, p. 36; De Ecclesia et ¦membris ejus, c.z, in Three
dicunt de talibus presbyteris, quod sunt Treatises by John Wycliffe; ed. Todd,
stolidi ac rudes. p. xi. "This moveth por prestis (poor
= Trevoe Preestis\^-cMeVx\es,\.^. Sermons priests) to speke now hertily in this
pubUshed by Arnold, v. I., p. 176 ; II., mater."
pp. 173, 182; pore prestis (poor priests), 3 'That it is euerie priests office and
tract. Lincolniensis in Miscellaneous duty for to preach busilie, freely, and
Wm-ks, p. 231. Fifty Heresies and Errors truelie the worde of God.' Yoyie, Acts
f Friars, c. 36, p. 393. Greet sentence and Monuments, v. ni. , p. 260.

1370-138=.] GROWTH OF THE SYSTEM. 195
passage as a priest himself, and in the name of others like-minded
with himself, who were also in priests' orders.
But even in this first stage, when only priests went out as itinerants
— two sub-stages must, I think, be distinguished. At the beginning
of the movement it was scarcely laid down as a prin- Beneflces do-
ciple,. that no one shoidd accept a pastoral charge. oimea.
Later, men made a virtue of necessity, and the principle was adopted
that even if such a charge could be obtained, it was advisable not to
accept it. This is the position taken in the tract. Why Poor Priests
have no Bmefices,^ in which the principle just named is justified on
three grounds : i. GeneraUy speaking, no benefice is to be obtained
without simony, whether the right of collation be in the hands of a
prelate or a temporal lord. 2. That the beneficed priest, by reason
of his dependence upon his ecclesiastical superiors, may be compelled
to give up to them, contrary to right, all that portion of his revenues
which exceeds his own necessities, and which by God's law and
public right ought to be expended upon the poor. 3. A priest with
out benefice, not being bound to a particular parish, and being free
from the jurisdiction of sinful men, is at liberty to preach the gospel
wherever he can be of use, and can also without hindrance flee from
one city to another, according to Christ's instruction, in case he
should be persecuted by the ' clergy of Antichrist.'
In the second stage, an important step in advance was taken. The
adoption of lay preaching was resolved upon, as it had been prac
tised before among the Waldenses, with whom lay preaching had
been a powerful factor in their whole movement ; and yet, so far at
least as I know the writings of WycUffe, he was not at all aware of
this precedent, and acted quite independentiy of it.
That lay preachers appeared among the Lollards after Wycliffe's
death does not admit of a doubt ; but that even in his Ufetime, and
with his knowledge and approval, laymen were era- Lay
ployed as itinerant preachers, I believe I ara able to P^«^°i'"'g-
prove. It is certainly no accidental circurastance that Wycliffe, in
sermons of his latest years, in referring to his beloved itinerants, no
longer speaks of them as ' poor priests,' or ' simple,' or ' faithful '
priests, but on aU occasions applies to them the names of ' evan
gelical men,' or ' apostolic raen.' ^ It looks as if, in such places, he
intentionally avoided the name of priests, because this was now no
' -Vauo-han, in Life and Opinions, etc.. Benefice, at least among the works of
VII p°i64 f., has given large extracts doubtful authenticity.
from' this tract, which he regards as an =¦ Sermons for Saints' Days, Nos. 31,
indubitable work of Wycliffe; but Arnold, 37, 53, fol. 6r, cols. 2 and 3; fol. 70,
in his Select Works, vol. III., p. xx., col. 4; fol. 109,00]. i.
places the tract— 1 1 'hi pore Prestis hiin ncn

ig6 wycliffe's ITINERANT PREACHERS. en. vi. § 2
longer applicable to all the itinerants ; but still raore clearly does
this appear from a passage in the Dialogus or Speculum Ecclesiae
Militantis. In this tractate, which was written certainly not earlier
than 1 38 1, and probably not before 1383, when comparing the bene
ficed clergy with the itinerants, he makes use of these words : ' And
as respects the fruits of preaching, it appears certain that a single
unlearned preacher effects more, by the grace of God, for the edifica
tion of the Church of Christ, than many who have graduated in
schools or colleges, because the former scatters the seed of the
law of Christ more humbly and more abundantly both in deed
and in word.' ' But the most convincing passage of all, to my
mind, is that which occurs in one of his later sermons, where
Wycliffe asserts with great emphasis that for a rainistry in the
Church the Divine call and coraraission are perfectly sufficient;
there is an installation by God Himself, although the bishop has
given in such a case no imposition of hands, in accordance with his
traditions.^ If the fact was, as we have now, we believe, shown to be probable,
that the itinerant preaching began at a time when AVycUffe stiU
Spread of belonged to the University, we are justified in further as-
itinerancy. guming that Oxford was the starting-point, and that the
country immediately surrounding this city was the first scene ofthe new
movement. It then spread frora thence raore widely over the land.
From several facts, attested by written documents, it appears that the
town of Leicester soon became a second centre of the WycUffite itine
rancy — a fact which was, no doubt, connected with the circumstance
that in the last years of his life AVycliffe had his settled residence at
Lutterworth, in the county of Leicester. One of the first who
appeared as an itinerant preacher was John of Aston. He was followed,
also in AA^ycliffe's life-time, by AViUiam Thorpe, already mentioned,
and others. These men went forth in long garments of coarse red
The woollen cloth, barefooted, with staff in hand, in order to
preachers, represent theraselves as pilgrims, and their wayfaring as
a kind of pilgrimage, their coarse woollen dress being a symbol of
^ Dialogus, or Speculum Ecclesits mili- collegiis, quia seminat humilius et copiosius
tantis, c, 27, "Vienna IMS. 1387 (Denis legem Christi, tam opere quam sermone.
CCCLXxxiv.), fol. 157, col. I ; and the = Sermons for Saints' Days, No. 8,
like words again occur in full in the short fol. 17, col. i. Videtur ergo, quod ad
piece, De Graduationibus scholasticis, c. esse talis ministerii ecclesiae requiritur
3, MS. 3929 (Denis CCCLXXXV.), fol. auctoritas acceptationis divinae, et per con-
2.19, col. 2. The words run thus — sequens potestas ac notitia data a Deo
Quantum ad fructum, certum videtur ad tale ministerium peragendum, quibus
quod unus ydiota, mediante Dei gratia, habitis, licet episcopus secundum tradi-
plus proficit ad aedificandam Christi eccle- tiones suas non imposuit illi manus, Deus
siam, quam multi graduati in scolis sive per se instituit.

1370-1382.] THEIR WORK DESCRIBED. 197
their poverty and toil (' poor priests '). Thus they wandered from
village to village, from town to town, and frora county to county,
without halt or rest, preaching, teaching, warning, wherever they
could find willing hearers, sometimes in church or chapel, wherever
any such stood open for prayer and quiet devotion ; sometimes in
the churchyard, when they found the church itself closed; and some
times in the public street or market-place.'
Their sermons were, before everything else, full of Bible truth.
This was to be expected from them, for these men had all gone forth
from AVycliffe's school, had imbibed his principles, and Their sermons
had all formed themselves as preachers upon his model. Bibiioai.
They had learned to regard as their chief duty ' the faithful scattering
of the seed of God's AVord ; ' and their sole aim was to minister
sound nourishment to the people.^ ' God's AVord,' ' God's Law,'
therefore, was not only their text, but their sole theme ; and it
agrees perfectly with the picture which we could not fail beforehand
to draw for ourselves, when the Leicester chronicler, who tells us
that he had more than once been a hearer of their preaching, testi
fies that the preachers were continually enforcing that ' no man could
becorae righteous and well-pleasing to God who did not hold to
" Goddis lawe," 3 for that,' says he, ' was their favourite expression, to
which they were ever appealing in all their addresses.' Wycliffe
himself, in his English tract. Of Good Prechyng Prestis, declares that
* This description rests upon several asscrere verbum Dei. Sic enim Ckiistu
attestations of friends and foes — the latter non solum in sinagogis sed in castelli
of an official as well as private character. (Matt. ix. 35) constantius fraedicabat.
A document both official and of certain Locus enim non facit sanctum populum,
date is the missive given above of William sed e contra (fol. 75, col. 3).
Courtenav, Archbishop of Canterbury, of The Chronicler of St. Albans, Thomas
30th of May, 1382, directed against cer- Walsingham, narrates under the year
tain itinerant preachers, alleged to be 1377, that -Wycliffe, partly to disguise
both unauthorised and heretical, pub- his heresy, and partly to spread it more
lished in Wilkins' Concilia, and in widely, entered into alliance with other
Shirley's T^ajc. Zizan., p. 275. Among men as associates, hving partly in Oxford,
other things it is said — Quidam, aeternae and partly in other parts ofthe kingdom,
damnationis filii, sub magnae sanctitatis and he describes them talaribus indutos
velamine, auctoritatem sibi vindicant veslibus de russeto, in signum perfectionis
praedicandi — tam in ecclesiis quam in amplioris, incedentes nudis pedibus, qui
plateis et aliis locis prof anis dictae nostrae suos errores in populo ventilarent, etc.
provinciae, non verentur asserere, dog- Hist, Angl. ed. Riley, 1863. I. 324. The
matizare et publice praedicare. Wycliffe chronicler Knighton, of Leicester (or his
himself defends the practice of his friends continuator), remarks, col. 2657, that he
in preaching everywhere without dis- had himself heard several of these men
tinction of place, "in the 37th of his preach.
Saints' Day Sermons. Videtur mihi quod ' De Officio Pastorali, 1\., c. 3, p. 34.
sacerdos zelans pro lege Domini, cui Salubriter populo praedicantes.
negatur pio loco et tempore praedicatio 3 Knighton, De Eventibus A ngliae, col.
verbi Dei, debet usque ad passionem 2664. Talem enim habebant terminun,
martyrii, in casu quo non debet esse sibi in omnibus suis dictis semper praetendendt
conscius, praedicationem vel hortationem, legem Dei, ' Goddis lawe, '
in quacunque loco auditor ium habere potest.

igS wycliffe's ITINERANT PREACHERS. [ch. v.. § 2
their first aim was directed to this, that God's law should at aU times
be recognised, taught, practised, and highly regarded.'
That these sermons or exhortations ^ were less of a dogmatic than
an ethical character, we may gather not only from the name which,
after AVycliffe's example, the preachers were- in the habit
of applying to the Word of God — viz., God's law — but
also frora the confirmatory statements of Wycliffe and their oppo
nents. In the tract just mentioned, Wycliffe states that the second
aim of the ' good preaching priests ' was that all gross open sins
prevailing among different ranks, and also the hypocrisy and erro
neous teaching of Antichrist and his foUowers, ie,, the Pope and the
Popish clergy, should be done away ; while, in the third place, they
strove to promote true love in all Christendom, and especially in
England, and so to help men to reach in safety the blessedness of
heaven.3 The form and language of these addresses behoved, according to
AVycliffe's principles, to be plain and simple.* But these men,
Force of their according to all the notices which we possess of them,
language. must have been in the habit of using language of a very
emphatic and trenchant description : and this, as well when they
laboured directly for the awakening and moral regeneration of the
people, setting eternity before their eyes, and exhorting them to live
in Christian brotherhood and peace and beneficence, as when they
depicted the prevailing sins of the time, holding up before all ranks
their vices and lusts, and especially exposing to reprobation the
vices of the clergy — their hypocrisy, sensuality, avarice, and ambition.
From the description given of these popular discourses by the ear-
witness of Leicester, entirely adverse as he was to the movement,
one receives a vivid impression both of the winning attractiveness
and unction, and of the arresting and subduing power by which they
must have been characterised. s When we remember the moral
earnestness and the crushing power which we have felt in AVycUffe
himself as a preacher, we cannot wonder that his scholars also, men
in earnest about ' God's Law,' should have rebuked the prevailing sins
' Qf good Prechyng Prestis. Comp. -Vaughan, Life and Opinions, etc., II,,
Shirley, Original Works of Wycliffe, p. p. 187.
45. Lewis — History, p. 200 — gives the 4 De Officio Pastorali, 11,, c. 3, p. 34.
commencement of the piece, which indi- Debet evangelisator praedicare plane evan-
cates, at the same time, its chief sub- gelicam veritatem.
stance. Arnold, in Select EnglishWorks, s Knighton, col. 2664. Doctrina eorum
III., p. xix., places this piece among the in quibuscumque loquelis in principio
works of doubtful authenticity. dulcedine plena apparuit et devota, infine
^ In more than one passage which quoque invidia subtili et detractione plena
treats of the Itinerants, Wycliffe puts defloruit. Comp. col. 2660. Frequenter
together praedicationes and exhortationes. in suis sermonibus — clamitaverunt, Treicc
3 Of good Prechyng Prestis. Comp. Prechoures I False Prechoures I

i37c-i3S=.] THEIR WORK DEFENDED, 1 99
of the time without reserve and with all sharpness. Of course this
severity of speech, especiaUy when it was directed against the
hierarchy, offended the latter in the highest degree, and slanders were
spread about the preachers to the effect that the only thing they were
able to do was to abuse the prelates behind their backs ; that they
were undermining the whole frame of the Church, and were serpents
casting forth deadly poison.'
Against these calumnies AA''ycliffe defended his followers in a tract
entitled. The Deceits of Satan and his Priests. Almighty God, who is
full of love, gave commandment to His prophets to cry
, , , , , • Defence
aloud, to spare not, and to show to the people their against
transgressions (Isaiah Iviii. 1). The sin of the common
people is great, the sin of the lords, the mighty and the wise, is
greater, but greatest of all is the sin of the prelates, and most blind
ing to the people. Therefore are true men by God's commandment
bound to cry out the loudest against the sin of the prelates, because
it is in itself the greatest, and of greatest mischief to the people.^
AVycliffe, as we before had occasion to see, published a consider
able number of tracts which related exclusively, or at least chiefly, tc
the itinerant preachers of his school. There are still Tracts on
extant both English and Latin writings of this kind. itiJisranoy.
Those in English are all defences of the preachers, sorae of thera
taking the form of controversy with their opponents. To this class
belong the foUowing: — Of Good Preaching Priests,^ Why Poor Priests
have no Benefices, Of Feigned Contemplative Life,"! Of Obedience to Pre
lates,^ Mirror of Antichrist.^ These writings, it is true, are all placed
by Arnold among the works of doubtful authenticity. Among the
Latin writings is, e.g.; the sraall tract. Of Academic Degrees, including
a defence of the itinerant preachers ; the sole object of which is to
prove that the preaching of the gospel by raen who are not graduates
is justified by the Scriptures, and allowed by the Church. 7
AA'hile the tracts hitherto naraed treat chiefly of the itinerants, and
are intended less for thera than for the people, and rjhe 'Six
some of thera especially for the learned class (such as Yokes.'
the tract last mentioned), there is also a small book which I find
' The Archbishop of Canterbury in his Comp. Lewis, p. 198. No. 107, 42, No.
Mandate of the year 1382, mentioned 26. -
above. ^ Shirley, 40, No. 12.
¦> On the deceits of Satan andhis priests, « Shirley, 41, No. 17. -Vaughan, Z//i
after Vaughan, Life and Opinions, etc, , and Opinions, II., p. 188 f, under tiie
V. II. , p. 184. title. On the Four Deceits of Antichrist.
3 Comp. Lewis, //wtory, p. 200; Shirley, i De Graduationibus scholasticis, in
Catalogue, p. 45, No. 32. three chapters, in Vienna MS. 3929 (Dinis
4 Of feyned contemplatif Lif Shirley. CCCLXXXV. , fol. 247, col. 2, 250, and in
¦" ¦' other MSS.).

200 WYCLIFFE'S ITINERANT PREACHERS. [cu. vi. § 2
among AVycliffe's writings, which was composed primarily and directly
for those simple preachers themselves. I refer to the tract of The Six
Yokes. For as to the so-called Letter to the Simple Priests, it is
neither, as I have been convinced for some years, a real letter in form
(although it occurs under this title in two catalogues of Wychffe's
writings made at the beginning of the fifteenth century), nor does it
relate to the itinerants, but obviously treats of ordinary parish priests.
The whole appears to me to be a fragment taken either from some
tractate, or (which I think quite possible) frora a Latin sermon.'
The tract of The Six Yokes, on the other hand, appears to me to
have been designed by AVycliffe for those of his friends who devoted
theraselves to the itineranc)'. Its very comraencement indicates this :
'In order that unlearned and simple preachers, who are burning
with zeal for souls, may have materials for preaching,' etc. I must
here remark, however, that the materials of this tract were originally
interwoven with several of his Latin sermons, and were only subse
quently formed into an independent whole. For I find in the Saints
Day Sermons some of the same portions which now form several
chapters of the tract. = The English sermons, too, lately issued by
the Clarendon Press, leave the impression,, at least in several places,
of being sketches intended by the author for the use of others rather
than himself At the end of the very first of them, for example,
occurs the remark, ' In this Gospel may priests tell of false pride of
rich raen, and of lustful life of mighty raen of this world, and of long
pains of hell, and joyful bliss in heaven, and thus lengthen their
' The Epistola missa ad simplices again, forms the concluding part of one
Sacerdotes is mentioned in both the Cata- sermon, viz., the thirty-first, fol. 62, col. 3.
logues drawn up in Bohemia, which Shirley The fifth chapter makes the second half of
printed in his Catalogue — the first the thirty-second sermon, fol. ^¦^, col. 3 ',
from the -Vienna MS., 3933 (Dinis fol. 64, col. 3; and even so does the last
CCCXCI.), fol. 19s; the second from chapter form the second half of the thirty-
D^nis CCCXCIII., fol. 102. Comp. espe- third sermon, fol. 65, col. 3; fol. 66, col. 2.
cially pp. 62, 68, in Catalogue. Shirley It is not, therefore, quite accurate when
placed too much confidence in these Shirley observes of the tractate, De sex
notices when he printed in his Introduc- Jugis, that it is an extract from the
tion to the Fasc. Zizan. the supposed Sermon 11., No 27; for in this sermon
letter (to which he gave, at his own in- only the beginning of tbe tractate is to
stance, the name ofa circular), p. xli., be found, at least in the MS. which I
note. The text which he gives requires, have made use of
indeed, some not inconsiderable cor- There is also observable a difference
rections, and yet it proves clearly enough in the ways in which these several sermons
that it has np reference to the Itinerants, are manipulated to make out the several
and in 1,0 case was a letter addressed to chapters of the tractate ; for while what
that class. is used of the first sermon is closely inter-
= Ihe first chapter of the treatise forms woven with the contents of the first
the close of the twenty-seventh sermon chapter, the portions of the other sermons
in the Sermons for Saints' Days, fol. 53, made use of are only mechanically at-
col. 4 ; fol. 54, col. 2. The second and tached to the following chapters— inserted
third chapters make up the greatest part into them, so to speak, like fragments of
of the twenty-eighth sermon, from fol. exploded stone.
54, col. 4 onwards. The fourth chapter.

1370-1382.] WRITINGS FOR THEIR BENEFIT. 20I
sermon as the time asketh.' 'Here may man touch of all manner
of sin, and specially of false priests, traitors to God, that should
surely clepe (call) men to bliss and tell them the way of the law
of Christ, and raake known to the people the cantelis (devices) of
Antichrist.' Still more characteristic is the concluding remark of the
second sermon : ' Here the preacher may touch upon all manner of
sins, especially those of false priests and traitors to God, whose duty
it is to deal faithfuUy with the people for their salvation, and to show
thera the way of the law of Christ, and the deceitful wiles of Anti
christ.'' These and other passages, of which we could mention
several more, lead us to the conjecture that these sermons were
composed by AA'ycliffe, in part, at least, for the benefit of the itiner
ants of his school, as helps and guides, and furnishing materials for
preaching. At all events, the fact is certain that no inconsiderable part
of the literary labours of AA^ycliffe centred in the Institute founded by
him for this preaching itinerancy, and was designed to be serviceable
to the preachers, either by defending them frora attack, or assisting
them in their work.^
^ Sermons on the Gospels, v. I., 3-6. Lutterworth, it continued in full activity,
= [V\'e are without exact information as and is specially noticed by Archbishop
to when the system of ' Poor Priests ' was Courtenay in a letter to the Bishop of Lon-
set on foot by Wycliffe. The prevalence don in 1382. ' Unauthorised preachers, '
of the Lollard doctrines in after years writes the archbishop, ' under tbe cloke
throughout the district lying immediately of great holiness, are setting forth false
to the east of O.xfordshire seems to point and heretical doctrines, and perverting
to some original centre of activity in that many from the Catholic faith,' Fasc Ziz.,
neighbourhood ; and as Wycliffe held the p. 275. We may therefore, with suffi-
living of Ludgarshall from 1368 to 1374, cient accuracy, assign the chief activity of
the probability seems to be that the plan the movement to the years between 1370
was initiated there. After his removal to and 1382.]

CHAPTER VII.
WYCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR, AND HIS SER
VICE DONE TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
I. — The Novelty of the Idea of an English Translation
of the whole Bible.
IN the preceding chapter we have seen AA'ycliffe laying down the
principle that, in preaching, God's AA'"ord raust be taught before
everything else, because it is the indispensable bread of life, the seed
of regeneration and conversion. Nor was it only in theory that he
laid down this principle. That he knev/ how to establish and eluci-
The Scrip- ^^^'^ ''^ ^^ ^ matter of doctrine we shall have opportunity
tures for all. jq ggg by-and-by, when we come to represent his whole
dogmatic system. He also carried out the principle in life and
action : first, in his own person as a preacher ; and next, by sending
out itinerant preachers to proclaim the Divine Word. The same
principle led him also to the work of Bible-translation. AVycliffe
was not a man to do anything by halves. AVhen once he recognised
a principle to be right, he knew how to carry it out completely on
all sides. So here in particular. The principle that God's AVord
should be preached to the people, he expanded into the principle
that Scripture must become the common property of all. As a
means to this end, he saw the necessity of the Bible being translated
into the language of the country, with the view of giving it the
widest possible diffusion among the population.
This was a project so great, so new, and so bold for that age, that
we become eager to learn what were the preparatory intermediate
stages through which AVycliffe was led onward to the execution of
his high purpose. In order to understand the undertaking in its
peculiarity and greatness, we raust first have before us a clear idea
of the state of things before AVycliffe took the first step in the
matter. Sir Thomas More, the well-known statesman under Henry VIIL,

lajo?] ALLEGED PREVIOUS VERSIONS. 203
repelled the charge laid against the hierarchy at the time of the
Reformation, that it had withheld the Holy Scriptures from the
people during the Middle Ages, by the assertion that it was by no
means true that A\''ycliffe was the first man who had undertaken a
translation of the whole Bible into English for the use .„ ^
° Alleged
of the laity, for complete English translations of it had previous
existed long before AVycliffe's time. He had himself
seen beautiful old manuscripts of the EngUsh Bible, and these books
had been provided with the knowledge of the bishops.' Nor was
More the only one who claimed to have knowledge of English trans
lations of the Bible before Wycliffe ; several Protestant scholars of the
seventeenth century were of the same opinion. Thomas James, the
first librarian ofthe Bodleian, a very dUigent and indefatigable polemic
against the Papists, had held in his own hands an English manuscript
Bible, which he judged to be much older than the days of AVycliffe.^
Archbishop Usher foUowed in the same line, when he assigned this
alleged pre-AVycliffite version to be about the year 1290.3 Henry
Wharton, also, the learned editor and completer of Usher's work,
even beUeved himself able to show who the author of this supposed
translation was, viz., John of Trevisa, a priest in Cornwall.''
All these suppositions, however, rest upon error, as was seen
several years later by the last-named investigator himself, who
corrected both his own text and that of Usher, s Those manuscripts
of the English Bible seen by Sir Thomas More, and later by Thomas
James, were, it is certain, nothing more than copies of ^hese reaUy
the translation executed by AVycliffe and his followers, wyoiiffe's.
There is documentary evidence to show that at the time of the
Refonnation there were several manuscripts of this translation in the
hands of Roman Catholic prelates. Bishop Bonner, for instance,
-was possessor of one, which is now preserved in the Archiepiscopal
Library at Lambeth, and a second copy, which belonged in 1540 to
a Knight of St. John, Sir William Weston, is now in Magdalen
College, Cambridge.^ Besides, if the fact were correct, that there
ever existed any older English translation of the whole Bible, some
sure traces of it, on the one hand, would not have been wanting, and,
on the other, we may feel very certain that, in that case, the Wycliffites
1 Thom. More, Dyalogues, fol. cviii. * Auctorium Historiae Dogmaiicae J.
cxi. cxiv. Usserii, p. 424.
¦^ Treatise of the Corruption of Scrip- 5 H. Wharton (under the pseudonym
twe, Lond., 1612, p. 74. Vide Forshall Ant. Harmer), Specimens of Errors in the
and Madden 's Wycliffite Versions of the History of the Reformation. Lond. , 1693.
Bible, vol. I., p. xxi. Vide Vaughan, John de Wycliffe, p. 334,
3 Historia Dogmatica Controversiae de Note I.
Scripturis et Sacris Vernaculis. Lond., * Wycliffite Versions of the Bible, yo\.
1690, 4to, p. 155. I. Pref xxi. Ivii.

204 WYCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR. , [ch. vn. § i
would not have omitted to appeal to that fact in justification of their
own undertaking. It is quite clear from their writings, moreover,
that they knew nothing of any older translation; but, on the con
trary, regarded their own version as the first English version of the
whole Bible.' Only in one solitary instance, in a tract of the years
1400-1411, is mention made, in defence of the right of possessing
the Bible in the English tongue, of the fact that a citizen of London,
of the name of AA'ering, was in possession of an EngUsh Bible, which
many had seen, and which appeared to be two hundred years old.^
Assuming that this statement of age was trustworthy, the translation
in question could only have been one belonging to the Anglo-Saxon
period. Let us now see how the case stands with regard to trans
lations of that era.
All the attempts at Bible translation and commentary which are
known to date frora Anglo-Saxon times belong to that period which
The Anglo- ^^ called, by Unguists and Uterary historians, the old
Saxon. Anglo-Saxon period, reaching down to a.d. iioo; while
the new Anglo-Saxon or Half-Saxon period extends from 11 00 to
1250.3 Now, the old Anglo-Saxon literature is comparatively rich in
productions which treat of Biblical subjects, both in verse and prose.
The first of the Anglo-Saxons to adopt this line was the monk
Caedmon of AVhitby, who lived in the seventh century. ¦* In his
religious poem, called The Paraphrase, he sang of the Creation, the
Fall, the Flood, the Exodus, and kindred topics. Bishop Aldhelm,
of Sherborn, in the eighth century, according to the testimony of
Bale, translated the Psalter ; and an Anglo-Saxon paraphrase of the
Latin Psalter, which was discovered in the Royal Library of Paris at
the beginning of the present century, is considered to be in part
the work of Aldhelm. The Venerable Bede, also, while producing
works for the learned, comprising all the erudition of the age, was
not forgetful of the wants of the common people. AVe know from
himself that he made a translation of the Apostles' Creed and the
Lord's Prayer into Anglo-Saxon, and presented copies of it to the
less educated among the priests with whom he was acquainted ;
^ Wycliffite Versions, p. xxi.. Note 9. 4 The only MS. of these Poems, dating
° Printed at the time of the Refor- from the tenth century, and belonging to
mation as A compendious olde treatyse the Bodleian Library, does not name the
shewynge how that toe ought to have the author. Francis Junius, who published
Scripture in Englyshe. Vide Wycliffite the first editionof the /'(Xra/^T-aje in 1655,
Versions, vol. I. xxxiii.. Note, and xxi., in Amsterdam, was the first to put forth
Note 9. the conjecture that Caedmon was the
3 Max Mulier, Lectures on the Science author. New editions have been brought
of Language, Lect. v. vi. , Note. C. out by Benjamin Thorpe, Lond,, 1832, and
Friedrich Koch, Historische Grammatik by Bouterwek, Elberfeld, 1849.
der Englischen Sprache, I,, p. 8.

735-1200,] ANGLO-SAXON AND NORMAN VERSIONS. 205
indeed, his latest work was an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospel
of John, which he had no sooner finished than he exjiired, in the
year 735.'
The greatest of the Anglo-Saxon princes. King .Vlfred, is known to
have entertained at least the design of making pans of Scripture
accessible to his subjects in the mother tongue. Not
long after his time there existed a Saxon translation of ^^^ '^^ '
the Gospels, of which several MSS. have been preserved; and if the
Psalter attributed to Bishop Aldhelm was not really his work, its
date, at least, cannot be later than the tenth century. In addition,
two Latin ]\ISS. of the Gospels, with interlinear Saxon glosses, reach
up to the days of Alfred, who died in 901.^ Similar glosses upon
the Psalter and the Proverbs are known to scholars, which are
conjectured to belong to the same century.
Towards the end of the tenth century, the monk and priest
Aelfric had the extraordinary merit of executing a translation of
selected parts of the Books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Kings, and
of Esther; and, in addition, of Job and the apocryphal books of
Maccabees and Judith ; while in his eighty Homilies he Versions in
greatly promoted Bible knowledge by his renderings of the tenth
the text, and by quotations from the Bible at large.
The WTitings which have descended to the present time are sufficient
to prove that the Anglo-Saxon Church was in possession of a con
siderable part of the Bible in the mother tongue. But when we
reflect how much of this literature must have perished during the
Danish incursions and conquests, and, at a later period, in conse
quence of the Norman invasion, we raust form a conception of its
extent very different from what is suggested by its existing remains.
These Saxon glosses and translations, however, continued to be in
use among the Saxon part of the population during the Norman
Period — a fact which is established by the circumstance that several
of the MSS. in question were not executed till the twelfth century.
In little more than a century after the Norman invasion, the
Norman population possessed a prose translation of the Psalms, as
well as of the Latin Church hymns, in their own lan- Norman
guage, the Anglo-Norman. This was the case even versions.
before the year 1200; and towards the middle of the thirteenth
century the Normans had not only a Bible history in verse reaching
down to the Babylonish captivity, but also a prose translation of the
whole Bible. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact, attested by men of
^ Cuthberti Vita Bedae. and the Rush-worth Gloss, in the Bod-
' Namely, the so-called Durham Book leian.

206 WYCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR. [ch. vn. § i
special learning in this field, that the French literature of the
mediseval age was extremely rich in translations of the Bible — that
it surpassed, indeed, in this respect ^the literature of all the other
European peoples.' Still, it raust always be borne in mind, with
regard to England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that the
Norman tongue was only the language of the dominant race, of the
higher classes, spoken at Court, in the seats of the nobles and
bishops, in the courts of justice, the churches, and the garrisons,
while the Saxon tongue lived on among the middle and lower strata
of the population, the traders, artizans, and peasantry. The Anglo-
Norman tran.slations of portions of the Bible could only therefore be
of use to the privileged classes, whUe the mass of the people enjoyed
none of the benefit, but, on the'contrary, were all the less considered
and provided for, the more those classes were satisfied who had the
power of the country in their hands.
But from ihe middle of the thirteenth century the Saxon element
grew in strength, both in the population and the language. From
that date the English language was developed in three periods : Old
English from 1250-1350, Middle English to 1500, New English from
the sixteenth century downwards.
As in Anglo-Saxon and raost languages, so also in Old English,
the earliest attempts in Biblical subjects are of a poetical kind. Such
is' the Ormulum, a Gospel harmony in verse without
Old English. , , ', ^ . , . , ,
rhyme,° a work, however, not of a kind to make way
among the comraon people. Another production somewhat later
describes the chief facts of the F'irst and Second Books of Moses.3
To the end of the thirteenth century belongs a translation of the
Psalter in verse, the language of which is simple and full of
expression. The oldest prose translation of a Bible book into Old English
dates from the fourteenth century — about 1325 — and, what is re
markable, two translations of the Psalms in prose appeared almost
simultaneously. The one was executed by AViUiam of Shoreham, a
Versions of country parish priest, in the county of Kent ; the other
the Psalms. ,j^.j,g jj-jg y^,Qy^ ^f ^ hermit, Richard Rolle, of Ham
pole, who died in 1349. The former wrote the Psalter, verse by
' Reuss, Revue de TUologie, II. 3 : and who was an Augustinian Canon.
' Les bibliothdques de la scale ville de Edited, with Notes and Glossary, by
Paris contiennent plus de manuscrits bib- Wright, Oxford University Press, 1852,
liques fran^ais que toutes les bibliothsques 2 vols. 8vo.
d'Outre Rhin ne paraissent en contenir 3 The Story of Genesis and Exodus, an
d'allemands. early English song, about A.D. 1250.
2 Called Oi'inulum, after the author, Edited by Richard Morris for the Early
v.hose name ivas eillier Orm or Ormin, English Text Society. 1865.

1250-1350] OLD ENGLISH VERSIONS. 207
verse, in Latin and English, the translation being in general faitliful
and verbal, except that the author often substitutes the words of the
gloss in place of the text. The other, the so-called Hermit of Ham
pole, had written in the first instance a Latin Commentary on the
Psalms. This occasioned hira afterwards to translate the Psalter,
and to publish it with an English Comnientar)'.' According to a
notice in English verse, found in one of the numerous MSS. of this
work, and which dates from the fifteenth century, tlie author under
took the work at the request of a worthy nun. Dame Margaret
Kirkby. The original was stiU to be seen in the nunnery at
Hampole ; but many copies of it were alleged to have been tampered
with by the LoUards, and altered in the sense of their doctrines — ¦
an imputation which the editors of the Wycliffe Bible have found
entirely wanting confirmation, although they have examined many
MSS. of this translation and commentary on the Psalter^ A third
translation of the Psalter — which is found in a Dublin MS. of the
fifteenth century, and has been supposed to be the work of a certain
John Hyde, because the book was at one tirae his property — appears
from the specimens given of it to be nothing raore than a revision of
the language of the translation of Shoreham. 3
The whole result for this period, as weU of the Anglo-Saxon as of
the Norman and the Old English tongues, stands as foUows : —
I. A translation of the entire Bible was never during this period
accomplished in England, and was never even apparently con
templated. 2. The Psalter was the only book of Scripture which was fiUly and
literally translated into all the three languages — Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-
Norman, and Old EngUsh.
3. In addition, several books of Scripture, especially of the Old
Testament, were translated partially or in select passages, as by
Aelfric, leaving out of view poetical versions and the translation of
1 For our first trustworthy information parts of Yorkshire, and he closed his li.''e
concerning the person and life of this re- in Hampole in 1349.
markable man we are indebted to the = Wycliffite Versions of the Bible, vol.
documents pubhshed by Mr. Perry in the I., p. iv. At all events, one such remark
preface to the English Prose Treatises of drawn from a single MS. is not sufiicient
Richard Rolle de Hampole. Lond., 1866 to support the conjecture made by Hum-
p. XV. f. Vide Legenda de Vita Ricardi phrey Wanley that this translation of the
Rolle, preserved in the Cathedral Library Psalms in its shortest form was a juvenile
of Lincoln. According to these, he was work of Wycliff'e himself.
born at Thornton, in Yorkshire, studied 3 lb,, vol. I., pp. v. and vi., and par-
at Oxford, and returned home in his nine- ticularly Note i. All the preceding state-
teenth year, where he immediately took to mems regarding the Bible translations
a hermit's life. Later in life he laboured which were anterior to Wycliffe rest upon
as an itinerant preacher in the northern the learned investigations of the editors of
the Wychffe Bible, found in their preface.

208 WYCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR. [cm. vii. § a
the Gospel of John by Bede, which celebrated work has not come
down to us.
4. Last of all — and this fact is of great importance — in none of
these translations was it designed to make the Word of God acces
sible to the mass of the people, and to spread Scriptural knowledge
araong them. The only object which was kept in view was partly to
furnish aid to the clergy and to render service to the edticated class.
2. — How Wycliffe came to engage in this Undertaking.
Considering that this was the state of things down to the middle of
the fourteenth century, the fact becomes one of a highly important
Wyoiiffe's character that only thirty or forty years later a translation
undertaMng. ^^ jj^g .^^jj^jg gj^jg ^lad been executed, and that, too,
with the design of becoming the comraon property of the nation.
And this was the work and merit of AVycliffe. To what extent
he did the work of translation with his own peri, it will hardly ever
be possible to ascertain with perfect certainty ; but so much as
this is certain, that it was he who first conceived the idea, that he
took a personal share along with others in the labour of its execution,
and that the accomplishment of the task was due to his enthusiastic
zeal and judicious guidance.
This fact is so strongly attested by manifold testimonies of friends
and foes as to be beyond all doubt. Knighton, a chronicler of the
Testimony of pcriod, in a passage which was probably penned before
Knighton. ^-^^ y^^j. j^qq^ laments the translation of the Bible into
English, and ascribes it categorically to Wycliffe. He maintains
that Christ gave the Gospel, not to the Church, but only to the
clergy and doctors of the Church, to be by them communicated to
the weaker brethren and the laity according to their need ; whereas
AVycliffe has rendered the Gospel ffom the Latin into English, and
through hira it has become the possession of the common people,
and raore accessible to the laity, including even women who are able
to read, than it used to be to the well-educated clergy. The pearl is
now thrown ' before swine and trodden under foot,' etc' When the
chronicler speaks of ' the Gospel ' here, we are not to understand him
in a restricted sense, as meaning the translation of the New Testa-
' Knighton, col. 2644, Hie magister Anglicain linguam non Angelicam ; unde
Joannes Wyclif Evangelimnquod Christus per ipsum fit vulgare, et magis apertum
contulit clericis et Ecclesiae Doctoribus, ut laicis et mulieribus legere scientibus, quam
ipsi laicis et infirmioribus personis secun- solet esse clericis admodum literatis et bene
dum temporis exigentiam et personarum intelligentibus; etsicevangelicamargarita
indigentiam cum mentis eorum esurie did- spargitur et a porcis conculcatur, etc.
citer ministrarent, transtulit de Latino in

.382.] TESTIMONY OF FRIENDS AND ENEMIES. 209
ment only, as distinguished frora the Old, or even of the Gospels, in
distinction from the otlier New Testament books. The whole of
Holy Scripture was often so designated. This being so, we need no
further proof to show that Knighton regarded the translation of the
Bible as the work of \\'ycliffe.
AVe also find the idea and plan of a Bible translation attributed to
A\'ycliffe in a document of official character. Archbishop Arundel of
Canterbury and his suffragan bishops, in the year 141 2, Testimony of
addressed a memorial to Pope John XXIII., with the Anmdei.
petition that in the exercise of his plenary apostolic powers he would
pronounce sentence of condemnation on the heresy of AVycliffe and
his party. In this document AA'ycliffe is charged, among other things,
with having contended with all his power against the faith and the
doctrine of the Church, and, in order to make his malice complete,
with having devised the plan of a translation of the Holy Scriptures
into the mother tongue.' The language here employed, it may be
remarked in passing, is a clear proof of the fact that before Wycliffe's
time there was no English translation of the Bible in existence. It
is also e-vident from the words that it was not raerely single books,
but the whole Bible, that had now been translated. The document,
however, speaks only of the idea and the plan of the work, without
ascribing to AA^ycliffe himself its execution in detail.
By the side of these testimonies proceeding from opponents raay
be placed the language of one of AA^ycliffe's adrairers — John Huss — •
who says in a polemical tract against John Stokes of the testimony of
year 1411 : 'It is plain from his writings that AVycliffe ¦^"^^¦
was not a German, but an Englishman. — For the English say that he
translated the whole Bible frora Latin into EngUsh.'^
The fact is certain, then, that AVycliffe was the first to conceive
the great idea of a translation of the whole Bible, and that for the
use of the whole people. AVhat, then, we are led to ask, were the
intermediate thoughts and preliminary stages by which AA^ycliffe was
led to the conception of this grand design ?
As a great number of his writings have come down to us, it is
natural tliat we should first look into these for information on this
point If Luther in his day refers every now and then to his Bible-
translation in letters from the Wartburg and later writings, it might
I Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britan- maternam translationis practica adin-
iiiae, III., p. 350, Joannes Wycliff—et venta, etc.
ipsam ecclesiae sacrosanctae fidem et doc- ' Replica contra Jo, Stokes, Quod
Irinam sanctissimam totis conatibus im- autem Wicliff non fuit Teutonicus sed
pugnare studuit, novae ad suae malitiae Anglicus, patet ex suis scriptis — nam per
complementum Scripturarum in linguam Anglicos dicitur ^ quod ipse tota Biblia

transtulit ex Latino in Anglicum,

15

210 WYCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR. [ch. vn. §,2
be supposed that Wycliffe, too, must sometimes have had occasion to
refer to a work whose importance and greatness lay so near his, heart,
and that such references might be found to throw light upon the
preliminary stages of the undertaking. But, in point of fact, it is
-Wycliffe's '^^^Y ^^^^ '° ^^'^' either in his Latin or his English writings,
course. a,ny allusions to the work either while in progress or
after its completion. The condition of things at that time, it must
be remembered, was very different from what it was in the third and
and fourth decades of the sixteenth century. In Wycliffe's day men
could not conceal from themselves that such an undertaking was
attended with danger ; and therefore it was the part of prudence not
to talk loudly of the raatter so long as it was only in progress. Not
withstanding, however, the almost total silence of AVycliffe respecting
his own work, one circumstance, at least, seems probable, viz., that it
was through the translation of several single books of the New Testa
ment that he was gradually led to contemplate a complete version of
the whole Bible.
The editors of the Wycliffe Bible — Rev. Josiah Forshall and Sir
Frederic Madden— are of opinion that the earliest translation of a
„. Biblical book executed by Wycliffe was the Commentary
His supposed ^ ¦' . ^
earuest upon the Rcvclation of St. John.' Now, it is true that,
as early as the sixteenth century. Bishop Bale. included
araong AVycliffe's works an Explanation of the Apocalypse ; and Shirley
has admitted the same without hesitation into his list of WycUffe's
genuine writings.^ But, for my own part, I do not see my way to
attribute this Commentary to Wycliffe, especially since the translation
of the text contained in the oldest manuscripts of the work does
not agree with Wycliffe's translation of it in his complete version.*
The case is different, indeed, with the single Commentaries on the
Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, as the English version of the
Vulgate text given in these writings agrees with the
mentariesnot Wycliffe translation in its earliest form. The Preface to
the Gospel of Matthew is very much in accordance with
AVycliffe's general style ; but, in my judgment, the Commentary on the
Gospel of Luke cannot be recognised as his work, because in the
preface the author writes of himself in a manner which is not at all
applicable to AVycliffe. The writer first introduces sorae words of
Scripture, and then proceeds as follows : — ' Therefore it is that a poor,
insignificant man (a caitiff), who, for a tirae, has been inhibited from
I Wycliffite J^ersions, I., -p, -vii. 3 Wycli^teVersions, i.,^p,'v'\ii.,'ifotez.
= Catalogue of thi Original Works of
7. W., p. 36.

i38o?] EARLY COMMENTARIES. 211
preaching, from causes known to God, writes the Gospel of Luke in
English for the use of the poor people of his nation, who understand
littie or no Latin, and are poor in wit and worldly wealth, but none
the less are rich in good-will to be well pleasing to God.' ' It is im
possible to point out a moment in AA'ycliffe's life when ' for a time he
was hindered from preaching the gospel.' For the allusion here has
no appearance of being to a tirae of sickness, but rather to some
hindrance on the part of ecclesiastical superiors. Thus understood,
the side hint that the causes of the hindrance are known to God
becomes all the more appropriate, as it hints at the wisdom of God's
permission of the hindrance. The whole mode of expression appears
to me to be such as to indicate one of AVycliffe's itinerant preachers
as the writer, but not AA'ycliffe himself^
Nor does the preface to the Commentary on the Gospel of John
speak for the authorship of AVycliffe, when the author gives for his
determination to write it the following reasons : — ' Our Lord Jesus
Christ, very God and very man, came to serve poor meek men, and
to teach them the gospel ; and for this cause St. Paul saith that he
and other apostles of Christ be servants of Christians for the sake of
our Lord Jesus Christ. And again he saith, " I am debtor to wise
men and unwise ; " and again, " Bear ye the charges one of another,
and so ye shall fulfil the law of Christ;'' that is, of charity, as St.
Augustine expoundeth. Therefore a simple creature of God, willing
to bear in part the charges of simple poor men well willing to God's
cause, writeth a short gloss in English on the Gospel of John, and
setteth only the text of Holy AA^rit, and the open and short sentences
of holy doctors, both Greeks and Latins, and allegeth them in general
for to ease the simple wit and cost of poor simple men, remitting to
the greater gloss written on John, where and in what books these
doctors say these sentences".' 3 This description of his own person
suggests that the writer desired to remain anonymous ; whereas
AVycliffe," so far as I know, in all cases took the personal responsibility
of what he wrote, not to mention the fact that, while he is always
glad to have the support of passages from the fathers and later
doctors of the Church, Wycliffe never confines himself to a mere
reproduction of the earUer authorities, as is done in the productions
now in question, which, in substance, only render in English
' Wycliffite Versions, I. , p. ix. , Note d. authorship of this Commentary on partly
The words r\m thus : — ' Herfore a pore the same grounds as those upon which I
caityf lettid fro prechyng for a tyme for had come to the same conclusion some
causes known to God,' etc. years before ; only he conjectures that its
= Arnold, in his Introduction to the true author may have been a monk.
First "Volume of Wiclif s English Ser- 3 ¦ Herfor a symple creature of God
mons, p. s, concludes against the Wycliffe writith a schort glos in Englisch,' etc.

212 V.'YCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR. [ch, vn. § 2
what already stands in the Catena Aurea of Thomas Aquinas.
However, as I have not been in a position to examine the manu
scripts for myself, and can only rest ray judgment upon the short
extracts which are given in the preface to the Wycliffe Bible, I do
not pretend to be able to pronounce an authoritative judgraent upon
the subject. Only so much as this appears to be beyond doubt — that
the writer or writers of these commentaries must have belonged to'
Wycliffe's school.
The same thing must also be said of the author of a Coraraentary
on the first three Gospels, who gave, in the same way, a translation
of the Vulgate text, with coraraentaries frora older fathers and
doctors ; for ' the Servant of God ' who encouraged the author to
undertake the work gives utterance to precisely such principles as
Wycliffe maintained. In the preface to the Gospel of Matthew the
author writes as follows : — ' I was stirred some time ago to begin
this work by one whom I suppose verily was God's servant, and oft-
times prayed me to begin this work, saying to me that since the
Gospel is the rule by the which each Christian ought to live, and
divers have translated it into Latin, the which tongue is not known
to every man but only to the learned, and many layraen are that gladly
would con the Gospel if it were translated into the English tongue,
and so it should do great profit to man's soul, about which profit
every raan that is in the grace of God, and to whom God has sent
abihty, ought heartily to busy himself '
Thus far, then, we have found nothing which can be regarded
with an adequate degree of confidence as a preliminary labour of
.A Gospel Wycliffe in the work of Bible-translation. There is more
jiarmony. reason for recognising as a work frora Wycliffe's own
hand the EngUsh translation of the Latin Harmony of the
Gospels (entitled Series Collecta) which Prior Clement of Lan-
thony, in Monmouthshire, wrote in the second half of the twelfth
century. For (i) this translation has always, from the sixteenth
century, especiaUy since Bishop Bale, been attributed to Wycliffe,
^nd never to any other raan. (2) It varies very little from Wycliffe's
itranslation of the Gospels. (3) The preface of the translator (to be
carefully distinguished from that of the Prior) consists of two parts,
the one being identical with the preface to the Coraraentary on
Matthew's Gospel raentioned above, while the other was evidently
intended frora the first to be the preface to the translation of this
^ Wycliffite Versions, I., pp. ix. , x. , rewle, bethe whilkich Cristenmanowes to
and particularly Note f. ' One that I lyf— ilk man that is in the grace of God,
suppose veraly was Goddys servant — and to whome God has sent konnyng,
seyand to me that sethyn the gospel is owes hertely to bysy him. '

'3So?] PLEA FOR TRANSLATION. 213
Gospel Harmony ; and this latter bears the unmistakable stamp of
thought and expression peculiar to Wycliffe.
The author of the preface takes as his text the saying of Christ,
' Blessed are they who hear the A\'ord of God and keep it ; ' and he
draws from it in particular the conclusion that ' Christians ought
to travail day and night upon the text of Holy AVrit, especially
upon the Gospel in their mother tongue.' ' 'And yet,' he remarks,
' men wUl not suffer it that the laity should know the
^ , J ,..,. ,.,  Wycliffe's
uospel, and read it in their common life m humUity piea for Bible
and love.' Hereupon he continues as foUows : — ' But
covetous clerks of this world reply and say that laymen raay soon
err, and therefore they should not dispute of Christian faith. Alas !
alas ! what cruelty is this, to rob a whole realm of bodily food
because a few fools may be gluttons, and do harm to themselves and
others by their food taken immoderately.^ As easily may a proud
worldly priest err against the Gospel written in Latin, as a simple
layman err against the Gospel written in English. . . . What reason
is this, if a chUd fail in his lesson at the first day, to suffer never
children to come to lessons for this default ? AVho would ever
become a scholar by this process ? AVhat Antichrist is this who, to
the shame of Christian men, dares to hinder the laity from learning
this holy lesson which is so hard (strongly) coraraanded by God ?
Each raan is bound to do so, that he be saved, but each layman
who shall be saved is a real priest raade of God, and each man is
bound to be a very pi-iest.3
' But worldly clerks cry, that Holy AVrit in English will set Christians
in debate, and subjects to rebel against their sovereigns ; and there
fore it shall not be suffered among laymen. Alas ! how may they
more openly slander God, the Author of peace, and His holy law,
fully teaching meekness, patience, and charity ? . . . Thus the false
Jews, namely, high priests, scribes and Pharisees, cried on Christ that
He raade dissension among the people. O Jesus Christ ! Thou
that didst die to confirm Thy law, and for ransom of Christian
' It is to be regarded as a peculiar holy writ, and namely the gospel in her
merit of the Editors of the Wycliffe trans- modir tunge.
lations of the Bible that they have given in = Here unmesurabli is to be read ac-
the Preface so rich an anthology of e.x- cording to the other MS., not mesurabli,
tracts from English manuscripts. One of which the editors have preferred.
the most valuable of these communica- 3 Wycliffite Versions, vol. I. , p. xv, , col.
tions, in my opinion, is the second pre- i. ' Thanne eche levved raan that schul be
face, printed in full from two jMSS., to saued is a real prest maad of God, and
the English translation of the Gospel- eche man is bounden to be suche a verri
harmony of Clemens, in vol. I., p. xiv.. prest. But worldly clerkis crien that holy
col. 2, and p. xv. , col. i. The sentence writ in Englische wole make cristen men
last quoted in our text is worded in the at debate, and suggetis to rebelle agheyns
original thus — ' Cristen men owe moche her souereyns, and therefor it schal not
to traueile nyght and day aboute text of be suffred among Icwcd mon,'

214 WYCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR. [ch. vn. § 2
souls, stop these blasphemies of Antichrist and worldly clerks, and
make Thy holy Gospel known and kept of Thy simple brethren, and
increase them in faith, hope, and charity, and meekness, and patience,
to suffer death joyfully for Thee and Thy law. Araen, Jesu, for Thy
raercy ! '
I repeat, these are through and through genuine thoughts of
WycUffe, spoken with godly warmth in his own simple but sharp and
original style. The whole preface is nothing else than a plea for the
translation of the Gospel into English, and for its diffusion among the
laity. And if this preface was written specially for the translation
of the Gospel Harmony, it lets us see that at that date, whatever it
was, AVycliffe had already grasped the idea, 'the Bible for the
people ! ' At the same time, this theological vindication of the idea
could not fail to lead on to the plan of a complete Bible version. It
is to be regarded as a kind of temporary substitute for the latter that
to that Gospel Harmony in English there was added an appendix
containing portions of the Catholic epistles, and selected extracts
frora other parts of the Bible. This collection presents in the
different manuscripts variations in bulk, and also in the arrangement
of the several pieces.' In how far, however, this appendix is the
work of WycUffe, it has not hitherto been possible to ascertain.
The second half of the fourteenth century witnessed the produc
tion of another woijc of the same kind which is well worthy of
attention, viz., a complete translation of all the Epistles of Paul, in
which the Latin and English follow each other, paragraph by para-
version of the g'^^P^''' or cvcn verse by verse, in such a way that with
Epistles. ^ ygfy literal translation there are interwoven occasional
explanations of single terms. The circumstance, however, that the
full Latin text always stands first, is a clear proof that the work could
not have been prepared for the people, but rather for the less
-educated class of priests. =
AU the writings hitherto mentioned were preparatory labours by
which the proper goal to which they all tended was more and more
nearly reached, viz., a pure and at the same tirae a complete English
version of the whole Bible.
' Wycliffite Versions of the Bible, v. I., Latin books so as to be able to instruct
pp. xi. , xii. the people, it is necessary not only for the
= lb., V. I., p. xiii. In an English tract, ignorant people, but also for the ignorant
vvhichmay well have_ come from Wycliffe's priests, to have books in the Enghsh
pen, p. xiv.. Note, it is expressly said language containing the necessary instruc-
that ' as the parish priests are often so tion for the ignorant people. '
ignorant that they do not understand

1382.] HIS VERSION MADE FROM THE VULGATE. 215
3-— The WyclifTe Translation.
The New Testament was naturally translated first. Luther followed
the same order nearly 150 years later. But the main difference in
the two cases was that Luther translated frora the Greek 5,1^3 j^^^
original, AA'ycliffe from the Latin of the Vulgate. There Testament.
is no need to prove this latter fact. AA''ycliffe had no knowledge of
Greek, and everywhere it is Latin, not Greek, which is spoken of as
the language from which the version is made. That the translation
of the New Testament was AA'ycliffe's own work we may assume with a
considerable degree of certainty, for this is the point upon which the
testimonies of friends and foes, as given above, most undoubtedly
agree; Although Huss speaks of the whole Bible as translated by
AVycliffe, we shall yet find immediately that a great part of the Old
Testament was done by one of his friends ; and our attention is thus
directed chiefly to the New Testament as AA'^ycliffe's part of the work.
Knighton, in speaking of ' the Gospel,' and ' the Evangelical Pearl,'
refers of course primarily to the New Testament. Added to this,
there is a close resemblance of expression and style in the Gospels as
compared with the other parts of the New Testament : and the
whole has the appearance of being cast in one mould.
Prefaces are attached to the several books. These, however, are
not original productions, but merely translations of the prologues
which usually precede the different books of Scripture
in the manuscripts of the Vulgate of the fourteenth
century. Whether these prefaces were translated by the same hand
as the text is not certain ; and there is some reason to suppose that
they were not attached to the text at first, but were added afterwards
— at least, they are wanting in some^raanuscripts before the Gospels,
and in other copies before the other books. Not unfrequently short
explanations of words are admitted into the text. The different
manuscripts, however, of this original version of the New Testament
vary considerably from one another, as the Biblical text in several of
them has undergone a considerable number of - corrections and
changes. The execution of the Old Testament was taken in hand either
while the New Testament was still in progress, or shortly after the
completion of the latter, — and this not by Wycliffe Theoid
himself, but by one of his friends and fellow-labourers. ^Testament.
The original manuscript of this part of the work has remarkably
been preserved.' A second manuscript, which was copied from this
' It is preserved in the Bodleian Library, the circumstance that very often altera-
No. 959 (3093), and is distinguished by tions are made in the middle of a sen-

2l6 WYCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR. [cii. vn. § j
one before undergoing correction, contains a remark which ascribes
the translation to Nicholas of Hereford ; and this remark, which was
manifestly added no long lime after, is worthy of full credit. Now,
it is a peculiar circumstance that both these manuscripts break off
quite unexpectedly in the middle of a sentence, — namely, in the
Book of Baruch Ui. 20,' — a fact which can only be explained by the
supposition that the writer was suddenly interrupted in the w6rk„
This supposition well coincides with the fact, attested by existing
Nicholas of docuiiients, that Nicholas of' Hereford, Doctor of
Hereford. Theologv, and one of the leaders of the Wycliffe party
in 1382, after a serraon preached by hira before the University on
Ascension Day, was cited, in June of the sarae year, to appear before
a Provincial Synod in London, to answer for his teaching on that
occasion.^ The result of his examination was that on July i sentence of
excommunication was passed upon him. Against this sentence he
appealed to the Pope, and, according to Knighton's Chronicle, went
in person to Rome to prosecute his appeal, but was there thrown into
prison, where he remained for some years, when he was at length
discharged, and returned to England. It is easy, therefore, to under
stand how Nicholas of Hereford came to be so suddenly interrupted
in the middle of his work ; and as it was impossible for him to carry
on the work for several years, the fragment remained as it was when
he was unexpectedly compelled to lay down his pen.
If these combinations and conjectures rest upon any adequate
ground, they furnish us at the same time with the advantage of a
Date of the Uxed date ; for, supposing the above facts to be correct,
work. ^yg gjj^ii ji^gj^ ijg ^jjjg ^Q assume with some confidence
that in June, 1382, at the latest, the translation ofthe New Testament
by Wycliffe must have been completed, if his fellow-labourer Hereford
had already in the Old Testament advanced as far as the Apocrypha,
and was hi the middle of the Book of Baruch. The version itself
affords proof that it was continued and finished by another hand;
not improbably [by Wycliffe himself From Baruch iii. 20 the style
is one characteristically different from Hereford's, as we shall have
tence ; not unfrequently a word has been side stands written by another but con-
cancelled as soon as it was written, or temporary hand, ' Explic^ translacoin
before it was written fully, in order to put Nicholay de herford.' See Wycliffite
another in its place. Wycliffiite Versions, Versions, vol, i. , pp. xvii. and 1., where a
I., pp. xvh. and,\lvii. facsimileof these words with the preceding
' -The second MS. is in the Bodleian, lines is given,
marked Douci 369, and ends with the = Fasc ¦Zizan., p. 289. Knighton,
words, ' and othyr men in the place of hem Chronica. , eo\. 2656.
risen. The yunge. ' Then on the next

1382.]. THE WORK COMPLETED AND REVISED. 217
occasion to show in the sequel. The prologues to the books of the
Old Testament, as in the case of the New Testament, are only a
translation of those which were then commonly found in the
manuscripts of the A'ulgate. For the raost part they consist of
letters and other pieces of Jerome.
It must have been a heartfelt joy and deep satisfaction for AVycliffe
when the translation of the whole Bible was completed, and the great
plan accomplished which he had so long cherished and ^he work
pushed forward with so warm a zeal. This, in all <=o'"Pi8tsd.
probabUity, took place in the year 1382. AVycUffe, however, was not
the man to betake himself to rest as soon as he had attained any
single object, and leaSt of aU in this sacred cause. To hira the
translation of the Bible was not an end in itself, but only a raeans to
an end, that end being to place the Bible in the hands of his own
countrymen, and to bring home the Word of God to the hearts of the
English people. His next care, therefore, after the translation was
ready, was to make it as widely useful as possible. For copies
this purpose copies of it were now made and circulated, m^^wpii^'i.
not only of the whole Bible, but also of portions, and even of single
books. Moreover, in many of these copies there was inserted
a table of the Bible lessons for Sundays and all the feast and fast days
of the ecclesiastical year, which table is still to be found in several of
the existing manuscripts ; and, in order to put select portions
of Scripture into the hands of many at a cheap price, books
-were also copied out which contained no more than the Gospels and
Epistles. Of this sort are two manuscripts stiU remaining, which were
written at all events before the close of the fourteenth century.
A still more important work now became necessary. As soon as
the English Bible was complete and came into use, the imperfections
which clung to it began to be raanifest ; and in truth it
° ° ' Revision.
was not to be wondered at that it should have con
siderable blemishes. It was a work of uncoramon m.ignitude,
especially for that time, considering that it was executed under
unfavourable circumstances by different hands, and in the absence of
any firm basis of clear and consistent principles of translation. The
portion executed by Hereford, embracing the Old Testament books,
had a character of its own, differing much from Wycliffe's version of
the New Testament in its method of translation, and in the form of
its English idiom. These and other blemishes could least of all
escape the notice of AA^ycliffe himself It was he undoubtedly who
suggested a revision of the whole work, and perhaps undertook it
himself Luther, in like manner, after his complete German Bible

2l8 WYCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR. [ch. vii. § 3
appeared in 1534, began ere long to revise it, and never ceased tiU
his death to improve and polish it, partly by his own hand and partly
with the assistance of Melancthon, Bugenhagen, Cruciger, and others.
No marvel if the case was the same with the English Bible of the
fourteenth century.
The revision was a work of tirae. Wycliffe did not Uve to see it
completed. The revised Wycliffe Bible did not appear till several
years after his death, and the improved form which it
John Purvey. then assumed was essentiaUy the work of one man,
who was a trusted friend of Wycliffe, and in his latest years his
assistant in parochial work, John Purvey. This fact has been made
not merely probable but certain by the learned editors of the Wycliffe
versions of the Bible, who have also shown that the probable date of
the completion of the revision was the year 1388 — ie., four years
after Wycliffe's death.' Before the appearance of the coUected edition
of the Wycliffe translations just referred to, very confused and
mistaken ideas of the oldest English versions of the Bible prevailed.
Not" to speak ofthe already-mentioned and now exploded assertion of
Sir Thomas More, that long before Wycliffe's day there were in
existence complete translations of the Bible in EngUsh, it was a
common error, since Lewis's day down to 1848, to take the older
translation of Wycliffe for the later revised one, and to take the later
for the older, i.e., for the genuine or unrevised work of AVycliffe.
More than this, down to the year 1848, no part of the older transla
tion had appeared in print, with the exception of the Song of Songs,
which Dr. Adara Clarke had printed in his Bible Coraraentary from a
manuscript in his own possession.'' It seeras that the older genuine
" To have established this fact, and Oxford University Press, 1850, 4 vols.
brought clear light into the manifold large 410, with a copious Preface in vol. I.
darkness which rested upon these subjects, (from which we have drawn much of what
is one of the numerous merits of these two we have given above), and a Glossary to
men who, with the liberal support of the these translations in vol. IV. The two
delegates of the University Press of Ox- translations are throughout printed side
ford, carried on their investigations for by side in double columns — the older to
twenty-two years, made a thorough search the left, the later to the right. The vari-
of the most important public and private ous readings are given in Notes.
libraries of Great Britain and Ireland, and = Henry Wharton, in the Auctorium to
on the basis of a critical comparison of Vs%her s Historia dogmatica Controversiae
numerous MSS. published the earlier as de Scripturis et Sacrisvernaculis,l.ondon,
well as the later translations, along with 1690, p. 424, had rightly perceived which
prefaces. The work has this title. The was the older and which the later transla-
Holy Bible, containing the Old and New tion, and while rightly attributing the
Testaments, with the 'Apocryphal books, in older to Wycliffe, had incorrectly assigned
the earliest English versions made from the later to John of Trevisa. Dr. Water-
the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and land had come to see that the Translation,
his followers ; edited by the Rev, Josiah with the General Preface to the Bible,
Forshall, F.R.S., and Sir Frederic was the work of John Purvey ; but he had
Madden, K,H., F,R.S., Keeper of the not held fast to this view, and had even
Manuscripts in the British Museum. fallen back to the old opinion that the

Facsimile (Daniel i. i, 2 ; 9-11) from an early MS. of Purvey's Revision, in
THE Bkitish Museum ; slightly reduced in size.

1332-14=3,] TRANSCRIPTION AXD REVISION, 221
AVycliffe translation had met with the fite of being so long ignored in
consequence of the appearance of the later improved version. For
the later form of the text of the translation was eageriy Eager reoep-
sought after. Copies of it came into the hands of people tioio"iiebook.
belonging to all classes of society, and must have been multiplied
with extraordinary rapidity, for even at the present day there are still
about 150 manuscripts extant which contain Purvey's revised version
either in whole or in part, the majority of which were executed within
forty years after the year 1388.
It would, however, be extremely short-sighted and hasty if we
should undervalue or entirely overlook the work of Wycliffe by
reason of Purvey's work. AVas, then, Purvey's Bible pm-Teyana
translation anything more than a uniformly executed 'Wyciiffe.
edition of AA''ycliffe's work, already published, revised in respect to
language and expression ? The revision was, indeed, carried through
in a consistent manner under the guidance of distinctly conceived
principles ; but this was a work of far less difficulty than the task of
originating the translation itself, especially when we consider the
grandeur and the novelty of the first idea of the work, and the
tenacious persistency and steady industry which were absolutely
required for its execution. Last of all, we point again to the pro
bability before referred to — that it was AVycUffe himself who was first
sensible of the need of a revision of the finished translation ; and it
was only the carrying out of the task which fell to Purvey — whose
relative merits, however, we have no wish to undervalue.
AA'hat, now, is the peculiar character and importance of the earUer
version, in so far as it was AVycliffe's personal work ? Its peculiarity
becomes more clearly visible when we compare the New Testament
in the older version with the Old Testament as rendered by Hereford.
Hereford's translation is excessively literal, and keeps character of
as close as possible, almost pedantically, to the Latin tiie version.
expression and arrangement of sentences of the Vulgate. This makes
the version very often stiff and awkward, forced and obscure. The
.ater recension was the earlier. He was MS,, in Bagster's English Hexapla, 410,
followed in this by John Lewis, Wychffe's ( The Bible Translationsof Wiclif , Tyndale,
first biographer, when he published, on the Cranmer, and otliers"). On the other hand,
basis of two MSS. , the later translation of the New Testament in the older translation
the New Testament as the work of Wycliffe was first published in 1848 by Lea Wilson,
— The New Testament, translated out of after a MS. in his own possession, under
the Latin Vulgate, by John Wiclif, about the title. The New Testament in English,
1378. Lond., 1731, fol. This same translated by John Wycliffe, circa 1380.
translation has been twice printed in the Lond. , 4to. Last of all. Rev. Josiah For-
present century — in 1810, by H. H. Baber, shall and SirFrederic Madden have given
The New Testament, translated from the to the world the two Translations of the
Latin, in the year 1380, by John Wycliff, whole Bible, with critical exactness, in the
D.D. ; and in 1841, upon the basis of one work already mentioned.

222 WYCLIFFE AS BIBLE TRANSLATOR. [ch. vii. § 3
translator kept only the original in view, in the wish to render it with
the utmost possible fidelity ; on the spirit and laws of the English
tongue he seems scarcely to have bestowed a thought, and as little on
the qualities of intelligibility and legibility which it was his business to
impart to the translated text. The case is quite different with Wycliffe
in the books which he translated, and above all in the New Testament.
He ever keeps in view the spirit of his mother-tongue and the require
ments of EngUsh readers, so that the translation is so simple as to be
thoroughly readable. Nay more, it is a reraarkable fact that Wycliffe's
English style in his Bible translation, corapared with his other English
writings, rises to an uncommon pitch of perspicuity, beauty, and force.'
If we compare Wycliffe's Bible, not with his own English writings,
but with English literature in general before and after his tune, a still
more important result is revealed. Wycliffe's translation
Influence on '• , . ,
the EngUsh of the Bible marks an epoch m the development of the
English language just as rauch as Luther's translation
does in the history of the German tongue. The Luther Bible opens
the period of the new High German ; WycUffe's Bible stands at the
head of the Middle English. It is usual, indeed, to represent not
AVycUffe, but Chaucer — the father of EngUsh poetry — as the first
representative of the Middle English literature. But later philologists
• — such as Marsh, Koch, and others — rightly recognise AVycliffe's
Bible prose as the earliest classic Middle English. Chaucer, indeed,
has some rare features of superiority — liveliness of description, a
charming way of clothing his ideas, genuine EngUsh humour, and a
masterly command of language. Such qualities of style appeal more to
the educated classes — they are not adapted to make a form of speech
the common property of the nation. That which is destined to
develope a new language must be something which concerns closely
the weal and the woe of raan, and which for that reason takes hold
irresistibly of every raan in a nation, the lowest as well as the highest,
and, to use Luther's expression, ' satisfies the heart.' In other words,
it must be moral and religious truths, grasped with the energy of a
genuine enthusiasm, and finding acceptance and diffusion for thera
selves in fresh forms of speech. If Luther, with his translation of the
Bible, opened the era of the High German dialect, so Wycliffe, with
his English Bible, stands side by side with Chaucer at the head of
the Middle English. In the latter, moreover, are already found the,
fundamental characters of the new English,, which reached its
development in the sixteenth century.
^ This remark was first made by Sharon the Middle Ages. 1830, Vol. v. , p. 425.
Turner in his History of England during Comp. p. 447.

CHAPTER VIIL
WYCLIFFE AS A THINKER AND WRITER; HIS
PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM.
I. — His Gradual Development as a Thinker and
Reformer.
IT makes a great difference in our whole view and judgment of
AA'ycliffe, according as, on the one hand, we assume that from
the very beginnina; of his public work he stood forth with
1 ^ -r 1 r 1 , -Wycliffe's
a complete ana unified system of thought, or as, on views
the other, we recognise a gradual development of his p'°^^^^''^^-
thoughts, and progress of his knowledge. The former assumption
was entertained until recent times. AA'ycliffe's earliest biographer,
John Lewis, was the first to adopt this view, and it continued to be
held even after Vaughan had been able to throw sorae light upon
the inner progress of AVycliffe's ideas. Men iraagined they saw
AVycUffe stand before them at once a finished man, and missed in
him that gradual loosening from the bonds of error, and that slow
progress in new knowledge, which in the case of Luther followed
the first decided break with his old thoughts. This assumption
rests upon error, and especially upon an imperfect acquaintance with
the underlying facts. Even from the Trialogus, the first of Wycliffe's
works which was sent to the press, men might have learned with
sufficient certainty that AVycliffe had passed through very consider
able changes of opinion. For in raore than one place he raakes the
frankest acknowledgment that on more than one metaphysical ques
tion, he had formerly tenaciously upheld the opposite of what
he now maintained — that ' he was sunk in the depths of the sea, and
had stammered out many things which he was unable clearly to
make good,' etc' StiU more strongly does he express himself in one
of his unprinted writings, where he makes the foUowing free confes
sion : ' Other statements which at one time appeared strange to me,
1 Trialogus, ed. Lechler. Oxford, 1869. Lib. lii., c. 8, p. 155 ; i., c. 10, pp. 69, 70.

224 WYCLIFFE'S TEACHINGS. [ch, vni, § i
now appear to me to be sound and true, and I defend them ; for,'
he continues, in the words of St. Paul, ' when I was a child in the
knowledge of the faith, I spoke as a chUd, I understood as a child ;
but when, in God's strength, I became a man, I put away, by His
grace, childish thoughts.' In this place he is speaking especially of
the freedom of man's will and agency.' And in a similar way he
expresses himself in his work on the Truth of Holy Scripture,
touching his chUdishly literal understanding of the Bible in his
earlier years. ' At last, however,' he continues, ' the Lord, by the
power of His grace, opened ray mind to understand the Scriptures ; '
and he even adds the humbling confession — ' I acknowledge that
ofttimes, for the sake of vain-glory, I daparted from the teaching of
Scripture, both in what I maintained and what I opposed, when my
double aim was to acquire a dazzling fame among the people, and to
lay bare the pride of the sophists.' ^
Other frank acknowledgments of Wycliffe to the same effect could
be produced, but these may suffice, and I only add here a few more
particulars which are worthy of mention.
Among the collections of AVycUffe's Latin sermons there is one,
upon which we have already remarked, that, when compared with the
others, suppUes some information regarding the progress
illustrations of of the preacher in knowledge. We refer to the older
IS pro ess. gQjJg(,(.JQjj ^f ^gj-Jy jjjjg(.g]^lg^jjgQ^g ggj,jjjQjjg_3 ThiSCOmCS
out especially in his doctrine of the Lord's Supper, on which we
shall have occasion to remark more particularly below. In addition
to this, it is unmistakable that on the subject of the Papacy and the
Hierarchy, not only Wycliffe's tone of language, but even his mode
of thought, is essentiaUy different, after the occurrence of the Western
Schism of 1378, from what it was before that event. Further, on
the subject of the Mendicant Orders, Wycliffe's opinions in his
earlier writings differ widely frora tliose expressed in his later ones.
AVe shall show that there is no good ground for the supposition
which has hitherto prevailed among Church historians, and upon
"which even an investigator like Vaughan proceeds in his latest work
^ Responsiones ad argumenta Radulphi attentive readers, even so early as the
4e Strode, "Vienna MS. 1338, f. 116, col. Hussite period, as is shown by the re-
3. Et aliae conclusiones, quae olim vide- mark which is to be read in the margin
bantur mihi mirabiles, jam videntur mihi of the Vienna MS. 3928, fol. 193, from
cathoUcae, defendendo, etc. another hand than the transcriber's : Con-
' De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, c. 6 ; stet omnibus, quod iste Wycliff XL, ser-
<.. 2, Vienna MS., 1294, fol. 13, col. i ; fol. mones illos scribens fuit alius a se ipso
3, col. I : De ista vana gloria confiteor hie quam alibi, ut apparet legenti. Quia
saepe tam arguendo quam respondendo dcmptis paucissimis,paenein omnibus his
firolapsus sum a doctrina scripturae, etc. scriptis sequitur ecclesiam in fide et ritibus
3 "rhis did not escape the notice of et modo loqucndi catlwlico.

1350-1380.] DEVELOPMENT OF HIS VIEWS. 223
upon AVycliffe, viz., that AA'ycliffe had commenced his conflict with
the Mendicant Orders as early as 1360 or the following year, and
•carried it on for twenty years afterwards.' It was in connection with
the question of transubstantiation that any controversy of AVycliffe
¦with these particular Orders took its rise. Before that time it was
rather against the endowed Orders that he aimed his attacks, while
towards Francis of Assisi and Dominic, and the Orders founded by
them, he cherished and expressed all manner of respect and sincere
recognition. All these facts constitute a sufficient proof that AVycliffe passed
through important changes of opinion, even after he had arrived at
mature years, and had made his first appearance upon the public
stage ; and that on several questions of great moment he gradually
arrived at essentially different conclusions from those of his earUer
years. It would indeed have been astonishing if a raind guoh progress
so independent and thoughtful — a man whose whole t° i^e expected.
life was spent in labours on behalf of others, and in efforts for God's
glory and the public good — had, in the substance of his teaching,
adhered stiffly to the standpoints which he had in the first instance
taken up. It will accordingly be our aim, as far as possible, to point
out the gradual development of Wycliffe's views on all the chief
points of his philosophical and theological beliefs.''
AVe have to regard Wycliffe first as a philosophical, and next as
a theological thinker and writer; and though his philosophy and
theology continually interlock, conformably to the whole character of
¦scholasticism (for AVycliffe was a scholastic divine), yet it may be
conducive to clearness if we give to each a separate treatment.
2. — Wycliffe as a Philosophical Thinker and 'Writer.
In order that the distinctive features of Wycliffe's phUosophy may be'
adequately described, a sufficient amount of his writings in this
department raust first be forthcoraing. Here rauch is lacking ; for
' Vaughan, Monograph, pp. 87, 410. and carefully analysing his reasonings.
= The most accurate and thorough ex- What may still be regarded as defects
position of Wycliffe's teaching hitherto in this, in many respects, excellent pro-
published is that of Dr. E. A. Lewald, duct of German industry and learning,
formerly Professor of Theology in Heidel- are, I think, these two : first, that the
berg. Die Theologische Doctrin Johann author does not exhibit sharply enough
Wycliffe's, nach den Quellen dargestellt, what constitute Wycliffe's peculiar and
und kritisch beleuchtet, in the Zeitschrift distinctive ideas ; and secondly, that the
fur hist. Theologie, 1846, pp. 171, 503, exposition binds itself too closely to
1847, p. 597. Lewald, while making use each section of the Trialogus succes-
of Vaughan's Life and Opinions, etc., has sively taken up, whereby the connection
chiefly confined himself to the Trialogus. of the different parts of the same doctrine
He investigates Wycliffe's doctrine in its is, in more than one instance, broken up,
most important heads, following the order and repetitions are introduced.
16

226 PHILOSOPHY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.viii. §2
of his philosophical works, in the form of treatises, not a single
Lack of avail- piece has ever appeared in print, down to the present
able material, ^^y . ^,^^^ what is more serious, a considerable nuraber
of thera have in all probability perished.' Contenting ourselves with
what remains available, and turning first to his logical pieces, these,
so far as we are acquainted with them, consist of only two short
tractates, the one entitled Logica, the other Logicae Continuatio. Both
of these have the peculiarity of limiting themselves to the simplest
ideas and principles ; whereas the logical treatises of the fourteenth
¦Wyoiiffe's century generally run into excessive length and lose
logic. themselves in the extreraest subtleties.'' In the Logica he
treats simply of terminus, propositio, and argumentum, each of these
forms of thought being defined and exhibited in its simplest varieties.
And here we meet with the memoriter-verses on the manifold forms
of syllogism which had been in use since the time of WiUiam
Shyreswood.3 The Logicae Continuatio, again, examines somewhat more largely
the different kinds of judgments and processes of proof That
Wycliffe restricted himself in both works to the most general prin
ciples of the science, was no doubt done in consideration of what was
wanted for young men on their first introduction to the study of logic.
It is next worthy of notice that these treatises on formal logic have
a theological and especially a Biblical end in view. In the introduc
tion to the Logica, AVycliffe says frankly, ' I have been induced by
several friends of God's Word {legis Dei amicos) to
Xiogic sub- . . , . . , , . .,,.',
sidiary to compose a treatise in explanation of the logic of Holy
eo ogy. Scripture. For, as I see many entering upon the study
of logic, with the idea that they will be the better able thereby to
understand the Word of God, and then leaving it again, on account
of its distasteful mixture of heathenish ideas, and also of the hoUow-
ness of the study when thus conducted, I propose, with the object
of sharpening the faculties of believing minds, to give processes of
proof for propositions which are all to be drawn from Scripture,'
etc., etc.*
The reader sees that it is entirely with Christian ideas — with
Biblical knowledge — that he proposes to concern hiraself Yet the
result is no sorry mixture of theological and philosophical matter,^
' In the list of lost works of Wycliffe 3 lb., vol. in., p. 10.
given by Shirley in his Catalogue, p. 50, 4 Vienna MS., 4523, fol. i, col. i.
. occur not fewer than twenty-four num- s It is not a Theologica Logicis inserere,
bers, which appear to have been works as the University of Paris expressed its
of a logical or metaphysical description. censure in the year 1247. D'Argentr^,
'^ Comp. Vranll, Geschich/e der Logik im Collectiojudiciorum de novis erroribus,
Abendlande,\o\.lu. (I^eipz.,i86^7),-p,iy8. I., p. 158. Paris, 1728.

1372-138=-] LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS. 227
but a purely formal doctrine of the laws of thought. Even in his
latest years he laid great stress upon a right knowledge of logic for
the understanding of Christian truth, and maintained that the light
esteem of Scripture doctrine, and every error in respect to it, had its
root in ignorance of logic and grammar. This was not a thought
exclusively A\'ycliffe's own. He shared it with William Occam, whom
he names more than once in his manuscript works, and sometimes
under his scholastic title of honour, Veneradilis Inceptor.^
Passing from Logic to Metaphysics, the question which AVycliffe
regarded as by far the most important was that of Universals.
He handles this quesiion not only in several treatises devoted
to it, e.g., De Universalibus, Replicatio de Univer-
salibus, De Materia et Forma, De Ydeis, but in his
theological works, also, he not seldom returns to it as being, in
his opinion, a doctrine of great reach and decisiveness in its theo
logical bearings. For AVycliffe was in philosophy a Realist. He
takes his stand firmly and with the greatest decision upon that side
which maintains the objectivity and reality of Universals ; following
herein Augustine among the fathers of the Church, and Plato among
the ancient philosophers, as his authorities and models. In this
point he sides with Plato against the criticism which Aristotle
directed against the Platonic doctrine of ideas. ^ However highly
he values Aristotle in other respects, calling him, as the Middle Age
in general did. The Philosopher, and usuaUy leaning upon his
authority, he is still distinctly conscious that on this -wyoiiffe's
subject he is a Platonist, and essentially at variance Beaiism.
with Aristotle — a state of matters which was not at all irreconcilable
with the fact that Wycliffe, like all his contemporaries, had no know
ledge whatever of the Platonic philosophy from its original Greek
sources. He seeras to have known Plato only frora Augustine and
by his mediation ; and he was by no means the first who, while of a
Platonising spirit, was yet unable to withdraw hiraself frora the
authority of Aristotle. The Parisian teacher Heinrich Gothals of
Ghent (d. 1293) (Henrieus de Ga.nda.vo, Doctor solemnis), the Averroist
Johann of Jandun (d. about 1320), andAValter Burleigh (d. 1337 3), to
all of whom Wycliffe occasionaUy refers, had preceded hira in the
path of an Augustinian Church-Platonisra conjoined with Aristotelian
method. 1 E.g., De Universalibus, c. 15; p. 62; i, i.. 9, p. 66; Book 11., c. 3,
fol. 57, col. I ; De Veritate Scripturae, p. 83.
c. 14 ; fol. 40, col. 4 ; fol. 41, col. 3. 3 Comp. PrantI, Geschichte der Logik
= Trialogus, ed. Lechler, Booki., c. 8, im Abendlande, m., pp. 183, 273, 297I

238 PHILOSOPHY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. viii. § 2
That WycUffe makes use of the double designation universal and
idea in speaking of the same subject, is sufficient to show that he had
Influence of '''°'- Overcome the dualism between Aristotelic and
Plato and Platouic first principles. Nowhere, so far as we know,
does he draw a clear and definite distinction between idea
and universal. And yet one difference may be observed to prevail
in his use of language upon this subject. When he treats of ideas,
his point of view is always one where he looks at matters from a
higher to a lower level ; whereas the case is often the reverse when
he speaks of universals. Manifestly, in the one case, the ground
taken is d. priori ground ; in the other case it is empirical. It is the
Platonic spirit which prevails in the former, the Aristotelic in the
latter. Still Wycliffe is perfectly well aware that the principle which
asserts the objective reality of universals is a very disputable one;
and he has reflected on the causes which have given rise to the
controversy regarding it. Four causes, it appears to him.
Controversy , ,. , . , , .. ,. '
on the reality underlie this great and long-standing divergency of
opinion. The first cause is found in the strong im
pressions made by the world of sense, whereby the reason is dark
ened. The second cause he finds in a striving after seeming instead
of real knowledge, as of old among the Sophists,' from which arises
rauch contention, insorauch that raen dispute propositions which
ought to be conceded as necessary truths. A third cause he finds
in the pretentiousness of men, which is always reaching after
something peculiar to itself, and stiffly maintaining and defending
it. And finaUy, he discovers a fourth cause in the want of in-
struction.^ Wycliffe's doctrine of ideas and their reality does not admit of
being set forth without the conception of God. For he takes this
Conception conception as his starting-point. The Idea is, in his
of God. view, an absolutely necessary truth,3 for truth is nothing
else but God's thought, which thought is also immediately a wUling
and working, a proposing and doing, on the part of God. For God
cannot think anything which is external to Himself, unless this thing
is intellectually thinkable. What God creates. He cannot possibly
create by chance or unwisely ; He must therefore think it ; and His
thought, or the archetype of the creature, is identical with the idea ;
and this same is eternal, for it is the same in time with the Divine
^ De Universalibus, fol. 70, col. i ! "^ lb., fol. 70, cols, i and 2.
Quidam enimmoresophistarumnon solum 3 Trialogus, Book i., c. 8, p. 61:
volunt scire sed videri scientes. Ydea est, Veritas absolute necessaria.

1372-1382.] CONCEPTION OF THE DEITY, 229
knowledge. In its essence it is one with God, in its form it is
different from God, as a ground comformably to which God thinks
out what He creates. It has in itself a ground in reason, by virtue
of which it determines the Divine knowledge.'
In this last expressed proposidon lies, as it appears to me, the
kernel of AA'ycliffe's doctrine of ideas, the central point of his Realism.
He is not satisfied with regarding human knowledge as a reflex of
actual e.xistence; while the Nominalism or Terminism (as PrantI
caUs it=) of Occam looks upon knowledge, in so far as it goes beyond
the sensible observation of nature and the empirical self-contem
plation of the soul, only as something subjective, and cast in a logical
form. According to AA'ycliffe, in thinking of universals, we conceive
what has an independent existence, what has its ground in God's
thought and work. But even God's thought, he holds, does not
proceed arbitrarily, but conformably to its subject, agreeably to reason,
answerably to the reason of things. And hence, in more places than
one, he decidedly censures the usual practice of speaking of the
thinkability of the unreal, or even of the self-contradictory, as empty
subtlety, and a copious source of false reasonings and perverted
conclusions. 3 Rather he lays down the proposition that God can
only think that which He thinks in point of fact, and He thinks only
that which is — is, at least in the sense of intellectual entity, in like
manner as God, in wiUing, working, and creating, can only work and
produce that which He actually produces, in its own time. For God's
knowing and producing are coincident ; God's knowledge of any
creature, and His production and sustentation of it, are one and the
same thing.*
The realism of AVycliffe, accordingly, is a principle of great and
wide bearing. He is an enemy of all arbitrary, empty, and vague
thought ; he will not allow it to have the value of thought ; as, for
example, when a man supposes what might have followed if a certain
something presupposed had not taken place {conclusiones contingentiae).
Only realities can be thought. Thus knowing and thinking are
coincident, as well in God as in the human mind, which thinks
exactly as much as it knows, and no raore.s Only, if we would hit
AA^^ycliffe's raeaning, we raust not restrict the real to what is per-
' Si (Deus) illud intelligit, illud habet Lewald, Theol. Doctrin Wycliffe's, in the
rationem objectivam, secundum quam ter- Zeitschrift fiir hist. Theologie, 1846, p. 210.
niinat intellectivitatem divinam. Tria- * Ib., r., c. 11, p. 74; Cum idem sit
logus, L, c. 8, p. 63. Deum intus legere creaturam quamlibet,
^ PrantI, Geschichte der Logik im ei ipsam producere vel servare.
Abendlande, Ul., p. ¦^^¦^. Comp. Eduard 5 /b., i., c. 10, p. 70: Intellectus
Erdmann, Grundriss der Gcscliichte der divinus ac ejus notitia. sunt parts ambitus.
Philosophic, I., p. 432. (Berlin, 1866. ) sicut intellectus creatus et ejus notitia.
3 Trialogus, i., c. 9, p. 67. — Comp.

230 PHILOSOPHY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.viii. §2
ceptible by the senses, and what is a matter of experience at the
present moment. Agreeably to his principle, he does not allow of
any endless series of ideas, according to which every idea would
give rise again to another,, and that to a third, and so on for ever.
Such a reflex action, evermore mirroring back the idea and redupli
cating it, is to him something useless and perverted, a mere stamraer-
ing talk without sense and substance ; whereas we have to occupy
ourselves with the realities of things, which objectively determine our
knowledge by what they actually are.'
It remains to add that Wycliffe loves to give a Biblical as well as a
philosophical basis and development to these thoughts by raeans of
Idea of the the idea of the Logos. He is convinced that his doctrine
Logos. Qf i(jgas is agreeable to Scripture, and he lays stress
upon it particularly on that account. For the same reason he holds
it advisable to expound this doctrine of ideas only to such as are
faraiUar, at least in some degree, with the thoughts of Scripture ; one
to whom the latter are still strange may easily take offence at his
doctrine." Herein Wycliffe supports himself, with special liking,
upon an expression of St. John in the prologue of his Gospel — a
passage to which, in several of his writings, and in connection with
different thoughts, he continually returns, sometimes by express
quotation, and sometimes by a mere allusion.3 And yet, remarkably,
this passage is one which Wycliffe has misunderstood (foUowing, it is
true, the lead of the Latin Fathers, especially Augustine, and of
several of the scholastics, including Thomas Aquinas) ; his error lying
in throwing into one sentence certain words which properly fall into
two. In chapter i. 3, the Evangelist says of the Logos — ' All things
were made by Hira, and without Him was not anything made that was
made ; ' and then in ver. 4 continues — ' In Hira was life,' etc. But
Wycliffe, following the authority of his predecessors, takes the last
words of ver. 3, ' quod factum est' (in the Vulgate), along with 'in
ipso vita erat ' of ver. 4, as forming together one sentence (a raistake
which was only possible where the Greek original was not under
stood); and then he finds the thought of the whole to be this —
' Everything which was created was originally, and, before its creation
^ Trialogus, I., c. it, p. 72 : Falsum est, Cavebo ne rudibus et non nuiritis in lade
quodydeae, alia est ydea etsic in infinitu-m, scripturae sic loquar ne darem scandalum
cum multiplicando ilia verba homo balbu- fratri meo, etc.
tiendo ignorat se ipsum, p. 73 : Intelliga- 3 In the Trialogus, T. , c. 8., p. 63, he
mus res, quae per suas existentias movent refers to the passage, and in the tractate,
objective intellectum nostrum, De Ydeis, just quoted, that saying of St.
= De "Ydeis, Vienna MS., 4523, fol. 67, John is, so to speak, the ever-recurring
cols. I and 2 : Ista rudimenta sunt lactea refrain. He applies the same citation in
et infantibilia, in quibus oportet juvenes De Veritate Sci'ipturae Sac, Wienu'^yiS.,
enutriri, ut subtilia ydearum percipiant. 1294, fol. 19, col. i.

1372-13S2.] DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 23 1
in time, an actual reaUty — ideally pre-formed, in the eternally prc-
existent Logos." '
AVith this passage he connected other Biblical expressions ; above
aU the word of Christ where He testifies of Himself, ' I ara the
way, the truth, and the life ' (John xiv. 6), which last word he in
terprets, certainly not very happily, as meaning the eternal life of
thought. In addition, he appeals to the authority of the Apostle
Paul, where (Romans xi. 36) he says ' Of Him, and through Hira,
and to Hira are all things.' In particular, he supposes that when
the Apostle was caught up into heaven, and saw visions and heard
unutterable words, he had a view vouchsafed to him of the intel
lectual world — the world of ideas." And then he traces to the
instructions of St. Paul the initiation of , his great convert Dionysius
into those high mysteries which the latter has treated of in his work
On the Divine Names.^
True knowledge is conditioned by Wycliffe, conformably to the
above basis of thinking, by the apprehension of the ground of
things pre-existing in the eternal reason. If men look „,,.
° '^ ° . The ground
at creatures only in their existence as known to them of true
1 . /• . Ni-.n,, knowledge.
by expenence {i7i propria genere), their minds thereby are
only distracted and drawn off from God. If we desire one day
to see God in the heavenly honie, we raust here below consider
His creatures in the light of those deep intellectual principles, in
which they are known and ordered by Him, and we must turn
our eyes towards that eternal horizon under which that light lies
concealed.'* But not only true knowledge, but also true morality is conditioned,
according to Wycliffe's fundamental view, by our grasping and
striving after that which is universal. All envy, and every ^.j^g principle
sinful act, has its basis in the want of well-ordered "f morality.
love to the universal. Whoever prefers a personal good to a
comraon good, and sets his aira upon riches, huraan dignities, etc.,
places that which is lower and individual above that which is higher '
and universal: he reverses the right order of things, he loves not
truth and peace (Zechariah viii. 19), and therein falls into sin. And
thus it is that error in knowledge and feeUng with regard to uni-
^ Lewald, Zeitschrift, etc. (see p. 225, fecta et tantum distrahens etiam in viae :
n. 2), p. 208. — verisimile est, quod non erit in patria.
2 De Ydeis, in MS. mentioned p. 230, Si ergo voluerimus videre naiuram divi-
zi. 2, fol. 64, col. 2. nam in patria, considereinus creaturas
3 lb., fol. 65, col. T. secundum rationes .^uas, quibus ab ipso
i Liber Mandatorum, Vienna MS., cognoscuntur et ordinantur, et converta-
1339, fol. 139, col. a : Cum visio crea- mur ad orizontem aeternitatls, sub quo
iuraru^m in proprio genere sit tam imper- latet lux ista abscondita.

232 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. vni. § 3
versa] s {circa universalia) is the cause of all the sin that is dominant
in the world.'
After this glance at WycUffe's philosophical principles, especiaUy
his realistic metaphysics, we pass on to his theological system, in
which we shall see again the reflection of the philosophical stand
point which has been indicated above.

3. — 'Wycliffe's Theological System.
I. The Sources of Christian Truth.
In proceeding to treat of AVycUffe's theological system, we have to
inquire first of all into his fundamental ideas of the sources of our
knowledge of Christian truth. The nature of the subject, and the
theological peculiarity of Wycliffe, both require precedence to be given
to this point,
AVycliffe recognises a double source from which Christian knowledge
is to be derived— reason and revelation, as we are wont to say ;
Reason and '''^^''' ^"<i auctoritas, as the scholastics express themselves.
revelation. -^Qx in all the scholastics we find this distinction raade.
They bring forward, for one and the same proposition, first rationes,
or ground of reason, and next aUctoritates or testimonies of Holy
Scripture, or of the Fathers, Councils, etc. AVycliffe distinguishes, in
Uke manner, between ratio and auctoritas as the two bases of theo
logical argument and of all Christian knowledge.^
Under 'reason' AVycliffe by no means understands anything merely
formal — thought, with its inherent laws — in virtue of which it rejects
what is contradictory and draws necessary conclusions from given
premises, and regulates the formation of ideas, the process of proof,
and the like. In one word, by the term ratio Wycliffe
definition of does not denote merely the formal logic and dialectic.
However much stress he lays upon these sciences, in the
spirit of his age and of its scholastic phUosophy, he by no means con
tents himself with a merely formal doctrine of thought and a scien
tific method, but he has a conviction that the reason of man has
within itself a certain basis of truth in reference to the invisible, the
Divine, and the moral. To this stock of intuitional truth belong the
universals, or ideas, so far as knowledge or theoretical reason is con-
1 De Universalibus, c. 3, Vienna MS., ' E.g., Trialogus, I., c. 8, p. 61 : Nee
4523, fol. 69, cols. I and 2 : Sic error ratio, nee auctoritas hoc convincit; and
intellectionis et affcctus circa universalia similarly in other places.
est causa totius peccati rcgnantis in
mundo, etc.

1372-1382.] REASON AND REVELATION. 233
cerned. AVith reference, on the other hand, to action and the prac
tical reason, AVycliffe appeals to the law of nature, which has its seat in
the conscience and the natural reason.' He looks upon the law of
nature as the standard of all laws, so that not only municipal law, but
even the moral commandments of Christ, are to be valued according
to their conformity to the law of nature.^ On this subject, indeed, I
think I have remarked in AVycUffe a certain wavering of judgment, or
more accurately a progress of thought in the direction of recognising
the exclusively decisive authority of revelation — ie., of Holy Scripture,
For while in the book De Civili Dominio he sets forth the law of
nature as the independent standard of all laws, even of the moral
law of Christ, I find that in his treatise Ofthe Truth of Holy Scripture —
which was written several years later at the least — he recognises the
law of Christ as the absolutely perfect law, as the source of all that is
good in every other law. 3 But in so saying he has no intention to
bring into question that there exists a natural law in the conscience
and the reason.
Not only in matters of action and of duty, but also in matters of
faith, AA''ycliffe recognises a fiatural light ; only he most distinctly pro
nounces as erroneous the notion that the light of faith is opposed to
the light of nature, so that what appears to be impossible, ^^^ ugj^t of
in the light of nature, must be held for truth in the light nature.
of faith, and vice versa. There are not two lights thus contra
dicting each other ; but the natural light has since the fall been
weakened, and labours under a degree of imperfection ; but this God
in His grace heals by the impartation of revealed knowledge. Thus
it comes to pass that what one man knows by the spiritual light of grace,
another man knows by natural light. Hence the different stages of know
ledge in respect to the articles of faith among different men. 4 Thus
AVycliffe has no doubt that Plato and other phUosophers were able to
know, by means of natural light, that there is a Trinity in the nature
of God ; 5 and he makes the attempt himself to prove by grounds of
reason the doctrine of the Trinity, the necessity of the Incarnation of
¦1 De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 12, Sed lex Christi patiendi injurias propin-
Vienna MS., 1294, fol. 31, col. 4. Here quius ducit ad statum naturae quam
he is speaking of threats against his civilis. Ergo ista cum suis regulis est
own person, and expresses tlio opinion lege civili perfectior. Comp. c. 17, fol.
that a Jew or heathen would, from an in- 236, col. 2.
born sentiment of goodness, abhor those 3 De Veritate Scrip. Sac, c. 20, fol.
who were guilty of such, inasmuchas they 67, col. i. The love of cur neighbour is
obviant legi conscientiae et naturaliter thoroughly learned and acquired by the
insitae rationi. law of Christ : in tantum quod si lex alia
2 De Civili Dominio, IT., c. 13, Vienna docet caritatem aut virtutem aliquam,
MS. 1341, lol. 207, col. 2 : De quanto ipsa adeo est lex Christi.
aliqua lex ducit propinquius ad con- 4 Trialogus, i., c. 6, p. 53.
formitatcm legis naturae est ipsa perfectior. 5 lb., i,, c. 6, p. 56.

234 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. vm. § 3
the Divine Logos, and other doctrines of the gospel.' He thus
credits reason with an independent power of its own of penetrating
deeply into the knowledge of the mysteries of salvation. Herein he
occupies the same standpoint with the great majority of the scholastic
divines. His difference from the other scholastics in the view he takes of
' authority,' i.e., of positive revelation, is even more marked than
his agreement with them on the subject of reason. On
Authority. .
this subject Wycliffe approves himself as a thoroughly in
dependent thinker, and especially as a man imbued with the spirit of
the Reformation ; for he has already come in sight of the principle
that Holy Scripture is the only authoritative document of revelation,
that it is the rule and standard of all teachings and teachers. But I find
that on this decisive point it was only step by step that Wycliffe attained
to the truth.
Apart from reason, the scholastics set forth as a standard principle,
'authority.' Under this idea they range, in miscellaneous array,
conclusions of Councils, decrees of the Popes, doctrines
view'o/" of the Fathers, Biblical statements. In their eyes Holy
au on y. Scripture has no pecuUar, exclusive, privileged position,
no decisive weight of its own. In other words, the Middle Age, in the
generic idea of ' authority,' brings together, in na'ive fashion, two dif
ferent things, which, since the Reformation, have been distinguished
from each other, as well as by Roman Catholics as by Protestants,
viz.. Scripture and Tradition. Criticism was so far incomplete, that
these two elements were looked upon and made use of as of like
nature and like validity. The Bible itself was regarded as only a part
of tradition — a book handed down from one generation to another,
just as the works of the Fathers were. Tradition, on the other hand,
had come to be regarded as falling under the idea of ' Scripture,'
as it was only known through the medium of its written form. We do
not mean by this to call in question the fact that the scholastic divines
were in general aware of the distinction between the Bible and Church
tradition. Evidences of this are, no doubt, to be found in their dog
matic systems, summce, quodlibets, etc. But that was a theoretical
distinction. In practice, in bringing proof in support of any Roman
dogma, the distinction was immediately forgotten ; traditional ele
ments and Scripture proofs were all uncritically jumbled together,
as though they were all of equal value ; they were all alike ' Autho
rities.' AVith AA''ycUffe in this respect the case was essentially different. It
' Trialogus, I., t. 7, p. 58 ; in,, u. 25, p. 214.

1372-1382,] AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE. 235
is true, indeed, as shown above, that he too mentions 'authority'
along with ' reason ' in a general way, as sources of goripture and
knowledge and bases of proof in matters of faith ; and in tradition.
dealing with such questions, like other scholastics, he places Scripture
and Tradition in Une together, under the one banner of 'authority.'
But this in his case, when closely examined, is only like a small frag
ment of egg-shell still adhering to the wings of the newly-hatched
chicken. It is merely the force of custom which we recognise in this
still lingering use of the technical word 'authority.' For in all cases
where he is independently developing his own principles, and main
taining them not merely in theory, but applying them to particular
questions of a practical nature, he draws so sharp a line of distinction
between Scripture and Tradition that the two can no longer be
properly ranged under the common head of 'authority.' For he
ascribes to Holy Scripture, and to it alone, ' unlimited authority ; '
he distinguishes in principle between God's AVord and human tradition,
and he acknowledges the Scriptures to be in and by themselves the
all-sufficing source of Christian knowledge.
Nor was it only at a later stage of his teaching that AVycliffe
grasped this decisive principle ; he gave early expression to it. It
was only gradually, it is true, that he reached it, and to
what extent this was so, will be shown below. But as -wyoiiffe's views.
early as the date of his collection of ' Miscellaneous Ser
mons,' which all belong to the period of his academic labours, and at
all events to the years preceding 1378, he expresses himself in a
manner which shows that he fully recognises the alone-sufiiciency of
the Word of God, and pronounces it to be unbelief and sin to give
up foUowing 'the law of God,' and to introduce in place of it human
traditions.' With a clear consciousness of the whole bearing and extent of this
truth, AVycliffe lays down the fundamental proposition that 'God's
Law,' i.e.. Holy Scripture, is the unconditional and ab- suffloienoy
solutely binding authority. This principle he expresses "ma™^?"
in innumerable places in sermons, learned treatises, and Sonpture.
popular tracts, and in the raost raanifold manner, always with the
consciousness of bearing witness to a truth of the widest scope. His
opponents, too, were quite sensible of the far-reaching and weighty
consequences which must result from this principle; and for this
reason they did not faU to make it the object of their attacks. It
• Miscellarieous Sermons, XVIII., fol. enim peccatur infideliter, dimittendo exe-
222, col. 2 : Infidclis consideratio est, ciitionem legis Dei, et inducendo tradi-
guod periret ecclesia nisi praeter legem Dei Hones humanas, fomenta litium.
humanis legibus regularetur. In hoc

236 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch, vm. § 3
was in defence of the principle, as well as to illustrate and establish
it to the utmost of his power, that Wycliffe wrote one of the most
iraportant of his works, under the title, Ofthe Truth of Holy Scripture
{De Veritate Scripturae Sacrae).^
How he understands his own principle wUl best appear, if we
inquire into the way in which he partly establishes and partly applies
it. In establishing and proving the principle of the
authority of absolute authority of Holy Scripture, AVycliffe looks at
his subject from many different points of view. First of
all, he sets out from the general truth, that in every sphere there is a
Urst, which is the standard for everything else in the same sphere.^
That the Bible is first and highest in the sphere of religion, he proves
by pointing to the fact that Holy Scripture is, as a matter of fact, the
Word of God. This last proposition he presents in various turns of
expression ; at one time he describes Holy Scripture as the AVill and
Testament of God the Father, which cannot be broken; 3 and at
another he asserts that God and His Word are one, and cannot be
separated the one from the other.'*
In other passages, secondly, he describes Christ as the proper
Author of Holy Scripture, and deduces immediately from that fact
its infinite superiority and absolute authority. As the person of one
author is to another, so is the merit of one book compared to another;
now it is a doctrine of the faith that Christ is infinitely superior to
every other raan, and therefore His book, or Ploly Scripture, which
is His law, stands in a similar relation to every other writing which
can be named. = This being so, he knows not how to give any other
psychological explanation of the indisposition of many to acknow
ledge the unbounded authority of the Bible corapared with every
^ De Veritate Scripturae Sacrae, fols. of Wycliffe himself stands out in this
1-119, col. 2. This work forms part particular work with an almost statuesque
of the so-called Summa of "Wycliffe, effect.
namely, its Sixth Book, and with its = De Blaspliemia, the 12th book of his
thirty-two chapters would fill a printed Theological Summa, fol. 126, col. 2 : In
volume of about thirty sheets. That omni genere est unum primum quod est
this work had its origin in theological metrum et mensura omnium aliorum.
lectures is certain, both from its con- 3 De Veritate Scrip. Sac, c. g, fol.
tents and form. Its date also is fixed 2T, col. 4 : Si non licet filio infringere
by two passages to have been the year testamentum patris terreni, multo inagis
1378. The book is properly nothing 7ion licet catlwlico dissolvcre testamentum
more than a defence of the Bible against infrangibile Dei patris. Comp. c. 14,
the accusatorcs or inimici Scripturae of fol. 43, col. 3, where he calls Scripture
whom the author repeatedly speaks, e.g., testimonium Dei, quod voluit remanere in
c. 12 and 28. From one passage in the first terris, ut suam voluntatem cognosccrent,
chapter it appears that one leading oppo- etc.
nent in particular of Wycliffe and his "t Wycket, ed. Oxford, 1828, p, S : ' For
teaching, along with otliers of the same he (God) and his wordf; is all one, and
views, had given the proximate occasion they maye not be separated.'
to this apology for the Bible ; and this is 5 Trialogus, III., c. 31, p. 239.
the reason, no doubt, why the personality

1372-138=,] AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE. 237
Other book, in any other way than from their want of sincere foith in
the Lord Jesus Christ Himself' And as it was a standing usage of
thought and speech in the medieval period lo speak of the Bible as
' God's Law ' and ' Christ's Law,'= so AVycliffe calls Christ our Law
giver ; he warmly exclaims that Christ has given a law which is suf
ficient in itself for the whole Church mUitant.3 But Holy Scripture
is regarded by him as not only the work of Christ, its Author, not
only as a law by Him given ; it stands yet nearer to Christ : Christ
Himself is, the Scripture which it behoves us to know ; and to be
ignorant of the Scripture is the same thing as to be ignorant of Christ.'*
This thought leads directly to a third argument in support of the
unlimited authority of Scripture, viz., the contents of the Bible. The
Bible contains exactly that which is necessary and indispensable to
salvation — a thought to which AVycliffe gives expression in the lan
guage of the Apostle Peter, ' Neither is there salvation in any other,
for there is none other name under heaven given among men
whereby we must be saved,' but the name of Jesus Christ. s
AA'ith this limitation of the contents of the Bible to what is neces
sary to salvation stands connected the universal appUcation and force
of the commands and directions of the Gospel. ' If Christ had gone,
in the least degree, more into detail, the rule of His religion would
have become to a certain extent imperfect ; but as it now stands,
la)rman and cleric, married man and monk, servant and master, men
in every position of life, may live in one and the same service, under
Christ's rule. The evangelical law, moreover, contains no special
ceremonies whereby the universal observance of it would have been
made irapossible ; and therefore the Christian rule and religion,
according to the form of it handed down to us in the Gospel, is of
all religions the most perfect, and the only one which is in and by
itself good.'*
I Trialogus, \\\.,e.^i,p.'2^%: Non sin- 3 De Officio Regis, "Vienna MS., 3933,
cere credimus in Dominum Jesum Chris- c. 9, fol. 46, col. i : Legifer noster Jesus
ium, cum hoc dato ex fide fructuosa tene- Christus legem fer se sufficientem dedit ad
remus, quod Scripturae sacrae — sit in- regimen totius ecclesiae militantis.
finitum major auctoritas quam auctoritas < De Veritate Scrip. Sac, c. 21, fol.
jilterius scripturae signandae. 70, col. 2 : Ignorare scripturas est igno-
= Among the writers of the fourteenth rare Christum, cum Christus sit scrip-
-century, I name only Occam, Marsilius of tura, quam debemus cognoscere.
Padua, Peter D'Ailly ; and of the fifteenth i De Blasphemia, c. i, "Vienna MS.
century, John of Goch, which latter lays 3933, fol. 118, col. 3. Comp. De Veritate
<Teat stress upon evangelical liberty, and Scripturae Sac, c, i., fol. i, col. 2 : In
yet, as little as Occam, finds any difficulty ilia consistit salus fidelium.
in boasting of the evangelicae legis liber- ' De CiviliDominio, II., c. 13, fol. 211,
tas. Goch, De quatuor erroribus circa cols, i and 2 : Nullas fart'iculares ceri-
Icem evangelicam exortis ; in Walch, monias e.xprimit, quibus eis universalis
Monimenta medii avi, Fasc. 4, p. 75 ; observantia vetaretur. Ideo regula ac
Occam De jurisdictione imperatoris in religio Christiana secundum formam in
causis ' matrimonialibus ; in Goldast, evangelic traditam est omnium perfectis-
Monarchia, i., p. 24. sima et sola per se bona.

338 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.viii. §3
Last of all, he points to the ejects of Holy Scripture as an evidence
of its truly Divine and absolute authority. The sense of Scripture is
of raore efficacy and use than any other thought or language.' The
experience of the Church at large speaks for the sufficiency and
efficacy of the Bible. By the observance of the pure law of Christ,
without mixture of huraan traditions, the Church very rapidly
grew: since the mixing up of traditions with it, the Church has
steadily declined.^ Furthermore, all other forms of wisdom vanish
away, whereas the wisdom which the Holy Ghost imparted to the
apostles on the day of Pentecost remains for evermore; and all
its enemies have never been able effectually to contradict and with
stand it.3
This principle of the absolute authority of the Scriptures, which
Wycliffe knows how to confirm on so many different sides, imme
diately finds in his hands the most manifold applications.
From the principle of the Divine origin of Scripture immediately
foUows its infallibility (whereas every other surety, even an enlightened
Tlie doctrine Church doctor, like St. Augustine, easily errs and leads
applied. jj^j.^ error),* its moral purity,^ and its absolute perfection
in raatter and forra. In the respect last named AVycUffe more than
once calls attention to the fact that Holy Scripture has a logic of its
own, and that its logic is firmly based and unanswerable, and that
every believer ought to venerate and imitate not only the sense and
InfaUibility contents of Scripturc, but also its logic* For the Holy
oi Scripture. Qi^Qst led the apostlespto all truth, and delivered to them
also, without doubt, a logic of His own, that they might be able to teach
others again wit!h the like authority. But the chief inference which
AVycliffe deduces frora the Divine origin and absolute
authority of the Bible is its perfect and entire sufficiency.
The Bible alone is the ground docuraent of the Church, its fundaraental
¦ De Veritate Scrip. Sac, c. 13, fol. Sac, c. 2, fol. 4, col. 3 : Locus a testis
45, col. 4: Efficacia sententiae [the subject monio Augustini non est infallibilis, cum
spoken of is the Bible) est magis utilis Au gust inus sii errabilis.
.... quam sententia vel locutio aliena, 5 De Civili Dominio, I. , c. 34, fol.
= De Civili Dominio, I., c. 44, fol. 141, 81, col. 2 : Lex humana est mixta multa
col. I ' Pure per observaniiam legis nequitia, ut patet de . . . . regulis civi-
Christi sine commixtione traditionis libus, ex quibus pullulant multa mala ;•
humanae crevit ecclesia celerrime; et post lex autem evangelica est immaculata.
commmixtionein fuit continue diminuta. Comp. Liber Mandatorum, c. 10, fol.
3 lb.. III., 26, fol. 252, col. 2 : Aliae 114, col. 2 (after Psalm xviii. 31).
logicae et sapientiae evanescunt, sed os et ^ Trialogus, l., c.9, p. 65 : Sicut sacrae
sapientia, quam dedit apostolis in die scripturae sententia, sic et ejus logica est a.
pentecostes, manet in aeternum, cui nori fidelibus veneranda. III., c, ^t, p. 2^2; Cum-
potuerunt efficaciter resistere et contra- logica scripturae sit rectissima, subtilis
dicere omnes adversarii. sima et inaxiine usitanda. Comp. Supple-
4 Sermons for Saints' Days, No. LV., ineniem Trialogi, c. 6, p. 434. De Veri-
fol. 112, col. 3. De Veritate Scripturae tate Scripturae Sac, c. 3, fol. 6, col. i.

i37=-i3S=.l AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE. 239
law, its charta. Evidently v/ith allusion to the Magna Charta, the
fundamental charter of the civil hberties of his nation, AVycliffe loves
to speak of the Bible as the charter of the Church's liberties, as the
God-given deed of grace and promise.' It is the kernel of all laws
of the Church, so that every precept profitable to the Church is
contained in it, either expressly or by deduction.^ Scripture alone
has this- importance and authority for the Church — a doctrine which
corresponds almost literally with the motto of the German Reforma
tion, rerbo solo,3 the JFord alone. To Scripture alone, therefore, is
ascribed the prerogative of 'authenticity.' In comparison with it,
all other writings, albeit they may be the genuine works of great
Church doctors, are 'apocryphal,' and have no claim upon our
faith for their own sake.-*
Not merely in the ecclesiastical sphere and in that of religion and
morals, but in the whole circle of human existence, including civil
life and the state, all law, according to AVycliffe, ought to scripture
order itself according to the Law of God. Every action, imiversai lu
^ -' ' application.
every charitable deed, buying, exchange, etc., is only so
far right and good as the action is in accord with the evangelical law;
and in so far as it departs from that law, it is to the same extent
-wrong and invalid.5 Yea, he goes so far as to assert that the whole
code of civil law ought to be grounded upon the evangelical law as
a Divine Rule^ — a view which is less evangelical than legal, and
reaches farther in its consequences than can be approved, for it leads
directly to a complete Theocracy, if not a complete Hierarchy.
From what precedes flows the rule — Put nothing, whatever it be,
upon a footing of equality with Holy Scripture, stUl less above it.
Wycliffe, without reserve, lays down the proposition, ' It ^3 goje
is irapossible that any word or any deed of the Christian autiionty.
should be of equal authority with Holy Scripture.' ? To place
1 De Ecclesia, c. 12, fol. 165, col. i : * Trialogus, in., c. 31, p. 239 : Quod
Sine conservaiione hujus cartae impos- Scriptura sacra sit infinitum magis auten-
sibile est quod maneat dignitas ad pri- tica et credenda, quam quaecunque alia.
viUgium vel aliquod bonum gratuitum . . . Unde scripta aliorum doctorum mag-
capiendum. De Veritate Scripturae Sac , norum, quantumcunque vera, dicuntur
c. 12, fol. 32, col. 4, he calls the Bible apocrypha, etc. In the use of this term
caria a Deo scripta et nobis donata, per ' apocrypha ' (it is the same with Occam),
quam vindicabimus regnum Dei. Comp. Wycliffe does not refer to the genuineness
c. 14, fol. 43, col. 4. of these writings, but to their credibility
= De Veritate Scrip. Sac. , c. 21, fol. 71, and authority.
col. i: Lex Christi est medulla legum ^ De CiviliDominio, I,, 2S,to\.82,col, 2.
ecclesiae. De Ecclesia, c. 8, fol. 152, col. ^ lb., c. 20, fol. 45, col. i : Totum
3 : Omnis lex utilis sanctae matri eccle- corpus juris humani debet inniti legi
siae doceiur explicite vel implicite in evangelicae tanquam regulae essentialiter
Scriptura. divinae.
3 De Civili Dominio, I., c. 44, fol. 7 De Veritate Scrip, Sac, c. 15, fol.
133, col. I : Sola Scriptura sacra est 48, col. 2 : Impossibile est, ut dictum
illius auctoritatis et reverentiae, quod Christiani vel factum aliquod sit parts
si quidquam asserit, debit credi. auctoritatis cum Scriptura sacra.

240 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [cei. vm. § 3
above Scripture, and prefer to it, human traditions, doctrines, and
ordinances, is nothing but an act of blind presumption. A power
of human appointment which pretends to set itself above the Holy
Scriptures can only lame the efficacy of the Word of God, and intro-
™ ^.^. ,> duce confusion.' Yea, it leads to blasphemy, when the
Tradition and ' , i j7
Papal Pope puts forward the claim that what he decrees in
raatters of faith raust be received as gospel, and that his
law raust, even more than the Gospel itself, be observed and carried
out.^ It is the simple moral consequence of the doctrine, that
' Scripture alone is of absolute authority,' when Wycliffe enforces
the duty of holding wholly and entirely to Scripture, and Scripture
alone — of 'hearing Moses and the prophets '3 and not even to
mingle the commandments of men with evangelical truths. Men
who practise such a raixture of God's truth and huraan traditions
Wycliffe calls mixtimtheologi, 'medley divines.''* He also remarks
that it is no justification of a doctrine that it contains, in a collateral
way, much that is good and reasonable, for so is it even now with
the behests and the whole life of the Devil hiraself; otherwise God
would not suffer him to exercise such power. But Christian law
should be only and purely the law of God, which is without spot and
giveth Ufe to the soul ; and therefore a law of tradition ought to be
repudiated by all the faithful, on account of the mixture of even a
single atom of Antichrist, s By a glance into the history of the
Church of Christ, Wycliffe discovers that this departure from the
Evangelical Law through the raixture of later traditions was at first
very slight and almost unobservable, but that in process of time the
corruption became ever ranker.^
What we have here to do with is, unmistakably, nothing else but
the principle that ' God's Word pure and simple ' ought to be taught,
^ De Civili Dominio, I., 36, fol. 86, humanae sunt sic commixtae cumveritati-
col. 2 ; Liber Mandatorum, c. 22, fol. bus evangelicis, ut sunt modo.
180, col. I : Potestas j urisdictionis super 4 De Veritate Scrip, Sac, c. 7, fol. 17,
Scripturam sacram humanitus introducta col. 3 : Ut quidam doctor traditionis
potest effect um legis Dei casando confini- humanae et mixtimtheologus dicit. Comp.
dere. De Condemnatione XIX Conclusionum,
' De Blasphemia, c. 3, fol. 125, col. 3. in Shirley, Fasciculi Zizan., 1858. The
3 De Civili Dominio, I., c. 11, fol, 24, opposite to this is purus theologus; De
col. I. Spiritual rulers are bound uti pro Ecclesia, c. 10.
suo regimine lege evangelica impermixte. 5 De Blasphemia, c. 8, fol. 144, col.
De Veritate Scripturae Sac. , c. 14, fol. 42, i : Lex autem Christiana debet esse
col 3 : Videtur mihi summum remedium solum lex Domini et immaculata cour
solide credere fidem Scripturae, et nulli veriens animas, et per consequens recusari
Mil in quacunque credere, nisi de quanto debet a cunctis fidelibus propter commixr
se fundaverit ex Scriptura. Ib. , c. 20, tionem cujuscunque attomi (sic) antir
fol. 66, col. I : Utilius et undique expe- christi.
ditius foret sibi [ecclesiae) regulari pure ^ Sermons for Saints' Days, No. XLIX. ,
lege scripturae, quam quod traditiones fol. 99, col. i.

1372-1382.] 'DOCTOR EVANGELICUS.' 241
and that God's AVord, and nothing else, not even any angel, ought
to determine articles of faith, as is laid down in the principle of
Second of the Lutheran Articles of Schmalkald. In one I'rotestantism.
word, this is the Bible principle of the Reformarion— the so-called
formal principle of Protestantism.
AA'ycliffe himself was well aware of the importance and wide bear
ing of his Bible principle. That is the reason why he ceiUs his
adherents ' Men of the Gospel ' — viri evangelici, doctores evangeUci,'^
etc. — a name which, in the mouth of his adrairers and disciples, was
applied to himself as a high tide of honour. If honorary titles were
created for other scholastic divines, which, for the most part, were
taken from the special character of their scientific pre-eminence,
such as Doctor subtilis, irreframbilis, profundus, resolu-
^ . . -^ ^ , . ¦' ' -Wycliffe
tissitnus, etc., or from their moral purity and elevation, 'Doctor Evan-
such as Doctor angelicus, seraphicus, etc. ; so for
AA'ycliffe the title of honour. Doctor Evangelicus, which early became
current among his friends and followers, and was also transplanted
to the Continent (as appears frora a number of passages in Wycliffe-
manuscripts transcribed by the Hussites), was one of a kind to
indicate, in an appropriate way, his high estimation of the value of
the gospel — an estimate which he put upon nothing else — and to
signalise, in fact, his characteristic Bible principle.
Here also may be the proper place to mention that AVycliffe's
knowledge of the Bible was, in fact, astonishing. The remarkable
number of Scripture passages which, in a single work, ^ia knowledge
he sometimes explains and sometimes applies, as in the °^ *^° Bitie.
Trialogus, is of itself enough to show that he was, in an extraordinary
degree, familiar with the -Bible. And although his skill in interpre
tation is not masterly (how could it be so at that time ?), yet I have-
not seldom found in the reading of his unprinted works that he oftert
manifests a felicitous tact and exact judgment in the process, and
that an appropriate passage of Scripture does not easily escape him
when his object is to arrange a train of Scripture proof But his
Bible knowledge is almost more remarkable in cases when it is not his
object to quote Scripture, but when, notwithstanding, the whole life
and moveraent of what he writes is in Scripture thought and phrase.
The fact is not without importance that even the enemies of
^A'ycliffe, as before remarked, recognised and controverted his Scrip-
' Sermons for Saints' Days, No. XXXI., the two last, are chiefly meant Wycliffe's
,fol. 61, col. 2, No. XXXVIII., fol. 76, col. itinerant preachers. But oi doctores evan-
4. h\so'\n\he XXIV. Mlscella.neous Ser- gelici he speaks in De Civili Domino,
-mons. No. XIX,, fol. 175, col. i. Under MS. 1340, fol. 163, col. i.
viri evangelici in these places, at least in 17

242 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. vm. § 3
ture principle. In particular, it raay be in place to raention that
one of his opponents accuses hira of being, on this point, an adherent
¦Wycliffe's of the 'heretic Occam;' in other words, that he had
opponents, borrowed frora Occam the principle of resting exclusively
on Scripture — as, in fact, raen have ever been inclined, in the case
ofthe manifestation of any tendency which appeared suspicious and
erroneous, to identify it with, and to derive it entirely from, some
earlier teaching which had been already condemned and branded as
unsound doctrine. The fact of this accusation having been raade
I know frora Wycliffe's own words, as in his book. Of the Truth of
Holy Scripture, he takes notice of the objection, and replies to it.'
His words are to the effect that three trustworthy raen, according to
the information of his nameless opponent, had said that Wycliffe did
exactly what ' that heretic ' Occam and his followers had done
before him, viz., he took his stand upon the literal sense of Holy
Scripture, and would submit to no other judgment whatever. Farther
on, where he answers this accusation, Wycliffe replies, among
other things, that he had neither borrowed his principles from Occam,
¦Wycliffe and nor Originated them himself; instead of that, they are
Occam. irrefragably grounded in Holy Scripture itself, and are
in repeated instances set forth also by the holy Fathers. Now, this
assertion of WycUffe is fully confirmed when we look into Occam's
own writings upon the subject. He appeals, indeed, wherever
possible, to Holy Scripture (particularly in his controversial pieces
against Pope John XXIL), and he knows how to select his proof-
passages with intelligence and judgment;^ but still there is an
important difference between him and Wycliffe on the subject of the
rank and prerogative of biblical authority. The difference is this,
that Occam always appeals to, and clairas authority for. Scripture
and Church-teaching in combination — thinks of the two as being
always found in harraony. Evidently he cannot for a moment
reconcile himself to the thought that the sanctioned doctrines of the
Church itself, as well as the teaching of the Fathers of the Church,
must first be tested by the help of Scripture.3 Whereas WycUffe
^ De Veritate Scrip. Sac. , c. 14, fol. 40, 410, in Goldast, investigates the ques-
col. 4. Comp. fol. 41, col. 3. tion of what constitutes false doctrine,
2 E.g., Defensorium contra Joannem and he brings into view the principle as
papam XXII., in Fasciculus rerum expe- one which had been held by some, while
tendarum, etc., ed. Brown, 1690, fols. 439- at the same time himself opposing it, that
463. Dialogus in Goldast, Monarchia, only those doctrines should be held to be
Frankfort, 1668, 11., fols. 398-957. Opus ortliodox and necessary to salvation which
nonaginta dierum contra errores Joannis are taught either directly or indirectly in
XXII, papae de utili dominio rerum Holy Scripture. With this principle,
ecclesiasticarum, etc. Goldast, 11. , fols. Wycliffe's, it is true, is identical ; but there
993-1236. is nothing to show, notwithstanding, that
3 Occam, in his Dialogus, Lib. 11., fol. he had borrowed it from any quarter.

137:^-1381.] SUPREMACY OF SCRIPTURE. 243
distinguishes quite clearly between Scripture and Church-teaching,
and recognises the Bible as the supreme standard by which even the
doctrines of the Church and the Fathers are to be tried. In brief,
any dependence of AVycliffe upon Occam for his Scripture principle
is an allegarion which cannot with any show of right be raaintained.
On the contrary, AVycliffe took a decided step in advance towards
the truly evangelical standpoint, the standpoint of the Reformers of
the sixteenth century. AVycliffe took this step, in our judgment,
quite independently ; and it could not have been owing to a mere
self-deception that he was conscious of having derived his principle
of the absolute authority of the Bible, and the Bible alone, from no
other source than from the Scripture itself, by means of his own
personal investigations.
Before AVycliffe's time, the AValdenses carae the nearest to the
Biblical principle ofthe Reformation, when, in their desire to justify
their practice of free lay preaching in opposition to the -wyoUffe and
Romish hierarchy, they appealed from the existing law ti^^ ¦Wawenses,
ofthe Church to Divine law, to the AA'ord of God, to Holy Scripture.
They thus set against Church tradition and Church law the Holy
Scriptures as the higher and decisive authority, by which they
measured and tested not only the prohibition of lay preaching, but
also other ordinances and traditions of the existing Church.' Still,
it must be remembered that, although the AValdenses were led by
their practical necessities to see and to make use of the normal
authority of the Ploly Scriptures, they failed to grasp and con
sciously to realise the Bible principle itself as such; whereas in
the case of AVycliffe we find all this in full measure ; and we need
not remind the reader again that AVycliffe appears to have had only
an imperfect knowledge of all that relates to the Waldenses.
AVe cannot leave this subject before touching upon several points,
which, though not of first-rate importance, are yet by no means of
subordinate interest.
The first of these has reference to the interpretation of Scripture.
And here we have reached the point which we before hinted at,
where I believe I am able to show an important ad- jnierpretation
vance in the personal development of AVycliffe. The °^ scripture.
Scripture principle attains to only half its rights, so long as, though the
Bible is acknowledged to be the supreme and decisive authority, yet
in pracdce the authority of Church tradition is nevertheless exalted
as the standard of Scripture interpretation. For then the tradition
which had been before repudiated comes in again by a back door,
' Dieckhoff, Die Waldenser in Mittelalter. Gottingen, 1851, pp. 171, 267.

244 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. ch.viii. §-3
and under cover of the motto ' Holy Scripture alone,' the authority
of the Church, and of traditional Church doctrine, asserts itself once
more. At this latter stage of opinion AVycUffe found himself at a time
when, as Doctor of Theology, he recognised as an authority, apart from
reason, only the Holy Scripture, not tradition. At the
Tradition and '. ^ .,,,,, ., , . ,.
Scripture inter- same time he Still held two guides to be indispensable
pretation. , - ,. , . . . ^ .
to the understanding and interpretation of Scripture,
viz.. Reason and the interpretation of the Holy Church doctors as
approved by the Church.' The work in which he so expresses
hiraself respecting Scripture and its interpretation was written at
latest in the year 1376. But only a few years later he had already
come to see that not even in the work of Scripture interpretation
can the tradition of the Church have a decisive weight. In the third
book of his treatise De Civili Dominio, c. 26, he opposes the opinion
that every part of Scripture is of doubtful meaning, because it can
only be understood by the help of the doctors of the Church, and
these doctors raay put us in a difficulty by opposing interpretations ;
and because it was corapetent for the Church of Rome to decide
that any part of Scripture lias a sense the opposite of that which had
hitherto been assumed. To which AVycliffe replies, ' No created
being has power to reverse the sense of the Christian faith — the holy
doctors put us in no difficulty, but rather teach us to abstain frora
the love of novelties, and to be sober-minded.' But the chief
thought which he opposes to this view is that ' the Holy Ghost
teaches us the raeaning of Scripture, as Christ opened the Scriptures
to the apostles.' ^
Here we see that Wycliffe has already begun to have doubts
respecting the right of the Church to speak with a decisive voice in
the matter of Scripture interpretation. He means what he says when
he asserts that ' the Holy Ghost instructs us in the understanding of
Scripture.' The only remaining question is. By what means and in
what way do we arrive at certainty that the sense which we find in a
given passage, or in Scripture as a whole, is really given to us by the
Holy Ghost? It would, in AVycUffe's own judgraent, be to enter
upon a dangerous path, for an interpreter to be so bold as to claim
to be assured by the illumination of the Holy Ghost that he had hit
1 In Pref to Book 1., De Dominio duobus ducibus, scilicet rationi philosophis
Divino, MS. 1339, fol. i, col, i : Innitar revelatde, et postillationi sanctorum doc-
. . . in ordine procedendi rationi et sensui torum apud ecclesiam approbatae.
.¦scripturae, cui ex religione et speciali = De Civili Dominio, III., 26, MS.
obcdientia sum professus. . . . Sed ut 1340, fol. 252, col. 2 : Spiritus Sanctus
sensum hujus incorrigibilis Scripturae docet nos sensum Scripturae, sicut Christus
scquar sccurius, innitar ut plurimum apcruit apostolis sensum ejus.

i37=-i382.] STUDY OF SCRIPTURE. 245
upon the right meaning of Scripture.' AVycliffe goes no farther,
indeed, than this, that an indispensable means of attain-
.1 • 1 . 1 ,./-,-.. . , How to learn
ing to the right understanding of Scripture is the en- the meaning
lightenment of the Scripture inquirer by God Hiraself; °* ^'"^'p"^''^-
for Christ is the true light which lighteneth every man (John i. 9),
and hence it is irapossible that any raan should have light to know
the meaning of Scripture unless he is first enUghtened by Christ. ==
He even confesses on one occasion for himself that at an earlier
period of his Ufe he had spoken about the Scripture ' as a chUd '
(i Cor. xiii. 11), and had felt himself greatly at a loss in the defence
of Scripture till his eyes had been graciously opened to perceive the
right understanding of it, and to arrive at the conviction of its perfect
truth.3 And in connection with this he repeatedly insists upon the
truth that a devout and virtuous and humble spirit is requisite if a
man would understand the genuine sense of Scripture Devoutness
{sensus Catholicus). Putting away all pretentious sophis- *"'* humility.
tical hoUowness, and renouncing all disputing about mere words,
a man must search out the meaning of every Scripture writer in
Aumility.^ So much on the personal spirit of every honest ' disciple of
Scripture.' But on the objective matter itself, by far the raost im
portant truth taught by AVycliffe, and what he repeatedly scripture self-
insists upon, is the tenor of Scripture teaching as a whole, '"terpreting.
frora which follows the rule of always explaining single passages in a
manner consistent with its general sense ; in other words, to interpret
Scripture by Scripture. It is a part of this truth when he warns
against ' tearing the Scriptures in pieces,' as the heretics do. We
must rather take them in connection, and as a whole ; only then can
they be rightly understood, for the whole of Holy Scripture is the one
Word of God. It is in harmony with itself ; often one part of Scripture
explains the others ; it is all the more useful to read Scripture dUi
gently, in order to perceive its harmony with itself s AVith such views,
1 De Veritate Scrip. Sac, c. 15, fol. 45, t'lonem confert sanctitas vitae ; c. g, fol.
col. I : Nepseudo-discipulifingantsei-m- 22, col. 4: Virtuosa dispositio discipuli
^lediate habere a Deo suam sententiam, Scripturae, is viewed as including auc-
crdinavit Deus com-munem Scripturam toritatis Scripturae humilis acccptatio ;
sensibilein, c. 5, fol. t2, col. i : Sensus auctoris
2 Ib. , c. 9, fol. 23, col. r. De Civili humiliter indagandus.
Dominio, in., 19, fol. 162, col. 2 : Nemo s lb,, c. 19, fol. 62, col. 3 : Tota Scrip-
sufficit intelligere minima^m Scripturae tura sacra est unum Dei verbum. Comp.
farticula^m, nisi Spiritus Sanctus aper- c. 12, fol. 31, col. i : Tota lex Christi
uerit sibi sensum, sicut Christus fecit est unu'm perfectum verbum procedens de
.apostolis. ore Dei ; c. 4, fol. 9, col. 4 : Non licet
3 lb., c. 6, fol. 13, col. I. Comp. c. 2, lacerare Scripturam sacram, sed allegare
fol. 4, col. 4 : Nisi Deus docuerit sensum eam in sua integritate ad sensum auctoris,
Scripturae, est error in januis, Comp. c. 6, fol. 15, col. 3: Haeretici
* lb., c. 15, foL 45, col. I : Ad irradia- lacerando, . . . negant Scripturam sacram

246 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.viii. §3
it may easily be conceived that Wycliffe is no friend of arbitrary
interpretation, which played so large a part at that period; he opposes
it often enough. And although he now no longer recognises in
principle that the traditional interpretation of the Church is the
authorised guide, still the consensus of the Fathers in the understand
ing of Scriptures has great weight in his judgraent, in any case where
it occurs : more than once he lays stress upon the consonantia cum
sensu Doctorum.^
But as Wycliffe sets out from the conviction, which he derived
chiefly frora Augustine, that Holy Scripture includes in itself all truth
Reason and — partly raediately, partly immediately — so he maintains,
faith. Q,j (.jjg Qjjg i,ian{]^ that reason is indispensable to the right
understanding of Scripture ; and, on the other hand, that the right
understanding of Scripture is the only thing which can work in the
inind a joyful and unlimited assent to its contents.^
It is weU known that in mediseval times the conviction was firmly
held that Holy Scripture contains a manifold — indeed, a fourfold
sense. To this traditional opinion AVycliffe nowhere
Literal and ,.,._, , • 1 .
spiritual sense opposes himself Ever and auou, as in his sermous, he
cripur. expressly assents to it. It is, however, characteristic of the
good sense and sobriety of his thinking that he takes as his starting-
point the literal sense of Scripture; and that he claims this sense
to be the indispensable, the never-to-be-depreciated, and the abiding
basis of all thorough and deep understanding of the Scriptures. He
knows right well that a reckless man is in a position to pervert the
whole sense of Scripture, if he denies the literal sense and invents a
figurative sense at his pleasure. In opposition to this, he lays down
the principle that all the counsels of Christ, as all Holy Scripture in
general, must be observed to the letter, as every particle of Scripture,
in virtue of its incontrovertible contents, is true. The literal sense,
indeed, may be taken in two ways : sometimes according to first
appearances, as ignorant grammarians and logicians take it ; at other
times according to that understanding of it which an orthodox teacher
esse veram., et non concedendo eam ex serves : Sunt enim veritates Scripturae
integro capiunt ; e contra autem catho- quae sunt verba Dei, sic conncxa, quod
lid allegant pro se Scripturam sacram, unumquodque jiruat quodlibet.
. . . cum acceptant ejus autcnticam ^ De Veritate Scrip. Sac, c. 15, fol. 45,
veritatem ex integro ad sensum, quem col. i. Comp. c. 12, fol. 31, col. 4.
sancti doctores docuerant. Farther, c. 9, = 'L,e\^a\d,'\n Zeitschrift fiir Historische
fol. 22, col. 3 : Crebra lectio partium Theologie, 1846, p. 177. De Veritate
Scripturae videtur ex hoc necessarium Scripturae, c. 9, fol. 22, col. 4 : Utro-
(sic), quod saepe una pars Scripturae ex- bique in Scriptura sacra est conformitas
lit aliam. Prodest crcbro legeie partes rationi, et per consequens ratio est testis

Scripturae pro habendo concept u suae con- necessarius ad habendam sententiam scrip-
cordantiae, \-ci\he Miscellaneous Sermons, turarum.
No. XL., fol. 213, col. I, Wychffe ob-

i37=-i382.] SCRIPTURE INTERPRETATION. 247
a-cquires by the instruction of the Holy Ghost. And that, precisely,
is the spiritual sense, to reacli which the doctors of Holy Scripture
are specially bound to use all their endeavours.'
On this subject I find a thought expressed which is thoroughly to
the point, that there is nothing like a gap intervening betwixt the
literal and the spiritual sense ; but that the latter is immediately con
nected with the simple sense of the words ; and that everything
depends on determining the spiritual sense which is couched in the
literal sense. And this is what AVycliffe also does in the interpretation
which he gives to Scripture. As a rule, he takes his start from the
literal sense ; and, as remarked above, he knows, on numerous
occasions, how to raake Scripture passages yield a sense as simple as
it is full and rich.
The CuriaUsts in AA'ycliffe's tirae were accustoraed to found upon
Luke xxii. 38 — ' See, here are two swords,' taken along with the answer
of Jesus, ' It is enough ' — a Scripture proof ofthe dograa,
•" ' , ,* f L , . . f ,. ' Illustration:
that to Peter, and therefore to the Pope as his rightful the ¦ Two
, . ,. , , , . . , Swords.'
successor, there appertains a twofold power — the spiritual
and the teraporal ; this double power being signified, figuratively,
by the two swords. In opposition to this, AVycliffe observes, with the
support of Augustine's rules of interpretation, that such a leap from the
literal sense to the spiritual avails nothing, if this figurative meaning
is not founded upon other passages of Scripture. Now, he con
tinues, this mystical sense of Pet,er's double power of the keys has
nowhere else any basis in Scripture; and the whole, therefore, is
merely a sophistical, false conclusion, originating in the suggestion of
a wicked spirit. ^^ Bearing in mind this well-founded leaning to the
literal sense of Holy Scripture, Wycliffe's favourable judgment of
Nicolas of Lyra, who was his contemporary (d. 1340), may be readily
understood In adducing sorae of his interpretations, he calls hira
a ' raodern, indeed, but a thoughtful and pregnant interpreter of
Scripture according to the letter.' 3 As a proof of the great attention
which AA'ycliffe pays to the usage of language {ustis loquendi), even in
small particles, let the circumstance be mentioned here, that in inves
tigating the question of man's ability for good, apart from grace, he
' " De Veritate Scrip. Sac, c. 2, fol, 4, = De Quatuor Sectis Novell'is, MS.
col, 3 : Et sic posset proterviens totum 3929, fol. 232, col. 4 : Non valet saltus a
sensum Scripturae subvertere negando literali sensu Scripturae ad sensum misti-
sensum literalem etfingendosensumfigura- cum, nisi ille sensus misiicus sit alicubi-
tivum ad libitum, De Civili Dominio, fundatus.
III., ig : Omnia Christi consilia — sicut et 3 De Veritate Scrip. Sac. , u. 12 : Doctor
tota Scriptura — ad literam observanda, de Lyra, licet novellus, tamen copiosus
etc. Et iste sensus est spiritualis, circa et ingcniosus postillator Scripturae ad
quem doctores sacrae paginae debent sped- literam, scribit, etc.
aliter laborare. Comp. c. 9, fol. 56, col. 2.

248 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.viii, §3
reraarks upon the distinction between c^ 'iav-uiv and t? iavri^iv (2 Cor.
iii. 5) ; and then, after a comparison of passages bearing a resem
blance to each other in point of expression, he adds
attention to the observation that the Apostle Paul, on good grounds,
was careful in his use of prepositions and adverbs.''
On weighing this observation well, we immediately perceive that,
if logically carried through, it would form the basis of a rational
system of grammatical interpretation. AVe are not entitled to sup
pose, of course, that WycUffe was aware of any such bearing of the
thoughts which he expressed ; but the expression appears, neverthe
less, worthy of remark, as a slight indication of his fine observation
and careful interpretation of terms.
To the question in what relation to each other Wycliffe placed the
Old and New Testaments, the only answer that can be given is that
while he exhibits, on more than one side, the difference
Relation of . .
the two between the two revelations, he is yet not clearly aware
of their fundamental difference. In repeated instances
he has occasion to speak of the distinction between the two Testa
ments. Not seldom does he mention, in connection with his censure
of the encroachments of the hierarchy upon the civil province, that
the New Testament does not meddle with that sphere. '^ But in one
place he examines the distinction in question upon its purely scientific
side, under several heads, viz., as to their respective contents, author
ship, kind and manner of revelation, degree of perfection, etc.3 And
here AVycliffe, it is true, also speaks to the effect that in the Old
Testament the prevailing thing 'is fear ; in the New Testament, love.^
This appears to be quite apposite. He faUs, notwithstanding, as
already said, in the right insiglit into the radical and essential dif
ference between law and gospel. He raakes use, indeed, of these
two" simple and weighty designations of the two Testaments ; and
also characterises quite accurately the spirit of the man who stands
under the law, and of the man who Uves in the state of grace. But
the single circurastance that he so often, and without the least rais-
Defective gi'ving, speaks of the evangelical lain {lex Evangelica),
views. ^j^^ describes Christ as our lawgiver {Legifer), is a suf
ficient indication to us that he had not yet become fully consci(5us of
the essential difference between Moses and Christ, law and gospel,
^ De Dominio Divino, IIL, c. 5, fol. 3 Liber Mandatorum, c, 7-9, MS. 1339,
84, col. -2 : Apostolus autem de i-atioue fol. 104, col. i ; fol. 112, col. i.
notabili respexit praepositiones et ad- 4 j/,^ ^ c. 7, fol. 105, col. 2 ; Brevis est
verbia. differentia legis et evangelii, timor et
^ De Officio Pastorali, II,, c. 7, p. 39 : amor, Comp. c, 8, fol. 107, col. i : Lex
Christus renuit judicium secutare, quod nova tanquam aniorosa est lege timorosa
approbat in lege veteri. perfectior.

1372-138=.] APPEALS TO SCRIPTURE. 249
law and grace. The deeper reason of this we shaU find below, in his
doctrine of die way of salvation. It lies in this, that he had not yet
come in sight of the material principle of Protestantism — justification
by faith alone. We have, accordingly, no ground for understanding
the title of honour which was given him of Doctor Evangelicus in the
full sense of a decidedly Pauline theology, and of a truly evangelical
doctrine of salvation. If \A'ycliffe had been a Doctor Evangelicus in
his doctrine of the way of salvation, as he was in his doctrine of the
sole authority of Scripture, he would not, humanly speaking, have
remained a mere precursor of the Reformation, but would have been
himself a Reformer.
That AVycliffe recognised the right of all Christians to the use of
the Bible is a point which it is hardly necessary to dwell upon here,
after having seen above, in the sixth and seventli chap- ^j^g ^j^j^
ters, how emphatically he inculcated the duty of preach- * '=°°'^ '°^ 'fil
ing God's AVord, and how he had translated it into English in order
to make it accessible to the people. AVe raay remark, however, that
the deep veneration which he felt for the AVord of God, and the
knowledge which he had acquired of its infinite, value, were enough
to lead him to the conclusion that the Bible was a book for every
man. This thought he expresses often enough in the clearest man
ner, not only in the treatise Of the Truth of Holy Scriptwe, where
this was most to be expected, but also in other writings. In the
work just mentioned he says in one place, 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.' ' In The Mirror for
Temporal Lords, he demands for all beUeving people immediate
access to the Holy Scriptures, chiefly on the ground that Christian
truth is made known more clearly and accurately there than the
priests are able to declare it ; while many of the prelates besides are
quite ignorant of Scripture, and others of them intentionally hold
back from the people certain portions of Scripture doctrine.^ And
in his EngUsh tract, the Wyckeit, he exclaims with emotion, ' If
God's AVord is the life of the world, and every vi^ord of God is the
life of the human soul, how may any Antichrist, for dread of God,
I De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 7, fol. c. i. Vide my essay, Wiclif und die
17, col. 4 : quam omnes homines tenentur Lollarden, Zeitschrift fiir histor, Theo-
cognoscere defendere et servare, cum se- logic, 1853, p. 433, note 30. Comp.
cundum illam tenentur sub obtentu aeierui Lewald, Theologische Doctrin des Johann
praemii Domino ministrare, Wycliffe, in the same Zeitschrift, 1846,
» Speculum Secularium Dominorum, p. 180.

250 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. vm. § 4
take it away from us that be Christian men, and thus suffer the
people to die for hunger in heresy and blasphemy of men's laws, that
corrupteth and slayeth the soul ? ' '
4. — Doctrine of God and the Divine Trinity.
In the first four chapters of his Trialogus, Wycliffe goes into the
proofs of the existence of God. He occupies himself partly with the
The Divine ontological proofs, iu which he closely follows Anselm
existence. Qf Canterbury in his Proslogium, partly with the cosrao-
logical proofs. In the former he starts frora the idea of ' The Highest
Thinkable,' and comes to the conclusion that this highest thinkable
also exists. In the latter he starts from the idea of a cause, and
arrives at the existence of a last and highest cause. ^ As Wycliffe in
this place appropriates to himself trains of thought whicli had already
been made use of by previous thinkers, and appears to be peculiar
only in the reflections which he makes upon them, it is not necessary
for me to enter farther into thera here, and I content rayself with
referring to the exposition of them given by Lewald.
In his inquiry into the attributes of God, on the other hand, we
come in sight of a peculiarity of Wycliffe's doctrine, which we raay
The Divine briefly indicate as /^j-///z'//)', in the philosophical sense,
attritutes. qj. g^g j-ealism. The subject discussed is the nature of
our idea of the infinitude of God. AVycliffe starts from the axiom
that God is the absolutely perfect Being. FoUowing Anselm of Can
terbury and his Proslogium, he lays down the twofold principle — (i)
God is the highest that can be thought; (2) God is the best which
exists ; 3 and in the inquiry into God's attributes he always proceeds
upon the ruling principle that God is all which it is better to be than
not to be* But according to all this an idea of God may be formed
quite different from Wycliffe's idea of Him. The infinitude of God
may be thought of in a vague and absolutely indefinite
sense, or in the sense of a positive and substantive per
fection. AVycliffe takes the latter view with distinct consciousness
and decision. He insists on its being understood, not merely in a
negative but positive sense, that God is immeasurable and infinite,
as God possesses a positive perfection in this respect. s
' Wycket, Oxford, 1828, p. 3. * lb,, I., c. 4, p. 52 : Deus est quid^
^ T rialogus , I. c. 1-4, pp. 39-52. Comp. quid melius est esse quam non esse.
Lewald, Theologische Doctrin Wyclije's s /b., c. 5, p. 54 : Non solum negative
in Zeitschrift fUr histor. Theologie, 1846, sed positi'ue conceditur Deum esse infi-
p. 188. nitum, , , , cum Deus habeat positivum
^ //'. , I., c. 4, p. 50; Deus est, quo perfectionis in istis denominationibus,
majus cogitari non potest, p. 49 : Deus est
optima rerum mundi.

137=- 1332.] THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 251
The precise meaning of this will become clear when we take up single
attributes of God. As to God's omnip.dence, AVycliffe decidedly
rejects the idea of a whoUy unlimited power of doing.
T^ J , ,- 11 r /,, ,, • , TT Onmipotenoe.
It does not follow from Gods omnipotence that He
has the power to become less than He is, or the power to lie, etc.
Neither is it aUowable to conclude, on the other hand, that God's
power is a limited one because He is unable to do what men do,
namely, to lie, or to sin in any way ; for to lie, or to sin, does not
mean the doing of something, but abstaining from the doing of the
good.' AVycliffe regards it as the act of a mistaken imagination when
men suppose that God is able to bring into existence an infinite
world for Himself; he puts in the place of an alleged unlimited and
boundless power the idea of a power conditioned and limited by no
other power, the greatest positive power of all.= In other words, he
conceives of the Divine omnipotence as a power self-determining,
morally regulated, ordered by inner laws {potentia Dei a-dinata, in
opposition to potentia absoluta).^ He thus arrives at the proposition
that God's almighty power and His actual work of creation and
causation are coincident with and cover each other.
In a simUar way he expresses himself respecting the Divine omni
science. This appears to him to be in every respect a real or actual
wisdom. God's wisdom is a thing of absolute necessity,
. Omniscience.
for He necessarily knows, first of all, Himself, and also
all of which He is the Creator. But the conclusion which AVycliffe
draws from the Divine all-knowledge is a peculiar one, viz., that all
which ever was, or shall be, is. This he proves in the following way :
AA'hatever was or shall be, God shall know it. If He shall know
that it is, then He knows nozv that it is, for God cannot begin or
cease to know anything ; but if God knows anything as being, that
thing is. Therefore if anything was or shall be, so is it.-* Further,
AVycliffe rejects the distinction which men were inclined to make
between God's power to know and His actual knowing, and instead
of this lays down the proposition, God can know nothing unless what
He knows is fact. For if God can know it. He knows it now, for
He cannot raake a beginning or an end of knowing ; and God knows
nothing but what is, at least in the sense of the ens intelligibilis.'i
' Trialogus, c, s,V- 53- Comp. Lewald, Again, p. 71: Omnipotentia Dei et ejus
pp. 196 215. actualis creatio vel causatio adaequan-
^ lb., I,, c. 2, p. 42: Deus est maximae tur.
potentiae positivae, etc. ; comp. c. 10, p. 3 De Dominio Divino, IIL, c. 5, MS.
69 : Sicut Deus ad intra nihil potest pro- 1340, fol, 30, col. I : Phantasiantes de Dei
ducere, nisi absolute necessaria illud pro- potentia absoluta,
ducat, sic nihil ad extra potest producere, * Trialogus, I., c. 5. p. 52.
nisi ¦ pro suo tempore illud troducat. 5 /,J., i., c. 9, p. 67.

252 THEOLOGY OF WYCLIFFE. [cii. vm, § 4
With this again connects itself AVycliffe's view of God's eternity.
He deduces this eternity from the consideration that if there existed
any measure {mensura) which was antecedent to God,
then God Himself could not be the first and highest
cause, from which it appears that eternity is the proper name for
the measure of the Godhead. Accordingly, he regards eternity
expressly not as a mere attribute which indwells in God, but as
identical with God Himself But eternity in itself is absolutely
indivisible — it has no before and after, like time.' From this last
proposition he then deduces the Divine unchangeableness. God
cannot change His thoughts. His understanding and knowing. What
He thinks and knows. He knows eternally. If He were to change
His thoughts according to the change of their object. He would then
be in the highest degree changeable in His thoughts. Yea, God's
thought would be constructed out of observations made from moment
to moment.^ With this again is connected the doctrine of what he
calls the deep Metaphysic — i.e., his own realistic philosophy, viz., that
all which ever has been or shall be is present to the Divine raind,
i.e., in the sense of real existence.3
The doctrine of the Divine Trinity Wycliffe evidently took up
siraply in the forra in which it had been in part conceived by the
ancient Church, and in part handed down by the scholastic doctors
before him. AVe should in vain seek in his writings
The Trinity. . , . , . . , . , r 1 • .1
for any peculiar and original treatment of this article,
especially on the basis of Scripture teaching. There is only a single
point of this Trinitarian doctrine, as it seems to me, in which he felt
a peculiar interest — the doctrine of God the Son, as the Logos.
From all that Wycliffe says, as well in the Trialogus as occasionally in
other writings, on the subject of the Trinity, it appears indubitable
that he presupposes, and proceeds upon as conclusively established,
the whole body of Church dogma as it was sanctioned in the fourth
century, and was finally completed by Augustine. He operates with
the technical terms of the Latin Church Fathers — Nature and Person,
as fixed by ecclesiastical sanction ; and yet he is not altogether un
acquainted with the definitions of the Greek theology. Still, so far
as he occupies himself with such definitions, he by no raeans pene
trates into the subject any deeper than others had done before him.+
^ Trialogus,\.,e.2,p. ^2: Aeternitas, quod sentit, intelligit . . . aetemaliter
cjuae est omnino indivisibilis, et cwm sit illud cognoscit. Wycliffe appeals in sup-
ipse Deus, non accidentaliter sibi inest, port of this partly to Holy Scripture.
nee habet prius et posterius sicut tempus. e.g. , Mal. iii. 6, etc. , partly to authorities
^ De Veritate Scrip. Sac, c. 19, fol. such as Augustine, Anselm, Bradwardine.
62, col, 2 : Deus non potest ¦mutare sen- 3 Jb. , c. 6, fol. 19, col. 3.
sum — vel intellectum suum, sed omne 4 Trialogus, I, c. 6, especially p. 59.

1372-1382.] DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 253
Further, as to what concerns the speculative proof of the doctrine of
the Trinity, AA'ycliffe, it is true, devotes to it much attention. In
the Trialogus, the sophistical opponent Pseustis censures it as an
undue pretension of the reason, and as an injury done to faith and
its exclusive light, that so specific an article of faith as that of the
Trinity should be proved by arguments of reason.'
. . . . The Trinity
AVycliffe himself, speaking in the character of Phronesis, proved by
adheres to the belief that the reason is able to attain
to a knowledge of this truth. He finds no difficulty in maintaining
that Plato and other phUosophers had grasped it. But he laid
particular stress, notwithstanding, upon the assertion that a meri
torious knowledge {merito?-ie cognoscere), i.e., a saving knowledge ot
the mystery of the Trinity, is possible only to that faith which springs
from Divine grace and illuraination.^ As to grounds of reason for
the doctrine, however, AA'ycliffe remarks that it is self-evident that
here any such proof of the 'why' is out of the question, and that
only the ' that ' — the Divine fact itself— can admit of such proof;
in other words, the Divine Trinity cannot possibly be grasped and
proved from its relation to any cause higher than itself, because God
Himself is the highest and last cause ; rather this truth can only be
proved frora facts which are the effects wrought by the Triune God. 3
But when we look raore narrowly at the proofs theraselves, which
AVycliffe partly indicates and partly states at length, we find that they
are merely the same which were first brought forward by Augustine
in his great work on the Trinity, founded upon natural analogies —
memory, cognition, wUl, and the like — and which among the
scholastics had already been appropriated to his own use by Anselm
in his Afonologium.
As already observed, AVycliffe interests himself by far the most in the
idea of God the Son as the Logos. For in this idea of the Logos lies
at the same time AVycUffe's doctrine of ideas ; in other Doctrine of
words, the doctrine of Realism. The Logos — the sub- ^ °^°^'
stantive AVord — is the inclusive content of all ideas — of all realities
that are intelligible (capable of being realised in thought), and is
thereby the mediating eleinent or member between God and the
world. And yet in the Logos both the God-idea and the world-idea
are immediately one. We need not wonder, therefore, if in Wycliffe
we sometimes stumble upon propositions v,'hich verge too nearly on
Pantheism, such as this : ' Every existing thing is in reaUty God
• Trialogus, i., c. 6, p. 54. come to a Zwti, and such as come fo a on,
^ lb., p. 56. ^ or, as Wycliffe expresses himself, demon-
3 lb., c. 7, p. 58, applying the Aristo- siratio propter quid, and demonstratio,
tehan distinction between proofs which quod est. Comp. Lewald, p. 199.

254 wycliffe's theological system. [ch.viii, §s
Hiraself, for every creature which can be named is, in regard to its
" intelligible " existence, and consequently its chief existence, in reaUty
the AA''ord of God' (John i. 3). But hardly has he used this
languaare when he becomes conscious that this thesis
Pantheistic ,°.°, ., ,,. . ...
tendencies has its dangerous side, and therefore immediately
guards himself against the conclusion which might be
drawn from it, that God is the only existence.' His words are,
' But this gives no colour to the conclusion that every creature what
ever is every other creature whatever, or that every creature whatever
is God' Here we see that to give support to Pantheism is not at
all his raeaning or design ; and if, notwithstanding, he approaches
it here too closely, it should not be lost sight of, in excuse for him,
that Augustine himself, in whose footsteps he treads in the doctrine
of the Logos and in that of ideas, has not always known how to avoid
Pantheistic conceptions.

5. — Doctrine of the World, of the Creation, and of
the Divine Dominion.
From the preceding, we may already conjecture what Wycliffe's
views wiU be on the subject of the world ; for his ideas of the attri
butes of God, such as omnipotence and omniscience, could not be
Creation determined without having regard to the things of the
world. Thus it does not surprise us that AVycliffe de
clares the Creation to have been an act of God which was remote
from all arbitrariness of determination — an act which in its own
nature was necessarily determinate. The School of the Scotists,
following the lead of Duns Scotus himself, conceived of the Divine
AVill and creative work as a matter of freedom and of unconditioned
discretion, and maintained, in logical consistency with this view, that
God could have done otherwise than He has actually done. He does
not choose to do anything because it is the best, but it is the best
because He chooses to do it ; and God might have created the
world otherwise than He has created it.°
In direct opposition to such views, AVycliffe takes the side of the
Thomists, and maintains that it was irapossible for God to have
1 Liber Mandatorum, c. 9, fol. no, bum Dei (John i,). Nee ex hoc est color,
col. I : Omne ens est realiter ipse Deus ; quod quaelibet creatura sit quaelibet, aut
dictum enim est in inateria de ydeis, quaelibet sit Deus. Comp. Trialogus, i.,
quod omnis creatura nominabilis secun- c. 3, p. 47.
dum esse intelligibile et per consequens = Comp. Erdmann, Gundriss der Ge-
esse principalissimum est realiter ver- scliichte der Philosophic, I. , 1866, p. 424.

1372-1382.] GOD AND THE WORLD. 255
made the world larger or fairer, or more rapid in its movement,
etc., than it is.' Like Thomas Aquinas, he lays great sootist and
stress upon the aphorism expressed in the Book of AVis- ^^"""i^' ^'«'^^-
dom (xi. 22), that God ordered everything by measure, nuraber, and
weight.^ He believes that he discerns therein not only a fact of
experience, but also an inner law of the Divine AVill and creative
action, according to which they are free only in this sense, that they
are at the same time determined by an inward necessity.
Still, it does not follow from this that Wycliffe meant to say that
the existence of the world is a necessity, that God must needs have
created it. In one passage the only thing he says at aU to this effect,
and that with a certain timidity of tone, is that God could not for
ever have withheld Hiraself frora creating any being, because other
wise He would not have been in the highest degree comraunicative
and good. 3 At all events, that is only a tnoral necessity, conditioned
by the goodness and love of God — His own special attributes. But
AVycliffe concedes so rauch as this, that every creature of God, in so
far as we regard its intelligible nature, is as necessary and as eternal
as God Himself, for its inteUigible nature is coincident with God
Hiraself — with the substantive Logos.*
On the other hand, he draws a sharp line of distinction between
God and the world in respect to their mode of existence. God alone
is eternal, immutable, without fore and after. The world
, . . , , , . . , , . . . God and tha
IS temporal, t.e., it has a mutable existence, including in it world
a. fore and an after. AVycliffe supposes, besides, as Al-
bertus Magnus had done before him, a third medium existence, which
he calls aevum or aevitas, and which belongs to pure, spiritual beings,
as angels, and the blessed in heaven ; and here, too, there is no suc
cession of tirae. Hereby aevitas is distinguished frora time ; but how
it is to be distinguished from eternity cannot be gathered frora his
explanations. 5 Time and eternity form a decisive difference between
the world and God ' It is one thing for a thing to exist always, and
another for a thing to be eternal ; the world exists always, because
at every time, and yet it is not eternal, because it is created ; for the
moment of creation must have a beginning, as the world had.' ^
1 De Dominio Civili, III., c. 5, fol. 29, producendo aliquam ci'eaturam, quia tunc
col. r: Impossibile fuisset ipsum fecisse non esset summe communicativusac bonus,
Tnundum m.ajore-m, pulcriorem, etc. etc.
= Trialogus, IV., c. 40, p. 390, and De * Trialogus, II., c. 1, p. 76.
Dominio Civili, in the passage just 5 lb., i., c. 2, p. 79.
quoted : Christus ponit cuncta in men- ^ lb., I., c. i, p. 76 : Aliud est rem
sura, numero, et pondere. semper esse et eam aeternaliter esse, . . .
3 De Dojninio [in communi), c. 7, fol. instans creationis oportet incipcre sicut
123, tol. I : Concedunt quidam, quod mundum, ¦
Dens non posset perpetuo continere non

256 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § s
Accepting the ideas of the Aristotelian metaphysics, as taken up
and further developed by scholastics like Thomas Aquinas, AVycliffe
Suhstanoe distinguishes in the creation and in all single existences,
and form. substauce and forra, ie., the substratum capable of receiv
ing determination, and the being which determinates it. It is only
both these united which make a creature to be what it is ; and these
three, including the resultant creature, answer to the Trinity. The
determinating form answers to tlie Logos ; the substantive raatter
answers to God the Father ; and their union into one points signifi
cantly to the communion ofthe uncreated Spirit'
Instead, however, of going further into the cosmology of Wycliffe,
it may be more worth while, as this cosmology contains little that is
peculiar to himself, to learn what he teaches on the subject of The
Divine Dominion.
This is a part of his teaching which is quite as characteristic as
it has been hitherto Uttle known. The latter circumstance is very
easily explained by the fact that the works to which AVycliffe com
mitted his views upon this subject have not only never been printed,
but are also nowhere to be met with in England, and have come
down to us in the Vienna manuscripts alone. The three Books of
'De Dominio ^^'^ Divine Dominion {De Dominio Divino) .iovm. a
Divmo.' preliminary work to the great theological collective work
of AVycliffe, the Summa in Theologia; and in the repeated perusal of
the books De Dominio Divino I have received the impression that
we have here lying marked out before us the path of transition by
which AVycliffe passed over from the philosophical to the properly
theological period of his life and authorship. The work itself is of
a raixed nature — raetaphysical investigations and biblico-theological
inquiries passing over into each other. The author, also, speciaUy
values, not only scholastics Uke Anselm of Canterbury, but also the
Fathers of the Church, for their philosophical reasonings in support of
Christian doctrines. The preface to the work gives occasion to the
conjecture, as Shirley was the first to remark, that AVycliffe began it
not long after his promotion to the Theological Doctorate.^
The question at once arises : How carae AVycliffe, at this stage of
his development, to raake precisely this idea of dominion the pole of
„ . . his philosophico-theological thinking? I ara not able
•Dominion' . . .
-WycUffe's to give a direct answer from his own mouth, but, frorti
central idea. .,- ., . ,. f -r , • , ^ , ,
certain hints .and indirect proofs, I think I am able to
gather that two facts in the history of his century became points of
' Trialogus, II,, c. 4, p. 87. = Introduction to Fasciculi Zizanio
rum, p. .xvi.

137-2-1382.] DOCTRINE OF DOMINION. 257
attachment for AA''ycliffe's thinking, and served to direct his thoughts
precisely to this idea of Dominion, One of these was the struggle
between Church and State which took place on the threshold and in
the former half of the fourteenth century — namely, the conflict be
tween France, under PhUip the Fair, and Pope Boniface VIII. ; and
then the conflict between the Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, and Pope
John XXII. These conflicts, the former of thera especially, disclosed
a new bent of the public raind in Europe, and turned rauch raore
upon questions of principle than the earlier wrestling-matches be
tween sacerdotium and imperium under the Eraperors of the Staufen
race. Men perceived more distinctly than ever before, that the
question in dispute was whether the State should be in subjection
to the Popedom, and the latter should become an absolute world-
monarchy, or whether the State or sovereign power, within the sphere
of civil life and affairs, should be independent of the Popedom. It
was a question of lordship. It had to do with dominion.
The other fact was the collision between the Papacy and the
stricter party of the Franciscans, which, together with the eccle-
siastico-theological discussions which took their rise from it, did nob.
pass away without leaving impressions on Wycliffe. Here the-
question in dispute, which was answered in the affirmative by Occam->
and others, was. Ought the Franciscan Order to be poor and without
property ? It was a dispute about dominium, in the sense partly of '
personal and partly of corporate property and rule.
These facts appear to have led Wycliffe to take the idea of domi- -
nium as the kernel or germ of a whole system of thought. But as a,:
man of deep penetration, he took a raore comprehensive comprehen-
view of the subject, and treated it on a much grander wyoiiffe's*^
scale, than his predecessors, who stood nearer to those '"®^"
conflicts in actual life, and had therefore investigated the questions
involved with a much more direct practical interest, indeed, but also
from a more restricted point of view. For example, the representa
tives of the State idea, or the party of Philip the Fair and Louis the
Bavarian, contended for the autonomy of the State in purely civil
affairs ; but AVycliffe goes farther, and recognises, as attaching to the
State, both a right and a duty even in the internal affairs of the
Church. He widens the dominium of the State. Again, the con
tention of the Franciscans was that the obligation of poverty should
be laid only upon the monks, or raore strictly upon the Mendi
cants, and should be stringently enforced. Wycliffe goes farther
in this matter also, and would have, in place of dominion, a ministry
of humUity in poverty imposed upon the clergy at large, 'upon
18

258 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch.viii. §s
the spiritual office in general. He takes a deeper view of the
subject, and treats it with a raore penetrating insight ; and herein
placed himself in ;intagonism to a conception which everywhere pre
vailed in the Middle Age. Through the feudal system all the rela
tions of life had been converted into forms of landed possession, all
offices into the form of fiefs, into a sort of territorial property and
subordinate dominion.^ A natural consequence of this was that the
majority of the masters of Canon Law regarded the spiritual ofUce
as a dominion. Wycliffe, on the contrary, recognises it, not as a
mastery, but as a service. In his view, it is not a dominium, but a
ministerium. To come nearer to the subject itself, the plan of Wycliffe's great
work — the Summa in Theologia — comprehending twelve books on
Hi th d tbe main subject, besides three preliminary books, is laid
of treating out in such a way that the doctrine of the Dominium
the subject. forms the kernel of the whole subject. For he treats,
first of all, in the three preliminary books ^ of the Divine dominion,
in such wise that the First Book, after sorae observations of the most
general kind, investigates the Subject of the dominion, or who is its
lord ; the Second Book, the Object of the dominion, or upon whom
it is exercised ; the Third, the Acts of the dominion, or wherein it
consists. In the Summa itself, the First Book — Liber Mandatorum
or De Preceptis — develops the rightful foundation of all human
dominion, viz., the commandments of God. The Second Book —
De Statu Innocentiae — defines the nature of the dominion which
prevailed in the state of innocency as a dominion of man exclusively
over nature, and not over his equal. The Third, Fourth, and Fifth
Books treat of Civil Dominion. Wycliffe then enters upon the
properly ecclesiastical territory. The Sixth Book — De 'Veritate
Scripturae Sacrae — establishes the standard authority of the Bible.
The Seventh Book is De Ecclesia. The Eighth — De Officio Regis —
discusses the ' question of Christian Magistracy, or the relation
between Church and State. The Ninth Book — De Potestate Papae —
illustrates the Roman Primacy; and the last three Books treat of
the chief evils under which the Church is suffering, viz., the Tenth,
De Simonia ; the Eleventh, De Apostasia ; the Twelfth, De Blas
phemia. ' Augustin Thierry, Lettres sur I'his- the three 'Vienna MSS. which contain
toire de France, 7th edition. Paris, 1842. this book. Lib. II. contains in the MS,S.
Lettre ix., p, 148. only five chapters, and Lib. lit. only six ;
= De Dominio Divino: Lib. I., in 19 both books break off in the middle ofthe
chapters, the last of which has remained treatment. '
a fragment ; at least this applies to all

1372-13S2.] DOCTRINE OF DOMINION. 259
In the preliminary work, Of the Dirine Dominion, AVycliffe illus
trates first of all the Idea of Dominion in general. He remarks that
it has four sides : the subject ruling; the object ruled over; .Dominion'
the relation of the ruler to the ruled ; and the law where- defined.
on the rule is founded. He decides for the foUowing definition,
* Dominion is the relation of a rational being, in- virtue of which he
is set over another as his servant,' ' — manifestly an unsatisfactory
definition, if judged by a logical standard, as it is only verbal, not
substantive, and expresses idem per idem. He then gives a survey of
the different species of dominion, according to its subjects, its objects,
and its foundations. There are three kinds of rational beings, and
therefore also three kinds of dominion — divine, angelic, and human.
There are also three different objects of dominion, and therefore the
distinction between monastic, municipal, and kingly rule. And
there is a like difference in the foundations of dominion — natural
law, evangelical law, and human law — and thus there is a natural
dominion, an evangelical dominion — which is nothing else but a
ministerium, a service in love in the stead of Christ — and human
dominion, i.e., the dominion of force or compulsion.^
No dominion, of whatever kind it is, is absolutely eternal, as it, of
course, must first begin with the existence of the ministering creature.
God Himself is not called ' Lord ' before He has created the world.
But God's dominion begins with the creation, and as a consequence
of it To uphold the creatures and to rule them are prerogatives
belonging to Hira, on the very ground that He is Lord. 3
The Divine dominion excels every other in all respects — in virtue
of its subject, inasmuch as God in no way stands in need of the crea
ture put under Him ; in virtue of the ground upon which
_-.-%.. .--..,.. _ The Divine
His dominion rests, viz.. His mfinite power as Creator, Dominion
1-1 , 1 V- J. J • • chief of aU.
on which account, also, God s dominion never comes to
an end; lastl)', in respect to the object of His dominion, for the
creature raust be subject to God whether he will or not.*
WycUffe also- takes up the question whether the service of God
adraits of a raore or a less, which he answers in the negative; for every
creature owes God service with his whole being. Here, however, he
remarks that, besides such beings who stand directly under the
1 De Dominio Divino, Lib. I., c. i, fol. is founded upon Genesis ii. 2, where the
I, col. 2 : Potest dominium sic describi : -Vulgate translates the two Hebrew names
dominium est habitudo naturae rationalis, which here, for the first time occur to-
tZlenli. ^"'"" ^""^'"''^"'- '^opraefid ^^jj^er, d'H^^ HIH* by Dominus Deus.
2 lb., I., c. 3, fol. S, col. I. ¦* Ii-< c. 3, fol. S. col. 2. Comp. c. r,
3 lb., I., c. 2, fol. 3, col. 6. Theobser- fol. 2, col. i: Quaelibet creatura necessaria
vation upon the Divine name ' Lord ' seruit Deo, ut sibi canit ecclesia : ' Ser-
viunt tibi cuncta, quae creasti. '

26o wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm, § s
dominion of God — the individual creatures — there are also things
which stand under it only indirectly or mediately, e.g., errors and
sins. These, indeed, do not themselves serve God ; but the persons
\ who commit sin and are the slaves of sin are subject notwithstanding,
"ilin the main, to the supreme God.' Wycliffe repeatedly returns to
l»this difficult point. In the chapter, especially, where he inquires
into the extent of the Divine dominion, he enters into a very full
and searching investigation respecting the relation of the human
will to the absolute dominion of God over all which is and coraes to
pass.^ It is, however, not appropriate to enter into this investigation
here ; we shall find a raore suitable place for it below.
The Second Book, as remarked above, treats of the Objects of the
Divine Dominion. Here WycUffe's realistic view of the universe
„,.. ,, . comes at once into view. All dorainion applies to what
Objects of 11
the Divine is created, consequently God's dominion connects itself
Dominion. ,,,'.^,.,^, , ,,
With the order in which the creatures were made. And,
as being is created before everything else, so God's dominion has first
of all to do with created being. God has dorainion over the general
at an earlier stage than over anything individual which can be
naraed. 3
Finally, the Third Book inquires into the single acts by which
dominion is exercised. Of these there are sixteen, of which there
are three which belong exclusively to the Divine dominion — creating,
upholding, and governing; and thirteen which have a relation to
human dominion, whUe some of them likewise belong to God and
the Divine government.'*
The first among these acts is that of Giving. AVycliffe treats of
this first; but as the manuscript before me is incomplete, and breaks
Acts of Divine ^^ ^' the closc of the sixth chapter, he does not get much
Dominion, beyond this act ; for in these few chapters he investigates.
only the idea of Giving, with the corresponding idea of Receiving ; i
also that of Granting and Recalling, as also that of Lending and
Borrowing.^ MeanwhUe we may console ourselves over the frag
mentary condition of this Book with the thought that enough of what
is characteristic is found in what of it still remains to us. AVycliffe
begins his treatment here with the observation that the act of giving
belongs, in the highest measure, to God, for God's giving is of all the
^ De Dominio Divino, c ^,io\, g,co\, -.i, he has returned to his proper subject.
* lb., c. lo, 14-18. Still I see, from the commencement of
3 lb.. Lib. II., c. I, fol. 59, col. I. As Book IIL, that in Book 11. he had treated
the author at this point immediately of the ideas of creation, conservation,
enters more deeply into his favourite and government.
doctrine of the reality of universals, our 4 /^.^ Lib. in., tj. 1, fol. 69, col. 1.
MS. breaks oif at the fifth chapter before s lb,, c. 1-3. ' lb,, c. 4-6.

t372-i3S^-l DOCTRINE OF ANGELS AND MEN. 26 1
richest, and to the creature the most useful — the richest, inasmuch
as God never gi\-es to His servants anything without giving to them
His chief gift — Himself.'
Further, the inquiry respecting the kinds of granting, lending, and
so forth, leads up to the idea of merit ; and here the author lays down
the principle that merit and the means of attaining to The idea
merit are absolute gifts of God. He is beforehand with of merit.
us, awakens us, moves us to the acquiring of merit. But from this
again AA'ycliffe deduces the consequence, not to be undervalued, that
no creature can merit anything before God unless it be in considera
tion of congruity {de congruo), but under no circumstances in con
sideration of worthiness (de condigno).'' To this negative proposition,
to which plainly the chief importance attaches, AVycliffe often returns
afresh, in order to lay special emphasis upon it, and to prove it in
the most convincing manner — a thought in which the evangelical
ground-truth does not indeed come purely into daylight, but still
comes into view in some degree. AVe shall by-and-by refer again to
these ideas more at length in their own place.
In the doctrine of the good and evil angels AVycliffe has little that
is peculiar. He accepts the Patristic and Scholastic ideas with
regard to differences affecting them, e.g., the difference ooodand
between the morning-knowledge and the evening-know- ^'^^ Angela.
ledge of the angels — ie., their foreknowledge and their knowledge
from experience. He attaches special importance to the occasions
of various kinds which are made use of by the evil spirits, for the
temptation and seduction of raen ; as well as to the conflict with the
powers of darkness which at the end of all things will take the form
of a tremendous, decisive struggle between the Church of Christ and
the Antichrist. 6. — Doctrine of Man and of Sin.
In his treatment of the Doctrine of Man, AVycUffe mixes up an
extraordinary amount of matter which is either of a philosophical
kind, or entirely belongs to the natural sciences, especially -wycUffe'a
anatomy and physiology— «.,§-., the anatomy ofthe brain,3 Anthropology.
or the question in what way the perceptions of the senses take place. ¦*
From his manner of speaking on such subjects we see that Wycliffe
' De Dominio Divino, c. 3, fol. 71, col. de congruo, sic quod nihil penitus de con-
2 : Deus non dat suis famulis quodvis digno. Fol. 79, col. i : Creatura penitus
donum, nisi principa liter det se ipsum. nihil a Deo merebitur ex condigno.
2 lb., IIL, c. 4, foi. 78, col. 2 ; Nulla 3 Trialogus, II., c. 6, p. 94.
creatura potest a Deo mereri aliquid nisi * lb., 11., c. 7, p. 97.

262 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [en, vm. § 5
possessed not only extensive knowledge in the field of the natural
sciences — on the scale, of course, of his own age — but also a sound
and accurate judgment on such matters. But this is not the place
to take notice of his observations in this field, nor yet of his philo
sophical expositions respecting the distinction of a double soul in
every human being; concerning the mental faculties (cognition, wiU,
and memory; following Augustine), and touching the imraortaUty
of the soul.' We limit ourselves rather to what is important in a
theological sense ; and here it is worthy of remark that Wycliffe, as
I see from several passages in his unprinted works, finds in the
Redemption, quite justifiably, the key to the Creation ; and throws a
reflex light frora the eschatology of Scripture upon its anthropology,
in holding fast to the Biblical idea of the whole man as a Unit made
up of Soul and Body.^ The greatest importance, however, seems
to attach to aU that portion of his treatment of ' Man and Sin ' which
belongs to the moral sphere, viz., the doctrine of the will, the
question concerning the Freedom of the Will, and concerning Evil
and Sin.
In reference to the human will, Wycliffe lays great stress upon its
freedom, for to him it is clear that the raoral worth or worthlessness
Freedom of °^ action is conditioned by the freedom of the wiU.
the wm. jjg maintains that ' God has placed raan in so great a
condition of freedom that He can demand from him absolutely
nothing else than what is " meritorious " {i.e., what is of raoral worth),
and therefore under the condition that raan perforras it freely.' *
And yet Wycliffe, quite unmistakably, has a leaning to the Augus
tinian view. Among all the Fathers Augustine is the man to whom
he is at all times most indebted, for whom he cherishes the pro
foundest respect, and whose disciple he was held to be by his own
adherents, who, for this reason, sometimes gave him the name of
'Joannes Augustini.' -t Wycliffe, moreover, looked upon Thomas of
Bradwardine — the Doctor profundus — as a teacher with whom he
was sensible of standing in intellectual affinity ; 5 and manifestly
he felt . himself one with him not only in a general sense, in virtue
1 Trialogus, IL, c. 5, p. 90, and c. 8, p. fol. 105, col. 2: Sui discipuli vocabant
loi. Wycliffe himself, however, in his ser- eum famoso et elato nomine Joannem
mons, does not entirely avoid entering Augustini.
into philosophical questions of this kind, s In the De Dominio Divino, c. 14, fol.
e.g., in No. XXIX. of the Sermons for 139, col. i, Wycliffe calls Armachanus
Saints' Days, fol. ^-j, col. 4. (Archbishop Richard Fitz-Ralph), and
^ E.g. , in the sermon just now men- the Doctor profundus, ' duo praecipui
tioned, fol. 58, col. i. doctores nostri ordinis ;' -which,! suppose,
3 De Ecclesia, c. 13, fol. 16B, col. 3. could only be intended to mean that
¦» According to the testimony of Thomas these were men with whom hewas con-
Walden, Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei, scions of being at one in his views.
I., c. 34, "Venetian edition, 1571, vol. L,

i3;2-i3S2,l DOCTRINE CONCERNING SIN. 263
of his zeal for God's honour and cause,' but also in his funda
mental view of the all-sufficing grace of God in Christ, and of God's
all-determining will. But notwithstanding this, he is so fully con
vinced of humaii freedom, that in its defence he places himself in
opposition even to a Doctor profundus. He agrees with hira, indeed,
in the main principle that everything which takes place does so of
necessity, and, further, in the doctrine that God co-operates in every
act of wUl in the sense of previously determining it ; "^ but, notwith
standing this, AA'ycliffe does not intend in any way to prejudice the
freedom of choice of the human will ; in particular, he repudiates
the conclusion drawn from the main principle, that if any one sins,
it is God Hiraself who determines hira to the act.
And here we come to AVycUffe's doctrine of evil. In every action
he distinguishes two things, the act of a being created by God, and
the feeling frora which the act proceeds. The act itself Doctrine of
— the doing of the creature— :is^ .good, _and is deter- ^¦^¦
mined_by God, who, therefore, so far co-operates in producing U.
But the feeling froin which the act springs may be a bad, ill-ordered
feeUng, morally evil and sinful; in causing this perversion of the
soul, this evil condition of the will, God in no way co-operates.3 It
is only the intention, the feeling which prorapts an act, which makes.
the act a sin ; and that intention or fedin^s_not_froin_ God.
Wycliffe here applies the distinction between substance and
accident to the subject of evU.-* ' Eiery„ action,' he says, 'which
is^raorally_evU,Js evil on\-y accidenter.' But evidently God not the
this investigation of the question is not of a character author of sin.
to solve its knots. For, first of aU, there is a multitude of ac
tions, e.g., of deceit, of betrayal, of malice, in which a line of dis
tinction can only be drawn in a forced and artificial way, between
the active power of a created being, on the one hand, and the
bad or raorally censurable intention and feeling of the act, on the
other. But, further, the question raust be asked. How then does
it stand with regard to actions which are moral, pious, and well-
pleasing to God? Does God co-operate in such actions only to.
the extent of aiding the active power of His creature, and not;
also tov/ards the production of the pious feeling itself? And if the
latter is the true view, viz., that God's co-operation extends, in such.,
1 ' De Causa Dei' vias the title which 3 Obliquitas animi, malitia voluntatis..
Bradwardine gave to his principal work. De Dominio Divino, i., c. 14, fol. 139,.,
Comp. p. 67 above. col. 2.
' De Dominio Divino, I,, c. ii^.ioi. i^ig, * lb., Omnis actus— malus moralil^v
col. I  a passagein which -Wycliffe entirely est accidenter solum malus.
follows Bradwardine's course of thought.

264 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch, vm. § 6
cases, both to active power and feeUng — as we must assume to be
the case, according to the words of the Apostle quoted by Wycliffe
in another place, 'Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think
anything as of ourselves ' (2 Corinthians Ui. 5) — then arises the
question. How comes it that God Himself, in this case, awakens and
determines the thoughts and feeUngs, but does not do so in the
other case ? And either there appears to be a marvellous inequality,
if not arbitrariness, in the Divine procedure, or we are brought back
again to the thought that God wills and determines ultimately also
the free voUtion of evil in the creature, because He determines all,
and, as the ultimate cause, is the Maker of all.
This is precisely the point on which AVycUffe consciously and
deliberately departs frora the doctrine of Bradwardine. He gives
¦Wycliffe and a decided negative to the view held by the latter, that
Bradwardine. jjj ^^^ ^^j. ^f gjj^ ^j^gj.^ jg ^ necessity which excludes
all freedora of choice, inasmuch as the distinction between God's
permission and His positive will and pleasure is, as Bradwardine
alleges, a nullity ; and the truth rather is that God's will precedes
every action of man, and infallibly determines it, so that no will of
the creature is in itself really free. AVycliffe finds here in the
Doctor profundus an error of which he seeks an explanation in a
false antecedent proposition, viz., that every volition in God is an
eternal, absolute substance.^ The thought that God Himself
occasions the evil volition in the soul of man is repugnant to the
feeUng and thinking of WycUffe, not only on the ground that the
¦sinner would then be in a position to excuse himself with more
than a mere appearance of reason, but chiefly on the ground that,
' De Dominio Divino, c. 16, fol. 144, (per se pure libera, AlS. 1339). Nee
-col. I. He begins by remarking that this mirum, si variet ab aliis in ista materia,
subject is one of those things which are, quia III. libro, c. 6, ponit quotlibet vol'i-
accordingt02Peteriii. 16, hardtobeunder- tiones in Deo esse aeternas essentias abso-
stood, and that not all the Doctors had lutas. Ideo cummodicus errorinprincipio
entertained right notions about it : Ideo (primo, MS. 1339) scilicet in quaestione,
restat ulterius declarandum : si ponatur quid est (quidem, MS. 1339) hujus-modi
in actu peccati necessitas ultra contingen- voluntatum, facit variationem maximam
tiam ad utrumlibet, sicut videtur multis in opinione de passionibus com.mu niter ;
Doctorem profundum dicere, ymo quod non mirum, si variet a sapientibus, qui
Deus velit beneplacite hominem peccare ; ponunt, omnes volitiones hujusmodi non
, , , quia, ut dicit, omnis Dei permissio, est esse absolutas substantias, etc. And here
ejus beneplacitum, cum tam potens dominus he names Thomas Aquinas (l.. Pars
non permitiit aliquod [cihvid, MS. ^¦^¦>,g)nec Summae, Quaest. 15 and 16), the Doctor
aliqualiter, quod non placet. Maximum subtilis (Duns Scotus) , as well as Dominus
autem fundamentum in ista materia est Armachanus, Lib. xvi., c. 5, De quaes-
de actu volitionis divinae, quod non sub- tionibus Armenorum. In the following
sequitur sed praecedit naturaliter quem- chapter, 17th, he came back once more
libel actum vel effectum. . . . Ex isto to Bradwardine, in controverting the doc-
quidem videtur sibi (Thomas Bradwar- trine maintained in the ZJe Caara ZJej, II.,
dine) libro III., 4 capitulo, quod omnis c. 30, of the inevitabihty of every act of
actus est inevitabilis creaturae, et per con- creature will in presence of the Divine
sequens nulla volitio creata est pui'c libera will.

1372-13S2.] DOCTRINE CONCERNING SIN. 265
on that pre-supposition, the dark shadow would fall on God Hiraself,
of being privy to sin and consenting to it, and therefore guilty of
it. AVycliffe says, in distinct terras, that if tliat were a correct view,
every murderer, robber, or liar would be able to say with reason,
' God determines me to all these acts of transgression, in order to
perfect the beauty of the universe.' ' It is precisely such blasphemous
consequences, so dishonouring to the holiness of God, that Wycliffe
intends to obviate, and therefore he makes a reservation of autono
mous freedora — not absolute, indeed, but relative, and placed out
of reach of all compulsion — to the innermost sphere of feeling and
of volition.''
A\ ith this result, however, in reference to moral volition and
action, stands connected a view of the whole world of being and be
coming, according to which evil is not a being but a ^.^ii
not-being; not a positive action, but a defect or negation. " "^gation.
This idea of the negativity of evil, AA^ycliffe, as he himself hints in
one place, borrows from no less an authority than Augustine him
self. And, in point of fact, however strongly Augustine lays stress
upon the power of sin, especially in his controversial writings against
the Pelagians, he nevertheless speaks of sin in other places as having
only a negative existence. Such, in effect, is the significance of the
thought that sin is only an occasion of good— a thought which
scholastics like Anselm, Albertus Magnus, and others, have also
appropriated frora Augustine.3 But Augustine also expresses him
self in the most direct manner to the effect that sin is not a doing,
but a defect or omission of doing ; + it is not anything positive, and
therefore has no causa efficiens, but only a causa dcficieiis ; or, other
wise, it is not an affectio, but a defcctio, etc. This doctrine of the
negativity of evil was, in the case of Augustine at least, a conse
quence of his internal struggle with Manicheeism. In order to avoid
the concession of an independent existence of evil in opposition to
God, he endeavours to represent it as a thing which has in truth no
real or substantive being of its own — an unreality, a non-entity.
1 De Dominio Divino, I., c. 15 ; fol. fol. 151, col, 2. De Veritate Scrip, Sac,
141, col. 2: Deus me necessitat ad omnes c. 23, MS, 1294, fol. 76, col. 4. Cum
istos actus nefarios pro perfectione pulcri- praedestinatione et praescientia stat liber-
tudinis uuivcrsi. tas arbitrii.
= Immediately after the last quoted s Augustine, DeLiberoArbitrio, III,, i^,
words follows the reply : Hie dicitur, Opp. Venet., 1729, I., 625. Enchiridion,
quod creatura rationalis est tam libera, c. ii. Quid est aliud qucfd natura dicitur
sicut creatura aliqua potest esse {licet non nisi privatio boni. Comp. Anselmi,
fossil aequari libertati summi opificis), C^nt.,trtict., De concordia praescientiaeet
rum sit tam libera, quod cogi non poterit praedestinationis . . . cum libera arbi-
(sic), licet tam Deus quam bonum i-nfimum trio, Qu. L, c, 7. Albert] Magni Summa
(a lower good, the possession or enjoy- Theol., 'I'ract VL
ment of which excites desire) ipsam neces- + Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIL, 7.
itare poterit ad volendum. Comp. c. 18, Opp., Tom. VIL, Venet. 1732, p. 306.

266 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch.viii. §6
This Augustinian thought Wycliffe, in fact, raade his own. Even
in the pulpit (in his Latin sermons) he does not shrink from setting
forth this speculative doctrine of sin. Frora the saying of Christ,
' If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin,' he
¦Wycliffe and takes occasion to handle the metaphysics of sin, and to
Augustine, maintain its negativity quite in the manner of Augustine.'
He expresses the same thought both in his earlier and later writings.
For example, in his work, De Dominio Divitio, he lays stress tipon
the assertion that sin, as such, is a defect, a want, not positive action;^
and in the Trialogus he repeatedly takes occasion to say that sin is
not a being, but a non-being — a defection ; 3 that sin, even original
sin, is only an occasion of good ; ¦• that there does not exist an idea
of evil or sin 3 {non habet peccatum ideam), and that therefore it is
out of the question to speak of sin being caused or wrought by God.
There is, therefore, a forth-putting of God's will and power and
government in respect to evil, only in so far as God turns the evil
into an occasion of good, ^ partly in visiting it with punishment,
partly when He takes occasion from sin to institute salvation and
redemption. In this he goes so far as not even to shrink from main
taining that it is better that there should be a law (the law of the
flesh, Romans vii.) opposing itself to God, than that the universe
should be without such opposition, for thereby is the Providence of
God revealed, and His glorious power.? Even in his Sermons he is
not afraid to give expression to these thoughts ; not, indeed, without
guarding his hearers frora the false inference that it raight be lawful
to do evil that good raight come out of it (Romans iii. 8) ; for in
the case of obstinate sinners, their sins serve only to land them in
unutterable miseries, and to the redeemed their guilt is of benefit
only in the sense of being the occasion of the Mediator's fulness of
grace.^ ¦ \n the ¦i,o'CCv oihXs Sermons for Saints' '• Trialogus, c. ii, p. 74 ; IIL, 22, p.
Days, fol. 60, col. 2 : Non habet causam 205. Comp. III., 26, p. 222.
nisi in quantum sapit bonum, sicut non 5 lb., i., c. 9, p. t^j : Non habet pecca-
dicitur esse, sed potius Deesse secundum turn ideam. Comp. c. 11, p. 74 : Cuin
aliam rationem. . , . Nee valet excusatio peccati non sit idea, etc. Comp. Lewald.
capta a beato A ugustino, quod peccatum Zeitschrift fiir historische Theologie, 1846,
non habet causam efficientem sed deficien- p. 217.
tem. ^ lb., IIL, c. 22, p. 205: Creatura
' De Dominio Divino, I., c. n,ioi. ^o, mala facit defectum, de quo Deus facit
col. I : Secus est de effectu et defectu gratiose bonum. Comp. c. 4, p. 141.
secundum conditiones oppositas : nam 7 Liber Mandatorum sive Decalogus , c.
omnis effectus, in quantum hujusmodi, 5, fol. 100, col. 2 : Melius est, esse legem.
placet Deo secundum Esse primum, quam- Deo adversantem, ad manifestanda-m ejus
vis secundum Deesse , . . sibi displi- provident'iam et gloriosam potentiam,
ceat. ^ qua7n esse, quod iota universitas sine
3 Trialogus, I., c. 10, p. 71 ; Peccatum, repugn antiafundaretur.
quod est defectus hominis, etc. ^ Miscel. Sermons, No. XXV., fol. 234,
col. 3.

1372-1382.] THE FALL AND REDEMPTION. 267
AA'e shall only mention, in brief, that AA'ycliffe treats of the state
of innocence in Paradise, of the fall of the first man, and of original
sin, . entirely in the sense of Scripture and the doc- Dootrme ot
trine of the Church, keeping specially close to theFau.
Augustine. In his view, Adam was the representative of the whole
human race, the germ of which he already carried within himself —
a view which came all the more naturaUy to him, as he was deeply
imbued with the realistic mode, of thought. As he regarded the
genus humanity as a real collective personality, it became easy to him
to see represented in Adam, the first transgressor, his whole sinful
posterity.' And yet in this matter AVycliffe is not without a mode of
thinking which is pecuUar to hiraself Personality stands so high in
his regard that he is not content with looking upon the first sin as
the collective act of the whole human race, but he attempts to con
ceive of original sin as a personal act of every individual human
being, i.e., in the intelligible sense.^ Further, in intimate connection
with this subject, he pronounces most decidedly against the doctrine
which regards the semen generativum as the bearer of the self-propa
gating peccatum originale. However much he sides with Augustine
and differs from Pelagius in other things, he does not hesitate openly
to acknowledge that the latter has proved convincingly that the semen
generativum is not the conveyer of original sin. WycUffe himself
pronounces with emphasis that not what is corporeal, but the mind is
the conveyer of it.3 This does not rest, indeed, upon any original
reflection of WycUffe himself, for Thomas Aquinas had already
given expression to the sarae thought.'* But it is, nevertheless, a
fact bearing somewhat significantly on Wycliffe's character as a
theologian that he preferred the mental to the corporeal view of the
subject, and that he laboured to place above everything else the
moral personality of every individual man.
7. — Doctrine of the Person of Christ and the Work
of Redemption.
Wycliffe speaks of the person of Christ as the God-man in innu
merable passages, and he takes occasion to do so when treating of
^ Trialogus, III., c. 24-26. gius, peccatum originale non in illo scm'ine
^ /^. III., 26, p. 220: Quilibet ex traduce subjectatur, quamvis illud semen sit sig-
descendens a primo homine in principio num vel occasio sic peccandi ; . . . patet,
suae originis habet proprium peccatum quod . . . peccatum illud in spiritu sub-
originate, etc. Comp. Lewald, in Zeit- jectatiir.
schrift fiir historisclie Theologie; 1846, ^ Thomas Aquinas, Summa, Secundae
pp. 231, 517. Pars I., Qu. 83. ArL i, ed. Venet., 1478.
3 lb,, p. 221 : Ideo, sicut beneprobatPela- Comp. Lewald, as above, p. 517.

258 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [cu. vm. § ;
the most different points of the Christian doctrine and life. But all
his inquiries into the personality of the Redeemer, Divine and
Deity of huraan in one, in so far as they are of a doctrinal cha-
christ. racter, suffer under a certain monotony and stiffness. He
simply repeats in a stereotyped fashion the traditional Christology of
the Church, together with the proofs alleged in support of- it by the
Fathers and the Scholastics. But of profound original reflection on
the godly mystery we find no trace ; his thoughts upon it never flow
in the channel of speculation.
Wycliffe emphasises the truth that Christ was a true Man, that He
is, in fact, our Brother; and he defends the doctrine of the true
humanity of the Redeemer against dialectical objections.' On the
other side, he bears testimony to the true Godhood of Christ as the
Tlie Logos on so many occasions, not only in sermons but
Incarnation, g^jg^ jj^ treatises, both scientific and practical, that it
hardly seems necessary to adduce single passages in proof of the
statement. It will suffice to mention that Wycliffe maintains with all
distinctness the pre-existence of Christ,, the eternity of His personal
Being. ^^ And further, the idea of the incarnation of God, the union
of both natures in the one person of the God-man, as well as all
questions respecting the possibility and necessity of the incarnation,
were all taken up into his system by AVycliffe entirely in the form
in which they had been settled in the course of the Christological
contests of the fourth and fifth centuries, and in which they had
been speculatively carried out by Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury,
and others. 3 On these points, and all which stands in connection
with them, we are not able to discover anything characteristic or
peculiar in his mode of thought or treatment.
And yet AVycliffe's Christology has one reraarkable distinctive
feature, viz., that he always and everywhere lays the utmost possible
emphasis upon the incomparable grandeur of Jesus Christ as the
Christ °"^y mediator between God and men, as the centre of
tlie Centre of humanity, * and our one only Head. He is in truth
Humanity. . . . .
quite inexhaustible in the task of bringing these truths
into full expression by means of the most manifold ideas and
figurative illustrations. He loves especially to set forth Christ as
the centre of humanity. In the passages of his festival serraons
' Trialogus, III,, 2g, p. 230, cf. IV., 39, p. 213: necesse fuit Verbum divinum
p. 386, incarnari,ete, Comp. Lewald, Zeitschrift
„ 'lb., IIL, 30, p. 235: Personalitas fiir historische Theologie, 1846, pp. 319,
n Christi est aeterna, et suae humanitalis 523.
Si assumptio aeternaliter praeparata, etc. 4 ph., iil, ii, p. 164. Comp. Sermons
3 lb., il, 7, p. 99 ; cf. IIL, 30, p. 23s : for Saints' Days, No. XVIL, fol. 33, col ^.
unio hypostatica naturarum. III., 25, Miscel. Sermons, XXV., fol. 221^, col. ^.

1372-135=.] THE GREATNESS OF CHRIST. 269
referred to below, he says, Christ in His Godhood is an intelligible
circle, whose centre is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.
In His Manhood He is everywhere in the midst of His Church ;
and as frora every point of a circle a straight line reaches the centre,
so the Christian pilgrim, in whatever position of life he may find
himself, comes straight to Christ Himself as the centre ; whereas
the i-nodern Sects (the Mendicant Orders) find themselves, so to
speak, as at the angles of a rectUinear figure, outside the circum
ference of those who are in a state of salvation. AA^ycliffe also raakes
use of the most manifold thoughts and figures to express the truth,
that Christ is the one incomparable Head of redeemed humanity.
He chooses his Ulustrations for this purpose sometimes frora the
secular and poUtical, and sometimes frora the spiritual and eccle
siastical sphere. Thus, in a sermon preached on All Saints' Day, he
calls Christ the best of conquerors, who teaches His soldiers how to
conquer a kingdom for Him by patience.' In like manner, he calls
Him 'our Caesar,' ' Caesar always Augustus,' etc.^ The figure of a
giant marching forward exultingly he applies also to Christ, resting
originally upon a Bible passage (Psalm xix. 6), and allegorically
appUed long before AVycliffe's day {e.g., by Gregory VII. in his letters),
but employed by AVycliffe with a special preference to the Redeemer.3
But still raore frequently does he derive his figures and descriptions
from religious and Church Ufe, when he would express the funda
mental thought that Christ is the true Head, and the only authorita
tive Superior of redeemed, believing men. In this sense he calls
Christ ' the Prior of our Order,' + or ' the Common Abbot,'
' the Highest Abbot of our Order.' s The expression, in like
manner, is borrowed from the Monastic sphere, when, in coraparison
with other founders and holy patrons, such as St. Francis and
others, Christ is called 'our Patron.'^ The idea, again, is borrowed
1 Sermons for Saints' Days, XXXIX., ¦• De Civili Dominio, II. , c. 8, fol. 179,
fol. 77, col. 4 : Christus conquestor opti- col. i : Christus, qui est prior nostri
mus docet suos milites per fugam et ordinis atque principium,
patientiam conquirere sibi regnum. 5 Trialogus, IV., 6, p. 263 ; c. 33,
' De Statu Innocentiae, c. i, fol. 238, p. 364. De Ecclesia, c. 5. De Sex Jugis,
col. I. De Civili Dominio, IIL, c. 23. c. 2. De Civili Dominio, IL, 13; fol. 212,
Liber Mandatorum, c. 8, f. 106, col. 2, col. i. Sermons for Saints' Days,^o.vl,,
Christus qui existens Caesar semper Au- fol. 12, col. i. English Sermons on the
gustus's'emper . meliorcmde-procedii-. De Gospels, No. XXX. 'God made Him . . .
•Veritate' Scripturae s. , c. 28, f. 98, col. i. priour of al his religioun ; and he was
3 De Divino Dominio, IIL, 4, f. 81, abbot, as Poul seith, of the best ordre
col. I. De Civili Dominio, IIL, c. 7, that may be.' Select English Works, ed.
f. 37, col. I. Miscel. Sermons, No. IIL, Arnold, vol. L, p. 77. The expression,
f. 134, col. I. In the latter passage is somewhat strange to us, occurs also else-
combined with the Biblical image of the where, e.g., in John Gerson.
victorious giant, the antique image of ' lb., iv., 33, p. 371 : sequi Christum
Atlas bearing up the world, inasmuch as patronum, etc.
Christ (Heb. i. 3) upholdeth all things by
His mighty word.

270 WYCLIFFE S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § 7
frora the general constitution of the Church, when AVycliffe says of
Christ, with a conscious allusion to i Peter U. 25, that 'the Bishop
of our souls' and our eternal Priest, from whom we have consecra
tion, is one who far surpasses our bishops on earth.' He even
gives to the Redeemer, inasmuch as He is a Royal Priest, the title
of Pope.==
But not only from human ties and relations, whether civil or
ecclesiastica], does Wycliffe borrow his comparisons when his object
Supremacy of i^ to picture forth the solitary grandeur of the Redeemer;
Christ. j^g g^jgQ summons to his aid the invisible world, and
again and again exclaims that Christ is the Saint of all saints. This
description rests upon the passage in Daniel ix. 24, where the pro
mised Messiah is spoken of under this name ; and AVycliffe raakes
frequent use of it.3 What he means by the appeUation, he develops
clearly enough when he goes on to remark that ' to all saints, who
soever they be, is due remembrance, praise, and veneration, only in
so far as they derived all of good which they possessed, and proved
by deeds and sufferings, from Christ Hiraself, who is the only source
of salvation ; and in so far as they walked in the imitation of
Christ.''! In accordance with this is the judgraent which he gives
on the subject of the invocation of saints, and the festivals and
devotional services observed in their honour ; these, he says, can
only be of use in so far as the souls of men are kindled by thera
into love for Christ Himself But it often results frora the raulti
tude of saints whose intercession is thus sought, while yet Christ is
the only true Mediator and Intercessor, that the soul is drawn away
from Christ, and love to Him is weakened.
In all this, it is true, there is nothing set forth which is new and
important in a scientific and dogmatic sense ; but the devout spirit
which it breathes, and the whole posture of the author's heart
toward God, enforces the decisive apostolic truth, 'Neither is
there salvation in any other; there is none other name under
heaven given among raen whereby we raust be saved.' Where
the grand truth of 'salvation in Christ alone' is so consciously
^ Miscellaneous Sennons, No. VIL, fol. (parish priest), episcopum atque papam,
148, col. 4 : Episcopus nos consecrans et etc. De Civili Dominio, III,, 22, fol. 196,
excedens nostras episcopos est episcopus col. 2. He calls Christ, in order to dis-
animarum et sacerdos in aeternum, etc. tinguish Him from the Roman Pontiff,
= Ib. , No. VIIL , fol. 149, col. I : Illi Summus Pontifex longe majoris auctori-
ergo episcopo (Christo) fuit gloria et tatis , . . cui oportet amplius obedire,
imperium, cum sit simul rex et impera- 3 E.g. , De Statu Innocentiae, c. 2, fol.
tor, cum sit simul rex et imperator et 239,001.1. Saints' Days Sermons, 'Ro. I.,
sacerdos sanciissimus sive papa. De fol. i, col. 1. Comp. Trialogus, IIL,
Ecclesia, c. 2, fol. 8, col. 2 : Quilibet 30, p. 234. [Auth. "Ver. ' the most Holy ; '
laicus fidelis tenetur ci-edere, quod habet which "Wycliffe understands of Christ.]
Christum sacerdotem suum, rectorem ^ Trialogus, III., 30.

1372-138=.] ¦ THE MEDIATOR. 27 1
and clearly, as it is here, set over against the piebald variety
of saint-worships. Church-authorities, foundations, and „, , ,. .,
1 ' . ' ' Christ the
institutions in which men sought salvation side by side o^iy
.,_,,.- 7 , , Mediator.
With Christ, we recognise a knowledge, a feeling, and
an action truly reformational. And undoubtedly AA')'cliffe is dis
tinctly conscious of regarding Christ as the only Mediator, as alone
the source of salvation.' Thus he lays down the following principle,
that ' If we had Christ alone before our eyes, and if we served
Him continually in teaching and learning, in prayer, work, and rest,
then should we all be brothers, sisters, and mothers of our Lord
Jesus Christ' (Mark Ui. 35).= He looks upon himself and those
who were like-minded with him, as those who before all things seek
the honour of Christ, who contend for the grace of God and Christ's
cause, who carry on a warfare against the enemies of the cross of
Christ ; in a word, as the party of Christ. 3 And when AA''ycliffe, as
was shown above, in the most emphatic manner and on many sides,
affirms the sole standard authority of the Bible, this, the formal
principle of his system, ve?-bo solo, has a connection of the most
intimate and essential kind with its material principle, viz., that
' Christ alone is our Mediator, Saviour, and Leader,' not only in
itself, but also in reference to AVycliffe's own personal consciousness
of this connection. For to him Christ^and the Bible are not two
separated powers, but in the most intimate sense one, as we have
already seen above (p. 237).
This characteristic thought of Wycliffe — Christ alone the source of
salvation — rests, indeed, not only upon the idea of the person of
Jesus Christ as the God-man, but quite as rauch upon
¦' J 1 1 Threefold
the doctrine of the work of Christ. Proceeding, then, work of
to develop AVycliffe's view of the rederaptive work of
Christ, the first fact that presents itself to us is that he contemplates
Christ in a threefold character, as Prophet, Priest, and King. It is
not precisely the phrase, current araong ourselves, of the ' threefold
office ' of Christ, which we meet with in Wycliffe ; but his representa
tion of the threefold personal dignity of the Redeemer comes in
substance to the sarae thing.4
¦ Trialogus, IIL, 30, p. 234: Nullus of his Captain, in glorying only in the
hoino potest — sine illo utfonte salvari. Cross of Christ, the words admit of being
" De Civili Dominio, 11., 13, fol. 212, justly applied to Wycliffe himself. In the
col. T. Liber Mandatorum, c. 26, fol. 206, col. 2,
3 Saints' DaysSermons,'Ro.'Vll.,io\. 13, he remarks tha.t pars Christi sit parte ad-
col. I : Totus honor Dei gratiae ex integro versa potentior; and in the same treatise,
iribuatur. No. III. , fol. 6, col. 2 : Christus c. 28, fol. 214, col. 2, he speaks of doctores
—foriificat pugnantes pro causa sua, etc. detegentes sensum scripturae as Christi
When in No. 11. , fol. 3, col. i, Wycliffe discipuli.
says of St. Paul that he lifts the banner ¦• De Civili Dominio, IL, c. 8, fol. 1-9,

272 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm, § 7
I. As to what concerns Christ as a Prophet, we meet here ag.iin
with a one-sidedness of view which has been already raentioned. It
Prophet and is that by which the Gospel is predominantly regarded
Teacher. jj^ jj^g iig],jf of j^ „£^ i^^y^ Christ being the Lawgiver.
AVycliffe, indeed, as was shown above in the investigation of his
formal principle, knows how to place in a clear light the raanifold
difference between the two covenants, and the infinite superiority
of the new over the old; but notwithstanding this he places the
Redeeraer in so far on the same line with Moses, as he holds Christ
to be a lawgiver. OccasionaUy, indeed, he comes very near to the
truth, but only in an almost unconscious way; as when he answers the
question, why Christ, our Lawgiver, did not deliver the.ne'.v law in a
written forra, as Moses delivered the old one. To this, his answer is
threefold. First, it behoved Christ, as the perfectly sinless One, to
conform His life to the state of unfallen innocence, in which men
knew and fulfiUed God's will in a purely natural way, without the
help of writing or paper. Secondly, his work was, in the power of
his Godhead, to write the commandments of life upon the inner raan
created after His own image. Thirdly, if Christ had occupied Him
self with the business of writing a record, the holy Evangelists would
never have undertaken it, and would never have accomplished that
miracle of unity in diversity {concordia tante distcintjum) which we
see in their narratives.'
AVhen, however, AVycliffe designates Christ as a Prophet and
Teacher, it is by no means only Plis spoken word that he has in view,
but also quite as rauch the example which He exhibited
Ejxample. in His actions and sufferings; for, as he observes, 'the
works of Christ are the best interpreters of His law.''^ He Himself
is ' the Book of Life,' and ' all the doings of Christ are an instruction
for us.'3 It is on these grounds that he demands that the life of
Christ should be placed before the eyes of men of all classes, in
schools, in sermons, and in churches,'' because it is a Ufe which comes
home to every man, and is known to the whole Church as a city set
on a hill. To mention here shortly only one particular, Wycliffe is
col. I ; Ille enim, qui est sacerdos in Christi sunt interpres optimus legis suae.
aeternum, propheta magnus atque magis- Comp. III., 31.
ter, exhortatus est saluberrime crebrius 3 IDe Civili Dominio, I., 28, MS. 63,
iraedicando ; sed cum sit rex regum, exer- col. i : Omnis Christi actio est nostra
cult tam auctoritative quam ¦ministeri- instructio.
aliter correptionem humanitus coactivam. ^ De Veritate Scripturae Sac. , c. 29,
Comp. the words quoted in note ^ p. 270 : fol. roi, col. 4: Vita Christi, tanquam
Illi ergo episcopo , . . papa. communissima et toti ecclesiae notissima
^ Liber Mandatorum, c. 6, fol. 102, super verticem montium posita, est in
col. I. scolis, in sermonibus atque ecclesiis omni
' Trialogus, IV., 16, p. 300 : Opera generi liominum detegenda.

1372-1382.] ON THE VIRGIN MARY. 273
accustomed to hold up with special preference one feature of the
character of Jesus, His humility and gentieness, and another from
the history of His life. His poverty. In one of his serraons he
remarks that it is to Christ that men must look for a perfect
example, for ' He is our sinless Abbot ; whereas the saints, even
the Apostles Peter, Paul, and John, and the rest, were not free
from sin, and error, and foolishness, as we know from Scripture
itself '
Here we raay be allowed to add what was AVycliffe's manner of
thinking respecting the holy A'irgin. In his sermons preached on the
Festivals of Mary, he could not do otherwise than speak of r^i^^ virgin
her. On the Festival of the Purification, AVycliffe touches Mary.
the question whether she was absolutely without sin, and closes with
words to this effect — that in no case is it necessary to salvation to
believe that Mary was free from original and all actual sin. Yea, it.
is a pharisaic folly to contend so much upon such a question. The-
inost advisable course is not to give any categorical decision either
way. His personal view of the raatter is that the holy Virgin was
probably without sin.= From this it is evident enough that AVycliffe,
who acknowledges clearly and emphatically the sinlessness of the
Redeemer, was at least not disposed to recognise the sinlessness of
Mary as a matter of dogma. In a sermon preached on the Festival
of t'ne Assumption, he also discusses the question whether Mary was
taken up to heaven corporeally, or only spiritually. In doing so he
weighs the reasons for and against the alleged Assumption in an
unprejudiced and cool tone, but so as to incline the scale to the
negative of that opinion. He remarks that God has kept such things.
secret from us in order that we may humbly confess our ignorance,
and may hold fast all the raore earnestly the things which are more
necessary to the faith. 3
2. Christ as ' everlasting Priest ' (Hebrews vii.), and the power of
His reconcUiation, AA'ycUffe comraends with a warmth altogether
peculiar. He never fails to lay a simple and truly -g.^^^,^ ^nd
devout emphasis upon Christ's Passion. In a Passion Saorifloe.
sermon he remarks that Christ is saying every day in our hearts — ¦
' This I suffered for thee, what dost thou suffer for Me ? ' * Particu-
• Saints' Days Sermons, 'Ho.\l.,iol.-!.2, a nobis puncta talia, ut recognoscentcs
col. I : Petro, Paulo, evangelistae Johanni humiliter nostram ignorantiam, fidei ne-
et ceteris citra Christum Scriptura imponit cessarioribus fortius insistamus,
grave peccatum, et per consequens errorem * XL, Miscellaneous Sermons, No.
et stultitiam, . . . ideo abbas noster XVIIL, fol. 222, col. 4 : Christus dicit in
Christus impeccabilis est videndus. nobis cottidie : Hoc passus sum pro te,
= lb.. No. VIIL, fol. 14, col. 2. quid pateris pro me"? Comp. the well-
3 Miscellaneous Sermons, No. XXVL, known words, ' This I did for thee, what
fol. 235, cols. ^¦Si.n&i,: Adhuc Deus celavit doest thou for Mo ? '
19

274 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [cu. vm. § 7
larly worthy of notice is what he says of the infinite power and
eternal importance of the Passion of Christ and the reconciliation
accompUshed by Him. Again and again he affirms that the effect of
the Passion of Christ extends as well to later ages as to the ages pre
ceding it, and therefore reaches forwards to the world's end, and
backwards to tlie world's beginning. Were this not so, then never
would a single member of the human family since the fall of the
first man have become morally righteous or a saved man.' No one
can be saved unless he is washed in the blood of Christ (Revelation
i. 5). The blood of Christ, in virtue of His spiritual nature, is so
constituted that it penetrates to the kernel of the mind and purifies it
from sin both original and actual.^ The boundless power of the
sufferings of Christ WycUffe describes in such terms as to say that
they would suffice for the redemption of many worlds ; 3 and he
places the state of grace, which has its ground in the redemption of
Christ, higher than the state of innocence in Paradise. Christ, he
affirms, has gained more for mankind than Adam lost.'*
This, however, is to be understood only of the intensive power of
the grace of God in Christ, not of the extensive reach of the recon
ciliation. For Wycliffe, Uke Augustine, limits the work of redemp
tion to the elect, and does not hesitate to say that Christ has not
redeemed all men, for there are many who will remain in the ever
lasting prison of sin.s
Only one point raore may be mentioned in this place, viz., the
continual mediation and intercession of Christ, which Wycliffe
warmly affirms, on the ground of Scripture (i John ii. i), in opposi
tion to the pretended intercession of the saints.*
3. The dignity of Christ as ' King of kings,' Wycliffe chiefly men
tions, in so far as he deduces frora it the duty of worldly rulers to
' Trialogus, IV., 12, p. 2S8 : Non ¦» De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 30,
dubitoquinpassio Christi tam ad posterius fol. 107, col. 3: Humanum genus est in
tempore (sic) quam ad anterius in fructus .majori gratia, per reparationem Domini
efficacia se extendit. Miscellaneous Ser- nostri Jesu Christi, quam. fuisset, posito,
mons. No. L, fol. 193, col. 2; Sicut virtus quod nemo a statu innocentiae cecidisset,
meriti Christi se extendit usque ad finem etc.
mundi post ejus completionem, sic virtus 5 De Civili Dominio, III. , 25 ; fol. 246,
ejusdem meriti se extendit usque ad princi- col. i : Patet, quod Christus non redemit
pium 7nundi ante ejus impletionem. Et omnes homines a da^mnatione ad regnum,
nisi sic esset, nunquam fuisset persona cum jnulti sunt qui non resurgent in
humani generis, post praevaricationem judicio, sed manebunt in perpetuo carcere
primi hominis, justa moraliter sive sal-ua. peccatorum. Comp. De Veritate Scrip-
' XXIV. Miscellaneous Sermons, No. turae Sac, c. 30. Tertii dicunt, sicut ego
VIIL, fol. 148, col. 4. saepe locutus sum, quod Christus solum
3 De Ecclesia, c, 3; fol. 11, col. 2: redemit praedestinatos, quos ordinavit ad
Christus salvavit totum mundum humani gloriam.
generis, cum apposuit^medicinam passion is, ^ Trialogus, in., 30, p. 236.
quae suffecit redimere multos mundos.

1372-13S2,] DOCTRINE OF SALV.iTION. 275
serve Christ and to further His kingdom. In relation to which
he calls to remembrance the fact that Christ more christ the
than once made use of His ro)'al power, as when in ^"^•
His own Person He drove the buyers and sellers out of the
temple.'

8. — Doctrine of the Order of Personal Salvation.
To the question concerning the personal application of the salva
tion wrought out by Christ, AVycliffe gives the sarae general answer as
the Church doctrine of his time and as Scripture itself; the way in
which the individual becomes a partaker of salvation is by conver
sion and sanctification.
AVith regard to conversion, AVycUffe recognises that it includes two
things — turning away frora sin, and a believing appropriation of the
saving grace of Christ ; in other words, repentance and Repentance
faith. Repentance he regards as an indispensable con- audoonversion.
dition of the forgiveness of sins and of a real participation in the
merits of the Redeemer. He acknowledges without reserve that
" no raan would be in a condition to make satisfaction for a single
sin, if it were not for the unmeasurable raercy of the Redeemer.
Let a man, therefore, give proof of fruitful repentance before God,
and forsake past sins, and by virtue ofthe merits of Christ and through
His raercy, his sins shall be blotted out.' ^
But the repentance which he holds to be indispensable raust not
only be sincere and heartfelt, raust not only have respect to sin itself,
and not raerely to its punishment, must not only be a 'godly sorrow,'
as the apostle calls it, but it raust also be a ' fruitful ' repentance ;
it must verify itself in an actual and abiding forsaking of sin. In
other words, AVycliffe here views the penitence and turning from sin
included in conversion as one and the same with the work of sanctifi
cation, in which self-denial, or the constant avoidance of sin, forms
the one side, while the love of God and our neighbour forras the
positive corapleting side. But precisely this blending together of
initial repentance, with the subsequent and abiding giving up of sin,
is a defect which Wycliffe has in common with the teaching which
prevailed in his tirae; and this defect corresponds with another of
much greater moment in reference to faith.
1 Trialogus, IV., 18, p. 306. esset immensitas misericordiae Siilvatoris.
= XXIV. Sermons, No. VL, fol. 143, Poeniteat ergo homo Deo fructuose, et
col. 4 : Verum concluditur, quod pro nulla deserat peccata praeterita, et virtute meriti
peccato suo posset homo satisfacere, nisi Christi et suae gratiae sunt deleta.

276 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. Ich. vm. § a
Passing on to the idea of faith, as constituting the other side of
the work of conversion, Wycliffe distinguishes, as had been usual
since Augustine set the example, a threefold use of
savingfaith. ^^^ ^^^^_ ^^ , ^^.^^^ , is understood— (i) The act by
which a raan believes; (2) the condition of soul in which a maa
beheves; (3) the truth which a raan believes.' Further, he makes
the distinction, also a favourite one, between explicit, or conscious
faith, and implicit, or unconscious faith ; meaning by the latter
the faith which a good Christian, who explicitly believes in the
Catholic Church in general, extends to every particular item of
doctrine which is included in the Church's whole beliefs When
we hear Wycliffe say that ' Faith is the foundation of the Christian
reUgion, and without faith it is impossible to please God ; ' 3 or when
he lays down the principle that faith is the primary foundation of the
virtues, and unbelief the first mischief which leads to sin, which was
the reason why the Devil enticed raen first of all into unbelief, ¦* we
might naturally be led to suppose that Wycliffe must have grasped
the idea of faith at its very kernel, and must have understood it to
mean a heartfelt turning of the soul to God — a most inward laying-
hold of the reconciliation in Christ. And yet this is not the case-
After careful investigation, the result which I have arrived at is this,.
that Wycliffe views faith as being, on one side, a knowledge and
recognition of certain truths of Christianity, and, on the other side, a
moral acting in imitation of Christ from a motive of love ; whereas
that element of faith which, to a certain extent, fornis the connecting-
link between these two, viz., the heartfelt turning of oneself to, and
laying hold of, the redeeming love of God in Christ, is almost over
looked. For in places where AVycliffe describes faith more closely,
Lith and t^e kernel of it appears to be something intellectual — a
th^inteueot. knowledge of the truth, which, however, has for its
consequence and fruit a course of raoral action. In particular, he
adduces, as a proof of the necessity of faith, the fact that all those
' Trialogus,m.,2,p,fi^i, De Ecclesia, ^ XL. Sermons, No. XII.; fol. 214.
c. 2, fol. 133, col. 4 : Fides nunc sumitur col. i ; Fides est fundamentum religionis
pro actu credendi, quo creditur, nunc pro Christ ian ae, sine qua impossibile est
liabitu credendi, per quem creditur, et placere Deo,
nunc pro veritate, quae creditur, ut docet 4 De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 21, fol.
.^w^z^j/zwwj xiii° De Trin. (c. 2 and 3). 71, col. 4: Sicut primuin fundamentum-
^ lb.. Alia est fides, quae est credulitas virtutuin est fides (Heb. xi. ), sic primum
fidelis explicita, et alia fides implicita, ut detrimentum alliciens ad peccanduin est
catholicus, habens habitum fidei infusum infidelitas, etc. And some lines before
vel acquisitum explicite credit ecclesiam he says, it is certain, ?ion esse quenquam
catholicam in communi, et in ilia fide possibile peccare, nisi propter defectum
communi credit implicite , . . quodcun- fidei. Trialogus, III., 2, p. 135. Cum
que singulariter contentuin sub s. matre impossibile sit quenquam peccare, nisi
ecclesia. de tanto in fide deficiat.

i37!i-i3S=.] FAITH AND SALVATION. 277
who have reached the years of youthful ripeness are obliged to learn
their credo.' And in a connection quite different frora this, where
faith is his subject, AVycliffe lays it down as a principle, 'that it is
absolutely necessary to salvation that every Christian should believe,
at least implicitiy, every article of the faith.' = He does not intend
by this to say a word in favour of easy belief or credulity. He is
much too sensible and critical for that. Even in his sermons the
critical side of his character reveals itself.
Turning now to the other side of faith, AVycliffe evidently assumes
that the kernel of faith is a .state oi feeling — a moral activity — when,
in accord with the theology of his age and agreeably to Aristotelian
metaphysics, he lays particular stress upon the fdes formata, and
defines faith to be a steadfast cleaving to God or to Christ in love
{per amorem caritatis perpetuo adhaerere).^ In so defining it,
AA'ycliffe, hand-in-hand with his theological contem- paithand
poraries, passes imraediately beyond the moment of feeling.
conversion, and takes his standpoint within the work of sanctifica
tion ; in other words, he mixes up conversion and sanctification, faith
and works. And, for this reason, we can hardly expect to find
WycUffe doing homage to the Pauline Reformation-truth of the
justification of the sinner by faith alone. There are not wanting,
indeed, expressions which, at first sight, verge upon this truth, e.g.,
¦when referring to Hebrews xi., he describes faith as 'the ground of the
justification of man before God,'-* or when he enumerates the func
tions of faith as follows : — (i) It animates all- the regenerate in the
path of virtue ; (2) it urges and strengthens pilgrims to do battle
with their enemies ; (3) it covers the enemy with defeat. And here
it is interesting to note that AVycliffe grounds the first of these
statements upon Romans i. 17, and Habakkuk ii. 4, ' The just shall
live by his faith.' s
* XL. Miscell. Sermons, No. XIL, fol. fol. 169, col. i : in Christum credere —
214, cols. 1-3. The connection of thought sibi [Christo) per amorem caritatis perpetuo
in this passage is significant : Nemo potest adhaerere. De Veritate Scripturae Sac,
filacere Deo nisi ipsum diligendo ; sed c. 21 : Credere in Deum est credendo
-nemo potest Deu^m diligere, nisi ipsum per ipsum sibi adhaerere firmiter per amorem.
fidem cognoscendo. 4 De Veritate Scripturae Sac, , c. 10, fol.
2 De Civili Dominio, I., c. 44, fol. 25, col. 3 : Probat apostolus Hebr. xi, ,
143, col. 2 : Oportet — omnem Christianum quod fides sit fundamentum justificaiionis
de absoluta necessitate salutis quemlibet hominis quoad Deum.
articulumfidei saltem implicite credere. '^ XL. Sermons, No. XIL, fol. 214,
3 Trialogus, III., 2, p. 133 : Fides [ut col. 3 : Inter alia, in quo (sic) fides est
dicunt scholastici) alia est informis, — et utilis, prodest generaliter ad haec tria :
nliaest fides caritate formata. De Veritate i, om-nes regenerates in via virtutum
Scripturae Sac, c. 10, fol. 25, col. i : vivificat; 2, viantes ad invadendum ini-
Nisi habuerint fidem formatam, damna- micos excitat et confortat ; 3, protegendo
iuntur tanquam vacui inutiles ; c, 2, impugnantes confundit,  Habak-
fol. 133, col. 4: si habuerii fidem caritate kuk ii. 4: 'Justus meus ex fide vivit,'
formatam. XXIV. Sermons, No. XVIL, etc.

278 wycliffe's theological system. [ch.viii. §8
But the nearer he approaches to the truth, the more evident does
it become that Wycliffe, in his estimate of faith, stiU occupies the
Faith and Standpoint of mediseval scholasticism, and has not even
justification. ^ presentiment, to say nothing of an understanding,
of what faith was to the mind of the Apostie Paul. In the perusal of
his writings I have scarcely met with a more characteristic passage
than the following, which occurs in a sermon on the purely Pauline
passage, Romans x. 10, ' AVith the heart man believeth unto righteous
ness, and with the raouth confession is raade unto salvation.'
AVycliffe remarks, in the course of his sermon, that ' as life precedes
all living actions, so faith goes before all other virtues. It is for this
reason that the apostle, in Hebrews x., says, in the words of the
prophet, " The just shall live by faith ; " as if he would say that
the spiritual life of the just si^rings out of faith. In order that a man
may be righteous, it is necessary that he should believe what he
knows. And as faith under favourable circumstances works great
things, inasmuch as it is irapossible that so great a seed, when sown
in fruitful soil, should not spring forth and work to good effect, it is
for this reason the apostle adds, " With the raouth confession is
made unto salvation." ' ' Wycliffe, it is manifest, failed to seize the
evangelical idea of faith. One might almost say that in his case, as
in that of other scholastics, as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and
others, the very organ needed for this was wanting. He has, there
fore, no faculty of perception for the truth of justification by faith
alone. On the contrary, he is inclined to put ' righteousness before
God' to the account of good works along with faith, and for this
reason does not even deny to these all 'merit'
This leads us from the work of conversion to the work of sanctifi
cation ; and, on going more closely into the latter, we come, at the
Wycliffe's Same time, in sight of AVycliffe's fundamental thoughts
ethics. ^^ jj^g subject of morals. And, if we are not mis
taken, his ethical system is worthy of a more careful study than it
has ever hitherto received.
To the question respecting the highest good, summum bonum,
Wycliffe replies that there are three kinds of good, which are
graduated according to their value, thus : — The good things of for-
I XXIV, Sermons, No. XX., fol. 173, quod homo sit Justus, requiritur ipsum
col. 3 ; Sicut vita praecedit omnes alios credere intellectum. Et cum fides, habita
actus secundos, sic fides virtutes alias, et opportunitate, operatur magna, si est, cum
hinc dicit apostolus Hebr, X. ex testimonio impossibile est tantum semen in terra
prophetae: 'Justus ex fide vivet;' ac si fructifera non in bonam operam ebullire,
intenderet, quod vita spiritualis justorum ideo subjungit apostolus, quod ' ore con-
originatur ex fide, . . . Ideo dicit apos- fessio fit ad salutem.'
tolas: ' Corde creditur ad justitiam,' i.e..

i37=-i38=.] DOCTRINE OF VIRTUE. 279
tune, which possess the smallest value ; the good things of nature,
which have a medium value ; and Listiy, the good things virtue the
of virtue and grace, which are of the highest worth.' summum
' bonum.
The highest good, then, is to him coincident with
virtue, which virtue is conditioned by grace. The good things of
virtue are, at the same time, the good things of grace. The stand
ing in grace is the condition of Christian freedom, and freedora frora
sin is the summit of all freedom.^ In the standing of grace the
Christian has a right to all things ; not in the sense of municipal
right, but in virtue of grace, titulo gratiae.^
Coming closer to AVycliffe's doctrine of virtue, we have, it is true,
at first, the well-known old song of the four philosophical or cardinal
virtues — righteousness, courage, prudence, and raodera- Division of the
tion (this is AA'ycliffe's usual way of arranging them), virtues.
and of the three theological virtues— faith, hope, and love."*
But, on a closer examination, ethical ideas pecuUar to himself, and
characteristic of his mode of Christian thought, are not altogether
lacking. These I find in what AA'ycliffe says of humility and of love.
Humility he recognises as the basis of all virtue ; as in pride he
discovers the first sin. In the third book of the
Trialogus he gives an outline of the fundamental prin- ™asis
ciples of his ethics (c. i.-xxiii.). In particular he treats ° '"^ ^°-
(c. ix.-xxiU.) of the seven mortal sins and their opposite virtues, and
there he places pride foremost araong the sins, and humility foremost
among the virtues. And why so ? Because the root of every kind of
pride lies in this, that man does not humbly believe that all that he has
comes to him frora God.s Pride is the first step to apostacy. When
man is proud, he is guUty of an implicit blasphemy, for he denies by
implication that he has any one above him to whose laws he owes
obedience.^ On the other hand, humUity, according to oft-repeated
expressions of AVycliffe, is the root of all virtues, yea, even of Christian
piety. The raore humility a man has, the nearer is he to Christy
^ Saints' Days Sermons, No, v., fol. 8, ^ Trialogus, IIL, i and 2, p. I2£t,
col. i: bona fortunae, quae sunt minima, 5 /b., iiL, 10, p. 163: Tota radix-
bona naturae, quae sunt media, bona vir- cujuslibet speciei superbiae stat in isto •
tutis et gratiae, quae sunt maxima. quod homo errat non credendo humiliter ,_
2 Trialogus, IIL, 29, p. 229, De Ec- quod quidquid habuerii est a Deo,
clesia, c. 11, fol. 161, col. 2 : Libertas a ^ De Christo et ejus Adversaria, c, 10,.,
peccato est jnaxima, sine qua non est fol. 74, col. 3 ; Superbia est primus pes,
aliqua vera libertas. per quem peccator a Deo decidit, ut patet ¦
3 De Ecclesia, c, 14, fol. 174, col. i, on de Lucifero, etc. XL. Miscellaneous:
mentioning the pretended ' Donation of Sermons, No. VI. , fol. 8, col. i : Superbid'
Constantine,' Wycliffe says of Silvester: est implicite blasphemia, . . Quum homo
Fuit dominus super astra et omnia in- superbit, negat i'mplicite se habere supe.
feriora ho?nine in jiatura, sed non titulo riorem, legibus cujus obediat,
civili, imo titulo gratiae, quo justi sunt
omnia.

280 wycliffe's theological system. [ci-i. viii. §3
HumUity — ie,, the heartfelt and practical acknowledgment that we
are God's servants, and that to Him alone belongs the glory — is, so
to speak, the mUd atmosphere in which all other virtues can alone
grow and flourish.' This view of humility as the basis and root of
all virtue rests unmistakably upon a religious sentiment, and upon a
dogmatic conviction which gives to God alone the glory, and which
sees in Christ alone the salvation of mankind. These ethical
thoughts of Wycliffe are thus a mirror of his religious and dogmatic
individuality. The true centre of all Christian virtue AVycliffe declares to be the
love of God and our neighbour. Without love to God with aU the
heart and all the soul, there dwells no moral virtue in
cipie of Chris- man. No one can reach the blessed home without it;
it is the wedding garment without which we cannot
stand in the final judgment.^ Love to God is the chief lesson
which raan learns in the school of the virtues ; and no action has
value except that which is animated by the love of God above every
thing else. 3 In his treatise. Of the Ten Commandments, AA^ycliffe
investigates psychologically, in imitation of St. Bernard, the different
gradations of the love of God ; and he declares to be the highest stage
of it that state of feeling which, in virtue of a certain relish of the
Divine sweetness, passes beyond all created things and goes forth in
love to God Hiraself, purely for His own sake; whUe there is also a
love of God which seeks a recompense for its affection, which loves
Him not for what He is in Himself, but in view of reward. ¦* From
the pure love of God springs the love of our neighbours On this
subject AA^ycIiffe calls attention to the fact that love has its own order
according to which it is bound to love, in the first place, the members
^ Trialogus, III, ,11, p. x(n: Humilitas Wycliffite Versions of the Bible, vol.
¦est aliis virtutibus fundamentum. Qui- IV., lo— not softness or gentleness, but
¦cunque est humilior, est Christo propin- humility.
quior ; religio in humilitate fundata. De ^ lb., iiL, 2, pp. 132, 136.
Graduationibus Scholasticis, c, 2, fol. 3 De Civili Dominio, iir., 26, fol. 247,
III, col. 3 : Radix religionis Christi est col. 2 : Ars praecipua, quam in schola
Jiumilitas. XL. Miscellaneous Sermons, virtutem addiscimus, est ars diligendi
No. VI., fol. 202, cols. 3 and 4 ; Fides et Deum. XL. Miscel. Sermons, No. L, fol.
humilitas connexae sunt fundamentum 194, col. 2 : Nullus actus hominis meri-
religionis Christianae, Humilitas est tortus est, nisi in quo Deus supereminenter
quasi aura temperata, in qua oportet diligitur. In one of his English sermons
omnia plantaria aliarum virtutu7ii con- Wycliffe says, ' Humility is the foundation
seri, si debeant crescere in Christiano, In of all virtues, and Love their summit
his English writings, sermons, etc., Wy- which reaches to heaven.' Select English
cliffe insists often enough, and with the Works, vol. I., p. 64.
greatest emphasis, upon meekness, eg., ^ Liber Mandatorum, sive Decalogus,
in the 121st sermon in Arnold's edition, u. 31, fol. 126, col. 2.
I., 399, he says, ' Ever as a m.in is more s Trialogus, III., 2, p. 136 : Consistit
meek, evere the betere man he is.' And autem caritas in amore, quo Deus debite
¦meek, meekness signify with Wycliffe, ac- diligitur et tota suafabrica.
cording to his Bible translation — vide

i37=-i3S=.] THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 281
of its own household, &c. (i Tiraothy v. 8). Honest love manifests
itself, according to circumstances, by candid remonstrance and
earnest censure (Uke as God Himself chastenetli those whom He
loveth), while that weak indulgence which allows everything to take
its own way is nothing else but a blind love and a false compassion.'
The principle, that the love of our neighbour should begin with what
stands nearest to it (' Charity begins at home,' according to the
modern proverb), is connected with another held by AVycliffe, that it
is the duty of every man conscientiously to fulfil the requirements of
his position and caUing, be that calling what it may. The more
faithfully and conscientiously he discharges his nearest duty, the more
certainly, by virtue of a certain concatenation in things, will he be
useful to others and advance their welfare."
This thought stands in unmistakable opposition to the one-sided
ness of a narrow, monkish mode of feeling and thinking on moral
subjects, which considered the contemplative life and The true
seclusion from the world as the surest means of virtue.
AA'ycliffe, on the contrary, sets out with the design of restoring the
active life of the Christian man in the raost various callings to its
true moral rights — so often ignored in his day ; and how he did
this in respect to civil life and the State we shall show below.
AA'hen the question is put, AA'hat is the moral standard which the
individual should apply in any given case, when he is concerned to
know what is well-pleasing to God, or what is conform- Christ's
able to the love of God and our neiehbour — we are example the
° . , standard.
pointed by AA''ycliffe to the example of Christ, the imita
tion of which will lead us in an unerring and sure path. Christ says
to each one, ' Follow Me ; ' ahd every man who desires to be saved
must follow Him, either in suffering or at least in raoral conduct.3
To ^ive a particular instance, AVycliffe, on one occasion, deduces
from the incident in the Gospel concerning ' the woman that was a
sinner ' in the house of Simon the Pharisee,'* rules as to the way and
manner in which a servant of Christ should conduct himself in inter-
^ Saints' Days Sermons, No. LVL, fol. status, et de quanto facit solicius [sic icont
114, col. 4 : Ordo caritatis exigit, quod sollicite), de tanto quadam naturalitate
Iiomo prhao in ordine diligat suos domes- cuilibet membra capaci prodest amplius,
ticos, etc. De Ecclesia, c. 15, fol. 177, etc., cf , fol. 187, col. i.
col. 2: Patet, quod de lege caritatis et 3 Saints' Days Sermons, "^o. in,, fol. 4,
spiritualis elemosinae — tenetur praeposi- col. 2 : Omnem salvandum oportet sequi
ius, subjectos corripere. Unde inter omnia ipsum vel in passione vel saltein in 7nori-
peccata, de quibus magis timeo in superi- bus. Et si sit viriuosus, quomodo Dei
oribus regni nostri, sunt caeca pietas, falsa virtus causans et exemplans virtutem
misericordia, etc. suam non erit dux, quem sequitur in
= Liber Mandatorum [Decalogus] , c. 23, moribus ?
fol. 186, col. 2: Faciat ergo quod libel mem- * lb., No. XVIIL, fol. 36, col. 3.
brum ecclesiae, quod incumbit officio sui

282 wycliffe's theological SYSTEM. [ch.viii. §8
course with sinners. He lays down this principle, 'The nearer the
life of a Christian conies to Christ, the more rich it is in virtue. It
follows that men's departure from the principles of the Christian
religion is owing to their having too high a value for many teachers
who stand in opposition to Christ, to the neglect of the doctrine and
example of the best Master and Leader.' ' Manifestiy, Wycliffe sets
up here an ideal standard ; but he is clearly conscious of doing so,
and censures, in the sharpest manner, the practice of attempting to
reduce at pleasure the moral standard, and of pretending that the
commands of Christ are indeed binding upon every man, but not so
His counsels, for these last are obligatory only upon heroic Christians
like the saints, but not upon people of an average sort. Such an
aUegation would tend to extinguish the religion of Christ, for then
every man might set aside all Christ's counsels together, and maintain
that they were not binding upon hira, for he was one of the weak.
Wycliffe, on the contrary, lays down the principle that ' Every counsel
which Christ has imparted is binding upon every one to whom it is
given.' AVith this view stands connected the circumstance that Wycliffe
pronounces a moral neutraUty to be entirely inadmissible, yea, un
thinkable : like for ' as no man can be neutral in regard to virtue
and vice, so neither can the life and walk of any man be neutral.' ^
He rightly looks upon the moral character of a man as a complete
whole, whose prevailing principle gives or takes away the worth
of every single feature and act. Wycliffe is far removed from
that atomistic view, which, as with Pelagius and others, regards
every single act as an isolated phenomenon. He pre-
Charaoter to . , , ^ , . - , , .
be regarded as fers, On the Contrary, a comprehensive way of looking
* ^ ° ^' at the subject, which recognises the moral life as consti
tuting a whole made up of many parts. ' As the earUer drops have
a preparatory effect, and the last drop completes the hollowing of the
stone, so sins which have full swing in the middle of a man's life
prepare the way for his despair at last.' AVycliffe admits, indeed,
that any one may do a work vv'hich is in itself good {opus bonum de
genere) whUe living in a state of mortal sin ; but he holds that in that
case the work is a sin, and the doer of it even incurs, in the act, a
mortal sin, as, e.g., when a parish priest, while living in an uncon
verted and dissolute state of life, administers the sacraments
^ De Veritate Scripturae Sac, C.2C). io\. Christo contraries, doctrina et sequela
lor, col. 4 : De quanto vita Christiani magistri et duds optimi praetermissa.
est Christo propinquior, de tanto est vir- ^ lb., I., 43, fol. 123, col. i : Sicut
tuosior. Et patet correlarie, quod decli- nemo potest esse neuter quoad virtutem et
natio a religione Christiana ex hoc oritur, vitium, sic nulla conversatio hominis
quod nimis attcnditur ad multos magistros potest esse neutra.

1373-138=.] DOCTRINE OF yuSTIFICATION. 283
correctly, does good to the poor, etc., etc. Not only 7C'hat a man
does is to be considered, but how he does it, and from what feeling
and motive. AVycliffe is fond of expressing this in the words of St.
Bernard, ' God recompenses not the good thing which is done, but
that which is done in a good way ; God rewards not the 7cihat but
the ho7ci.' And from this it further foUows, that every pilgrim upon
earth has need to test his own life most carefully in reference to this
point, whether he is living in the hope of salvation, and has a stand
ing thereby in the state of grace.'
After this survey of the ethical thoughts of AA'yclifl'e, we return
to his views, before touched upon, respecting the way in which the
sinner attains to righteousness before God. Bringing
, „ , ° , . , . , . . . '^ ° Justification.
together all he says on this subject, his opinion amounts
to this — that man can obtain righteousness before God, forgiveness
of sins, and hope of eternal life, only through grace, but not without
his own moral work and sanctification. Now, it is true that he is
wont to express this in a way which looks as if he had stood at no
great distance from the delusion that heaven can be earned or merited
by men." But we must be on our guard not to mete AA'ycliffe's
theology with the measuring Une of the Reformed Confessions. For,
in the first place, he goes to work with quite a different apparatus of
ideas from an evangelical theologian of the present day. Ideas such
as meritum and demeritutn (for he raakes very frequent use of these
correlative ideas) he derived, like the Scholastics before hira, from
the Latin Fathers, chiefly in the sense of moral worth and unworth.
The proper idea of merit, i.e., of an independent per- DcoMne of
formance, conferring a full legal claim upon God's re- merit.
cognition and recompense, in the forra of eternal blessedness, he
designates according to scholastic usage meritum de condigno ; while
the meritum de congruo obtains validity and recognition in considera
tion only of what is fair and reasonable, not of strict right. 3 Then,
1 De CiviliDominio, I., 43, fol. 202, col. ad moralitatcm, qua^m oportet fundari in
I ; fol. 203, col. I ; Sicut m.alum de genere gratia et caritate, quae non possunt inesss,
potest bene fieri [e.g., execution of crimi- nisi insit inoralitas.
nals), sic bonn-m de genere potest male ^ The expressions, mereri praemium in
fieri. Glossa Bernhardi, ' Deus,' inquit, alio seculo, ^neritum, opera meritoria,
' non est remunerator hominum sed ad- are of such frequent occurrence with
verbiorum,' hoc est tantum dicere; non Wycliffe, that the slightest doubt can
remunerat Deus bonum quod fit, sed evidently never have occurred to him of
quod benefit. Comp. De Officio Pastorali, the propriety of applying them to Chris-
I., 10, p. 18 : Ideo dicunt loquentes commu- tians. They are also repeated so often
niter, quod Deus est remunerator adver- that it appears superfluous to quote
biorum. Farther, De Veritate Scripturae passages in proof of the fact.
Sac, c. 14, fol. 116, col. 4: Non solum 3 "VVycliffe defines meritum in one
debet attendi, quid homo faciat, sed qualiter place to be something done by a rational
et qua intentione, cum Deus sit remune- creature which is worthy of reward ; and
rator adverbiornm, quae faciunt maxime he remarks that, as the same man may

284 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [en. vm. § 8
secondly, when it comes to the application of these ideas to the
actual state of things, AVycliffe contends, quite categorically, against
all thoughts of proper merit in the full sense of the word, i.e., meritum
de condigno. AA^e have already quoted above an unmistakable
utterance of his to the effect that under no circumstances can a
creature merit anything of God in virtue of its own worthiness,' and
he expresses repeatedly the sarae thought with the greatest emphasis.
He declares it to be a vain imagination, when the case is put that
' nature ' — i.e., the will-power naturally inherent in man — is able to
perform anything good without the co-operation of grace ; in his
judgment this would amount to God's making a creature of His own
equal to Himself In connection with this point he gives a detaUed
interpretation of the words of St. Paul in 2 Corinthians iii. 5, ' Not
that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as
Grace the „ . . jo
source of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.' He holds
that St. Paul, in these words, saves, on the one hand, the
freedora of the will, and the power of acquiring a ra.erit de congruo,
but denies, at the sarae tirae, that we are able, without prevenient
grace, to merit anything de condigno ; i.e., he declares that we merit
absolutely nothing in the sense of legal claim. ^
Thirdly, AVhen we come still nearer to the actual facts of the case,
no fewer than four different questions come under discussion, (i)
Can man raake satisfaction for sin by good works? i.e..
Four questions .,.. r ¦ ^ ^ -, 1 \ r^
concerning Can he merit the forgiveness of sms thereby? (2) Can
he, by his moral behaviour, merit the gift of grace re
quisite to conversion ? (3) Can he, after conversion, merit by good
works eternal Ufe or blessedness? (4) Is there in reality such a thing
as supererogatory merit ? The first question AVycliffe answers in the
negative. His straightforward confession upon this point is this — •' I
do not believe that even the smallest sin committed against the Lord
can be effaced by any merit; it must be done away in the main
or principally by the merit of this Man (the Redeemer).3 Quite
similarly he speaks on this subject in one of his sermons. ' I do not
be both father and son, so the same act nobis,' ct per consequens salvatur nobis
may be de condigno in relation to one set liberum arbitrium cum potentia merendi
in authority, who rewards without any de congruo; secundo per lioc, quod negat
grace, and de congruo in relation to a nos posse aliquid cogitare ' ex nobis, ' ex-
Lord who rewards only of grace. De plicat, quod non possumus mereri aliquid
Dominio Divino, IIL, fol. 87, col. i. sine praecedente gratia, et sic nihil sim-
^ De Dominio Divino, IIL, 4, fol. 79, pliciter de condigno.
col. I : Creatura penitus nihil a Deo 3 Jb., ill., 4, fol. 30, col. 2 : Non — rear
^nerebitur ex condigno, cf. 78, col. 2. peccatum vel minimum commissttm contra
^ lb,, IIL, 5, fol. 84, col. I, on 2 Corin- . dominum per aliquod meritum posse tolli,
thians iii. 5; In quo dicto videtur mihi, nisi per meritum hujus viri principaliter
quod apostolus Tnore suo profunde primo sit ablatum.
innuit, nos posse cogitare aliquid ' a

1372-13820 DOCTRINE OF MERIT. 2S5
see how any sin can be done away by raeans of meritum de condigno
in the sinner, since infinite grace is required (he refers 1. Man
to the individual's standing in grace) in order to satisfac- "a^a'tiSaoUou"
tion for sin.' ' The passage also already quoted frora for sin.
the si.\th of his Twenty-four sermons contains the same thought, that
the infinite compassion of the Redeemer and His all-availing merit
alone make possible the forgiveness of sins ; while it is by no means
excluded that sorae moral performance of the individual sinner
may be requisite, if his own committed sins are to be forgiven
hira. As to the second question. Can raan by his moral behaviour merit
the gift of grace for conversion ? it is well known that many scho
lastics were accustomed to answer it in the affirmative — • 2. Nor merit
in assuming that God grants to those who are honest in ^^''^s grace.
their endeavours after a better Ufe the grace which is needed in order
to conversion. He does this, indeed, not de condigno, as if He were
bound in law to do it ; but de congruo, inasmuch as it is fair and meet
that honest strivers should be met so far with the needed help. AVhat
position does AA'ycliffe take up in relation to this teaching ? He
rejects it with the utmost decision as a vain imagination ^ {vanitas).
He declares himself clearly and roundly in opposition to the suppo
sition that, before his conversion, man can do anything by his moral
behaviour to win God's gift of the grace of the Holy Spirit needful
to conversion. In other words, he rejects the erroneous notion that
converting grace is conferred by God as at least a half-merited reward.
Indeed, Thomas Aquinas had also declared himself against the sup
position that any one could merit this grace de condigno, but the
milder view of the possibility of meriting the grace de congruo he had
passed over in silence.
The third question is as follows — Can raan, after his conversion,
merit eternal blessedness by good works? To this question, also,
Wvcliffe repUes in the negative, in so far as any meritum
de condigno is thought of On this pomt we simply eternal
recall the expressions already adduced above, to which
we only add what follows by way of confirmation. AVycliffe is honestly
striving to set aside all vain self-approbation, which gives the glory not
to God, but to itself For this reason he lays stress upon the words
of Christ — ' AVhen ye have done all, then say, AA'e are unprofitable
1 XXIV. Sermons, No. IL, fol. 132, = Trialogus, IIL, 7, p. 153: Et patet
col. 3: Ego non video, quomodo ex con- vanitas nostrorum loquentium,quiponunt
dignitate meriti pcccantis dcleri possit quod gratia talis datur homini. . . de
quodcunque peccatum, cum ad satisfac- congruo, ut facilitet hominem ad meren-
tionem requiritur gratia infinita specialis. dum.

286 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [cu. vm. § 8
servants.' ' The holy Ufe of Christ alone is deemed by him to be
absolutely meritorious, and the principle which first lends Ufe, i.e.,
power and weight, to every other merit.^ And in another place he
brings out the thought that every raoral virtue, every truly God-
pleasing action, is conditioned by the gracious working of God, by
the ' power frora on high,' whUe its avaUment and weight in God's
eyes is dependent on this, that God is pleased, in the riches of His
grace, to accept it.3 There cannot, then, well exist any doubt re
garding so much as this, that Wycliffe consciously and distinctly
rejects the notion that the converted Christian can effect any moral
performance or achievement, in virtue of which he acquires a lawful
right to the coming blessedness — a meritum de condigno. Herein he
agrees wilh Thomas Aquinas, except that the latter acknowledges
such a merit as existing in cases where this meritorious work is
ascribed to the Holy Ghost.* This, indeed, does not exclude, but in
fact indirectly concedes, the truth that there does exist a raoral merit,
improperly so called — a meritum de congruo — or works meritorious in
the widest sense. The latter are what are meant when WycUffe
says, on one occasion, ' If the husbandman already has joy in the
hope of the fruit of his sowing, how much more may a pilgrim, who
may believe that he has done many meritorious works, rejoice in the
hope of the fruits which these wiU yield to him ! ' s
The fourth question — AVhether such a thing as supererogation
really exists? answers itself from what precedes. For if huraan merit,
in the strict and proper sense ofthe word, is not, generaUy
Supererogatory -^. ,
merit speaking, recognised, much less, of course, can there
imp ss . j^^ anything to say for a pretended surplus merit {meri
tum supererogatum). It is no wonder, therefore, that AVycliffe
pronounces the notion of a boundless treasure of supererogatory
merit, to administer which is the function of the Church, and in part
' De Dominio Divino, IIL, fol. 89, col. 3 Trialogus, in,, 2, p. 132 : Quomodo
2. Here Wycliffe lays down the principle quaeso posset homo mereri beatitudineni,
that worldly rulers should ever remember vivendo et agendo secundum beneplacitum
that they are the servants and stewards Dei, nisi Deus ex magna sua gratia hoc
of God, and he continues as follows : Si acceptet ? Ideo quidquid homo egerit vel
ergo istam sententiam haberemus prae natura creata in ipso genuerit, non dici-
oculis, tunc non inaniter gloriaremur, tur virtus moralis meritoria praemii vel
quasi hoc haberemus ex nobis, sed cum laudis perpetuae, nisi ilia virtus ab alto
timore distribueremus bona domini solum venerit, et per consequens ex gratia Dei
dignis, ascribentes Deo honores (sic) et sui,
non nobis, qui solum sumus dispensatores 4 Summa, II,, i Quaest. 114, 3.
et ' sei-vi sibi inutiles .' 5 Saints' Days Sermons, No. XXXIV.,
= /^.,IIL,4, fol. 80, col. i: ,£7Mj-(Christi) fol. 67, col. 2: Si agricultor in spe
quidem con-aersatio summe jneritoria in gaudet de fructu sui seminis, quanto
pleniiudine temporis ordinata est princi- magis viator, qui debet credere, se fecisse
pium vivificans quodlibet aliud meritum multa opera meritoria, debet eorum fructi-
subsequens vel praecedens. bus spe gaudere.

i37=-i38^.] DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH. 287
of every Pope for the time being, lo be nothing less than a ' lying
fiction.' '
According to aU this, AVyclifle absolutely rejected the notion tiiat
man is able to acquire any moral merit in the full sense of the word,
whether in order to make satisfaction for sin, or to attain thereby to
conversion or eternal blessedness. On the other hand, it must be
conceded that he recognised a merit in an improper sense — a
co-operation of man's own raoral power, partly in the matter of
forgiveness of sin, and partly in reference to the hope of the eternal
blessedness. AA'hen Melanchthon, in a short critique upon AVycliffe, pronounces,
among other things, the judgment that he was totally ignorant of the
righteousness of faith, ie., of the doctrine of justification „
° . ¦' ¦WyoUffe and
by faith alone,^ we cannot do other than acknowledge the Beforma-
.... , , . T , ,. tion doctrine.
this judgment to be exact and just. It was reserved for
Luther, first of all men, to be called of God to separate by felicitous
tact this kernel of saving truth from the husk, and to make it the
central doctrine of the Evangelical Confession. 3

9. — Doctrine of the Church as the Communion
of the Saved.
If we ask for AA''ycliffe's most general and most comprehensive idea
of the Church, he meets our inquiry with a view which is wide
enough to embrace both what is visible and invisible, ^^^^ church
both the temporal and the eternal. ' The Church,' he "^Ift^^'
says, 'is threefold, of the triumphant {triumphantium aivision.
in coelo); of the militant {militantium hie in mundo); and of the
sleepers {dormientium in purgaiorio): The first division embraces
the angels and the blessed saints in heaven ; the second, the Chris
tians who are alive on earth in conflict with the world ; the third
embraces those who are fallen asleep, in so far as they have not yet
reached the estate of blessedness, but are still in Purgatory. More
than once AVycliffe compares these three parts of the whole Church
I XXIV. Sermons, No. VII., fol. 146, totum ilium thesaurum Christus papam
col. 2 : Cautela subtilissima a fratribus const ituit, etc.
inventa stat in mendaci fictione thesauri = Preface to Sententiae veterum de
infiniti supererogati meriti ecclesiae tri- coena Domini, in a letter to Frederick
iimphantis, quem Deus ponit in potestate Myconius, about March, 1330, Corpus
distributi-va cujuscunque papae caesarii. Reformatorum, vol. IL, 32: Prorsus nee
Comp. Trialo<ms,\\., 'i2,p. 158. Sup- intellexit nee tenuit fidei justitiam.
ponunt, quod in coelis sint infinita sane- 3 [This statement regarding the defect
torum supererogata merita . . . et super in Wycliffe's doctrine seems to require
somequaUfication. See note in Appendix.]

288 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [en, vm. § ,
to the threefold division of Solomon's Temple, as set forth in the
well-known sequence — Rex Solomon fecit templum,
Cujus instar et exemplum
Christus et ecclesia.
Sed tres partes sunt in templo
Trinitatis sub exemplo ;
Ima, summa, media.
This division of the Church, however, is not a thought peculiar to
AVycliffe ; it is acknowledged by himself to be an ancient division,
and he regards it siraply as a Catholic doctrine.' Ancient, indeed,
it is not, but, no doubt, medieval, 'and everywhere current among
t'ne scholastic divines. There is nothing, therefore, characteristic of
AVycliffe in this division, any more than there is in his idea of the
oneness which it assumes of the Church on earth with the Church in
heaven and in Purgatory.
There is, however, one peculiar feature in his fundamental idea of
the Church. Not that this peculiarity was anything new, or belonged
only to AA''ycliffe (he has it, as he was well aware, in common with
Augustine),^ but it is one of very great importance, and runs like a
scarlet thread through the whole system of Wycliffe's
The Church .... , , , , , ^, , .
the body of the thinking — we mean the thought^ that the Church is
nothing else than the whole number of the elect. It is to
this thought that we have to direct our attention before every other,
for this concerns the eternal ground of the Church, while all other
parts of the discussion relate to its temporal manifestation and life.
According to AVycliffe, the eternal ground or basis of the Church
lies in the Divine election. He always defines the Church to be the
communion or the whole body of the elect. 3 In other words, he
places himself in deliberate opposition to the idea of the Church
' De Christo et ejus Adversaria, c. i, Christo sponso ecclesiae copulatum, etc.
fol. 70, col. i: Secundum catholicos, De Civili Dominio, I., i^^, fol. 116, col. i.
ecclesia est praedestinatorum universitas, Necesse est supponere unam veritatem me
et sic est triplex ecclesia scilicet, ecclesia taphysicam . . . scilicet quod ecclesia
triumphantium in coelo, ecclesia militan- caiholica sancta apostolica sit universitas
tium hie in mundo, et ecclesia dormien- praedestinatorum .... et istam eccle-
tium in purgaiorio. Saints' Days Sermons, siam necesse est esse sponsam capitis, quam
No. XLVIII. , fol. 97,, col. 3 ; XXIV. ratione praeordinationis ac promissionis
5er7«OTzJ, No. XIL, fol. 157, cols. 3 and 4. non potest ipsam (sic) desercre. Liber
In both sermons I find the above sequence Mandatorum [Decalogus), c. 23, fol. 184,
introduced. Comp. Daniel, Thesaurus col, i : Omnes Christiani praedestinati
Ilymnologicus, vol, V., p, 106. simul collecti constituunt unam personam,
'= Comp. De Veritate Scripturae Sac. , quae est sponsa Christi, De Ecclesia et
c, I, fol. 2, col. i; De Ecclesia, c. i, membris ejus, c, i, p, 4, ' And this chirche
fol. 143, col. 2. is moder to eche (each) man that shal be
3 7"/-;'a/o^aj, IV. , 22, p. 324 : Vere dici- saved, and conteyneth no membre but
ttir ecclesia corpus Christi mysticnm, quod only men that shiilen be saved.'
I'crbis praedestinationis aeieruis est cum

1372-1382.] DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH. 289
which prevailed in his time, and expressly disapproves of those
notions and forms of speech according to which raen took the Church
to mean the visible Catholic Church — the organized communion of
the hierarchy. AA'ycliffe, on the contrary, seeks the Church's centre
of gravity in the past eternity, in the invisible world above; for to
him the Church is essentially Christ's body or Christ's bride, accord
ing to the well-known apostolic figures. A soul is incorporated with
Christ, or betrothed to Christ, not by any act of man, not by any
earthly means and visible signs, but by the decree of God, according
to His eternal election and fore-ordination.' The Church, therefore,
has in the visible world only its manifestation, its temporary pilgrim
age ; it has its home and its origin, as also its end, in the invisible
world, in eternity. Every individual devout Christian owes all that
he possesses in his inner life to the regeneration which is the fruit of
election.? It is only by virtue of the gracious election of God that
the individual belongs to the number of the saved, and is a member
ofthe body of Christ, a child of the Holy Mother Church, of which
Christ is the Husband.
It is self-evident that, with such a view of the Church as this,
AVycliffe could not but regard as radically false the prevailing notion,
according to which the Church and the clergy were The church
looked upon as one and the same thing, aU the raera- ^°^ *'^^ clergy.
bers of the clerical order being included in the Church, and all non-
clergy excluded frora it, 3 — an error involving iramense consequences,
against which Luther in his day had still to contend. But the idea
of the Church as the whole body of the elect is not only, on the one
hand, wider than that conception of it which identified the Church with
the clergy ; it is also, on the other hand, narrower and more exclusive
than this conception — narrower inasmuch as it shuts out from the
coraraunion of the Church the ungodly, the hypocrites, and the half
hearted, even when they fill the offices, high or low, of the Church.
Further, as AA^ycliffe carries back conversion, salvation, and raeraber-
ship ofthe Church to the election of grace, i.e., to the eternal and
free decree of God in Christ, he, at the same time, is far removed
' Trialogus, IV., 22, p. 22ii, -where this thei understonden anoon prelatis and
doctrine of the Church is significantly prestis, monkis, and chanouns, and freris,
enough attached to the treatment of the and alle men that han crownes (that have
sacrament of marriage. the tonsure) though thei ly ven nevere so
= XXIV, Sermons, No. xiL, fol. 158, cursedly agenst Goddis lawe, and clepen
col. I : De nativitate ex semine praedes- not ne holden seculeris men of holy
tinationis, after i John iii. 9. churche, though thei lyven nevere so
3 In the English tract under the title trewely after Goddis lawe, and enden in
Octo in quibus seducuntur simplices Chris- perfect charite. But netheles alle that
tiani,in'W-jchSe's Select English Works, schuUen be savyd in blisse of hevene
ed. Arnold, in., 447, Wychffe says : ben membris of holy Chirche, and ne
'Whanne men speken of holy Chirche, moo.'
20

290 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § 9
from the assumption, which up to that time was universal, that
participation in salvation and the hope of heaven were conditioned
exclusively by a man's connection with the official Church, and were
dependent entirely upon the mediation of the priesthood. There is
thus included in Wycliffe's idea of the Church the recognition of the
free and immediate access of believers to the grace of God in Christ ;
in other words, of the general priesthood of believers.
After thus indicating in general terms the extreme bearing and
the 'Reformational' importance of Wycliffe's idea of the Church, let
Predestina- US now look at it from a nearer point of view. There
*""'¦ is included or implied in the idea of ' the whole body
of the elect ' an unexpressed antithesis which not only runs through
all the present, but also reaches back into eternity, to the Divine
election, and forwards into the eternal future both of the blessed
and the condemned. The eternal purpose of God AVycliffe con
ceives of as a twofold enactment : God has fore-ordained some to
salvation and glory, in virtue of His election {praedestinatio) ; to others
He has appointed everlasting punishraent, in virtue of His foreknow
ledge of their sin {praescientia). The former Wycliffe caWs praedesti
nati, the latter ox6.in3.n\y praesciti, ' foreknown; ' only in one instance
do I find him using instead the expression reprobi.' He purposely
and persistently avoids speaking of a Divine purpose of rejection
{reprobatio, or such like), following, in this, in Augustine's steps.
Yet it is not his meaning, that the Divine adjudication of eternal
punishraent and damnation is conditioned entirely and purely by
God's omniscient prevision of men's own spontaneous choice of evil,
and their final continuance in sin. For Wycliffe is well
Beprohation. ,., ..,, ., „.
assured of the principle that in the nature of things it
cannot be the creature which is the cause of any action or even any
knowledge in God, but that the ultimate ground of these must lie in
God Hiraself^ Yet it by no means foUows from this, in his judg
ment, that the guilt of sin, on account of which a man is punished
eternally, should be attributed in any wise to God's ordination or
decree. His meaning rather is this, that when predestination to
punishraent is viewed passively, it is seen to be the result of the con
current working of several causes — (i) God Himself; (2) the esse
intelligibile of the creature; (3) the future entrance of sin or crime.3
¦ In a passage of his Saints' Days Ser- actus sive notitias Deo intrinsecas atque
mons. No. XLVII., given in note ' on aeternas.
page 292. 3 lb. : Intelligendo autem passive prae-
^ Trialogus, IL, 14, p. 122: Praedes- destinationem vel praeparationem ad poe-
tinationis aut praesdentiae divinae est nam, videtur, quod illae sunt a Deo, ab
causa indubie ipse Deus, cum nulla crea- esse intelligibili creaturae, et a futuritione
tura causal, formaliter intelligendo, hof criminis concausatae.

1372-1382.] FOREKNOWLEDGE AND ELECTION. 29T
The final issue, accordingly, i.e., the eternal reward or punishment,
is, on the one hand, it is true, brought about by the raoral action of
man or his transgression {factum meritorium sive demeritorium); but,
on the other hand, this action of man in the present is preceded by
a conditioning cause in eternity, viz., God's election, or fore-ordina
tion in respect to the future action of His creature. But when God
ordains a punishment or act of this kind {ordinal punitionem vel
actum hujusmodi). He has an end in view which is morally good,
which subserves the best interests of the Church, and contributes to
the perfection of the world. '
It needs no lengthened investigation to make it clear that WycUffe
has by no means succeeded by these statements in solving all the
difflculties which confront his view of election and the The Divine
fore-ordination of God. For, assuming his view, only sovereignty.
two cases are thinkable. Either the self-determination of a man (as
foreknown by God) on the side of evil, and an impenitent persistency
in it, is a really free act; and then God's eternal prevision of it and
His decree of damnation awaiting the sinner raust be thought of as
conditioned by the self-deterraination of the creature emerging in its
own time ; in other words, the Eternal in this case must be deter
mined by the teraporal ; the infinite God in His knowing and willing
must be thought of as dependent upon His own finite creature. Or,
alternatively, the Divine election and eternal ordination of what
comes to pass is absolutely free and independent and all-conditioning ;
and then the logical sequence cannot be escaped, that the transgres
sion of the creature, the sin of man, comes of God's own will and
ordering — a conclusion which would throw a dark shadow of blame
upon God Himself, and do away with the responsibility of man.
It is to be remarked further, in regard to AVycliffe's doctrine of
the election of the saved, and the eternal foreknowledge of those
vvho fall into the state of eternal punishment, that he does not ground
it, as Augustine does, upon the doctrine of original sin, and the
utter impotency of fallen raan for moral good, but exclusively upon
the idea of the omnipotence of God, and His all-conditioning work
in regard to all that comes to pass.
Wycliffe's fundamental idea of the Church as ' the whole body of
the elect,' includes, as already remarked, an antithesis which runs
through the present and actual, as well as through the Two classes of
eternal past and future. He gives clear and sharp expres- ""ankimi-
sion to this hiraself. ' There are two classes of raen,' he observes,
' Comp. the whole 14th chap, of 2d of the same in Lewald, Zeitschrift fiir
Book of the Trialogus, and the Analysis Historische Theologie, 1846, pp. 222-225.

292 wycliffe's theological system. [CH.VIII. §»
' who stand over against each other, since the world's beginning to
the world's end. The first class, that of the elect, begins with Adam,
and descends through Abel and all the elect to the last saint who,
before the final judgment, shaU contend for the cause of God. The
second class is that of the reprobate, which begins with Cain and
descends to the last man whom God has foreseen in his persistent
impenitence.' To the latter Christ addresses the words, ' Woe unto
you, for ye buUd the sepulchres of the prophets,' etc. (Luke xi. 47),
in which special reference is raade to Abel's blood, and the afflicted
lot of all the prophets and righteous raen.' Here Wycliffe has in
view the whole history of mankind, not the Church of Christ
exclusively. As to the latter, the fundaraental conception of it as
the whole nuraber of the elect draws a separating line soraewhere
also ; and the only question is whether this line is drawn within the
Church or outside of it. There are sorae authors well acquainted
with WycUffe's writings who are of opinion that his conception of
the Church draws the separating line outside and around the
Church ; and that precisely this is the fundamental error of his
teaching on the subject of the Church, viz., his maintaining that only
those who are saved souls are members of the Church on earth,,
while the ungodly, on the contrary, are in no sense of the word
Church members.^ In this judgment we cannot entirely concur.
At the beginning of the English tract adduced in support of this;
view by Dr. Todd, of Dublin, Wycliffe, it is true, raakes use of
language which appears to warrant it.3 And in other places besides
we have the sarae principle expressed in the raost decided manner,,
as one agreeable to Scripture and confirmed by many testimonies of
the Fathers — i.e., that only the elect man is a meraber of the Church.'*
And it is only an application of this doctrine when AVycliffe, speaks
ing of worldly-minded and immoral bishops, says of them — 'They
are indisputably no raerabers of the Holy Church, but members of
' Saints' Days Sermons, No. XLVII., Patet ex fide Christi scripturae et multi-
fol. 94, col. I. Duo genera a principio plici testimonio sanctorum, quod nullum
mundi usque ad finem contraria, primum est membrum sanctae matris ecclesiae nisi
electorum ab Adam indpiens et descendens persona praedestinata, De Ecclesia, c.
per Abel et cunctos electosusque ad sanctum 19, fol. i8g, col. 4: Supposito ex fide-
novissimum ante diem judidi militan- Scripturae elaborata a Sanctis doctoribus,
tem ; secundum genus reproborum a Caym quod solum praedestinati sunt 7nembra
indpiens et transiens per alios reprobos sanctae matris ecclesiae, restat dubium ul-
usque ad praescitmn novissimum ; et illis terius : si praesciti gerant ordines et qfflcia-
Christus dirigit hunc sermonem. illius ecclesiae ? Et videtur ex dictis,
" Dr. Todd has taken this view in his quod non, etc. In the same Book, c. 3,
notes to Wycliffe's tract, De Ecclesia et Wycliffe appeals, in support of this view,
membris ejus. -Vide Three Treatises by particularly to Thomas Aquinas : Non
John Wycklyffe, Dublin, 1851, p. clvii. enim vidi in S. Tlioma vel alio Doctore-
3 De Ecclesia et membris ejus, c. i, p. probabili, quod totum genus [humanum)
S43, note 2, end. ^ sed pars ejus praedestinata sit sancta mater-
* Supplementum Trialogi, c.2, p. 413 : ecclesia , , , et universalis ecclesia, etc.

1372-1382.] the true and the visible church. 293
Satan, disciples of Antichrist, and children of the synagogue of
Satan.'' Here we have a strong antithesis, not between the Church
and the world outside of Christendom, but between holy Mother
Church and the ' Church of the malignants,' ecclesia malignantium, a
terra borrowed frora Psalra lxiv. 2 in the A/'ulgate version;'' and
between the members of the Holy Church and the raembers of
Satan and the disciples of Antichrist.3 The harshness of this
dualism may seem strange to us, as though it were an utterance of
excited feeling and very violent antagonism. We shall, however,
judge it raore mildly when we remember that even with a Pope like
Gregory VII. the very same dualism between raembers of Christ and
members of the devil or members of Antichrist was quite a common
usage of speech. The application of the language, it is true, is
exactly opposite in the hands of Gregory VII. and Wycliffe, but that
makes no difference with regard to the dualism itself
But still, on the other hand, I find that Wycliffe not very un
frequently gives expression also to another view, according to which
his fundamental conception of the Church as the whole „
body of the elect draws a separating line through the the vtsihie
heart of the Church itself. In other words, AVycliffe at
times makes use of language which shows that he distinguishes
within the circle of the Church between true members and only
apparent members, which is an approximation to the distinction
raade by the Reformers of the sixteenth century between the visible
and the invisible Church. Thus, in a sermon on the marriage feast
and the guest without a marriage garment, he says of the apostles
that they filled the Church militant with the elect and the fore
doomed (praedestinatis et praescitis) ; and in another sermon he ob
serves, on the words of Christ (John x. 26), 'Ye are not of My sheep,'
that there are two flocks in the militant Church, the flock of Christ
and manifold flocks of antichrist ; and the shepherds, too, are of
.opposite kinds;'! and by the Church militant Wycliffe always under-
• Saints' Days Sermons, No. II. , fol. 3 XX. Sermons, in Select Works, ed.
3, col. I : Omnes episcopi, qui ad tem- Arnold, I., 30: 'There ben (are) here
poralia, ad mundanos honores in familia, two manere of chirche, holy Chirche or
in apparatibus, vel expensis ministerio Chirche of God, that on no manere may
Christi superfiuis anhelant, omnes inquam be dampned, and the cherche of the fend,
tales apostotant (sic) cum antichristo et that for a time is good, and lastith not ;
solvunt infidelitur — totum decalogum ; and this was nevere holy Chirche, ne part
et tales indubie non sunt meinbra sanctae therof.'
matris ecclesiae. Vita eorum mundana * Miscell. Sennons, No. XXXIIL, fol.
cstendit patule, quod sunt membra diaboli 243, col. 2 : Et impleverunt [sc, apostoli)
.et discipuli antichristi. Comp. Trialogus, ecclesiam militantem de praedestinatis et
IV., 32, p. 323: Filios sanctae matris praescitis. And XXIV. Serm., No. IV.,
ecclesiae. . . . filios synagogae Satanae fol. 136, col. 4 : Sunt autem greges dupli-
(after Rev. ii. 9). ces in ecclesia militante, scilicet grex
= E,g., Supplementum Trialogi, c, u, Christi et greges multiplices antichristi,
p. 416 ; c. 8, p. 447. etc.

294 wycliffe's theological system. [CH. vm. §9
stands the Church upon earth. Thus, in his view, there is not only a
separating line, drawn like a tangent to the circle outside the Church,
to serve as a boundary line, but there is another also, drawn like a
chord through the Church itself WycUffe adopted frora Augustine
the distinction between the true body of Christ and the mixed or
simulated body of Christ, permixtum, simulatum.'^ It was his con
test with the Donatists which led Augustine to this distinction. He
holds, indeed, firmly to the truth that only true believers — the elect —
belong to the Church in the proper sense, and forra the true body of
Christ; but still he concedes that these true members ofthe Church
are for the present mixed with the unconverted, as
The visible , , „ . , , , , , .
Church a wheat and chaff are mixed together on the thrashing-
floor {permixtum). He acknowledges that in the pre
sent life the unconverted, to all appearance, form also a part of the
Church {corpus simulatum). Thus Augustine recognises, indeed,
the whole body of elect and truly converted men as the proper kernel
of the Church, and yet does not shut his eyes to the fact that in
actual experience that kernel exists only with a shell-like surround
ing of seeming Christians — a view which coincides with the Reforma
tion doctrine that the Church in the proper sense of the word is the
congregation of believers. = And inasmuch as Wycliffe accepts that
Augustinian distinction, he recognises the unconverted, the only
apparently holy, as being also members of the Church in a wider or
improper sense, and thus draws a separating line through the Church
itself. The fact is, that Wycliffe never quite escaped a certain wavering
of opinion between these two ideas. I cannot find that he was
attached to one of the two only in an earlier stage of
¦Wyoiiffe's his thinking, while giving his preference to the other in
huroh views. ^ j^^^^ stage; at least, the last quoted passages of his ser
mons belong to very different periods of his Ufe — the one to a collec
tion of sermons preached in his earlier years, the other to another
collection belonging to his latest life 3 — and in both alike he avers
that even within the Church railitant the elect of God and the
adherents of Antichrist exist side by side. This wavering, however,
serves to prove that Wycliffe cannot have made the idea of the
Church the subject of very mature reflection in a dogmatic sense ;
he attached more importance to the practical side of the subject.
' Augustine, De Doctrina Christ., III., " The XL. Miscellaneous Sermons he-
t. 32. long to the earlier years, the XXIV.
^ Confessio Augustana, Art. VII. ; Est Sermons to the very latest period of
autem ecclesia congregatio sanctorum, in Wycliffe's life.
qua evangelium recte docetur et recte ad-
ministrantur sacramenta.

1372-1382.] christian assurance. 295
This much is certain, that the real raembers of the Church, or of the
true body of Christ, are, according to AVycUffe's fundamental prin
ciple, exclusively those who have been chosen of God unto salvation,
and who therefore persevere in the standing of grace to the end ;
from which it necessarily follows that no man knows with certainty
the extent of the Church, or who does, or does not, belong in fact
to it No one knows of another whether he is an elect raan and a
child of the Church or no; and AVycliffe thinks that this
, , •' . , ,. ¦Wycliffe on
Ignorance is a real advantage to us ; it keeps us from christian
hasty judgments respecting the spiritual condition of
those among whom we live ; for no one has a right to pass judgment
upon a man, saying either that he is a true member of the Church,
or condemning and excommunicating him. No man may canonise
another as a saint or pass an opposite sentence upon him, unless on
the ground of having received a supernatural revelation upon the
subject.' Nor only so ; AVycliffe also holds to the purely Roman
Catholic view, that no Christian can even be sure of his own stand
ing in grace, and so be able to arrive at an assured conviction of his
own proper membership in the Church of Christ ; he may have an
opinion as to the probability of his state, but assurance is by no
means to be reached on the question.^ A man may, indeed,
know that he is in a state of grace for the present ; but the main
point concerns the question whether he will continue therein to the
end ; and of this no one can be certain for the future. 3 But the
probabUity that any one is of the number of God's elect, and there
fore a real child of the Church, rests upon a life of piety and
morality, upon good works and the imitation of Christ. ¦* Every
pilgrim upon earth should have the hope of eternal blessedness,
and therefore should be able to rest in the calm belief that he has a
standing in grace which raakes hira well-pleasing to God; and for
this reason it is needful that he should carefully exaraine hiraself,
whether he is conscious of any mortal sin, and whether, without mis
giving, he is able to believe that he has a standing in love.s
' Trialogus, IV. , 22, p. 323 : Ex istis * Ib. , IV. , 22, p. 323 : Reputare lawmen
-aidetur, quod non solum quantitatem ec- debemus recte nobiscum viventes esse filios
clesiae sed ejus quidditatem communiter sanctae matris ecclesiae, et contrarie viven-
ignoramus, etc. fes esse filios synagogae Satanae. Supple-
= De Ecclesia et membris ejus, c. 7, L. mentum Trial,, c. 2, p. 416 ; Non enim
ed. Todd : ' Certis this pope wot not him supponeret, quod sint tales (real members
silf, '«.«., whether he is one of the members of the Holy Church), nisi ab evidentia
oi Christ. capta ex opere, quo sequerenfur dominum
3 Trialogus, IIL, 6., p. 150 : Concedi Jesum Christum.
debet, quod multi praesciti sunt in gratia i De Veritate Scripturae Sac, u. 14,
secundum praesentem justitiam, praesciti fol. 33, col. 3.
tamen nunquam sunt in gratia finalis
persroerantiae, etc.

296 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § to
The thought is no doubt one of great importance — that a Christian,
in regard to his own standing in grace, as well as to the membership
of others in the Church of Christ, can only find in the moral fruits
of grace a true standard of measurement, and distinctive marks which
are really certain. It establishes the right, at all times, to apply the
moral standard in testing the actual life of the Church, as it is in the
present ; and this raoral feature is one which we find, from Wycliffe
downwards, in all the Precursors of the Reformation.

10. — The Worship of the Church.
AVe pass on now to the temporal existence and life of the Church, and
direct our attention (i) to its Worship.
One iraportant side of the worship of the Church — viz., the
preaching of the Word — we do not think it necessary to speak of
in this place at any length, as we have already shown
(chapter vi.) what Wycliffe's judgment was regarding
the manner of preaching which was prevalent in his day. AVe only
remind the reader in a word that there were two things which he
censured in the sermons of his age : first, that men did not as a
general rule preach the Word of God, but other things ; and secondly,
that when the AVord of God vvas preached, this was not done in a
way calculated to make its influence felt as a ' Word of eternal life.'
With regard to the other parts of Divine service, AVycliffe again
and again censures its degeneracy in the direction of an extreme
sensuousness sensuousness. ' AVould that so many ceremonies and
m worship, symbols,' he exclaims in one place, 'were not multi
plied in our Church,' ' for in such ritual he recognises a relapse
into Judaism, which seeks after signs, and a departure from the
spiritual nature of Christianity. ' There lies a danger for the Church
mUitant in this practice of Judaising, which values in a carnally
sensuous spirit those symbols and the huraan traditions connected
with thera more highly than the spiritual things which they signify ;
and even of giving heed to the Word of God more with the bodily
eye than with the eye of the mind and by the light of faith.' = AVhen
the monks appealed, in defence of the splendour of their cloister
churches, to the glory of Solomon's temple, as a proof that the
basilicas ought to be more beautiful still in the period of grace,
^ De Ecclesia, c. 2, fol. 134, col. 2 ; signa ilia cum traditionibus humanis
Utinam non multiplicarentur tot ceri- plus suis signatis praeponderet, vel etiam
moniae ei signa in nostra ecclesia I - legem Dei plus attendat judicio sensus
^ lb., c. 19, fol. 192, col. I : Sed in isto corporei, quam oculo 7nentis vel etiam
stat periculum militantis ecclesiae, quod lumine fidei.
judaizando secundum sensum carnalem

^372-1382.] CHURCH WORSHIP. 297
AA'ycliffe in one passage replies that one can only marvel that the
monks should imitate so closely that idolatrous and luxurious king
in the Old Testament, and not the example of Christ, the Head of
the Church and the King of kings, who had Himself foretold the
¦destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.' And on another occasion
he gives a reply still more severe ; ' Those senseless Galatians
(Galatians iii. i) wished to burden the Church [with the ceremonies
of the Mosaic law, and to leave on one side the counsels of Christ ;
and yet it is the inner man that should be adorned with virtues, as
every moral virtue is infinitely better than all the riches or all the
ornaments of a body without a soul.' ^
What raost offended Wycliffe's eye in the sensuous degeneracy of
Christian worship was the numerous images and pictures in churches,
and the veneration paid thera. He was prudent enough, images in
indeed, to admit that images, though prohibited in the cimrohes.
law of Moses, are not in theraselves forbidden in the Christian
Church. He acknowledges it also to be indisputable that they
may be made with a good design, when they are intended for the
purpose of stirring up the believing to a devout adoration of God
Himself. But, on the other hand, he recalls the fact that in the
early Church images were not used in such great numbers as they
are at present. Nor does he hesitate to assert that their use
operates raischievously on men's minds in more than one direction.
It leads, e.g., to error in the faith, and to the idea that God the
Father and the Holy Ghost are corporeal, when the Trinity is
represented by artists in such a way that God the Father appears
as an old man who holds between His knees God the Son hanging
upon the cross, while God the Holy Ghost alights in the form
of a dove upon them both, and such like. Very many, besides,
have fallen into the error of taking an image for something animated,
and solemnly bowing to it, which indisputably is idolatry. Many
also have been led to beUeve in miracles performed by the image,
a superstition resting upon mere delusion, or at most a diabolical
deception. 'And by such delusions of an adulterous generation
which seeketh after a sign (Matthew xvi. 4) are the people of Christ
blinded more and more ; and therefore must we preach against all
such costliness, beauty, aud other arts, which are employed raore for
the purpose of extracting money from deluded strangers than to
promote the religion of Christ among the people.' 3
1 Saints' Days Sermons, No. XVI. , fol. onerare Christi ecclesiam cum cerimoniis
32, col. I. legis antiquae, dimissis Christi consiliis,
' De Blasphemia, c. 6, fol. 134, col. 4 : etc.
Sed istiinscpisati Galataevoluni monstrose 3 Liber Mandatoj-um [Decalogus), c. 14,

298 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [en. vm. § 10
' The effect of every image should only be this, to awaken the
raind and heart of a man to attend to heavenly things ; but when
this effect has been produced, the sooner the imagination ofthe man
drops all attention to the qualities of the image, the better, for
in the continued dwelling of the imagination upon these qualities
lies concealed the venom of idolatry. As, now, the first and greatest
commandment forbids us to pray to any work of man, insomuch
that it was prohibited to the Jews to make any images whatsoever,
it manifestly behoves us to be constantly on our guard against the
poison under the honey,' i.e., against an idolatrous worship of the
image instead of the Divine Being so represented.' 'The people,
therefore, must be faithfully warned of the danger which lies in this
matter, especially as merely nominal Christians, men of an animal
nature, dismissing all faith in spiritual things, are wont at the present
day to feed their senses to excess in religion, as, e.g., their eyes with the
sumptuous spectacle of the Church's ornaments, their ears with bells
and organs and the new art of striking the hour of the day by the
wonderful chimes, not to mention many other sensuous preparations
by which their other senses are moved, apart altogether frora religious
feeling.' '
By far the greater number of images were representations of the
saints, their acts, and their martyr deaths. AA'hat AVycliffe thought
of saint-worship has been much better known hitherto
Saint-worship. ... . .
than his opinion respecting images, for he has given
sufficient expression to his views upon it in the Trialogus. Vaughan
remarked with truth that Wycliffe became step by step raore clear
and decided in his repudiation of saint-worship,3 and we are in a
The Virgin position to Confirm this general statement by particular
Mary. proofs. Thus, e.g., it appears worthy of remark that in
a sermon of his earlier life, preached on the Feast of the Assumption
of Mary, he is teaching, quite unsuspectingly, that the mother of our
Lord is to her worshippers a mediatrix full of mercy. ' Even fellow-
pilgrims upon earth, moved by brotherly love, help one another in
fol. 133, col. 2, particularly 134, col. i : ^ Ib. : Videtur jnihi periculum diligen-
Et de ista deceptione generationis adulterae tius exponendum, specialiter cum nomine
signa quaerentis populus Christi continue tenus Christiani tanquam animates vel
plus caecatur, etc. bestiales dimissa fide credendoruin spiritu-
' Liber Mandatorum [Decalogus), fol. aliicm nimis hodie pascunt sensus, ut
134, col. 2 : Ideo de quanto expeditius visum spectaculis ornamentorum ecclesiae
post expergefactionem adcoelestia imagina- sumptuosis, auditum campanis organis et
tiva hominis dimittit accidentia imaginis, novo -modo discernendi horas did per
de tanto est -melius, quia in ^nora imagi- campana^n ¦mirabiliter tintinantem, et
nandi latet venenum idolatriae ; . . . sensibilia, quibus irreligiose moventur
patet, quod summa diligentia cavere de- sensus alii, sunt parata,
bemus venenum sub melle, adorando idola- 3 Life and Opinions, 11, , p. 293,
trice signum loco si^nati.

1372-1382,] THE VIRGIN AND SAINTS. 299
the time of need, but the blessed Virgin in heaven beholds our
necessities, and is still fuller of love, stiU richer in compassion ; and
all the more faithfuUy does she care for our needs, as she knows that
she has attained to so high honour in order that she raight become
the refuge of sinners.' AVhat would men have more ? ' The preacher
makes only one condition, that we be the imitators of Mary's virtues,
especially of her humility, purity, and chastity, for she loves much
only those who are like herself AVhen, however, the objection is
raised that any one who exercises these virtues will certainly obtain
the eternal reward even without Mary's help, AVycliffe replies, 'It
seems to me to be impossible that we should obtain the reward
without the help of Mary. There are, however, degrees in her help.
No one goes away frora her quite unaided from her boundless
resources ; even those who have done no good thing as yet shall
have experience of her povver to soothe; because of her humUity and
intercession for mankind they shall be more mildly punished. For
she was herself in some measure the cause of the incarnation and
passion of Christ, and so of the whole redemption of the world.
There is no sex or age, no rank or position of any one in the whole
huraan race, which has no need to call for the help of the Holy
Virgin.' = These are thoughts which vie with the raost ardent glori
fications of Mary and her raerits.
In his later years WycUffe's judgraent was entirely different. There
were two questions here which engaged his further reflections — first,
the right of the Church to canonise certain personages ; and next,
the moral value of the devotions and rituals which are offered to the
saints. The first question occupied Wycliffe, as we are able to see, for
some length of tirae. I find traces of this in his work De Civili
Dominio. But here he stiU expresses hiraself with caution, even
with a certain degree of reserve ; for he maintains only the possibility
that the Church in her canonisations may deceive both herself and
others, either through the love of money, or from the inordinate love
of those persons who stand in near relation to the individuals con-
1 XL. Miscell. Sermons, fol. 233, col. adeptam tantum honorem, ut sit refugium
2 ; fol. 36, col. 2, particularly 236, col. i : peccatorum.
Tertium, quod debemus credere de matre ' lb., fol. 236, col. 2 : Hic videtur mihi,
Domini, quod ipsa est suis et veris cultori- quod impossibile est nos praemiari sine
bus propitia procuratrix. Nam viatores Mariae sufiragio. . . Imo illi, qui nihil
ex impetu caritatis suffragantur egentibus. meruerunt, sentient ejus levamen, cum oc-
Sed b, virgo Maria videi in verbo (coelo?) casione suae humilitatis et interpellationis
nostram egentiam, et est magis caritativa pro humano genere mitius punientur. Ifsci
et magis misericors. Ideo credendum est, enim fuit quodammodo causa incarnati-
quod fidentius procurat contra nostram onis et passionis Christi, et per consequent
egentiam et eo specialius, quo noscit se totius salvationis mundi.

300 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm, § lo
cerned, or through iUusions of the devil. He puts, also, the case that
many holy monks stand higher in blessedness than cer-
canonisation. ^^._^ ^^.^^^ ^^^^^^ festivals the Church celebrates. Still,
however, it surpasses the judgment of man to decide upon this
subject in individual cases, and therefore men must defer to the
determination of the Church. It may, indeed, well be that the
holders of the Primacy receive special inspiration from heaven in
this matter' AVycUffe takes a step in advance of this in his work
De Ecclesia, when he observes that 'certainly no Christian can
beUeve that it is necessary to salvation to believe of this or that
person whom the Church canonises, that he is in glory on that
account, especially in respect to certain raodern saints.' " But raost
strongly of all does he speak in the Trialogus, when he puts into
the raouth of others the assertion that it is nothing less than a
blasphemous pretension of the Romish Curia when, apart from any
special revelation, it pronounces persons to be saints, of whose holi
ness it can know as littie as the ' Prester John,' or the Sultan. And
the hearing of witnesses in such a matter cannot possibly supply any
proof 3 Here the authority of the Church to confer canonisation is
denied in the most distinct and decided way.
The second question concerns the moral value, or the contrary, of
the devotions and festivals celebrated in honour of the saints. On
1 in '^^^^ subject AVycUffe took up, in his later life, a position
honour of essentially different from that which we have seen hira
saints. occupying in his earlier years ; for now he lays down,
with entire decision, the principle that a devotion or a festival offered
to any saint is only of value in so far as it is fitted to proraote and
to heighten the feeUng of pious devotion towards the Saviour Him
self.'* Again, he is only expressing the same thought when he says
that the blessed saints in heaven look down with contempt upon the
perverted praise which men offer to them, and upon the many com
memorations and numerous festivals, often of a very worldly character,
^ De Civili Dominio, IIL, c. lo, fol. ^"j, vel muneris, non oportet nos apponere
col. I : Contingit etiam, quod ^nulti ss. tantamfidem, etc.
monachi et fratres sint in beatitudine 3 Trialogus, ill., 30, p. 237 : Insuper
altiores quam dati sancti, quorum festa videtur multis, quod curia ista sic cano-
solemnisat ecclesia, verumtamen discretio nizans sanctos blaspheme prraesumit, cum
hujus in particulari excedit humanum subducta revelatione tam plane ignorat
judicium. Ideo standum est determina- sanctitatem def uncti, quam plane ignorat
tioni ecclesiae, Johannes presbiter vel Soldanus.
^ De Ecclesia, c. 2, fol. 134, cols, i 4 Saints' Days Sermons (delivered later
and 2: Absit christianum credere, quod than 1378), No. I., fol. i, col. i : Non
de necessitate salutis oportet omnem fidelem valet festum vel devotio cujuscunque sancti
eredcre explicite de isto et quacunque, quem citra dominum, nisi de quanto in ejus
ecclesia nostra canonizaf, ut eo ipso sit devotionem supereminenter persona solem-
beatus. De aliis autem modernioi'ibus qui nisans accenditur.
eanonizantur ratione parentelae, questus

1372-1382,] SAINT-WORSHIP. 301
with which men desire to honour them ; and they withdraw their
assistance from all such worshippers.' In so saying, he expresses
also an unfavourable judgment on the excessive number of saints'
days, which he looked upon as in no way promoting the good of the
Church. 'As the apostles, without any such saints' days, loved
Jesus Christ more than we do, it appears to many orthodox Christians,
a rash and dangerous thing to institute so many saints' festivals, and
they deem that it would be better not to have so many celebrations,
burdening the Church.'^ ' It would be no sin in a parish priest,' he
says, 'if, in dealing with people who did bodUy labour on one of the
saints' days appointed to be kept holy by the Church, but having no-
confirmation of their sanctity from Holy Scripture, he did not censure
nor punish thera as transgressors of the Ten Commandments ; in
forbearing to do so, he would, on the contrary, be preserving the
Uberty of the Christian Church within the limits prescribed by Christ
HiraselL' In these circumstances it would have surprised us if AVycliffe had
not also spoken with disapproval of the veneration of relics as welt
as of the custom of pilgrimages, both of which practices were so
closely connected with saint-worship ; and in fact he has done so in
an unmistakable way, although sometimes with rauch caution. His
language, however, is sufficiently strong when he remarks that 'a
culpable blindness, an immoderate and covetous worshipping of
relics cause the people to fall into gross error, as the punishment of
their sin. AA'hence, in many countries, the love of money brings
things to such a pass, that in numerous churches a portion of the
body of some one who has been canonised as a confessor or martyr
is more honoured with pilgrimages, and costly oblations, and ornaments
of gold and precious stones lavished upon his grave, than the body of
the mother of God, or the Apostie Peter, or Paul, or any other of
the acknowledged saints.' 3 ' For my part, I condemn no act of this
kind; but at the sarae time there are few or none which I can positively
1 Saints' Day's Sermons, No. 11. , fol. 3, melius esset non fore tot solemnitates ai
col. I : Cum sancti viatores gra-oiterferunt onus ecclesiae, etc.
exaltationemsui, multo magis beati despi- 3 De Ecclesia, c. 19, fol. 192, col. n:
ciunt illam laudem eorum perversam ; et Unde talis culpanda caecitas, inordinatus
He beati creduntur contemneremultascano- ac cupidus cultus circa reliquias faciunt
nisationes ; et ita cum beati contemnunt in foenam peccati populum multum falli.
quoscunque Deus contemserit, necessaria Unde in multis pat-riis cupido pecuniae-
subtrahunt suffragia a sic eos colentibus. facit in multis ecclesiis, quod pars personae,
2 lb.. No. I., fol. I, col. I : Cum emtae ut canonizetur pro confessore vet
apostoli sine talibus festis sanctorum plus mariyre, plus honoreiur peregrinatione,
nobis dilexerunt Jesum Christum, videtur sumptuosa oblatione et sepulcri ornatione-
multis catkolicum (pure Christian truth), auro et lapidibus preciosis, quam corpus
tot sanctorum festa instituere esse temera- matris Dei, etc. Comp. Sermons on the
rium ; unde videtur quibusdam, quod Gospel, 'No, XXXII,, Select Works, I,, 83.

302 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § lo
commend, because those who go on pilgrimage, worship relics, and
collect money, raight at least occupy themselves more usefully, if
they omitted these practices. From the Word of God it even
appears to be the duty of all such persons to employ theraselves
better at the present tirae, and consequentiy that they are guilty of
great sin in failing so to employ themselves. I say nothing of the
sins which occur on these occasions, and how the practice itself is a
pharisaical one, savouring of the Old Testament, but without any
ground in the new law.'
It is a reraarkable fact, psychologically, that in the sarae serraon on
the Feast of the Assuraption which so decidedly seeras to favour
Mariolatry, there already occurs a reference to the errors which
develop theraselves from the veneration of relics. As stated above,
AVycliffe is, in this sermon, investigating the question whether Mary
went up corporeally to heaven, or was taken up after her death, and
shows his leaning to the latter view. He then adds the remark, ' and
because the contrary might have happened in consequence of erro
neous worship and covetousness of the clergy, it seeras to me
probable that God so ordered it that the bodies of Moses, of the
Virgin INIary, of the Evangelist John, and of many other martyrs,
should remain unknown to us on account of the errors which might
result from such veneration.' On the other hand, in a serraon
delivered in the last year of his life, on the feast of John the Baptist,
AVycliffe expresses the thought that God and the Church triumphant
regard the worshipping of corporeal relics at large with no approbation ;
and then he continues as follows ; — ' It would be to the benefit of the
Church, and to the honour of the saints, if the costly ornaments so
foolishly lavished upon their graves were divided among the poor.
I am well aware, however, that the man who would sharply and fully
expose this error would be held for a manifest heretic by the image-
worshippers and the greedy people who make gain of such graves ; for
in the adoration of the eucharist, and such worshipping of dead bodies
and images, the Church is seduced by an adulterous generation.' '
The difference of tone between the two last-mentioned passages is so
marked as to show clearly enough what important progress Wycliffe
must have raade in the interval in his insight into the dark side of
^ Saints' Days Sermons, No. XXII. , hunc errorem foret a cultoribus signorum
fol. 43, col. 3. The following words et avaris reportantibus ex talibus sepulcris
occur at the end of the Sermon, fol. 44, lucrum, manifestus haereticus reputatus ;
col. I : Unde ad honorem foret sanctorum nam in cultu et veneratione eucharistiae,
et utilitatem ecclesiae, quod distributii tali cultu mortuorum corporum atque
Jorent pauperibus jocalia (jewels) sepul- imaginum, per generationem adulteram
crorum, quibus stulte . . . sunt ornata. ecclesia est seducta.
IScio tamen quod acute et diffuse detegens

1372-13S4] SAINT-WORSHIP. 303
saint-worship. Only one thought on the subject of pilgrimages may
yet be touched upon here ; it is this— that Christian people would do
better to stay at home, and keep God's commandments in private,
than to make pilgrimages and bring gifts to the thresholds of the
saints.' In a simUar spirit AA^ycliffe expresses himself on the subject of
masses for the dead, and all that concerns them. He attaches littie
importance to them, and though he does not exactly deny that such
masses and prayers for the departed, and foundations in their memory,
raay be of some benefit to them, he yet affirms with aU emphasis his
conviction that in all circumstances the good which a man does in
his lifetime, should it be only the giving of a cup of cold water, out
of love and for the sake of Christ, is of more use to him than the
spending of thousands on thousands of pounds by his executors after
his death for the repose of his soul.^
Another side of the life of the Church on earth in regard to
which AA''ycUffe's judgment raay be of importance for us, is the moral
condition and character of the Church.
Everywhere A\'ycliffe sets out from ethical ideas, and applies to all
conditions and actions the standard of morals. There are occasions
when he speaks under the influence of strong feeling on the different
aspects of this subject. At such times his discourse has a tone of
deep earnestness, and becomes truly impressive, even incisive.
The judgment which he pronounces upon the religious and moral
condition of Christendom, when he tries it by the standard of the
first coraraandraent, is sufficiently unfavourable. He
finds that idolatry and creature worship are in the ascen- 'foms"'*
dant everywhere. 'It is clear as day,' says he, 'that we °*"i°i*'''y-
so-called Christians make the creatures to be our gods. The
proud or ambitious man worships a likeness of that which is in
heaven (Exodus xx. 4), because, like Lucifer, he loves, above all
things, promotion or dignity in one form or another. The covetous
man worships a likeness of that which is in the earth beneath. And
' De Civili Dominio, IIL, 10, fol. 67, frigidae' pro Christi nomine, quam pio
col. I : Melius occuparetur populus domi ipso mortuo, in purgaiorio punito, darentur
in praeceptorum Dei observantia, quam in ab executoribus millies mille librae. Liber
peregrinatione et oblatione visitando sane- Mandatorum [Decalogus), c, 23, fol. 816,
torum liinina. col. 2 : Si quaeritur de praestantiori modo
^ XL. Miscellaneous Sermons, No. VI. , juvandi mortuos, dicitur quod ju-jando
fol. 203, col. 3 : Licet mortuis prosint vivos amplius indigentes, ut seminando
suffragia ecclesiae, verumtamen quantum- opera -misericordiae tam corporalia quam
libel opus meritorium .... factum a spiritualia secundum spiritum consilii.
superstite est sibi magis utile, quam foret, Non enim oportet imprudenter in uno
ipso mortuo, quantumlibet magnum suf- globo una die celebrare tot missas, facere
fragium ; sic quod plus prodest homini tot distributiones aut simul tot jejuna-
vi-oenti dare in caritate ' calicem aquae tiones.

304 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § lo.
although, arrayed in sheep's clothing, we hypocritically confess that
our highest of all service is in the worship of God, yet it would very
well become us carefully to inquire whether we faithfully carry out
this confession in our actions. Let us then search and examine
whether we keep the first and greatest coraraandraent, and worship God
above all. Do we not bend and bow ourselves before the rich of this
world more with the view of being rewarded by them with worldly
honour or teraporal advantage, than for the sake of their moral
character or spiritual help ? Does not the covetous man stretch out
now his arms and now his hands to grasp the gold, and does he not
pay court untiringly to the men who have it in their power to hinder
or to help his gains ? Does not the sensual man, as though he were
making an offering to the idol Moloch, cast himself down with his
whole body before the harlot ? Does he not put upon such persons
worldly honour ? Does he not offer to them the incense of purses
of gold, in order to scent the flow of sensual delight with the sweetest
perfumes ? Does he not lavish upon his mistress gift upon gift, till she
is more wonderfully bedizened with various ornaments than an image
of the Holy Virgin ? And does not all this show that we love the flesh,
the world, and the devil more than God, in that we are more careful
to keep their commandments than His ? What violence do we hear
of the Kingdom of Heaven suffering in our times (Matthew xi. 12),
while the gates of hell are bolted ? But, alas ! broad and well trodden
is the way which leadeth to hell, and narrow and forsaken the way
which leadeth to heaven ! This it is which makes men, for lack of
faith, love what is seen and temporal more than the blessings which
they cannot see, and to have more delight in buildings, dress, and
ornaments, and other things of art and men's invention, than in the
uncreated archetypes of heaven.' In the end Wycliffe concludes that
at least the greatest part of Christendom is infected with the pre
vaUing idolatry, and in reality treasures the work of its own hands
raore highly than God the Lord.'
Taking all things into view, AVycliffe arrives at the conviction that
the raoral condition of the race was sinking lower and lower. As
Corruptions of ^^^ world is forsaking the law of Christ, and in con-
the age. forraity to human maxiras is surrendering itself to the
lust of secular things, it cannot but be that offences and scandals wUl
arise. = And when he corapares the various classes of wicked raen,
it appears to him that there is a threefold gradation of evil among
1 Liber Mandatorum [Decalogus), vj. 15, declinante secundum traditiones humanas
fol. 136, col. I ; fol. 137, col. 2. ad cupiditatem temporalium, necesse est
» De Civili Dominio, IL, 17, fol. 238, ut contumeliae et scandala oriantur.
col. I : Mundo quidem, relicta Christi lege,

1372-1384I CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.

305

thera. The common people are bad, the secular rulers are worse,
and the spiritual prelates are worst of all.'
It may be anticipated frora this language that AVycliffe would not be
blind to the moral corruption of the clergy of his own age. On the
contrary, it is quite clear to hira that the Church has much more to
fear from enemies within than without, and especially from ' a clergy
who are given up to avarice, and therefore enemies to the Cross of
Christ and the Gospel.' - These few words alone are sufficient to show
that while his eye was open to all the religious shortcomings and all
the moral faults of the clergy of his time, he looked upon their
woridly-mindedness and love of wealth as the real root of all their
evil. But this topic does not admit of being fully treated except in
connection with the whole body of his teaching on the subject of the
constitution of the Church.
II. — Constitution of the Church.
The first foundation-principle of the Roman CathoUc Constitution
is the division of the Church into two ranks — clergy and laity — or
the division between the teaching and hearing Church clergy and
— the governing and obeying Church. A distinction ^^'*y-
which the Reformation a priori abolished by putting the idea of
office in the place of a distinction of rank, or, in other words, by
maintaining the universal priesthood of believers.
This fundamental principle of the Church of Rome AA^ycliffe does
not deny with any clear consciousness of the opposite conception,
but nevertheless he puts forth views which are indirectly opposed
to it. For the personal responsibility, and the consequent liberty
of conscience of the private raembers of the Church, are principles
which he is far frora ignoring; on the contrary, he requires that
every Christian should have knowledge of the truth, should in a
sense be a theologian, for faith is the highest theology. The difference
in knowledge between Church member and priest is only one of
degree.3 He goes further stUl. Not only does he think the case
^ De Ecclesia, c. 5, fol. 142, col. 3: 3 De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 24, iol.
Omnes praesciti constituunt unum corpus. 78, col. 2; Omnem Christianu-m oportet
. . . Ex quo patet, quod oportet esse una7n esse theologum, quia necesse est omnem
generationem, quae fuit m-alu in vulgari- Christianum addiscere fidem ecclesiae, vel
bus, pejor in secularibus praepositis, sed scientia infusa vel cu-m hoc scientia hu-
pessima in praelatis. manitus acquisita ; aliter enim non foret
2 De Civili Dominio, II. , 2, fol. 156, fidelis, fides autem est sujnma theologia.
col. I : Si non fallor, longe plus infestatur Ideo oportet omnem catkolicum esse theo-
ecclesia ab inimicis domesticis, ut clero logum ; sed sacerdotem, in quantum su-
avaritiae dedito et sic cruci Christi ac pericrr, secundum quandam excellentiam,
legi evangelicae inimico, quam a Judaeis Comp. De Civili Dominio, I. , 44, fol. 130,
faganis forinsecus. col, 2 : Omnis homo debet esse theologus et
21

306 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § n
possible that theologians and priests might take a wrong direction
in doctrine and life, while the laity remained steadfast in the truth,
but he maintains the existence of this state of raatters as a matter
of actual fact Upon occasion of his opposing the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, he observes that God always preserves natural
knowledge araong the laity, and keeps up among sorae of the clergy
the right understanding of the Faith, as in Greece and elsewhere, as
seemeth to Hira good' He does not even shrink from laying down
Bights of the ^^ principle, however much offence it raay excite,
laity. that; tjie laity have the right, in case their spiritual
rulers faU to do their duty, or give themselves up to certain vices
and evil ways, to withhold from them the Church's revenues — a
principle which undoubtedly rests on the assumption that the laity
are in a position and are entitled to judge respecting the life of their
spiritual superiors, and the way in which they execute the duties of
their office.^
To maintain such a principle would have been an astounding
pitch of boldness if the Canon Law itself had not been on its side,
and papal. precedents had not conceded to the congregations of the
Church that right And these facts AVycliffe knew right well how to
avail hiraself of in his own support. We mention only the measure
which Gregory VII. had recourse to in his day in order to carry
through his reforms, and, in particular, to abolish the marriage of
priests. For this end he laid his injunctions upon the- congregations
— that is, upon the laity — ^that they should no longer hear masses
read by married priests, that they should cease to visit the churches
where such priests officiated, and should, so to speak, put a mark of
infamy upon them — all by papal command.
Wycliffe, it is true, makes an application of the principle different
le^sta ; nam omnis debet esse Christianus, ' De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 25,
quod tamen non potest esse nisi legem man- fol. 82, col. 4 : Ex istis colligi potest sen-
datorum Dei cognoverit, IL, c. 13, fol. tent'ia, quam saepe inserui, licet sit mundo
210, col. 2. Every Christian is bound to odibilis, quod licet laicis in casu tam sub-
foUow the counsels of Jesus Christ, at trahere quam auferre bona ecclesiae a suis
least some of them, ad quod judicandum praepositis. Et voco praepositos quoscun-
crit discretus sibi ipsi judex optimus. que, qui debent juvare suos subditos spi-
^ Trialogus, IV., 5, 261 : Sed Deus rituali suffragia, . . . ut patet de epis-
sicut semper servat notitiam naturalem in copis et clericis, etc. In the sequel
laicis, sic semper servat sensum catkolicum Wycliffe refutes, fol. 86, col. 2, the objec-
in quibusdam clericis, ut in Graecia vel tion that laymen are not at all entitled to
alibi, ubi placet. In his piece, Cruciata sit in judgment upon the life and official
(Wyclif Society, 1883), vol. ii. pp. 619, conduct of their spiritual superiors. This
620, Wycliffe maintains that it is possible idea he repudiates with the remark, that
that a time may come when the mihtant this would be as much as to say that it
Church may consist only of poor believers, was not competent for the laity to con-
scattered in many lands, of people who cern themselves about their own salva-
follow Christ more faithfully in their moral tion.
walk than Pope and Cardinals.

1372-1384] UNIVERSAL PRIESTHOOD OF BELIEVERS. 307
from that of Hildebrand, but the principle in both cases is the same,
i.e., that unfaithful and unconscientious clergy deserve the reprimand
and actual repudiation of the laity. AVycliffe emphasises the right
of the laity so strongly that he puts it forward as a formal duty, the
neglect of which cannot be justified. A member of the congregation
who omits such a reprimand makes himself a partner of the sin of
his spiritual rulers ; ' while laymen who withhold the temporalities of
the Church from an unworthy object, take them from him not as a
spiritual ruler or Church minister, but as an enemy of the Church.^
And AVycliffe does not think of such a case as a mere possibility
¦which might occur in single exceptional instances, but believes that
abuses of all kinds — the incorporation of benefices with foundations
— the granting of indulgences — the neglect of necessary censures —
may be pushed to such a length that the so-caUed clergy would
become an utterly worldly body.3 But, on the other hand, he holds
it as no inconceivable thing that the Church might consist for a time
of lay raembers alone*
Frora the foregoing it appears clearly enough that AVycliffe by no
means accepted of the Romish division of the Church into two
ranks — the clergy and the laity — according to which .
the laity had only to hear and obey, and were destitute priesthood of
believers.
of all independent judgment and free decision in eccle
siastical matters. On the contrary, he recognises the general priest
hood of believers, although he never makes use of this phrase.
His conception of the Church as ' the whole body of the elect '
is itself an indirect proof of this, for it is as clear as day that,
measured by this conception, the chasm which exists between the
* elect ' and the ' foreknown ' must be thought of as incomparably
greater than that which is placed between a cleric and a laic. And,
undoubtedlyj an ' elect ' man — a believing and earnest Christian
(' trew man '), layman though he is, yet stands before God infinitely
higher than a priest, or a bishop, or even a pope, if the latter, how
ever highly placed in 'the mixed Church,' in virtue of priestly
¦consecration and hierarchical order, is yet only in name a Christian
' De Veritate Scripturae Sacrae, 26, ¦• De Civili Dominio, I., 43, fol. 127,
fol. 88, col, 2 : Non excusatur parochi- col. 2. Wycliffe remarks here that when
unus tali praeposito innuitive consentiens; men comfort themselves with the thought
quin partidpat peccatis praepositi, qui sic that 'Peter's little ship' can never go
fauet. down, it will depend upon the way in
2 lb., fol. 88, col. 4 : Laid legitime which this is understood, whether it is
auferentes bona ecclesiae ab indigno not a piece of sophistry. The Church
non auferunt ab eo tanquam praelato vel militant may exist sometimes among one
ministro ecclesiae, sed, ut vere debent ere- people and sometimes among another,
dere, ab ecclesiae inimico. and sometimes among averysmall number
3 lb., c. 24, fol. 80, col. -^. of persons. Nee video, qiiin dicta navi.
Petri possit pure pro tempore stare in laiciss

308 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm, § n
and priest, but in truth an enemy of the Church and a limb in the
body of the wicked fiend.
This dualism between ' elect ' and ' foreknown,' between raerabers
of Christ and raembers of Antichrist, runs through the whole
ascending scale of the hierarchy. To the pastoral
Corruptions
in the clerical office, as we have already shown in chapter vi.,,
° ''' Wycliffe devoted the most unreraitting pains, as well im
the practical fulfilment of his own calUng as in the labour of
thought and the exercise of his influence upon others, by speech
and writing. In particular, his whole tractate. Of the Pastoral Office,
is devoted to it ; but, in addition to this, there is scarcely one of his
writings, large or sraall, in which he does not return to the subject,
describing the actual condition into which the office had fallen, and
striving to the end that it should again become what it ought to be.
AVith great outspokenness he brings to light the negligences and sins
of the ' false shepherds.' ' Above all, he complains of their neglect
of the chiefest duty of the office — the preaching of God's Word ;
they take no heed to feed the sheep ; the pastors are often dumb
dogs.^ Oftentimes and bitterly enough he rebukes the total worldli
ness of many pastors, who neglect the service of God in order to serve
noblemen, or waste their time in hunting, drinking, boon companion
ship, and such like ; men so utterly earthly-minded that they can be
compared only to moles ; they give themselves up wholly to money-
gathering, partiy by preaching only for gain, partiy by fleecing the
poor, of whom they are supposed to be the protectors.s
Let it not be supposed, however, that Wycliffe had the same bad
opinion of aU the parish priests. He was himself a conscientious
True and false curate of souls, and may very weU have known many
shepherds, jjjjg himself in the land. He knows weU how to
make the right distinctions. 'There are three kinds of pastors,'
he observes in one place : ' sorae who are true shepherds both
in name and in truth, and some who are only shepherds in name.
And these latter again divide themselves into three classes — there
are some, namely, who preach and do the work of a shepherd, but
chiefly for worldly fame or profit ; and these Augustine calls " hire
lings." Men of the second class fail to fulfil their pastoral oflSce,
^ De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 23, iol. Quidam sunt canes muti non valentes
77, col. 2, and fol. 78, col. i [pseudopas- latrare, etc.
tore^ after Ezekiel xxxiv. 3 Liber Mandatorum, c. 10, fol. 114,
= De Officio Pastorali, II. , c. 1-4, p. 31. col. 2 ; c. 26. fol. 205, col. i. De Civili
Liber Mandatorum, c. 30 : Clerici cae- Dominio, I., 23, fol. 39, col. i. XXIV.
cantur ignorantia proprii officii, quod est Sermons, No. v^, fol. 141, col. 2. XL..
praedicatio verbi Dei. XL. Miscellaneous Miscellaneous Sermons, No. XXIX., fol.
Sermons, No. XXIX., fol. 238, col. 3 : 238, col. 3. Select Works, I., 11 ; 11., 60.

1372-13S4.] PASTORAL CHARACTER AND DUTY. 309
but at the same tirae inflict upon their flocks no visible damage or
wrong ; and yet they are described by Christ as thieves and robbers
(John X. S), because in virtue of their office they defraud their
parishioners of a full return for those Church revenues which are
the inheritance of the poor. But the third class not only rob the
poor openly of their goods vvithout rendering any corresponding
service, but Uke wolves they also attack and destroy their flocks,
and incite them in many ways to sin ; and these are " the ravening
wolves" (Matthew vii. 15). But a "shepherd" enters into office
through the door, which is Christ, in order to serve God and His
Church in humility, and not for the sake of earthly gain or worldly
advantages. Such an one leads the sheep upon the way which
conducts to heaven, by the example of a holy life; he heals the
sick, by application of the sacramental means of grace; he feeds
the hungry, by reaching to them the food of holy preaching; and
finaUy he gives drink to the thirsty, by opening up to them the
wisdom of the Scriptures with the help of the reading of holy
exposition.' '
On the subject of the Celibacy of the Priesthood, Wycliffe gives
repeated expression to his views. In several places he characterises
the Church law which enjoins it as an ordinance clerical
plainly unscriptural, hypocritical, and morally perni- celibacy.
cious. Neither Christ nor His apostles forbade the marriage of
priests ; they rather approved it.= He points not only to the usage
of the raost ancient Church to consecrate married men as bishops,
but also to the still existing practice of the marriage of the clergy
in the Greek Church.3 And as concerns the present, he confesses
himself unable to see why in all parts of Christendom allowance
should not be given to married men to continue in the priesthood,
especially if no candidates of equal qualifications for the priest
hood should be forthcoraing. In particular, he urges that it would
undoubtedly be the lesser evU of the two, that men who are living
in honourable matriraony, and who are ruling equally well the Church
and their own houses, should be consecrated to the priesthood vvith
out disturbance to their married life, than that priests should be
living, indeed, out of the married state, but should be practising
unchastity in spite of their vows, with wives and widows and virgins.-*
• De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 23, fol. 81, col. 2 : In primitiva ecclesia ordinati
7^, cols. 2 and 3- jwk^ monogami in episcopos, . . . et sic
2 Of Weddid Men and Wifis ; in Se- continuata est talis copula in Orientali
lect English Works of John Wyclif, ed. Christianismo.
Arnold, Oxford, 1871, in., 189. On tlie '¦ lb., fol. 8r, col. 3 : Numquid crc-
Seven Deadly Sins, 'ih., c. 29, 163. dimus com^nunius malu-mfuisse conjugates
s De Veritate Scripturae Sac. , c. 24, iol. liieratos et castas gubernationi ecclesiae

310 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § ir
Hypocrites, it is true, who set the ordinances of men above the
word of Scripture, abhor the marriage of a priest as poison, while
allowing themselves in uncleanness of the most shameful kind>
And yet Scripture nowhere forbids the marriage of a priest, but
prohibits unchastity to all raen, the laity included, without excep
tion.' But even apart from such sins and vices, WycUffe is of
opinion that in all cases it would be better that a priest should live
as a married man, than that while remaining out of matriraony he
should live a wholly secular Ufe, addicted to ambition and the love
of raoney.^ Let this be as it may, Wycliffe never allows himself to
be shaken in his conviction that the pastoral office, more than any
other, when rightly exercised, is the most useful, and for the Church
the only indispensable, office ; that all the other grades of the hier
archy raay fall into disuse, but that the cure of souls in the congre
gations of the Church raust always be continued and steadfastly
upheld. 3
This last declaration is in accord with AVycliffe's view of the higher
gradations of the hierarchy, especially with his conviction, to which
Presbyter he had before given expression, that between priest and
oriS^aiiythe bishop there is no difference arising frora consecration
same. , — {jjat, on the contrary, every priest regularly ordained
possesses full power to dispense in a sufficient manner all the sacra
ments. Araong the nineteen propositions of WycUffe which Pope
Gregory XI. rejected in 1377, this one now stated is already found ;
and I find that it was extracted frora his work, De Civili Dominio.^
This conviction was not only always held fast by hira frora that time
forward, but was developed still more boldly and logically, as may be
seen from his later writings ; and hewas confirmed in it partly by Holy
et domus suae intentos, stante conjugio ^ Saints' Days Sermons, No. x-LVi., iol,
ordinari presbyteros, quam nos extra con- 93, col. 3 : Raiificari quidem debet status
jugiiim post votum conti-nentiae cognoscere residentium curatorum, et subtrahi totum
omne genus m.ulierum ut ¦meretrices, con- residuum.
jugatas atque viduas etvirgines, imo pro- ^ In the schedule added to the Papal
priasfilias speciales ? Brief of May 22, 1377, No. 16 reads as
1 Responsiones ad Argumenta Radulphi follows ; — Hoc debet catholice credi, quili-
de Strode, MS. 1338, fol. 120, col. 4. bet sacerdos rite ordinatus habet potestatem
' De Officio Pastorali, iL, 11, p. 46 : sujffidenter sacramenta quaelibetconferendi
The disciples of Christ are turned into et per consequens quemlibet contrituma -
Pharisees, who strain out gnats and swat- peccato quolibet absolvendi. And the
low camels. Nam conjugium secundum original passage to which this refers is
lege-m Christi eis licitum odiunt ut venc- plainly the following [De Civili Dominio,
num, et secutare dominium eis a Christo I., 38, fol. 93, col. i) : Hoc ergo catholice
prohibitum nimis avide amplexantur. credi debet, quod quilibet sacerdos rite:
Quite similarly Z?« Q^«'o if e^«, c. 2, fol. ordinatus habet potestatem sufficientem
8, col. I. Comp. De Civili Dominio, 11. , quaelibet sacramenta conferendi , . .
13, fol. 105, col. I : Unde, si non fallor, absol-oendi, nee aliter potest papa absolvere.
minus malum foret clericum uxoi-ari. Nam quantum ad protestatem ordinis
quam circa mundum esse sollicitum. — Of omnes sacerdotes sunt pares, licet potestas
IVeddid Men and Wifis; in Select inferioris rationabiliter sit ligata.
Works, IIL, 190.

1372-I3S4.1 THE HIERARCHY. 31I
Scripture and partly by the history of the Church. From Scripture
he derived the knowledge that the Church of the apostles recognised
only the distinction between Presbyters and Deacons, but made no
difference between Presbyter and Bishop, which in the apostolic age
were identical' And the history of the Church revealed to him the
further fact, that even for sorae considerable time after the apostolic
age, the equality of the presbyterate and the episcopate continued
to subsist — a fact for which Wycliffe appeals to the testimony of
Jerome, and which was known to the Middle Age chiefly from the
Corpus J^uris Canonici, which contained the passage from Jerome
just referred to.-
AA'ycliffe, it is true, had an erroneous idea of the manner in which
this original equaUty of the two offices passed into the stage of the
superiority of the bishop above the presbyter, and into
the further development of the hierarchy in all its ^'of'the^"
gradations. But if his conception of this differed frora ^^^^° ^'
what, according to the testiraony of history, actually took place, the
blame of his error lay not in himself, but in the time when he
lived — when the unhistorical and mythical traditions of the Middle
Age were still in possession of unchallenged prevalency.3 Wycliffe,
that is to say, proceeds on the assumption that Constantine the
Great not only endowed the Bishop of Rome, in the person of
Silvester I., with rich temporal possessions, but also with new power
and dignities — a consequence of which was the elevation of the
bishops above the presbjlerate not only in the Roman See, but
everywhere in the Church, and the development of a graduated
hierarchy, culminating in the Papal Primacy itself'* Hence AVycliffe
in numberless places speaks of the imperial plenary power of the
Pope — e.g., Trialogus, iv. 32 ; Supplementum Trialogi, c. 10 —
' Trialogus, IV., 15, p. 296; Unum ordinationemCaesareampraesidentiaepis-
audacter assero, quod in primitiva ecclesia coponim. Comp. Trialogus, IV., 13, p.
ut tempore Pauli suffecerunt duo ordines 296. Verum videtur, quod superbia
clericorum, scilicet sacerdos atque diaconus. Caesarea hos gradus et ordines adinvenit.
Secundo dico, quod in tempore apostoli fuit He names immediately before Pope and
idem prresbyter atque episcopus; patet Cardinals, patriarchs and archbishops,
I Timothy iii. et ad Titum i. Comp. bishops and archdeacons, officials and
Supplementum Trialogi, c. 6, p. 438 : ut deans, besides the other ofiicers, quorum
olim omnes sacerdotes vocati fuerunt epis- non est numerus neque ordo. In like
copi. De Officio Pastorali, I., 4, p. 11 : manner in many other places, e.g.. Saints'
Apostolus voluit episcopos, quos vocal quos- Days Sermons, 'Ho, XL., fol. 81, col. 3 :
cunque curatos. Licet Constantinus Imperator decrevit,
2 Jb., IV., 13, p. 296. Comp. De- suum episcopum atque clerum esse supcr-i-
creti Pars I, Distinct., 95, c. 3, and orem in mundana gloria quam reliquos in
Hieron. Comm. in Ep. ad Tit. i.S, Opp., privatis aliis provinciis, et licet Anti-
vol. VIL, 694, ed. -Vallarsi 'Venet. 1766. christus sequens tn hoc errore ampliavit
3 Comp Dellinger, Die Papstfabeln des istam haeresim, tamen fidelis debet recog-
Mittelalters, 2, Aufl. p. 186. noscere fidem Christi dictam, Galatians
* Saints' Days Sermons, No. XLVI., fol. ii. 6.
93, col. 3. Tertio introducta est secundum

312 wycliffe's theological SYSTEM. [ch.viii. §ii
whereby he took occasion to exalt himself, aUowed hiraself to be
blinded, etc. And when Wycliffe speaks of Csesarean bishops
{Episcopi Caesarei) the aUeged donation of Constantine is, in like
raanner, present to his raind as that which was the first occasion of
the original equality of bishops and presbyters being disarranged,
and a power being attributed to bishops which did not belong to
thera, and was without warrant. Wycliffe's ideas of the Papacy
The Papal ^'^s assumed to be known with exactitude, and yet, up
primacy. ^q jjjg pj-gggnt time, they have been known only from
his latest writings, and, on this account, only very incompletely. In
looking into his earUer writings as well, I find that his opinions on
this subject underwent a considerable change ; so much so, in
deed, that we are able to trace a steady progress in his judgment
respecting it.
I think I am able to distinguish three stages in this development.
These admit of being distinguished from each other both chrono
logically and substantively. In point of time, the first stage reaches
down to the outbreak of the Papal schism in 1378; the second
stage embraces the years frora 1378 to 1381 ; and the third extends
from thence to Wycliffe's death in 1384. In substance the successive
stages may be clearly and briefly discriminated thus — first, the
recognition within certain limits of the Papal primacy ; next, eman
cipation from the primacy in principle ; finally, the most decided
opposition to it. I have now to point out this in detail.
The first stage, beginning with the earliest appearance of AVycUffe
in ecclesiastico-political questions and extending to the year 1378, is
marked by a recognition of the Papal primacy within
¦Wyoiiffe's certain limits. Here Wycliffe is still far removed from at-
ne-n-s. tacking the Papacy as such in its very core and essence.
As the central power of the Church, he still accords to it a real recog
nition and a sincere reverence, but only within certain limits, on the
maintenance of which he lays great stress ; and in this is discerned
the free, reformative tendency which is characteristic of even his
earliest opinions. AVhat are these limits ? They are of two kinds :
First, in relation to the State, they bar all attacks of the Papacy upon
it, whether on questions of finance or of civil jurisdiction. Here
belong the investigations which WycUffe at the outset of his pubUc
career set on foot respecting the claims of the Papacy to the
payraent of a feudal tribute on the side of England, and other
questions of the like kind. Of the same character was the part he
took in the transactions at Bruges in 1374-75. In this direction he
speaks here and there with great caution and reserve, though some- ,

¦=372-1378.] THE PAP.A.CY. 313
times also with emphasis.' As a rule, it is in reference to the
financial spoliation of countries that AA'ycliffe expresses himself in a
sharper tone— calling it downright theft— a robbery of the Church. =
Then, as concerns the purely ecclesiastical and spiritual domain,
AA'ycliffe in so far imposes a limit upon the Papacy as he denies its
pretended necessity in order to salvation, and its unconditioned
plenary povver. It is itself an indication of this opinion that he
maintains the moral right of entering into a scientific inquiry into
this plenary povver. 3
In more than one place he disputes with clearness and decision
the proposition that the office and Church authority of the Pope
is absolutely indispensable and necessary to salvation.-* AA'ycliffe
reaches the same result which ]\Ielancthon expressed in the words,
that the Pope may be recognised to be the Head of the Church ^wr^
humano, but not jure divino. Holding such views as these, AVycliffe
could not, of course, possibly concede the infalUbUity and the
plenary power of the Pope in spiritual things. On the contrary, he
declares quite explicitly that the Pope raay err in judgment. God
alone is without sin, and His AA'ord alone is infallible. s An ' elect
man ' may believe that the Pope and the Roman Church are guilty
of injustice in putting him under a ban ; and this assertion he bases
on the proposition that it is possible that not only the papai
Pope but the whole Roman Church may fall into mortal faiubiuty.
sin and be damned ; it follows that he may also abuse his power by
' E.g., In De Civili Dotninio, IL, 4, 2 In Liber Mandatorum, c. 26, fol, 203,
fol. 164, col. 2, he mentions, it is true, col. i, he treats of this subject under the
the investiture of John Lackland with commandment 'Thou shalt not steal.'
the crown of England on condition 3 De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 11, fol.
of the payment of feudal tribute, the 30, col. 3.
transfer of the crown of Castile from * In one of his earliest writings [De
Peter the Cruel to Henry the Bastard by Civili Dominio, i., i^-^, iol. 123,00]. 11),
Urban V. (1366) ; but he remarks imme- he maintains that no person in the
diately upon these and other cases, in Romish Church is absolutely necessary
which the Pope claimed the right, as to the government of the Church ; and in
Peter's successor, to dispose of kingdoms, the book ZP« Veritate Scripturae Sac,
that it was not his business to inquire which he wrote in 1378, he treats it as a
whether the Pope thus acted from fatherly mere fiction when it is pretended esse de
affection or in love fohis allies, or to cen- necessitate salutis credendum, quod papa
sure the abuses of secular princes [non est quicunque sit caput universalis ecclesiae,
-meum discutere). One of the most em- etc. , c. 20, fol. 63, col. 4.
phatic passages is that in Book I., 19, 5 De Ci-oili Dominio, I., 33, fol. 84,
fol. 160, col. I, where he remarks that col. i. Wycliffe observes that he who
the greatness of the Pope stands in his maintains that all bulls and instruments
humihty, poverty, and readiness to serve. of the Pope are absolutely right and just
When he becomes degenerate and seculat- gives it indirectly to be understood that
ised, and an obstinate defender of his the Pope is without sin, and therefore God
worldly greatness, then it seems to the [implicat, papam esse impeccabilem, et sic
author that the Pope becomes an arch Deum; potest ergo errare in judicio).
heretic, and raust be put down from his Comp. 3, 43, fol. izo, col. i.
spiritual dignity as well as his earthly
•dominion.

314 WYCLIFFES THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch, vm. § ir
putting men under the ban unlawfully, from motives of avarice and
ambition. Even Peter three times sinned after his consecration
and the conveyance to him of representative power ; still raore,
therefore, may a later successor in his office be capable of sinning..
These are views which are still held by many decided Episcopalians,,
e.g., among the GaUican clergy. But although Wycliffe contested
with head and heart the doctrines of the CuriaUsts and flatterers of
the Pope touching his absolute power,' he was still very far, during
this first stage of opinion, and as late as 1378, from impugning the
prerogatives of the Roman Church. On the contrary, he expressly
concedes them, and defends himself in the most earnest raanner
against every suspicion of his sentiraents in this respect.''
We raust not forget, indeed, on this point, that the Pope and the
Roraan Church are always two distinct things ; as, in fact, Luther
still held fast his veneration for the Roraan Church at a tirae of his
life when he had already taken up a sufficiently decided position
againtst the Pope. But even towards the Pope hiraself Wycliffe at
Election of that Stage still cherished a confidence which is really
touching. I am able to produce in proof of this an
expression of AVycliffe which has hitherto remained unknown. After
the election of Urban VL, on April 8, 1378, the news of his
first speeches and measures was quickly conveyed to England, and
these evidently made upon Wycliffe a quite extraordinary impression.
How he rejoiced in every sign of good intention and moral earnest
ness in that quarter ! He conceived the hope that the man who had
just ascended the Papal chair would prove a reformer ofthe Church.
Under the fresh impression of the news he breaks out into the
words, ' Blessed be the Lord, who in these days has given to His
Church, in Urban VL, an orthodox head, an evangelical man, one
who in the work of reforming the Church, that it raay live conforra-
ably to the law of Christ, follows the due order by beginning with
hiraself and the raerabers of his own household. From his works,
therefore, it behoves us to believe that he is the head of our
Church.' 3 AVycUffe's soul is filled with true enthusiasm and joy.
' E.g., De Ecclesia, c. 12, fol, 164, col. Benedictus Dominus matris nostrae, qui
3: Blasplie-mant quidam extollentes papam nostrae peregrinanti juvenculae [z.n image
sophistice super omne quod dicitur Deus, of the Church from the Song of Solomon)
etc. Co-cnp. De Veritate Scripturae Sac, diebus istis providit caput catholicum,
c. 20, fol. 63, col. 4 : they break out in virum evangelicum, Urbanum sextum.
blasphemiam summe execrabileni, quod qui rectificando instantem ecclesiam (the
dominus papa — sit parts auctoritatis cum Church of the present), ut vivat confor-
Christo humanitus, cum sit Deus in terris, miter legi Christi, orditur ordinate a se
?'c. ipso et suis domesticis; ideo oportet ex
" De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 14, operibus credere, quod ipse sit caput nostrae
fol. 43, col. 3. ecclesiae. Comp. c. 15, fol. 178, col. 4.
3 De Ecclesia, c. 2, fol. 133, col. 2 :

THE PAPAL SCHISM.

315

He believes that in Urban VL may be recognised a Pope of evan
gelical spirit and true Christian earnestness, who has sanguine
a clear knowledge of the raoral disorders of the ^°^^^-
Church at the present tirae, and who possesses both the courage and
the self-denial to begin the necessary reform with himself and the
Curia. One might, indeed, be disposed to attach the less weight to
this language, on the ground that it is only the presumed evangelical
and reforming spirit of Urban that he so joyfully salutes. But what
fills him with such exalted feeling and hope is precisely the circum
stance that it vvas in a Pope that he saw such a spirit. On one
point alone he has still his misgivings — whether this worthy head of
the Church wUl persevere in the good way to the end.'
AATiat AVycliffe had foreboded came only too soon to pass. Urban's
efforts for reform, however well-meant, were carried out in so high
handed a manner, and with such reckless severity, that Disappoint-
they gave offence to a number of his cardinals in such ^^'^*-
a degree as not only to alienate thera, but even to convert them into
open enemies. In the end, in August, 1378, under pretence of
doubts regarding the regularity and validity of his election to the
See — which they alleged had been forced upon thera by terrorisra —
they proceeded to the election of a rival Pope in the person of the
Cardinal of Geneva, Clement VII. AVith this step began the Papal
schism which continued for nearly forty years. The consequences
were that the one Pope excommunicated the other ; they fought each
other with all the weapons they could think of, and the ^j^^ ^
whole of AVestern Christendom was rent asunder. This schism.
is not the place to follow out the moral and religious effects of this
mischievous event AA'e have to exaraine here only the effect which
it had upon AVycliffe, on his view of the Papacy, and on his raoral
attitude towards it. AVe have remarked above that, frora the year
1378, AA''ycliffe emancipated himself from the Papal primacy in prin
ciple, and this is what we have now, with more particularity, to
show. This second stage of his conviction and judgment in reference to
the Papacy was reached only gradually, as we might beforehand
expect. In the time imraediately succeeding the outbreak of the
Papal schism, he was still inclined to recognise Urban VI. as the
legitimate Pope — as, in fact, all England remained attached to him
and to his successors in Rome as long as the schism lasted, and
' De Ecclesia, c. 2, iol. 1^3, col. 2 : Ista verantiae. . . . Nee dubium, quin nos
aute^n fides de nostro capiietam gratiose et omnes tenemur subesse sibi (sc. Urbano),
legitime nobis dato est credenda cum. qua- de quanto tanquam verus Christi vicarius
damformidine de corona suae finalis perse- mandat magistri sui consilia et non ultra.

3l6 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § n
refused to recognise the French anti-Pope. But notwithstanding this,
AVycliffe even thus early expressed his opinion, that, in case Urban
also should fall into evil ways, it would then be better and healthier
for the Church to dispense with both Popes together. To this date,
probably towards the close of 1378, I beUeve I may assign several
declarations made by AVycliffe, partly in one of his scientific writings,
and partly in a Latin sermon delivered by him, no doubt, in Oxford.'
AVhen Urban VI. , however, aUowed hiraself to adopt the extreme
measures against Clement VII. and the cardinals and national
¦WycUffe's churches that supported his cause, of not only laying
neutrality, them under the ban of excommunication, but also of
using against them all other possible means of hostility, AVycliffe
went farther, and casting off his allegiance to Urban, took up a posi
tion of entire neutrality. He now declared it to be probable that
the Church of Christ would find herself in better case, and in par
ticular would enjoy a greater degree of peace than she did at present,
if both the Popes were set aside or condemned, as it might be
concluded from the Uves of both that they had little or nothing
in common with the holy Church of God.= By the experiences
resulting frora the Papal schism Wycliffe was brought step by step to
the conclusion of cutting himself off from all moral connection with
the Papacy as such.
The third stage was only a further development and culmination
of the second. Having already gone so far, Wycliffe found it irapos-
His final posi- sible to remain in a position of bare neutrality. It vvas
*'""• inevitable, from the nature of the case, that an ever-
sharpening antagonism, and a warfare against the Papacy growing
continually more uncompromising, should develop itself And to
this the controversy concerning the Lord's Supper, in which AVycliffe
began to engage in the year 1382, essentially contributed. The
more violently he was calumniated and attacked by the friends of
the Papacy on account of his criticism on the Doctrine of Transub-
' De Ecclesia, c. 13, fol. 178, col. i : Si although it certainly was so in the election
nos Anglici gratis tantum obedimus papae oi Urban VI. Ideo maneat Urbanus noster
nostro Urbano VI, tanquam humili sei-vo in justitia verus Petri vicarius, et valet
Dei, sicut schismatici obediunt dementi sua electio. , . . Quod si Urbanus noster
propter dominium et potestatem secu- a via erraverit, sua electio est erronea, et
larem : quis dubitat, quin ut sic habemus multu-m prodesset ecclesiae, utroque isto-
rationem meriti amplioris f Saints' Days rum carere.
Sermons, No. X. (on Matthias's Day) fol. = Cruciata (Wyclif Society) vol. ii. p.
19, col. I. The preacher maintains that 621 : Probabiliter creditur, quod utroque
the election of Matthias to be an apostle istorum subtracto de medio vel damnato,
was legitimate and well done. ' -Would staret ecclesia Christi quietius quam stat
that men nowadays would proceed in modo, cum multi supponunt probabiliter
like manner in elections, especially to high ex vitis eorum, quod nihil illis et ecclesiae
places.' That was not the case in the elec- sanctae Dei.
tion of Robert of Geneva (Clement -VII. ),

1378-13S2.] ANTICHRIST. 317
stantiation, all the more did the Papacy itself appear to him to be a
limb of Antichrist. To this period of his life belong all the strong
assaults upon the Church which have been heretofore ^^^^ papacy
known to the world from his Trialogus and several Antichrist.
popular writings in English. But these attacks become better under
stood, both psychologically and pragmatically, only when we think of
them as a climax gradually realised. All the usurpations of the
Papacy hitherto censured and opposed by AVycliffe were now seen by
him, for the first time, in the Ught of a corruption of Christianity of
the widest extent, and immeasurably deep, for which he could find
no more appropriate name than Antichristianisra. The systematic
spoliation of the national churches, the haughty pride, the worldly
character of the Papal Governraent, the clairas to hierarchical
domination over the whole world — all these features of the de
generate Papacy were attacked by Wycliffe after this date as well as
before, but were now for the first time seen by him in their connec
tion with what was the worst feature of all — with an assumption of
Divine attributes and rights which seemed to hira to stamp the Pope
as the Antichrist.
The Pope's claims to absolute power, and to a heaven entirely
special to himself, appeared to Wycliffe all the more astounding,
because he held fast to the fundamental principle that. Blasphemy in
in point of right, there are only deacons and priests in ^apai claims.
the Church of Christ, and that the whole graduated hierarchy within
the priesthood had no other basis than the Ulegitimate smuggling of
secular arrangements into the Church, and grants obtained from
imperial patronage. It is, therefore, says Wycliffe, truly ridiculous
or rather blasphemous when the Roman Pontiff, without any founda
tion whatever, says, 'It is our wiU, so must it be." From this time
forward, however, he speaks of the Papacy rauch raore as a God-
blaspheming institution than as a subject of ridicule. In earlier
years, indeed, AVycUffe had censured absolutist ideas of Papal
dignity and power, but only as the ideas of individual administrators
and flatterers of the Pope. But now he regards the assumption of
such absolutism as the very kernel of the Papacy itself For the
claim to the dignity of a vicegerent of Christ upon earth, taken along
with the strongest contrast to Christ in all respects— in character,
teaching, and life — was a combination which appeared to him to be
only fully expressed in the idea of the Antichrist ; and this name
I Saints' Days Sermons, No. LVL , fol. dicat sine fundatione : ' Nos volumus ita
Ii6 col. 3 : Revera tam derisorium vel esse t' Comp. 117, col. i.
ila'sphemum est, quod Romanus presbyter

3l8 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [cu. vm. § ir
AVycliffe appUed to the Pope in numberless passages of the writings
of his latest years. He now not only caUed both Popes alike ' false
Popes,' ' and stigmatised Clement VII. in particular as Antichrist ;
he also applied this name to the Papacy generally, that is, to all the
Popes collectively; for, says he, ' they come in the name of Christ,
and declare themselves to be His immediate vicegerents, and claim
unlimited power in spiritual things, whUe their whole position rests
exclusively upon the imperial grant of Constantine.' ^ But with
special frequency he applies to the Pope the well-known words of the
Apostle Paul (2 Thessalonians ii. 3) concerning ' the apostacy,' when
the ' Man of Sin ' is revealed who opposeth and exalteth himself
above all that is called God, or that is worshipped. 'Now,' he
remarks, ' it is nothing else but blasphemy when the Pope puts for
ward claims to Divine rights and Divine honours, and almost raises
himself above Christ, whose position upon earth he pretends to
represent.' 3 No wonder that AVycliffe, when he once went so far as
this, did not shrink even frora the thought that the Papal ofl5ce itself
is of the wicked one, seeing that no Divine warrant exists for more
than the pastoral care of souls, and an exemplary walk in humility
and sanctity, along with faithful warring in the spiritual conflict, but
none at all for any worldly greatness and dignity. * The veneration,
' Supplementum Trialogi, c. 9, p. 430 : bound conscientiously to follow Christ in
Manifeste patet, quod uterque istorum his acts, non apostolicus sed apostaticus
pseudopaparum tanquam membrum dia- habeatur.
boli in causa stultissima provocat homines ^ XXIV. Sermons, No. IX., fol. 152,
ad pugnandum, etc. col. i : Breviter totum fapale offidum est
= Trialogus, IV., 32; Supplementum venenosum ; deberet enim habere purum
Trialogi, c, 4, pp. 423, 447, 430. He offidum pastorale, et tanquam iniles prae-
carries out these thoughts even in ser- cipuus in acie spiritualis pugnae virtuose
mons — e.g., in Saints' Days Sermons, procedere, et posteris, ut faciant simpliciter
No. XLIV., on Matthew xxiv. s, where the (similiter?), exemplare. Sic enim fecit
subject is false prophets and false Mes- Christus in humilitate et passione, et non
siahs ; Omnes isti pseudo-papae ' veniunt in seculari dignitate vel ditatione. Et
in nomine Christi ' dicentes, se esse imme- haec ratio, quare praelati versi sunt in
diatos vicarios ejus, sic quod infinitum lupos, et capitaneus eorum sit diabolus
plus possunt de dispensatione quoad spi- vita et opere antichristus, etc. WycUffe
ritualia, quam alius Christianus. . . . even goes so far as to have no difficulty
Sed fundamentum taciturn stat in dona- in maintaining that no man upon earth is
tione Caesarea et concessione quadam better fitted to become Antichrist and
Constantina. Comp. Select Works, IL, vicar of Satan than the Roman Pontiff
p. 394. hitns^i,ut sit vicarius principalis Satanae
3 De Blasphemia, c. 1, fol. 117, col. 2 : et praecipuus antichristus, '^usthecscasehe
Videtur multis ex fide Scripturae et facto can easily deceive the Church with hypo-
Iiominum, quodin Curia romanasit radix crisy and every kind of lie. De Blasphemia,
hujus blasphemiae, quia homo peccati c. 3, fol. 126, col. i. The idea of Anti-
cintichristus insignis loquitur, quod sit christ becomes in the end so common with
summus Christi vicarius, in vita ei opere him that he uses the name as convertible
inter mortales sibi simillimus. Trialogus, without more ado with the name of the
IV. , 32, p. 359 ; Extollitur — super omne Pope. He speaks of legates a latere
quod dicitur Deus, quod declarat apostolus antichristi, and more in the same style —
competere antichristo, etc. De Apostasia, e.g.. Saints' Days Sermons, No. v., fol.
c. I, MS, 1343, fol. 37, col. i: If the Pope 8, col. 2: legates cum bullis misr sao
breaks his covenant [liga) by which he is latere antichristi.

1378-1384-] ANTICHRIST : THE MONASTIC ORDERS. 319
therefore, which is rendered to the Pope, appears to him to be an
idolatry, all the more detestable and blasphemous {plus detestanda
atque blasphema idolatria), because hereby Divine honour is given to
a hmb of Lucifer, who, because of his active wickedness, is a, more
abominable idol than a painted block, etc. '
The roughness and unmeasured tone of this polemic may have in
it, at first sight, something offensive. But we shall judge it raore
mildly if we remember that it was by no means a new
thought, one never heard of before in its special applica- language
tion to the Papacy, which AVycliffe now expressed. AVe ^" 'o pa e
point to the fact mentioned above that Gregory VII., as appears
from his collected letters, was accustomed to distinguish between
the ' Members of Christ ' and the ' IMembers of the Devil or of the
Antichrist.' Of course it was the enemies of his own aims and
designs whom Gregory looked upon as the raembers of Antichrist :
but it was only an application of the same thought from an opposite
standpoint, when the opposition party in the Church gave the
name of Antichrist to a holder of the Papal dignity himself And
this vvas what was done in high places in an instance lying close at
hand. The same cardinals who opposed theraselves to Urban VL,
before proceeding to the election of a rival Pope, issued a raanifesto
against Urban, wherein they roundly declared that Urban ought to
be called Antichrist rather than Pope. Is it to be wondered at if
AVycliffe foUowed in the footsteps of their eminences, and declared to
be the Antichrist, first the Pope set up by themselves, Clement VIL,
and afterwards Urban VI. , and finally the Popedom at large ? He
operated with ideas traditionally handed down to him, and he carried
the application of these to the highest place in Christendom, but
only under the pressure of conscience, and for the honour of Christ
as the only Head of the Church.
In setting forth the doctrine of AVycliffe regarding the Church, it
would be a serious omission not to include his thoughts on the subject
of the Monastic Orders.
AA^ycUffe's controversy with the Mendicant Orders takes so pro
minent a place in his writings, especially in the Trialogus, that it
became usual, even at an eariy period, to look upon controversy
this antagonism as one of the most distinctive features iri^^*^|t
of his thought and practical activity. In particular, oraers.
since the days of Anthony Wood and John Lewis,^ it has been
received as an established fact that Wycliffe put hiraself forward
' De Blasphemia, c. 2, fol. 123, col. 3. Lewis, History ofthe Life and Sufferings
' Wood, Antiquitates Oxonienses. of John Wiclif, 1820, p. 6.

320 wycliffe's theological system. [ch. vm. §ir
as the adversary ofthe Mendicant Friars as early as 1360, ie., at the
very commencement of his public career. Even Dr. Vaughan, to-
whom we are so much indebted for our knowledge of Wycliffe, con
cedes no more than this in his latest work upon his life — that no
documentary proof is to be found in the extant writings of AA''ycliffe
to show that he had at so early a date as 1360 engaged in any dis
cussion respecting these orders ; but, notwithstanding this admission,.
he still represents the raatter in such a raanner as to iraply that
AVycliffe, from the very comraencement of his work, appeared as
their opponent.' It was Professor Shirley who was the first to dis
cover that the prevailing assumption was groundless, and in fact
contradicted by one of AVycliffe's contemporaries. For a well-known
opponent of his, AViUiam AA^oodford, states expressly, that before he
drew upon himself the disapprobation of the Mendicants by his
erroneous teaching concerning the sacrament of the altar, he had
never meddled with them, but had afterwards often
its commence- made them the objects of his attacks.^ When Wood-
™*" ¦ ward adds that WycUffe's hostilities against the Friars
were therefore prompted by personal vexation, we may regard such
an imputation of motive as purely subjective on our informant's part,
without the weight of the facts which he gives as purely historical
being thereby at aU diminished. Shirley, therefore, takes at least a
first step towards a correction of the hitherto prevailing view, when
he pronounces the tradition to be a fable which relates that on the
death, in 1360, of Richard Fitzralph, the active Archbishop of
Armagh, AVycliffe inherited, so to speak, his spirit and work, and
took up and carried forward the conflict which he had so earnestly
urged against the Begging Orders. This correction, however, of
Shirley's, has not yet attracted so much attention as could be wished;
and Shirley himself, besides, with the materials at his coraraand, has
only been able to prove a negative in opposition to the tradition
hitherto received. A positive exposition of Wycliffe's whole mode of
thought and feeling on the subject of Monasticism can only be
furnished by means of those chief writings of Wycliffe which still
exist only in manuscript.
From these documents the following well-established results are
, obtained. As raatter of fact, there is no truth in the
Progress of '
¦w-yoiiffe's tradition that AVycliffe, from the very first, was in con
flict especially with the Mendicant Orders. On the
contrary, I find in his earlier writings evidence to show that to a
' -Vaughan's Monograph, p. 87. in his unprinted 72 Questiones de Sacra-
= Shirley, Fasc. Zizan., Introduction, mento Altaris, Qu. 50, dub. 7.
xiv. The passage of Woodford occurs

1378-13S4.] CONTROVERSY WITH THE MONKS. ¦ 321
certain extent he regarded them with raoral esteem and syin-
pathy. The same writings, on the other hand, are not free
from hostility against the endowed orders — e.g., the Benedictines.
At a later period, say from the year 1378, he began to attack the
former also in part, and finally, from 1381, he carried on against
them a systematic war. These three periods correspond to those
which have been pointed out in reference to Wycliffe's position
on the question of the Papacy. In the frst period, in writings
where he develops his 'Scriptural theology,' vvithout any applica
tion to Roman Catholic dogma, but rather around the central
idea of Dominium, and in which he is chiefly occupied with Tem
poralia, it is chiefly the endowed Monastic Orders that he keeps in
view. It was principaUy men belonging to these orders who stood
forward to oppose his views ; and of course he did not fail to meet
them with suitable rejoinders. For example, in his book. Of the
Truth of Holy Scripttire, which must have been written in 1378, I
find that AA'ycliffe speaks almost exclusively, or at rpue endowed
least mainly, of monks of these orders, as men vvho orders first
¦" . . attacked.
deny both in word and deed the doctrine of Scrip
ture, and are apostates from it. It is also only members of these
orders whom he speaks of as his personal opponents, who spare
neither trouble nor money to blacken him in the eyes of the Papal
Court, in order to obtain the Pope's condemnation of certain doc
trines which he has set forth. It is raanifest that the reference here
is to several of the nineteen propositions which vvere condemned in
1377 by the decree of Gregory XL' In other places also he names
as persons who derogate from the AVord of God and its authority
'the modern theologians,' 'the monks of the endowed orders'
{religiosi possessionaii), and ' the Canonists ' {sacerdotes causidici).^
In the enumeration of these three classes the Mendicants are con
spicuous by their absence. But this is not all. I find even language
which amounts to positive proof that AA^ycliffe at that time was inclined
to give a preference to the Rule of the Mendicants over that of the
endowed orders, as weU as over the religious and moral standing of
• De Veritate Scripturae Sac. , c. 20, fol. quam cartas proprias de dotatione in per-
63, col. 3 : Religiosi autem possessionaii, petuam elemosynam, laborarent forte in
nt defendant [inste&doideiending) in vita contrarium, etc,
et verbis legem Scripturae patenter aposta- ' lb., c. 20, fol. 63, col. 2 : Videtur,—
tant, cum laboribus et expensis laborant quod magis culpandi sunt nostri theologi,
ad Curiam romanam pro damnanda sen- nostri religiosi possessionaii, et nostri
tentia dicente, multas carias humanitus sacerdotes causidici, etc. Wychffe is wont
adin-aentas de hereditate perpetua esse im- to give this name, causidici, to the re-
possibiles. Et tamen Oxoniae tam publice verers of canonical law, whose spirit was
quamprocuratorie dicunt testamenta Deiet more juristic than theological, particularly
Ic^em Christi impossibilem et blasphemam. the advocates of Papal absolutism.
Quodsi legem Scripturae diligerent plus
22

322 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § n
the richer portion of the parochial clergy. In one passage he even
places Francis of Assisi with his mendicancy side by side with the
Apostles Peter and Paul with their handJabour, in opposition to
the worldly possessions and honours ofthe clergy of his time.' And
ih other places he expresses himself in such terms as to show that
he looks upon the Foundations both of Francis and Dominic as a
species of reformation of the Church, yea, as a thought inspired by
the Holy Ghost Himself. It is possible, however, he concedes, that
the Mendicants too may become degenerate and worldly like the rest.^
From 1378 we date a period of a few years in which Wycliffe
began to attack the Mendicants upon single points of error and abuse.
Beginningof But frora the year 1381, when he began to make a
*vrtth'°he°* definite application of his theological principles, and
Mendicants, especially of his Scripture principle, to the Roraan
Catholic dograatic systera in a critique of its doctrine of the Sacra
ments, and in particular of the dograa of Transubstantiation, not
only did his judgment respecting the Papacy becorae, as we have
seen, much more severe, but he also opened at the same time a
conflict with the Mendicant monks, which went on from that time
till his death with ever-increasing violence. It may well have been —
indeed, we cannot doubt — that Wycliffe vvas in some measure in
fluenced by the fact, that it was the Mendicants who charged him
with heresy for his doctrine of the Lord's Supper. But certainly
-this was not the sole occasion of the controversy. Manifestly another
co-operated in producing the effect, viz. , that Wycliffe had now come
to recognise in the Begging Friars the most zealous promoters of
Papal absolutism, and the most systematic defenders of errors and
abuses in the Church. Now it was that he reached the standpoint
which we have long been familiar with in the Trialogus. Whether it
is the scholastic system which he exposes in its nakedness {sophistae
fheologi), or the practical worldUness of the Church ; whether he has
to do with scientific ideas, or with life and manners — always it is
Grounds of against the new orders {sectae novellas), or the private
opposition, religions {religiones privatae), as he caUs the Mendicant
-Orders, in opposition to the religion of Christians in general, that he
' De Civili Dominio, IIL, 23, fol. 200, faith is plainly not of the right sort. Such
¦col. I ; Veritas ¦ quain saepe inculcavi, a man has no fancy to go a-fishing with
scilicet quod status religiosorumviventium Peter, nor to make tents with Paul, nee
.secundum paupertatem evangelicam est mendicare cum Francisco. There is only
perjectissimus in ecclesia sancta Dei. Ib. one thing that troubles him — that he is
IL, 13, fol. 208, coL I. In this latter not ruler of the world like Augustus.
place he speaks of such an one who is = lb., Iii.„2, fol. 7, col. .2 : Necesse fuit
utterly disincUned to give up worldly, , Spiritum S. fratres de ordine Dominici
power and splendour for the sake of '- et Francisci statuere ad aedificationem
Christ, and maintains that such a man's ecclesiae, etc. Comp. c. i, fol. 3, col. i.

137S-13S4.] ATTACK ON MENDICANT ORDERS. 323
deals his blows. Not only in passages where he censures the pro-
•ceedings of the Friars themselves, or the vices which attached
specially to their monasteries, but also in places where he blames the
usurpations of the Papacy, the sins of the clergy, and the theological
errors of his tirae, all concentrates itself in a violent invective against
the Begging Orders. These appeared to him in that age nearly in
the sarae light as that in which we regard the order of the Jesuits of
the present day — as the raost ready instruments of Papal despotism,
the promoters of an anti-scriptural theology, etc. But, instead of
following his controversy with them through its various phases, let a
single point be here mentioned, which is significant of the evil opinion
which AA'ycliffe had formed of them as a body. He sees in Cain the
Bible original of the four Mendicant Orders, and he is of opinion
that when the blood of Abel cried from the earth to heaven for
vengeance on the fratricide, that heinous deed was a type of the
wickedness of these fraternities. This somewhat odd ,
An acrostic.
thought is connected with a certain play upon the
letters ofthe name Caim (so written instead of Cain), viz., that these
four letters are the initials of the names of the four Orders — the
Carmelites, the Augustinians, the Jacobites or Dominicans, and the
Minorites or Franciscans.'
AA'ycliffe, however, did not allow himself to be carried away so far
by his controversy with the Begging Friars as to see in thera nothing
but error and wickedness, and to expect frora them only j^ striking pre-
what was evil in all tirae to come. On the contrary, aiotion.
he raakes the foUowing explicit declaration : — ' I anticipate that some
of the friars whom God shall be pleased to enlighten will return
with all devotion to the original religion of Christ, wiU lay aside their
unfaithfulness, and with the consent of Antichrist, offered or solicited,
-will freely return to priraitive truth, and then build up the Church, as
Paul did before them.' " This thought of Wycliffe was an uncon-
' Trialogus, IV., c. 33, p. 362. Comp. of St. Jacques. The fastening of the
.Supplementum Trialogi, c. 8, p. 444. name upon them as a mark of Cain was
De Officio Pastorali, IL, c. 16, castra very ih taken by the monastic orders and
Cainitica. Hence the name he gives to their friends, which it would be easy to
,the mendicant monks at large, Cainitae, prove from -Woodford and Walsingham,
in Suppl. Trial. , c. 6, p. 437, and to the if it were worth the pains.
whole institution — Caymitica Institutio; ' lb,, IV., 30, p. 349: Suppono autem.
Trial,, IV., 17, p. 306. In his English quod aliqui fratres, quos Deus dig-
,tracts, Wycliffe calls the cloisters of the natur docere, ad religionem primaevavi
,begging monks ' Cain's castles ' — e.g. , Christi devotius convertentur, et relicta
The Church and lier Members, c. 5, Select sua perfidia, sive obtenta sive petita anti-
Works, III., 348 ; &nd Fifty Heresies and christi licentia, redibunt libere ad re-
Errors of Friars, c. 2, p. 368. The ligionem Christi primaevam, et tunc
name yiZ£-o*;^^,rfor the Dominicans sprang aedificabunt ecclesiam sicut Paulus, A
from the circumstance that their first similar but much vaguer expression I find
monastery in Paris stood near the gate in the treatise De Apostasia, c. 2, fol. 51,

324 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [cH.vm.gir
scious prophecy of the Reformation. For let us remember that not
only Luther himself was an Augustinian, but that a number of his
most active fellow-workers belonged to houses of that order ; ' that
Eberlin of Giinzburg, and Francis Lambert of Avignon, were Fran
ciscans ; that the other Mendicant Orders in like manner contributed
no unimportant promoters of the work; while the last prophet of
Reformation was the Dominican, Savonarola.^ Let us further keep
in view that the founders ofthe Reformation, Luther himself before
all, owed their evangelical insight, in the main, not to themselves,
and not to others, but as a matter of fact to God Himself; and that
their own personal enlightenment and conversion led the way to, and
qualified thera for, the task of renovating the Church. Let us alsO'
reflect on the fact that the Reforraers of the sixteenth century, raore
or less consciously, aimed at nothing else but the restoration of primi
tive apostolic Christianity; and that in the person of Luther especially,
the Pauline spirit revived and worked out not only a purification of
the Church, and an effectual edification of it, but also its elevation
to a higher level of faith and life. Taking all this together, and
comparing it with that presentiment of AVycUffe, we cannot fail to
see in the Reformation a remarkable fulfilment of what he presaged ;
and we have no difficulty, in view of the promise of Christ, that the
Holy Spirit would show His servants things which were to come
(John xvi. 13), in regarding the above declaration of AVycliffe as ai
prophecy, the like of which the history of Christ's Church has many
raore to show. True, indeed, the fulfilment in more than one
particular went beyond AVycliffe's personal and conscious thought,
when he penned those words ; in particular, his siait Paulus was no-
doubt far more fully realized in the Reformation than the writer had
ever imagined. But that such a prophetic presentiment of the Refor
mation fruits which were to spring from the bosom of the Mendicant
Orders should have come from the pen of so determined- -and
implacable an enemy of these Orders, was a fact all the raore
astonishing and remarkable.3
col. I : Si.— placet benefacere istis sectis. New Testament, was an 'Augustinianv
tribuetur eis abscondite seorsum elemosyna, Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials. Oxford,,
ut dissolvantur colligationes impietatis, et 1832, L, 2, p. 34.
reducantur ad perfectionem 7'eligionis ^ Comp. Leopold Ranke, Deutsche
primaevae. Geschichte in Zeitalter der Reformatnm,
' Comp. C. A. Cornelius, On the Co- II, , 66.
operation in Reformation Efforts of the 3 Neander was the first to call attention
Augustinians in tlie Netherlands, the to this passage, as a prediction that the-
Lower Rhineland, and Westphalia ; Ges- Reformation would proceed from the
chichte des Miinsterisclien Aiifruhrs, i^SSt Mendicant Orders. Bbhringer, Wycliffe,
I., 33. Friar Barnes in London, also, p. 368, and Oscar Jager, John Wieliffe,
from whom, in 1328, two Wycliffites out Halle, 1834, p. 37, have observed, in op-
of Essex purchased a printed EngUsh position to Neander's view and my own,.

1372—1384.]

CHURCH REFORM.

325

This is perhaps no unsuitable place to add something touching
AVycliffe's views in other parts of his works on the necessity and
means of a reformation of the Church. He declares in many
places that such a reformation is a pressing and indis- -wyoiiffe on
pensable necessity. And upon what ground ? Because °^'"°''-^®*°™-
the Church as she is is not what she ought to be. For the Church
is departed from the Institution and the AVord of Christ — frora the
Bible — is corrupted frora its original condition in apostolic times. '
If we inquire into the view he took of the historical course through
which the Church passed in its progress of corruption, it must, on
the one hand, be confessed that in many particulars of the subject he
thinks unhistorically, e.g., when he traces back the whole secularisa
tion of the Church exclusively to Constantine the Great — a notion
which he shares, indeed, with Dante and other enUghtened minds
of his century. But, on the other hand, he accurately discerns that
the corruption and depravation of Christianity came in quite gradually,
and progressed step by step. In answer to the plea of .a false con
servatism that the Church from time immemorial had stood in the

e.\-pressed in Zeitschrift fur historisclie
Theologie, 1833, p. 452, that this is
going too far. But if, as Jager himself
admits, we see ' in Wycliffe's whole per
sonality a comprehensive fact-prophecy of
the Reformation,' is there anything im
possible or even improbable in the idea
that there should have been also a word-
prophecy of it? And if Wycliffe says no
more than / suppose, and not / prophesy,
does it follow that there is no question
here of prophecy at all?
' It cannot be attempted to bring
together all the passages in which Wycliffe
has given expression to these views.
A few may suffice, instar omnium. Be
ginning with external matters, it is to such
he refers when, in the Liber Mandatorum,
c. 8, fol. 108, col. I, he says that the stiff
demand of the Church for its temporahties
far oversteps the example of the primitive
Church [ultra exemplum p~imitivae eccle
siae). The .Apostolical Church, that
Church of martyrs, was also a Church of
poor confessors [ecclesia pauperum con
fessorum), but on that very account it did
a much greater work than the richly-
endowed Church of later times. De Civili
Dominio, IIL, c. 22, fol. 193, col. i. That
Wycliffe, in the matter of worship, affirmed
thatthe Church had departed from ancient
usage, to which the use of so many
images and saints was unknown, has
been already noticed above, vide p. 296.
The hierarchical despotism to which the
Popes had reached, he paints in the

strongest colours. De Officio Regis, 0. 7,
fol. 37, col. 3. But not only in life, but
in doctrine also, has this departure taken
place from the Word of God and the true
Christian standard, and it is here that he
lays the main stress. Saints' Days Ser
mons, XXL, fol. 41, col. 4 : At the time
of the first advent of Christ the synagogue
was manifestly corrupt. Scriptural doc
trine was hidden away or perverted —
human traditions multiplied, etc. At
His second advent the antichrist will be
still more deeply and manifoldly apostate.
But the priests and Pharisees of the Old
Testament were more excusable than the
Romish Chin-ch — non enim tantum a lege
Mosaica declinaverant, quantum nostri
prelati declinant tam vita quam scientia
a lege et regula Christiana. They de
ceive others, indeed, and themselves by
assuming that they are the Holy Church
to which Christ has promised that it shall
endure to the end. But in the Old Testa
ment times men had indulged in like
false confidences. ' The temple of the
Lord are these ' (Jeremiah vii. 4). But the
principal cause of this falling away from
true Christianity lies here, as Wyclifi'e
sets forth in De Veritate Scripturae Sac. ,
c. 29, fol. loi, col. 4, that men have set
aside the one only Lord and Master, and
have given heed to many other masters
who are opposite to Christ— that the
corrupt traditions of men have been
followed, and riot the gospel of Jesus
Christ.

326 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § n
faith which the Church of Rome teaches, and that therefore it is
heresy and impiety to depart from this religion,' he points not only
to the earUer Roraan Church,^ but goes much farther back, and lays
down the principle that the errors of the present age ought not to be
measured by the nearest and latest error which has received Church
approval, but by the institution and life of Christ as the primary
standard. Men would then perceive immediately how far our priests-
depart from the first rule or measure, in their law and life and preach
ing of the gospel.3 Considering the whole subject broadly, notwith
standing the fact that the secularisation of the Church had begun
The two through the alleged Donation of Constantine, the first
miUenmums. ^JJQ^sJ^^d years of Church history appear to hira as the
raillenniura of Christ {millenarium Christi) ; but from that date
Satan was let loose, and a millennium of lies set in {millenariu7n men
dacii).* WycUffe, moreover, is persuaded that upon the inclined
plane on which Christianity now finds itself, it will descend lower
StiU, even to the deepest point. ' The Antichrist (here the personal
Antichrist himself) will not come before the law of Christ is cast
away avowedly as well as in secret.' s StiU, even here, contemplating
the deepest and latest apostacy, God's AVord stands out clearly
before his mind, not only as the measure of the Church's faU, but
also as the principal raeans of her restoration.
If now we further inquire what vvere AVycliffe's thoughts touching
the raeans by which a reformation of the Church was to be
Methods of brought to pass, it follows, from what has already beeru
reform. stated, that this reformation, according to his ideas,,
could only be, on the one hand, a purification of the Church from
^ Saints' Days Sermons, No. XL., fol. antichristi cum sectis suis — nam par tan-
8, col. 4. tum temporis et amplius diabolus est
2 Prior Romana ecclesia, cui magis solutus. In the Trialogus, the period
debemus credere, XXIV. Sermons, No. when the devil was set loose is assumed
I., fol. 128, col, 4. He refers here to the to be well known — almqst as much so as
eleventh in comparison with the twelfth an established chronological fact, e.g. , b.,
and fourteenth centuries. III., c. 7, p. 133 ; c. 31, p. 240 ; b. IV., c.
3 Saints' Days Sermons, No. XXL, fol. 2 and 33, pp. 249, 362 : Ante solutionem
65, col. 2: 'Becausethe Antichristisaware Satanae, post solutionem Satanae, etc.
of the great importance of the institution This apocalyptic view was everywhere
of Christ, he has managed that it should prevalent in the Middle Age. To quote
be departed from only gradually, but only one document in illustration of tliis
craftily ; and under his blinding influence, fact, I refer to the letter from Liege,,
worldly-minded people have been thus which was addressed to Paschalis II.,
led to look upon errors which were still diiring the Investiture controversy. There
not excessive, as of no consequence, or as the same thought occurs more than once-
no errors at all. ' — Satan is loose, and has great wrath —
4 XXII '. Sermons, No. i, fol. 130, col. Saianas solutus , . . jam divisit regnum
i: Aliter errarent tam ecclesia quam et sacerdotium.
doctores de millenario Christi, qui sic ^ De Veritate Scripturae Sac, , c. t^, io\^
esse credendum docuerant. Saints' Days 45, col. 2 : Antichristus non veniet ante-
Sermons, No. XL., fol. 80, col. 4: Istis quam lex Christi sic dissipata tam in-
diicentis annis et amplius fuit cursus talis tellectu quam affectu.

i37=-i384.] CHURCH ENDOWMENTS. 327
the errors and abuses which had invaded her, and, on the other hand,
a restoration of primitive Christianity in its purity and perfection.-'
Now, as AA''ycliffe, along with many true Christians of that century,
regarded the secularisation of the Church as its worst evil, and saw
this secularisation chiefly in the worldly possessions of the Church,
so it seemed to him that the raost indispensable raeans of reform,
and, as he hoped, the richest in blessing, would be the unburdening
of the Church of her worldly goods and property.
Innumerable times, and almost from every conceivable point of
view, AA'ycliffe returns to this thought, either in the form of calling
for the withdrawal and secularisation of the Church's
1 .,,,,. . , „ „ Seoularisation
endowments, if need be by force, or in the forra of of ohuroh
, . ..,,,., revenues. ¦
suggesting a voluntary renunciation by the bishops,
abbots, and others, of all their worldly dignities and possessions, in
conformity with the exaraple of Christ and the standard of His
AA^ord.^ It is due to truth that we should express frankly our convic
tion that in this thought AA'ycliffe deceived hiraself. AVe share with
him, indeed, the belief which he expresses in these words : ' It is
impossible that the Lord should forsake His priest, or suffer him to
want for food or clothing ; and therewith, according to the apostles'
rule (i Timothy vL 8), should he be contept.' But Wycliffe was un
questionably mistaken when he so confidently assumed that the
single external measure of a secularisation of the Church's endow
ments would result in the return of the clergy and the Church at
large to the Christianity of the apostles. That was not only a too
sanguine hope, resting upon notions all too ideal, but it proceeded
from a reformation zeal which was over-hasty and deficient in depth
of insight. It seeras never to have occurred to Wycliffe that by the
dissolution of monasteries and the calling in of Church property the
selfishness of Christendom would be awakened, passions stirred, and
pious endowments alienated from their original objects.
' De Blasphemia, c. i, fol. 118, col. 4 : Pastorali, IL, 11, p. 43 ; Trialogus, IV..
Purgatio gloriosa ecclesiae ab antiqua 28, p. 310 ; Dialogus, c. 34, fol. 159, col.
blasphemia, etc. De Ecclesia et membris 2 : Si autem ipsi episcopi . . . et alii
ejus, ed. Todd, c. 6, p. xli. : Purging of dotati praepositi conciperent in hoc vitam
the chirclie. De Civili Dominio, ill., 22, ct legem Christi, et sic gratis renunciarent
fol. 193, col. 2 : Ecclesiae ad primam omnibus m.undanis dominiis, foret illis
perfectionem restitutio. De Ecclesia, c. 3, magis meritorium et gloriosior triumphus
fol. 13s, col. I : Corrcctio nostra secundum ecclesiae militantis super diabolum et alia
statum primaruum. membra sua. The whole tractate De
= A single passage for a thousand may Officio Pastorali turns in Uke manner
here find a place. In the Saints' Days upon the thought that it would be more
Sermons, No. xxxvi., fol. 72, col. 4, wholesome for the parish clergy, and, at
Wycliffe says : Medicina necessaria ad the same time, quite sufficient for their
extinguendum venenum diaboli foret, worldly comfort, to Uve upon the voluntary
totum clerum exproprielarium facere, et gifts of their congregations ; food and
ordinationem Christi quoad suam eccle- clothing would not be wanting to them.
siam innffvare, etc. Comp. De Officio

328 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch.viii, §ir
In order to have a full knowledge of AVycliffe's idea of Church
reform, we must direct our attention also to the personal question,
¦Who are to be ' Who Can, and should undertake the reform ? ' To
the reformers? this question he replies, 'Everyone can do something
to help in it. Some should help by declaring reasons for it taken
out of God's Word ; others should help by worldly power, such as
the earthly lords whom God has ordained ; and all raen should help
by good lives and good prayers to God, for in Him is to be found
help against the wiles of the wicked fiend : so should Popes, bishops,
and begging monks give help in this work by reforming themselves.' '
He assigned no small share in the work, as already indicated, to
earthly princes and lords, or, in one word, to the State. He main
tains that worldly lords have not only power to take away the
Church's temporalities when she is habitually at fault {habitualiter
delinquente), but that they are even bound to do it.= Wycliffe, indeed,
raeans by this that the Church and cloister endowraents should be
applied to other pious uses, especially to the relief of poverty. He
holds it, therefore, to be advisable that the king should call a synod,
in order to proceed in the matter with the aid of its advice, in a
manner most suitable to the object in view. 3 And not only does he
hold that princes and lords have authority to withdraw monastic and
Church endowments and to dissolve monasteries,'! but he believes
that it is their duty also to deprive clerics of their office who, in a
spirit of worldliness, have estranged themselves from the pure
religion of Christ.s And how much in earnest he was in the opinion
that princes and lords are not only empowered to adopt such mea
sures, but are even bound in duty to have recourse to them, in virtue
of the obligation laid upon them to protect the Church and their own
subjects, appears frora the raanifold calls which he raakes upon thera
to take action, and especiaUy from the fact that he
Bestralnts on .,,,., , . , . „ ,
secular charges them with blindness and indifference to the
espo ism. (;^J^^J(.J^'s interests ; that they in truth are chiefly to blame
that the wholesome reform of the Church is so long delayed.* StUl,
' The Church and lier Members, ch. hatur elemosyna regis nostri in alios pios
6; Select English Works, IIL, 351. usus, non oportet currere Romam ad.
^ Trialogus, i-v., zS, p. -^it : Nos autem habendum consensum sui pontificis . . .
dicimus illis, quod nedum possunt auferre ne tamen illud fiat indiscrete, congreganda
temporalia ab ecclesia habitualiter delin- est synodus auctoritate regis, etc.
quente, nee solum quod licet illis hoc facere, 4 7,5. ^ i^^, col. 2 : Claustrorum dissi-
sed quod debent, etc. De Civili Dominio, patio . . . posset verisimilius esse eorum
c. 22, fol. 183, col. 2 ; Licet dominis (claustralium) correctio, etc.
temporalibus auferre a religiosis (monks) 5 lb., c. 19, fol. 163, col. i : Expediens
collaias elemosinas progenitorum suorum est . . . seculares dominos auferre a
[i.e. , endowments) iu casu quo habitualiter clericis onus ministerii hujusmodi, si vi-
eis abusi fuerint. derint eos a religione Christi aversos, etc.
3 De Civili Dominio, IIL, 22, fol. 196, ^ De Simonia, c. 3, fol. 21, col. i : Nee
-col. 2: Si . . . sit rationabile, ut retra- dubium, qui caecus torpor dominorum

1372-1384.] CHURCH AND STATE. 329
-on the other hand, he desires to prescribe certain limitations, as a bar
against despotism and arbitrary power. He lays it down as an express
principle that no priest or cleric should be subjected to punishment
by the secular arm in the shape of the loss of his endowments,
except by full authority of the Church, when his ecclesiastical
: superior faUs in his duty, and only in case of his having faUen away
from the true faith.' If the clergy would do their duty by brotherly
punishment and censure, the need of chastisement by the secular arm
-could be entirely dispensed with.'^ On the other hand, when Church
men are notoriously delinquent, it would be a sin to defend tiiem,
especially against pious princes, when they, in the exercise of their
catholic duty, apply coercion to them in a way in which prelates have
no power to do.3
This view of the right and the duty of princes, to proceed in cer
tain circumstances against clerics with- pains and penalties — not in
. consequence of any civil offences, but for unfaithfulness church and
to their ecclesiastical office and for departure from the state.
faith — is sufficient of itself to show that AVycliffe was no adherent
of the Romish view of the relation between Church and State. But
it is in other ways unmistakable that he is already under the in
fluence of the raodern idea of the State, as this began to develop
itself since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. -^ Not only so, he
secularium sit in causa, quare tam Omnis rex dominat-ur super toto regno
gloriosus fructus et emendatio ecclesiae suo ; omnis clericus regis legius (vassal or
retardatur. In the Saints' Days Sennons, liege) cum tota possessione sua est pars
fol. 117, col. 2, the Fifty-sixth closes with regni; ergo dominatur super omnibus
the wish, ' O that kings would wake up istis. Secondly, The way in which
and shake off this faithlessness of the anti- Wycliffe sets forth the dignity of the king
Christ, and in divine things take the sense as derived immediately from God, and as
of Scripture pure and undefiled ! ' independent of the Church, and even of
' De Civili Dominio, II. , 8, fol. 177, the Papacy. The governing power of
col. 2 : Nullus sacerdos vel clericus debet the king is conferred by God, and ac-
per coactam ablationem bonorum corripi knowledged by the people. De Officio
per brachium secutare, nisi auctoritate Regis, as a'oove, fol. 176. col. 3 : Rex, in
ecclesiae, in defectu spiritualis praepositi, quantum hujusmodi, habet privilegium
et casu quo fuerit a fide devius. concessum a Deo et acceptum a populo ad
' lb., fol. 178, col. 2. regnandum. The king, therefore, is a
3 lb., I., 39, fol. 93, col. 2 : Et quum vicar of God, as good as the Pope, who
notabiliter delinquunl, peccatum esset ipsos should exhibit divine justice in his actions ;
, defendere, specialiter contra pios principes ista exemplaris justitia in Deo, debet esse
catholice coercentes, qualiter praelati non exemplar cuilibet ejus vicario tam papae
suffidunt. quamregi, etc. Rex enim est Dei vicarius.
1 I bring into view here two particulars This is properly the basis of thought in
 ^grstj The way in which Wycliffe em- this whole book. In connection with
phasises the inherent rights of the crown, this subject, "Wycliffe more than once
according to which the claim of the Pope supports himself upon a thought of
to the first fruits of a prelacy, and also Augustine, Ejiist. 185, according to which
the pretended exemption of the clergy in a king is a representative of Gud, but a
their person and property from the king's bishop a representative of Christ. T-ria-
jurisdiction, are both irreconcilable with logus, IV., 13, p. 297 ; Saints' Days Ser-
the inteo-ritas regaliae regis nostri. De mons, No. XL,, fol. 81. col. 4, in the
Fcclesia, c. 13, fol. 176, col. 2. Comp. latter of which two places episcopus is the
De Officio Regis, c, 4, fol. 13, col. 2 : word used, in the ionxiex- papa. Comp.

330 wycliffe's theological system. [ch. viii. §11
has in his mind an ideal of the State ; and that is the ' Evangelical-
State ' — which he evidently figures to himself as a commonwealth or
commune, in which not rigid right and private property, but love is
in the ascendant, and all things are in comraon '¦ — an idea which
cannot be absolved from the charge of sanguine idealisation.
But besides the State, AVycliffe assigns to all true evangelically
minded Christians an important part in bringing about that reform of
Co-operation of the Church which vvas so urgently needed, and so much
au Christians, j^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ -g^ ^^^^ helpers he means the 'men of
the Gospel ' {viri evangelici ) — the ' evangelical doctors ' — or the
' apostolic men,' as he also calls thera. These are the raen on whora
he places his reliance. He is well aware what a single raan, if true
and steadfast, can accomplish. But he also bethinks hiraself of
the povver which lies in united forces, and therefore he requires of
evangelical men, that when locally separated they should in will and
action stand together as one man, and steadfastly defend the word of
Christ which they have among them.^ His language sounds, in fact,,
like the trumpet call of a leader who is collecting a party, and leading
them in closed ranks into the battle. And AVycUffe in truth has the
The spirit of consciousness of being such a leader in the struggle for
a leader. Church reform. Indeed, in an iraportant passage of
the Appendix to the Trialogus, now first published, he acknowledges
De Blasphemia, c. 7, fol. 140, col. 3. As yet along with this, and in the second
a fruit of the contest between Church and line, in relation to temporal things. But
State, which went on from the end of the each jurisdiction must lay hold of the-
thirteenth centurybetween Boniface -VIII. other and render it support. As the
and Philip the Fair, we especially must Church has two estates, clergy and laity
regardthejudgment expressed by Wycliffe — so to say soul and body — so she bas
in Liber Mandatorum, c. 26, fol. 203, col. two sorts of censure and discipline —
2, in the following terms : — The king in spiritual, in the shape of admonition ;,
temporal things stands above the Pope, corporeal, in the shape of compulsion ;,
and therefore the Pope must acknow- of which the former takes effect by the
ledge him as in this respect the higher preaching of the law of Christ and.
upon earth, though in spiritual things the conviction of reason, and belongs to-
Pope has the superiority : Rex autem est the doctors and priests of Christ, while-
in temporalibus supra papam ; , . . ideo the latter takes effect by the deprivationi
quoad istud oportet papam superiorem in of the gifts of nature and temporal,
terris cognoscere, licet in spiritualibus goods, and is exercised in the hands of
antecellat. Wychffe defines the relation the laity. De Civili Dominio, IL, 8, fol.
between Church and State, between tem- 178, col. i ; fol. 179, col. i.
poral and spiritual government, sharply ' De Civili Dominio, II. , 16, fol. 233,
and clearly, as follows : — Secular princes col. 2 : Tunc necessitaretur respublica
govern their subjects directly and imme- redire ad politiam evangelicam, liabens-
diately in reference to the body and tem- omnia in communi.
poral goods, but only mediately, or in ^ Saints' Days Sermons, No. XXXL,
the second line [accessorie), in relation to fol. 63, col. 2 : Viri quidem evangelici
the soul, which latter interest, however, in debent in voluntate et in conversatione-
the order of the two objects or ends of tanquam vir unus concurrere, quanquam
government, should be the first. On the loco distiterint (MS. destituerint), et legem
other hand, the priests of Christ exercise Christi sibi praesentis constanter defendere
government chiefly and directly in rela- Doctores evangelici, De Civili Dominio.
tion to spiritual gifts, e.g., the virtues ; iiL, 19, fol. 163, col. 1.

1.372-13S4] devotion to CHRIST'S CAUSE. 33I
quite openly that he has formed the design ' to lead back the Church
to the ordinance of Christ, and pure conformity to His AVord.' ' Nor
does he conceal from himself that in such an undertaking he will
meet with the most violent opposition, and perhaps wiU encounter a
martyr's death ; for not alone Antichrist (the Pope) and his disciples,
but the devil himself and all his evil angels are fuU of hate against the
institution of Christ having an)- place on the earth.' A thought which is
by no means an isolated one in his writings, and which vividly reminds-
us of Luther, vvho knows himself to be constantly in conflict with the-
vvicked fiend. But in view of this mighty and imminent battle,
A\''ycliffe is strong and of good courage, not only because he can
depend on the good corarades who have hitherto stood side by side
with hira in God's cause, and will, he believes, abide by him to the
end, having nothing in comraon with apostates,3 but chiefly in the
firra assurance that it is God's cause and Christ's cross prepared for
for which he is contending, and that God's cause in martyrdom.
the end must ahvays carry off the victory. ' O that God,' he ex
claims in one place, 'would give me a docile heart, persevering
steadfastness, and love to Christ, to His Church, and to the members
of the devil vvho are rending that Church asunder, that I raight out
of pure brotherly love encounter thera {ipsa corripiam). What a
glorious cause is this for me in which to end the present miserable
life ! For this same vvas the cause of the martyr-death of Christ.' "^
And in another passage, which has long been well known, he says :
' I ara assured that the truth of the Gospel may indeed for a time be
trampled upon in particular places, and may for a while Assured of
abide in silence, through the menaces of Antichrist ; but ^"^^ success.
extinguished it can never be, for the Truth Himself says, " Heaven
and earth shall pass away, but My words shall never pass away." ' s
' Supplementum Trialogi, c. 8, p. 447 : usque in finem assistent, quia nihil illis et
Tunc foret facilius . . . errores corrigere, dictis apostatis,
et statum ecclesiae ad ordinationem Christi * De Veritate Scripturae Sac. , c. 23, fol.
pure secundum legem suam reducere, quod 78, col. i : O si Deus dederit mihi cor
attendere desidero. Comp. Dialogus, c. docile, perseverantem constantiam et cari-
18 : Intendimus purgationem et pe-ifec- tatem ad Christum, ad ejus ecclesiam et
tionem cleri, quam scimus non stare in ad membra diaboli ecclesiam Christi
multitudine personarum, sed in obser- laniantia,ut pura caritate ipsacorripiamJ
vantia status, quem Christus instituit. Quamgloriosa causa foret mihi praesentem
= Hoc tentans pro parte Christi habebit miseriam finiendi I Haec enim fuit
plurimos adversantes, quia non solum causa martyrii Christi. Comp. the beau-
antichristum et omnes ejus discipulos, sed tiful conclusion of Book IL De Civili
ipsum diabolum et omnes suos angelos, qui Dominio, c, 18, fol. 251, col. 2 : Concedat
summe odiunt, quod Christi ordinatio stet Deus nobis clericis arma apostolorum et
in terris : Saints' Days Sermons, ^o. III., patientiam martyrum, ut possimus in
fol. 6, col. I. i>ono (the evil with good) vincere ad-oer-
3 De Apostasia, c, 2, fol. 32, col. i : sarios crucis Christi I Amen.
Confido de bonis sociis, qui mihi confi- S Trialogus, IV., 4, p. 258. Comp.
denter in causa Dei astiterant, quod . . . Dialogus, c. 23, fol. 156, col. i : Dicam:

332 wycliffe's theological system. [ch.viii. §12
But in tJie last resort his hope for the accomplishment of the
necessary reformation of the Church rests upon the help of God
His help in and the workings of His grace. However true and
'^°*' steadfast believing men may be to God's cause, God
alone has power to awaken and to enUghten men for this work, and
-with Him alone stands our help against the coming of the evil one.'
It is for this reason that he even concedes the possibUity that the
reformation of the Church, for which he so earnestly longs and con
fidently hopes, raay be brought to pass in ways of which he has no
conception, and by a , miracle of God, with whom is no respect of
persons, for araong every people and in every land he who loves
Him is accepted of Him.^ These last words sound almost Uke a
far-off presentiment of the event, that the decisive battle of souls for
the reform of the Church of Christ would be fought out in another
land than his own, and in the midst of another people. At all events,
AVycliffe is conscious that the fulfilment of his dearest hope is for
himself a mystery, and will come to pass in the end only by a miracle
of God's power.
Taking all this into one view — what Wycliffe thought and said of
the necessity of a reformation, of the ways and means by which it
' sehnauoht was to be effected, and of the personalities by whora it
und Drang." .^^^ (.q ^g introduced — it is irapossible for us not to
receive this as our total irapression — that his soul is full of longing
and pressure after a God-pleasing restoration of the Church's purity ;
the vision of it is continually before his eyes, for t'tiis he enlists his
whole powers — for this, if it should be God's will, he is resolved to
endure persecution and even a martyr's death. It cannot, therefore,
admit of a doubt that Wycliffe vvas a Church reformer of the true
evangelical type. 12.— Doctrine of the Sacraments.
Of the doctrinal system of AVycliffe, there still remains for us to
examine that chief head wherein he placed himself in strongest
ergo islam sententiam pro bono papae atque " Ib. (one of Wycliffe's latest writings),
ecclesiae, et si occisio vel alia poena inm c. i, fol. i2o, col. 4 : Ideo videtur tutius
eveniat, rogo Deum meum dare virtute a generatione ista saltem in mente aufugere
.ad constanteret humiliter patiendum. et ad protectionem Christi confugere, relin-
^ De Blasphemia, c. 1, fol. 119, col. i : quendo destructionem antichristi cum suis
Verum potens est Deus itluminare et ex- satrapis Dei miraculo. Scimus quidem,
eitare mentes paucorum fidelium, qui quod oportet, utviis nobis absconditis istud
eonstanter detegant et moneant, si digni eveniat ; sed scimus, quod personarum
sumus, ad destructionem hujus versutiae acceptio non est apud Deum, sed in omni
antichristi. Sic enim incipiendo afemina gente vel loco, qui ipsum dilexerit, acceptus
convertii per paucos apostolos totum mun- est illi.
dum.

1378-1384.] THE SACRAMENTS. 333,
opposition to the teaching of the Church of Rome— namely, the
doctrine of the Lord's Supper and of the Sacraments generally. A\'e
shall, however, handle the doctrine of the other sacraments with com
parative brevity, because we are able to refer upon this subject to the
full and satisfactory treatment which it has received from Lewald.'
Several points, however, need more precise definition and some
degree of correction. I. Of ihe Sacraments in general.
Here the three following questions come under consideration : — ¦
I. AVhat is the notion and nature ofa sacrament? 2. AVhat are the
several sacraments? or, in other words, how many sacraments are
there? 3. AATiat view is to be taken of the efficacy of the sacra
ments ?
AA'ith regard (i) to the notion ofa sacraraent, it is to be premised
that AA'ycliffe has devoted the first half of the fourth book of the
Trialogus to the doctrine of the sacraments, in the first chapter of
which he treats of the sacraments in general, and especially of the
notion of a sacrament.
He sets out from the generic idea of the sign ; a sacrament is a
sign ; to every sign there corresponds a thing signified, the object of
which the former is a sign. But this, as AVycliffe him- s^^raments as
self allows, is so general an idea, that it must be said that signs.
everything which exists is a sign ; for every creature is a sign of the
Creator, as smoke is a sign of fire. God Hiraself is also a sign —
viz., of everything which can be naraed ; for He is the book of life,
wherein everything that can be named is inscribed (an allusion to
the doctrine of the ideas of all things in God). This generic notion
of a sign, therefore, is too general. WycUffe accordingly advances to
a more precise definition of the notion — a sacrament is a sign of a
holy thing.'^ But this definition also appears to our Thinker to be too
wide, for every creature is a sign of the Creator and of its creation —
therefore a sign of a holy thing. If we advance still further, and
define a sacrament with yet more precision as ' the visible form of an
invisible grace,' so that the sacrament bears in itself a resemblance
to, and becomes a cause of the grace, even this definition appears to
WycUffe to allow of every possible thing being caUed a sacrament ;
for every creature perceptible by the senses is the visible appearance
of the invisible grace of the Creator, carries in itself a resemblance
^ Vide Zeitschrift fiir historische Theo- sacrae rei signum: invisibilis gratiae
logic, 1847, pp. 597-636. visibilis forma, ut similitudinem gerat et
" Trialogus,Vf.,c. 1,^. 2^: Signum; causa existat.

334 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. viil § 12
to the ideas embodied in it, and is the cause of their resemblance and
of the knowledge of the Creator (who is known to raan frora the
creaturej. Here we find again those raetaphysical ideas which lie at
the foundation of all Wycliffe's thoughts and views of God and the
world. 2. From what he has observed regarding the idea of the sacra
ment results, of itself, his judgment concerning the number of the
sacraments. The sacramental idea, according to his
more than view, is much too wide to allow of his conceding that
only the so-called seven sacraments are really such. In
other words, Wycliffe holds that there are raore than seven sacra
ments.' He thinks, e.g., that the preaching ofthe Divine Word is as
truly a sacraraent as any one of those seven well-known actions. He
makes it clearly understood that he looks upon it as an arbitrary
limitation — as an artificially constructed dogma — when no more than
the septem sacramenta vulgaria are recognised as sacraments.^ It is
a mere irony when he complains that it is owing to his poverty of
faculty that he conceives that many things on this head of doctrine
rest upon too weak a foundation ; nor has he yet become acquainted
with the labels which raust be affixed if the name of sacraraent is to
be liraited to these seven in one and the same sense.3
WhUe WycUffe in most places inclines to the opinion that the
seven sacraments had no exclusive right to be regarded as such, i.e.,
. ^ , that seven is too small a number for thera, in case we
Scriptural . . . .
restriction of set out from the generic idea which is coramon to them
their number. ,, , ,,,.,. . . , ,
all, he nevertheless also indicates an opinion that the
number seven is too large, namely, when tried by the standard of
Scripture authority. This thought, indeed, he does not express in
plain terms. He only hints at it — at one time by the order in which
he treats of the several sacraments, placing the Lord's Supper and
Baptism first in order, while leaving the remaining five to follow;
while, in another place, he observes expressly that the right order of
the sacraments is determined by the measure in which they have for
their warrant the express foundation of Scripture.'* In particular, he
^ Trialogus, IV. c. i, p. 244.* Quomodo expressius sunt fundata. The difference
ergo sunt solum septem sacramenta dis- among the sacraments in this respect was
iincta specifice f . . . p. 2^^: Mille autem never entirely forgotten even in the Middle
sunt talia sensibilia signa in scriptura. Age, at least not in scientific theology.
cjuae habent tantam rationem sacramenti. Baptism and the Lord's Supper were
sicut habent communiter ista septem. always recognised as sacraments of the
^ lb., p. 246. first rank, so to speak, inasmuch, espe-
3 lb., p. 24s : Nee didici pictatias, ex tially, as they were instituted personally
quibus adjectis hoc nomen sacrainentum and directly by the Redeemer Himself — a
limitari debet univoce ad haec septem. - fact which was prominently put forward
* lb., c, II, p. 281 : Secundum ordi- by Alexander of Hales.
nem, quo sacramenta in scriptura sacra

^378-1384.] THE SACRAMENTS. 335
¦says of the Lord's Supper, which he places first in order, that he does
-so, among other reasons, because it has the strongest Scripture
warrant of all ; ' whereas of extreme unction, which is the last of the
seven to be examined by him, he remarks that it has too weak a
foundation in that passage of Scripture (James v. 14) upon which it
is commonly rested.^* AA'hen, notwithstanding this, he abstains from
entering into any proper critique of the other sacraments, with the
exception of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, but foUows, on the
whole, the sarae manner of teaching which had been in fixed use since
Peter the Lombard, this circumstance was owing to the fact that
AVycliffe's attention, within the area of this whole locus of doctrine,
was directed to one definite point and concentrated upon it.
3. The third question touches the efficacy of the sacraments.
That by virtue of God's ordinance a certain efficacy, a real com
munication of grace, is connected with a sacrament, Wycliffe has
an assured belief He observes how, in contrast with sacramental
actions and arrangements of human origination, such as efficacy.
the Pope's election, which have no promise of God that He will
endow thera with grace, God has given the covenanted proraise really
to communicate grace with the sacraments of Baptism and Penance,
which are obviously named only by way of exaraple.3 And on
another occasion he lays down quite generally the principle that ' all
sacraments, when rightly administered, possess a saving efficacy.' -*
True, this saving efficacy is conditional; and what are the conditions
and limitations, according to AVycliffe, within which they have this
effectual working ? One condition, the most undoubted of all, and
recognised in the teaching ofthe evangelical Church, is already men
tioned in the passage last quoted, viz., that the sacraments exert a
saving efficacy only when rightly adrainistered {rite ministrata), i.e.,
only then do they serve to the real communication of Divine strength
when they are adrainistered conforraably to their first institution.
AVycliffe is likewise thoroughly aware of the truth that a further con
dition of the gracious working of every sacrament lies in the mind
and spiritual state of the receiver.
On this subject there is room for doubt on a single point only,
whether AA''ycliffe required a positive preparedness and receptivity in
I Trialogus, IV., c. ^, p. 247. ¦• De Ecclesia, c. 19, fol. 192, col. i :
2 lb., c, 25, p. 333. Non nego, quin necesse sit, nos in vita
3 De Civili Dominio, I., ^¦^,iol.j20, col. intendere signis sensibilibus, in quibus
T2 : Sacramenta baptismatis etpoenitentiae, stat modo suo Christiana religio, cum
cum quibus Deus pepigit realiter conferre debemus credere, quod omnia sacramenta
ffratiani, . . . quodcunque officium hu- sensibilia, rite administrata liabent ejffi-
manitus limitatum., cum quo Deus non caciam salutai'em.
4eterminavit se conferre gratiam.

336 wycliffe's theological SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § 12-
the form of a penitent, believing, and devout spirit, as a condition of
Preparation of ^^^ Sacrament possessing a saving efficacy ; or whether
the recipient. }jg j-^gifj jt to be Sufficient that the receiver should not
oppose a positive hindrance thereto, by an ungodly state of mind
and feeling. Expressions occur which seem to favour the latter
idea; but in by far the raost nuraerous instances WycUffe demands a
positive receptivity on the part of the person to whom the sacrament
is administered, if a gift of grace and a blessing are to fiow to him
therefrom.' Manifestly he is not satisfied with the conditions first
formulated by Duns Scotus, that only no barrier should be put in the
way of the efficacy of the sacrament by mortal sin in the receiver, or
by the set purpose to corarait such ; but he prescribes a truly peni
tent and pious frame of mind as a condition of the blessing which
should accrue to the receiver.
These explanations stand in a certain connection with the other
question, whether the saving efficacy of a sacrament is conditioned
by the worthiness and ' standing in grace ' of the priest
¦W-orthincss of , , . . _ . , -, r
the adminis- vvho dispenscs It. It IS usual to assume, and for sorae
time back it has been the settled opinion, that Wycliffe
answered this question in the affirmative. This assuraption has even
passed into the confessions of the evangelical Lutheran Church.'-'
This, however^ is no proof of the point. The German Reforraers, if
I ara not quite raistaken, came into possession of this thesis, as one
alleged to have been held by AVycliffe, frora no other source but the
Council of Constance. In the list of those articles of Wycliffe upon
which this Council pronounced its condemnatory judgment, under
the third head were set forth no fewer than four articles all bearing
upon the principle in question.3 But it is well known with how
Uttle conscientiousness and trustworthiness this Council went to
work upon the question whether a certain article had been reaUy set
forth and defended by Wycliffe or by Huss. If we go still farther
back, I find that the enemies of Wycliffe, in his lifetime, on only
^ De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 12, iol. more clearly and fully. It remarks in
33, col. 3 : He speaks of capaces, com- the style of an authentic interpretation :
municants to whom the sacrament is of Satis clare diximus in Confessione, nos
profit ; and in De Ecclesia, c. 19, fol. 193, improbare Donatistas et Viglevistas, qui
col. 3, he speaks of the faith of the com- senserunt Iwmines peccare accipientes sac-
municants, oi fideles, pii fideles, to whom ramenta ab indignis in ecclesia. Even
the Lord's Supper brings blessing, al- here, indeed, Wycliffe himself is not.
though the ministrant priest be wicked. named, butin all probability the * WycUf-
= 'The Augsburg Confession, indeed, in fites ' are meant in the sense of including
Art. 8, expressly mentions only Donatists their master, not the reverse.
and the like as those qui negabant licere 3 Orthuinus Gratius, Fasciculus Reru^m
uti ministerio malorum in ecclesia, et Expetend, ac Fugiend, 153S, fol. cxxxiii.
sentiebant ministerium malorum inutile Mansi, Conciliorum Nova Collectio, vol.
et inefficax esse. But the .,4/o&^_)' expresses xxviL, 632.
itself, in Art. 4, p. 130, ed. Rechenberg,

1382.1 ADMINISTRATION OF SACRAMENTS. 337
one occasion brought under discussion the particular thesis which is
now before us, namely, in the list of twenty-four articles which Arch
bishop Courtenay procured to be condenined at the so-called Earth
quake Council held on May 24, 1382. Among these is conderaned
as heretical the article (No. 4), that a bishop or priest, being guilty of
mortal sin, has no power to ordain, or consecrate, or baptize.' It is
to be remarked, however, that AA'ycliffe is not here naraed expressly
as the holder of this doctrine. Among the eighteen articles of
AVycliffe, which a provincial Synod under Archbishop Arundel of
Canterbur)', in February, 1396, declared to be in part erroneous, in
part heretical, there is not found any article to this effect, although
that whole series of articles, with few exceptions, relates precisely to
the doctrine of the sacraments.
Thomas of AValden, however, makes mention of a doctrine of
this kind He opposes it as a Donatistic error and as a wrong
against all the sacraments taken together, when AVycliffe
puts it as doubtful whether Christ supports and owns tions^of'''
in the administration of the sacraments a priest whose ^"^^^ ^ '"^¦"•
walk is contrary to the life of Christ.^ But it must be remembered
that it was not till 1422, and the following years, that Walden wrote
his great polemical work — -nearly forty years therefore after Wycliffe's
death, and several years after the Council of Constance, which he
himself attended. And this enemy of the Wycliffites, when dealing
with the question now before us, has unmistakably in view the form
of the first of those articles which the Council had set forth as
AA'ycliffe's doctrine ' of the sacraments in general.' 3 Still, of course,
the matter can only be brought to a decision by the authentic language
of AVycliffe hiraself Now, so far as ray knowledge of the writings of
AA'ycliffe reaches, there is not to be found in them a single expression
in which the saving efficacy of the sacraments is made dependent, in
language free of all ambiguity, upon the raoral and religious worthi
ness of the adrainistrant priest. True, he says, in one place of the
Trialogus, when treating of the doctrine of the Mass — so often as
Christ works with a man, and only in this case, does He bring the
sacrament to effect ; but AVycliffe immediately adds, ' and this must'
be assuraed and pre-supposed of our priests.''* Still more clearly
' Wilkins, Concilia, IIL, 137; Lewis, Christus assistit tali pontifici, propter lioc
p, 107. quod tam hianter super illam hostiam sic
'^ Doctrinale Antiquitatum Fidei Eccle- mentilur, et in sua conversatione dicit
sia Cath., -Venet. 1371, in., 11. contrarium vitae Christi.
3 The proposition runs thus in the ^ Trialogus, iv. , c. 10, p. 280 ; , . .
Acts of tlie Council: Dubitare debent quandocunque Christus operatur cum
Jideles si moderni haeretici conficiunt vel homine, et solum tunc conficit sacramen-
rite ordinant vel ministrant alia sacra- tum, quod reputari debet de nostris sacer-.
jnenta. Quia non est evidentia, quod dotibus et supponi,
23

338 WYCLIFFE'S TH&OLOGiCAL SYSTEM. [ch,viii. §12
does he express himself in reference to baptism, to the effect that
chUdren who have rightly received water baptism are partakers of
baptismal grace, and are baptized with the Holy Ghost.'
It is true, indeed, that if we start with the idea of the Church as the
whole body of the elect, which Wycliffe lays as his foundation, and
then draw out with logical strictness the conclusions which ensue, we
shall then arrive at the view that a minister of the Church who does
not belong to the elect cannot therefore be a rightly conditioned
steward of God's mysteries and means of grace. But we must be on
our guard against drawing abstract consequences from that principle.
WycUffe himself proceeds with caution and moderation in this
respect. He declares, e.g., in his work on the Church, that it is a
Aaministratipn point of Undoubted certainty to him that no reprobate
by reprobates, j^j^jj jg ^ meraber or office-bearer of the holy Mother
Church ; and yet iraraediately after he remarks that such a person
may nevertheiless possess certain offices of administration within the
Church, to his own condemnation and to the utUity of the Church. =
If the official ministrations of a priest who is not in a state of grace
can yet be to the utUity of the Church, this evidently iraplies the
saving efficacy of the raeans of grace dispensed by him. The
efficacy, therefore, is independent of the worthiness of the dispensing
minister. Most decisive of all is an expression occurring farther on in the
same chapter, in which Wycliffe declares his conviction that a repro
bate, even when he is in a state of actual mortal sin, may administer
the sacrament to the utility of the faithful entrusted to him, although
it be to his own damnation.3 Frora this and other similar passages
* Trialogus, ly.,c,z2,p.2?>6:Reputamus of good men helpith moche, he says, c. 4,
. . . absque dubitatione, quod infantes rite ' In prayer, it is true, everything depends
baptisati fiumine sint baptisati tertio upon the spirit and character of the pray-
baptismate (sell, baptismo flaminis), cum ing man ; ' but the case is otherwise with
Jiabent gratiam baptismalem. the sacraments and their administration :
' De Ecclesia, c. 19, fol. 189, col. 4 : ' Thes Antichristis sophistris schulden
Hic videtur mihi indubie, quod nullus knowe well, that a cursed man doth fully
fraescitus est pars vel gerens officium tan- the sacramentis, though it be to his damp-
quam de s. matre ecclesia ; habet tamen nynge, for they ben not autouris of thes
intra illam ecclesiam ad sui damnationan sacramentis, but God kepith that dygnyte
et ecclesiae utilitatem certa officia, etc. to hymself.' Select English Works, III.,
3 lb., fol. 190, col. 3 : Videtur autem 227. In the work De Dominio Divino,
mihi, quod praescitus, etiam in mortali III., c. 6, Wycliffe had already set forth
peccato actuali, ministrat fidelibus, licet the principle roundly and fully, that the
sibi damnabiliter, tamen subj ectis utiliter efficacy of the means of grace "upon the
sacramenta. WycUffe expresses himself to congregation was not injured by the
the same effect, and quite unmistakably moralcharacterof the ministrant, fol. 23 r,
inDc Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 12, iol. col. 3; Et si praedico appetitu indebito
33, col. 3 : Nisi Christianus fuerit Christo coactus ex commodo temporali, adhuc cum
ainitus per gratiam, non habet Christum credita sint mihi ex officio eloquia praedi-
Salvatorem, nee sine falsitate dicit verba candi, adhuc est officium utile auditori,
sacramentalia, licet prosint capadbus. cum ministerium sacramenti non infidtur
And in an EngUsh Tract : How preiere ex ministro.

1378-1384] THE EUCHARIST. 33g
it appears with a clearness which does not admit of doubt that
AA^ycliffe requires indeed of every office-bearer of the Church who
has to administer the sacraments, that for the sake of his own salva
tion he should be a veritable member of the body of Christ ; but he
by no means on this account makes the efficacy of the sacraments
for the soul's health of those to whom they are dispensed, dependent
upon the spiritual condition of the ministrant priest. Wycliffe sees
clearly enough that it would be to ascribe much too great an imports
ance to the powers of a minister of the Church, and to attribute to
hira what belongs solely to God as His sovereign prerogative, if it
should be supposed that through the sinfulness of an unconscientious
priest, the congregation would incur the loss of the blessing which
God comraunicates by virtue of the means of grace. AVycliffe knew
much better how to distinguish between the objective and subjective
in Christianity, between the grace of God in Christ, which is hidden
in word and sacrament, and the spiritual condition of the acting and
dispensing Church minister, than has for a long tirae back been sup
posed. The accusation of a Donatistic mode of thought which
Melancthon brought against the Wycliffites is, therefore, so far as it
was aimed at AVycliffe personally, and not only at his followers, to
be set aside as unfounded and unjust, on the ground of a more
accurate understanding of Wycliffe's actual teaching.
IL Of the Lord's Supper.
Wycliffe always placed the Lord's Supper high above the other
sacraments, as the holiest and most honourable of all. He was con
vinced that no other sacrament has so strong a founda- uie Lord's
tion in the AVord of God. But, holding it in such l^i^^^t
reverence, he watched over its scriptural purity with the ment.
greatest care, and when he came to see that the Eucharistic doc
trine which was prevalent in the Church of his time was perverted
and corrupt, he set himself to oppose it with unsparing severity and
indefatigable zeal. It was the doctrine of Transubstantiation against
¦which he contended with aU his power.
Coming nearer to the subject, we find three questions which require
to be answered.
I. How was AVycliffe led to the examination of this particular
•question ?
2. With what arguments did he attack the doctrine of Transub
stantiation ?
3. What is his own view of the presence of the body and blood of
¦Christ in the Lord's Supper?

340 WYCLIFFE'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § 12-
I. How was Wycliffe led to a critical exaraination of this question?
It has long been known that it was in the year 1381 that Wy
cliffe carae forward with an incisive attack upon the
Fnosffiss of
-Wyoiiffe's con- Romish scholastic doctrine of 'The Change of Sub
stance ; ' ' that this attack became frora that date the
centre of his reforraational exertions, in so far as these had reference
to the doctrinal system of the Church ; and that his antagonism to
this doctrine became the chief target aimed at by his enemies, both
in scientific argument and by actual persecutions.
As may be supposed, it was only gradually, and not vvithout vacilla
tions and inward struggles, that Wycliffe arrived at the point of
opening an earnest attack upon the doctrine of the Mass which had
.been long sanctioned in the Church, and which vvas still the culmina
ting point of the whole Ronian Catholic worship. But it has not
hitherto been possible to arrive at any exact understanding of the
course of thought which brought him at last to this result. = Let us
see whether more light upon the question is to be gained from the
documents which are now lying before us.
First of all, we are able positively to prove that Wycliffe for a long
time did not stumble at all at the doctrine, but received it in simple
His early faith in coramon with other doctrines of the raediseval
dootrtoeof tte Church. He confesses, in a controversial piece which
Mass. appeared to belong to the year 1381, that he had for
a long tirae suffered himself to be deceived by the doctrine of
' accident without substance.' 3 We have found more than one
passage of his earUer works in which he stUl adheres to the doctrine
without any misgiving. Especially do such passages occur in his
work, De Dominio Civili. The usual doctrine of the change of
substance in the Supper, of the ' making ' of the body of Christ by
priestly consecration, is plainly assumed by hira in naive fashion
in a passage describing Christ as eternal priest, prophet, and king,.
where he says, araong other things, 'He was a priest when in the
Supper He raade His own body {corpus suum conficiens).' ^ StUl
clearer is a remark occurring in the first book qf the same work. He-
is there censuring the practice of departing frora Biblical language in
1 Not so early as 1379 — as Bohringer led to this result by his studies of Scrip-
makes it, Kirche Christi, II., p. 340 ; it ture.
was not till two years later that he first 3 Responsiones ad argumenta cujusdam
stood forward against that dogma. emuli veritatis, MS. 3929, c. 16, fol. 114,
= -Vaughan, in Life and Opinions, etc., col. 3 : Confiteor tamen, quod in haeresi
vol. II. , 38, limited himself to the remark, de accidente sine subjectoper tempus nota-
' Of the steps which determined his hos- bile sum seductus.
tile movements relating to it, we are only 4 De Dominio Civili, 11. , c. 8, fol. 179,
partially informed.' He knew of nothing col. 2 : Sacerdos fuit in cena corpus suum.
further to say than that WycUffe was conficiens.

II378-1331.] THE EUCHARIST. 341
a spirit of undue exaltation of the creature, e.g., when raen say, ' The
priest absolves the penitent,' instead of saying, ' He declares him
before the congregation to be absolved by God's forgiving mercy ' —
the act of absolution being irapossible for any creature to perform.
The case is similar, when, in the Supper of the Lord, the priest is
said ' to make the body of Christ ' — for by this is to be under
stood that the priest, in a ministerial way, by the virtue of the holy
words, and not of his own authority, brings it. to pass that the body
of Christ is present under the accidents of bread and wine.' These
words express with the most entire precision what is decisively charac
teristic in the doctrine of Transubstantiation — namely, that by virtue
of the consecration, bread and wine are alleged to be changed into
the body and blood of Christ, so that only the sensible properties
of bread and wine remain present — the accidents, without the sub-
¦stance or their underlying basis. Nothing can be clearer or more
unambiguous than this language, from which it is certain that up till
1378 (for in this year at the latest must this work of De Dominio have
been composed) AVycliffe still held without any misgiving the doctrine
of the Mass.^
AVe have now two certain dates — the year 1378 and the year 1381.
At the former date, AVycliffe stUl adheres to the scholastic doctrine
of Transubstantiation with unbroken confidence ; at the ijie belief
latter he enters into conflict with it publicly and de- ^st^nSiin
cidedly. In the interval, therefore, of from two to renounced.
three years, the change took place in his convictions ; and the short
ness of the interval gives additional interest to the inquiry, how
this change came to pass.
In order to obtain a satisfactory answer to this question, there is
unfortunately no adequate amount of documentary material at our
coraraand. One solitary expression of AVycliffe is all that The transition
has as yet been found which throws any light upon that ^**s®'
transition stage. • It occurs in a serraon on John vi. 37. Here,
araong other raatter, the preacher explains the words of the Re
deemer, ver. 38 : 'I came down from heaven not to do Mine own wUI,
but the will of Hira that sent Me.' Upon this he remarks that it is,
not the meaning of Christ in these words to deny that He has a per
sonal will of His own, but only to say that His own will is at the sarae
' De Dominio Civili, I. , c. 36, fol. 85, " No doubt the same dogma is assumed
col. 2 : Proportionabiliter de eucaristiae as often as we meet with expressions such
confeclione . . . et sibi similibus est di- as Christum conficere, and the like, e.g.,
cendum ; sacerdos enim 'conficit corpus De Civili Dominio, II,, e. 18, fol. 249, col*
Chrisii,' i.e., facit m.inistratorie, quod 2 : sacerdos, qui debet quottidie praeparare
eorpus Christi sit sub acddentibus per templum Christo, quem conficit.
¦verba sacra.

342 WYCLIFFE'S THFQWGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § 12
tirae the wiU of His Father. For that, he adds, is the way in which
Holy Scripture expresses itself, so that often in negative sentences a
word, such as ' only ' or chiefly,' requires to be supplied, e.g., Mark
ix. 37, 'Whosoever shall receive Me, receiveth not (only) Me^ but Him
that sent Me;' Ephesians vi. 12, 'We wrestle not (only or chiefly)
against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers.'
This usage of speech must be also kept in raind in interpreting the
words of Ambrose, to the effect that after the consecration of the host,
the bread remains no longer, but what had been bread must be
called the body of Christ. By this, according to Wycliffe's explana
tion, we are to understand, that what remains after consecration is in
the main or chiefly only the body of Christ. Why, then, should it be
denied that the bread reraains after consecration, in consequence of
the fact that it is chiefly the body of Christ that is present ? '
In this passage raanifestly the positive side of WycUffe's new view
regarding the Lord's Supper appears. The negative as yet exists
only in germ, which in the course of years developed itself into the-
sharpest opposition to the scholastic doctrine of Transubstantiation
— especially to the assumption of ' accidents ' without ' substance.'
But the positive side of his new. view is here distinctly expressed ;
;and we recognise clearly this twofold proposition — i. After consecra
tion, the bread is still bread as before; 2. After consecration, the
Body of Christ is present in the Supper, and that, too, as the principal
thing therein.
These thoughts occurring in the transition stage of AVycliffe's con
victions are characteristic in more than one respect. The following,
¦ Saints' Days Sermons, No. Lx. , fol. language of Holy Scripture: Et noti-
t2j; col. I. 'These sermons, and par- tiam istius -modi loquendi vellcm haere-
ticularly the sermon in question, the last ticos illos attendere, qui abjiciunt glosam
of the series, belong, as is known by istam Ambrosii tanquam haereticam,
several indications, to the year 1380. To quod post consecrationem liostiae non
aid in the understanding ofthe passage, it remanet panis, sed quod fuit panis, dicen-
is further to be presumed that it relates to dum est esse Solummodo corpus Christi.
,the interpretation and sense of an ex- Hoc est, secundum glosam verborum Am-
pression of Ambrose, De Sacramentis, brosii dicendum est, esse solum princi-
IV., c. 4 (which was admitted into the paliter corpus Christi, Est enim modus
^Corpus juris canon. De Consecratione, loquendi Scripturae, subintelligendo ad-
Distinctio, II., c. $^. The words of the verbium 'simpliciter' exprimei'e hujus-
father are these, ' Et sic quod erat panis modi negativas. Then follow the pas-
.ante consecrationem, jam corpus Christi sages, Mark ix. 37 ; Ephesians vi. 12 ;
est post consecrationem,' It is a passage John vi. Nunquam ergo glosa sufficiens
which was often discussed in the Middle pi'o evangelic suffiicit et Ambrosio, qui
Age, and one which Berengar of Tours, in modo loquendi Juerat assiduus ejus
De Sacra Coena, often occupied himself sequax. [In this sentence there is cer-
with. Comp. "Vischer's Edition of Be? . tainly an error of the copyist ; it should
.rengar, Berlin, 1834, pp. 132, 178. Wy- perhaps be read : Numquid . . . sequax f
cliffe calls his own interpretation of or Nonne, etc.] Quomodo ergo negandum
Ambrose's words, glosa Ambrosii, and foret, quod panis remanet post consecra-
. defends it against the charge of being tionem, ex hoc, quod remanet principaliter
heretical. He takes his stand upon the corpus Christi f

1378-13S1.] ATTACK UPON TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 343
three points corae out clearly frOm them:-^i. The motive prin
ciple of his subsequent attack upon the scholastic doc- v?-yoiifre'a lead.
trine by no means lay in a preponderant inchnation to '"8 positions.
deny or pull down, but, on the contrary, in an earnest striving after
positive truth in Divine things. 2. In laying down the proposition that
after consecration the bread remains what it is, it was far from his inten
tion to profane a holy thing, to divest the sacrament of its deep signi
ficance ; he wished to put in the place of a baseless and unreal notion
a solid and substantial idea. Besides, it is not to be overlooked that
the proposition in question does not stand in the position of a chief
proposition, but comes in only as a corrective, subsidiary proposition
in connection with the other proposition which follows it. The truth
that after consecration the body of Christ iS present and forms the
chief element in the sacrament, gives by ho means a warrant to the
inference that in virtue of the consecration the bread ceases to be
bread. 3. How this presence of the body of Christ in the Supper
is conceived of cannot be fully understood from some short words
occurring in one division of a sermon. In any case, the declaration
before us furnishes no sufficient ground to assume that Wycliffe, not
withstanding his opposition to the doctrine of Transubstantiation,
always and absolutely held fast to the presence of the body and blood
of Christ in the sacraraent. For as we have now before us the transi
tion stage of his opinions, it is at least supposable that AVycliffe,
after he had once attacked the Church doctrine, gradually advanced
in the sarae direction. We shall do well to keep this in view in our
further investigations of the subject. But first we have to answer
our second question — 2. What reasons Wycliffe brought into the
field in opposition to the doctrine of the change of substance ?
He opens his inquiry into the doctrine in the Trialogus with these
words : — ' I raaintain that among all the heresies which have ever
appeared in the Church, there was never one which was
. , , , . , , • , , • His reasons
more cunningly smuggled in by hvrpocrites than this, or against Tran-:
, . , . 1 • .1 1 ^ -i 1 J substantiation.
which in more ways deceives the people ; for it plunders
them, leads them astray into idolatry, denies the teaching of Scrip
ture, and by this unbelief provokes the Truth .Himself oftentimes to
anger.'' Here he proceeds to examine the doctrine from several
points of view, and rejects it from every one.
1 Trialogus, IV., c. 2, p. 248: Inter consequens ex infidelitate multicipliciter ad
omnes haereses, quae unquam in ecclesia iracundiam. provocat veritatem. Comp.
pullularunt, nunquam considero aliquam c. 3, p. 261 : Antichristus in ista haeresi
plus callide per hypocritas introductam et destruit grammaticam, logicam et scien-
multiplicius populum defraudantem ; nam tiam naturalem; sed quod magis dolendum
spoliat populum, facit ipsum committere est, tollit sensum evangelii, , , ,
idolatriam, negat fidem Scripturae, et per

344 wycliffe's theological system. [ch.viii. §12
Before everything else, it is with Wycliffe a weighty objection to
, the dogma that it is contrary to Scripture. How it could ever have
i. Contrary to come to be received as true, AVycliffe can only explain
Scripture, j^y ^^le overvaluing of tradition and the undervaluing of
the Gospel itself' He sets out from the fact that, according to all
the fundamental passages of Holy Scripture which treat of the insti
tution of the Supper (Matthew xxvi., Mark xiv., Luke xxii., i Corin
thians xi.), ' Christ declares the bread which He took into His hand
to be in reality His body {realiter) ; and this must be truth, because
Christ cannot lie.' ^
In particular Wycliffe brings into prominence the fact that the
Apostle Paul, in i Corinthians x. i6, and in chapter xi., describes the
Testimony of Supper with the words, ' The bread which we break.' Who
st, Paul. would be so bold as blasphemously to maintain that ' a
chosen vessel ' of God, so great as he, applied a false name to the
chief sacraraent, especiaUy as he knew that false doctrines concerning
this sarae bread would arise ? If Paul knew that this sacraraent is
not bread, but an ' accident ' without ' substance,' he would have acted
with too rauch heedlessness towards the Church, the Bride of Christ,
in calling the sacraraent so often by the narae of bread, and never by
its true narae, although prophetically knowing that so many errors on
¦this subject would arise in after times.3 Further, Wycliffe appeals to
the way and manner in which Scripture often expresses itself. When
Christ says of John the Baptist that he is Elijah, He does not mean
that, by virtue of His word, John has ceased to be John, but that,
continuing to be John, he has become Elijah in virtue of the ordina
tion of God. And when John hiraself, being asked whether he was
Elijah, denied that he was, this is no contradiction to that word of
Christ ; for John understands the alleged change as relating to the
identity of his person, while Christ understands it of the
Illustrations. . .
material character which he bore.-t And when Christ
says, ' I am the true vine,' Christ is neither become a material vine,
nor has a material vine been changed into the body of Christ ; and
even so also is the material bread not changed from its own sub
stance into the flesh and blood of Christ.3 According to all this,
^ Trialogus, I V. , c. 6, p. 262 : Istam siones ad argumenta cujusdam aemuli
. , . repute causam lapsus hominum in veritatis, c. 16, MS. 1338, fol. 114, col. 3 :
istam haeresim, quod discredunt evangelia, Fides Scripturae,cumrationeshumanaehic
et leges pdpales ac dicta apocrypha plus ac- defidunt, est specialiter attendendum [sic).
ceptant. Comp. c. 7, p. 268 : cujus causa ' lb., IV., c. 2, p. 230.
est, quod praelati . . . non sint propter 3 Jb,, iv., c. 4, p. 237. XXIV. Miscell.
legem antichristi in lege Domini studiosi. Sermons, No. i. , fol. 130, col. 2.
Comp. c. 3, p. 261 : Antichristus in ista * lb,, IV., c. 4, p. 236, and more fully,
haeresi . . . quod magis dolendum est, c. 9, p. 274.
tollit sensum evangelii. See also Respon- 5 Wyckeit, p. 18, Oxford, 1828.

1381-1384.] ATTACK UPON TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 345
A\*ycliffe is persistent in maintaining that the scholastic doctrine is
contrary to Scripture, for according to Scripture, in the sacrament
after consecration true bread is truly the body of Christ, and there
fore not the mere appearance of bread or the accident of the
same. On the other hand, he asserts that nowhere in the whole
Bible, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the Apocalypse,
does a word stand written which speaks of the making of the body
of Christ, excepting to this effect — that He, the only-begotten Son
of the Father, took unto Hiraself flesh and blood of the Virgin
Mary.' But not only does A\'ycliffe declare the doctrine to be contrary to
-Scripture, he misses also the testimony of tradition in its support, and
lays great stress upon the fact that the doctrine handed
down from the better age of the Church stands opposed, ' by "^ly
as well as Holy Scripture, to the Roman dogma, which
is in fact of comparatively recent date. Even the Curia itself, in the
period preceding the ' letting loose of Satan,' adhered to the Scrip
tural doctrine ; and the holy doctors of the ancient Church knew
nothing of this modem dogma. In particular, AVycliffe mentions
that Jerome, that exceUent Scripturist and divine, held the Biblical
idea of the Lord's Supper ; and on another occasion he observes that
the doctrine of ' accidents without subject ' was as yet no part of the
Church's faith in the days of Augustine. It was not tiU Satan was let
loose {i.e., two or three hundred years back) that men set aside
Scripture teaching and brought in erroneous doctrines.^ God, how-
¦ ever, knows even at the present day how to uphold the orthodox
doctrine of the Supper where it pleases Him, e.g., in Greece and
elsewhere.3 In addition to Scripture and the tradition of Christian antiquity,
AVycliffe also appeals to the concurrent testimony of the senses and
of sound huraan understanding in proof of the fact that the conse-
* Wyckeit, p. II : ' In all holy scrip- naviter introductae. Dialogus, c. 15, fol.
ture from the begynnyng of Genesis to the 133, col. i . The reader is reminded of
end of the Apocalips there be no wordes what was remarked above, of WycUffe's
wryttenof the makyng of Christesfaodye,' view of the course of the history of the
• etc. Church at large, viz., that the first thou-
^ Trialogus, IV. , c. 2, p. 249 : Ipsa sand years of that history was the mil-
Curia ante solutionem diaboli cum antiqua lennium of Christ, since which date Satan
sententia . . . planius concorda-oit ... is loosed.
, et sic est de omnibus Sanctis doctoribus, 3 Trialogus, IV., 3, p. 261. De Eucha-
. qui usque ad solutionem Sathanae istam ristia, c. 2, fol. 6, col. 2 : Novella ecclesia
materiam pertrcutarunt. Comp. p. 250, ponit transsubstantiationem panis et vini
and c. 3, p. 254. XXIV. Miscell. in corpus Christi et sanguinem ; fol. 7,
Sermons, No. I., fol. 128, col. 3 : Et ista col. i : Ecclesia primitiva illud non
. est sententia Jeronimi in Epistola ad posuit, sed ecclesia novella, ut quidam
Elindiam, qui indubie plus scivit de sensu infideliter et infundabiliter sompniantes
.evangelii, quam omnes sectae modernae baptisarunt terminum, etc.

346 wycliffe's theological system. [cH.viii.Sr^
crated bread is bread after consecration as it was before.' Yea !
3 Opposed to ^^^'^ irrational animals, such as mice, when they eat ai
the testimony lost consecrated wafer, know better than these unbe-
ofthe senses, lievers do, that the host is bread, just as it vvas before ! ^
This appeal to the instinct of the brutes, however, appears to be only
a humorous episode, for no serious stress is anywhere laid upon it.
Much more value is attached by Wycliffe to the dialectical testing-
of the ideas, taken intrinsically, with which scholasticism here goes
4. False ^o work. As the effect of consecration, it alleges, bread
metaphysics, j^^^ ^jj^g ^^^ changed into the body and blood of
Christ in such a manner that the substance of bread and wine is no
longer present ; that only appearance, colour, taste, smell, etc. —in a
word, only the accidents of bread and wine, without the substance of
them, are present {accidentia sine subjecto). In opposition to this,
AA'ycliffe observes that ' accidents,' such as softness or hardness,
toughness or bitterness in the bread, neither exist independently nor
in other accidents, and therefore presuppose a substance in which
they inhere, such as bread or sorae other. In the sarae way the
wine in the cup, at first sweet and pleasant to the taste, becoraes
after sorae time sour and unfit to drink : this change proves that
there must be sorae substance to which the qualities of the wine can
adhere. It is a contradiction — an unthinkable idea — a fiction as in
a dream, when raen raaintain ' accidents without a substance.' 3 He
goes further, and assuraes the offensive against the upholders of the
Substance and dogma of the change of substance ; he demands of
accident. them, tuliat then is properly the element which remains
after consecration ? and as the defenders of the doctrine in that age,
especially the learned men of the Mendicant Orders, gave different
answers to this question — ^one saying it is quantity, a second quality,
and a third nothing, -i so Wycliffe recognises in this disagreement a
symptom of the untruth and untenability of the whole doctrine, and
applies to it the word of Christ, ' Every kingdom divided against itself
is brought to desolation ' s (Matthew xii. 25). And even granting that
^ Trialogus, IV., 4, p. 257; Ideo vel 124, col. i : Facit miraculosa ipsa acci-
oportetveritatem Scripturae suspendere,vel dentia per se esse; cujus somnii causam
cum sensu ac judicio humano concedere, ego non video, nisi quia defidunt eis
I est panis. Comp. c. 3, p. 259 : Inter miracula sensibilia, .' . . fingunt false-

ovines sensus extrinsecos, quos Deus dat insensibilia miracula, etc.. .Wycliffe re-
homini, tactus et gustus sunt in suisju- peatedly calls the proposition in question
dictis magis certi ; sed illos sensus haeresis a fiction, e.g., Trialogus, IV., 3, p. 253.
ista confunderet sine causa, etc. ^ lb., No. XLViI. , fol. 96, col. 2 :
^ lb., p. 257, c. 5, p. 260; Mures Nescit ista generatio, quid sit sacramentum.
autem habent servatam notitiam, de panis altaris . . . dicit unus, quod est quan-
substantia sicut primo, sed istis infidelibus titas, et alius, quod est qualitas, et tertius,
istud deest. i quod est nihil.
3 Saints' Dqys Sermons, 'Ho. lA-x., fol. S Trialogus, IV., 6, p. 263. Comp.

1381-1384.] attack upon transubstantiation. 347
the idea of ' accident without a subject ' were possible and tenable,
what would be its use ? ' AVhy raust the bread be annihilated in order
that Christ's body raay be present ? AVhen any one becomes a pre
late ofthe Church or a lord, he does not cease on that account to be
the sarae individual; he remains in every respect the same being,
only in a higher position. Does the manhood of Christ cease be
cause He became God? So also is the substance of the bread not
destroyed on account of its becoming the body of Christ, but ele
vated to something of a higher order.^ And what sort of blessing
is that whose working is alleged to be of a destructive and anni
hilating character? For, according to these men, by consecration
they destroy the substance of the bread and wine ; whereas Christ,,
even when He pronounces a curse, does not annihilate the substance
of anything, as, e.g., of the fig-tree. 3
But with the greatest emphasis and raoral earnestness Wycliffe
opposes the doctrine, on account of the consequences which it leads
to, and especially of the idolatry which springs frora it,
partly through the adoration of the consecrated host, and auences of the
partly through the blaspheraous self-exaltation and dei- doctrme.
fication of raan implied in the pretended power of the priests ' to
mahe the body of Christ,' the God-man. AVe only touch, in passing,.
the allusions of AVycUffe to the spoliation practised by the priests upon
the people by means of the masses ; "* but much raore frequently and
urgently does he combat the idolatrous practice of rendering to the
consecrated host truly Divine worship and devotion. He allows no
force to the defence brought forward by some theologians of the
Mendicant Orders, that the host is not worshipped, but only vene
rated, on account of the presence of the body of Christ. They raust
in reason adrait that the people, who as a raatter of fact worship the
host as the body of Christ, are destitute of the light of faith, and
idolatrous. 5 In the presence of the Christian faith, which recog
nises the triune God as God alone, AVycUffe can only regard the
worship of the host as unscriptural and utterly without warrant ; and
XXIV. Miscell. Sermons, No. I., fol. 130, et virtute suae benedictioni^panem oblatum
col. 2 : Et reperi multos in fide sua dia- destrui, nod sacrari.
bolica variari, sic quod vix duos reperi in ^ lb., IV. 5, p. 261: O quis posset
eandem sententiam consentire. fratres et alios apostatas cxcusare, quod
^ Trialogus i v. , 3, p. 258 ; Deus nee de- . . . nolunt . . . populum docere, de quo
sti'uitnaturam impeccabilem nee co-nfiundit . . . accipiunt tantum lucrum; c. 6, p.
notitiam naturaliter nobis datam, nisi 264 : Praelati praesumunt propter pec-u-
subsit major utilitas et probabilitas niam benedicere a Domino maledictis,
ratioins. 3 ]b., iv., 7., p. 279 : Nee prodest fratri-
° lb., IV., 4, p. 255. bus negantibus istam hostiam adorari sed
^ lb., IV., 6, p. 264; Comp. Sermones propter assistentiam corporis Domini vene-
dc Sanctis, No. XIL, fol. 22, col. 2 : Sed rari. . . , Ideo oportet hos fratres dicere,
dicunt, se esse consecratores accidentium, quod populus adorans hanc hostiam ut

348 wycliffe's theological system. [CH.VIII. §12
this aU the more, because the object to which this Divine honour
The essence was addressed was alleged to be only an accident with-
of idolatry. q^(. underlying essence.' In fact, it is worse, he remarks,
than the fetish-worship of the heathen, who worship throughout the
day whatever object they chance first to see in the early morning,
when many so-called Christians habitually honour as very God that
accident which they see in the hands of the priests in the Mass.'^
Wycliffe's indignation against the idolatry committed in the worship
ping of the host is all the stronger because he cannot escape the
conviction that the authors of this deification of a creature are per
fectly well aware of what their God really is. 3 Such priests, accord
ingly, he does not scruple to call plainly the priests of Baal.-t Not
seldora he adds to his protest against the worship of the host a per
sonal reservation and a general observation. The reservation is to
the effect that for his own person AVycliffe conforms to the custom of
the Church (in kneehng before the host), but only in the sense of
addressing his devotion to the glorified body of Christ, which is in
heaven. 5 The general observation is, that with the same right as
the consecrated host every other creature might lay claim to Divine
honours ; yea, with superior right — first, because the host, according
to the modern Church doctrine, is not a substance, but only an
accident; and secondly, because in every other creature the un
created ' Trinity itself is present, and this, being the absolute Spirit,
is infinitely raore perfect than the body of Christ.^
¦ corpus Domini sit idolatra de lumine fidei videt in missa inter ^nanus sacerdotis in
desolatus. It is worthy of remark that hostia consecrata, sit realiter Deus suus.
zealous defenders of the Roman doctrine In his confession on the Snpper, WycUffe
of the Supper were still shy of commit- calls his opponents cultores accidentium.
ting themselves to the proper worship of — Lewis, History, p. 328.
t]-)e elements. Two centuries later the 3 Trialogus, IV. , c. 4, p. 258: Certus
Council of Trent had no longer any hesi- sum, quod idolatrae, qui fabricant sibi
tation in claiming for the sanctissimum Decs, satis noscunt, quid sint in suis
the full worship which is due to the true naturis, licet fingant, quod habean.t ali-
God. Sessio XIIL, Deer, de ss. Eucha- quid numinis a Deo Deorum supernatura-
ristiae Sacramento, c. 5 : Nullus dubi- liter eis datum,
tandi locus relinquitur, quin omnes ^ De Blasphemia, c. 13, fol. 163, col.
Christi fideles pro more in caiholica 4: Sicindubiefaci-unt [i.e.,'tii-^sphe^cn\2cca.
ecclesia semper recepto latriae cultum. , qui Christo imponunt) hodie sacerdotes Baal,
vero Deo debetur, huic sanctissimo sacra- qui dicunt se esse accidentium factores.
mento in veneratione exhibeant. Concilii Comp. 167, col. 3 : illud acc-idens, quod
Trid. . . . canones et decreta, cura Guil. sacerdotes Baal consecrant. Confessio, in
Smets, ed. 4, Bielefeld, 1834, p. 38. Lewis, History, 332, and in Fasciculi
^ Wyckeit, Oxford, 1828, p. vi. : • For ZAzaniorum, 134 : sacerdotes Baal, in
where fynde ye, that ever Christ or any opposition to sacerdos Christi.
of his disciples or apostels taught any s Trialogus, I v. , c. 10, p. 281 : Visa
man to worshipe it [sc. the secret hoost — hostia adoro ipsam conditionaliter, et
sacred host) ? ' omnimode deadoro corpus Domini, quod
^ De Eucharistia, c. i, fol. 4, col. 2 : est sursum; as above, c. 7, p. 269 : Et
Et forte multi christiani nomine infideli- tamen nos ex fide Scripturae evidentius et
tate paganis pejores ; nam minus malum devotius adoramus hanc hostiam vel cru-
foret, quod homo id quod primo videt mane, cem Domini vel alias imagines humanitus
per totum residuum diei honorat ut Deum, fabricatas.
quam regulariter illud accidens, quod ^ lb,, IV., c. 7, p. 269 : Certum est,

1381-1384.] ATTACK UPON TRANSUBSTANTIATION.

349

Last of all, the most emphatic protest is made by AA''ycliffe against
the delusion that the priest mahes the body of Christ by his action in
the Mass. This thought appears to him to be nothing e.Biasphemoua
less than horrible ; first, because it attributes to the P^i^s^y "i"'™-
priests a transcendental power, as though a creature could give being
to its Creator — a sinful man to the holy God ; ' again, because God
Himself is thereby dishonoured, as though He, the Eternal, were
created anew day after day ; ^ and lastly, because by this thought the
sanctuary of the sacrament is desecrated, and an ' abomination of
desolation is set up in the holy place.' 3

qnod in qualibet creatura est Trinitas
increata, et ilia est longe perfectior, quam
est corpus. The reading corpus Christi
is evidently a gloss. Confessio, in Fasc
Zizan., p. i2y. Naminquacunque substan
tia creata est Ddtas realius et substanti-
alius quam corpus Christi in liost'ia conse
crata. XXIV. Miscel. Sermons, No. I.,
fol. 131, col. 2 ; Ipsi autem dicunt, quod
est [sell, hoc sacramentum) accidentium
congregatio, quoruin quodlibet in natura
sua est infinitum imperfectius, quam ma-
terialis substantia dgnanda.
I Wyckeit, ed. Oxford, 1828, VI. : 'And
thou then, that art an earthely man, by
what reason mayst thou saye, that thou
makest thy Malcer?' and p. 16 : ' By what
reason then saye ye that be synners, than
ye make God?'
= De Eucharistia, c. i, fol. 2, col. 2 :
Nihil enimhorribilius, quam quod quilibet
sacerdos celebrans facit vel consecrat qnoti-
die corpus Christi. Nam Deus noster non
est Deus recens.
3 In Trialogus, IV., c. 7, p. 268, it
is remarked, but still with some reserve,
that what is said in Matthew xxiv. 13 of
'the abomination of desolation in the
holy place,' seems to have its ulterior
application to the consecrated host.
-Whereas in the EngUsh popular tract
called the Wyckeit, the thought that
Transubstantiation is the abomination in
the holy place foretold by Daniel xi. 31,
xii. II, is the thread which runs through
the whole. The tract takes its title
Wyckeit from the Redeemer's language
concerning the strait gate and the narrow
way which leadeth unto life ; for the tract
sets out from that language and comes
back to it at its close. Its substance is
in brief the foUowing : — ' Christ hath re
vealed to us that there are two ways, one
leading to life, the other leading to death ;
the former narrow, the latter broad. Let
us therefore pray to God to strengthen us
by His grace in the spiritual Ufe, that we
may enter in through the strait gate, and
that He would defend u? in the hour oi

temptation. Such temptation to depart
from God and fall into idolatry is already
present, when men declare it to be heresy
to speak the Word of God to the people
in English, and when they would press,
upon us, instead of this, a false law and
a false faith, viz., the faith in the conse
crated host. This is of all faiths the
falsest.' The latter thesis is proved by a
series of reasons which constitute the-
largest part of the tract. It closes with
the exhortation to earnest prayer, that
God may shorten this evil time, and close
up the broad way and open up the narrow
way by means of Holy Scripture, so that
we may come to the knowledge of God's
will, serve Him 'in godly fear, and find
the road to everlasting bUss. Thus the
warning against the doctrine of change of
substance in the Eucharist forms the sub
stance of the whole tract, and this doc
trine is contested as ' the abomination ot
desolation in the holy place' — i.e., the
profanation ofthe sanctuary by heathenish
idolatry. ' Truly this muste needs be the-
worst synne, to say that ye make God,
and it is the abhominacion of dyscomforte
that is sayd in Daniel the prophete
standynge in the holy place' (pp. 2, 16).
Comp. p. 17. This small tract is con
jectured by Shirley to have been originally
a sermon [Catalogue, p. 33), and appeared
in print first in Nuremberg, 1546 ; and
this original edition is closely foUowed by
the edition prepared by Mr. Panton, a
successor to 'Wycliffe in the parish of
Lutterworth, which appeared in Oxford
in 1828. I am inclined to believe, how
ever, that the use of the name of ' Nurem
berg ' was only a feint, and that the tract
may reaUy have been printed in England/;
for the original edition, so far as my
researches go, is not to be found either in
Nuremberg nor in any other library of
Germany, a fact which would be quite
unaccountable if it had really proceeded
from a German press. Add to this the
circumstance that 1546, the last year of
Henry -VIIL's life, was a year marked.

350 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § 12
If we cast another glance over the whole of WycUffe's controversy on
the subject of the Romish doctrine of the Supper, we perceive that his
Denial of the attacks are exclusively directed against the doctrine of
cup to the laity, ^j^^ change of substance, with all its presumptions and con
sequences. The denial of the cup to the laity is never once expressly
mentioned by him in any of his works, printed or still in manuscript.
In WycUffe's time the practice had not yet received the sanction of
the Church. And as little has he applied any searching critique to the
doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass. I find even an express recog
nition and approval of the idea of the Mass sacrifice in a work which
certainly belongs to his latest years, and throughout opposes the
doctrine of the change of substance. The connection, however, lets
it be seen without difficulty that the sacrifice meant is only the
thank-offering of a grateful feast of commeraoration, not the
effectual oblation of a sacrifice of atoneraent.'
The Holy Supper had been alienated frora its institutional purity
by three chief corruptions — the denial of the cup, the change of
substance, and the sacrifice of the Mass. These three
corruption of particulars Luther, in his principal reformational work,
"^ ¦ De Cdptivitate Babylonica, 1520, designated as a three
fold captivity of the sacrament. Its first captivity relates to its
perfection or completeness of parts — it is a Romish despotism to
deny the cup to the laity ; the second captivity is the scholastic doc
trine of the change of substance ; the third consists in converting the
Mass into a sacrifice and a meritorious work.^ As these corruptions
had crept in gradually in the course of centuries, so also the recog
nition of them as such, and the re-discovery of the original truth of the
•case, was only reached step by step. First, the;doctrine of the change
was attacked, then the denial of the cup, and last the doctrine of the
¦sacrifice ofthe Mass, with all the errors and abuses therewith connected.
by many persecutions of Protestants by de Wycliffe (Wycliffe Society, 1845), and
Protestants, so that the concealment of by the Religious Tract Society [British
publications and the intentional mis- Reformers, vol. I.)]
leading of inquisitorial search by the ' De Eucharistia, c. i, fol. 2, col. 3 :
fiction of foreign printing places might Sicut laudative, non effective benedicimus
well be thought advisable. 'These reasons tam Deo quam Domino, sic et benedicimus
for thinking that the tract may have been corpori Christi et sanguini, non fadendo
printed in England itself find a strong ilium esse beatum vel sanctum, sed lau-
confirmation in the whole style of the dando et promulgando sanctitatem, quam
original edition, the typography of which, in corpore suo instituit ; et sic ymmolamus
as Mr. Thomas Arnold has kindly com- Christum, et ipsum offerimus Deo patri.
(municated to me in answer to ray = De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae
inquiries, and as he has been assured by Praeludium, in Lutlieri Opera lat. ad
learned bibliographers, points either to Ref. Historiam Pei'tinentia, curavit
the EngUsh presses of the i6th century Henr. Schmidt, Francof. ad Moen. 1868,
or to those of Antwerp. [Editions of the vol. v., 28 : Prima ergo captivitas hujus
Wyckeit have also been published by Dr. sacramenti est quoad ejus substantiam seu
"Vaughan, Tracts and Treatises of John intcgritatem, etc.

1381-1384.] PROTEST AGAINST TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 351
And in every instance new leaders and captains raust needs step into
the field. It was the doctrine of the change of substance, along
with aU its presumptions and consequences, that AVycliffe, frora the
moment when new light upon the subject came to him, attacked with
an indefatigable zeal and a holy earnestness of conscience inspired by
his concern for the honour and glory of God.'
In this he was followed by the numerous host of his disciples.
From the end of the fourteenth to the third decade of the sixteenth
century, the protest against Transubstantiation con- Louaras and
tinned to be a characteristic peculiarity of the English Hussites.
LoUards. In the fifteenth century the Hussites contended against
the denial of the cup,== and, with the fiery zeal characteristic of them,
regained for themselves the calix, which became their ensign. Last
of all, Luther, with all the might of his genius, and his conscience
filled with the AVord of God, assailed the conception and usage of
the Supper as a Mass sacrifice and a good work. The denial of the
cup he also regarded, as before 'stated, as a captivity of the sacra
ment ; but he expressed himself on that point with moderation ; 3
and milder still was his judgment on the doctrine of the change of
substance, although he denied that it had any ground in Scripture,
and regarded it Ukewise as a captivity of the sacrament. ¦^ But the
most godless abuse and error of all, and one bringing in its train
many other abuses as its consequence, he declared to be the conver
sion of the Mass into a meritorious work and a sacrifice. 3 Now, it
was on precisely the same grounds which moved Luther to protest
against the sacrifice of the Mass, that Wycliffe, one hundred and forty
years before, saw himself constrained to stand forward against the
^ In all his writings from 1381 onwards, ^ lb., p. 29: Altera captivitas ejusdem
in Latin and English, learned and popu- sacramenti mitior est, quod ad conscien-
lar, also in his sermons, Wycliffe continu- tiain special. Hoc solum nunc ago, ut
ally recurs to this doctrine, which had scrupulos conscientiarwm de medio tollam,
now become the hinge or the pole of all ne quis se reum haereseos metuat, si in
his thoughts, and he lives in the convic- altari verum panem verumque vinum esse
tion that 'for this righteous contention, ci-ediderit.
-when this brief, poor Ufe is over, the Lord s lb., p. 35 : Tertia captivitas ejusdem
in His mercy wiU most bountifully reward sacramenti est longe impiissimus ille
him.' — Trial., iv. , c. 6, p. 262. abusus, quo factum est, tit fere nihil sit
2 Documenta Mag. Joannis Hus . . . liodie in ecclesia . . , magis persuasum,
ed. Franciscus Palacky, Prague, 1869, p. ... quam missam esse opus bonum et
124, alerter to his friends in Constance, sacrifidum. Qui abusus deinde inundavit
No. 78, June 16, 1413 ; and to Hawlik in infinites alios abusus, etc. This Ian-
Prague, June 21, No. 80. guage becomes still stronger in the piece
3 De Captiiritate Babylonica Ecclesiae. Of the Abuse of the Mass, written in
Opp. lat., v. 29 : Itaque non hoc ago, ut 1321. Jena, ed. 1383, fol. 132, ' that the
vi rapiatur utraque species, quasi necessi- priesthood and mass-offering is no doubt
tate praecepti ad eam cogamur. . . . Tan- the work of the devil, wherewith he has
tumhocvolo, ne quis romanam tyrannidem misled and deceived the world.'
Justificet, quasi recte fecerit, unam speciem
laicis prohibens, etc.

352 wycliffe's theological system. (ch. viii. § 12-
doctrine of Transubstantiation ; viz., because it had no foundation in
Scripture, because it led raen astray into idolatry, and because it.
brought after it a whole chain of errors and abuses. Like Luther,
however, he did not go to work in a raerely negative and destructive
way. He put forward a positive doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
3. AVhat is the positive view which AVycliffe adopted of the
presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper ?
In place of the Romish theory of the change of substance, he lays
down the twofold proposition : in the sacrament of the altar there is-
{a) true bread and true wine ; {b) but at the same time the body and
blood of Christ.
The first proposition, from the lime when he began independently
to examine the doctrine of the Supper, Wycliffe always lays down
¦WycUffe's ¦^^itb distinctness, establishes with clearness, and defends
positive view, -without any vacillation. The grounds upon which he
rests it, we have already seen from his criticism of the opposite
doctrine. He takes his stand first of all upon Holy Scripture, inas
much as Christ's words of institution, and the language of St- Paul
in agreement therewith, speak of the real bread (and the wine) as the
body of Christ (and the blood). The proposition is next confirmed
by the testimonies of many fathers and teachers of the first thousand
years of the history of the Church ; ' and WycUffe further throws
light upon it by the analogy of a central truth of the Christian faith.
. , ., He places his doctrine of the Supper in the light of the
Analogy from >: , . , ' ,
the inoar- foundation truth of the person of the God-man. The
orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ is that He is
both God and Man, both Creator and created — neither solely crea
ture, nor solely Creator. In like manner, the sacrament of the altar
is both earthly and heavenly — at once real or very bread, and the real
or very body of Christ.^ This latter is, according to his showing in
' In the Confessio Magistri Jo. Wiclif, On one occasion WycUffe goes into this
in Lewis' Appendix, p. 329' (comp. parallel in a sermon, viz., the 39th of the
-Vaughan's Life and Opinions, etc., 11. , Saints' Days Sermons, fol. 123, col. 4:
432. Fasc. Zizan., Shirley, p. 126), Sicut Christus est duarum naturarum, et
seven witnesses are produced with their haeretici circa ejus personam dupliciter
statements, Ignatius, Cyprian, Ambrose, errarunt, sic est de materia de sacramenta
Augustine, "[erome, the Rojnan Church altaris. Quidam autem haeretici posue-
itself in a Decretal under Nicholas II., runt, Christum esse verum Deum vel
and the Canon of the Mass, as expressive angelum, et non hominem sive corpus, sed'
of the use of the Church. The same cita- assumpsisse corpus fantasticum ad com-
tions, word for word, I find in Wycliffe's municandum cum hominibus (Docetism).
book, De Apostasia, c. 17, fol. 114, col. 2. Alii autem sensibilius crediderunt, quod
' It is' an apt and happy thought of Christus fuisset vere etpure homo, sic quod
Wychffe to put the doctrine of the Lord's non Deus. . . . Et proportiona,liter, sed
Supper and that of the person of Christ gravius,. delirant haeretici . . . ipsum
in paralleUsm with each other. For both sacramentum credunt non esse corpus fan-
these articles of doctrine stand, in point tasticum, sed unum accidens sine subjecto,
of fact, in a near relation and alliance. quod nesciunt, sive nihil. This is as

1381-13S4.] doctrine OF THE EUCHARIST. 353
several places, the true and orthodox view of the sacrament {catholici
dicunt), whereas the view which maintains that in the Supper there is
present exclusively the body of Christ, and not bread, at least only
the accidents, and therefore only the appearance of bread, is heretical,
and infected with a certain Docetism which is even worse than the
ancient Docetism in reference to the humanity of Christ.
The second proposition, which forms, in connection with the first,
the AVycliffe doctrine of the Supper, could not but be touched upon
already in what precedes. It declares that ' the sacra- ^j^g oruoiai
ment of the altar is Christ's body and blood.' But how question.
is this meant? The question is a difficult one to answer. That
Christ's body and blood are in the sacrament AVycliffe had always
maintained ; but hoiv he conceived of the relation between the body
and blood and the consecrated bread and wine has, down to the pre
sent time, remained obscure. Is his meaning possibly this — that the
body of Christ is only represented by the consecrated bread ; in other
words, that what is visible in the Supper is merely a figure — a sign of
the invisible ? or does AVycUffe mean to raaintain a real existence, the
actual or very presence of the body of Christ in the Supper? In
other words, does AVycliffe's view stand related intellectually to
Zwingli's or to Luther's ? This is the question.
Now it is indeed indisputable that AVycliffe in repeated instances
expresses himself as though his view was that the visible in the sacra
ment of the altar was siraply and only a sign and figure Lather's view
of the invisible. He says, e.g., ' The sacraraental bread ™ zwingu's.
represents or exhibits, in a sacraraental raanner, the body of Christ
Hiraself,' or, 'The bread is the figure of Christ's body.' ' He who
much as to say that the theory of Tran- tas, et sic creator et creatura, sic sacra-
substantiationisstillworse than Docetism. mentum altaris in natura non abjectum
In the English Confession concerning tlie accidens, sed teri'ena substantia — et in
Eucliarist [Select Works, IIL, p. 502), signatione, figura vel modo quo aptius
WycUffe says positively : ' Right so as the vocari potest, est sacramentum corporis
persoim of Crist is verrey God and verrey Christi, ad quem sensum fidelis omnino
mon — verrey Godhed and verrey monhed debet attendere.
 right so — the same sacrament is verrey ' Trialogus, iv., c. 7, p. 267 : Sic
Gods body and verrey bred.' AlsoiaZ>e autem dici potest quod panis ille sacra-
,<4/<;j/aiia,c. io,fol.73,col. i: Wycliffesees mentalis est ad ilium modum specialiter
this parallel : Unde sicut errant Iiaeretici corpus Christi. 'Ad ilium modum,' i.e.,
de Christo, alii quod est pure creatura, et in such a way that the bread sets forth in
alii quod est creator et non creatura, sic figure the body of Christ. Immediately
est duplex haeresis de sacramenta altaris : thereafter Wycliffe remarks that opponents
nt illi dicunt, quod est panis et vinum qui could have nothing to object to this, in
praefuit (=antea fuit), sed in natura im- so far as they see that the sacrament is
perfectius quam panis furfureus vel vene- the body of Christ, i.e., sacramentally
num, alii autemremissius haeretici dicunt, signifies or figures the body itself. In
quod hoc sacramentum non est terrena this sense the Wyckeit strongly expresses
substantia collecta de terrae f rudibus, sed itself— ' So the breade is the fygure or
omnino identice corpus Christi. Catholici mynde [i,e., minding or remembrance) of
autem dicunt, quod sicut Christus est Christes bodye in earth,' p. 14, ed. Ox-
diiplex substantia, scilicet deitaset humani- ford.
24

354 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. viii. § 12
looks at such expressions superficially may naturally think hiraself
jusdfied in assuming that Wycliffe held a view which approximates
to the Zwinglian opinion. That would, however, be a hasty judg
ment. For, not to look as yet at the expressions used by him of a dis
tinctly opposite meaning, it is by no means said in the passages given
above, that the visible in the sacrament is nothing more than a sign,
or figure, or memorial of the invisible, of the body and blood of
Christ. Add to this that the connection in which these passages stand.
The real especially in the Trialogus, has always a poleraical bear-
presence, jj^g^ g^jj^ jg )jy j^g mcaHs intcndcd to set forth directly
and categorically the view entertained by the author himself But
what is of decisive weight is the circumstance that, in by far the
largest number of places, AVycliffe expresses himself positively as
beUeving in a real presence of the body and blood of Christ. It
certainly does not amount to much when in one place he declares
his readiness to believe in a deeper sense of the sacrament than the
figurative one, if he shall be taught it by the AVord of God or by
sound reason {si ex fide vel ratione doctus fuero),^ for this readiness is
one very stringently conditioned : but, on the other hand, there are
not wanting expressions in which Wycliffe very plainly discards the
view that the bread is only a figure of the body of Christ, and declares,
on the contrary, that the bread is Christ's body. In one passage he
reminds the reader that the question relates to a subject of the faith
which has been revealed to us, and that men therefore must give
heed to the teaching of Scripture upon it ; and, just as itis admitted,
on Scripture grounds, that this sacrament is the body of Christ, and
not merely a sacramental figure of His body, so must it be uncon
ditionally conceded, upon the same authority, that the bread which
is this sacraraent is in very truth the body of Christ.^ In another
work {De Apostasia) Wycliffe says that those who deny that the bread
in the sacraraent is the body of Christ, fall into the error of Beren
garius, who placed himself in opposition to the Word of God and the
four great doctors of the Church.3 Accordingly, we venture to main
tain with all decision that WycUffe does not satisfy himself with the
idea of a presence of Christ's body, represented by signs, and sub-
' Trialogus, IV., c. 7, p. 267: Paratus hoc sacramentum, est veraciter corpus
sum tamen, si ex fide vel ratione doctus Christi.
fuero, sensum subtiliorem credere. 3 De Apostasia, c. 7, fol. 64, col. i ; Si
= /i5., IV., c. 4, p. 233: Et sicut virtute autem negatur, panem ilium, qui est
verborum fidei scripturae conceditur, quod sacramentum, esse corpus Christi, inci-
koc sacramentum est corpus Christi, et non ditur in errore^n Berengarii . . . quod
solum quod erit vd figurat sacramentaliter est contra fidem scripturae et quatuor
corpus Christi, sic concedatur eadem aucto- magnos doctores. Comp. Confessio, iij
ritate simpliciter, quod iste panis, qui est Lewis, p. 324 : Simul Veritas et figura.

1381-1384.] THE REAL PRESENCE. 355
jectively apprehended by the communicant, but believes and teaches
a true and real objective presence of the sarae in the Supper.'
AA'ycUffe, then, believed in a real presence of Christ's body in the
Supper ; but not in the sense of a corporeal or local presence. He
denies this with the utmost decision. In a substantial, j^^t corporeal
corporeal, and local raanner the body of Christ is in °^ ^°''^^-
heaven, but not in the sacrament. Only the bread (the host) is
substantially, corporeally, locally, and quantitatively present in the
sacrament, but not Christ's body.^ Of course the question then
arises, If not in a corporeal and local manner, then in what manner
is Christ's body (and blood) present in the sacraraent, as it is still
maintained to be really present ? To this question AVycliffe does not
omit to supply an answer. He distinguishes a threefold manner of
presence of Christ's body in the consecrated host, an effectual, a
spiritual, and a sacraraental presence : effectual {virtualis), as He is in
His kingdora, everywhere, doing good, dispensing the blessings of
nature and of grace ; spiritual, as He graciously indwells in the souls
of the faithful ; sacramental, as He is present in a peculiar manner in
the consecrated host. And as the second manner of presence pre
supposes the first, so again the third raanner presupposes the second. 3
The glorified body of Christ is operative and spiritual. Christ, in
His human nature, is present at every point of the world, therefore
also in the host ; but the distinctive raanner of presence, which be
longs exclusively to the latter, is the sacraraental presence of the body
of Christ. +
But what does this last mean ? So raust we needs ask once more ;
and here AVycliffe's answer is simple — This sacramental presence is a
aniracle. It rests upon the Divine ordinance — upon the Tte Presence
-words of institution. By virtue of the sacraraental words ^p™*'"^' ""ly-
a supernatural change takes place, by means of which bread and wine
' Confessio, in Lewis, p. 324 (in^Vaughan, realiores et veriores, quos corpus Christi
Life and Opinions, II. , 428, in Fasc. appropriate habet in coelo, scil. modus
Zizan., ed, Shirley, p. 116) -.Modus essendi, essendi substantialiter, corpm-aliter et
quo cmpus Christi est in hostia, est modus dimensionaliter, . . Nullo istorum mod-
verus et realis. Hence he appeals to the orum trium est corpus Christi in sacra-
church-hymn which Thomas Aquinas is mento, sed in coelo.
inown to have composed. Range lingua; ^ lb,, p. 323, text after Shiriey, p. 113 :
for the words — Credimus enim, quod triplex est modus
,, , essendi corporis Christi in hostia conse-
¦Verbum caro panem verum ^^.^^^ ^J-^^^ virtualis, spiritualis et
Verbo carnemefficit, sacramentalis. Comp. Trialogus, iv.,
Fitque sanguis Christi merum, ^_ g_ ^.^^^^ jjj; ^^^ j^*^^, , ^ .^
Etsi sensus deficit — expressed, but less clearly than in the
he interprets entirely in favour of his own passage of the Confession just quoted.
view. De Apostasia, c. 3, fol. 33, col. 2 ; * Luther also makes use of the epithet
-SO also in XXIV. Miscell. Sermons, No. sacramental to express the peculiar and,
J., fol. 130, col. I. in its kind, unique union between the body
'lb., p. 324: Sunt alii tres modi of Christ and the eucharistic elements.

356 wycliffe's theological system. [c-h. viii. § 12
remain indeed what they are in their own substance, but frora that
moment are in truth and reality Christ's body and blood.' Not that
the glorified body of Christ descends out of heaven to the host,
wherever it raay be consecrated in church ; no ! it reraains above in
heaven fixed and immovable, and only in a spirUual, invisible raanner
is it present in every raorsel of the consecrated host, as the soul is
present throughout the body.^ Therefore we are able to see the body
of Christ in the sacrament, not with the bodily, but only with the
spiritual eye — that is, with the eye of faith ; and when we break the
consecrated host we break not the body of Christ — we handle Him
not with the bodily touch — we do not chew and eat Him corporeally,
but we receive Him spiritually.3 The host is not itself Christ's body,
but undoubtedly this latter is in a sacraraental manner concealed in
it.* In scholastic language, it is not a question of identification or
of impanation. Both of these ideas Wycliffe rejects,^— not only the
former, according to which two things differing in kind and number
were aUeged to become one and the same in kind apd number, but
also the latter. The idea of irapanation was sustained by that of the
incarnation. Just as the Son of God becarae raan vvithout ceasing
to be God, or without the human nature passing into the Divine, but
in such wise that the Godhead forms with the manhood one insepar
able God-manhood ; so analogously, it was thought, did the body of
• De Apostasia, c. 8, fol. 65, col. i : Christian faith by its enemies, that 'the
Sic in translatione ista supernaturali priests b'reak the body of Christ, they
remanet tam panis quam vini essentia, et break, therefore. His neck and His limbs,
cum sic iniraculose corpus Christi et san- and that we should do this to our God is
guis, sortitur nomen excellentius secundum shocking.' To which WycUife replies —
religionem, quam ex fide scripturae credi- we break the holy sign or the consecrated'
mus ; tamen vere et realiter ex virtute ver- host, but not the body of Christ, for that
borum sacramentalium fit corpus Christi is a different thing : frangimus sacramen-
et sanguis. Quomodo autem hoc fiat, debet tum vel hostiam consecratam, non autem
fidelis sedulo perscrutari. Ego autem corpus Christi, cum distinguuntur ; sicuf
intelligo hoc fieri per viam sacramentalis non frangimus radium solis, licet franga-
conversionis, aut quacunque alio nomine inus vitrum vel lapidem cristallum. Et
ista mutatio catholice sit detecta. haec videtur sententia cantus ecclesiae, quo.
= Trialogus, IV., c. 8, p. 272 : Non est canitur —
intelligendum, coipus Christi descendere
ad hosiia^n in quacunque ecclesia conse- ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ Sacramento
cratam, sed manet snrsum in coehs stabile ^^ ^^^-u^ 5^^ memento,
ei tmmotum ; tdeo habet esse sptriiuale tn tantum esse sub fragmento,
hostia etnon esse dzmemwnatzwi et cetera Quantum toto tegitur—
accidentia quae m coelo. De Eucharistia, °
c. I, fol. 2, col. I : Ipstmi {corpus Christi)
est toiu7n sacramentaliter et spiritualiter from the loth Strophe of the Sequence ot
vel vii-tualiier ad omnem (sic) pzinctum Thomas Aquinas : Lauda Sion Salva-
hostiae consecratae, sic%tt anima est in torem, c£ Daniel, Thesaurus Hymno--
corpore. logicus, vol. II., p. 97.
3 De Eucharistia , as above : £t conce- ¦* lb. , fol. 2, col. 4 : Visa hostia debemus
dimus, quod non videmus in sacramento c7'edere, quod ipsa non sit corpus Christi,
illo coj'pus Christi oculo corporali, sed sed ipsutn corpus Christi est sacramental—
oculo mentali, scilicet fide. Shortly before iter in ipsa abscondiizim.
he cites the objection brought against the "5 Trialogus, iv., c. 8, p. 269.

1381-1384.] THE REAL PRESENCE. 357
Christ become bread in the Supper ; not in the sense of the bread
ceasing to be bread, but in the sense of the glorified impanation
' body of Christ entering into a perfect union with the *staut™Son*"
real bread. This theory AA'ycliffe sets aside as well as rejected.
the other of the identificadon of the bread with the body of Christ.'
Neither ' impanation ' nor ' identification ' was AVycliffe's doctrine, but
only a sacramental presence of the body of Christ in and with the
consecrated host, wrought by virtue of the words of institution —
what he also calls a 'spiritual,' i.e., an invisible presence. He expresses
his doctrine of the Supper compendiously in the proposition, 'As
Christ is at once God and man, so the sacraraent of the altar is at
once Christ's body and bread — bread in a natural raanner, and body
in a sacramental manner.' ^ Still raore compactly does he concen
trate his thoughts in the short sentence : ' The sacrament of the altar
is the body of Christ in the forra of the bread' 3
Returning to the characteristics touched upon above, according to
which the presence of the glorified body of Christ in the Supper is
a ' spiritual ' as well as ' effectual ' and ' sacramental ' „^ _
presence — like the indwelling of the soul in the body spiritually
— it follows from this idea, as already mentioned, that
we see Christ's body in the sacrament not with the bodily, but only
with the spiritual eye — that we do not touch Him corporeally,
and therefore, also, cannot receive and enjoy Him corporeally,
but only spiritually. To this point AVycliffe raore than once refers,
emphasising it intentionally, and drawing from it without reserve the
1 It rests entirely on a misunderstand- ecclesiae, quod, sicut Christus est simul
ing when the Carthusian prior, Stephen Deus et lionw, sic sacramentum est simul
of Dolan, in his Medulla Tritici seu corpus Christi et panis, panis naturaliter
Anti-Wikleffus, Pars, IV., c. 3, vide Fez, et corpus sacramentaliter. Trialogus,
Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus, vol. IV., c. 4, p. 238: Hoc sacramentum
IV,, fol. 316, expresses the opinion that venerabile est in natura sua verus panis
WycUffe himself first broached both the et sacramentaliter corpus Christi. Con-
idea and the technical expression of fessio, in Lewis, 328 ; Ponimus, venerabile
impanatio : Confingis tibi (so he apos- sacramentum altaris esse naturaliter
trophizes'Wycliiie) adinventionisterminos panem et vinum, sed sacramentaliter
novo perversitatis loquendi modo .... corpus Christi et sanguinem.
impanationem videlicet corporis Christi 3 De Apostasia, c. 18, fol. 116, col. 2 :
iibi fabricans, referring to the words in Supponendum est, sacramentum altaris
Trialogus, IV., 8, p. 271. Woodford, esse corpus Christi informa panis. Of
before Stephen, knew better than this, Feyned Contemplatif Lif, MS. in Lewis,
-when he quotes the word impanari from p. 91 : ' The Eucharist is the body of
a controversial treatise against Berengar, Christ in the form of bread.' In English
¦written by Guitmund, Bishop of Aversa, Confession of Wiclif, in Knighton's
and states that this was one of the phrases Chronicle: De Eventibus Angliae, ed.
made use of by Berengar. "Vide Wood- Twysden, London 1652, vol. in., p.
fordus adv. Jo. IViclefum, in Fasciculus 2630. We give the words according to
Rerum, etc., by Ortuinus Gratius, 1333, the original MS., accurately printed in
fol. 96, col. 2, ed. Edward Brown, 1690, Select English Works, vol. in., p. 300 :
London, fol. 192. ' Iknowleche, that the sacrament of the
= Saints' Days Sermons, No. LIX., fol. auter is verrey Goddus body in fourme of
J24, col. 2 : Veritas quidem est et fides brede.'

358 wycliffe's theological SYSTEM. [CH.VIII, §13
conclusion which is its necessary outcome.' He remarks that the
believer's desire is to partake of the body of Christ not corporeally,
but spiritually ; and therefore it is that the Omniscient has connected
th,T,t spiritual manner of presence with the host which is to be eatsn
by the beUever, and has set aside another raanner of the presence
because it would be superfluous. Only unbelievers, or persons of
a Jewish spirit, join in the 'murmuring' of those who (John vi.
60, 61) were dismayed and said, ' It is a hard saying,' because they
understood Him to speak of a body which it behoved thera to eat
corporeally.^ In raore than one place AA'ycliffe appeals to the
word of Christ in John vi. 63 : 'It is the Spirit that quickeneth —
the flesh profiteth nothing. ' 3 I raight even go the length of main
taining that this expression appears to him, together with the words;
of institution, ' This is My body,' as the fundamental passage on,
the subject of the Lord's Supper. The corporeal eating of the
bread in the sacrament and the spiritual eating stand as wide asunder
from one another, in his opinion, as the heaven frora the earth. A
swine or a shrew-mouse is able to consume it carnaUy,"* but both are
incapable of enjoying it spirituaUy, because to them faith and soul
are wanting.
As AVycUffe makes the actual receiving of the body of Christ in
the sacrament dependent upon faith, he must necessarily, as a logical
thinker, have held that only believing communicants are
lieving partake partakers in fact of the body and blood of Christ;
'"^ ^' while the unbelieving receive exclusively only the visible
signs, and not the invisible body of Christ. Up to the present
time, it is true, no passage had been found in which this latter thought
vvas expressed in dear and unambiguous terms. 5 But in the sermon
^ De Eucharistia, c. i, MS. 1387, fol ". Ib., No. I,, fol. 129, col. 4: Et
3, col, I ; Nota ulterius ad acceptionem patet, quod, quantum differt coelum a
corporis Christi, quod non consistit in terra, tantum dijfert manducarc panem
corporali acceptione — vel tactione hostiae sacramentalevi spiritualiter et mandu-
consecratae, sed in pastione animae ex care ipsum corporaliter. Stat enim,
fructuosa fide. suem vel soricem manducare ipsum car-
' Confessio, in Lewis, p. 323 : Cum ergo nalitcr, sed non possunt manducare spi-
fidelis non optaret comedere corporaliter ritualiter, cum non habent fi.dem vel
sed spiritualiter corpus Christi, patet quod animum, quo manducent. In De Eu-
Omnisciens aptavit ilium modum spiri- chai-istia, c. i, fol. 2, col. i, Wycliffe
iualem essendi corporis sui cum hostia, remarks that as a lion, when he devours-,
quae debet comedi a fideli, etc. the body of a man, does not devour his
3 XXIV. Miscellaneous Sermons, No. sov.l along with it, although it is every-
I., fol. 128, De Eucharistia, c. i, fol. 3, where present in the body ; so an animal
col. I. Confession of tie Sacrament, in can, it is true, consume a consecrated
Lewis, p. 328 ; in Fasc. Zizan., ed. Shir- host, but not the body of Christ, in the
ley, 124; John vi. 63, dicit Christus: sacrament.
Cai-o non prodest quicquam, cum nee 5 Lewald, indeed, mentions it as a
.lumptio corporalis, nee manducatio cor- thought of which -Wycliffe is fairly con-
poralis corporis Domini quicquam prodest. vinced, that only the believer enjoys the
— Wyckeit, Oxford, 1828, p. vii. body of the Lord. Zeitschrift fiir histo-

1381-1384.] HIS TEACHING ON THE EUCHARIST. 359
on the Sixth Chapter of St. John's Gospel, which has already been
repeatedly quoted, I find also this thought clearly stated. AVycliffe
distinguishes sharply between corporeal and spiritual tasting of the
sacramental food ; and in accordance with this, he not only maintains
that any one who has not received the sacramental food may, notwith
standing, truly partake of the flesh and blood of Christ by means of faith
— e.g., John the Baptist ; but he also declares his belief that the non-
elect do not in fact partake of Christ's body and blood, any more
than Christ receives them — and as little as the man who has partaken
of indigestible food can be said to have really consumed it.'
Taking a survey once raore of AA^ycliffe's whole investigation of the
Lord's Supper, to which he almost constantly returned during the
last four years of his life, whatever misrht be the point of
. ¦Wycliffe's de-
Christian doctrine he was discussing at the tirae, and votiontothe
which he treated of in serraons and popular tracts, as ^" ^^° '
well as in disputations and scientific works, it is irapossible not to be
impressed with the intellectual labour, the conscientiousness, and the
force of will, all equally extraordinary, which he applied to the solu
tion of the problem. AVith a courage derived from the sense of duty
and frora the might of truth, he nobly dared to undertake the dangerous
conflict with a doctrine which he had corae to look upon as a heresy
opposed to the teaching of Scripture, dishonouring to God, and tlie
source at the same tirae of numerous errors, abuses, and mischiefs.
His attack upon the dograa of Transubstantiation was one so concen
trated, and delivered from so many sides, that the scholastic conception
vvas shaken to its very foundations.^
The animated strife which was directed against WycUffe, and the
strong measures which vvere taken by the hierarchy against him and
his party, are the loudest testimonies to the importance Importance
ofthe attack that called forth this resistance. Although ofwyoiiffe'a
Huss and the Hussites — the Calixtines at least — did
not continue AA'ycliffe's opposition to Transubstantiation, his early
rische T/ieologie, 1846, p. 611. But the sacramentaliter, verius manducare hoc
sentence from an Easter sermon of corpus, ut patuit de Baptista, . . . col.
Wycliffe quoted in an essay of the well- 3 : Sed sicut homo proprie non comedit
known Hussite Jacobell (Jacob of Mies) cibum indigestibilem, sic praesciti nee
— in Von der Hardt, Constantiense Conci- Christum comedunt, nee ipse illos, sed
Hum, \ol. III. , fol. 926 — is not sufficient tanquam superfiua et indigestibilia mittit
to prove that thought, especially when foras.
the connection in which the sentence = Even Cardinal Peter d'Ailly (died
stands is obser\-ed. The sermon from 1423) expressed the opinion that the
which Jacobell took the sentence is the assumption of true bread and wine in the
twentieth of the XL. Miscellaneous sacrament, and not of mere accidentia.
Sermons. The sentence itself occurs would have much more in its favour, and
in fol. 226, col. 2. would infer fewer superfluous miracles, if
I XXIV. Miscellaneous Sermons, No. only the Church had not decided against
I., fol. 129, col. I : Nee dubium, quin it. Vide Luther, De Captivitate Baby-
saepe contingit hominem non cibatum lonica, p. 29, Opp. Lat. ed. Schmidt, 1868.

360 wycliffe's THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM. [ch. vm. § 12
labours in this field bore fruit in the sixteenth century. The theory
which he had so violently shaken fell to the ground in consequence
of the German and Swiss Reformations; and it is well worth remark
ing that Luther's opinion on Transubstantiation, although he regarded
it as a mUder kind of bondage of the sacrament, yet agrees in many
parts with that hostile criticism which AA''ycliffe had developed against
it a hundred and forty years before.'
As to Wycliffe's positive doctrine of the Lord's Supper, it will
hardly be denied either that it is thought out with an uncommon
Summary of amount of acutcness, or that it does justice to the
his views, holiness of the sacrament and its dignity as a real means
of grace. It consists, to recur to it once more, of a twofold pro
position. The ^rst proposition, ' The sacrament of the altar after
consecration, as well as before, is true bread and true wine,' requires
no further elucidation, especially as it has found recognition in all
the Protestant confessions. The second proposition, ' The sacrament
of the altar after consecration is the body and blood of Christ,'
affirms the real presence of the body and blood of Christ, but not on
that account a local and corporeal, but a sacramental and spiritual
presence of the same, similarly as the soul is present in every part of
the human body. AVhen it is affirmed here with emphasis that the
body of Christ in the Supper can only be spiritually seen, received,
and enjoyed, but not corporeally, because it is only present spiritually,
and when, in consequence, it is asserted that only to believers a real
participation of the body of Christ in the Supper is attributed, while
to the unbelieving, on the contrary, such participation is denied, it is
at this point that the difference of Wycliffe's eucharistic doctrine from
Luther's becomes most apparent. For it is certain that Luther, at
least from the time of his controversy with Carlstadt, taught a cor
poreal receiving of Christ's body and blood, and, as connected with
Difference ^'^'^' ^ partaking of the body of Christ on the part both
^^]w^™ ^a" °^ worthy and unworthy communicants. In close con-
Luther's doc- nection with the corporeal receiving held by Luther, and
as a necessary preliminary to it, stands Luther's doctrine
of the ubiquity of the body of Christ ; whereas AVycliffe firmly and
distinctly maintains the contrary view — that the body of Christ remains
in heaven, and does not descend into every consecrated host. But
notwithstanding these points of difference, AVycliffe's doctrine of the
Eucharist, with its real but spiritual presence of Christ's body, stands
nearer to the Lutheran doctrine of the Supper than it does to the
Zwinglian, or even to the Calvinistic doctrine ; in so far, at all events,
' De Captivitate Babylonica, pp. 29, 30.

13S1-13S4.] WYCLIFFE AND LUTHER. 361
as AVycUffe understands an imraediate presence of the body and blood
of Christ, instead of assuming only a communion with Christ's body
and blood effected by the Holy Ghost {Spiritus sancti virtute).''
AA'ycliffe's doctrine of the Supper deserves at least sincere recognition
and high estimation, on account of the harmonious union which it
exhibits of the power of original laborious thought with the energy
of a mature and solid Christian faith.
¦ Calvini Institutio Relig. Christ., IV., virtute, ut cum came et sanguine Christi
^- I7i §§• 31. 33. <.'-i'-i in 'hfi latter pas- communicemus.
jsage; P'lt incomprehcusitili Spiritus sancti

CHAPTER IX.
THE EVENTS OF THE LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S
LIFE, 1 378-1 384.

I. — The Papal Schism and its Effect upon Wycliffe.

I

N the Fourth Chapter we followed the personal incidents of
AVycliffe's life down to the beginning of the year 1378. In
this year and the preceding one the hierarchy had at-
Temporary i «-> j ^
freedom from tacked him — in 1377 the Enghsh episcopate, and in
molestation. 1378 the Roman Court itself, under Gregory XI. On
both occasions AVycliffe had personaUy appeared, but on both his
enemies were unable to effect anything against him. In the one case
the Duke of Lancaster had stepped in to his protecdon, not without
violence ; in the other the Princess Regent had shielded him, while
the citizens of the capital had stood by him with their sympathies.
For three full years from this time he remained exempt from all
serious annoyance.
An event took place soon after AVycliffe's last examination which
seemed likely to induce on his part a desistance from all further
Death of opposition to the Church. On March 27, 1378, Pope
Gregory XI. Gregory XI. died in Ro-me — a year and two months
after his festive entry into the city. On the twelfth day after this-
event, the Archbishop of Bari, Bartholomew of Prignano, was
elected Pope, and took the name of Urban VI. The strong raoral
earnestness which raarked his very earliest proceedings produced sO'
favourable an impression in England, and upon AVycliffe especially, that
he indulged the joyful hope that the new Pope would put his hand
energetically to the necessary reform of the Church.'
But AVycliffe's joyful expectations were of short duration. Only
too soon several of the cardinals were so much disgusted by Urban's.
Urban the vvell-meant but inconsiderate zeal, and by his haughty.
Sixth. imperious bearing, that in the middle of May they with
drew to Anagni, where their opposition to his measures became more
^ De Ecclesia, c. 2, fol. 7, col. 2.

1378-1384.] THE PAPAL SCHISM. 363
and more determined. Towards the end of July, 1378, the French
cardinals assembled at Anagni drew up a public letter to Urban VI.,
in which they declared his election to have been illegal, ^he Papal
because it had been compelled by the terrorism of the schism.
Roraan mob, and called upon him to renounce his pretended Papal
dignity, which he had usurped contrary to law.' And when this
attempt proved futile, as was to be expected, and vvas answered by
Urban in a letter of the most fanatical and peremptory kind,'' the
cardinals who had remained true to the opposition took the final step
of electing, on September 20th, at Fondi, in the NeapoUtan territory,
a rival Pope, in the person of the Cardinal Bishop Robert of Cam-
br.ay. Count of Geneva, who took the narae of Clement VII.
Both parties had sued for the favour" of England, even before the
election of the rival Pope. AA'hen Parliament met in October, 1378,
in Gloucester, legates appeared from Urban VI. com- Appeals to
plaining of the injustice which he had received at the England.
hand of many of the cardinals ; and coraraissioners also, frora the
ojDposition party of the College of Cardinals, bringing several writings,
which attempted to win over to their side the English Church.3
These writings, indeed, took no effect, for the Church of England
continued to adhere to Urban VI. ; but this vvas a foretaste of the
fruits of the coming schism, which vvas to extend throughout the whole
of Western Christendom, and to continue for the next thirty years.
In earlier centuries the schisms created in the Church by the
election of rival Popes had produced in the minds of raen the most
profound impressions. The world's faith in the unity -^seat of the
and immutabUity of the Church, its confidence in the schism.
sanctity of the Pontiff in Rome, had been shaken to pieces, AA^hen
men beheld the vicegerents of Christ contending with envy and hate
for power and honour and dominion, they began to have suspicions
that all the life and efforts of the rest of the clergy were in like
manner nothing but a striving after higher offices and earthly
advantages.'* It may be readily understood that the effects of a schism like that
which had now broken out were more powerfully felt than those of
all previous schisms of the same kind, in proportion to -wyciiffe's
its passionate character and its all-embracing extent. position.
How deeply must a man of AVycUffe's zeal for the honour of God
I The literal rendering of the letter in « Comp. on the schism which took
Walsingham's Historia Anglicana, ed. place about the year 1044, -Voigt's Hilde-
Riley, i., 382. brand, as Pope Gregory Vll,, and his Age,
' Comp. Walsingham, i., 383. 2 ed., 1846, p. 2.
3 lb., I., 380.

364 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [cu. ix. § 1
and the well-being of His Church, and who was so acute an
observer of all ecclesiastical facts, have been affected by the event !
High and joyful as the hope had been which he had entertained
on hearing the accounts of the first measures of Urban VI. ,
his disappointment was equally severe when in the end Urban,
not less than his rival, Clement VIL, injured and destroyed the
unity of the Church by unbridled passion and by hostile actions.
I find that AVycliffe, in consequence of this schism, advanced
steadily in his views of the Papacy at large. The event became.
a raost momentous turning-point in the development of his con
victions, and in his position as a Reformer. His opinions con
cerning the Popes, the Papacy, and the right of the Papal primacy,
from the commencement of the schism became raore keen, more
firmly based on principle, more radical. In the tinie immediately
succeeding the outbreak, AVycliffe continued to recognise Urban as
the rightful Pope, not only because his election had been regular, and
had been carried through with honest intentions, but also because
Urban hiraself was a man of truly upright character.' This latter
ground, it is true, was of such a kind that, under certain pre
suppositions, it might lead to the most opposite results. This was
expressed by AVycliffe himself, when (possibly towards the end of
1378) he remarked : ' If ever Urban departs frora the right way, then
is his election a mistaken one ; and in this case it would be not a
little for the good of the Church to do vvithout both the Popes ! '
The sentiment which was here put only contingently was one
which AVycliffe by-and-by, under the impression made upon him by
the realised results of the schism, accepted definitively as
Separation from both just and true. When he was compelled to see with his
Popes aUke. , , , t, • 1 . • . ¦
own eyes that both Popes, m order to mamtain their
position against each other, had no scruple in using all kinds of
weapons in the strife ; that each put under the ban of excommuni
cation not only his rival himself, but all his supporters ; and that both
parties alike, whenever possible, levied war upon each other,= he
arrived at last at the conviction that it was not only allowable, but a
plain duty, to separate himself frora both Popes alike. This was
soraething very different from the neutrality which at the beginning
^ Saints' Days Sermons, No. X,, fol. and unchristian. Whereas Urban -VI.,
19, col. I. This is the standpoint which although his name does not expressly
we find also in the Trialogus. In occur, is assumed to be the rightful, and
two places there. Book iv,, c. 36, 37, a really good Pope.
PP- 373. 377, he speaks of Clement "VII. ' Of the two Popes, Urban 'VI. was
[Robertus Gilbonensis), but on both occa- the first who threatened to overrun his
sions in such a way as to characterise enemy with a crusade, which he did in a
both hira and his party as heretical Bull of November 29, 1378.

1378-1384.] THE PAPAL SCHISM. 365
of the schism was observed by many lands and incorporate bodies
in AVestern Christendom. AVhen the kingdom of Castile adhered to
its neutraUty tiU May 19, 1381 ; when the University of Paris still
held the same attitude in the early months of 1379,' the intention of
the parties was only to guard against over-haste, with the purpose in
the end of recognising the Pope vvho should prove to have been
lawfully elected. It was still felt that a Pope vvas indispensable.
People were on their way to submit themselves to one of the two rival
Popes ; only, under the circumstances, they restrained themselves so
far as to reserve their judgment as to which was the true Pontiff.
AA''ycliffe, on the other hand, was on his way to breaking loose from the
Papacy itself, both on moral and religious grounds, so strongly was he
repelled by the proceedings of both the rivals alike. Each of thera
declared his opponent publicly, most solemnly, in God's narae, to
be ' a false, pretended Pope,' damned him as a schismatic, and, as
much as in him lay, cut him off from the Church. AVycliffe's judg
ment of them was distinctly this — They are both in the right (in their
judgment of one another), and they are both wrong (in their clairas);
they are both in point of fact false Popes, and have nothing to do
with the Church ; for their doings and their lives testify that, far frora
being members of the body of Christ, they are apostates and limbs
of the devil. '^ Not only in scientific works like the Trialogus, or in
lectures intended for the learned, but even in serraons, he spoke out
without reserve against the violence of both parties towards each
other. It was nothing less than unchristian, and a thing before
' Comp. Schwab, Joannes Gerson, worse Pope of the two ; but it may be
Wiirzburg, 1838, p. 113. taken as a probable truth that neither the
2 This is the standpoint taken by one nor the other is a real member of the
WycUffe in one of the latest of his known Church, for their walk and work are
writings, viz., in the Supplement to the opposed to Christ and the apostles ; it
Trialogus ; while in the Trialogus itself would be better for the Church if she had
his position is this, that he looks upon no Pope at aU, and held singly and alone
Clement 'VII. as an illegitimate and in- to the Bishop of our souls in the trium-
herently unworthy Pseudo-Pope, while phant Church above. In the gth chapter,
quietly, and by impUcation, recognising p. 448, he pronounces both to be ' mani-
Urban -VI. In the Supplement, on the fest Antichrists,' and warns the believers
contrary, he condemns both Popes as (in allusion to the word of Christ in
Antichrists, as monsters [nwnstra, c. 4), Matthew xxiv. 23 and 26) in these
as incarnate devils (p. 423) ; he praises terms : ' Believe it not that one or either
the Lord Christ, who is the Head of the of them is a Pope, and go not a crusading
Church, that He has split the usurped to slay the sons of the Church,' etc.; and
head, the Pope, into two, and he laments in the tract on the crusade, entitled
only the stupidity of the Church that she Cruciata, c, 8, he expresses himself in
does not -withdraw herself from both these quite a similar way (see the passage from
pretended and antichristian heads, but it quoted above, culminating in the asser-
rather regards it as her duty to the faith tion, quod nihil illis (Urban 'VI. and
to adhere to one of the two. The fourth ClementVll,) et ecclesiae Dei— neither the
chapter of the Trialogus, p. 423, treats one nor the other has anything to do with
for the most part of this subject alone. the holy Church of God, vol. 11. (Wyclif
Clement VIL, in Wycliffe's opinion. Society) p. 621.
may, comparatively speaking, be the

355 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [cu. ix. § i
unheard of, that, with the object of securing the death of the rival
Pope and his supporters, it was declared to be allowable for every
Christian in the AVest of Europe to put his feUow-Christian to death ;
for every man held with one or other of the two rivals.' AVhen
Urban VI. issued a BuU in 1383, on the strength of which Bishop
The new Spcucer, of Norwich, undertook a crusade to Flanders,
¦WycUffe's the effect of the schism in stirring up wars was brought
protest. home to EngUshmen in coramon with other nations ;
and AVycliffe raised a loud protest against such proceedings in a Letter
to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his ' Outcry touching the
Crusade,' and in other pieces.^ But stiU worse, in his opinion, was
the fact that even civil war was actually kindled, or at least threatened,
by the opposing Popes and their fanatical adherents. Hence the
reference in one of his serraons to the fact that the mendicant monks
of England were in communication with Clement VII. (the French
Pope), and were favourers of his party.3 One fact alone in these
melancholy circumstances appeared to him to be a judgment of God
and an instance of His Providential working, namely, that the two
anti-christian chiefs were striving to no other end than to injure each
¦other. AVycliffe thought the best and wisest course was to stand by,
and look quietly on, until the two halves of Antichrist should destroy
each other.*
We see how neutrality towards the two Popes was converted into a
renunciation in principle of the Popedom itself, which ended in the
The Papacy as conviction that the Papacy is the Antichrist, and its
Antichrist, .yyhole institution from the wicked one. From the year
1 38 1 we find this opinion repeatedly expressed by Wycliffe. The
thought and the expression gradually became quite habitual with him.
From the day when this iramense change took place in his convic
tions AVycliffe's theological position and his ecclesiastical action became
ever more and more decided and energetic. The work of Bible
translation, which, with the help of some friends, he had already
taken in hand, was now pushed forward with increased zeal and
emphasis, so that the English translation of the entire Bible was com
pleted in all probabUity in 1382. It was probably, too, in the years
between 1378 and 1382 that the training and sending forth of
" XXIV. Miscell. Sermons, No. xi. , schism into a national question for
fol. 136, col. 4. England.
2 Litera Missa Archiepiscopo Cant., 4 De Quatuor Sectis Novellis, c. i
fol. loS, col. 2; Cruciata, throughout (Wyclif Soc. ), vol. I., p. 243 : 5eKcA'ctej
(Wyclif Soc), vol. II., pp. 588-632. Deus, qui , . . di-oisit caput serpentis,
3 XXIV, Sermons, No. XIV., fol. 162, movens unam pariem ad aliam conteren-
'Col. 4. The dependence of Pope Clement da-m. . . . Consilium ergo sanum videtur
VII. upon the support of the French permittere has duas partes Antichristi
Crown converted, in fact, the Papal se ipsas destruere.

1378-1384] ATTACK ON TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 367
AVycliffe's evangelical itinerant preachers began. At the end of May,
1382, the Archbishop of Canterbury mentions, in a mandate to the
Bishop of London, the operations of 'uncalled' traveUing preachers,
vvho were aUeged to be spreading erroneous doctrines ; and a letter
to the Archbishop from members of the University of Oxford who
were opponents of AA'ycliffe — also in the year 1382 — mentions the
great number of his adherents in the province of Canterbury in such
a way as to suggest that it must have been by the preaching of his
Itinerants that his reformational views vvere so largely spread abroad.'
If we are not mistaken in this supposition, it becomes all the more
interesting to notice a remark made incidentally in the same docuraent,
to the effect, that the results of which the writers of the letter com
plain had been accomplished ' within a few years ' — a hint which, in
fact, may be taken as a confirmation of our suggestion, that the
sending out of Itinerants had been comraenced by WycUffe since the
year 137S. At all events, the Itinerancy vvas in full and effective
operation in 1380 and following years, when, in the spring of 1382,
the Supreme Church judicatories of England found it necessary to
take official action against them.
2. — Wycliffe's Attack upon the Doctrine of Transub
stantiation.
Such action of the hierarchy seemed to be all the more necessary
because AA'ycliffe had recently begun to attack even the doctrines of
the Church. This was the effect, on the one hand, of opening of
the Scripture principle which he had arrived at long ^^ attack.
before, by the power of which his criticism gained the requisite inter
nal freedom; but, on the other hand, we shall scarcely err if we recognise
in it, at the same time, the effect of the great Papal schism, inas
much as this allowed him the necessary freedom of external action.
AVycliffe for a long tirae devoted his ardent attention to the doctrine
of the Lord's Supper; and at length, in the year 1379 or 1380 at
the earliest, he arrived at the result that the doctrine of Transub
stantiation is unscriptural, groundless, and erroneous. As soon as he
had forraed this conviction he gave expression to it without reserve,
as well from the pulpit, in the hearing of the people, as from the
¦ The passage runs thus : Doctor denique suae sectae procreavit haeredes,
quidam novellus dictus Joh. Wycliff, quod, sicut probabiliter credimus, absque
non electus sed infectus agricola vitis mordacibus sarculis et censuris asperrimis
Christi, jam intra paucos annos pulcherri- explantari -aix poterunt aut evelli. Wil-
mum agrum vestrae Cantuariensis pro- kins. Concilia Magnae Britanniae, TJ^j,
vinciae tot variis seminavit zizaniis, vol. III., fol. 171.
totque pestiferis plantavit erroribus, tot.

358

LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE.

[CH. IX. § 3-

chair, before the learned world. In the suraraer of 1381 he published
twelve short theses upon the Lord's Supper and against Transub
stantiation, which he undertook to defend against the world.
These theses vvere the following : ' —
I. The consecrated host which we see on the altar is neither' Christ
nor any part of Him, but the efficacious sign of Hira.
The twelve ^- •'^^ pilgrim upon earth is able to see Christ in the
theses. consecrated host with the bodily eye, but by faith.
3. Formerly the faith of the Roman Church was expressed in the
Confession of Berengarius, that the bread and wine which continue
after the benediction are the consecrated host.
4. The Eucharist, in virtue of the sacramental words, contains
both the body and the blood of Christ, truly and really, at every point.
5. Transubstantiation, Identification, and Irapanation — terms made
use of by those who have given names to the signs employed in the
Eucharist — cannot be shown to have any foundation in the Word of
God
8. Sacramentum eucharistiae est in
figura corpus Christi et sanguis, in quae
transubstantiatur panis aut* vinum, cujus
remanet post consecrationem aliquitas,
Ucet quoad considerationem fideUum sit
sopita. 9. Quod accidens sit sine subjecto non
est fundabile; sed si sic, Deus annihilatur,
et perit quilibet articulus fidei Christianae.
10. Quaecunque persona vel secta est
nimis haeretica, quae pertinaciter defen-
derit quod sacramentum altaris est panis
per se existens, in natura infinitum abjec
tior ac imperfectior pane equino.
II. Quicunque pertinaciter defenderit
quod dictum sacramentum sit accidens,
qualitas, quantitas, aut earum aggregatio,
incidit in haeresim supradictam.
12. Panis triticeus, in quo solum licet
conficere, est in natura infinitum perfectior
pane fabino vel ratonis ; quorum uterque
in natura est perfectior accidente.
That only a single MS. of the Con
clusiones is known to exist is the more to
be regretted, than in more than one place.
there is strong reason to suspect that the
readings are erroneous, e.g., it can scarcely
be beUeved that Thesis 8 is correctly given,
for as in Thesis 3 the idea of transub-
stantiatio is rejected as unbiblical, it is
impossible to see how this idea can again
be made use of in Thesis 8 — Corpus Christi
et sanguis, in quae transubstanticilur
panis aut vinum. In Thesis iia also, the*
phrase infinitum perfectior may have
arisen from the infinitum abjectior of
Thesis 10, for in the connection where it
stands it is unsuitable and out of place.
in articles 7 and 8.

¦ Vide the original text under the title
Conclusiones J. Wiclefi de Sacramento
altaris, printed from a MS. in the
Bodleian, in Lewis, History, etc., ed.
1820, p. 318 ; in -Vaughan (from Lewis),
Life and Opinions, 2 ed., II., 423 ; John
deWycliffe, p. 360 ; Fasc. Zizan., Shirley,
p. 103 ; from which last we transcribe :
Conclusiones Wycclyff de Sacramento
Altaris.
I. Hostia consecrata quam videmus in
altari, nee est Christus, nee aUqua sui pars,
sed efiftcax ejus signum.
2. NuUus viator sufficit oculo corporali,
sed fide, Christum videre in hostia con
secrata. 3. Olim fuit fides ecclesiae Romanae
in professione Berengarii, quod panis et
vinum, quae remanentpost benedictionem,
sunt hostia consecrata.
4. Eucharistia habet, virtute verborum
sacramentalium, tam corpus quam san
guinem Christi, vere et realiter, ad quem
libet ejus punctum.
3. Transubstantiatio, identificatio, et im
panatio, quibusutunlurbaptistae signorum
in materia de eucharistia, non sunt
fundabiles in Scriptura.
6. Repugnat sanctorum sententiis as
serere quod sit accidens sine subjecto in
hostia veritatis.
7. Sacramentum eucharistiae est in
natura sua panis aut* vinum, habens,
virtute verborum sacramentalium, verum
corpus et sanguinem Christi, ad quemlibet
ejus punctum. * Shirley reads et

138..] THESES AGAINST TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 369
6. It is contrary to the opinions of the saints to assert that in the
true host there is an accident without a subject.
7. The sacrament of the Eucharist is in its own nature bread and
wine, having, by virtue of the sacramental words, the true body and
blood of Christ at every point of it.
8. The sacrament ofthe Eucharist is in a figure the body and blood
of Christ into which the bread and wine are transubstantiated, of
which latter the nature reraains the same after consecration, although
in the contemplation of believers it is thrown into the background.
9. That an ' accident ' can exist without a subject cannot be
proved to be weU grounded ; but if this is so, God is annihilated,
and every article of the Christian faith perishes.
10. Every person or sect is heretical in the extreme which obsti
nately maintains that the sacrament of the altar is bread of a kind
per se — of an infinitely lower and more imperfect kind even than
horses' bread.
II. AA'hosoever shall obstinately maintain that the said sacrament
is ' an accident,' a quality, a quantity, or an aggregate of these things,
falls into the before-said heresy.
12. AVheaten bread, with which alone it is lawful to celebrate, is in
its nature infinitely more perfect than bread of bean flour or of bran,
and both of these are in their nature more perfect than ' an accident.'
These theses, boldly attacking a doctrine of such imraense import
ance in the Roraan system as Transubstantiation, made a prodigious
sensation in Oxford. In conservative and hierarchical ^j^.^^ ^^^^^ ^^
circles in the University it was said that the orthodox t^is theses.
faith of the Church was assailed ; that devout feeling among the
people vvas impaired ; and that the honour of the University would
suffer if such new doctrines were allowed to be held forth within
it' The Chancellor of the University at the tirae, AVUliara of
Berton, sided with those who disapproved of Wycliffe's proceeding.
He called- together a number of doctors of theology and laws, with
the view of obtaining from thera a judgment concerning the theses
which Wycliffe had published, and also touching the procedure which
should be taken by the University in case of need. Two of these
trusted counseUors were doctors of laws ; among the ten doctors of
theology there were only two who did not belong to the monastic
orders ; the rest were for the most part members of the mendicant
orders, viz., three Dominicans, of the Franciscan, Augustinian, and
Carmelite orders one each, and of the endowed orders one Benedic-
I Fasc. Zizan., Shirley, p. 109.
25

370 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § z
tine and one Cistercian. It is a fact full of significance for the social
relations of the University at that tirae, that the majority of these
doctors were monks, and that exactly the half of these monks were
mendicant friars. The result of their deliberations was an unanimous
advice that a decree should be issued pronouncing the substance
of the theses to be erroneous and heretical, and prohibiting their
being publicly taught. The Chancellor accordingly drew up a man
date, in which, without expressly naming Wycliffe, he declared two
theses set down in the mandate (containing pretty nearly the substance
of the twelve theses given above) ' to be plainly contradictory to the
orthodox doctrine of the Church, and further prohibited
The Chan- , . .
«eiior inhibits the publishing and defending of the said two theses
^' in the University, on pain of suspension from every
function of teaching, of the greater excommunication, and of im
prisonment ; prohibiting also, on pain of the greater excommunica
tion, all members of the University from being present at the pubUc
delivery of those theses in the University.^
This order was immediately published. The beautiful Augustinian
Monastery in Oxford contained several apartments which were used
Silenced at ^^ lecture-rooras.3 When the officers of the University
Oxford, entered one of these to read the mandate of the Chan
cellor, Wycliffe hiraself was seated in the chair and speaking on this
very subject of the Lord's Supper. The official conderanation of his
doctrine came upon hira as a sudden surprise ; and yet it is related
of hira that he iraraediately uttered the declaration, that neither the
Chancellor nor any of his colleagues had the power to alter his con
victions.* Later on, AVycliffe, according to the sarae informant,
appealed from the Chancellor and his advisers, but not, as might be
supposed, to the Bishop of Lincoln, in whose name the Chancellor
exercised a certain ecclesiastical authority over the University ; still
less to the Pope ; but to the King, Richard II. He was under the
necessity, however, of abstaining from all oral disquisitions upon the
Lord's Supper in the University, from that time forward. But as
" Primo, in sacramento altaris sub- Appendix, No. III., p. 423. Fasciculi
stantiam panis 7naterialis et vini, quae Zizaniorum, p. no.
prius fuerunt ante consecrationem, post con- 3 Dugdale, Monasticum Anglicanum,
secrationem realiter remanere. Secundo, London, 1830, vol. VIII., fol. 1396.
- , . in illo venerabili sacramento non 4 This statement from an enemy's pen
esse corpus Christi et sanguinem essenti- is found at the end of the document which
eiliter nee substantialiter nee etiam cor- contains the mandate itself. But when
poraliter, sed figurative seu tropice ; sic -Vaughan (Monograph, p. 247) represents
quod Christus non sii ibi veraciter in sua the matter as though the Chancellor had
propria persona corporali. been present in person, and Wycliffe had
= Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Brit., vol. appealed from him face to face, this re
in., 170. Lewis, Appendix, No. 20, p. presentation does not agree with the
319. Vaughan, Life and Opinions, 11., original account.

'38i.] THE peasants' REVOLT. 371
he was still left: at liberty to defend his convictions in a Uterary
form, he published a large Confession on the subject in Appeals to the
Eatin,' and also a popular tract in English entitled The ''^S'
Wicket. Not only in these, but in other writings, great and sraall,
learned and popular, he continued to prosecute the treatment of this
subject, coUaterally at least with other themes ; for after the year
1382 scarcely a single work of AVycUffe appeared in which he did
not recur, and sometimes in more places than one, to this weighty
point of doctrine. 3. — The Peasants' Revolt in 1381.
The measures taken by the Chancellor of Oxford to prevent the
sanction of the University from being given to AVycliffe's doctrine ofthe
Lord's Supper were followed in the next year by official ohaj'ge against
action on the part of the heads of the Church. This Wyoiiffe.
procedure was, however, partly due to a political event which took
place in the year 1381, namely, the great insurrection of the
peasantry in England. The adversaries of AVycliffe chose to con
nect this peasants' war with hiraself, his doctrine, and his party, and
charged hira with being the intellectual author and proper ringleader
of the revolt. In so doing they rested chiefly upon a confession
which John BaU, one of the leaders of the peasants, was alleged to
have made before his execution, and from which it appeared that
AVycliffe was the chief author of the insurrection.^ It is worth the
pains to go into this subject with sorae care, in order to inquire
whether the event can with any truth and right be set down to
Wycliffe's account.
The fact is beyond doubt that the insurrection of 1381 was
occasioned by the growing pressure of taxation, by the new poU-tax
in particular, and by the provoking severity which was causes of
used in the collection of these taxes. To this was added insurrection.
the strong desire and determination of the peasants, who were still
in a state of serfdom, to obtain an emancipation which the inhabi
tants of the cities had already for a long time enjoyed. Acts of
resistance to insolent and vexatious tax-collectors fell like so many
fiparks upon the heaped-up combustibles, and kindled the flames of
a social revolution of a raixed democratic and socialistic character.
" Confessio Magistri Johannis Wycclyff, ' Walsingham, Historia Anglicana,
inLewis, No. 21, pp. 323-332; in'Vaughan, ed. Riley, vol. in., p. 32. Fasciculi
Life and Opinions, II., pp. 428-433. Zizaniorum, p. 273.
Monograph, pp. 564-370. Fasciculi
Zizan,, pp. 115-132.

372 last years OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch.ix, §j
The outbreak seems to have taken place almost simultaneously both
south and north of the Thames, in the counties of Kent and Essex.
A baker at Fobbing, in Essex, was bold enough to resist the collector,
and in Dartford a tile-burner murdered the insolent tax-officer with
one of his tools. The first weak efforts of the authorities to put a
stop to such deeds of violence were not sufficient to strike terror, but
only excited the rioters to still more outrageous measures. On May
30th, when one of the king's judges and a jury were assembled to
try some of the Essex insurgents, a mob rushed upon the jurymen,
cut off their heads, aijd marched with these through the county. At
the sarae moment the revolters in Kent collected in a mob under
Wat the Tyler, and broke open the Archbishop's prison to release
John Ball, the priest, who thereupon became, along with another
priest, who called himself Jack Straw, the leader, agitator, and mob-
orator of the movement.
The rebel mobs of Essex and Kent united their masses and
marched upon London in the beginning of June with a strength, it
March on is alleged, of 100,000 men. The neighbouring counties
London. -were infected by the moveraent, and everywhere mobs
of rebels wasted the houses and lands of the nobles, burnt all deeds-
and documents, and put to death all judges, lawyers, and jurymen
upon whom they could lay hands. Every man was summoned to
unite with the peasants in the struggle for freedom, as they under
stood it. The existing laws should be upturned, a new set of laws
raust be introduced ; they would hear of no other taxes in future save
the fifteenths, which had been paid by their fathers and forefathers.
The worst outbreaks took place in London itself and its suburbs
on Corpus Christi day, June 13th, and the following days. The
mobs of peasantry, strengthened by the city populace, reduced to
ashes the magnificent palace of the Duke of Lancaster in the Savoy,
and destroyed all the valuables which it contained. On Friday, June
14th, they seized the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury,
who was also Chancellor of the kingdom, along with several other
high officers of State, all of whom they condemned as traitors to
lose their heads on the block ; and while these and other scenes of
blood were enacted in London, the neighbouring counties were over
run, and numerous houses of the nobles and many rich religious
foundations, including St. Albans, destroyed.
The young King, Richard IL, only fifteen years old, with his minis-
Death of ¦wat ters and the whole Council, could command neither
'^^^^''- courage nor strength enough to make a stand against
the storm until on Saturday, June isth, the undaunted Mayor of

'38i.] THE PEASANTS' REVOLT. 373
London, John AValworth, of Smithfield, boldly arrested Wat Tyler at
the moment when he was approaching the king with an insolent air ;
whereupon some knights of the king's train set upon him and put
him to death. From this moment both soldiers and citizens regained
their courage, and in a short time the nobles and armed burghers
were able to crush the disorderly masses of the insurgents, to put down
the revolt, and to re-establish quiet and good order in the land. The
privileges which had been wrung from the king by the rebels were
revoked on June 30th and July 2nd, and not only the leaders them
selves, but hundreds also of their misguided followers, were appre
hended, and, after trial and sentence, punished with death.'
AVe can readily understand how Wycliffe's adversaries pointed to
these events with a certain malicious satisfaction, and gave out that
these were the fruits of his destructive opposition to the Groundless
doctrines and institutions of the Church, and especially "^^^^t^
of the itinerant preachers, his adherents, who went wyciiffe.
about everywhere stirring up the people. But this was an accusa
tion which was utterly groundless. We lay no special stress
upon the fact that AA^ycliffe himself, in one of his writings still re
maining in manuscript, expresses the most deep-felt disapprobation
of the, peasant war, with its rough deeds of violence and its cruel
excesses.^ For it might be replied that this proves nothing. Wycliffe's
opposition to the Church might have had its influence upon the
peasantry, and yet it might be reasonably expected that he would
xitterly disapprove of the cruelties of the rebels.
His adversaries appealed, at least at a later time, to certain con
fessions which John Ball was said to have laid before his judges.
How does the case stand with this confession ? In the confession of
absence of the official records of the trial themselves, we ''"^^ ¦^^^•
are pointed chiefly to a document which was drawn up at least forty
years later,3 from which we learn that after the suppression of the
revolt, when John Ball was conderaned at St. Albans, by the chief
' 'Vaughan, John de Wycliffe, a Mono- posito ecclesiae delinquente . . . et haec
^rapk, p. 252. Pauli, Geschichte von videtur nimis crudelis punitio. In the
England, V. , p. 322. Walsingham, popular tract Of Servantis and Lordis,
Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, vol. I., how eche shall kepe his degree, the poor
453. priests, i.e., the itinerants, are defended
= De Blasphemia, without doubt writ- against a charge of disseminating a spirit
ten in 1382, c. 13, fol. 138, col. 4 : Patet of anarchy and disobedience. Vide
nobis Anglids de isto lamentabili con- Lewis, History, etc., p. 224.
flictu, quo archiepiscopus prior (Simon 3 Fasc. Zizan. , Shirley, p. 273. It was
Sudbury) et multi alii crudeliter sunt plainly the author's design to incorporate
occisi, . . . Temporales possunt auferre with his work, word for word, the proto-
temporalia ab ecclesia delinquente, quod col of the answers of Ball as it lay before
foret tolerabilius, quam quod rurales au- him, but the protocol itself is unfortu-
ferant vitam carnalem a capitali prae- nately no longer extant.

374 J^^ST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 3
judge, Robert Tresilian, to be hanged and quartered, he sent for
William Courtenay, Bishop of London, Sir Walter Lee, knight, and
the notary, John Profet, and in presence of these gentlemen raade
the confession that he was for two years a hearer of WycUffe, and had
learned frora him the false doctrines which he had preached, especially
on the subject of the Lord's Supper. The itinerant preachers of
Wycliffe's school, he said, had bound themselves to go over all
England until they had promulgated his doctrines throughout the
land. He had also given the name of Wycliffe as the instigator of
the moveraent, and in the next degree the names of Nicholas Here
ford, John Aston, and Lawrence Bedeman.
But these allegations are destitute of the importance which is attri
buted to thera ; and, indeed, their truth is doubtful, for seVeral reasons.
The confession ^or exaraple, the stateraent of Ball that he was for two
examined, years a hearer of Wycliffe may be perfectly true, but
what foUows from that ? What a multitude of hearers and disciples
may Wycliffe have had in the crowded University of Oxford since
the tirae when, as a doctor of theology, he began to deliver lectures .'
Certainly all these did not becorae his followers in the sense of
having forraed his school, so that their opinions and actions could
with reason and justice be attributed to hira as their head. Add to
this, that in view ofthe notorious hostility of Bishop Courtenay against
AVycliffe, it raay readily, and with probability, be suspected that the
prisoner, who was already under sentence of death, was induced to
say something which he knew that high dignitary of the Church
would be glad to hear. It seems, in particular, as if the men
tion of Wycliffe's doctrine of the Lord's Supper had not been made
without a leading question from the bishop. But such an allu
sion to the Lord's Supper was utterly out of place here ; for it was
not till the early part of 1381 that Wycliffe, as we know, began to
attack the doctrine of Transubstantiation; and at that date John
Ball was already in the prison of the archbishop, where he remained
until the rebel peasants released him. It is therefore unsupposable
that the latter should have learned the heresy touching the sacra
ment of the altar from Wycliffe, and openly have preached it.
The chronicler Walsingham mentions that John Ball had preached
for twenty years and more in different places, in a style which showed
BaU and that his aim was to gain popular favour ; for he was wont
¦WyoUffe. jQ j.^jj against the lords, both spUitual and temporal.
Nobody, he preached, need pay tithes to the parish priest, unless the
payer was better off than the priest ; every man was at liberty to
withhold tithes and gifts frora the Popish priests if he Uved a better

1381.] THE PEASANTS' REVOLT, ^75
moral life than the priest himself, etc' This stateraent of the annalist
of St. Albans is confirmed by an official document. As early as the
year 1366, Siraon Langham, Archbishop of Canterbury, issued a
mandate against the ' pretended priest,' John Ball, who was ' preach
ing many errors and scandals.' The clergy should forbid the members
of their flocks from attending his preachings, arid Ball himself would
have to answer for his proceedings before the archbishop.^ Now,
before the year 1366, AVycliffe had not yet in any way becorne the
object of public attention. It is besides to be noticed that when in
this same year the archbishop had occasion, from the rumours which
reached his ears, to take proceedings against Ball, the latter had been
carrying on his practices for a considerable tirae previously; and
thus we are carried back to the year 1360 or thereabouts, and there
fore to the sarae period to which Walsingham refers. But the further
back we go with the date at which that exciting mob-preacher first
began to attract notice, the less does his mode of thought admit of
being attributed to the influence of AVycliffe.3 All the raore worthy
of attention is the view taken by another contemporary and historian,
that John Ball, instead of being Wycliffe's scholar, was rather his
precursor.'* From all which it follows that thepersonality of this man,
and his statements before his execution, by no means avail to prove
that AVycUffe was the real author and instigator of the English peasant
war of 1381.
On the contrary, several facts go to disprove the existence of any
such connection. There is, first of all, the declared hostility of the
insurgent peasants and their leaders to Duke John of .j;-^,^^ oonneo-
Lancaster — a fact which is quite irreconcilable with the *'"" ^sproved.
supposition that AVycliffe, whose high patron this prince was acknow
ledged to be, stood in any connection, even of a mediate and remote
kind, with that movement. The insurgents took an oath from every
one who joined them to recognise no one as king who bore the name
of John — which could refer to nobody else but Duke John of Lan
caster, s They suspected him of ambitious designs, and believed him
capable of nothing less than high treason. It was for that reason
1 Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, not young enough to have been a scholar
ed. Riley, 11., p. 32. of his.
= Wilicins, Concilia Magnae Britan- * Henrieus de Knighton, Chronica de
niae, in., 64. Unfortunately this man- Eventibus Angliae, in Historiae Angl.
date does not contain the slightest indi- Scriptores, ed. Twysden, fol. 2644 : Hic
cation of the nature of the doctrines habuit praecursorem Jo. Balk, etc., also
which Ball set forth. fol. 2636 : Hic magister J. Wiclyf in suo
3 This was rightly apprehended by adventu habuit Johannem Balle suae pes-
Lewis, who remarked (History, etc., p. tiferae inventionis praemeditatorem, etc.
223, note a) that in all probability Ball 5 Walsingham, Hist. Anglicana, ed.
was an older man than Wycliffe, at least Riley, vol. I., 434.

376 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch.ix. §3
that on June 14, 1381, they set fire to the duke's palace in the
Savoy, destroyed all the valuables they found there, and put the
1. The insur- prince to death in effigy, by placing a valuable doublet
pathy°to°'j^n of ^s upon a lance, and shooting at it with arrows.'
of Gaunt. -Q^^^ not content with this, they had designs against his
person and the whole of his possessions. Before the outbreak of
the insurrection he happened to be engaged in negotiations on the
Scottish border, and he remained in Scotland after the treaty of peace
was concluded, as long as the storm lasted.^ In the meanwhile two
strong leaders of insurgent peasants marched to the north, destroyed
the castles belonging to the duke at Leicester and Tutbury, with
everything they found in them, and lay in wait for some time, though
to no purpose, for his return to the kingdom. AU these incidents
prove so deep an embitterment against the man who for years had
been the declared protector of Wycliffe, that the leaders of the raove
ment could not possibly have belonged to AVycliffe's party.
A second fact must not be overlooked. The movement of the
serf-peasants and their leaders was directed against the privileged
classes of the kingdom and all landed proprietors, as
tothepS^^ well as against all laws, rights, and legal documents
leged oiasses. fayQ^j-^ble to these classes of the population. It was
for this reason that they searched everywhere for papers, bonds, and
deeds, in order to destroy thera, and to create a new law of property
upon the footing and basis of absolute freedora and equality. The
storm broke forth upon the clergy and the rich Church foundations
and cloisters, not because they were spiritual and ecclesiastical bodies,
but solely and entirely because they belonged to the land-holding
and privileged classes. This is another feature of the EngUsh
peasant revolt which bears direct testimony against its having any
thing to do with Wycliffe and his tendencies. For his contention
from the first was against the Papacy and the hierarchy, upon the
ground that these latter made encroachments upon the rights of the
State and the country, and were guilty of violations of their reUgious
and ecclesiastical duties ; whereas the rights of the State, and also the
position and dignity of the temporal lords, were at all times warmly
supported by him, and defended to the utmost of his power. He
would have been fully entitled to say to the sowers of sedition and
the democratic clamourers for equality, ' You are raen of a different
spirit frora us.'
A third fact is the partiality of the insurgent peasantry for the
' Walsingham, Hist. Anglicana, ed. ' lb., vol. II., 41.
Riley, vol. i., 437.

i38i.] THE PEASANTS' REVOLT. 377
Begging Friars. Though they attacked the great abbeys and richly
•endowed foundations, the excited mobs dealt indulgently „ ,^, ,„ .
' ° •' 3. Partiality to
With the cloisters of the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Mendicant
and the rest of the Mendicant Orders. They evidently
looked upon the monks of these Orders as people like themselves,
'with whora they had certain interests in common, because they,
too, were of poor and humble condition. This sympathy with the
Begging Orders was openly expressed in the confession of one of the
most prominent leaders of the movement. Jack Straw, who, next to
Wat Tyler, was the greatest raan among them.' When he lay in
prison under sentence of death, on being required by his judge, the
Lord Mayor of London, to make a sincere confession respecting the
•designs which his party had contemplated, he made the foUowing
among other statements : — ' AA^e would have ended by Testimony of
taking the life of the king, and by exterminating from ^^"'^ ^^''^"^¦
the face of the earth all landholders, bishops, landed monks, endowed
canons, and parish priests. Only the Begging Friars would have
been spared, and these would have been sufficient to keep up divine
¦service throughout the whole country.' ^ This preference of the
peasantry for the Mendicant Orders is another thing which speaks
decidedly against the view that AVycUffe may have been the intellectual
author of the insurrection. It is now ascertained, indeed, that
WycUffe was not, frora the first, an adversary of the Begging monks,
as has hitherto been supposed ; but that it was only after the contro
versy on the doctrine of Iransubstantiation that an antagonism
rapidly developed itself between him and these Orders. But, not-
-withstanding this fact, the high appreciation of the pastoral office
¦which Wycliffe always retained, and his long-continued efforts to raise
the tone of the preacher's function, raake it impossible to suppose
that a revolutionary moveraent which raenaced the pastor's office,
and would have substituted the Begging Orders in its roora, was in
any way originated or occasioned by him.3 The preference for these
I Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, probable that the heads of the Mendi-
•ed. Riley, vol. ii., 9 : qui fuit, post Wal- cants were the movers.' Of very great
terum Tylere, maximus inter illos, interest in connection w-ith this subject is
° Ib. , p. 10 : Postremo regem occidisse- a document printed in Fasc. Zizan. , p.
-mus, et cunctos possessionatos, episcopos, 292. It is a letter addressed t6 Duke
monachos (tbe landed monks of the older John of Lancaster by the heads of all
orders), canonicos, rectores insuper eccle- the Mendicant monasteries of Oxford, in
.siarum de terra delevissemus. Soli Men- which they pray the duke to vindicate
dicantes vixissent super terram, qui suf- and protect them against injuriotis^ sus-
fecissent pro sacris celebrandis aut confe- picions. The blame of the Peasants' Re-
rendis uni-aersae terrae. volt is charged upon them and their
3 Comp. Pauh, Geschichte von Eng-, Order, first, because they are alleged to
land, IV., p. 347. Westminster Review, suck out the substance of the land by
1834, VI., p. 170 : ' If there was any their mendicancy, and this impoverish-
iunderhand agency at work, it seems more ment of the people is oiie cause of the

37^ LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 4
Orders, which raarked the moveraent, had by no raeans a reUgious
ground, but rested on a purely social and secular basis — the poverty
which was coraraon to both parties. An able theologian has reraarked
that the peasant wars before the Reformation were essen-
Motives ofthe .,,,..'. . , . , , . , ,
different tially different m character from those which came after
peasan wars. .^^^ j^ ^^^ former, the feeling which lay at the bottom
was the purely huraan feeling of hatred against unjust oppression;
in the latter, there was present at the sarae tirae a powerful reUgious
sentiment — the faith that men were fighting in the interest of pure
Christianity.' This remark we believe to be true.

4- — Preparations for Persecution on the part both of
the Church and the State.
Although it could not without injustice be maintained that Wycliffe
had had anything to do, even in an indirect way, with the outbreak of
the peasants' revolt, his enemies, notwithstanding, eagerly seized this-
opportunity of blackening his character and of representing his oppo
sition to certain doctrines and institutions of the Church of his tirae
as the source of the social revolution which had fiUed everybody with
terror.'' It was an evU oraen for AVycliffe that just at that time the
man who, perhaps more than any other, leaned to this opinion, rose
to the highest dignity in the English Church.
On that dreadful Corpus Christi day, June 13, 1381, when the
insurgent hordes of the peasantry perpetrated in London the worst
misdeeds, they beheaded in the Tower the Archbishop of Canter
bury, Siraon Sudbury. He was a raan of sense and raUd character.
In the foUowing October WiUiara Courtenay, Bishop of London, was
elected his successor. He was the fourth son of the Earl of Devon
shire, and was related in blood to several of the highest families in
the realm, his mother being a granddaughter of Edward the First.3 In
spirit he was a genuine hierarch — a zealot for the Papacy, and an ener
getic, domineering Churchman, and had already, in the year 1 3 7 7, as we
have seen — when Bishop of London — set on foot an inquiry against
insurrection ; secondly, because the beg- Orders is the doctor of theology, Nicholas
ging of the monks has set a bad example, of Hereford. The letter is dated Feb-
and the serfs and peasants have been ruary 18, 1381, but this must mean 1382,
moved by it to desert their work and for the revolt itself did not take place till
indulge in idleness, issuing at last in re- May of 1381.
bellion ; and thirdly, because the well- ' Hausser's Geschichte des Zeitalteri
known influence of the Begging Friars der Reformation, Berlin, 1868, p. 107.
upon the larger part of the nobility as = This appears plainly enough from the
wellasof the people, has led f othe present confession of John Ball, which may be
state of excitement and irritation. The conjectured tohave been drawn frcHnhim
man who, more than any other, has by the Bishop of London. ~
spread such odious charges against these 3 Lewis, History, etc. , p. 58, note d.

1382.] PROCEEDINGS OF COURTENAY. 379.
Wycliffe. This 'pillar ofthe Church,' as his admirers caUed hira,,
was now Primate of all England. As AA ycliffe, in the meantime, had
proceeded further and further in his ecclesiastical opposition, and not
only in preaching, writing, and academic action, but also by raeans of
the Itinerant Preachers' Institute, had prosecuted his reforraational
efforts far and wide throughout the country, the new archbishop-
deemed it to be his imperative duty, without delay, and 'by all avail
able means, to adopt measures with the view of breaking down the-
increased power of the opposition party, and putting an effectual stop
to their attempts.
His plan of operations was evidently the fruit of cool and mature
deliberation, so as to make his victory and success all the more
infallible. The order of procedure was to be this : that, in the first
instance, the doctrines and principles of AVycliffe and his adherents
should be condemned by ecclesiastical authority ; and that, in the
second instance, the persons who professed these doctrines should be
attacked and compelled to recant, or else, in the event of obstinacy,
should be persecuted and struck down vvithout mercy. First deal
with the subject, and then with the persons. That vvas the idea ; and
so men made sure to gain their end. The archbishop designate was
able to think over his future proceedings all the raore deliberately as,
after his appointment, he abstained, on principle, from all official action
as Primate till he received the pallium from Rome ; and this was not
the case till May 6, 1382 — a full half-year after his nomination by
the Crown.
Now, therefore, he proceeded rapidly to action. The first measure
was aimed, as before arranged, against the doctrines ; and here no
hindrance could stand in the way, for in the sphere of doctrine the
ecclesiastical povver could act with a free hand. The archbishop
summoned an assembly of ecclesiastical notables for May 17, 1382,
in London. This assembly consisted of ten bishops, sixteen doctors
of laws, thirty doctors of theology, and four bachelors of laws.' The
archbishop had selected at his own pleasure the raen whom he could
trust, to exaraine and decide the questions which he intended to lay
before thera— all men, ofcourse, of acknowledged Roman orthodoxy
and papistical views. ^ The sessions took place in the hall of the
Dominican Monastery in Blackfriars. 3 During the sittings of the as-
1 These numbers are taken from the 3 Apud Praedicatores, Fasc, Zizan. , p.
document printed in Fasc. Zizan. , p. sgi. 272; apud Dominicanos, Foxe, Rerum
' The archbishop says of them, in a in Ecclesia Gestarum Commentarii, 1339,
document printed in -Wilkins' Concilia, p. 19. The English edition, 1563, p. 13,
III., 137, quos famosiores et peritiores rendered this erroneously by ' grey friars '
credidimus, et sanctius in fide caiholica (Franciscans), which has passed into many
sentientes. later accounts — e.g., "Vaughan, Life and

38o

LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFES LIFE.

[CH. IX. § 4

sembly it happened that a terrific earthquake shook the city, and fiUed
rjiie every one with consternation. The event made so deep
earthotuake. ^y^ impression upon some raerabers of the assembly that
they looked upon it as an evil oraen, and advised that the design of the
raeeting should be given up. But Archbishop Courtenay was not the
man to be so easily shaken in his purpose. He declared that the earth
quake was rather to be regarded as a good and encouraging omen, and
he knew how to calm again the rainds ofthe assembly.' He represented
to the Churchmen that the earthquake was an emblera of the purifi
cation of the kingdom from erroneous doctrines. As in the interior
of the earth there are enclosed foul airs and winds, which break out
in earthquakes, so that the earth is purged of them, though not without
great violence, even so there were many heresies shut up in the hearts
of the unbelieving, but by the conderanation thereof the kingdora
would be purged, though not without trouble and great agitation.^
AVycliffe hiraself speaks of the earthquake as a judgment of God
upon the proceedings of the assembly, which he was in the habit of
calling the ' Earthquake Council ; ' or, at other times, as a gigantic
outcry of the earth against the ungodly doings of men — like the
earthquake at the passion of the Son of God. 3

Opinions, II., 70 ; John de Wycliffe, p.
269 ; Pauli, Geschichte von Englarid, IV.,
p. 348.
' This earthquake is mentioned not
only in chronicles, but also in poems of
the time, which have come down to us,
and in several places by Wycliffe himself.
The day of its occurrence is given vari
ously. Lewis and "Vaughan name May 17,
the day of the first meeting of that eccle
siastical assembly. But documents like
the Fasc. ZAzan., p. 272, and historians
like John Foxe [Acts and Monuments,
•ed. Pratt and Stoughton, in. , 19) mention
St. Dunstan's Day, Mayi9. Walsingham
(Hist. Anglic, ed. Riley) gives a day still
later, duodecimus calendas Junii, or May
21. [The mention of the Saint's day by
Foxe is no doubt weighty evidence. But
other authorities (the Godstow Chronicle,
Eulogium Historiarum, III., 336 — Rolls
Series — and even Fasc, Zizan., p. 288)
give the Wednesday before Whitsunday,
or May 2r, supporting Walsingham's
date.] ^ Fasc. Zizan., p. 272. The construc
tion of the words fuit depuratum seems
to prove that the earthquake cannot have
taken place at the beginning of the sit
tings, but towards the close. -Vaughan,
however, gives a different construction
to the phrase. Monograph, p. 263.
3 Trialogus, IV., c. 27, p. 339 ; c. 36,
pp. 374 and 376 : Multi fideles pie repu-

tant, quod in ista damnatione, ad osten-
dendum defectum attestationis humanae,
fuit insolite motus terrae, Quando enim
membra Christi defidunt ad reclamandum
contra tales haereticos, terra clamat. Even
in his sermons Wycliffe contended against
the Earthquake Council, e.g., in the nth
oitheXXIV. Miscell. Serm., fol. 137, col.
I : Fratres— da-mpnarunt ut haeresin in
suo concilio terrae nwtus, quod solum prae
destinati sint partes s, matris ecclesiae,
Comp. Fasc. Zizan., p. 283 ; also Wic
lif's English Confession on the Lord's
Supper, which is preserved by Knighton
in Twysden, in., 2747. Both Lewis, p.
103, and "Vaughan, Monograph, p. 371,
reproduce the whole piece simply as it
appears in the printed chronicle, in which
the words now in question are without
meaning. But Arnold has recently pub
lished the piece in vol. iil. , Select English
Works, ina critically amended form, upon
the authority of a MS. in the Bodleian
Library, containing Wiclif s Confession,
and after collation with two MSS. of
Knighton's Chronicle. According to this
corrected form, the passage in question
reads as follows :— ' And herefore devoute
men supposen, that this counsel] of freris
at London was with erthe dyn. For thei
putt an heresye upon Christ and seyntis
in heven ; wherfore the erthe trembled, fay-
lande monnis voice ansWerande for God,
as hit did in tyme of his passioun, when

1382.]

SYNOD AT BLACKFRIARS.

381

Of the transactions of the assembly we have no records. AVe only
know the conclusions which it arrived at, and these only from the
Mandates of the Archbishop, in which he published conclusions of
them for the information and use of the Church, tiiecounou.
These Mandates contain in an appendix twenty-four Articles, which
had been in part publicly set forth in the University of Oxford, and
in part spread abroad by itinerant preachers in the country. The
judgment passed upon these Articles, after deliberation with the
Council, vvas to the effect that they were in part heretical, and in
part erroneous.' The first ten, which were pronounced heretical,
were the following : —

he was dampned to bodily deth.' This
earthquake is mentioned by Wycliffe in
yet another of his Enghsh tracts. The
Seven Werkys of Mercy Bodyly, c. 6.
' Ther cownsel of trembulynge of the
erthe.' Select English Works, in., p.
' Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae,
vol. III., 157. Lewis, History, p. 337.
Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, II.,
58. Foxe, Acts and Monum., III., 21.
Fasciculi Zizaniorum, ed- Shirley, pp.
277-282. Conclusiones tiereticae, et contra determi-
nationem. ecclesiae, de quibus supra fit
mentio, in haec verba sequuntur.
I. Quod substantia panis materialis et
vini maneat post consecrationem in sacra
mento altaris.
2. Item, quod accidentia non maneant
sine subjecto post consecrationem in eodem
sacramento. 3. Item, quod Christus non sit in sacra
mento altaris identice, vere, et reaUter in
propria praesentia corporali.
4. Item, quod si episcopus vel sacerdos
existat in peccato mortaU, non ordinal,
conficit, nee baptisat.
5. Item, quod si homo fuerit debite
contritus, omnis confessio exterior est sibi
superfluus vel inutilis.
6. Item, pertinaciter asserere non esse
fundatum in evangeUo quod Christtts mis
sam ordinavit.
7. Item, quod Deus debet obedire dia-
bolo. 8. Item, quod si Papa sit praescitus, et
malus homo, ac per consequens membrum
diaboli, non habet potestatem supra fide
les Christi ab aliquo sibi datam, nisi forte
a Caesare.9. Item, quod post Urbanum sextum
non est aUus recipiendus in Papam, sed
vivendum est more Graecorum, sub legi
bus propriis.

10. Item, asserere quod est contra
sacram Scripturam, quod viri ecclesiastici
habeant possessiones temporales.

Conclusiones erroneae, et contra determina-
tionem ecclesias, de quibus superius
memoratur, in haec verba sequuntur.
II. Quod nullus praelatus debet aUquem
excommunicare, nisi prius sciat ipsum
excommunicatum a Deo.
12. Item, quod sic excommunicans, ex
hoc sit haereticus, vel excommunicatus,
13. Item, quod praelatus excommuni
cans clericum qui appellavit ad regem et
consilium regni, eo ipso traditor est Dei,
regis, et regni.
14. Item, quod iUi qui dimittunt prae
dicare, seu audire verbum Dei, vel evan
gelium praedicatum, propter exoommuni
cationem hominum, sunt excommunicati,
et in die judicii traditores Dei habebuntur.
13. Item, asserere quod liceat alicui
etiam diacono vel presbytero praedicare,
verbum Dei absque auctoritate sedis apos-
tolicae, vel episcopi cathoUci, seu alia de
qua sufficienter constet.
16. Item, asserere quod nullus est do
minus civiUs, nullus est episcopus, nullus
est praelatus, dum est in peccato mor
taU. 17. Item, quod domini temporales pos
sint, ad arbitrium eorum, auferre bona
temporalia ab ecclesiasticis habituaUter
deUnquentibus, vel quod populates pos
sint, ad eorum arbitrium, dominos delin-
quentes corrigere.
18. Item, quod decimae sunt purae
eleemosynae, et quod parochiani possunt,
propter peccata suorum curatorum eas
detinere, et ad libitum aUis conferre.
19. Item, quod speciales orationes ap-
plicatae uni personae per praelatos, vel
religiosos, non plus prosunt eidem per
sonae, quam generales orationes, ceteris
paribus, eidem.
20. Item, quod eo ipso quod aUquis

3.82 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch.ix. §4
I. That the substance of material bread and wine doth remain in
the sacrament of the altar after consecration.
„ . 2, That the ' accidents ' do not remain without the
T?en 'Heresies.' ' subject' m the sarae sacraraent after consecration.
3. That Christ is not in the sacraraent of the altar identically,
truly and really in His proper corporeal person.
4. That if a bishop or a priest be in mortal sin, he doth not
ordain, consecrate, nor baptize.
5. That if a raan be duly contrite, all exterior confession is to him
superfluous and invalid.
6. That it hath no foundation in the Gospel that Christ did ordain
the Mass.
7. That God ought to obey the devil.
8 That if the Pope, according to the Divine foreknowledge, be a
reprobate and an evil man, and consequently a member of the devil,
he hath no power over the faithful of Christ given to him by any,
unless peradventure it be given hira by the Emperor.
9. That after Urban VI. none other is to be received for Pope,
but that Christendom ought to live, after the manner of the Greeks,
under its own laws.
10. That it is contrary to Holy Scripture that ecclesiastical per
sons should have any temporal possessions.
The following fourteen articles were conderaned as erroneous : —
II. That no prelate ought to excoraraunicate any raan except he
first know him to be excommunicated of God.
Fourteen r 2. That he who doth so excommunicate is thereby
'Errors.' himself either a heretic or excommunicated.
13. That a prelate or bishop excomraunicating a cleric who hath
appealed to the king or the council of the realm, in so doing is a
traitor to the king and the realm.
14. That they who cease to preach or to hear the Word of God or
the gospel, for fear of such excommunication, are already excom
municate, and in the day of judgraent shall be counted traitors to
God
ingreditur religionem privatam quam- religionibus privatis, non sint de reUgione
cunque, redditur ineptior et inhabilior ad Christiani.
observantiam mandatorum Dei. 23. Item, quod fratres teneantur per
21. Item, quod sancti instituentes re- laborem manuum, et non per mendica-
ligiones privatas quascunque, tam posses- tionem, victum suum acquirere.
sionatorum quum mendicantium, in sic 24. Item, quod conferens eleemosynam
instituendo peccaverunt. fratribus, vel fratri praedicanti est excom-
22. Item, quod religiosi viventes in municatus ; et recipiens.

^38=.] HIS OPINIONS CONDEMNED. 383
15. That it is lawful for any deacon or presbyter to preach the
AVord of God without the authority or licence of the Apostolic See,
¦or of a Catholic bishop, or of any other recognised authority.
16. That a man is no civU lord, nor bishop, nor prelate, as long as
he is in mortal sin.
17. That temporal lords raay at will withdraw their teraporal
,goods from ecclesiastics habitually delinquent ; also that the com
monalty (or tenants, populares) may at will correct lords (or landlords,
.dominos) when they transgress.
18. That tithes are pure alms, and that parishioners may, for the
offences of their curates, detain them and bestow them on others at
pleasure. 19. That special prayers, applied to any one person by prelates
or religious raen, do no more profit the same person than general
prayers would, caeteris paribus, profit him.
20. Moreover, in that any man doth enter into any private reli
gion whatsoever, he is thereby raade more unapt and unable to
observe the coramandments of God.
21. That holy men who have instituted any private religions what
soever (as well of seculars having possessions as of begging friars
who have none), in so instituting, did err.
22. That religious men living in private religions are not of the
Christian religion.
23. That friars are bound to get their living by the labour of their
hands, and not by begging.
24. That whosoever doth give any alms unto friars, or to any
friar that preacheth, is excoraraunicate ; as also is he that taketh.
It will be observed that the first ten articles — conderaned as
heretical — began with three theses relating to the Lord's Supper.
It is raanifest that Wycliffe's criticism of the doctrine of Transub
stantiation had excited the greatest attention. The doctrine of the
Sacraments in general, however, forras the point of union
in which all the theses ofthe first class raeet, for the 5th
thesis relates to confession, and the 4th, with 8-10, to the sacrament
of Holy Orders, The 7 th thesis — Deus debet obedire Diabolo — did
not perhaps proceed from a dishonest use of logical inference on
the part of opponents, or frora a fanatical raisapprehension of
WycUffe's meaning ; it was rather a thesis of his own, set forth,
indeed, in a paradoxical form, but meaning that God has permitted
evil to exist in the world, and must therefore have regard to its
existence in His govemment of the world, or must shape His action

384 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 4
accordingly, for even Christ submitted Himself to temptation by the-
devil.' The theses of the second class, which are only censured as erro
neous, all belong to the sphere of the external order of the Church.
For to that heading belong the questions touching excommunica
tion (11-14), the office of teaching, and the right to preach (14, 15),.
tithes and Church property (17, 18), monastic orders and cloister-life
(20-24), as well as prayers offered by prelates and monks for par
ticular persons (19). The i6th thesis is related to the 4th and Sth
in the first class. The 17th thesis, in raanifest allusion to the event
of the preceding year, viz., the revolt of the serf-peasants, contains
a hint, which could scarcely be misunderstood, that the frightful
violences and cruelties of the rebels were in sorae measure connected
with the inflammatory doctrines of the itinerant preachers. ^
In the mandates issued by the archbishop on the basis of the
conclusions of the Council, neither Wycliffe nor any other of his friends
and adherents were raentioned by narae — neither in the
The Arch-
bishop's raandate to Peter Stokes, the Carmelite doctor of theology
in Oxford, the Primate's comraissary there, nor in that
sent to the Bishop of London, to be by hira communicated to all
the suffragan bishops of the Province of Canterbury. The mandates
declared that 'men without authority, chUdren of perdition, have
usurped the office of preachers, and have preached, sometimes in
churches, and sometimes in other places, doctrines heretical and
unchurchly — yea, and undermining the peace of the kingdom.
To stem the evil and to hinder its spread, the archbishop had called
into his counsels, with the consent and advice of several bishops,
raen of experience and ripe ecclesiastical learning, by whom the theses
were maturely weighed and examined, and who had concluded that
they were in part heretical, and in part, at least, erroneous and
unecclesiastical.' So far the two mandates are identical. But at
this point they separate : the archbishop's commissary in Oxford is
directed to pubUsh the prohibition that, frora that day forth, no man
shall be permitted to set forth in lectures, or to preach or defend in
the University, the errors now censured, and no man suffered to
listen to, or in any way to favour the setting forth of the same ; but
' In the Introduction to Fasc. Zizan. , to Judas Iscariot : ' Crist obeshede and
lxiv., Shirley has given from a MS. in servede to Scarioth.' Comp. Arnold's-
Trinity College, Cambridge, the passage note on these words.
of a Latin sermon in which WycUffe men- » It is for this reason that Wycliffe in
tions the condemnation of the Article, the Trialogus emphatically defends him-
and vindicates the truth contained in it. self against the judgment of the Council,
And in the EngUsh tract, De Apostasia and explains the real meaning of his
Cleri, Select Works, in., 437, "Wycliffe Article iv. , c. 37, p. 377, while he justifies
remarks that Christ Himself submitted the 19th Art. in the 38th chap,, p. 389.

1382.] THE CONDEMNATION PROMULGATED. 385
every man, on the contrary, must flee from and avoid every upholder of
these doctrines, under pain of the greater excommunication. This
mandate was dated May 28, 1382, frora Oxford.' Two days later
was dated the mandate of the Primate to the Bishop of London. It
enjoins the bishop, upon his obedience, to communicate to all his
brother bishops in the Province the archbishop's injunction that every
bishop shall publish three times over, in his own cathedral and the
other churches of his diocese, an intimation and prohibition to the
effect that, on pain of the greater excommunication, which every
bishop has to pronounce in case of need, no one in future shall preach,
or teach, or hold the condemned theses, or listen or show favour
to any raan vvho preaches thera. ^
In order to give greater publicity to the conclusions arrived at,
and to engage the sympathy of the people upon their side, an extra
ordinary act was appointed. On Friday of AVhitsun ^^^ ^j
week, May 30th, a solemn procession passed through the tamiiiation.
streets of London, including clergy and laity, all arranged according
to their several orders and conditions, and all barefoot, for it vvas
meant to be an act of penitence. It concluded with a sermon
against the condemned doctrines, preached by the Carmelite, John
Cunningham, a doctor of theology ; vvho finished by reading in the
pulpit the raandate of thepriraate whereby tbe twenty-four theses were
condemned, and all men were threatened with the ban who should
in future adhere to these tenets, or listen to them when set forth or
preached by others.3
The first step was thus taken, and now it remained to carry it out
to practical effect. But the second step was not so easy to take as
the first. AA'hat had to be done was, to bring under the Help of the
yoke of the judgraent which had been pronounced on ^*^'® invoked.
the new doctrines the persons who were attached to these doctrines
— that is to say, to force them to a recantation — to crush those who
should prove refractory, and to annihilate the existence of the party.
But these were aims which could not be carried out by the Church
alone. The help of the State was required. The new archbishop
" Wilkins, Concilia, III. , 137. Fasc. had been sent to the Archdeacon of Lei-
Zizan., p. 275 ; comp. p. 282. Lewis, cester, and it was to this archdeaconry
Append., No. 31, p. 336. that tlie parish of Lutterworth belonged.
= lb.. III., 138: Knighton, De Even- WycUffe himself, as parish priest, must
tibus Angliae, Book V. of his Chronicle have received a copy of this mandate
in Twysden's Historiae Anglicanae Scrip- from the Archdeacon of Leicester through
tores, X. , fol. 2632, gives the text of the rural dean of Guthlaxton. The text
the archiepiscopal mandate to the Bishop of the archbishop's mandate is given by
of London, as incorporated in the man- Foxe (Acts and Monuments, ill., 23) in
date of the Bishop of Lincoln, July 12, English.
1382, to the archdeacons of his diocese. 3 Foxe, Acts, etc, in., 37,
Knighton had the copy before him which
26

386 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 4
¦ atterapted to interest the latter in the business, and to make sure of
its support for the end he had in view.
In the parliament which met in May, 1382, the archbishop moved
to obtain its consent that orders should be issued from the Chan
cellor of the kingdom to the sheriffs and other royal'
Appeal to Par- . . ° , , , , . ''
liament against officers to imprison such preachers, as also their patrons
and foUowers, as, a bishop should indicate to thera by
name for this purpose. He represented to the House of Lords that
it was a well-known fact that different ill-disposed persons were
going through the realm, from county to county and from town to
.town, in a well-known dress; and, under the aspect of great holi
ness, were preaching from day to day, vvithout authority frora the
proper ordinary or credentials frora any other quarter, not only in
churches and churchyards, but also in market-places and other public
thoroughfares, where rauch people were wont to resort. Their
sermons vvere full of heresies and manifest errors, to the great injury
of the faith and the Church, and to the great spiritual peril of the
people and of the whole realm. These men preach also things of a
calumnious kind, in order to sow strife and division between different
•classes, both spiritual and secular, and they excite the rainds of the
people, to the great danger Of the whole kingdora. If these preachers
„are suraraoned by the bishops for examination, they pay no regard
to their commands, do not trouble themselves in the least about their
admonitions and the cens-ures of the holy Church, but rather testify
their undisguised contempt for them. They know, besides, how to
draw the people by their fine words to listen to their sermons, and
they hold them fast in the errors which they preach with a strong
hand, and by means of imposing crowds. It is, therefore, he urged,
.indispensably necessary that the State should lend the assistance of
its arm to bring to punishment these itinerant preachers as a common
danger to the country.'
The Lords in Parliaraent gave their consent to the statute pro
posed ; but the consent of the Commons was still lacking. AVhether
Lords and ^^ '*™^ ^^^^ ^^^ Concurrence of the latter was not. asked
Commons. fQ,-^ qj. ^].y^^ ^}jg Commons, when asked, decidedly
refused it, cannot be ascertained from the extant Parliamentary
records. If the proposed statute had become law, it would have
become the duty of every king's officer in the counties, upon the
application of a bishop to that effect, to send instantly to prison any
raan vvho was accused by the hierarchy as suspected of heresy, and
to keep him there under. strict durance until such time as he had
1 Foxe, Acts, etc., in., 37.

1382.] ROYAL ORDINANCE AGAINST WYCLIFFITES. 387
¦cleared himself of the charge in the eyes of the Church. The mean
ing of which vvas nothing else but this, that the povver of the State,
so far as it vvas at the command of the county officials, should at all
times and everywhere be at the disposal of the bishops — to make the
State the obedient servant of the Church, and the officers of the
king the policemen of the bishops.
In point of fact, the young King, Richard IL, vvas induced to
admit among the statutes of the kingdora an ordinance of May 26th,
wlierein, with the pretended consent of Parliament, it Koyai
was ordered that upon certification from the bishops orainanoe.
the king's commands should be issued by the ChanceUor of the
kingdom to the sheriffs and other State officers of counties for the
imprisonment of itinerant preachers, as well as their favourers and
adherents.' The ordinance sounded like a law which had been
made by the joint consent of the Crown and the states of the realm.
And yet it was nothing of the kind. It was a mere royal ordinance,
given out for a statute of the realm. And this fact did not remain
vvithout notice, for in the next sitting of Parliament — October, 1382
— the Commons presented a petition to the king, in which they
roundly and clearly declared that that ' statute ' had never received
the consent or approval of the Comraons, and raoved for the annul
ling of the same. They were by no raeans disposed, either for them
selves or their posterity, to consent to a greater dependence upon
the prelates than their forefathers had known in past times. The
•consequence was that the offensive ' statute,' wrongfully so called,
was withdrawn by the king.^
But, apart from that pretended law of the land, the king, by desire
of the archbishop, issued also a patent, dated June 26, 1382,
wherein, 'out of zeal for the CathoUc faith, whose powers given
defender he is, and purposes always to remain,' he t° ti^e prelates.
conveys to the arclibishop and his suffragans special plenary power to
imprison the preachers and defenders of those condemned theses,
and to detain them either in their own or in other prisons, at their
pleasure, until they give proofs of repentance and make recantation,
or until the king and his Privy Council should have taken some
•other action in the matter. At the same time the patent obliges all
vassals, servants, and subjects of the king, upon their allegiance,
and on pain of forfeiting all their estates, not to give any favour or
support to those preachers or their patrons ; but, on the contrary, to
¦ Fo.xe, Acts, etc. III., 37. 'It is or- ' The French original of the petition
dained and asserted in this present Par- in Cotton, Abridgment of the Parliainen-
Jiament,' etc. tary Rolls, vol. III., p. 141 ; translated
in Foxe's Acts and Men,, ill,, 38.

388 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 5
assist the archbishop and his suffragans and their officers in the
exercise of these plenary powers.'
This patent differs in forra frora the statute, in so far as the former
is only a royal ordinance, which was issued as an act of administration,
whereas the statute claimed to be a legislative Act. It differed also
in substance frora the statute, inasmuch as it only empowered the
bishops to put and keep accused persons in prison by the hands of
their own officers and servants, so that the officials of the State
had nothing directly to do in the raatter ; whereas the statute made
it incumbent upon the State to carry out directly the judgraents of
the ecclesiastical courts. How it carae to pass that the patent vvas
issued after that statute, it is not easy to see, especially as the former,
as an addition to the latter, might almost be dispensed with, or at all
events raust seera to be the weaker measure of the two. As the Lower
House, some months later, publicly took objection to the constitu
tional validity of the statute, the conjecture is an obvious one, that
immediately after the publication of the statute, public opinion had
declared itself against it — that even some of the county authorities,
to whom the imprisonment of itinerant preachers had been proposed
agreeably to the provision of the statute, may possibly have declined
to carry out the proposal, because they contested its force in law. If
this was the case, a necessity would then arise for having recourse to
some other expedient ; and hence, perhaps, a renewed application of
the archbishop to the king, and as the fruit of this the patent of
June 26th. At all events, with these powers assailable, a persecu
tion, adequate to what was desired, could now be set in operation.
5. — The ¦Wycliffe Party intimidated by the measures
of the Archbishop.
The preliminary arrangements with the State had now been raade as
far as practicable. Action could now be taken either to bend or
to break the leaders and adherents of the ecclesiastical opposition.
The archbishop thought that no time should be lost.
He had already made use of the Church Council of May, 1382,,
Proceedings ^^^ i's condemnation of the articles submitted to its.
at Oxford. judgment, for the purpose of intimidating Wycliffe and
his party. Occasion had been given him to do so by the state of
parties in the University of Oxford.
' The patent is printed in fuU in Foxe's As the latter text is taken from the Epis-
Acts, etc.. III., 39, and has here, as in the copal Archives of Ely, the difference of
Collection of Patents, vol. I., 35, the date the date may be explained by supposing
June 26th, of the 6th year of Kichard 11. that in the latter archive the day was.
In Wilkins' Concilia the same patent is noted when the patent arrived in Ely.
given in Latin, but bears date July 12th.

1382.] PROCEEDINGS AT OXFORD. 389
Since the beginning of 1381 party feeling there had been more
than ordinarily violent. AVycliffe's attacks upon the Papacy, as well
as his preaching itinerancy, which had now for some years been in
operation, and of which Oxford was the head-quarters, had materially
increased the hostility of the opposing parties in the University.
The peasants' rebellion, too, had had an indirect influence, at least,
upon the position of the two factions. The petition of the Mendi
cant Monasteries in Oxford to the Duke of Lancaster, raentioned in
a former chapter, is an incontrovertible proof of this influence.' In
particular, that document reveals the fact that Dr. Nicholas Hereford,
a well-known friend and colleague of AVycliffe, was the most ener-
.getic spokesman of the party in the University which was opposed on
principle to the Mendicant Orders. To these ecclesiastico-political
antagonisms were added collisions in the domain of doctrine itself
AA^hen AVycliffe stood forward with his criticism of the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, it was theologians of the Mendicant Orders vvho
first controverted his teaching. In the Oxford Council of 1381, as
¦we have seen, those doctors of theology who did not belong to the
Orders of the Augustinians or Dominicans, the Carmelites or Fran
ciscans, were an almost invisible minority. Naturally enough, with
Wycliffe and his party the opinion gradually grew into an axiom that
' Begging ]\Ionk ' and ' thorough-going defender of Papistical doctrine
and modern errors ' were one and the sarae thing. As men's minds
were now pitted against each other, and the two parties engaged in
attacks, not only in the schools and lecture-halls, in disputations and
other academic acts, but also in pulpits and in the intercourse of daily
life, the excitement became every day more intense. It even occurred
that several members of the University vvere found with arms con
cealed under their clothes in the halls, and even in the churches.^
All the raore urgent appeared the necessity of interference, even in
the interest of peace and order, to say nothing of the need of doing
soraething to uphold the doctrine and life of the Roraan Catholic
Church. On Ascension Day, May 15th, Nicholas Hereford had preached
one of his bold serraons in the cemetery of St. Frideswide, in which
he openly espoused the cause of Wycliffe, and, if we Hereford's
may believe the report of an opponent, gave utterance sermon.
to many things of an offensive and even inflammatory character.
' Fasc. Zizan., p. 292. p. 302. Post sermonem intravit (Philip-
^ hi quo die (10 Juni, 1382) visi sunt pus Repyngdon) ecclesiam S. Fredeswidae
duodecim homines, armati sub indumentis cum viginti hominibus subtus pannos
in scholis. Fasciculi Zizan., ed. Shirley, armatis, p. 300.

39° LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 5
It was probably here that he expressed among other things the
opinion that Archbishop Sudbury had been put to death, and justly,
so, because he was understood to have resolved upon taking pro
ceedings against Wycliffe. He had also, some months earlier, taken
every opportunity to declaim against the Begging Friars, in connection
with the peasants' revolt of the previous year. He asserted that
their begging was to blame for the impoverishment of the country,
for by it the population was drained more than by taxes and other
public burdens — and further, that the bad example which the Mendi
cants gave by their laziness was the occasion of the serfs and peasants
leaving their accustoraed labours and rising in revolt against their
masters, etc. These representations seem to have found willing ears
in Oxford, and a dangerous agitation against the Mendicant Orders
began to spread. Hence the necessity under which the latter had
found themselves to address the Duke of Lancaster, and to cast
theraselves upon the protection of that powerful prince.'
These inflammatory harangues of the resolute but too excitable
Hereford gave particular offence to the Mendicants, and were the
cause of his being singled out for attack before all the other friends
of Wycliffe. To make suitable preparations for this, it vvas requisite
for his opponents to obtain the necessary basis of facts. But this
had its difficulties. For Nicholas Hereford, with all his boldness of
attitude, seems to have acted with prudence and foresight. At least,
he had not issued anything in writing — neither book nor pamphlet.
His enemies were aware of this, and called it wretched cowardice,
heretical secrecy, etc.= To reach him, no other course remained
open at last but to take down from his raouth -any doubtful expres
sions, which dropped frora hira, and to have thera legally attested. 3
This was done at the suggestion of Dr. Stokes, the archbishop's
coraraissary. It seemed to the enemy to be high time to take measures for
silencing the WycUffe party when it became known that Robert Rigge,
the chancellor, had appointed PhUip Repyngdon to
appointed to preach before the University on Corpus Christi Day,
preao . June 5, 1382. PhUip Repyngdon was a member of the
stately Augustinian Priory of St. Maria de Pratis in Leicester, and a
bachelor of theology in Oxford. Hitherto he had modestly kept
himself out of public view, and was even regarded with favour by the
^ Fasc. Zizan., p. 292. 3 Ease. Zizan., p. 296 : Haereses et
^ Sed ille Nicolaus velut miser fugiens, errores et alia nefanda redacta sunt in
nunquam voluit librum vel quaternum certam formam per notaries, ad instantiam
communicare altcri doctori, sed modo cujusdam doctoris in fiieologia, fratris,
haereticorum et multoties meretricio pro- Petri Stokys Carmelitae.
cessit. Ib.

1382.] PROCEEDINGS AT OXFORD. 39I
Popish party. But he had recently preached a sermon in the hospital
of Brackley, in Northamptonshire, in which he disclosed himself as
an adherent of AVycliffe's doctrine of the Lord's Supper ; and after
his promotion to the title of Doctor of Divinity, in the beginning of
the suraraer, he comraenced his first lectureship in the University in
that capacity by extolling the merits of AA'ycliffe. In particular, he
undertook to defend AVycliffe's ethical doctrines at all points. After
such proceedings it was natural that the adherents of the scholastic
Church doctrine should look forward with sorae uneasiness to Repyng
don's preaching before the University on such an occasion as Corpus
Christi. There was reason to fear that he would use the opportunity
to strike a keynote in favour of AVycliffe, and openly to attack the
doctrine of the change of substance in the Sacraraent, for the very^
reason that it was the Feast of Corpus Christi. They therefore
addressed theraselves to the archbishop, with an earnest request that
without delay, and before the festival arrived, he would order the
condemnation of AVycUffe's Articles to be published in Oxford.'
This request vvas compUed with without delay. On May 28th,
as already mentioned above, a mandate of the archbishop issued to
Dr. Stokes, with instructions to publish in the Uni- j^^.^ gto^ea's
versity the judgment which had been pronounced on mission.
the twenty-four Articles, and to prohibit the defence of them.'-= Two
days afterwards the Primate addressed a letter to the chancellor,
Robert Rigge, in which he censured him in the tone of an inquisitor,
for having shown favour to Nicholas Hereford, who was under strong
suspicion of heretical opinions, and for having appointed hira to
preach an exceptionally important sermon. He gives him, at the same
tirae, emphatic advice to abstain in future from giving any counte
nance to such raen, otherwise he must be himself regarded as belonging
to the party. On the contrary, let him give his assistance to Dr.
Stokes in the publication of the archbishop's mandate against the
Articles, and let hira cause the raandate to be read by the bedell of
the Theological Faculty in the theological lecture rooms at the lectures
next ensuing. 3
But the chancellor did not allow himself to be intimidated. He
said that Dr. Stokes, in his intrigues with the archbishop, was trench
ing upon the liberties and privileges of the University ;
that no bishop nor archbishop had any jurisdiction over lor's resist- '
the University, not even in a case where heresy was in
question. The autonomy of the learned corporation asserted itself),
^ Fasc. Zizan., p. 296. ^ lb., pp. 273-282. 3 lb,, p. 298.

392 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 5
we see, against the threatening attempt of the hierarchy to encroach
upon the freedom of teaching in the University. But the chancellor
did not venture to give expression to these principles in public. On
the contrary, after consultation with the proctors and sorae other
members of the University, he publicly announced that he would give
his assistance to Dr. Stokes. But in point of fact he put as many
difficulties in the coraraissary's way as he could (at least so says an
opponent), and found means to induce the mayor of the city to hold
in readiness a hundred armed raen — plainly with the view of putting
a stop to any disturbances which might ensue ; although there were
some who imputed to hira the design of making away with Dr. Stokes,
or at least of corapelling him to desist, in case he persisted in the
attempt to execute his commission.'
Meanwhile the festival of Corpus Christi was approaching. On
Wednesday, June 4th, the day before the feast. Dr. Stokes handed
to the chancellor a copy of the mandate which the
preliminary archbishop had sent to him, along with the letter
prooee gs. .^^j^j^j^ ^^g directed to the chancellor hiraself. The
chancellor took them both into his hands, but gave expression
to sorae doubts upon the raatter ; he had as yet, he said, no letter
and seal to show that it was his business to assist Dr. Stokes in the
execution of the archbishop's comraission. It was not until the
CarraeUte, on the very day of the festival, showed him, in full as-
serably, the archbishop's letter patent with his private seal attached,
that the chancellor declared hiraself ready to assist in the publication
of the raandate ; yet under reservation of first advising with the
University thereupon, and obtaining its consent thereto.'^
On Corpus Christi day, the members of the University, with the
chancellor and proctors at their head, and accompanied by the
Eepyngdon's Mayor of Oxford, proceeded to the cemetery of St.
sermon. Frideswide for solemn divine service, which was cele
brated in the open air. Dr. Repyngdon preached the festival sermon.
He seeras to have raade no direct attack on the doctrine of the
change of substance ; and he had good reasons for taking this course
on that occasion. But he spoke out his conviction unreservedly that
AVycliffe was a thoroughly sound and orthodox teacher, and had at
all times set forth the doctrine of the Universal Church touching the
Sacrament of the Altar. Among other things, he said that in sermons
princes and lords should have honourable mention before the Pope
and bishops, otherwise preachers acted contrary to Scripture; he also
' Ease Zizan., p. 298. = Litera fratris Petri Stokys, etc., in
Fasc. Zizan., p. 300.

:i382.] PROCEEDINGS AT OXFORD. 393
referred to AVycliffe's itinerant preachers, calling them ' holy priests.
Of the Duke of Lancaster the preacher declared that he vvas resolved
¦to take all evangelically-minded men under his protection. There
were people vvho characterised this serraon as seditious.
After sermon the assembly passed into the Church of St. Frideswide,
¦and opponents spread the report that nearly twenty men, with con-
¦cealed weapons, entered with the rest. Stokes, the Menacing
Carmelite, suspected that it was his own life which was J^aeaBures.
aimed at, and did not venture to leave the church again. The
chancellor waited for the preacher in the porch, congratulated
Repyngdon upon his sermon, and accompanied him from the church.
The whole AVycliffe party was overjoyed at the discourse.' But
Dr. Stokes was in such fear of his life that he had not the courage to
publish the archbishop's mandate. =* In the meanwhile the controversy
publicly went on in lectures and disputations.3 From continued
^hose days date, in my judgraent, those disputations in disputations.
Oxford, extending over several days, of which we read, between the
champions of the hierarchy on the one side, and Hereford and
Repyngdon on the other. It was significant of the time that the latter
vvere obliged to take up a defensive position, however ably and
triumphantly they represented their cause. How much these learned
• discussions, aided as they vvere by being open to the public, en
chained the attention of the general comraunity, we see from a poera
which was composed, at all events, in 1382 — not earUer than July
-and not later than October — and which has corae down to our
times. •^
The chancellor of the University himself was now summoned
ibefore the archbishop, to clear hiraself frora the suspicion of heresy.
•On June 12th, the octave ofthe Feast of Corpus Christi, along with
^ Ease. Zizan., p. 299 ; comp. 307. melancholy condition of England, men-
= Lxtter from Dr. Stokes to the Arch- aced without, rotten within, and sinking
.bisliop, S'^txni, Fasc. Zizan., p. ¦^oo. deeper and deeper in its moral and
3 y^. ,p. 302. religious life. For this state of things
* The dates given above may be the writer blames all ranks, but especially
gathered from the facts that the appeal the Begging Friars, and the Benedicdnes
-of Hereford and Repyngdon to the Pope as well. To uplift the Church again,
is mentioned at the end of the poem ; God has raised up Wycliffe and his dis-
and this appeal was made at the begin- ciples, who tell both tlie landed and the
ning of July, from which it follows that Mendicant orders the truth. But the
the piece could not have been written latter have opposed themselves to the
-earUer than that date. But, as Repyngdon ¦ witnesses of the truth, and, coming for-
recanted on October 23rd, the poem ward one after another, have attacked
cannot have been written later than in them in disputations. But Hereford
October. The poem, which is distin- and Repyngdon defended themselves so
guished by a remarkable refrain, is in its victoriously that nothing remained for
contents in part a complaint, and in part the friars at last but to take refuge in
an honourable commemoration of the the archbishop, who thereupon took
Reformation efforts of Wycliffe and his steps against -Wycliffe's friends until they
-^friends. The complaint describes the appealed to the Pope.

394 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 5.
two Others sumraoned at the sarae tirae — Dr. Thomas Brightwell
and John Balton, Bachelor of Theology — Dr. Rigge
The Chancel- .
lor summoned appeared before an assembly of ecclesiastics, presided
eresy. pygr by the arclibishop, in the Dominican Monastery of
London. Here the chancellor vvas examined touching several facts
which seeraed to bear out the suspicion that he was a favourer of
AA^ycliffe's party, especially of the Doctors Hereford and Repyngdon,
and participated in their opinions.' It was difficult for hira to con
test these facts. It vvas found that he and the proctors for the year-
— AA''alter Dash and John Huntraan — had, in point of fact, favoured
AVycliffe's doctrines. Hereupon the twenty-four Articles were laid,
before them, upon which the censure of the assembly of May
2 ist had been pronounced. Dr. Rigge at once assented to this
judgraent, while Dr. Brightwell and John Balton only expressed their
concurrence in it after some hesitation and mental conflict.' It was.
further laid to the chancellor's charge that he had disregarded the
2jg respect and deference which were due to the archbishop,
suhmission. jjj having taken no notice of the Primate's letter directed
to hira in person ; for which he begged upon his knees the arch--
bishop's pardon, and received the sarae upon the intercession of the
Bishop of AVinchester, AVilliam of Wykeham ;3 and now it was
required of him to publish in person that ecclesiastical censure of
the twenty-four Articles which he had been unwilling, a few days
' before, so much as to assist Dr. Stokes in publishing. He even
received a written injunction touching John AA''ycliffe hiraself, Nicholas
Hereford, PhUip Repyngdon, John Aston, and Lawrence Bedeman,
no longer to suffer thera to preach before the University, and to
suspend them frora every academic function, until they should
have purged theraselves from all suspicion of heresy.*
The Churchmen now thought themselves quite sure of the-
University. One unwelcome incident, however, occurred to cool
Dr Stokes's somewhat their satisfaction. AVhen Dr Stokes was
fears. called to account on the same day for not having, up
to that tirae, carried out the archbishop's instructions touching the
mandate, he frankly acknowledged that he durst not publish the
document, for fear of his life ; upon which Courtenay replied, ' Then
is the University a patron of heresies, if she will not allow orthodox
truths to be published.' 5
On Saturday, June 14th, Chancellor Rigge returned to Oxford
' Fasc. Zizan., pp. 304-308. 3 Ease. Zizan., p. 30S.
- Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britan- ¦* lb., pp. 309-311.
niae, vol. III., p. 139. Fasc. Zizan., p. 5 lb., p. 311.
288, fol. 308.

i33a.l PROCEEDINGS AT OXFORD. 395
and did not fail, in accordance with the obligation laid upon him, to
make known to Hereford and Repyngdon that he had
... , , r ,, TT . . Suspension Of
no choice but to suspend thera frora all University Hereford and
functions. But that he vv-as, notwithstanding, still of
the sarae mind, an incident which occurred soon after showed. A
monkish zealot, Henry Crump, of the Cistercian Monastery of
Bawynglas, in the county of Meath,' had been promoted doctor of
theology in Oxford, and was delivering lectures in the University at
that time. This raan indulged in violent attacks upon the AVycUffe
party, and applied to them the heretic narae of Lollards, which had
recently come into use, but untU that tirae had never been
publicly employed ; upon which the chancellor energetically inter
fered. He summoned the doctor to appear before hira, and when
the latter failed to present hiraself, he declared him guilty, pro
nounced judgment upon hira as a disturber of the peace, and
suspended hira from all University functions — a sentence which was
solemnly published in the University Church.
But the Cistercian did not take all this quietly ; he hastened im
mediately to London, and laid a complaint against the sentence not
only before the archbishop, but also before the chan- case of
cellor of the kingdora and the Privy Council.' The ^^"^^ °^"'=='p-
consequence was that the chancellor and proctors were summoned
to appear before the Privy Council ; and some weeks later Crump's
suspension was annulled by royal ordinance, and his complete
rehabilitation enjoined. But the archbishop did not omit to turn
this opportunity to good account. He exerted hiraself to obtain
, from the Government an instruction to the heads of the University
similar to that which he had addressed to them himself — viz., that
they should not fail to take measures against the AVycliffe party.
Meanwhile the archbishop, as Grand Inquisitor {inquisitor haereticae
pravitatis per totam suam provinciam), had sumraoned to his tribunal
the Doctors Hereford and Repyngdon, and also the bachelor of
theology, John Aston. The sarae appeared (June i8th), in a
charaber of the Dominican Monastery in London, before- the arch
bishop and many doctors of theology and laws, in order to be
examined on the often-mentioned 'Articles.' The two doctors
craved time for reflection; Aston asked for none, but gave his
declaration at once, to the effect that he would in future keep silence
touching the Articles laid before hira. Hereupon he was prohibited
frora preaching in future in the province of Canterbury. He did
I Fasc. Zizan., p. 349, in a document ' lb., p. 311 ; comp. 313.
of the Bishop of Meath.

395 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE' S LIFE. [ch. ix. § s
not deny that he was aware that the archbishop, by a special
mandate, had inhibited every man from preaching who had not been
properly called to that function. But as he maintained that he had
not incurred the ban by his itinerant preaching, which had been
•continued in the face of the mandate, he too was summoned to
appear a second time on June 20th, Hereford and Repyngdon being
also summoned to appear on the same day.'
On Friday, June 20th, tiie adjourned examination took place in
the sarae monastery.' The assembly consisted of the archbishop.
Examination ten bishops, thirty doctors, and thirteen bachelors of
of the accused, (jjvinity, sixteen doctors, and at least four bachelors of
law. Hereford and Repyngdon handed in a written declaration
touching the condemned Articles, in which they expressed their views
on every one of them in succession. This declaration was so worded
•as to guard their Church orthodoxy, while at the same tirae, by a
guarded interpretation of the Articles, they sought to establish
AVycUffe's soundness in the faith.3 No wonder that to the arch
bishop this written declaration seemed to be wanting in straight
forwardness. There ensued, therefore, a further exaraination upon
eight of the Articles. But here, too, no understanding was arrived
at, because on all points, especially in reference to the doctrine of
the Lord's Supper, the accused declined giving any raore definite or
distinct answer than they had given already in their written reply.
Hereupon the assessors of the Inquisitorial Court unanimously
declared that the answers of the two theologians were more evasive
and reserved than sincere and satisfactory. The archbishop accord
ingly required them once raore, in a solemn tone, to raake an
unreserved declaration ; and when this proved ineffectual, dismissed
them from the bar with the intimation that they were to appear once
more after eight days, to receive judgment*
John Aston was then called forward. He had shortly bfefore
drawn up a brief confession of his faith in English, and circulated it
in London in many copies as a fly-leaf. The object of
John Aston. , . . -^ , ,. . . , .
this was to win over public opinion, and to convince
his readers that he was a good, believing Christian.^ But now the
"Wilkins, Concilia, III., i6o ; Fasc. EngUsh, Knighton's CAra»2i:&, fol. 2655 ;
Zizan., p. 289. The date of the latter John Fo.xe, Acts and Monuments, III.,
document has to be corrected by sub- 32.
stituting xiv. cal. Julii for xiv. cal. Junii. ¦» Wilkins, III., 163 ; Fasc. Zizan., pp.
.Shirley's conjecture, note 2, on p. 289, is 326-329.
erroneous. s Confessio Magistri Johannis Astone,
^ Fasc. Zizan., p. 319. in Fasc. Zizan., p. 329. Knighton gives
3 The ' Explanation ' in full form in this Confession in Old Enghsh, though
Latin is to be seen in Wilkins, in,, p. in part incorrectly, in his Chronicle,
161 ; Fasc. Zizan., pp. 319-325. In Old Book v., fol. 2656,

138=.] PROCEEDINGS AT OXFORD. 397
archbishop required him to give a frank declaration touching the
condemned Articles. Aston, a practised itinerant preacher, tiien
began to make answer in the English tongue, which was very dis
pleasing to the archbishop because of the laity who vvere present.
Courtenay required him to speak in Latin. Aston continued, not
withstanding, in the mother tongue, and delivered a bold, and (in,
the estimate of the spiritual judges) insiUting speech, vvithout going,
however, into the scholastic questions laid before hira on the subject
of the Lord's Supper. In the end he was convicted of harbouring-
the conderaned opinions, and declared a teacher of heresy.'
On June 27th, Hereford and Repyngdon appeared before the
archbishop, at his country seat at Oxford. They were, however,
dismissed again without anything being done, and cited Hereford ana
once more to appear at Canterbury on July ist, on the 6^00^*^"
alleged ground that the archbishop at that time had cated.
none of his theological and legal assessors about hira. If the arch
bishop on this occasion had put thera to useless trouble, they aUowed
him to wait to no purpose for them on July ist. The archbishop^
appeared at nine o'clock in the chapter-house of his cathedral with
nine doctors and bachelors of theology, and ordered the accused to
be called. AVhen they failed to appear, he adjourned the proceedings
to two o'clock in the afternoon ; and when they remained absent alsO'
at that hour, he passed sentence upon them of contempt of court,
and laid them under the ban of excomraunication.'
Both of them now appealed to the Pope ; but the archbishop de
clared this appeal to be insolent, without justification, and invalid, and
appointed public proclamation of the ban pronounced pubUoationof
upon Hereford and Repyngdon to be made with aU ^'^^ sentence.
solemnity on July 13th, in serraons at St. Paul's Cross in London. A
cross was erected, candles were lighted, extinguished, and thrown on the
ground, etc.3 The chancellor in Oxford received coraraands to cause
the ban to be pubUshed with like cereraonies in St. Mary's Church,
and in a simpler form in all the lecture-rooms of the University, along
with a summons to both to appear before the archbishop's tribunal.*
And even all this was not enough — the like publication of the ban
and the summons was ordered to be made also in all the churches of
towns and larger vUlages throughout the province of Canterbury.s
' Wilkins, Cone M. Brit., III., 163. Archbishop to the Preacher at St. Paul's,
Fasc. Zizan., pp. 290-331. July 12th.
' lb.. III., 164. Foxe, Acts and Mon., * Mandate of same date to the chan-
III., 40. cellor in Wilkins' Concilia, III., 166.
3 /b.. III., 165. The Mandate of the s Mandate of July 30th to the Bishop
of London, lb., III., 167.

398 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 5
Archbishop Courtenay was not content, however, with ecclesiastical
"measures. He used his influence with the king and Governraent to
General in- erigage the power of the State in the affair, and to put
•quiry ordered. (Jq^^.j-^ thg heresy also with the teraporal sword. On the
same day on which the mandates of the archbishop were issued to
the chancellor of Oxford and the preachers at St. Paul's Cross, a
royal patent vvas drawn up, addressed to the chancellor and proctors
of Oxford, by which the duty was imposed upon them of making an
inquisition at large {inquisito generalis) among the graduates of
theology and law in the LTniversity, in order to discover such as
raight adhere to the condemned Articles ; and further, within eight
days they were to drive forth and banish from the University
and the city ' every member who receives, bears favour to, or has
any intercourse with. Dr. John AVycliffe, Nicholas Hereford, Philip
Repyngdon, John Aston, or any one else of the same party.' Nay,
more : search must be made without delay in all the halls and
•colleges of the University for books and tracts of AVycliffe and
Hereford; and all such writings must be confiscated and sent in
without correction to the archbishop. All which must be faithfully
•carried out, under pain of the loss of all the University's liberties
and rights. The Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire and the mayor of
the city, with all other king's officers, were also enjoined to lend a
helping hand in carrying out this royal order'
A day later, on July 14th, was issued a second royal letter to the
•chancellor and proctors of the University of Oxford, whereby, as
already stated, the academic suspension of the Cistercian Henry
Crump was annulled, and his restoration to his former position vvas
commanded. This brief at the same tirae prohibited the University
frora taking any action against Crurap or the Carmelites, Peter Stokes
and Stephen Patrington and others, on account of their attacks upon
the conderaned Articles, and the teaching of AVycliffe, Hereford,
and Repyngdon.'
The Crown had thus done its utmost in the use of its adminis
trative power to crush the opposition free-thought party,
measures the adherents of Wycliffe. The archbishop on his
side had promulgated the ecclesiastical decisions not
only in the University of Oxford, but through all the dioceses of
the land.
In the meantirae the persecution of the itinerant preachers and of
' Breve regium, in Rymer, Foedera, ' lb,; Fasc, Zizan., 314; Lewis, p.
VII., 363; -Wilkins' Concilia, III,, 166; 363; Foxe, III., 43.
Fasc. Zizan., 312.

I3S2.] PROGRESS OF PERSECUTION. 399
all the principal friends and admirers of Wycliffe was proceeding.
The Bishops of London and Lincoln in particular — progress of
Robert Braybrook and John Buckingham— distinguished P«"eoution.
theraselves by their zeal in this work. In the extensive and populous
diocese of Lincoln vvere Oxford, Lutterworth, and Leicester, the
three chief centres of AA^ycliffite effort ; and in the capital of the
kingdora and the surrounding country there were also to be found
many 'evangelical men.' But the chief instruments of persecution
in both dioceses were the mendicant friars. AVycliffe hiraself raentions
this fact, with bitter complaints against the diabolical malice of these
monks, who vvere unceasingly at work in London and Lincoln to
extirpate the true and poor preachers, principally for the reason that
the latter had discovered and exposed their cunning practices to the
people.' The Bishop of Lincoln received from the archbishop a
letter of commendation and thanks for his indefatigable zealagainst
''the Antichrist' and his adherents.' One of the itinerants who vvere
-summoned in the diocese of Lincoln, examined, and at last con
demned to recant, was the priest, Williarn Swindcrby. This man
appealed at first, when he was suraraoned by the bishop, to the king,
and had the wish in particular to be examined by the Duke of
Lancaster. But this helped him little. The case even came before
Parliament, but the Parliament did not take up the subject, leaving
it to the ordinary himself for decision. The ordinary obliged
Swinderby to proraise upon oath that he would never more in future
preach and teach the Articles which were laid before hira. He vvas,
at the sarae tirae, required to make a public recantation, in a forra
which was drawn up for hira, and this in the Cathedral of London,
in the Collegiate Church of Leicester, and in four parish churches of
the diocese of Lincoln. 3
In the meantime, by command of the archbishop, search was
made in Oxford and in the country for Hereford and Repyngdon,
Bedeman and Aston.* During the sumraer raonths they
. , Beoantations.
remained m concealment, and were able to baffle the
pursuit of their enemies ; but in the course of October the three
- Trialogus, IV., c. 37, p. 379: Tam 346. This is a full transcript, dated July
Londoniis quam Lincolniae laborant as- ir, 1382, and sent by the Bishop of
sidue ad sacerdotes fideles et pauperes Lincoln to those clergy of his diocese in
extinguendum, et specialiter propter hoc whose churches Swinderby was con-
quod eorum -oersutias caritative in populo demned to make the recantation required
detexerunt. oi him.
= Wilkins, in., 168. * Information of the Chancellor Robert
3 Processus domini Joh. Lincolniensis Rigge sent to the archbishop, dated July
episcopi contra Willelmum Swynderby 23, 1382, in Wilkins, IU. , 168.
¦ Wycclevistam, in Fasc. Zizan., pp. 334-

400 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § j
last-named were apprehended, one after the other, and ended by
making their submission and agreeing to recant. The first to set
this exaraple was Laurence Stephen, or Bedeman ; ' next, Repyngdon,
on October 23rd, presented himself before the archbishop and
several bishops and doctors in the Dominican Monastery of London.
He endeavoured to clear himself of the charges laid against him,
and declared his assent to the synodal judgment of May 25th,
whereby the twenty-four Wycliffe Articles were condemned ; where
upon he was absolved by the Primate frora the ban, and restored to
his former position, and to his University rights.' His recantation
was sealed at a provincial synod, held in Oxford in November, by a
confession of his faith, which he signed with his own hand on the
24th of that raonth.3 Last of aU, John Aston, too, raade up his
mind to a recantation, which he solemnly professed before the same
synod in Oxford, probably on November 24th, and was therefore also
absolved and restored to his position and rights. ¦*
The only one of Wycliffe's friends who now remained firm was
Nicholas Hereford. If we are to accept, indeed, the account of
Hereford stui Knighton in his Chronicle, Hereford raust have re-
^'"^- canted about the same time. But upon accurate
exaraination this assumption is found to be erroneous ; it is in fact
confuted by a piece of information which we owe to the sarae narrator. 5
He inforras us, namely, that Hereford went to Rome, and submitted
the twenty-four Articles to Pope Urban VI. for his definitive decision.
After mature exaraination by several cardinals and other theologians,
the Pope siraply confirmed the judgment which had been pronounced
in England. But Urban, mindful of the thanks he owed to the
English Church for its adherence to hira, instead of sentencing
Hereford to death at the stake, was pleased to commute the sentence
to imprisonment for life. In the summer of 1385, however, he was
unexpectedly released from prison and enabled to return to England,
upon occasion of the Pope's being besieged in Nocera by King;
Charles of Sicily, when the Romans, discontented at the long absence-
of the Pope, raised a tumult in the city, and among other doings
broke open the Papal prison and set free the prisoners.
' Under date October 18, 1382, the absolution and rehabilitation, dated Ox-
archbishop issued a mandate restoring ford, November 27, 1382.
him to his rights in the University, which 5 Knighton, fol. 2635. A recantation of
presupposes his recantation to have been Hereford in English ;i«hich,hov:eveT,C3.n-
previously made. not belong to the year 1382, but must dat&
' See the relevant document of October from a later period, because it names the
23, 1382, in Wilkins, III. , 169. year of grace 1382 as the date of a former
3 -Wilkins, III., 172. declaration of its author. StiU, we have no
* lb., III., 172. Comp. in same vol., ground for suspecting it to be spurious, as
fol. 169, the archbishop's attestation of -Vaughan does. Life and Opinions, II. , 89.

1332.] RESULT OF THE SYNOD. 401
In this whole narrative there is nothing of inherent improbability.
It is, on the contrary, confirmed by the fact that from June 27, 1382,
Hereford was not seen in England for several years, -gig g^^j^j,
as well as by the curious fact, formerly mentioned, that career.
his Translation of the Old Testament was abruptly broken off, and
so remained unfinished. On January 15, 1383, the archbishop
applied to the king for the assistance of Government against Here
ford, because he was still setting the ban pronounced upon him at
defiance.' In 1387, several years after AA'ycliffe's death, Hereford is
again mentioned as the leading itinerant preacher of the LoUards.'
It is scarcely credible, if he had remained all these years in the
kingdom, that he could have escaped for so long a time the search
of his persecutors.
Thus had Archbishop Courtenay, at the date of October, 1382, i.e.,
within five months of his entry upon the actual discharge of his high
office, so far succeeded in his designs that the opposition irimnTiii of
party iu the University of Oxford was fairly intimidated Courtenay.
and reduced to silence. The most important raerabers of the party
were either driven out of the country, or had bowed theraselves in
submission and made formal recantation. A very considerable
success, certainly, to be obtained in so comparatively short a tirae !
6. — The Cautious Proceedings of the Hierarchy against
WyclifFe himself.
Only one man still stood firra and erect upon the field; and
that was none other than AVycliffe hiraself; the bold, manful,
and indefatigable leader of the party. How vvas it .,„ ,.„
° . ' ¦' Wychffe
that the recognised head of the party should have unassaued.
remained unassaUed ? Judgment, it was true, had been pronounced
against his 'Articles.' They had been branded by the Church
authority partiy as errors, partly as heresies ; and it might be said
the narae was nothing compared -with the thing — the principles were
the chief matter, and these had been conderaned without reserve
and without raercy. True, also, measures against Wycliffe himself
had not hitherto been wanting. The archbishop had, July 12,
1382, sent an order to the Chancellor of Oxford that no one in
the University should be permitted to attend the preaching of Wycliffe
or his adherents, or in any way to favour them ; 3 and in a second
order it was commanded that public intimation should be given
I The order is given by Foxe, Acts, etc., cester of August 13, 1387, Wilkins, in.,
III., 47. 202.
' In a mandate to the Bishop of Wor- 3 Wilkins, in., 160.
27

402 LAST YEARS OF- WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 6
that the archbishop had suspended' John Wycliffe, with Hereford,
Repyngdon, Aston, and Bedeman, from all scholastic functions, until
they should be exonerated by himself from all suspicion of erroneous
doctrine. But this did not touch directly the person of AVycliffe,
especially as at that tirae he no longer had his principal residence
in Oxford, but in his parish of Lutterworth ; and of course it was
only his honour, not his personal condition, that vvas affected when,
in addition, a royal order to the Chancellor and Proctors of Oxford
(July 13, 1382) prohibited all raanner of favour being shown to John
AVycliffe and the other leaders, and appointed search to be made for
the writings of AVycliffe and Hereford.'
The question therefore again presents itself. How is it to be ex
plained that, at a time when persecution was so systematically carried
out against the friends of AVycUffe, he should have remained per
sonally unmolested ? The enigma is attended with great difficulty,
inasmuch as his enemies were clearly aware of his personal im
portance and influence as the leader of his party ; they spoke of hira
as the Antichrist who was doing his utmost to undermine the faith.^
It has been sometimes thought that the difficulty may be removed
by the observation that the measures adopted against the party
Seasons for applied principally to Oxford, while WycUffe had already
forbearance. £qj. gQ^^g time left the University and confined him
self to Lutterworth. 3 But this goes but a very little way to clear
up the matter ; for, ori the one hand, Wycliffe appears even now to
have still possessed the right of delivering lectures, conducting dis
putations, and preaching before the University; otherwise the sus
pension from all academical acts which the archbishop pronounced
upon hira would have had no raeaning ; t and, on the other hand,
the measures referred to were meant to apply to the whole province
•of Canterbury, howsoever and wheresoever the alleged errors might
come into view. It may well, however, be supposed (and this is
perhaps the true solution of the difficulty) that it was part of the
well-weighed plan of operations adopted by the archbishop, that
after condemnation had been pronounced upon the doctrines and
principles of the party, the personal persecution should only be
directed at first against Wycliffe's adherents and friends, in order
that after these had been intimidated and reduced to submission,
'¦ Wilkins, in., fol. 160. pressions, which the archbiiihop borrows,
' Ilium Antichristum, de quo scribitis from the letter of his suffragan, refer to
pro posse fidei subversorem, in a letter of Wycliffe.
Archbishop Courtenay to the Bishop of 3 -Vaughan, Monograph, p. 286.
Lincoln, Wilkins, III., 168. It can * Fasc. Zizan., p. ^Sg.
scarcely be doubted that the above ex-

IjS2.]

SUMMONED TO OXFORD.

403

Wycliffe hiraself might be all the more easily overpowered when
•deserted by all, and left standing alone.
In the end, however, he was summoned to appear in person
before the Provincial Synod which assembled in Oxford, Novem
ber 18, 1 38 2, and was again adjourned to the 24th
r , , rr., ? . , , , , „ ¦Wycliffe before
of the same month, ihe fact is not placed beyond all the Oxford
doubt, but has stiU a balance of probability in its ^° '
favour, that AA'ycliffe presented himself before this assembly in the
Church of St. Frideswide, and, in the trial to which he was submitted,
gsLve expression to and defended his convictions with freedora, and
faithfulness, and unshrinking courage.' Another fact, however, con-

' Lewis, p. 117, says, ' I do not find that
X)r. Wiclif was at all before this convoca
tion. ' Herein he manifestly relies upon the
•circumstance that tlie protocol of the ses
sions (Wilkins, III., 172) does not say a
single word about WycUffe. But "Vaughan
justly remarks (Monograph, .\ppendi.\-, p.
,572), that the protocol throughout con
tains very meagre minutes of the proceed
ings. "These proceedings relate to the
5Worn recantations of Repyngdon and
Aston, as well as to the examination of
the Carmelite Stokes and the Cistercian
Henry Cromp. But if Wycliffe made
?iis answers before the council with in
trepidity, and the bishops, notwithstand
ing, could not see their way to decide
upon a final condemnation of his person,
it is not difficult to explain why such an
issue as this, which there was not the
.slightest reason to be proud of, should
rather have been passed over in silence in
a half-official minute. While nothing is
to be gathered from this document, either
for or against the fact in question, we
have two other authorities who expressly
fittest that Wycliffe, when summoned,
appeared before the council and made
answer for himself. These are the
chronicler Knighton and Anthony Wood.
It is true, indeed, that when we carefully
•compare the two, the information of the
latter appears to rest exclusively upon
that of the former, which is, indeed, of
much older date, for the account given
by the Churchmen who were present in the
•council coincides with Knighton's narra-
-tive, as also Wood's narrative does, save
only that Wood, as a historian of the
University, names the chancellor and
•doctors, as may be easily understood,
immediately after the bishops, while the
Canon of Leicester puts thera in the
second place. And there is another cir-
•cumstance which speaks for Wood's de
pendence upon the chronicler, that the
former as well as the latter, and with
•<juite as Uttle justification too, looks

upon the confession of Wycliffe as a
recantation. The circumstance, on the
other hand, that Wood makes mention
of six men who wrote against that
confession, of whom Knighton says
nothing, is by no means a proof, as
Vaughan thinks (p. 373) , that "Wood had
other authorities besides Knighton, in
favour of the chief point of Wycliffe
having presented himself before the
council, for it proves no more than this,
that Wood found that particular literary
notice in some other source than the
Leicester Chronicle. All this being so,
we have, in fact, only one original
authority for the appearance of Wycliffe
before the council. But still this authority
declares clearly, and with precision, that
Wycliffe was summoned by the arch
bishop to Oxford, that he appeared before
him and six bishops, as well as before the
chancellor and numerous doctors, and
before clergy and people, to answer to
the charge of heresy which was brought
against him {De Eventibus Angliae, fol.
2649). He asserts, it is true, that Wycliffe
made a complete recantation (eis conclu-
sionibus sive opinionibus omnino renun-
cians, nee cas tenuisse neque tenere se vellc
protestans). But this judgment is contra
dicted by the English Confession on the
Lord's Supper, which Knighton has in
serted in his Chronicle, word for word, in
this very place. The document does not
contain a single trace of retractation, or
of even the correction of what he had
before said on the subject, but only a
clear exhibition and emphatic assertion
of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper
which he declares to be the pure doctrine
of Scripture, and at the same time the
primitive doctrine of the Church, whereas
the doctrine of the Sacrament, as a mere
accident without substance, he caUs a
' modern error. ' The Chronicle oi Leices
ter has found, notwithstanding, men of
easy faith and full of prejudice who have
maintained, on this mistaken authority.

404

LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [cu. ix. § s

nected with the trial is of undoubted historical certainty, viz., that
no sentence was pronounced upon him as its issue, either con
demning him to make a recantation of his doctrine, or inflicting
upon him any other ecclesiastical censure. The sUence of his adver
saries as to any such issue is itself, in such a case as this, a convincing
proof of the -fact ; for assuredly they would not have failed to
trumpet forth the event in high triumph, if they had obtained so
unexpected a success, and had forced the renowned and admired
Jiead of the opposition to undergo the humiliation of a public
¦recantation. Add to this another fact, that when it was afterwards
pretended that he had raade such a recantation, they found thera
selves obliged to put forward as a proof of this a piece of writing;
— viz., his English Confession — which, properly understood, sets
forth Wycliffe's doctrine of the Eucharist in language so clear and
unmistakable, and in a tone of such fearless decision, that it is.
marvellous that it should ever have been appealed to for such a
purpose ; which, however, would never have been done if any docu
ment had ever corae from AVycUffe's hand of such a kind as to show that
he had submitted to the Caudine yoke of the hierarchical inquisition.
AVhat was it that influenced the hierarchy to abstain from demand
ing from him such a recantation, to connive at his offence, and
to allow the bold, free-spoken raan to go back to his.
Caution of . .
-Wycliffe's Lutterwortli flock untouched, and in full possession of
enemies. ,,,. •,.., • -. a i
all his ecclesiastical proi-notions ? Are we to suppose that
they were overawed by dread of the Duke of Lancaster, who had
always been his powerful patron ? Archbishop Courtenay, it is true,
could scarcely have forgotten the scene in his own Cathedral of St.
Paul which had touched his honour so deeply ; when the duke took
upon hira the defence of the Oxford doctor in so high-handed a style,
and with insulting threats directed against his own episcopal person.'
even in the present century, that Wycliffe did not go to the bottom of the matter,
at that provincial council sought and might unwarily consider the document in
obtained rest from further persecution by question as a recantation. Nor may it.
a cowardly disguising of his real convic- remain unnoticed that Knighton, in ad-
tions, i.e., Lingard, History of England, dition to this, fell into another error of
IV., 260. Hefele, on the other hand, in a chronological kind. He is plainly
his Conciliengeschichte, VI,, 828, has, under the erroneous impression that it
with justice, acknowledged that Wycliffe, was this council at Oxford which first,
in the confession in question, remained pronounced that judgment upon the
true to his convictions, and even warmly Articles of Wycliffe, which, in fact, had
attacked the Roman CathoUc doctrine of already been pronounced upon them
the Supper. There is only one excuse for in May, 1382. Comp. also the observa--
this misinterpretation of the piece ; if the tions of Arnold in Select English Works,
bishops had reasons for letting Wycliffe's in., 501.
declaration pass as though they were ' Comp. chap, v, above. "Vaughan,
satisfied with it, and saw in it a sort of Monograph, p. 287, is disposed to think
recantation, it is all the more easy to that this was the consideration which-
understand that the chronicler, in case he chiefly weighed with the archbishop.

E382.] MEMORIAL TO PARLIAMENT. 405
But in the interval the duke had been so sensibly affected by the
events of the preceding year, when his Ufe was threatened at the
hands of the revolted peasantr_\-, that his haughty bearing and power
had been much broken down. He had, besides, for some tirae back
— no doubt under the influence of the sarae circumstances — kept
himself free frora participation in Church affairs, and had warned
AA''ycliffe to be on his guard — a fact which could not have remained
¦unknown to the archbishop. It can hardly, then, be supposed that
it was frora any reference to the duke that Courtenay should have
resolved to proceed cautiously with AVycliffe. It must rather hav6
been the thought of Parliament and of the state of public Opinion
that induced him to adopt this prudential course.
It was on Tuesday, November 18, that the Convocation had met
in Oxford, and on the following day the Parliaraent asserabled in
AA'estminster. To this Parliaraent AVycliffe addressed Memorial to
hiraself in a Memorial which, it might be presumed, I'ariiameut.
would not fail to attract some measure of public attention. At least
AA'ycliffe himself expressed the hope that it would lead to a dis
cussion. In its whole substance the ' Complaint ' was drawn up in
such a way as to keep) steadily before men's rainds the legislative
point of view. Four points vvere exarained in it : i. Monastic vows;
2, The exemption of the clergy and Church property ; 3, AVhat view
was to be taken of tithes and offerings ; 4, That the pure doctrine of
Christ and His apostles touching the Lord's Supper should be allowed
to be publicly ^taught in the churches.' The last point is handled
in the briefest manner ; and it was good tact in Wycliffe not to go
any deeper into doctrine, for King and ParUament were not the
proper authorities to decide upon dograatic questions. But all the
more fuUy does the author examine the first point, devoting almost
one-half of the ^Memorial to the proof of the proposition that
monastic vows are nothing but inventions of sinful men, and are
destitute of all obligatory force. A twofold fundamental thought
runs through the whole docuraent ; first, the conception of the pure
religion of Christ, without any additions of men ; and next, the
conception of Christian liberty. AVhen the author urges the right
of publicly setting forth the Scripture doctrine of the Sacrament,
and when, in opposition to the fetters of monastic vows, he claims
' This memorial to Richard II. and (comp. Shirley's Catalogue, p. 43), Was
Parliament, beginning with the words — published by Dr. Thomas James in 1608,
' Plese it to oure noble and most worthi along with a tract of considerable length
King Richard,' of which two manuscripts against the Mendicant Orders. It is
are still extant, the one perfect, in Cor- published in Arnold's Select English
pus Christi College, Cambridge, and the Writings, ill., 507-323, upon the basis of
other imperfect, inTrinity College, Dublin the Cambridge MS.

4o6 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE' S LIFE. [cu. ix. § r
for himself and others the liberty of foUowing the pure and simple
rule of the Redeemer ; when he contests the right of compulsory
tithing, approving of tithes and offerings only as voluntary gifts, it is
always a love of Christian liberty by which he is inspired. There
can be no doubt that this Memorial, as a summary statement and
defence of AA^ycliffe's ideas, was well fitted to find acceptance among-
the re]5resentatives of the country.
To this must be added the well-warranted mistrust, and the only
too intelligible irritation of the House of Commons, occasioned by
Spirit of the the Unconstitutional and arbitrary measure of the pre-
oommons. ceding session, when a bill for the imprisonment of the
Wycliffe Itinerants by the officials of counties, which had been passed
only by the Lords, and had never even been brought before the
Lower House, had been admitted into the collection of the Statutes
of the realm. AA^hat must it lead to, raen demanded, if the Crown
and the Peers of the realm, over the heads of the Comraons, lent their
aid to the bishops in encroaching upon the liberty of the people, and
forcing them, in a style never before heard of, under the yoke of the
prelates ? If such an irresponsible proceeding were to pass unnoticed,
what would become at last of the legislative power of the Commons ?
The Comraons, therefore, addressed a strong representation to the
Government against the pretended ' statute ' which had never obtained
their consent, and pressed for its annulment — a deraand which was,
in point of fact, conceded.' It may readily be supposed that this
question must have been warmly discussed among raerabers of Par
liaraent and in patriotic circles before the opening of the Parliaraentary
session ; and as it was the prelates who vvere chiefly aimed at in this
popular agitation, it is easy to understand how the archbishop, calling-
to mind the fate which had been prepared for his predecessor Sudbury,
may have found it advisable to proceed cautiously with a raan so
highly regarded in the country, and of such imraense influence, as
Wycliffe; and especially on the very eve of the opening of Parlia
ment, rather to wink at his offences, than to add intensity to the
ill-feeling which already existed by adopting a course in which all
considerations of policy and prudence were set aside.
7.— The Last Two Years of Wycliffe, and his Death.
AVycliffe was left at Uberty to return in peace to his quiet cure in
Lutterworth ; and during the two full years which intervened between
that date and his death he experienced no further personal disturb-
^ Comp. chai^. v. above.

^sS3,4.] WORK AT LUTTERWORTH. 407
ance at the hands of the English hierarch)-. The brief terra of life
still allotted to him he filled up with tranquil but many- -wyoUfra at
sided and indefatigable labour. Before everything else he Lutterworth.
devoted himself with conscientious faithfulness to his pastoral work.
A large nuraber of the English sermons preached by him which have
come down to us belong, vvithout doubt, to these last years of his life.'
He found himself, however, necessitated by age and declining health
and strength to engage an assistant pastor — a chaplain ; and in this
capacity John Horn was associated with hira for two years. In addition,
John Purvey vvas AA'ycliffe's constant attendant and confidential mess
mate — a helper of kindred spirit to his own, and a fellow-labourer in
all his widely extended work.= To him, without doubt, we are in
debted for the transcription, collection, and preservation of so raany
of AVycliffe's serraons. In the great work of the English translation
of the Bible, next to Nicholas Hereford, John Purvey was the most
active and meritorious of Wycliffe's co-workers. AVhen Horn and
this work was completed in its first forra, and AA''ycliffe Purvey.
became sensible of the need of submitting it to further revision and
improvement, it was undoubtedly Purvey upon whom the largest
share of this labour fell ; and he continued the work after AVycliffe's
death, till it was at last happily completed in the year 1388.3
It raay also be assumed, with some degree of probability, that ,
during these years the preaching itinerancy, although menaced by the
measures of the bishops, vvas still carried on, though in
diminished proportions, and with some degree of caution ;
and, so long as Wycliffe lived, Lutterworth continued to be the centre
of this evangelical mission. But the narrower the limits becarae within
which this itinerancy could be worked, the raore zealously did
AVycliffe apply himself to the task of instructing the people by
means of short and simple tracts in the English tongue, as a com
pensatory mode of reaching them. The largest number of these
tracts — at least half a hundred — which have have corae down to us
belong to these latest years of WycUffe's life.'* Setting aside transla
tions of portions of the text of Scripture, these tracts raay be divided
into two chief groups. The one consists of shorter or -w-yoiiffe's
longer explanations of single heads of the Catechism ; tracts.
the other of discussions of the doctrines of the Church. The latter,
^ Comp. chap. v. above. duns ipsum cum doctrinis et opinionibus
= Tliat Purvey (Purney) was Wycliffe's suis concomitabatur indefessc lalorans.
assistant is pretty evident from Knighton's 3 Comp. chap. VH.
Chronicle, col. -2660 : Magistri sui dum 4 Comp. Shirley's Catalogue, pp. 40-45,
adhuc viveret conimensalis extiterat . ¦ . and vide Appendix 11.
Clique usque ad mortis mefas comes indivi-

408 LAST YEARS .OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 7
for the most part, have a polemical character, while the former are
in a raore positive form, didactic and edifying. To indicate more
closely their contents in a few cases, several tracts of the first group
treat of the Ten Commandments, of works of mercy, of the seven
mortal sins ; several discuss the duties belonging to the different
stations and relations of life, whUe others treat of prayer, and explain
the Fater Noster and the Ave Maria. There are also tracts on the
Lord's Supper and on Confession and Absolution. To the second
group — all treating of the Church, with its offices and members,
institutions and functions — belong all those tracts which we have
before mentioned, as defences of the itinerant preachers, and attacks
upon their opponents. Others treat of the pastoral office itself,
chiefly of the function of preaching, but also of the execution of the
pastoral work at large, and ofthe life and conversation of the priests;'
and one tract of this set is specially designed to show that it is the
duty of earthly rulers and lords to hold the clergy to their duty in all
these respects. =
Ever interesting himself vividly in all that stirred his countrymen
and fatherland, Wycliffe could not remain unmoved when a crusade
Projected ^et forth from England which had no other object in
crusade. ,^.jg^ ^j^j. jg ^^t for the cause of Urban VI. against the
supporters of the rival Pope in Avignon, Clement "VIL, and, if
possible, to overthrow the latter.3 At the head of this crusade was
placed, not a nobleman skUled in war, but a prelate of the Church.
During the peasants' revolt in 1381, Henry le Spencer, Bishop of
Norwich, was the first raan who had the courage to oppose hiraself to
the movement, not only when it began, but as long as the flood
continued to rise, and when no one else had the spirit to resist it. He
Bishop happened to be at his manor-house of Burlee when he
Spencer. heard that the people had risen in Norfolk. In a
moment he set off to convince hiraself whether the fact was really so.
Putting on his armour, at the head of a small following of eight
lances and a few bowmen, he attacked a crowd of rebels, among
' E.g., De Apostasia Cleri (Shirley's the whole series was written in 1381. But
Catalogue, p. 46), published by Todd, no trace is to be discovered in these
1851. Select English Works, III., iS,-iO. writings ofthe specifically Wycliffitic
-' No. 33, Shirley's Catalogue, p. 44. spirit, and its party pecuharities. We
Select English Works, III., 213. have even reason to doubt whether Eng-
3 Theodore Lindner, in Theologische land at all was the birthplace of this
Studien und Kritiken, 1873, 131, has series of pieces, so full of puzzles. To say
given it as his opinion that the anony- the least, most, of the particulars which
mous author of a series of writings de- occur in them, and which are mentioned
signed to put an end to this Papal Schism, in a tone of personal feeUng, are of such
which were repubhshed by Ulrich von a character that they must be referred to
Hutten, in 1320, must have been one of French personalities and events.
Wycliffe's followers, and conjectures that

13S3.] THE PRoyECTED CRUSADE. 409
whom were two of the ringleaders, whom he ordered to be beheaded
upon the spot, and sent their heads to be set up in Newmarket.
As he marched through tlie county, his forces increased at every step,
for his resolution inspired new courage in the terrified knights and
nobles. At North A\'alsham he came upon a fortified and barricaded
camp of the rebels. This he immediately carried by storm under a
blast of trumpets, himself leading the attack on horseback ; and, lance
in hand, he dispersed the whole body, cut off their retreat, and after
a great number had been slain took their leaders prisoners. Those
who fled to the churches' for safety, trusting to the right of asylum,
were slain even at the altar with swords and lances. Among the
leaders was John Lister, a dyer of Norwich, who had allowed himself
to be styled King of Norfolk. The bishop in person sat in judgment
on the ringleaders at Norwich, and condemned thera to the gallows.
A chronicler applauds him for this — ' that his eye spared no one, and
that his hand was stretched out with joy for vengeance.'' From that
day the Bishop of Norwich had a high reputation as a man of
heroic fearlessness and energetic action ; he was even accredited
with the talent of mUitary coraraand. No wonder that he vvas
trusted to take the lead of a raartial expedition which was to be a
crusade. Perhaps it is not too bold a conjecture that Henry le Spencer had
himself taken the initiative of the movement, and at his own
instance had obtained a comraission frora Urban Vl. to rjhe pope ana
lead a crusade against the ' Clementines,' the adherents ^^^ crusade.
of the rival Pope. The Pope sent forth raore than one bull, in which he
empowered the Bishop of Norwich to collect and take the coraraand
of an array which should wage a holy war against Cleraent VII.
and his abettors on the Continent, especially in France. Extensive
powers vvere conferred upon the bishop for this end against Clement
VII. and all his supporters, both clergy and laity. He was free to
adopt all manner of measures against them — to banish, suspend,
depose, and iraprison, and also to seize their estates. AVhosoever
should personally take part in the crusade for a year, and whosoever
should provide a crusader at his own cost, or whosoever should assist
the undertaking with his purse and property, should receive a
plenary absolution and the same rights and privileges as a crusader to
the Holy Land.=
These bulls the bishop coraraunicated to the raembers of Parlia
ment in the session which met in November, 1382, and pubUshed
¦: Knighton, col. 2638. Walsingham, = Walsingham, 11., 71, particularly
Historia Anglicana, II., 6. p. 76.

4IO LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 7 t
thera by the dispersion of copies in aU parts of the kingdom, which
he caused to be posted up on the church doors and the monastery
gates, that they might be patent to the knowledge of all' The
bishop also, in virtue of 'apostohc authority,' drew up and issued
Eeoruiting of Letters of Indulgence.^ And now an agitation vvas set
crusaders. q^ fQ^j- throughout the realm with a view of gaining the
largest possible number to take a personal share in the crusade, and
of inducing others to aid it, atleast, with money and money's worth.
For some time the fruit of these efforts does not appear to have
everywhere come up to the bishop's wishes and needs. In a
circular to the parish priests and chaplains of the diocese of York,
he complains of the meagre result, and presses upon them the
duty of calling the attention of their parishioners to an opportunity
so favourable for their souls' salvation, and of moving those who
were remiss, whether rich or poor, by judicious handling in the con
fessional, to do what vvas in their power for the enterprise ; all
opposers of the undertaking it would be their duty to call before
thera, and to give intimation thereof to the bishop or his commis
saries, as well as to send in accurate returns of all the contributions
obtained.3 Circulars to the same effect were no doubt sent at the
same time to the clergy of other dioceses. In addition, by a special
commission frora the Bishop of Norwich, the Mendicants of different
Orders put forth the most strenuous exertions in the pulpit and the
confessional to awaken enthusiasm for the approaching crusade, and
to Call forth rich offerings in its behalf They had in their hands one
mighty key to the hearts of raen — the promised absolution from all •
guilt and penalty ; an absolution, however, which was only to be
obtained at the price of contributions to the holy war.
The undertaking vvas meant to be made the coraraon affair of the
whole EngUsh Church and nation. Archbishop Courtenay worked
for it — at the instance, no doubt, of the. Pope himself — by various
mandates, which he issued simultaneously, April 10, 1383, to the
bishops of his province, and to' the whole parish clergy of the king
dom, to the effect that in all churches prayers should be offered at
mass and in serraons for the crusaders and the success of their
The enterprise enterprise ; that every Wednesday and Friday solemn
promoted, processions should be raade on behalf of the crusade ;
and all the parishioners should be exhorted to join in the prayers.-i^
' Walsingham, 11., 72. for at the beginning of 1382 the business
= Ib. , 79. Gives one such indulgence, could not have been so far advanced r '
word for word. besides, the 13th year of his episcopal
3 lb., 78. The circular is dated Feb. consecration agrees only with 1383.
9, 1382 ; but this should have been 1383, -i Wilkins, Concilia, in,, 176.

X383.] THE PROJECTED CRUSADE. 4II
A second raandate enjoined collections for the same object ; ' and the
third contains the credentials and recommendation of three agents
and receivers of the Bishop of Norwich, appointed for the collection. =
No wonder that, when such extensive measures vvere adopted to secure
success, an extreraely large sura was in the end collected for the war-
chest of the crusade. The suras obtained, not only in gold and
silver, but also in money's worth, in jewels, ornaments, and rings, in
silver spoons and dishes, contributed alike by men and women, and
especially by ladies of rank and wealth, vvere incredibly great. One
lady of rank is said to have contributed one hundred pounds of
silver, and many persons gave far beyond their means, insomuch that
even a clerical chronicler is of opinion that the national wealth, in so
far as it lay in private hands, was endamaged.^
But the treasures of grace which were offered in return for contri
butions were also worth soraething : for the pardons which were
offered by Papal authority were of virtue both for the Appeals to the
living and the dead. It passed from mouth to mouth people.
that one of the bishop's commissaries had said that at their command
angels descended from heaven to release souls in purgatory frora their
pain, and to translate thera instantly to heaven. ¦! In another key, but
with the sarae object of raaking the crusade popular, the archbishop,
in his mandate of April 10, 1383, seeks to stir up national feeling and
English patriotism in support of the undertaking, by reminding the
country that it is directed against France, the hereditary enemy of
England ; for France was the chief patron of the rival Pope ; and by
reminding it further, that the well-being of the State is inseparably
connected with the interest of the Church ; while, in order to do
away with the offence which every unprejudiced mind could not but
take against the conduct of the war being put into the hands of a
prelate, the archbishop gives the assurance that the only object ofthe
war is to secure peace, s
Upon such proceedings as these, Wycliffe could neither look with
favour, nor preserve silence respecting them. More than once he
not only threw gleams of side light upon the crusade, ¦wyouffe's
but also discussed it thoroughly. In the summer of 'Cruciata.*
1383 he published a sraall tract in Latin, bearing the title, ' Cruciata;
" Wilkins, Concilia, III., 177. 5 Wilkins, Concilia, ill., 177 : Prac-
^ lb,, 177. cipue contra Francigenas, ipsorum schis-
3 Knighton, De Eventibus Angliae, Lib. ¦maticoiitm principalcs fautores, et domini
v., col. 2671 : Et sic secretus thesaurus nostri regis et regni Angliae capitalcs
regni, qui in manibus erat mulierum, peri- inimicos pro pace ecclesiae acquircnda ct
clitatus est. Comp. Walsingham, II. , 83. defensionc regni . . . quod neque pax
¦t lb., 2671. The blasphemous extra- ecclesiae sine regno neque regno salus
vagance of the language reminds one of poterit nisi per ecclesiam provenirc, etc.
Tetzel.

412 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 7
or. Against the AVar of the Clergy.' ' In this pamphlet he illustrates
the subject on different sides, and condemns the crusade and every
thing connected with it in the severest raanner ; first, because it is
a war, then because a war of which the Pope is the instigator is,
under all circumstances, contrary to the mind of Christ ; and, further,
because the whole quarrel between the contending Popes has to do
at bottom only with worldly power and mastery, which is a thing
entirely unbefitting the Pope, and wholly contrary to the example of
Christ That every one who does anything to aid this crusade shall
obtain remission from all guUt and punishment is a lie and ' an
abomination of desolation in the holy place.' The Mendicant
monks who promote this affair in their sermons, and take upon them
selves the labour of collecting for it, are nothing else but enemies to
the Church ; they and all the cardinals and Englishmen in the Papal
Court vvho plunder the country in this manner must, before every
thing else, make restitution of this unrighteous lucre, if they would
ever obtain forgiveness of their sins.
I know no writing of Wycliffe in which, vvith a greater absence of
all reserve, and in more incisive language, he laid bare, and did
battle against the anti-christian spirit which lay in the great
Papal schism in general, and particularly in the stirring up of an
actual war for the purpose of annihilating one of the rival Popes
by force of arms and the shedding of blood.= He characterises
the crusade as a persecution of true Christians, and as an inver
sion of the faith. It is a proof of the ascendency of the devil's
party, that kings and other powers tolerate the Pope's command to
banish and imprison every man who opposes his party or does not
actively support it. There are now few men or none at all who have
the courage to expose themselves to such raartyrdora ; and yet
never since the time of Christ has there been a better cause for

' Cruciata, seu Contra Bellum Cleri- endowing them with landed property,
comm : Such is the title of a tract iri ten contrary to the law of Christ, and by the
chapters [printed by the Wyclif Society, publication of a lie concerning the for-
1883 ; vol. II., p. 577], ofwhichMSS. are giveness of sins and indulgences, he has
only now extant in -Vienna, where no thrown the whole Western Church into a
fewer than six copies are to be found. state of disorder, as now, with two rival
Shirley's Catalogue, No. 73. Tn MS. Popes, our whole Western Christendom
3929, which I have used, the narae of the must take side with either the one or the
author is given at the end. Explicit other, and yet both of them are mani-
Cruciata-denerabilis et evangelici Doctoris festly Antichrists ' (et uterque ipsorum sit
Magistri Joannis Wyklef. [References in patule Antichristus). But the strongest
the following notes are to the printed thing in the piece is the view which per-
edition.] vades it throughout, that at bottom there
- Cruciata, c. 11., p. 394: "As Satan,' are only two parties existing at present in
says Wycliffe, 'poisoned the human race the Church — the party of the Lord Christ,
by one sin, the sin of pride, so he has and the devil's party (pars Domini . . .
a. second tirae poisoned the clergy by pars ista diaboU), c. ill., p. 600.

1383.] 'CRUCIATA.' 413
which men could have suffered a martyr's death ; and never vvas
there a more glorious victory to be won by the man who has the
courage to stand up on the Lord's side. It is not enough that so
many thousands of men should lose their lives, and that England
should be sucked dry by the fraudulent spoliations of hypocrites ;
the worst of all is that raany of those who fall in the crusade die in
unbelief while taking part in this anti-christian persecution, while the
Antichrist pretends that they are absolved from all sin and penalty
and enter at once into heaven.'
How is this miserable mischief to be remedied, which threatens in
the end to bring the whole Church into confusion ? To this question
Wycliffe replies : ' The whole schism is a consequence of the moral
apostacy from Christ and His life of poverty and purity.' If it is to
be mended, the Church must be led back to the poor and hurable life
of Christ and to His pure Word. In conforraity with this view, his
thought in the first instance is of princes and rulers. He thinks
that emperors and kings have done foolishly in providing the
Church with lands and lordships ; this they must set right again to
the utmost of their power, and so restore peace. AVycliffe com
pares, in his rough manner, the schism of the two Popes to the
quarrelling and worrying of two dogs over a bone, and thinks that
princes should take away the bone itself — that is, the worldly power
of the Papacy — ^for surely they do not bear the sword in vain.^ But all
Christ's knights should in this cause stand true at the side of Christ's
faithful poor ; all good soldiers of Christ should stand shoulder to
shoulder ; this would enable them to win a great victoiy and renown.
Yes ! the whole of Christendom should take upon itself toil and
trouble in order to put down wickedness, and restore the Church to
the condition of apostolic purity, and to put an end to the means by
which Antichrist misleads the Church.' 3
This memorial, written in the summer of 1383, enables us to per
ceive, in the clearest raanner, that AVycliffe was not in the least
intimidated by the inquisitorial proceedings which Archbishop
Courtenay had taken against him and his friends in the preceding
year. He stUl speaks out in the most fearless and emphatic way
' Cruciata, c. TTI,, p. 600; Pauci vel partis diaboli, sic quod multi occisorum
nulli sunt, qui audentseexponere martyrio quos Antichristus dicit sine poena ad
in liac causa; et tamen scimus, quod atem- coelum ascendere, moriuntur infideliter
pore Christi non fuit melior causamartyrii, in Jiac persecutione perfida jam regnante,
nee gloriosior triumphus illi, qui in causa "lb., c. II., p. 391: Videtur quod
domini audet stare. Non enim quietatur eorum interest prndenter auffere hoc dis-
ista persecutio in multis minibus coiporum sensionis seminarium, sicut canibus pro
occisorum, nee solum in fraudulentis spo- osse rixantibus , . . os ipsum celeritcr
liationibus hypocritarum, -ut specialiter semovere.
patet in Anglia, sed, quod est gravius, in 3 pb,, c. II., p. 396.
subversione fidei et perfida exaltatione

414 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. x. § 7
against both the Popes, and against the crusade commanded by
Urban VI. , favoured by the archbishop, and undertaken by an
Letter to the English bishop. In a writing directly addressed to the
Archbishop. Prjmate himself, which raust have been penned at the
same date, Wycliffe plainly told him that he could not learn from
Scripture that that crusade in defence of the Pope's cause was a
lawful measure, for only those works of man which are done from
love have the Lord's approval ; and neither the slaying of men nor
the impoverishment of whole countries can be the outcome of love to
the Lord Jesus Christ. And thus it is plain that there exists no valid
and defensible ground for the endurance of raartyrdora, for the im
poverishment of the people, and for an undertaking causing so much
anxiety and mischief'
Of the crusade itself let it only be briefly reraarked here, that the
Bishop of Norwich embarked in May, 1383,^ and, advancing from
Collapse of the Calais, took several towns in Flanders. But after this
crusade. rapid and successful beginning he lost time by laying
siege to the city of Ypres ; and after that he met vvith nothing but
misfortune. His conquests were no sooner won than they were lost
again, until at last he was fain to surrender Gravelines, which he had
taken, in order to secure his unopposed return to England at the
beginning of October. The crusade came to an ignominious end.
Nor was that all. At the bar of Parliaraent, which met at the end of
October, the bishop and the chief officers of his staff had to answer
to various charges which were laid against them, and the king with
held from him his temporalities, which were not restored again till
It was a melancholy satisfaction to Wycliffe that the crusade against
¦\vhich he had warned the nation came to such a wretched conclusion.
In its utter failure he saw a judgment of God ; only one thing was
Ttot yet clear to him, whether the whole of God^s judgment was
exhausted, or whether further punishment was yet to follow. -^
^ Litera missa Archiepiscopo Cantua- ista non sit stabilis causa martyrii, de~
riensi, Vienna MS., No. 1387, fol. 105, pauperailonis {M.%. : depa.vipera.tio) populi
col. I : Dixit iertio idem sacerdos et tenuit, et laboris tain anxii et damnosi.
¦quod nescit ex scriptura, quod ista crucis ^ Walsingham, Hist. Anglicana, cd.
erectio pro defensione causae papae sit Riley, 11., 88.
I i cita, vel quod approbaiive proccssit a "^ lb., II., 104, 109, 141. Comp. Pauli,
domino Jesii. Christo. Istud autem ex Geschichte von England, IV., 544.
hoc evidet, qzced solum opera homi?zis ex ¦+ In the piece, De Quatuor Sectis
caritate facia a domino approbantur. Sed Novellis, Vienna MS., 3929 [printed by
probahile est, quod nee ista plebis occisio the Wyclif Society, vol. iii., p. 233], Wy-
nec terrarum depaupei'atio processit ex cliffe comes to speak of this Crusade,
¦caritate domini Jesu Christi, specialiter and says : Nee scimus, si iste ultiimis
cum non sit fides nostra, quod iste papa transiius nostratuvi in FlandHam., quem
est caput vel membrum sanctae matris fratres multi istarum sectarum quatuor
ecclesiae militantis. Ei sic videtur, quod rcgularuni, sit a Deo punitus ad regulam.

:3S3.1 CITATION TO ROME. 415
It raust have been in this year 13S3, or the year following, that
AVycliffe's citation to Rome took place — if such a citation vvere indeed
an historical fact. His biographers all agree in narrating citation ofwy-
that Pope Urban VI. suraraoned him to appear before """'^ '° ^°™^-
his tribunal, but that AVycliffe excused hiraself in a letter addressed
to the Pope hiraself, on the ground of his declining health, while
giving, at the same time, a frank confession of his convictions.' But
it is passing strange that not one of them points to any contemporary
account attesting the fact of such a citation. Of those ' chroniclers'
to whom we are indebted for authentic data concerning AVycliffe's
person and life, there is not one who has so rauch as a single word
respecting the Pope's suramons. The assumption of such a fact
appears rather to rest entirely upon inferences drawn frora a production
of AVycliffe's own pen, which, however, cannot in any case be regarded
as an indubitable testimony to the fact in question. This is the so-
called letter of AVycliffe to Pope Urban VI. = But this -Letter to
piece, when examined without prejudice, is neither a tirban vi.'
letter in form, nor in substance an excuse for non-compliance with a
citation received Not a single trace can be discovered in it of the
form of a real letter — neither an address at the beginning, nor any
other epistolary feature from beginning to end. Nor among the
alleged letters of AVycliffe is this by any raeans the only one which
has been erroneously included in this category ; 3 while of all the
letters which are indisputably such, there is not one which is without
the characteristic address at least ¦? Indeed, the way in which
the piece raentions the Pope is positive proof against the suppo
sition that it was a letter addressed to the Pope himself Not less
than nine times is the Pope mentioned in this short composition,
but, without exception, he is always spoken of in the third person ;
he is never addressed directly. More than once Wycliffe refers to
-z'el adhuc ejus punitio sitfutura, c. x., p. ^Ponograph, 576 ; Select English Works,
281. Under tliese four sects, Wycliffe III., 304. The Latin text in ./^ic. Zz^nw.,
understands the endowed priests, monks, 341.
canons, and Mendicant orders. 3 Shirley, in Catalogue, p. 21, enu-
^ Yoxe, Acts and Monuments, eA. 1844. merates eight letters ; butin my opinion
III., 49 ; Lewis, History, 122 ; "Vaughan, only the half of these deserve that name.
Life and Opinions, 11., 121; John de For a longtime I have had no doubt
Wycliffe, a Monograph, 320. of the fact that the alleged Epistola ad
^ The piece in Latin is extant in five Simplices Sacerdotes is no letter ; vide
¦Vienna MSS., and in English in two chap. VI.
Oxford MSS. , and in a transcript besides ? The Letter to the archbishop has
of the 17th century. Comp. Shirley's the address, Venerabilis in Christo
.Catalogue, p. 21, No. 33. The Eng- pater et domine; and the letter itself
lish text, as Arnold rightly judges, is a. begins thus : Vester sacerdos pauper et
version from the Latin, which, in any humilis sub spe paterni auxilii, pandit
case, is the original. The English form of vestrae reverentiae ostia cordis suae, etc. ,
the te-xt is printed in Lewis, p. 333 ; in, -Vienna MS., 1387, fol. 105, col. i.
Vaughan, Life and Opinions, II., 435;

4l6 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 7
him as ' our Pope,' ' which is an indication that the writer had his
countryraen before his raind ; and when we add to this the circura
stance that the discourse, which frora the beginning to beyond the
middle proceeds in the first person singular, and sounds like an
entirely personal confession, passes over, towards the close, into the
first person plural, and in two instances assumes the tone of a col
lective injunction,^ the conjecture may not seem too bold, that we
have before us either the fragment of a sermon, or of a declaration
addressed to English readers.
If we look about for any particular occasion which raay have given
rise to the docuraent, it raay be conjectured, with most probability.
Occasion of the that Wycliffe put forth this declaration at the time when
letter. j^j^ friend Nicholas Plereford set out for Rometo make
his answer before the Pope. Perhaps, also, what the writing really
contains of the nature of excuse stands connected with the occasion
which we have surmised, and is explained by it. Possibly Hereford
hiraself may have wished and proposed that AVycliffe should under
take the journey to Rome along with him ; or possibly AVycliffe's
undertaking it might have been a step approved of by many of his
friends as a proof of faith and courage, insomuch that it was hoped
that if Wycliffe himself should appear in Rome, a favourable issue
for the coraraon cause might be reasonably anticipated. On either
supposition AVycliffe might see occasion to express his mind upon
the subject; and certainly his words referring to the point sound
raore like a justification of hiraself to like-minded friends, than an
excuse addressed to ecclesiastical superiors who had cited hira to
their bar ; but least of all do they sound like a reply to a suramons
which had issued to hira direct from the Pope and the Curia.3
^ Thrice it spccdis oi Pomanus pontifex, with the Papal Legates, with respect to
thrice of papa aut cardinales, twice of which our author had expressed his ex-
papa noster, once of papa noster Urbanus pectation that some original papers
sextus. hitherto unknown might possibly be pre-
= Rogare debemus ; . . . igitur rogemus served in the archives of the 'Vatican. To
Dominum cujuslibet creaturae ; et rogemus which historical points may with equal
spiritualiter. . . . reason be added the curious incidents in
3 [There are several points in the history Nicholas Hereford's life recorded by
of VVycliffe and the first Wycliffites on Knighton, and resting exclusively on his
which it was natural to expect that some authority, viz. , his appeal to Pope Urban
additional light might be obtained from vi. against the sentence of Archbishop
the Papal archives in Rome. One of these Courtenay, his condemnation and ini-
was WycUffe's .alleged citation to appear prisonment in Rome, and his unexpected
in person before the tribunal of Urban release from prison and return to England.
VI. , to which it has long been supposed Having become aware in 1876 that our
that he sent a declinature on the score of Public Records Office had an agent in
age and infirmity, a supposition for which, Rome employed in searches araong the
as the reader has seen. Professor Lechler archives of the -Vatican on matters con-
sees no adequate ground. A second nected with the history of Great Britain,
point was the part which Wycliffe took, I brought under the notice of Sir Thomas
in 1374, in the negotiations at Bruges Duffus Hardy the first of the historical

13S3.] 'letter TO URBAN THE SIXTH.' 417
fhese thoughts respecting the possible occasion of this remarkable
writing claim to be nothing more than conjectures. But that the
piece is not a letter to Pope Urban VI. is a point of ng oharac-
which I have no manner of doubt.' On the presump- teriatioB.
tion of this negative fact all the judgments which have been hitherto
pronounced upon the piece itself corae to nothing, whether of admi
ration for its bold, incisive, and ironical tone, according to some,
or of censure for its dissembling and disrespectful spirit, according to
others. If the writing, as we are convinced upon the evidence of
its own contents, was really an address to men of the same convictions
as himself, then neither was its author particularly courageous in
making use of such sharp language, nor can he be charged with a
disrespectful tone or a want of tact in his proceeding.
Although this aUeged citation to Rome must be relegated to the
category of groundless traditions, still, Wycliffe's life, in his latest
years, was always in danger. He was well aware of this, and stood
prepared to endure still further persecution for the cause of Christ,
and even to end his life as a martyr. In the Trialogus he speaks
more than once on the subject — e.g., where he says : ' We have no
need to go among the heathen in order to die a martyr's death ; we
have only to preach persistently the law of Christ in the hearing of
rich and worldly prelates, and instantly we shall have a flourishing
martyrdom, if we hold out in faith and patience.'
questions above referred to, and raore the sarae field of research. — A'ote by Dr.
recently I have called his attention to the Lorimer.^
other two. In both instances Sir Thomas ' To this assertion, it is true, is op-
accepted, with the greatest readiness, posed the external testimony ofthe MSS.,
my suggestion that search should be which, since the second decade of the
made by his agents in Rome, and he lost isth century, can be shown to have en-
no time in communicating first with Mr. titled the piece either Epistola Missa
Stevenson and aftenvards with Mr. Bhss ; Papae Urbano Sexto (so the Vienna MS. ,
and from both these gentlemen the in- 1387), or in some other similar way. But
structions sent by him received immediate still there was an interval of thirty years
and painstaking attention ; but, I regret between the time when Wycliffe wrote it
to add, without any satisfactory result. and the execution of these transcripts •
The Bulls of Gregory xi., in the matters and in this interval many of the shorter
negotiated at Bruges, are of course to writings of Wycliffe had a similar history
be seen in their places in the Bullarium — e.g., the alleged Epistola Missa ad
of that Pope ; but not a single notice Simplices Sacerdotes.
has yet been discovered in the records ['The opinion of Dr. Lechler on the
of the Vatican to add anything to our ' Citation ' must be taken with some
previous knowledge either of Wycliffe or reserve. In the tract De Citationibus
Hereford. Frivolis, printed by the Wiclif Society.
Of course my only reason for recording vol. 11., p. 536, we find a reference which
here this purely negative result is to make it is difficult to understand on any other
others aware, that an opportunity which supposition than that Wycliffe was cited
looked so promising of obtaining further to Rome, and prevented by infirmity from
light on a subject of so much historical compliance : Et sic dicit quidam debilis
interest has not been overlooked, in the et claudus citatus ad hanc curiam, quod
preparation of the present English edition prohibitio regia impedit ipsmn ire, quia
of Professor Lechler's work, and to save Rex regum necessitat et vult efiicaciter
time and trouble to future inquirers in quod non vadatl\
28

4l8 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. 5 7
It was foi; some time received in certain circles as a fact, that
AVycliffe had either been banished from the country by the sentence
¦Wycliffe's of a tribunal, or betook himself into voluntary exile, from
aUeged exUe. .^^,j.,j(,i,,^ however, after sorae tirae, he raust have re
turned. Foxe thinks that it raay be gathered from Netter of Walden
that Wycliffe was banished, or at least that he kept himself some
where in hiding.' In an expanded form the legend relates that
AVycliffe went into spontaneous exUe, and made a journey into
Bohemia. The Bohemians were already infected with heresy, but
Wycliffe in person, it was alleged, was the first man who established
them in the opinion that litde reverence was due to the priesthood,
and no consideration at all to the Pope. But I do not find in the
chroniclers and other writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
a single trace of this legend ; it seeras to have corae into existence
first in the sixteenth century. If I ara not raistaken, it was the
Italian Polydore Vergil who was the first to bring forward this fable.
He had corae to England, in 1509, as a Papal eraissary, where, by the
favour of Henry VIIL, he obtained high preferment in the Church,
but afterwards returned in advanced age to his native country, where
he died in 1555, in Urbino, the place of his birth. In his English
history, he told the above story with an air of confidence,^ although
it appears to have been nothing better than a conjecture of his own
brain, devised to furnish an explanation of the connection between
Wycliffe and Hussitism, by means of a story which resembles very
much the fantastic inventions of the Middle Age.
This utterly baseless statement of the Italian was rejected, as it
deserved, by Lelarid, his contemporary, and characterised by him
as ' a vanity of vanities ' and a dream. But the raost important of
Leland's writings, including his work on the British writers, were not
printed till a hundred and eighty years later ; and so his rejection
of Vergilius's bold invention remained unknown to most writers,
which accounts for the story having still found credit here and there
— as with Bishop Bale, from whom it passed over to Flacius and
others.3 '^ Acts and Monuments, Ul., pp. 4<), t^.^. fectus, a rudi gente magno in honore
^ Polydori Vergilii Urbinatis Anglicae habetur, qua-m pro accepto beneficio confir-
H'tstoriae Libri, XXVI., Basileae, 1533. mavit, summeque hortatus est in ea re-
At the end of Book XIX. , p. 394, the manere sententia, ut ordini sacerdotali
author speaks of Wycliffe, of whom he parum honoris, et ad Romanum Ponti-
says, at the end of the passage ; Ad ficem nullum respectum haberet,
extremum homo nimium confidens, cum 3 The Father of English Antiquaries,
rationibus veris cogeretur adbonam redire John Leland (died 1332), says in his Com-
Jrugem, tantum abfuit utpareret, ut etiam mentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis, ed.
7naluerit voluntariuin petere exilium Ant. Hall, Oxford, 1709, II., 379 : Quid
quam mutare sententiam: qui ad Bo'cmos, hic respondebo vanissimis Polydori Ver-
nonnulla haei-esi ante inquinatos, pro- gilii vanitatibus, qui . . . disertis et

1383, 4-1 FAILING HEALTH. 419
It is a fact to which there attaches not the slightest doubt, that
AVycliffe spent the last years of his life, vvithout a break, in his own
country, and in the town of Lutterworth, where he was p^ig^t ^^
parish priest. There is no probability even in the alle- Lutterworth.
gation that he was fain to keep very quiet, in order not to draw upon
hiraself the attention of his adversaries. On the contrary, it is
proved by the writings which he published during the last three
years of his life, including the Trialogus and nuraerous Latin and
English tracts, in which, for the most part, he wields a sharp pen
and adopts a resolute tone, that his energy was by no raeans dimin
ished nor his courage abashed.
The gracious protection of God was over him. His enemies
must needs leave him undisturbed. This inactive course, indeed,
may also have been recommended to them by the
circumstance (which cannot have remained unknown "^^ ^^^
to them) that AA'ycUffe had suffered a paralytic stroke towards the
close of 1382,' and was totally disabled thereby frora appearing
again upon the public stage, although his raental power and
force of character remained unimpaired. Yet even the personal
credit of AVycliffe as a believing Christian remained unassailed up to
his death. It is true, indeed, that a number of Articles which vvere
imputed to him were condemned as errors, and, in part, as heresies ;
¦and in several mandates of the heads of the Church he was
¦designated by name as under suspicion of erroneous teaching.
But no judgment had ever been pronounced upon his person by
his ecclesiastical superiors ; Wycliffe was never in his lifetime judi
cially declared to be a teacher of error or a heretic ; he was never
-even formaUy threatened with the ban of excoraraunication. He
continued not only in possession of his office and dignity as rector
¦of Lutterworth, but also in high estimation as a Christian and priest
with his parishioners and his countrymen, till he was seized with a
second stroke, and two days afterwards was permitted to breathe his
last in peace.
AVhile the year and the day of the Reformer's birth must remain
unknown, the date of his death admits of being de- -wyoUffe's
termined with precision. Differences, indeed, are not "leath.
wanting in the accounts which have come down to us. Walsingham
, accuratis -aerbis asserit Vicoclivum, ut alia Virgilii duo sunt, alter Maro, tu Polydore
somnia praeteream, voluntarium exilium Alter. Tu mendax, ille poeta fuit.
feiiisse, ac magno postea apud Bo'emos in ^ This fact is attested by Dr. Thomas
Jiretio fuisse f etc. The modern Vergilius Gascoigne : Et iste Wycleff fuit para-
was generally considered in England a lyticus per duos annos ante mortem suam.
liar, as is shown by the biting expression See Lewis, p. 336.
-of the celebrated epigrammatist, Owen
i(died 1622) :

420 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § r
gives 1385 as the date,' and Oudin, the literary historian, determines
for 1387.^ Two testimonies, however, are extant — the one of
an official and the other of a private character, which are quite
decisive upon the point. The first is an entry in the Episcopal
register of Lincoln, made in the tirae of Bishop Bockingham — in
the days of Wycliffe's iramediate successor in the rectory, and
indeed as early as the year 1385. It is probable that a question had
arisen respecting the right of collation to the benefice,, occasioned
by the fact that AVycliffe had been nominated to the living by King
Edward III. An inquiry, therefore, had been raade by commissaries
upon the subject ; an entry was engrossed in the register recording
the result of their investigation ; and this record establishes the fact
that the noraination of AVycUffe to the parish had been raade by the
king on account of the then rainority of the patron. It is in con
nection with this that the death of Wycliffe, on December 31, i384j
is officially specified ; 3 and we can hardly imagine any proof more
documentary, older, or raore trustworthy.
The other testiraony referred to, though only that of a private
individual, has all the force of a declaration upon oath from the
mouth of a contemporary, of even an eye-witness. Thomas Gas
coigne, Doctor of Theology, and Chancellor of the University of
Oxford frora 1443 to 1445, who died in 1457, received and wrote
down a comraunication respecting the death of Wycliffe in the year
1441 frora the raouth of the priest, John Horn, then eighty years
of age, under solemn asseveration of the truth of what he cora
raunicated. The declaration was to this effect, that AA''ycliffe, after
having suffered for two years from the effects of a paralytic stroke,
on Innocents' Day of the year 1384, whUe hearing mass in his
parish church at Lutterworth, sustained a violent stroke, at the
moment of the elevation of the host, and sank down on the spot.
His tongue in particular was affected by the seizure, so that from that
moment he never spoke a single word more, and remained speechless.
Date of the '•''^ ^'^ death, which took place on Saturday evening —
event. Silvester's Day, and the eve of the Feast of Christ's
Circumcision.'! This declaration was confirraed on oath by the
^ Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, 11,, Ecclesia (Lutterworth) incepit vacare-
119; Hypodigma Neustriae in Anglica, ultimo die Decem. (Decembri) ultimo.
Nortnanica, etc., ed. Camden, Frank- praeteriti {1384) per mortem Joannis
fort, 1602, fol. 337. He is followed by Wycliff ultimi rectoris ejusdem. The.
Capgrave (died 1464), Chronicle of Eng- -whole passage (see above, chap. 3) was
land, London, 1838, 240. first published by Lewis from the Regis-
^ Commentarius de Scriptoribus Eccle- trum Bokyngham, and afterwards by
siae Antiquis, Lips., 1722, vol. III., 1048. Vaughan, Monograph, 180.
3 The words bearing upon this point 4 For this valuable communication we^
run thus : Inquisitores dicunt, quod dicta are also indebted to Lewis, who printed.

t384.] HIS DEATH. 421
aged priest, John Horn, who raust have been a young raan of three-
and-twenty in the year of AVycliffe's death ; ' and it is entirely
credible in every respect. In reference to the death-day itself the
two testimonies corroborate each other perfectly ; only Horn, as an
eye-witness, supplies information, in addition, as to the day on' which,
and in what circumstances, AA'ycliffe suffered the second stroke which
ended in the fatal issue. It was in die Sanctorum Innocentium — i.e.,
December 28th — during the mass in Lutterworth Church. A correc
tion is thus supplied for the malicious remarks of several hostile
chroniclers, to the effect that AVycliffe had the stroke on Thomas
Becket's Day, when he had the intention to preach and to make a
blasphemous attack upon the saint.^ The Feast of St. Thomas
vvas kept in the English mediseval Church December 29th ; whereas
Wycliffe, according to the testimony of John Horn, was struck with
paralysis on the 28th. AValsingham's design in misplacing the day
was evidently that he might be able to say that Wycliffe was righteously
smitten down on the day of St. Thomas, whom he had often blasphemed,
and that his death as righteously befell on the day of St. Silvester,
whom he had often exasperated by his attacks. 3 This whole prag
matic interpretation, so far as it refers to Becket, is exploded by the
fact that AA''ycliffe vvas paralysed on the 28th day of December instead
of the 29th, while the representation given of Wycliffe's violent attacks
upon Becket and Silvester is proved to rest upon an entire mis
understanding.*
in full Gascoigne's Deposition, written by Capgrave, Chronicle of England, Lon-
¦with his own hand, from a MS. in the don, 1838, 240.
British Museum, History, Appendix, No. 3 -Walsingham, Hypodigma Neustriae,
23, p. 336. Vaughan has also printed it in Camden, Anglica, Normanica, etc.
again. Monograph, p. ^"pj. Frankfort, 1602 : Et quidem satis juste die
^ Et mihi juraz'tt sic dicendo : sicut S. Thomae percussus est, quem multotiens
respondebo coram Deo, novi ista fuisse lingua blasphemaverat venenata, et die
•z:era, et quia vidi, testimonium perhibui. Silvestri teinpordli morte damhatus es':.
We may therefore receive all that is quem crebris invectionibus exaspera-jer.i'
•contained in the testimony as fully cer- in dictis suis.
tified ; and we have no reason to hesitate * I find Thomas Becket not unfre-
between this account and another given quently mentioned in the MS. books and
by some annahsts, as if the day of the sermons of Wycliffe, e.g. , De Civili Do-
last paralytic seizure were not quite cer- minio, i., 34, 39; 11., 2, Vienna MS.
tain. Compare Vaughan, Monograph, p. 1341, fol. 79, col. 2 : fol. 94, col. 2 ; fol.
468, ' On the 28th, or, as some say, on 137, col. i ; Saints'' Days Serinons, No.
the 29th of December,' etc. v., fol. 8, col. i ; fol. 9, col. 2 ; De Ec-
= Walsingham, vol. 11., p. 119: Die clesia, c. 14, fol. 172, col. 3. Cotnpare
Sancti Thomae, Cantuariensis Archi- Wycliffe's English sermons on the Gos-
episcopi et Martyris . . . Johannes de pels; Select English Works, I., 330.
Wiclif, dum in Sanctum Thomam, ut And Wycliffe always speaks of Becket,
dicitur, eodem die in sua praedicatione, if not indeed with unlimited veneration,
.quam dicere praeparavei-at, orationes yet with sincere respect. He rejects the
.et hlasphemias vellet evomere, repente view which prevailed among some of his
judicio Dei percussus, sensit paralysim contemporaries that Becket had died ih a
omnia membra sua generaliter in-aasisse, contest about Church property, and he
etc. He is followed here, word for word, maintains by documentary proofs that

422 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 7
Nor is the representation historically exact which is given by
Vaughan, both in his earlier and later works on Wycliffe, to the
effect that the Reformer was struck vvith palsy while
DetaUs. , employed in adrainistering the bread of the Eucharist,"
or ' whUe engaged in the service of the church at Lutterworth.''^
This is not raerely an imaginative touch to the picture, such as raay
be allowed to an historian, but a contradiction to the only trustworthy
account which we possess of AVycliffe's last illness, according to
;vhich he was not reading but hearing mass at the moment of his
last seizure. = It is an additional inaccuracy to assert that Wycliffe
was deprived of consciousness by the stroke. 3 Horn says nothing
of unconsciousness, but only of a violent shock under which he fell
to the ground ; he raentions in particular only the paralysis of his
tongue. Speechlessness and unconsciousness are two different
things ; and it is at least conceivable that the sufferer raay have
corae to hiraself again sufficiently to be sensible of the sympathetic
love and care which vvere devoted to him in his last days by his
friends, and to express his gratitude, without words, by looks and
gestures. Indeed, Gascoigne's description of his condition rather
conveys the impression that it was not one of unconsciousness, for he
repeatedly raentions his speechlessness as a circurastance calling for
remark, which it would not have been if he had been reduced to
a condition of entire unconsciousness.* On St. Silvester's Day — ¦
the contest which Becket carried on was the Popish chronicler mentioned in the
for tho jurisdiction ofthe Church, its text is therefore entirely destitute of truth.
autonomy in opposition to the State. ^ Life and Opinions, 11., 224: 'He is
The case was very different with Pope said to have been eraployed iu adminis-
Silvester in Wycliffe's eyes, for it was tering the bread of the Eucharist when
Silvester, according to the historical assailed by his last sickness.' And in
view which Wycliffe shared with large John de Wycliffe, a Monograph, 468, it
nurabers of minds in the Middle Age, is said : ' While engaged in the service of
who, by accepting the alleged Donation the church at Lutterworth he was seized
of Constantine the Great, laid the founda- with palsy.'
tion for the territorial patrirnony of the ^ Audiens missam in ecclesia sua de-
Pope, the wealth of the clergy, and the Lyttyrwort circa elevationem sacramenti
secularisation of the Church. Wycliffe, ciltaris decidit percussus magna paralysi,
notwithstanding, was at all times far frorn says Gascoigne, from the report of Johi»
condemning Silvester, as if in that act Horn, in Lewis, 336.
he had been guilty of an unpardonable 3 Vaughan, Life and Opinions, n, ,
sin. He judged the act itself, indeed, of 224 : ' The paralysis deprived him at once
accepting the patrimony to be a sin, but of consciousness.' He expressed himself
he was also willing to presume that Sii- more cautiously at a later date, John de
vester had acted in the matter with a Wycliffe, 468 : ' He does not speak, nor
good intention, and that this sin was even seem to be conscious.'
forgiven him by God, at least in his last 4 Gascoigne's words are : Percussus
hour. Comp. Tric^logus, ill., c. 20; magna paralysi, et specialiter in lingua,
IV., c. 17. Supplementum Trialogi, c. i, ita quod nee tunc nee postea loqui potuit
2, pp. 196, 303, 407. Saints' Days Ser- usque ad mortem suam ; in introilu autem
mons. No. VI. (on St. Silvester's Day), fol. sui in ecclesiam suam loquebatur, sed sic
10, col. 2 ; fol. 12, col. I. Nowhere do I ut percussus paralysi in eadem die loqui
find him casting unmeasured blame upon non potuit, noc unquam postea loque-
Silvester. The malicious observation of batur.

J384] HIS DEATH, AND CHARACTER. 423
December 31st — 1384, John of AVycUffe was deUvered out of this
paralytic condition by death.
Adversaries of his work pursued him with fanatical outpourings
of contumely even beyond his grave. Here are the words of a
chronicler who has been frequently named before — Bepreaenta-
' On the Feast of the Passion of St. Thomas of Canter- wySiffe's
bury, John AVycUffe— that instrument of the devil, that enemies.
enemy of the Church, that author of confusion to the common
people, that idol of heretics, that image of hypocrites, that originator
of schism, that son of hatred, that corner of lies^being struck
by the horrible judgment of God, was struck with palsy, and
continued to live in that condition until St. Silvester's Day, on
which he breathed out his malicious spirit into the abodes of dark
ness.' ^ There is no need at the present day to use any protest
against words so full of venom as these ; but at the point where such
and so great a man withdraws from the stage of history, we feel it
to be a duty to gather up again the various features of intellect and
heart which have come before us in tracing the course of his life,
and once more to present them in the form of a complete portrait.
8. — Character of 'WyclifFe and his important place
in History.
The importance of Wycliffe, as seen from an age five hundred years
later than his own tirae, is in no respect less iraposing than it seeraed
to his conteraporaries, in so far as they were not pre- ,
occupied by party prejudice against him. But the fame inMs own
judgment of the present time must needs differ from
that of his own period, as to where the chief importance of his per
sonality and work lay. To the men of his own age his greatness and
his chief distinction lay in his intellectual pre-eminence. Not only
his adherents, but even his opponents, looked upon him as having
no living equal in learning and scientific ability — to all eyes he shone
as the star of the first magnitude. = But these judgments referred
' Walsingham, II., 119. Hic maxime nitebatur aliorum ingenia
¦^ When opponents give expression to subtilitate scientiae et profunditate ingenii
such a judgment, it has, of course, the sui transscendere. Historiae Anglicanae
greatest weight. Now Knighton, or his Scriptores, vol. III., col. 2644. And the
continuator, the Leicester Chronicler, is a Carmelite John Cunningham, an oppo-
man who manifests his dislike to -Wycliffe nent, who more than once stood forward
and his party upon every occasion ; and against him in his lifetime, is reported
yet he cannot avoid bearing this testi- by his disciple, Thomas Netter of
mony to him : Doctor in Theologia 'Walden, to have been an admirer of
eminentissimus in diebus illis. In Philo- Wycliffe's distinguished learning (admi-
sophia nulli reputabatur secundis, in ratur in Wiclefo doctrinae excellentiam,
scholasticis disciplinis incomparabilis. Lewis, p. xxiii.). On the side of his

424 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § 8
exclusively to scholastic learning in philosophy and theology; and
Wycliffe's mastery as a scholastic lost iraraensely in value with scholas-
ticisra itself, in the eyes of later generations. We frankly confess,
notwithstanding, that in our opinion this depreciation has been carried
too far, and that Wycliffe's scientific importance is wont, for the most
part, to be undervalued unduly.' This fact admits of explanation
frora various circurastances. First of all, the very unsatisfactory
Undue reac- Condition in which the text of the Trialogus existed till
tion. recently was answerable for much of the disfavour into
which Wycliffe fell as a writer. Much also in his writings which
appears faulty in our eyes is to be put to the account, not of the man
himself, but of his age, and of the usages, not always the best, of the
scholastic style. The utterly unclassical Latinity, the lumbering
heaviness of the style, the syllogistic forras and methods in which
inquiries were conducted — these and other features are all charac
teristics which were common to scholastic literature in general. Even
the practice observable in Wycliffe of often repeating himself to an
extraordinary degree, not only in different works upon the sarae sub
ject, but even in the course of one and the sarae work, was a coraraon
Dravfbaoks in f^^^' which he shared with many other scholastic writers
his -writings, of the period. A reader who keeps all this in view will
be on his guard against censuring too severely faults and imperfec
tions which Wycliffe had in common with the age in which he
lived. On the other hand, this very mastery of Wycliffe as a scholastic
deserves a more just recognition in the present age than it usually
His varied receives. The high intellectual position which was
ability. accOrded to him was needed to protect him from the
malignant attacks which threatened hira as a ' Biblicist,' and a severe
critic of Roman doctrine. This, to be sure, was only a secondary
benefit of his scientific eminence ; but undoubtedly the extraordinary
acuteness of his dialectics, the intellectual force of his criticism, and
the concentrated unity of the principles which forra the irnmutable
basis of his thinking, are worthy of a raore unreserved recognition
than is now usually accorded to thera.
The raany-sidedness of his- mind also deserves to be considered.
followers, it may suffice to point to the Wilkins, Cone. Magnae Britanniae, in.,
testimonial (so much discussed) of the 302. See below, p. 453.
University of Oxford, which celebrates ' We are not able to agree with
his sententiarum profunditas, and pro- Vaughan when, with all his esteem for
nounces of him, that in logicalibus, philo- Wycliffe, he says (Life and Opinions, I.,
sophicis ac tlieologicis ac moralibus et 319) that ' his scholastic treatises possess,
speculativis inter omnes nostrae universi- at the present day, only a very limited
tatis (ut credimus) scripserat sine pari. value, even for the students of history. '

1384.] HIS CHARACTER. 425
He has an eye for the most different things — a lively interest for the
most manifold questions. Upon occasion of an inquiry soientiflo
on the subject of slavery, for example, he coraes to ^^o^iedge.
speak of the laws of optics ; ' at another time the thought of mental
intuition and the idea of the operations of grace lead him to refer to
the laws of corporeal vision.^ On one occasion he illustrates the
moral effect of sin by which the soul is separated from the fellowship
of the blessed, by pointing to chemical analysis, by which the most
different elements of a compound body are detached from one another
and separated in space.3 How love waxes cold (Matthew xxiv. 12)
he Ulustrates in a sermon by a reference to physical laws, and to the
colder atmosphere of the mountain summits.'* To describe moral
watchfulness, he calls in the explanations of naturalists respecting
the physiological genesis of sleep.5 Geometrical and arithmetical
relations he frequently introduces in connection with the investiga
tion of certain ideas ; and he has a special partiality for the treatment
of subjects relating to national economics. The fact that in his
references to the natural sciences his notions are now and then fan
tastical and far from clear, cannot with justice lay him open to any
suspicion of ignorance on such subjects ; for who would deraand of
hira — a raan who had no pretensions to be a professed physicist —
that he should have been four or five centuries in advance of his own
time ? It is certainly well worth remarking how mathematical, phy
sical, naturalistic, and social ideas all pour in a full streara into his
many-sided and richly furnished raind.
Another characteristic feature of Wycliffe is the critical spirit
which inspires him. It cannot be denied, indeed, that he, too,
innocently repeats several sagas and legends which his critical
passed for sterling coin in the Middle Age, e.g., that spmt.
the Apostle John changed forest leaves into gold, and pebbles on
the sea shore into precious stones.^ In this respect, as in others,
AVycliffe pays tribute to his own time. For the Middle Age has a
certain fantastical legendary spirit of its own, by which things shape
theraselves to it in grotesque forms, like the mirage which conjures
up distant objects as if they were near at hand, but in reversed posi
tion. Historical events and relations received thereby a romantic
colouring. The age lacked true historical sense — it was wanting
most of all in critical endowment. To this legend-world of the
' De Civili Dominio, 1., c. 33, fol. 78, 4 Saints' Days Sermons, No. XXX., fol.
col. I. 58, col. 4, to fol. 39, col. I.
" Saints' Days Sermons, No. LII., fol. 5 lb., No. XLIX., fol. 99, col. i. Comp.
106, col. 3. Miscell. Sermons, No. I., fol, 194, col. I.
3 De Ecclesia, c. 3, fol. 142, cols. 3 ^ De Ecclesia, c, 9, fol. 133, col. i.
and 4.

426 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. i.x. § 8
Middle Age belongs in particular the Saga of the Donation of Con
stantine.' The endowment of the Papal see with territory and
people, the landed possessions of the Church, and her entire seculari
sation — aU these evils which Wycliffe fights against had their source,
according to the view which he shares with the centuries before him,
in the supposed donation of the Emperor.
It cannot be denied, notwithstanding, that AA''ycliffe was endowed
with a reraarkable gift of criticism. In proof of this, we raust not lay
churohtradi- too much Stress upon the fact that when the authority
tions examined ^f ^^^ ^f jj^g Fathers is brought into the field against
him — as, e.g., of Augustine himself — he does not at once acknow
ledge hiraself to be defeated, but first of all investigates, by a
thorough exaraination, whether the raeaning of Augustine, in the
quoted place or elsewhere, is really entirely opposed to hiraself^
Of higher importance is the circumstance that WycUffe mentions
Church legends occasionally vvith undisguised doubts of their truth
— e.g., the legend that the child whom the Redeemer on one occa
sion called to Him and placed in the raidst of His disciples (Matthew
xviii.) was St. Martial, whom Peter at a later period sent into Gaul.s
But the most decisive fact here is this, that Wycliffe, instead of
accepting at once and without more ado the whole condition of the
Church as to doctrine, ordinances, and usages, just as it stood and
was recognised in his tirae, turned upon it all a scrutinising glance,
and subjected the whole to a rigid exaraination. However undeni
ably AVycliffe shares in the weak points of scholasticism, he is still
free enough from prepossession, and has still enough of the critical
vein to see how much useless straw the ordinary scholastic was still ad
dicted to threshing. It is nothing unusual with him to express his con
tempt of the many subtleties (argiitiae fictitae) in which men stiU dealt
so much, and the multitude of baseless possibilities with which they
still occupied their heads. He earnestly calls upon men to renounce
all such utterly superfluous labour of the brain, and to occupy them
selves instead with solid and useful truths {veritates solidae et utiles)'' —
all of them thoughts tending towards an emancipation frora scholas-
ticisra — to a reforraation of science.
Still further, it is frequent with hira to distinguish between what
has come down from antiquity and that which is of later date, which
' Comp. the interesting investigation ipsis, qui credere illud volunt, tenendum
of Dollinger in his Papst-Fabeln des est, etc. Comp. XXIV. Sermons, No. X.,
Mittelalters, ed. 2, Munich, 1863, 61. fol. 153, col. i ; De Ecclesia, c. 22, fol.
" De Ecclesia, c. 8, fol. 131. 201, cols. 1-3.
^ Saints' Days Sermons, 'No. xxyj., iol. 4 Comp., e.g., Trialogus, IIL, c. 27.
50, col. 3 : Iste autem parvu Ius somniatur p. 223.
fuisse Martialis. . . . Sed dimisso isto

:'3S4.1 HIS CHARACTER. 427
the men of the last centuries, the moderns, had introduced. But
* old Christian,' with him, means what belonged to Appeal to
the original, the Primitive Chnrch— ecclesia primitiva, prinJtive faith.
and precisely for this reason the ultimate standard for hira is the
Bible — ' the law of Christ,' as he calls it. From this purely Protes
tant spirit of criticism sprang his free and manly contention against
various usurpations of the Papacy and abuses of the hierarchy,
against many particulars of the Roraan Catholic worship, and even
against several articles of Roraan doctrine, e.g., the doctrine of Tran
substantiation. To conduct such a criticism, a holy zeal for the
truth and honour of God, moral resolution, and manly courage, were
indispensable. In a word, the critical genius of AVycliffe was not
merely an efflux of scientific power and independence, but also a
fruit of moral sendment and of Christian character.
It is not, however, in his inteUect that AVycliffe's personality centres,
but in his will and character. AA'ith him, so far as I see, all thinking,
every intellectual achievement, was always a way to an ¦wyoufre'sprao-
end — a means of moral action and work — it never ter- *'°*^ ^'™°'
minated in itself. And this serves to explain, apart frora the fact
that AA'ycliffe shared in many of the faults of his time, many of the
weak sides of his performances as an author. There are, speaking
generally, two kinds of natures, one manifesting itself in art, the other
in practical action. Natures of the former class seek their satisfac
tion in the works which they complete — the painter in his pictures,
the sculptor in the plastic forms which he produces, the rausician in
his harmonic creations, the poet in his poetry, and the prose writer
in his prose. That every part of the work should make the wished-
for impression ; that the whole should raake an unUy coraplete in
itself; that the form should so shape itself in harmony with the
substance as to give full satisfaction to the mind, and be at once
lovable and fair, elevating and attractive : to these ends is directed
aU the effort of the arrist. That is the reason why one sketch after
another is raade and thrown away, and attempt follows upon attempt ;
the thinking mind, the critical eye, the improving hand, the smooth
ing file never rest till a perfect work stands before the artist.' To
these artistic natures, certainly, Wycliffe does not belong, but as
certainly to the men of practical action and work. It is not beauty
of form, not its harmony and the full expression of it — in a word, not
the work itself as a completed performance which floats before the
eye of such men ; it is in action and work themselves that they seek
' Comp. Schleiermacher's thoughtful remarks in the second of the Monologues, 4 ed..
Berlin, 1829, p. 29.

428 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. 8 8
their satisfaction— in the service of the truth, in the furthering of the
good, in work for man's weal and God's glory. To this class of
natures AVycliffe belonged. At no time was it his aim to give to his
addresses, sermons, scientific works, popular writings, etc., an artistic
shape, to polish them, to bring them to a certain perfection of form ;
but to join his hand vvith others in the feUowship of labour, to com
municate to others what he knew, to serve his native country, to pro
mote the glory of God, the kingdom of Christ, and the salvation of
souls. That was what he wanted to do, and to serve God therein
vvas his joy and satisfaction. If only what he said was understood ; if
his spoken word vvas only kindUng to men's souls, whether spoken from
the chair or the pulpit ; if his written word was only effective, and
his action was only followed by any good fruit, then it troubled hira
little that his style was thought to be without finish or without beauty,
or perhaps even wearisome ; in the end he neither knew nor cared
how it stood with his productions in these latter respects.
It is true that the repetitions which WycUffe allowed himself go
far beyond the permissible limit. And even this is not all. His
His uterary trcatracut of a subject generally raoves in a very free
method. g^j^^j g^gy Planner ; a strict logical disposition of his
matter is raissing often enough. He frequently allows himself to
digress frora his proper subject, and is obliged to remind himself at
last that he has lost sight for a tirae of his main topic' The
structure of his sentences is extreraely loose — a circurastance which
adds much to the difficulty of arriving at his true and exact raeaning ;
and the diction has rarely anything closely allied to the thought,
well-weighed, or carefully chosen. In one word, the style and pre
sentation are lacking in precisely those qualities of well-proportioned
and harmonious form, artistic inspiration, aesthetic perfection, which
we account classical.
But, in corapensation for these defects, WycUffe always comraunicates
himself as he is, his whole personality, undisserabled, true, and full.
His strong A,s a preacher, as well as a writer, he is always the
indi-nduaKty. .y^jj^jg man. Scarcely any one has stamped his own
personality upon his writings in a higher degree, or has carried more
of morality into his action than Wycliffe. Wherein, then, consists
the peculiarity of his personality ?
AVycliffe was not a man of feeUng, but a man of intellect. Luther
was a genial soul. On one occasion he begs his readers to take his
' Even as a preacher he makes little ference to a plain and simple, but suitable
account of flowery, fine speech, but both and apt mode of expression ; see chap.
in his theory of preaching and his own vi., p. 184.
pulpit practice he gives the decided pre-

1384-1 HIS CHARACTER. 429
words, however mocking and biting they may be, ' as spoken from
a heart which could not do otherwise than break with his genial
its great sorrow.'' AVycliffe never said such a thing ^p*^"-
of himself. He is a man in whom the intellect predominates —
pure, clear, shai'p, penetrating. AA'ith AVycliffe it is as if one felt
the sharp, fresh, cool breath of the morning air before sunrise ; while
in Luther we feel something of the kindly warmth of the morning
sun himself It was only possible to a predominantly intellectual
nature to lay so great stress as AA'ycliffe did upon the demonstration
of the Christian verities. Even in the Fathers of the Church he
puts a specially high value upon the philosophical proofs which they
allege in support of the doctrines of the Christian faith. Manifestly
it is not raerely a result of education and of the scholastic tone of
his age, but in no sraall degree the outcome of his own individuality,
that the path in which he moves with so strong a preference is that
of speculation, and even of dialectical demonstration.
In AA'ycliffe, along with the intellectual element thus decidedly
expressed, there is harmoniously combined a powerful will, equally
potent in independent action and energetic in opposition
— a firm and tenacious, a manly, yea, a heroic will. It
is impossible to read AA'ycliffe's writings with an unprejudiced and
susceptible mind, without being laid hold of by the strong manhood
of mind which everywhere reveals itself. There is a force and fulness
of character in his feeling and language which makes an overraastering
impression, and keeps the mind enchained AVycliffe sets forth his
convictions, it is true, in a learned manrier, with dialectical illustration
and scholastic argumentativeness. And yet one sees that it is by
no raeans a one-sided intellectual interest alone which moves him.
His conviction has unmistakably a moral source. He confesses
openly himself that the conviction of the truth is reached much
more in a moral way than by pure intellect and science.^
It is certain that he arrived at his own convictions more in a
moral than a merely intellectual way; and hence his utterances
have equally the stamp of decisive thinking, and of His moral
energetic moral earnestness. AVe recognise everywhere earnestness.
the moral pathos, the holy earnestness which wells up from the
conscience and the depths of the soul. And hence the concen
trated moral force which he always throws into the scale. Whether
^ Of the Papacy in Rome (1320), in satio, miraculorum operatio, et constans
Preface to the Jena edition of Luther's ac humilis injuriarum perpessio, foret
Works, 1690, I. , 264. argumentum efficacia s infideli, quam dis-.
" De Dominio Divino, I., c. 11, fol. putationes scholasticae, quibus insistimus,_
225, col. 2 : Credo, quod sancta conver- etc.

430 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. (ch. ix. § 8
he is compeUed to defend hiraself against the imputation of petty
by-ends and low-minded feeling,' or whether he is speaking to the
consciences of those who give their whole study to human traditions
instead of God's AVord,= or whether he takes occasion to address
moral warnings to young men,3 he invariably delivers his pithy words
vvith a fulness of raoral earnestness and with an arresting force. From
the intensity with which he throws his whole soul into his subject
springs also the warrath of feeling with which AVycliffe at one tirae
repudiates that which he is opposing, and at other tiraes rejoices in
.some conquest which he has won. Not rarely he manifests a moral
indignation and horror in the very raidst of a learned investigation,
where one is not at all prepared for such an outburst of flaraing
feeling. ¦» At other tiraes, in the very raiddle of a disputation with
opponents, he breaks out into joyful thanksgiving and praise to God
that he has been set free from the sophisms by which they are still
held fast.5 The contrast between trains of scholastic reasoning
and such sudden outpourings of feeling is surprising and arresting
Intensity and ^" ^ '^'S^^ degree; and this inner fire of inspiration
pathos. and heart-fervour, long hidden beneath the surface, and
only now and then darting forth its tongues of flame, well explains
and excuses raany literary faults. For whence corae these frequent
outbursts ? and whither do they tend? In very many cases Wycliffe
enters into regions of thought into which he is drawn by his heart
and the innermost feeling of his soul. Often in such episodical
passages have I come upon the raost elevating outpourings of his
raoral pathos — the raost precious utterances of a healthy piety. If
we follow hira in such places, we find no reason to regret it. The
reader accompanies the author vvith growing veneration and love ;
and at the close he will not only be fain to forgive hira for a digression,
but in spirit he warraly presses his hand vvith elevated feeling and a
¦ The strongest passage of this kind 3 Trialogus, in., c. 22, p. 206, where
which I know is one in /Je Veritate Scrip- he deals -with the sin of Onanism with
durae Sac, c. 12, fol. 34, col. 4, where he impressive earnestness.
refers to the fact that he was accused of 4 E.g, , De Veritate Scripturae Sac. , c.
seeking by-ends of his own, and that im- 12, fol. 34, cols. 3 and 4 : Illam novitatem
putations were cast upon him of falsehood detestor, etc. De Ecclesia, c. %, iol. z^^,
and equivocation, and repels these calum- cols. 1-2 : Deum contestor et numina, quod
nies in a high tone of earnestness and inter omnes doctrinas et consilia, quae
piety. audivi non occurrit mihi aliquod difii-
^ De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 20, iol. cilius aut detestabilius. . . . Ego qui-
¦63, col. 2. Here he presses the con- dem horrerem introducere scolam istam
,sciences of those who study the doctrines tanquam doctor mendacii, etc.
of men more than the Bible with one in- s De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 32 :
terrogation after another, in a style which Benedictus sit Deus, qui nos liberavit ab
makes one feel that he speaks with the istis argutiis I
authority of a theological censor, and
Avith the spirit and power of a proplaet.

1384.] HIS CHARACTER. 431
thankful heart. AVhat seemed a Uterary fault proves, upon an unpre
judiced and deeper view, to be a moral exceUence.
The intense feeling and warmth of the man manifests itself ever
and anon in the personal apostrophes which he addresses to an
opponent,' as well as in the manner in which he very Ataoiute
often speaks of himself in quite a personal way. On sincerity.
all occasions, indeed, he comes forward vvith entire straightforwardness
and unreserved sincerity ; never in any way concealing the changes
of opinion through which he has, it may be, passed ; openly con
fessing the fact when he has previously done homage to an error ;
declaring frankly what are his aims, and praying that by the help and
in the fear of God he may be steadfast to the end.^ As a preacher,
in particular, AVycliffe at all tiraes proves hiraself a raan of perfect
integrity, and at every stage of his inner development reflects it
faithfully as in a mirror. At all tiraes, whatever was highest and
best in the convictions at which he had arrived he truthfully pub
lished from the pulpit ; and from this perfect integrity and honour
it coraes to pass that his sermons furnish a standard for the state of
his knowledge and raanner of thinking at every stage of his career.
The personality of AVycliffe includes also a rich vein of wit and
huraour. To these he often allows a diverting play of cheerful
banter, as when, in speaking of the practice of taking His -wit and
money in the confessional, as though penitence could humour.
prove itself to be genuine in that way, he indulges in the word-play
— revera non jiirisdictio sed falsa jurisfictio ;'i or when, in his inves
tigations on Church property, he raentions, on the basis of an old
legend, that when the Apostle Paul was on his way to Jerusalem
with the money which he had collected for the Church there, his
road was beset with robbers, whereas at all other tiraes, he added,
the apostle travelled in perfect safety, because
Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.''
Even in the raidst of serious discussions and in poleraical pieces,
he loves now and then to strike a more cheerful note. On one
occasion he says : — ' Fortune has no such kind intentions for me as
that I should be in a position to bring forward any proof on matters
' De Ecclesia, c. 3, fol. 133, col. 2. last, under the guidance of the Holy
= Characteristic is the confession in De Ghost, he is resolved boldly to maintain.
Veritate Scrip. Sac, c. 32, fol. 117, col. 3 Liber Mandatorum, or Decalogus, c.
I, that he is equally on his guard against 26, MS. 1339, fol. 206, col i : Revera
a presuraptuous arrogance in the treat- non jurisdictio sed falsa jurisfictio istud
ment of doubtful questions, as against cogit, etc.
timidity and a hypocritical faint-hearted- *¦ De Civili Dominio, I., c. 20. fol. 43.
ness in defence of Scripture truth ; this col. 2.

432 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § s
of Church property which could have any weight in the eyes of the
doctor (a learned opponent with whom AVycliffe was at the time
engaged). To every proof which I have produced, his reply has
commonly been, that it is defective both in substance and forra.
But verily that is not the way to untie knots, for so raight a magpie
contradict all and every proof. I proposed the question whether the
King of England is entitled to deprive the clergy who are his subjects
of the temporalities, when they transgress. In reply, he slily leaves
the question in this forra unanswered, and introduces quite a different
subject — like the woraan, who, when asked, "How far is it to Lincoln?"
gave for answer — " A bag full of plums." Like hers is his answer :
" The King cannot take away frora his clergy any of their teraporalities,
hrevimanu; " i.e., he cannot strip thera of their property by an exercise
of arbitrary power.' '
When certain theologians of his day by their scholastic sophistry
almost made sport of the Bible, by first maintaining that, in raany
particulars, its language is irapossible and offensive, i.e., when taken
according to the letter, or in the carnal verbal sense ; and then, pro
fessing the deepest reverence for the Scriptures, pretended to redeem
their honour by a different translation, — Wycliffe's opinion of them
was, that they come in sheep's clothing, but bite with fox's teeth, and
thrust out, to boot, an otter's tail. It is just what the fox does when
he makes peace with the poultry and gets into the hen-roost. He
is no sooner in than he falls to work and raakes good use of his
teeth. AVhen they pretend that the Scriptures cannot have the
apparent sense, but only the orthodox sense which they put forward,
is it not, in fact, says Wycliffe, as unworthy a proceeding as to bring
a false accusation against a man, though it is acknowledged imrae
diately after that he has been lied against, or to break a man's head,
though directly afterwards a healing plaster is handed to him ? ^
In such cases, indeed, his wit and huraour easily pass over into
mockery and sarcasm ; and hence an objection sometiraes made by
His Irony and ^is Opponents that he had recourse to, satire as a con-
sarcasm, troversial weapon. In one place I find him defending
himself against the accusation of having allowed himself to use
irony against an opponent. 'If,' says he, 'He who sitteth in the
heavens laughs at them (Psalm ii. 4), so also may aU raen who stand
on God's side bring that school of theologians to shame with raiUery,
with reproaches, or with proofs, as God has given thera severally the
ability. Elijah, too, poured out bitter mockery and scorn upon the
» De Ecclesia, u. 21, fol. 196, col, 2. " De Veritate Scripturae Sac , c. 12,
fol. 31, col. 3.

1384] HIS CHARACTER. 433
priests of Baal (i Kings xviu. 27), and Christ Himself severely
reproached the Pharisees in rough and disdainful words (Matthew
xxii.). AVhen any one, frora a motive of love to his neighbour,
breaks out into words of reproach and scorn, in order to defend
God's honour and to preserve the Church frora errors, such a man,
if uninfluenced by revenge and ambition, does a work worthy of
praise.' '
The monks especially are a butt for his ridicule. In one place he
has occasion to speak of the prayers of the monks, and he remarks
that a principal motive which induces men to institute He ridicules
monastic foundations, is the delusive notion that the *''® monks.
prayer of a monk is of more value than all temporal goods ; and yet
it does not at all look as if the prayer of those cloistered folks vvere
so very powerful, unless, indeed, it be supjjosed that God listens to
them raore than to other men, on account of their red cheeks and
their fat lips.= AVycliffe occasionally caricatures the monks in stUl
greater detail. Of the begging friars, he goes so far as to say that
' they are like the tortoises, which quickly find their way, one close
after the other, through the whole country. They are even on a
footing of familiarity with noble lords and ladies, for they penetrate
every house, into the raost secret charabers, like the lap-dogs of
women of rank.' 3 A saying of his has been preserved by the learned
Carmelite, Thomas Netter of AA'alden, which reveals to us the tart
humour of the man. Netter tells us that Wycliffe said of the Mendi--
cant Orders, that no word of Christ can be found to justify their
institution save that one — 'I know you not' (Matthew xxv. 12).
Many examples of AA'ycliffe's hoinely vernacular are already known
from the Trialogus, as, e.g., when he said of the Mendicants and
their letters of brotherhood, that 'they seU the cat in a bag.' 4
Even in sermons he does not shun the use of such strong expressions ;
as when, in speaking of certain arguments which were used by the
Mendicants to prove the pretended antiquity of their Orders (which
was aUeged, in the case of the Carraelites, to go back to the days of
Elijah of Carmel, their founder), he characterises their argumenta
tion as ' worse than the sophistry of apes.' s
Although the personality of AVycliffe comes out in his writings
thus strongly, this by no means implies that he had any wish or
• De Veritate Scripturae Sac. , c, 22, utique, qnod fratres seminant deceptionem
fol. 199, col. 4 ; fol. 200, col. I. frivolam utrobique, et faciunt in facto
" Dialogus, or Speculum Ecclesiae magis fraudulentam commutationem,
Militantis, c. 23, M.S. 1387, fol. 153, col. 2. quam si venderent calum in sacco.
3 XXIV. Sermons, No. iv., fol. 138, s Saints' Days Ser^mons, No. viil, fol.-
col. 3. 3, col. 2 : Pejori quam simiali argutia
4' Trialogus, III., c. 30, p, 332 : Videtur arguunt quidam fratres, etc.,
29

434 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE S LIFE. [ch. ix. § s
design to put hiraself forward. On the contrary, he desires to
place in the foreground One far higher than hiraself, the Lord
Christ. His wish is to prepare the way for Him — as
tion for Christ's once did John the Baptist — his design is to promote
°* ^' God's glory and Christ's cause. , In face of a reproach
which one of his opponents had cast at him, that he set forth unusual
views frora a raotive of arabition or of hostile feeling, he gives this
solemn assurance in a passage already mentioned : — ' Let God be my
witness, that before everything I strive for God's glory and the good
of the Church, from reverence of Holy Scripture, and adherence to
the law of Christ' ' He has the consciousness, in all humility and
in joyful confidence, that it is the cause of God, and of the cross and
gospel of Christ, for which he fights and labours. And just because
it is not with his own petty honour but with the honour of God that
he has to do, he does not even hesitate in making some confessions
from which otherwise a concern for his own personal credit would
have held him back, e.g., ' I confess that in ray own case I have
often, from a motive of vain ambition, departed frora the doctrine of
Scripture both in my reasonings and my replies, while ray aim was
to attain the show of fame among the people, and at the same time
to strip off the pretensions of ambitious sophists.' " This conscious
ness that he was contending not for hiraself, but for God's honour
and Christ's cause, was also the source of the joyful courage and the
confident hope of final victory which filled his breast even in the
menacing prospect of persecution; and, perhaps, even of an approach
ing death-blow to himself and his fellow-combatants. He grew holy
himself with the holy aims which he pursued ; his personal character
was exalted by the cause which he served ; and the cause which he
served was never the truth as mere knowledge, but the truth as a
power unto godliness. He has always and everywhere in view the
moral kernel, ' the fruits ; ' not the leafage, but the fruit, is everything
in his regard. 3 It was from glowing zeal for the cause of God,
sincere love to the souls of men, upright conscientiousness before
God, and heartfelt longing for the reforraation of the Church of
Christ, that he put forth all his energetic and indefatigable labours
for the restoration of the Church to her original purity and freedom,
in which she had flourished in the priraitive Christian age,
' ' De Veritate Scripturae Sac, c. 12, 3 Comp. De Ecclesia, c. 21, fol. 199,
fol. 34, col. 4 : Testis sit mihi Deus, ego col. 2 : Ista irregularitas, Qua magis
principaliter intendo honorem Dei et attendimus ad folia quam ad fructus,
utilitatem ecclesiae, etc. creditur facere in oculis Dei sacramenta
^ lb., c. 2, fol. 3, col. I : comp. c. 5, nostra vilescere.
fol. II. col. 4 ; vide above, c. vii.

^384-] HIS REFORMATION VIEWS. 435
And what was the character of these reformation efforts of
AVycliffe ? This does not admit of being defined in simple and few
¦words, and for this reason, that his reformation ideas
passed through different transmutations and develop- reformatioa
raents, precisely the same as those of his whole ^*^^"
personality. AA'ycliffe, indeed, from the time when, in mature age,
he entered upon pubUc life and drew attention upon himself, down
to the end of his career, was always inspired by the reformational
spirit. That the Church as she then stood was suffering under evil
conditions ; that she stood in indispensable need of renovation and
reform — this was and ever remained his firm conviction, and for this
object he at all times continued to do what he could. But what the
worst of these conditions were, and how they vvere to be remedied —
¦on these points he thought differendy at a later period frora what he
did in his earlier Ufe. In raiddle life his reforraational views bore
an entirely ecclesiastico-political coraplexion ; in the last six years of
his course, from 1378, the political points of view retreated more
into the background, and the religious motives came to the front.
In the first twelve years of his public activity, the worst mischief of
the Church appeared to him to be the usurpations of the Papacy
upon the sovereign rights of the English Crown, the financial spolia
tion of the country for the benefit of the Curia in Avignon, the
general secularisation of the clergy, including the monasteries and
foundations, simony and the corruption of morals — all these evils
¦were ecclesiastico-political raatters ; and accordingly the means and
"ways of remedying them which he recommended, and in part himself
applied, were chiefly of an ecclesiastico-political character. State
legislation and administrative measures were called for — it was the
¦duty of Crown and Parliaraent, king and lords, to stem these evils,
while he himself laboured to remove them by the light of knowledge,
in the way of instruction, conviction, and admonition.
There was truth in all this ; and yet the end aimed at was not to
be reached in this way, for the weed was not plucked up by the
root ; with the best intentions, a wrong road vvas taken, his one stan-
¦Of this stage of AVycUffe's work, but only of this, what ^^^°i^^i^-
Luther said is true — that he attacked onjy the Ufe of the Church, and
not her doctrine. -But in the last stage of his work AVycUffe
undoubtedly went farther and dug deeper. The Church's doctrine
.as well as her life now engaged his attention, and in more than one
-article was emphatically assaUed. His first step was to set forth with
the utmost clearness, and to assert with the greatest decision, the
fundamental principle that Holy Scripture alone is infallibly true and

435 LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFE'S LIFE. [ch. ix. § a
an absolute standard of truth. No one, for centuries, had so clearly
recognised this truth, and established and defended it with sucb
ernphasis as Wycliffe. And not only did he learnedly and in a
literary form maintain this Protestant principle, as we may well call
it, but he also carried it into actual life, and practically appUed it, by
the institution of Biblical itinerant preaching, by the English transla
tion of the Bible, as well as by Scripture coraraentaries and popular
tracts. AA^ycliffe, however, did not stop with laying the foundation.
With the Bible, as a touchstone, in his hand, he also exarained
several chief articles of the dorainant theology of his tirae, found
them to be untenable, and from that moment fought against them,
with all the fiery zeal of which he was capable : especially the
doctrine ofthe sacraments, and in particular frora the year 1381, the
Roraish-scholastic doctrine of the Lord's Supper, and chiefly the
article touching Transubstantiation. That was an iraportant piece of
reformational criticism. But it was neither the only nor the most
important piece, though it was the criticism which most forcibly
arrested the attention of the world. Still weightier was the doctrine
„. . of AVycliffe touching Christ and the Church. That
His doctrine .
concerning Christ alone is our Mediator, Saviour, and Leader, that
He alone is the real and governing Head of His Church
— this is what we raay well call the material principle of the theology of
Wycliffe, just as- the sole authority of Holy Scripture raay be called its
formal principle. This fundamental principle of the sole mediation
of Christ has an intimate connection with the evangelical doctrine of
justification by faith alone ; and whUe it is true that the setting forth
of the latter doctrine by Luther was an immense advance beyond
Wycliffe, a memorable deepening of insight, and a felicitous seizure
of truth in the power of Divine light and guidance, to Wycliffe raust
StiU be attributed the prophetic thought — a thought of large reforma
tional reach and bearing — of Christ alone as our Mediator and
Concerning the Saviour. AVith this harmonises his idea of the Church
Church. j^g ^.jjg -vyhole body of the elect. Indeed, this latter idea
stands in the most profound connection with Wycliffe's fundaraental
view of Christ Himself For that Augustinian conception of the
Church forras with AVycliffe. the conscious opposite to the clerical,
hierarchical, and Popish idea of it ; and it rests precisely upon the
principle that the true Church is the Body of Christ. Proof enough
all this, that AVycliffe examined and attacked not the life alone, but
also the doctrine, of the Church of his time.
If we look back from AVycliffe in order to compare him with his
Continental precursors, and to obtain a scale by which to raeasure his.

1384-1 HIS INFLUENCE ON REFORMATION. 437
personal importance, the fact which first of all presents itseh is, that
AA'ycliffe exhibits in a concentrated form, in his own
, ' Concentrates
person, that reform movement of the precedmg cen- former
turies which traced the corruption of the Church to its ° °"^ '
secularisation by means of worldly property, honour, and power;
and which aimed to renew and improve its condition by leading it
back to a state of apostolic poverty.
What after Gregory VII.'s tirae, Arnold of Brescia, and the com
raunity of the AA'aldenses, Francis of Assisi and^ the Mendicant
Orders, had all in various ways aimed to effect; what his fore
st. Bernard of Clairvaux had so devoutly longed for — runners.
the return of the Church of Christ to an apostolic life and walk — the
same object filled the soul of AA'ycliffe, in the first period of his public
activity. The modern idea of the State as opposed to the hierarchical
ideal, which began to dawn upon men's minds after the struggle
between Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair; which found in
Marsiglio of Padua, John of Jandun, and AVilliam of Occam, its
eloquent advocates and representatives, and which called forth so
lively a sympathy among the English people in the middle of the
14th century — this idea was not only taken up by Wycliffe, but also
utUised by him for the practical object of Church reform. In estab
lishing and defending as a first principle the authority of Holy
Scripture as the sole standard of Christian truth, and in practicaUy
labouring for Bible-reading and the spread of Biblical knowledge
among the people, he was to sorae extent following in the footsteps
of the AValdenses. But he does not appear to have been aware of
this fact. There is nothing to show that he vfas indebted to them
for any of his reforming ideas and methods ; while it is certain that
neither the AA'aldenses, nor any others before him, had asserted the
authority of the Bible vvith a clearness, stringency, and emphasis
equal to his.
In the coUective history of the Church of Christ, Wycliffe marks
an epoch chiefly on the ground that he was the earliest personal
embodiment of the evangelical reformer. Before him, it ^.^^ ^^^^
is true, many ideas of reform and many efforts in the evangelical
' .* ^ . reformer.
direction of it crop up here and there, which even led to
conflicts of opinion and collisions of parties, and to the formation of
¦whole reformed societies. But AVycliffe is the first iraportant
historical personage who devotes himself to the work of Church
reform with the entire power of a master raind, and with the full
force of wiU and joyful self-sacrifice of a raan in Christ. To that
work he devoted the labours of a life, in obedience to the earnest

438

LAST YEARS OF WYCLIFFES LIFE.

[CH. IX. § S

pressure of conscience, and in confident trust that ' his labour was
not in vain in the Lord.' He did not conceal frora himself that the
labours of ' evangelical men ' would in the first instance be opposed
and persecuted and driven back ; but he consoled himself with the
assurance that the ultimate issue would be a renovation of the
Church upon the apostolic model. It was only after Wycliffe that
other living embodiraents of the spirit of Church reform, a Huss, a
Savonarola, and others, appeared upon the field — a succession which
issued at length in the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

The Chair in which Wycliffe was Carried out
OF Lutterworth Church when Stricken with
Paralysis, Dec. 28, 1384 ; still Preserved in the
Chancel.

CHAPTER X.'
THE SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE; AND SURVIVAL
OF HIS INFLUENCE.
I.— The Lollards.
DURING the last years of AVycliffe's life his opponents evidently
cherished the hope that his chief followers, already enfeebled
and intiraidated, would be hopelessly scattered after his death, and
that the whole party would become extinct. Soon, however, it
became plain that there was a Ufe in the moveraent not at all depen
dent on the personality of Wycliffe. He was removed frora the
earthly scene ; but his adherents continued his work with no appre
ciable diminution of energy.
It vvas in the year succeeding the death of Wycliffe (1385) that the
name of Lollards carae into general use as a designation of his
followers. It had its origin in the Netherlands early in the century,
and seems to have been at first applied to the 'Brothers of St.
Alexius,' or fratres Cellitae, who devoted theraselves to works of love,
in tending the sick and caring for the dead ; but who exposed them
selves to the imputation of bigotry and heresy. In England the name
was occasionally heard during AVycUffe's lifetirae;^ but it was not
untU after his death that it becarae general. Its use by the
hierarchy to characterise his followers is a proof to us that the
'AVycUffites' had becorae an independent sect, large enough to
attract public attention, and formidable enough to arouse ecclesiastical
animosity. 3
The LoUard party, in the years immediately following AVycliffe's
'[Condensed from Dr. Lechler's Second 'Walter Lollard,' sometimes named as
Volume and Third Book, entitled Die the founder of the sect, bemg as unhis-
Nachwirkungen Wiclif s: 'The after- torical a personage as 'Zadok,' the alleged
effects of WycUffe ; ' with notes and ad- founder of the Sadducees. Possibly the
ditions from raore recent authorities.] name comes from the Latm lolium, dar-
" See ch ix 65 p. 393, -where the nel or ' tares, ' regarded as mingled with
term is cited from the popish zealot the pure 'wheat' of Cathohc doctrme.
Henry Crump, 1382. Fasc. Zizan., p. Thus Knighton says of the Wycliffite
312 : vocavit haereticos Lollardos. itinerant preacher Aston, ubique praedi-
3 The origin of the title is obscure ; cans, lolium cum tritico semmavit, col.

440 SUCCESSORS OF V/YCLIFFL. [ch. x. § i
death, consisted, so to speak, of an inner and an outer circle. The
former vvas composed of enthusiastic and able raen, who in the first
Two classes instance through the preaching of the itinerants, and
of LoUards. subsequently through their own reading and study, had
been led to the adoption of evangelical principles. Thus it seeraed
to thera all the more necessary, after the death of their venerated,
strong-souled leader, to raaintain the closest bonds of aUiance for
mutual encouragement and a common defence against their enemies.^
The outer and far larger circle comprised raen and women, in
different grades of society, vvho listened and read, learned and often
believed. Many of these naturally passed into the inner circle, and
became theraselves the teachers of others. So nuraerous had the
adherents of WycUffe become during the period between his death
and the close of the century that, according to the testiraony of oppo
nents, at least half the population had ranged theraselves on the
side of the LoUards.^ ' You could scarcely raeet two persons in the
road, but one of them would be a disciple of Wycliffe,'
In the inner circle seven men stand pre-eminent, who formed the
nucleus of the party — Nicholas of Hereford, John Aston, John
Purvey, John Parker, William Swinderby, William Smith, and Richard
AA'aytstathe. On the other hand, Philip Repyngdon, who had been
allied with AVycliffe, Hereford, and Aston, at Oxford, in the proceed-
2639. Chaucer seems to recognise this et Wycliviani sive Lollardi vocati sunt.
derivation of the name, in his Prologue The first instance of the official use of the
io the Shipman's Tale : name appears to be in a mandate of
• This Loller here woU preohen us some- 'he Bishop of Worcester, 1387 which re-
j^ , " fers to five leaders and itinerant preachers
He woide sow some difficulte, °J "*« P^^y (Hereford, Aston, Purvey,
Or springen cockle in oure clene corn.' -PF/H"' ^'"'v ^wmderly) as noi'ime seu
*^ ^ ritu LoUardorum confoederati (Wilkins,
Moreprobably, as it seems to Dr. Lechler, Cone, in., 202). In 1389, in the records of
the name was derived from the Old Ger- a process instituted by the Bishop of Lin-
man lollen, lullen, ' to hum, or whine ' ; coin against certain heretics, these are
a satirical description of their tones. Thus spoken of ils Lollardi vulgariter nuncu-
Johann Hocsemius, Canon of Lifege (1348) pati. Hence again the phrase lollardia
writes : Eodem anno (1309) quidam hypo- sive haeretica pravitas, ' techings that men
critae gyrovagi, qui Lollardi sive Deum clopith Lollards doctrin.' Ib,, IIL, 208.
laudantes vocabantur per Hannoniam ct ' The mandate ofthe Bishop of Worces-
Brabantiam quasdam mulieres nobiles de- ter, quoted in the preceding note, speaks
ceperunt, Gesta Pontificum Leodensium, of the five Wycliffites, not only as con-
L, c. 31. If we are to follow Walsingham, focderati, but as conspirati in collegio
this name of Lollards had been introduced illicito,
into England seven years before the death ''See Knighton, col. 2644, Mediam
of Wycliffe, as he writes of the itinerant partem populi aut majorem partem sectae
preachers in the year 1377, Ni vocabantur suae acquisiverunt ; and col. 2666, Secta
Cl vulgo Lollardi. But in Riley's edition ilia in maxima honore illis diebus habe-
of -VValsingham (Historia Anglicana, batur, et in tantum multiplicata fuit,
1863) it is shown that this sentence is quod vix duos -oideres in via, quin alter
not in the original MS. , but an editorial eorum discipulus Wyclyffe fuerit. So
gloss in the first printed edition (Frankf., Walsingham, n., 188, under the year 1389,
1603). Knighton says, without assigning Lollardi. . . in errorem suum plurimos
any date : Sicque a vulgo Wyclyf discipuli seduxerunt.

1385-1399] HEREFORD, ASTON, AND PURVEY. 441
ings of 1382,' had been induced to recant, and became a persecutor
ofthe Lollards. He vvas afterwards made Bishop of Lincoln (1405),
and died a cardinal.
Nicholas of Hereford, doctor of theology, AVycliffe's great
helper in his Bible translation and other works, has been repeatedly
mentioned in these pages.= After his return frora Rome Nicholas
he is named first in a mandate of Henry AVakefield, Hereford,
Bishop of AVorcester, against the Lollards (August 10, 1387), and is
spoken of by AValsingham as chief of the party after AVycliffe's death. 3
His theological learning, as well as his indefatigable literary labours,
vvith his zealous itinerancy, placed him for a time in the very front of
the AVycliffe party.
Next to Hereford stands John Aston, or Ashton, vvho, as we have
aheady seen, had followed Philip Repyngdon in recantation ; but
who, unlike him, soon repented, and henceforth endea
voured by redoubled zeal to make amends for the error
into which weakness and fear had betrayed hira. In itinerant preach
ing he surpassed all others. The Bishop of AVorcester, in the raandate
above mentioned, couples Aston vvith Hereford. AViUiam Thorpe
gives explicit testiraony to Aston's constancy ' right perfectly unto
his life's end.'
During the same period, one of the most steadfast, zealous, and
distinguished of the party was John Purvey. In AA'ycliffe's lifetime
he had been curate to the Reformer at Lutterworth, his
coadjutor in the Bible translation, and in much literary
work beside. On his master's death he undertook the revision of
the Bible, and brought his task to a close in 1388. AVe must not,
however, suppose that even this work absorbed his energies to the
exclusion of more active labours. He too was a zealous itinerant
preacher, and is included with Hereford and Aston in the mandate
of Bishop AVakefield. Knighton speaks of these three, with Wycliffe
hiraself, as the ' four arch heretics.' Purvey is depicted as a plain
and horaely raan in person and garb, yet distinguished for mature
wisdora and moral power. ¦*
After these ' first three ' of AVycliffe's followers come four others,
' See above, ch. ix., § 3, pp. 390-400. adhaercbant. On his alleged early re-
Repyngdon's recantation was raade Oct. cantation, see p. 400. He seems in the
23, in the same year. end to have relapsed, was an assessor
= See pp. 389, 393, 397, etc., aud espe- at Brute's trial (p. 448), was made
cially p. 401. chancellor and treasurer of Hereford
3 Hist. Angl, Riley, II., 139. Nicolaus cathedral, and finally entered the Car-
Hereford, Doctoris Theologiae gradum thusian monastery at Coventry.
habens, sed seductoris sequens officium, * The sad story of Purvey's recantation
quippe cui post haeresiarchum Johannem belongs to a later date. See p. 433.
Wiclef omnes hujus sectae viri maxime

442 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.x. §t
also notable — Parker and Smith, Swinderby and Waytstathe.
Less distin- The first is to US but a name, save that he is included
guishednames. ^^y {j^g Bishop of AVorcester in his letter of 1387.
William Smith was a layman, whose picture has been drawn for us
by the unfriendly hands of Knighton as that of a person uncomely
and repulsive. A love-disappointment seems to have driven him
to an ascetic life. Barefoot, he travelled and preached ; having
learned to read and write only in his maturer years. Altogether he
illustrates the way in which sorae were drawn by irresistible force
frora the outer circle of adherents into the sraaller class of leaders and
champions of the cause.
William Swinderby was a priest who had been designated by
AVycliffe hiraself to the work of itinerancy, Frora his habits of Ufe he
was known as ' WiUiara the Herrait.' ' So earnest and fearless was
he in denouncing the luxuries and worldliness of the age that, as the
Romish chronicler notes, even 'some honest raen were well-nigh
driven to despair.' When forbidden to preach in church or church
yard, ' he made a pulpit of two raill-stones in the High Street of
Leicester, and there preached in defiance of the bishop.' 'There,'
says Knighton, ' you raight see throngs of people frora every part, as
¦well frora the town as the country — double the nuraber there used to
be when they raight hear him lawfully.' = AVith this 'William the
Herrait ' was associated ' Richard the Chaplain,' or Richard
Waytstathe, forraerly attached to the Augustinian church at Leicester.
These two took possession of a sraall chapel dedicated to John the
Baptist outside the walls, where for sorae time they preached the
Lollard doctrines.
In the outer circle of adherents the principal figures, down to
the close of the reign of Richard II. , were the Earl of Salisbury, Sir
Thoraas Latimer in Northamptonshire, Sir John Russell
the Lollard in Staffordshire, Sir Lewis Clifford Durham. This last
''*"^®- it was who intervened at the Lambeth Council in 1378,
by order of the Queen-mother, the Princess Joan, to protect Wycliffe
frora molestation. 3 To these names raay be added ¦* those of Sir
Richard Story, Sir Reginald Hilton, of the county of Durhara, and
' He is mentioned by Walsingham derly, mentioned in Bishop Wakefield's
(Hist. Angl., IL, 53) as having preached mandate.'
at Leicester on Palm Sunday, 1382. Inter 3 See above, p. 172.
quos (Wycliffe's emissaries) erat quidam * See'Wa.lsingha.m, Hist. Angl., II., lig
vultum et habitum praeferens heremitae. (year 1389). Erant autem milites qui hanc
. . . Hic emissus per dictum Johannem, sectam colue^runt, etc. ; also Knighton, col.
publice praedicavit Leycestriae, Dominica 2661. Erant enim milites — cum ducibus
in Ramis Palmarum. et comitibus . . . promotores strenuissimi
- Col. 2662. 'Swinderby,* says Lechler, et propugnatores foriissimi, etc.
is to be distinguished from Robert Swin-

J38S-I399-] EXTENT OF THE LOLLARD MOVEMENT.

443

Sir William Neville, third son of Lord Neville. A large number of
citizens and wealthy persons also aided the Lollard cause by their
influence and money. Most of their names have perished ; those
that remain have been preserved chiefly through the processes con
ducted against them by their persecutors. Araong these we note
Roger Dexter and his wife Alice, Nicholas Taylor, Michael Scrivener,
John Harry, William Parchmener, and Roger Goldsmith, with a nun,
by name Matilda, who lived as a recluse in a room in St. Peter's
churchyard, Leicester.*
The statistics of the Lollards can hardly be accurately given ; nor
can we obtain more than a general view of their progress in different
parts of England. Naturally, they most abounded in
AVycUffe's own diocese of Lincoln, which then included extent of the
Leicester and Lutterworth, and extended (until 1539) ™°''^™®''*-
as far as Oxford.^ Eight persons vvere apprehended in Leicester in
1389 on the charge of Lollardry, and these no doubt represented a
multitude of others whose names are lost. The Leicester chronicler,
Knighton, as we have seen, represents the Lollards as amounting to
half the population. Eastwards the sect spread to Norwich, and in a
south-easterly direction to London. To the south and west, the diocese
of Salisbury contained Lollard priests, the bishop complaining in 1389
that several holding these doctrines had obtained ordination .3 The
mandate of the Bishop of AA'orcester against Lollard teaching has
already been quoted. In the principaUty of Wales also, at least in
the southern dioceses of St. David's and Llandaff, there were itinerant
Lollard preachers in 1390.4 From these facts we can hardly doubt
that the sect had penetrated into other dioceses, and that the doctrines
had widely spread throughout the land.
If we inquire concerning the inner life of the LoUard comraunity,
we learn Uttle or nothing from Church history, but rauch frora the
incidental references of the chroniclers. They were, inner ufe of
above all, characterised by a striving after holiness, a ti^eLoUards,
zeal for the spread of Scriptural truth, for the uprooting of prevalent
error, and for Church reforra. Even the coramon people among
them were men who believed ; and they coraraunicated, as by a sacred
contagion, their convictions to those around them. Thus they became
mighty. Religious tracts had much to do with the dissemination of their
doctrines. Besides AA'ycliffe, Hereford and others prepared many of
¦ Wilkins, Co»«/;«, III., 208, 211. he first sent forth his 'poor priests."
" It should be noticed that it was Lollards abounded in Buckinghamshire.
probably during Wycliffe's incumbency 3 Walsingham, Hist. Angl., 11., 188.
of Ludgarshall (see above, p. 190) that " Wilkins, Concilia, in., 213.

'4^4 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. x. § i
these short treatises, which vvere copied and widely distributed.'
But above all the translation of the Bible becarae a
Literary aids. ,, , , . , , , .
power. It was largely circulated not only in a coraplete
forra, but in separate books ; and wherever it vvas known an impulse
The WyoUffe was given to the LoUard doctrines. Among the MSS. of
^'*^®- the Wycliffe Bible that have survived the ravages of time
and come into the hands of the most recent editors, no fewer than
twelve are of an earlier date than 1400.^ Some of these are very
costly, showing that the precious volume was sought by the richer
classes. The Bible being thus made a comparatively familiar book, great
stress was laid upon the exposition of its contents by preaching. Staff
LoUard in hand, the preachers journeyed on foot frora place to
preaching. piace,3 and paused wherever they could obtain a hearing
frora gentie or simple. Knighton says : ' When an itinerant preacher
arrived at the residence of sorae knight, the latter immediately with
great willingness set about calling together the country people to sorae
appointed place or church in order to hear the serraon ; even if they
did not care about going, they did not dare to stay away, or to object.
For the knight vvas always at the preacher's side, armed with sword
and shield, ready to protect him should any one dare to oppose in
any way his person or his doctrine.'
Of the character of the serraons Knighton says ; ' Their teaching
"was at the beginning full of sweetness and devotion ; but towa.rds the
end it broke out into jealousy and calumny. Nobody, they said, was
upright and pleasing to God who did not hold the AVord of ' God as
they preached it ; for thus in all their preaching did they hold up
God's Lavv.' +
' A royal ordinance of 1388 sets forth which werewrittenwithinthespaceofforty
that Master Nicholas Hereford and Master years from its being finished, have been
John Wycliff while he lived, quosdam lib- examined for the present edition. Others
ros, libellos, scJiedulas (fly-sheets) -et qua.- are known to have existed within the last
ternos (pamphlets) diversas haereses et century ; and more, there can be no doubt,
errores continentes, per se et fautores suos have escaped inquiry. How many have
frcquentius scribi, compilai'i, communi- perished, it is impossible to calculate.'
eari et publicari fecerunt. Wilkins, Co«- (p. xxxii.). See above, p. 221.
cilia, p. 204. In the year 1396 several 3 See above, p. 197.
Lollards were made on their recantation 4 Compare "Wilkins, Concilia, p. 2C2.
to promise, ' Ne I shall her (their) books Sub magnae sanctitatis velamine vene-
ne swych.(such) books, ne hem (them- num sub labiis ore mellifiuo habentes —
selves) resceyve,' etc. Ib., p. 223. devotionis fidelium, ecclesiae Christi et
^ See list in Forshall and Madden's ejus ministris solitas confer ri, ab iisdem
WycliffiteVersions, vol. I., p. xxxix. These subtrahere et ipsis appropriare nituntur —
learned editors say, ' The new version was et haereticas propositiones, tam in ecclesiis
eagerly sought after, and read. Copies et earum coe-meteriis quam in .plateis et
passed into the hands of all classes of the plurimis locis profanis — non verentur
people. ... The multiplication of copies et publice praedicare, et secrete in aulis,
must have been rapid. Nearly one hun- cameris, hortis et gardinis (gardens)
dred and fifty MSS., containing the whole Christi fideles utriusque sexiis auricu-
or parts of Purvey's Bible, the majority of lari,' etc.

1385-1399-] LOLLARD PREACHING. 445
The Romish historian, Lingard, alleges that these sermons were
mainly controversial ; but here he is confuted by the Lingard's
testimony of the chroniclers. Even bishops recognised eno-r.
some good in their sermons, baited as they were with allurements
to win souls to salvation.
The preaching, be it remembered, was in English; and the preachers
¦were mainly of the same class as their hearers : their homely ex-
posUions of Scripture went home to the heart; they spoke. Effect of the
moreover, of prevailing sins and evils, as luxury and the preaching.
like ; they called by their right names the misdeeds of the clergy,
while for themselves they sought nothing. It is no wonder that these
travelling preachers stirred the land, and that the minds of men were
attracted to them in a continually augmenting degree.
Besides these open-air gatherings, assemblies were convened in
haUs and cottages, in chapels, in gardens. Here and there a little
company would assemble to converse on Divine things, ^,52.^^.^^^^ ^^^_
to build one another up in faith and knowledge.' At vioss, Biwe
such meetings the Bible in AA'ycliffe's translation would
be read aloud, or a tract by AA'ycliffe or Hereford, explaining the
sacred text. Even the art of reading would be taught on such
occasions. It was thus, as we have seen, that WUliam Smith of
Leicester first learned his alphabet. Many others, raen and woraen,
anxious to read the Scriptures for theraselves, would follow his
example. Knighton bitterly complains that the Word of God trans
lated into English ' becomes more accessible and familiar to layraen
and to woraen able to read than it had heretofore been to the raost
intelligent and learned of the clergy.'
2. — Controversies bet-ween the Lollards and their
Opponents before 1399.
During the last fifteen years of the century the Lollards remained
firm, united, and progressive. They quitted the defensive attitude,
and adopted active raeasures for the extension and consolidation of
their body. Especially did they assume the right to ordain, holding
that every priest had as much power ui this raatter as the bishops
theraselves.^ An occurrence in London, in the year 1387, which excited consider
able attention, is a significant indication of the temper of the times.
'Wilkins Concilia, IIL, 211. Mutuo ciam, ut eorum presbyteri more ponti:
inter se hab'uerunt et tenuerunt opiniones, ficum novos crearent presbyteros : prac-
= Walsingham, Hist. Angl, IL, 188. ticaverunt istam perfidiam m diocesi
Lollardi tantum praesnmpscrunt auda- Sarum.

446 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. x. § 2
One Peter Pateshull, an Augustinian friar, having quitted the cloister
pgter and attached himself to the Lollards, began to preach
Pateshuu. against the monastic life, declaring that the life of acitizen
was hoUer and more complete. Not only so, but in sermons at St
Christopher's Church he began to inveigh against the character of his
late associates, raaking dark disclosures as to the conduct of the friars.
This aroused bitter aniraosity, and a party of twelve Augustinians
¦sallied forth from their monastery to the church, one of whom arose
in the congregation and contradicted the preacher. But the LoUards,
who happened to be present to the nuraber of about a hundred,
attacked the bold friar and drove hira, with his brethren, frora the
church, chasing thera to their monastery, which they would have set
on fire had not one of the sheriffs of London interfered to calm their
violence. The Lollards, however, induced Pateshull to write down
the substance of his sermon, with an account of what he knew con
cerning the friars. The document laid the gravest charges against the
Augustinians, including even murder. This writing was affixed to St.
Paul's Cathedral, where it was read and copied by many knights and
citizens who adhered to the Lollard party.'
In 139 1, we learn frora AValsinghara, the Lollards preached
against pilgriraages. But their boldest raeasure was taken in 1395,
when they presented to Parliaraent, through Sir Thoraas
petition to Latimer and Sir Richard Story, a document in which their
doctrines vvere clearly enunciated, and the help of the
legislature claimed in effecting raany needed reforms. It is possible
that this petition was a counter moveraent against the Romish party,
by whom a bill had been brought in five years previously, but not
passed, for the, confiscation of all copies of the English Scriptures that
raight be found in the hands of the coimnon people. It was John of
Gaunt who, with soraething of his old spirit, had thwarted this raeasure,
exclairaing, ' Let us not be the dregs of all nations, seeing that others
are likewise translating the AVord of God into their own language ! '
From this emphatic speech, and the failure of the Romish proposals,
the Lollards raay have anticipated a favourable reception for their
plea. But they were disappointed. Their petition does not appear
to have been even considered by Parliament. It was, however, fixed
to the doors of St. Paul's, of Westminster Abbey, and of other churches.
The bishops, dismayed by the daring of the Lollards, hastily sent a
deputation to Richard II. , who was then in Ireland. Thomas
Arundel, Archbishop of York, and Robert Braybrook, Bishop of
' See Walsingham, Hist. An^l.., 11., 157; followed by Foxe, Acts and Mon.,
111., 201.

I39S.] LOLLARD APPEAL TO PARLIAMENT. 447
London, undertook the mission. The king immediately returned
and addressed to the patrons oi the Lollards, in particular to Sir
Richard Story, such threatening language as for the tirae overawed
and disheartened the party.
The conclusions which the followers of AVycliffe thus laid before
Parliament and publicly displayed were briefly as TheLoUard
follows :  ' ' Conclusions."
I. Since the Church of England has begun to dote on temporalities
after her stepmother of Rome, faith, hope, and charity have fled, and
pride, with her dolorous genealogy of mortal sins, has usurped their
place. 2. The customary priesthood which began in Rome, and clairas
more than angelic authority, is not the priesthood which Christ
ordained to His apostles.
3. The priestly law of celibacy is the source of grave and shameful
evils. 4. The pretended miracle of the sacrament of bread leads almost
all men into idolatry. Would to God that they believed what the
* Evangelical Doctor ' says in his Trialogus, that the bread of the
altar is, ' habitualiter,' = the body of Christ !
5. Exorcisms and benedictions, wrought on wine, bread, water, oil,
salt, wax, incense, as upon altar stones and church walls, and on
robes, mitres, crosses, staves, belong to the arts of necroraancy rather
than to a sound theology.
6. King and bishop in one person — prelate and secular judge-
pastor and worldly functionary — is a union adverse to the true
interests of the kingdom. 'No man can serve two masters.'
7. The offering of special 3 prayers in our Church for the souls of
the dead is a false foundation of charity.
8. Pilgrimages, prayers, and oblations made to bUnd crosses or
* roods,' and to deaf images of wood and stone, are neariy related
to idolatry, and far from true charity.
9. Auricular confession, declared to be so necessary to a man's
salvation, exalts the pride of priests and gives thera opportunity of
I There are two extant MSS. of this = [Others read accidentaliter (so Foxe).
document, one in the British Museum I'he raeaning is evidently to deny the
(Cotton, Cleopatra E. 2), the other, which miracle of transubstantiation, while recog-
seems the original, in the Bodleian Library nising ' the Lord's body as present only
at Oxford. The Latin text is printed by in a spiritual sense. The reference is to
Lewis, Hist, of John Wiclif p. 337. Trialogus IV., c. 7 p. ^bj. Ille panis
Wilkins, Concilia,ii\., p. 221, and Shirley, est secundum habitudinem corpus Christi:
Fasc Ziz., p. 360. Foxe gives an English ' to be. taken figuratively as the body of
translation. Acts and Mon. (Pratt and Christ ' Comp p 353 above.]
Stoughton), UL, p. 203. Bale says the 3 The Latin MSS. read i/jrjfea/ej -an
paper was drawn up by Lord Cobham. evident mistake for speciales.

448 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. x. § »
secret conferences, leading to rauch evil. They say that they have
the keys of heaven and hell, that they can bless or excoraraunicate,
bind or loose at their pleasure, insomuch that for a small reward,' or
for twelve pence, they will sell the blessing of heaven by charter and
clause of warranty sealed with their common seal.
IO. Manslaughter, by war or pretended law of justice for any
temporal cause vvithout a spiritual revelation, is expressly contrary to
the New Testament, which is a law of grace and full of mercy. For
Christ teaches to love our enemies.
II. Vows of chastity taken in our Church by women, who are by
nature frail and imperfect, is the occasion of great and horrible sins.
12. The multitude of unnecessary arts practised in our kingdom
nourishes much sin in waste, luxury, and showy apparel.^ It seems
to us that the trade of goldsmiths, of armourers, and all arts not
necessary to men according to apostolic rule, should be suppressed
for the increase of virtue.
Avhatever may be thought of these several ' conclusions,' it is
evident that the spirit of Wycliffe lived in his followers ; while the
fearlessness which could lay such a document before the Parliaraent
and people of England attests the hold which the doctrines of the
Lollards had secured upon the public raind. It was the culmination
of their power. The hierarchy was now thoroughly alarmed, and the
Suppression ofthe sect vvas henceforth made a matter of ecclesiastical
concern. Another instructive illustration of the character of the Lollard
teachings may be found in the story of AValter Brute, as related
at length by Foxe. 3 The account of his pleadings before
¦Walter Brute. __. , °,.„ "' „. , ,.,.-. ^ , . '^ ," ,
John Gilbert, Bishop of Hereford, m 1391-2, shovvs how
fully the main doctrines of Wycliffe in regard to the supremacy of
Scripture, the sole headship of Christ in the Church, and the figurative
character of the Lord's Supper, were still maintained.* At the same
time Walter Brute varies from Wycliffe in some important respects,
showing the direction in which the great Reforraer's doctrines would
' hat., bussello. Christ said, "I am very bread," not
. = MS. Curiositate et inter disguysyng. changing His essence or being into the
3 Acts and Monuments, vol. IIL, pp. essence or substance of bread, but vvas
131-188. the said Christ which He was before-
t Pages 136, 186, ' If any man, of what really, and yet bread by a similitude or
state, sect, or condition soever he be, will figurative speech, so if He would, it might
show me that I err in my writings or be, when He said, "This is My body,"
sayings, by the authority of the Sacred but it should really have been the bread
Scripture or by probable reason grounded as it was before, and sacramentally or
on the Sacred Scripture, I will humbly memorially to be His body. And this
and gladly receive his information.' P. seemeth to me most nearly, to agree to
163, ' The head of the body of the Church the meaning of Christ, forasmuch as He:
is one, which is Christ.' P. 174, 'As said, " Do this in remembrance of Me," '

3385-I399-1 THE 'PLOWMAN'S TALE.' 449
naturaUy be developed. Thus we find in Brute a much clearer and
sharper distinction than in Wycliffe between Law and Gospel— a
decidedly nearer approach to Luther's doctrine of Justification by
Faith.' The interpretations of the Apocalypse, which occupy so large
a place in the statements of the later Confessor, are also a great
advance on AA'ycliffe's teaching. Brute was fervid and mystical,
perhaps, in part, frora his Celtic nationality. ' I am,' he said, ' a
Christian of the Britons, having my origin from the Britons, both
by my father's and mother's side.' ' He lays, accordingly, great
stress upon the fact that the Gospel came direct from the East to
Britain, not by way of Italy or Rome ; ' and thus it seemeth to me
the Britons, amongst other nations, have been, as it were, by the
special election of God, called and converted to the faith.'
Another testimony to the thoughts and characteristic habits of the
Lollards may be gathered from a poera which obtained great currency
during the later years of the fourteenth century, and ,j,^^ tiow-
which was printed in 1542, in an edition of Chaucer's ^^^'^ Taie.*
Canterbury Tales, under the title of The Plowmaris Tale. It is
certain, however, from the style and other considerations, that the
poem cannot be by Chaucer. It is true that he translated anci
incorporated in his work The Romance of the Rose, in which eccle
siastical pretensions are ridiculed ; but the tone and method of The
Plowman! s Tale are altogether different. It is plainly modelled upon
The Vision of Piers Plowman,^ written at least forty years before.
The Tale is allegorical — a dialogue between a pelican ¦* — emblem of
the true Church — and a griffin, symbolising the cruelty and greed
ofthe hierarchy. 3
The poem relates with a kind of grim humour how the griffin,
being defeated in argument, flies off, but presently returns with a
flock of birds — ravens, crows, kites, hawks, and the like. The pelican
is compeUed to flee, but soon returns in the form of a mighty phoenix,
puts the griffin and its company to flight, follows thera, and dashes
them without mercy to the ground. It is an almost prophetic glimpse
of the apparent defeat of the Lollard moveraent, foUowed by the
' P. 147, 'The law of Christ is charity;" = P. 136, compare 142, 144.
130, ' Christ did not, by the works of the 3 See above, ch. I. , } 7, p. 70.
law, justify the believers in Him, but by * The pelican was a favourite mediaeval
grace justified them from their sins. And emblera of redemption by sacrifice ; the
so did Christ fulfil that by grace which fable being that the mother bird feeds her
the law could not by justice ; ' 173, ' By young with her own blood. ,,.,,,
the faith which we have in Christ, be- 5 The poem is prmted in Wright s
lieving Him to be the true Son of God, .Political Poems and Songs relating to
who came down from heaven to redeem English History (Rolls Series), vol, i,,
us from sin, we are justified from sin, and pp. 304-346.
so do live by Him who is the true bread
and meat of the soul.'
30

450 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.x. §3
phcenix-like reappearance of its spirit as the aniraating power of the
Reforraation. Piers Plowman's Creed is another popular poera of the same
period, possibly by the sarae author ; the argument of it being that
•Piers pio-w- ^^ a man seeking truth, who visits the four Mendicant
.man's Creed.' Qrders in succession, and, being repeUed by^their pride
and other vices, learns at last the evangelical doctrine from a plough
man's lips.'
3. — Position of the Lollards at the close of the Century.
Archbishop Courtenay, the determined opponent of Wycliffe and
his foUowelrs, died in 1396, and Thomas Arundel was promoted from
Arundel York to Canterbury. One of the first raeasures of this
Archbishop, prelate was to convene a provincial synod (February,
1397) to deal especiaUy with Wycliffe's doctrines as raaintained in
the Trialogus. Eighteen articles were selected for conderanation, of
which the first three refer to the Eucharist, the fourth to baptism —
especially infant baptism — the fifth to confirmation, the
¦w-yciiffe's sixth to priestly ordination and the different grades of
the hierarchy, the seventh, eighth, and ninth to matri
mony, the fourteenth to extreme unction. The ' Seven Sacra
ments ' of the Romish Church were thus treated in succession, that
of penance only excepted. The remaining articles refer partly to
ecclesiastical offices and possessions, partly to worldly government,
as conditioned by the character of its possessors, and partly to the
foundations of belief as resting on the absolute authority of the Scrip
tures, and to the doctrine of necessity. The opinions of WycUffe on
.all these points were condemned, and the task of a formal, scientific
™. J, ;>.- refutation was coraraitted to a learned Franciscan,
vvoodiord s
Tractate. WiUiara Woodford, an old opponent of Wycliffe. His
treatise was entitled, A Tractate against the Errors of Wycliffe in tlie
Trialogus.'' Such scholastic dissertations were but the prelude to raore active
proceedings. As yet the courts had taken no measures against the
Wycliffites. We find, indeed, that so early as 1387 Parliament had
' Published by Pickering, London, 1836 ; pamphlet. Guil. Widefordi contra Jo-
and in the Early English Text Society hannem Wiclephum, sacrae fidei pestem
series : Appendix to ' The Vision of Piers et haeresiarcham, doctissimae et plane
Plowman.' - CathoUcae decertationes, quibus miserum
= This treatise was first printed in the hunc hominem ita confutat, prosternit,
collection of the Jesuit Ortuin Gratius, eviscerat, ac in omnibus vincit, ut ex illis
Fasciculus rerum, etc. , 1333; re-edited by ipsis omnes ferme nostri temporis liaereti-
Brown, i6go. See above, p. 4. Gratius cos mutos effeceris! (Index to the ed. of
is very emphatic in his description of the 1333. )

i385-i399.1 PERSECUTION OF THE LOLLARDS. 451
issued a mandate against the Lollards, and that in 1388 a royal
ordinance was issued to the town and county of Nottingham, in which
the king, assuming the position of ' defender of the Catholic faith,' '¦
commanded his subjects to repress the errors of Wycliffe ; Active mea-
but there seems to have been no result of all this until I'^atas'tT?
1396, when four men from Nottingham = were com- LoUards.
pelled to recant the Lollard doctrines before the king's court of
justice. But the attention of aU parties vvas now turned to the impending
revolution. In 1397 the archbishop was banished the kingdom on
the charge of complicity with his brother, the Eari of T^ ¦., .
. . . . 1 . • Deposition of
Arundel, in treasonable designs ; and Roger of AValden Richard 11.
vvas installed at Canterbury. In 1399 Richard was deposed, and the
Duke of Lancaster, the son of John of Gaunt, ascended the throne
under the titie of Henry the Fourth. 3 Thoraas Arundel was rein
stated, and the persecution of the Lollards entered upon a new
phase. It was to the hierarchy that the House of Lancaster owed its
elevation to the throne, and the king raust repay their assistance by
the unscrupulous and sanguinary repression of their foes.
4. — Persecution of the Lollards.
The king and the hierarchy were now at one; and for the first
time in the history of England the sword of secular authority was
<drawn for the suppression of reUgious opinion. Bloody was the
persecution that followed ; and the ' red rose ' of Lancaster, in raore
:senses than one, proved the appropriateness of the epithet. John of
Lancaster had been AVycliffe's friend-; his son, Henry of Lancaster,
becoraes the first and bitterest persecutor of Wycliffe's disciples.
A royal message was sent to the first Convocation summoned in
the new reign (October 6, 1399), to the effect that the king would
remit the exactions on ecclesiastical personages which ^jj^^ j^j^^ ^^^^
his predecessors had been wont to raake : he would convooation.
always maintain the rights and freedom of the Church, and employ
force, if needful, against all heresies and heretics : he only asked an
¦interest in the prayers of the clergy. To this message Thomas
Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, returned a grateful reply in the
name of his brethren, presenting at the same time a memorial setting
-forth the offensive activity of the LoUards, and praying for strong
measures against them. In reply, an Act was passed which gave the
' Wilkins, CoK«&, IIL, 204. Henry of Lancaster, Sept. 30, 1399:
= lb., p. 223. murdered in Pontefract Castle, February
3 Richard II. deposed in favour of 14, 1400.

452 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE, , [ch. x, § ,»
bishops power to arrest all persons comraonly reported to be heretics
to require them to clear themselves of the charge, and, should they
fail to do this, to punish them with imprisonment.
This enactment, however, was not strong enough for the emer
gency, and in the next year the infaraous Act de haeretico comburenda
was placed upon the statute book of England. By this
statute for the , , . , ^ , . ? ^ ,
, bumiQg of law bishops were as before erapowered to arrest and
iraprison; but authority was further given them to hand
over persistent or relapsed heretics to the civil officers, ' to be by
them burned on a high place before the people.' ^
Such was the first step in English legislation in that war to the
death with so-called heresy, in which the secular and ecclesiastical
authorities for many generations joined fraternal hands. Nor was
the statute suffered for an instant to reraain a dead letter. In the
sarae year proceedings against two of the Lollard party were insti
tuted before Convocation. Both were in priests' orders. One of
them was the well-known John Purvey, the other was named
William Sawtree.
This Sawtree had been parish priest at St. Margaret's, Lynn, where
he was charged with heresy in 1399, and made a recantation before
Spencer, Bishop of Norwich. He was now priest of
Sa-wtree the _,_,.,., , , i,,. A
first Lollard St. Osyth in London, and was charged before Convoca
tion with relapse. His first hearing was on February 1 2,
1401. He then asked time to consider his defence, which was
granted. At the second meeting, February i8th, he put in a written
answer on the points in dispute, in which he attempted to vindicate
his position by subtle scholastic distinctions, but conceded nothing.*
This led to a two days' discussion chiefly on the Eucharist, as the
result of which the archbishop in the name of Convocation pro
nounced Sawtree a heretic, while on account of his former recan
tation he was adjudged relapsed and incorrigible. On February
24, being conducted to St. Paul's, he was soleranly degraded
frora office, viz., divested of his priestly robes and deprived of the
tonsure ; being then handed to the king's raarshal. The royal
mandate to the mayor and sheriffs of London commanding execu
tion vvas issued on February 21, and early in March Sawtree vvas
burned in Smithfield before a crowd of spectators. Sawtree was
the first of the Lollard martyrs. A fire is always easier to kindle
than to extinguish. When once the spark is kindled the flame of
' Wilkins, Concilia, IIL, 234. Personas = The document is given in Fo.\e, in.'.
illas coram populo in eminenti loco com- p. 223.
bur i faciant, ut hujusmodi punitio metum
incutiat mentibus aliquorum.

540I-1410.] PERSECUTION OF THE LOLLARDS. 453
fanaticism burns high in the rainds of men and seeks continually
new victims.
Meantime John PuiTey had escaped by recantation. The auto dafe
of Sawtree appears to have made a terrible impression upon him, and to
have shaken his resolution. On March 5, before the Purvey
archbishop's coraraissioners, the Bishops of Bangor and recants.
Rochester, accompanied by several doctors, he recanted his opinions
and submitted himself unconditionally to the archbishop and his
council. On the next day, Sunday, March 6, he publicly read his re
cantation in English at St. Paul's Cross, enumerating seven aUeged
errors, which he publicly renounced.' It should be added as at
least probable that Purvey, whose fall spread grief and consternation
among the Lollards, subsequently returned to the evangelical party,
as in the year 142 1 he was again proceeded against by Archbishop
Chichely. Frora 1 40 1 the work of the new Inquisition went rapidly forward.
Inquiries against the Lollards were instituted in London and the
neighbouring diocese of Rochester, in Oxford, Notting- spread of
hara, AA'igston, near Leicester, throughout the diocese persecution.
of Norwich, and in the AVest of England as far as Bristol and its
neighbourhood, as well as in AVorcester. It was from this last-men
tioned diocese that the next victim was taken. John John Badby.
Badby, tailor, of Evesham, was arraigned before the
bishop in 1409 on the charge of holding heresies concerning the
Lord's Supper, and on March i, 1410, vvas further exarained before
a coraraission in London, Arundel again presiding. The tailor, re
maining firra in the rough coraraon-sense way in which he repudiated
transubstantiation, was conderaned as a persistent and incorrigible
heretic, and was handed over on March 5 to the civil authorities with
the hypocritical request that he raight not be put to death ! On the
same day, however, at the king's warrant, hurriedly prepared, Badby
was led out to Smithfield, and chained in a cask which was set upon
a heap of wood. At that moment the Prince of Wales (' Prince
Hal '), afterwards Henry the Fifth, approached the spot. Touched
with compassion, he entreated the poor raan to recant ; but in vain.
The Prior of St. Bartholomew now advanced in procession with the
host, preceded by twelve torch-bearers, and offered it to the martyr's
view. Badby exclaimed, ' It is consecrated bread, and not the
body of God' At a signal, the cask was overturned and the pile
ignited. When Badby felt the flame he cried out, Mercy I (an
appeal to God, and not to man !) The Prince was shocked, ordered
I See Foxe, liL, 286.

454 , SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. ^. § +
the fire to be extinguished and the cask to be removed. For the
second time pardon was offered, with promises of money and favour on
condition of recantation, but stoutly refused ; and Badby, thrust once
raore into the cask, endured his fate with unconquered fortitude.
When such scenes could be enacted, it was scarcely wonderful
that many persons were terrified into recantation. Others
other con- , .,,, ,-.,. . .
feasors and languished and died in prison. But several, in raany
mar yrs. pjacgg^ suffered on the funeral pile. Nor was this the
case in England only : in Scotland one John Resby, a Wyclifiite from
England, vvas burned in the year 1407.^
Only one man need be further mentioned under this section.
WUliam Thorpe ^ had been for twenty years an itinerant preacher,
¦William partly in the North of England, partiy in other districts,
Thorpe. when in the year 1397 he was apprehended in London,
but vvas set free on the banishment of Archbishop Arundel, In
1407 he was again seized and coraraitted at first to prison at
Shrewsbury. Afterwards the archbishop sent for him to his palace
in Saltwood, Kent, to interrogate him in person. The examinations
were repeated and protracted, sometimes conducted in an inquisi
torial and hostile tone, sometiraes in a mild and almost confidential,
manner. His friends visited hira frora time to time, and received
from him written memoranda of the interviews with the archbishop,
which they carefully kept. In the sixteenth century these most in
teresting records were pubUshed by William Tyndale, the Bible trans
lator, and becarae a favourite manual with the earlier adherents of
the Reforraation. The book was prohibited 3 with others by royal
proclamation in 1530, but has been preserved entire by John Foxe,
both in Latin and English, and may be read in his Acts and Monu
ments. ''
This work is in the highest degree attractive, not only on
account of the instructive matter contained in it, but also because
of the naive simplicity of the way in which the subject
Character of . . , , _
Thorpe's IS treated. The reader is amazed at the presence of
rep es. niin(j and calmness, the clearness, warmth, and decision
with which the prisoner answers the questions put to him in various
tones by the archbishop ; and it is irapossible to help admiring
greatly the deep spiritual gladness which animated this steadfast
witness for Christ. In consequence of Thorpe's obstinate refusal
to submit to the authority of the Church, and his reiterated assertion
' ^ieHae-nngton, History of tlie Church 3 Under the title : The Examination of
of Scotland (2n6. ei., 1842), p. 30. William Thorpe. Wilkins, iiL, 739.
= See Thorpe's testimony to Wycliffe ¦• Pratt and Stoughton's Edition, vol.
above, p. 191. in., pp. 230-282.

1406-1414.1 PROCEEDINGS AT OXFORD. 455
that he would only follow the teaching that he found in the Word of
God, the archbishop at last delivered him up. The
history of his fate is unknown to us. He could hardly ^^ ^'''^'
have been allowed to go free, and yet there is no evidence that he
was burned as a persistent heretic. It is most probable that he was
secretly despatched by hunger or strangling in prison. We know
that he dreaded the latter as his probable fate, for in his will, which
is also preserved to us, he makes this declaration: 'To witness to
the truth of my convictions I am ready in humUity and joy to suffer
my poor body to be persecuted where God wills, and by whom, and
when, and for how long a time, and to endure whatever punishraent
and death that He sees fit, to the honour of His narae, and to the
building up of the Church.' He finally requests all beUevers who
read or Usten to his testimony to pray for him — 'that grace,
wisdom, and knowledge may be given to rae from above, so that
I may end my life in the Truth for which I have witnessed, and in its
cause, in true faith, steadfast hope, and perfect love.'
5- — Proceedings at Oxford, 1406- 1414.
There has come down to us, under date October 6, 1406, a
reraarkable document, purporting to be the testimony
r t TT . . r ^¦\ r ^ • Declaration hi
Ot the University of Oxford concerning AVycliffe, occa- favour of
sioned by the report, then current in Bohemia and other ^° *'
European countries, that the English prelates had pronounced him a
heretic, and ordered his bones to be exhumed and burned.
'The conduct of Wycliffe,' it is said in this document,' 'even from
tender years to the time of his death, was so praiseworthy and
honourable that never at any tirae was there any offence given by
hira, nor was he aspersed with any note of infamy or sinister suspicion;
but in answering, reading, preaching, determining, he behaved him
self laudably ; and, as a valiant champion of the truth, he vanquished by,
proofs from Holy Scripture and according to the Catholic faith those
who by wilful beggary blasphemed the religion of Christ. Never was
this Doctor convicted of heretical pravity, nor was he delivered by
' The Latin original is printed in Wil- cum vacate testimonium ubique adesse non
kins. Concilia, IIL, p. 302. Huss and potest, suppleat calamus per scripturam ;
Jerome of Prague, Historia et Monu- hinc est, quod specialis benevolentiae ani-
menta, II. , p. 366 ; Lewis, History of mum ac teneritatis curam super Univer-
Wiclif p. 343 : Hofler, Concilia Pra- sitatis nostrae quondam filio Joanne
gensia (1862), p. 53. After a preamble, Wicleff, sacrae Theologiae Professore
the document reads. Quia etiam sagax secundum morum suorum exigentiam
humanae naturae discretio hominum. cru- possidentes, corde, voce, et Scriptura suas
delitate pensata contra blasphemantes conditiones in vita laudabiles fuisse at-i
altemos insultus, hunc modum referendi, testamur. Then follows the paragraph
et hunc clypeum defensionis instituit, ut, translated above.

45& SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.x.§s
our p'relates to be burned after his burial. For God forbid that our
bishops should have condemned so good and upright a man as a
heretic, who in all the University had not his equal, as they beUeved,
in his writings on logic, philosophy, theology, ethics, and the specula
tive sciences.'
This document was issued in the narae of the chancellor and
regents of the University, and sealed with the University seal, after
' Its genuine- which it was transmitted to Bohemia and other places,
tiess impugned, ^jj^ seems to have been held unquestioned until the
year 141 1, It was then stigmatised by the Convocation of the
Province of Canterbury as literae falsitatis ; and afterwards at the
Council of Constance the allegation was raade that the document
was a forgery by Wycliffe's friends, one Peter Payne ' having clandes
tinely obtained the seal of the University. It raust be observed,
however, that this was not the stateraent of the Convocation. The
phrase eraployed by them appears simply to mean that the contents oi
the paper were false and heretical. Had the Convocation desired to
say that the seal had been abstracted and the paper forged, they
would have adopted different phraseology ; as when in another part of
their proceedings they speak of a spurious register of ordination as
instrumentum pretensum. The idea of forgery seeras altogether an
after-thought. Again, the statement of the Convocation that the
principal members of the University did not take part in the affair,
must be received with caution, as this might really mean only that
the Romish raerabers were outvoted by the Wycliffites. The con-
Eeasonsfor tents of the document are certainly in favour of its
accepting it, genuineness;^ for the spirit which it expresses was
assuredly widely diffused in the Oxford of 1406 araong influential
personages of the University. Convocation itself complains of the
errors prevalent among the leaders. In the year 1408 Archbishop
Arundel, in a visitation of aU the coUeges, declares that 'this Univer
sity, which once was a juicy vine, and brought forth its branches for
the glory of God and the advancement of His Church, now brings
forth wUd grapes ; and so it coraes to pass that the unfruitful doctrines
of the Lollards so increase in the land.' It was hereupon ordained
that the heads of houses should every month carefully ascertain
whether any of their inmates, whether graduates or undergraduates,
'This Payne -was Vice-Principal of St. Neander [Church History, vol. ix. , p. 331,
Edmund's Hall in Oxford, 1410-1413. Clark's Eng. Ed. ) regards the document
He afterwards went to Bohemia, and in as decidedly spurious. ' The seal of the
1433 appeared at the Council of Basle University,' says Neander, 'was much
as delegate of the Hussites ; he died at abused in those days.' Why, then, did
Prague, 1433 (Foxe, vol. iil, p. 814). not the Convocation at once declare the
' It should in fairness be stated that paper to be a forgery?

i4"-^i4i4] PROCEEDINGS AT OXFORD. 457
Jiad asserted or defended any tenets at variance with the doctrines
of the Church. Every offender was to be first warned ;
V ...^ * «-• 1- i T- . . Arundel's com-
11 persisting, ne was to be excommunicated, and to be ex- plants of the
pelled the college and University.' These mandates, it ^'^™""y'
is true, were for a time disregarded, and in 1411 the archbishop
.again visited the University in person to enforce them. His deter
mination proved at length effectual. In 141 2 the principal men in
the University were Papist in belief and reactionary in tone ; the
.governing body transmitted to the archbishop and his suffragans tze/o
hundred and sixty-seven propositions, taken from thirteen treatises of
AVycliffe, which they found erroneous and heretical. Two years later,
rin 1414, just after the accession of King Henry the Fifth, the University
presented a memorial to His Majesty in which it was promised to use
all zeal for the arrest and punishment of the Lollards. So signal was
the reaction. A littie while before the prelates had been compeUed
to put forth great endeavours to bring the University into the track
of orthodoxy ; now the University itself becomes the tool of the
bishops for the work of inquisition ! From this tirae Oxford appears
-to have repudiated the AA''ycliffe party, and to have becorae wedded
to the Papal scholasticism. It was but thirty years after the death of
AA''ycliffe. Thus one of the two sources from which the stream of
LoUard doctrine had issued through the land vvas definitely closed.
From this time must be dated the decline of Oxford. Culture,
scientific reputation, moral influence, seera to have alike Decline of
•deserted the University, and the next hundred years are Oxford.
the most barren in all her annals.

6. — The Lollards in the Reign of Henry V. Lord
Cobham.
Henry Y., as we have seen, was now upon the throne.^ The year
after his accession Archbishop Arundel died, and vvas succeeded by
Henry Chichely. The prelate and the king were, if Henry v. and
j)ossible, more vehement against the Lollards than their ohioheiy.
jpredecessors had been. The ' poor priests ' of Wycliffe and his ira
mediate followers gradually disappeared ; Popish itinerant preachers,
like WiUiam Lindwood, went forth in increasing numbers to oppose
' Wilkins, IIL, 318. The fact of these carrying out the spirit of his famous
-Strong measures being necessary attests Constitutions of 1409 ; for which see Foxe,
the prevalence of the Wycliffite spirit in IIL, pp. 242-248.
the University, and so far sustains the ' Henry V. proclaimed king, March 21,
iprobability of such an expression of good- 1413 ; Henry Chichely installed as Arch-
will to the Reformer himself as is con- bishop of Canterbury, 1414 ; in which
tained in the docuraent of 1406. The year, also, the Council of Constance held
iarchbishop, in these mandates, is but its first sittings.

458 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.x. §6.
the obnoxious sect, who now were compelled to. meet in hidden
places, in retired houses, even in holes and caves. Still they were-
joined by many curates and chaplains, even ordained priests; and
though in a great measure compelled to discontinue their more active-
measures, they raaintained their opinions openly, by way of protest,
when challenged to the test. Wycliffe's Bible translations and tracts.
were largely circulated. In the esteera of the Scriptures, the depre
cation of saint-worship, and the rejection of transubstantiation, these'
confessors remained unshaken. Scattered incidents attest their per
sistency, and show also the extravagances into which they were.
naturally carried in their resistance to prevailing beliefs.
Nor did the opposition to constituted authority confine itself to
matters of belief Disaffection to the governraent often openly de
clared itself, and was oftener suspected. The persecu-
Poli tical .
grounds of tion of the LoUards was based as much on political as on
^ ° ^°"' ecclesiastical grounds. Sirjohn Oldcastle, 'thegoodLord-
Cobham,' ' as he vvas affectionately termed by the poor and simple,
was a firm adherent of the Lollards, whose preachers he welcomed to
his seat at Cowling Castle, in Kent, and refused to surrender to the
command of the authorities. AVhile Henry IV. survived
Iiord Oobham. , , i , . ,-
the brave nobleman was let alone, but on the accession of
Henry V. he was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. ^ He escaped,.
however, almost imraediately, and for a time was concealed in Wales.
Meantime the Lollards began to gather menacingly. They mustered
on a winter's night in St. Giles's Fields, then north-
Bt. Giles's west Of London, 3 hoping that Sir John Oldcastle would
place himself at their head. The king was apprised of
their designs, and ordered the city gates to be closed. The intended
junction ofthe London vvith the country Lollards vvas thus prevented,
and the design rendered abortive. Thirty-nine Lollards were appre
hended, summarUy conderaned, and burned or hanged in St. Giles's.
Fields. The charge was that of traitorously devising the kings-
death, with that of the royal princes and raany of the lords spiritual
and temporal.'* Of the sufferers four names have come down to us :
Sir Roger Acton, a preacher named Beverley, one Browne, a knight,
and a rich Dunstable brewer, AVilliam Murle.
A reward of a thousand marks was now offered for the apprehen
sion of Cobham, but for a time in vain. Other interests occupied.
the public mind, and possibly the search may not have been very
• Sir John Oldcastle became Lord Cob- the name of 'Cobham Tower, ''where he-,
hara on his marriage with Larly Joan, the was imprisoned.
heiress of the title. = January 7, 1414.
" The fact is preserved to this day by. 4 Rymer, Foedera, IX., 89.

I4I4-I417-] LORD COBHAM. 459
Strict. The year 141 5 was the year of Agincourt, and it was not until
the king had returned a conqueror from France that cobham
the proceedings against the Lollards were energetically apprehended.
resumed. At length, in the autumn of 141 7, Cobham was apprehended
in Wales, and carried to London, where he was indicted before Parlia
ment on the charge of being concerned in the proceedings of January,
1414. Being called on for his defence, and knowing
hiraself prejudged by his enemies, he simply replied,
' AVith me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or
of man's judgment ' (i Corinthians iv. 3). He was thereupon sen
tenced to be hanged as a traitor and burned as a heretic. This
sentence was literally carried out ; he was placed upon a sledge, as if
he had been a traitor of the deepest dye, and was thus dragged
through the town to St. Giles's Fields. On arriving there he was
taken down from the sledge, and, imraediately falling on his knees,
he began to pray to God for the forgiveness of his enemies. His
prayer ended, he rose, and, addressing the asserabled raultitude,
warned them to obey God's commands written down in the Bible,
and always to shun such teaching as they saw to be con- ^jg ^ruei
trary to the life and example of Christ. He was then death.
suspended between two gallows by chains, and the funeral pUe was
kindled beneath him, so that he was slowly burned. So long as life
remained in him he continued to praise God and commend his soul
to His divine keeping. Thus perished the raost erainent man among,
the AA^ycliffites, both in social position and in raoral worth and
Christian courage, a martyr of blameless steadfastness and fearless
ness. The accusation of high treason had not the least foundation :
in fact, his execution was nothing less than a murder.
With the death of this illustrious victim, the tendency of the Lol
lards to become a political party seems to have corae to an end.
From that time forward we discern them siraply as a Accession of
sect, and the persecution, which still continued, vvas Henry vi.
entirely religious. Inquisition into their opinions and imprisonments
continued aU through this reign; but in 1422 Henry died, in the
prirae of life and at the surarait of his povver. The regents for
the young Henry the Sixth, John of Bedford and Huraphry of
Gloucester, had no desire to raeddle vvith ecclesiastical affairs, and
until 1428 persecutions seera wholly to have ceased. In that year
Henry of Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, a legitiraatised son of John
of Gaunt, and therefore great-uncle to the youthful king, was raised
to the rank of Cardinal, and charged to lead a crusade against the
Bohemian Hussites. The crusade failed, but the attention of the

46o SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch.*.§7
authorities was again directed to the Lollards ; and the Pope's nuncio
in England, announcing the ' oppression of the orthodox by the
beretics ' in Boheraia, was urgent on the English prelates to take
further measures against the Lollards. It was at this
persecuting time, as will be shown in a concluding section, that the
measures. ,- i ^-, ., r j-i . ,
sentence of the Council of Constance on Wycliffe s
remains was carried out. The Archbishop of Canterbury, at a
meeting of the Provincial Convocation, declared that instant raeasures
must be taken against the heretics, who were increasing in number
daUy. Several LoUards were accordingly imprisoned ; some died
martyrs' deaths, and the persecution raged until 143 1, when the
reverses in France,' the growing weakness of the royal house,
and the beginnings ofthe long, dreary struggle between the Houses of
¦Vork and Lancaster, turned the raind of the nation away from"
ecclesiastical channels; and henceforth the Lollards
Maintenance , , . , , . ,
of the LoUard have no history^ save the record of earnest, obscure
es imony. j^jg^^ mostly poor, often illiterate, who yet prized the
teachings of Holy Scripture, silently testifying against the corruptions
of the professed Church of Christ, and so preparing the raind and
heart of the people to welcome the Reformation of the sixteenth
¦century. 7. — W^ycliffe, Huss, and the Council of Constance.
We must now for a raoraent go back to the year 1382, and to the
marriage of King Richard II. vvith the Princess Anne of Boheihia, a
devout and godly lady, and a favourer of Lollard doctrines. She
' It was in 1431 that Joan of Arc was or, as he calls them, 'governances,' of
put to death. the clergy — ' the use of images, the going
= The tlieological ground taken by their on pilgrimage, the holding of landed pos-
ppponents is most effectually set forth in sessions by the clergy, the retention of
two treatises, a knowledge of which is the various ranks of tlie hierarchy, the
necessary to all who would understand fraraing of ecclesiastical laws by papal
the great controversy of the time. i. and episcopal authority, and the institu-
Thomas Walden's Doctrinale Antiqui- tion of the religious orders.' Five other
iatum Fidei Ecclesiae Catliolicae, about points are mentioned, but not discussed
1427. (This Walden was the compiler of in this treatise : ' the invocation of the
the Fasciculi Zizaniorum, so often quoted saints and priestly intercession, the cost-
in these pages.) He was Provincial of liness of ecclesiastical decorations, the
.the Carmelites in England, and confessor ceremonies of the mass, and the sacra-
of Henry -V. He attended the Councils ments generally, the taking of oaths, and
of Pisa and Constance, accompanied the lawfulness of war and capital punish-
Henry -yi. to France, and died at Rouen, ment.' Pecock's treatise — published in
1430. 2. Pecock's -ffc/y-^ior, about 1449. the Rolls Series, two vols., edited by
' The design of it is to defend the clergy Churchill Babington, B.D., i860 — is
from what he conceived to be the unjust invaluable as shoVving the questions on
.aspersions of raany of the " lay party " or which the Lollard controversy turned
"Bible -raen" (Lollards), and to show in the middle of the fifteenth century,
that the practices for which the former with the arguments of the Lollards them-
(were blamed admitted of a satisfactory selves, and the answers of their fairest and
vindication,' He vindicates six practices, most candid opponents.

1369-1403.] yOHN HUSS. 461
died in 1394. AVycliffe tells of her that .she possessed the Scrip
tures not only in the Latin Vulgate, but in the Boheraian England and
and German languages. Many of her countrymen Bohemia.
became connected in various capacities with the English court, and
so were conversant vvith the doctrines of AVycliffe. Students from the
University of Prague repaired to Oxford, and took back with them
copies of Wycliffe's books and tracts. Among these students Jerome
of Prague became illustrious ; but it is probable that others had pre
ceded hira, even so early as 1390, since Huss avowed, in his Treatise
against Stokes, 1411, that he had known the writings of Wycliffe for
twenty years. The last students known, to have come from Prague
to Oxford were Nicholas Faulfisch and George of Knienitz, who in
1407 revised AA'ycliffe's Treatise Of the Truth of Holy Scripture.
John Huss himself vvas born in 1369 ; he studied at the University
of Prague, where he graduated as Bachelor of Arts, 1393, and Master
of Arts, i^q6. He afterwards became Bachelor of _
.1.1 ,- -i^ T John Huss.
Divinity, but never attained the degree of Doctor. In
1398 he began to lecture, and in October, 1402, was made Rector of
the University — a post which he retained until April, 1403. He
seems to have lectured on text-books by masters of Prague, Paris,
and Oxford ; and as the copy of AVycliffe's Five Philosophical Treatises
preserved at Stockholm is by Huss — completed in 1398 — it is prob
able that he used these for at least his earlier lectures. The MS. is
said to be arranged after the form used at that time by Bachelors in
Arts and Theology.
In the year 1402 Huss also becarae curate, or select preacher, of
Bethlehera Chapel, in Prague, on the presentation of John of MiiU-
heim. His duty was to preach in the Bohemian lan- ^^ ^^^
miaee • and in preparing hiraself for this work Huss was reformation
06 J r r o ,,,,.,..• r movements.
led to Study the Scriptures and the theological writings of
Wycliffe. These raade hira eager for reforra ; and with characteristic
simphcity he sought the co-operation of his ecclesiastical superiors.
A series of disputations in the University ensued with regard to
Wycliffe's principles, the first being held May 28, 1403. Certain
opinions of Wycliffe, including the twenty-four conderaned at Black
friars in 1382,' with twenty-one others, were condemned and for
bidden to be propounded in future. Huss, however, persisted in
lecturing, and defended these forty-five theses, when fairiy interpreted.
A statute was in consequence passed, forbidding bachelors to lecture
at aU on the Trialogus or De Eucharistia, or to discuss the doctrineg.
and the writings of Wycliffe. ' See above, pp. 3S1-383.

462 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. x. § 7
The Archbishop of Prague, Sbynjek by name, who was installed
in 1403, appointed Huss preacher to the Synod, which gave the bold
Reformer repeated opportunity for protesting against prevalent errors
and superstitions. His words were at first received with approval ;
in Bethlehem Chapel, where he still officiated, crowds of all classes
.attended his ministrations ; but in 1408 the archbishop's favour was
withdrawn, and Huss hencefortii had to fight the battie unfriended
by dignitaries in Church or State.
The ambitious king, Wenceslaus, bent on becoming Emperor,
feared that Wycliffe's doctrines might stand in his way; yet neither
Huss nor his friend Jerome was seized. The controversy
German and .,,,-,. . "^ ,. , , . , . , .
Bohemian in the University was complicated by national jealousies,
the Germans and Bohemians taking opposite sides in
the question between the rival popes. At length the former were
-outvoted, and left the University.' Huss was again chosen rector
(1409). But the archbishop, now his declared enemy, succeeded in
rousing the Pope (Alexander V.) to action. Papal bulls were issued,
March 9, 1409, authorising four Doctors of Theology and four of
Canonical Law to make inquiry into the alleged heresy, vvith a view
to its suppression, demanding the surrender of Wycliffe's books, and
also forbidding preaching in unconsecrated places (an attack upon
'the Bethlehera Chapel). Huss personally brought before this com
mission of inquiry what books of AVycliffe he possessed ; others
followed his example. Two hundred volumes, it is said, were burned
¦(July 16, 1409), and Huss and his followers were excommunicated.
Great uproar arose in consequence, Huss being still very popular.
He openly defended Wycliffe in his University lectures, and continued
to preach stirring sermons in Bethlehera Chapel.
The Pope Alexander died in 1410, and no time was lost by his
successor, John XXIII., in renewing proceedings against Huss. To
the Papal envoys, however, who came to Prague, the king, queen,
and nobles deplored Alexander's proceedings in regard to the
Wycliffite teachings, as well as in the prohibition of preaching, and
begged a reversal of the sentence ; but the Pope and archbishop
were firra. New proceedings were instituted against Huss and his
coadjutors ; the court and hierarchy becoming more openly divided.
At this juncture the archbishop died (141 1), and the proceedings
were interrupted for a while.
A treatise written at this tirae by one Stephen, a learned Carthusian
¦prior of Dolan, near Olmiitz, entitled The Marrow of Wheat, or
' They founded the University of Leipzig as a consequence of this secession.

T[4".i4i-i.l . yOHN HUSS. 463
Anti- Wiclif^ describes how the doctrines of the English" Reformer
had spread through Boheraia and gained favour among Stephen's
all classes of the people. The author attacks WycUffe ' Anti--wioiif.'
personally, rather than his followers ; and the work is most graphic,
showing clearly how from 1408 to 141 1 Wycliffism was the cause of
the stirring of spirit which prevailed throughout Bohemia.
The excitement of public feeling was stimulated by the attitude
of Huss in relation to a crusade now proclaimed against King
Ladislaus of Naples, a partisan of the 'anti-pope,' Gregory ^ ^ew
XII. In the ground taken by the Bohemian Reformer crusade.
there are many points of resemblance to the arguments by which
AA'ycliffe opposed the crusade projected by Bishop Spencer of
Norwich.^ The people of Prague responded to the Reformer's
appeal, and burned the bulls relating to crusade, as if in answer to
the burning of AVycliffe's books two years before ! Three young
men concerned in the tumult were apprehended and put to death.
The populace regarded thera as raartyrs ; with Huss's concurrence,
their bodies were interred as those of martyrs in the Bethlehera
Chapel, which their enemies were reduced to calling, in ridicule, ' The
Chapel of the Three Saints.'
In the meantime the theological faculty of the University declared
once more against Huss, reviving the condemnation of AVycliffe's
'' forty-five heresies,' and adding six of Huss's own to the .
number. The king's interference was petitioned to for- hubs
. . - /- 1 • J condemned.
bid the promulgation of these doctrines, and to forbid
Huss to preach. To the former request Wenceslaus consented, the
latter he refused. The clergy appealed to Pope John XXIII., who
deputed one Peter of St. Angelo, Cardinal-deacon, to proceed against
Huss. Twenty days were given to the Reforraer in which to recant.
In the event of refusal he was to be treated after that tirae as an
outcast ; aU believers were exhorted to apprehend hira, and to raze
Bethlehem Chapel to the ground. Plis friends resisted, and in con
sequence were debarred from the rites of the Church. Such tumult
arose that the king himself entreated Huss to rethe frora the scene.
He consented, and in December, 1412, went into voluntary exUe,
' Weizenmark, oder Anti- Wikleff. = See above, p. 408. [' The decla-
The book was printed by Bernhard Pez, rations of Huss moved entirely within the
(d I73>;) in his Thesaurus Anecdotorum tracks of Wichf.' Loserth, Wiclif and
Novissimus, vol. IV., part 2, pp. 130-359- ^u^. Eng. trans , p. 140 (1884). Loserth
The treatise is in four divisions— the first adds that ra the address deUvered by
and third on the Sacrament of the Altar ; Huss on the crusade, June 7, 1412, all
the second on the constitution of the the arguments, down to the details, are
Church, especially in relation to the mo- adopted with verbal fidehty from different
nastic and mendicant orders ; the third on tractates of Wichf. 'J
the Romish primacy and Church property.

464 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch, x. § 7-
after he had published a paper appealing to Christ as the Judge
of all. A synod was held in Prague with a view to settle the disputes,
but in vain. Meanwhile Huss in his retirement continued to preach
and write with indefatigable zeal, in his Latin works making great
and constant use of Wycliffe's."^ The Pope meantime had con
vened a ' general council ' in Rome, hoping to establish his authority
against that of his rival, but in vain. The councU, however, again
condemned sundry writings of Wycliffe, as the Dialogus, Trialogus,
and others, as containing heresies. All bishops were commanded to
search out and burn these books. Any one undertaking to defend
his memory was to present himself before the Pope within nine
months. Nothing, however, came of these proceedings. All attention
was concentrated on the approaching Council at Constance.
The Council was sumraoned by John XXIII., at the instance,
chiefly, of Sigismund, King of Hungary and Rome. Its great object
Council of ^vas to Consolidate the Papacy and to end the schism.
Constance, j-q^ there were now two anti-popes, Benedict XIIL, at
Avignon, and Gregory XIL, at Rimini. Matters of doctrine were
also to be considered, and heresies to be extirpated. Early in the
course of the discussions the Pope, being charged with impiety and
profaneness, fled to Schaffhausen — a practical abdication, which,
however, did not take effect until a year afterwards. = The subsequent
proceedings of the council, therefore, up to the point at which our
history ends, were conducted without a Pope, the council asserting
its own supreme authority. King Sigismund prevailed on Huss to
attend the council, on the promise of a safe conduct and of a fair
and open hearing. Probably that monarch believed and expected
that Huss would prove himself orthodox.
"Very early in the sessions of the assembly the doctrines of AVycliffe
were taken into consideration. The ' forty-five articles ' were con
demned as heresies. Two hundred and sixty raore had
¦Wycliffe's forty-flve been industriously gathered from his writings,^ but the
council seeras not to have had patience to hear them
all. On May 4, 1415, at the eighth full session of the council, the
EngUsh Reformer himself was soleranly declared 'the
Sentence on .
¦WycUffe's leader of heresy in that age.' ¦* His books were ordered
to be burned, and his reraains to be disinterred from
their grave at Lutterworth and reraoved frora consecrated ground, ' if
• [See the parallel passages in Loserth, own accord ; Martin 'V. was elected iii
Wiclif and Hus (Eng. trans., 1884), 1417.
hooYii. , pasdm.'\ 3 The whole 260' are given by Ortuin
^ John XXIII. was at length formally Gratius, J^ajc. rer. expet. ed. 1333, p. I33>
deposed by the council, also Benedict 4 Nostris temporibus vetus ille. . . ¦ Nos-
XIII. Gregory XII. abdicated of his tris nova cerlamina suscitavit, quorum dux-

1-4IS.] TRIAL AND SENTENCE OF HUSS. 465
they can be distinguished frora the bones of the faithful.' The
reason of this proceeding was, of course, that he had died in
excommunication !
Huss himself, vvho had in the meantime been imprisoned, was
summoned to appear before the council on the sth of June, the
hearing being continued on the 7 th and 8th, Thirty- ^^lai of
nine articles were produced against him : twenty-six ^"°°'
taken from his book On the Church, seven from his controversy
with Dr. Palecz, and six from his reply to Stanislaus. These two
were leading doctors of the Prague University, vvho had been com
missioned in 1413 to point out the 'erroneous doctrines' of the
Heforraer. Huss stood his ground bravely, explaining where he had
been misunderstood, and defending what he had before raaintained.
On his Church doctrine and the Papacy he is especially decided.
' The Church was governed infinitely better,' he said, ' in the time of
the apostles than now. AVhat can hinder Jesus Christ from govern
ing it by His true disciples ? ' Referring to the absence of the Pope,
he adds, 'Though, I say, the Church has no head at present, yet
Jesus Christ ceaseth not to govern it.' Being required to recant these
articles en masse, Huss implored the council, for God's sake, not to
impute to hira doctrines that he had never held. For never — God
was his witness — had he believed or taught that the sacred elements
¦ of the Eucharist after consecration remained material bread.
'Opinions, he added, that he had never held he could not recant.
Any errors that he had really maintained he vvas ready to renounce
if taught better. In regard to further aUegations he boldly vindicated
his conduct. Charged with having publicly read the letter frora the
University of Oxford in favour of AVycliffe,' he owned that he had done
: so, adding that it bore the University seal. Another letter frora the
University was then produced by the English delegates, in which
more than two hundred articles from the writings of
. . Sentence.
Wycliffe were sent up to the council for condemnation.
In fact, all through these proceedings the name of AVycUffe is ever
¦on the lips of Huss's enemies.^
The fate of the Reforraer vvas now sealed. In vain was the safe-
conduct of Sigisraund pleaded. Huss must die. On June 24th his
princeps exhibit quondam Johannes Wic- indeed for the great part with verbal
' leff pseudo-Christianus, etc. Von der fidehty, are to be traced back to Wychffe ;
Hardt Concil., Const., vol. IV., p. 99. so that John Stokes was entirely m the
Comp. L'Enfant's Hist., vol. i., p. 231, right when he made the remark that i¥z«j
Eng trans need not boast of these doctrines as his own
' See above, p. 433. property, inasmuch as they belong demon-
= Of the 39 articles which were sub- strably to Wiclif, Loserth, p. 174.
, mitted to the council, almost all, and 31

466 SUCCESSORS OF WYCLIFFE. [ch. x. § 7,
writings were burned ; on July 6th he hiraself was sentenced and
hurried to the stake. On the showing of his very eneraies, the
sentence was iniquitous. Huss did not reject transubstantiation.
The two pioneers of Reforraation, AVycliffe and Huss, were to
each other as father and son, or rather as master and disciple, i. Both
acknowledge the Scriptures as the standard. Wycliffe
Huss discovered this truth, Huss asserted it. On the other
hand, Wycliffe refuses to hear the teaching of the
Church ; Huss accepts it as interpreting Scripture. 2. Both call the
Church 'the assembly of the elect,' Wycliffe connects this idea
with his views of Divine things, of the world and worldly kingdoms,
of the sin-world and spirit-world. He also takes as his basis the doc-
Their trine of election, not, as Augustine, the fall and universal
doctrines. sinfulness of man. But Huss does not philosophise ;
he holds the doctrine simply. 3. Both believe that Christ alone is
Mediator between God and man. AVycliffe rejects the veneration of
saints and prayers to thera ; Huss never foregoes his trust in their
intercession. 4. As to the Sacraments, Huss does not equal
AVycliffe in sharpness of criticism. He agrees with him concerning
the non-dependence of sacramental efficacy on the character of the
minister, but he does not reject transubstantiation. 5, Concerning
Church Government, Huss agrees with Wycliffe in denying the Divine
right 'of the Pope, but only goes so far as to believe in equality
among bishops, not among aU priests.
Wycliffe was an original genius. Huss is to hira as a planet to
the sun. Wycliffe vvas independent ; Huss yielded raore deference
Their ^'^ public opinion. Both were filled with zeal for God's
character, cause ; but Huss was raore gentle than Wycliffe — not
genial, like Luther, but sensitive and mild. Wycliff'e was active and
energetic ; Huss was much-enduring. AVycliffe was a man of God ;
Huss a cJiild of God. ,
A Hussite Cantionale of 1572, in the Prague University Library,
contains, on page 364, a hyran in the Czech language in memory of
WyoUffe, Huss, Huss. The page is adomed with beautiful miniatures,
and Luther, qj, Qjjg gjjg being three medallions ; the first repre
senting AVycliffe striking a spark, below him Huss kindling the coals,
and Luther at the foot brandishing the lighted torch* Nothing could
more vividly symbolize the mission of the three men than this-
' triology ' of medallions !
The decree of the Council of Constance in regard to Wycliffe's-
bones was carried out after long delay. The Bishop of Lincoln, in
¦whose diocese was the parish of Lutterworth, was at this time Philip

1428.]

WYCLIFFE'S REMAINS EXHUMED.

467

Repyngdon, AA'ycliffe's old comrade ; and he may have shrunk from
being a party to the absurd indignity. As we have
, a J Exhumation of
seen, the command to exhume the remains of the -wyoiiffe's
Reformer was given in May, 1415. In 1420 Repyng
don resigned, and Richard Fleming was appointed to the See. But
it was still eight years before the raandate was enforced, at the
pereraptory bidding of Pope Clement VIII. Fleming weakly yielded,
and the remains of the great Englishman were not only torn from
their resting-place, but burned to ashes and cast into the little river
Swift, that runs by Lutterworth on its course to the Avon. Thus, in
the often quoted words of Thomas Fuller, ' the little river conveyed
AA'ycliffe's remains into the Avon, Avon into the Severn, Severn into
the narrow seas, they to the main ocean. And thus the ashes of
AVycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all
the world over.'

L'JTTERWOETH I THE RiVEK SWIFT.

Note. — The first article in the Appendix to Dr. Lechler's work is on
the treatise, long attributed to Wycliffe, entitled The Last Age of the
Church. As, however, the Wycliffe authorship of this tractate is now
given up by all competent authorities, the question need not be discussed
here. The author was evidently a Franciscan — belonging, says Dr.
Lechler, to an inner circle of that brotherhood, ' vvho, with a zealous
adhesion to the strictest peculiarity of their order, had been brought into
a position of antagonism to the existing Church, and were attached to
¦certain enthusiastic apocalyptical views.'
Another treatise, until recently attributed to Wycliffe, and repeatedly
printed as his, is entitled The Poor Caitiff, and consists of a number of
¦short pieces on the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and other religious
subjects. The work is characterised by devoutness and fervour ; but
Shirley, Arnold, and others have satisfactorily disproved its Wycliffe
authorship. Bishop Pecock attributes it to some unknown Mendicant
Friar.

APPENDIX.

RICHARD FITZRALPH, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH.
THERE are two well-authenticated facts in the earlier life of this re
markable prelate left unmentioned by Professor Lechler, which it is
desirable to bring into view. The first of these is his early connection
with BaUiol College, of which he vvas for some time a Fellow. This fact
is distinctly stated in the following passage of Anthony Wood's History
and Antiquities of the Colleges and Halls in the Uttiversity of Oxford.
Having stated the chief provisions of the original statutes of the college —
those ofthe Lady Devorguilla — he goes on to say, that 'the said statutes
were for divers years kept inviolable, yet not so much but that divers of
the said scholars, about forty years after, having raised some doubts from
them, would not content themselves to study the liberal arts — only such
that vvere performed in the schools of arts by artists according to the
aptest sense of the statutes, but also would ascend to higher faculties,
though prohibited so to do by the then extrinsic masters or procurators,
named Robert de Leycester, D.D., a Minorite, and Nicolas deTingwyke,
Doctor of Physic and Bachelor of Divinity. At length the matter, being
controverted among them a considerable time, vvas in 1325 referred, with
the procurators' consent, to two doctors and two masters that were
formerly Fellows of this house, Drs. Richard de Kamsale and Walter de
Hockstow, vvho then, after both parties were heard, decided this matter
in the Common Hall thus : That no Fellow of this house, whether
Master or Scholar, learn any Faculty, or give his mind to it, either in full
term or vacation, besides the liberal arts that by artists are read and-
practised in the School of Arts.' The college incident here referred to
occurred only about ten years before the coming of Wycliffe to Oxford
and his probable admission to Balliol, and wiU be found in the sequel to
have a bearing upon the course of study through which Wycliffe passed
as a member ofthe University of Oxford. As Fitzralph was undoubtedly a
man of enlightened views, which were considerably in advance of his age,
his connection with Balliol in the first quarter of the fourteenth century,
taken along with Wycliffe's in its second quarter, may sen-e to suggest

470 APPENDIX.
that BaUiol, then one of the youngest of the coUeges ofthe University, vvas
also one of the most free and liberal in its ideas ; and probably, too, the
remarkable impatience of divers of its scholars at being limited to the
studies usually included in arts, and their eager desire to read in ' the
higher faculties,' may be taken to indicate, in these young men, a more
than ordinary amount of intellectual life and ardour. The archives of
BaUiol contain a brief Latin record of the conclusion arrived at by the
four referees to whose decision the question was submitted, and a full
transcript of this record is given in the report of Mr. Riley on the Balliol
Papers to the Royal Comraission on Historical MSS., 1874. In this
document Richard Fitzralph (Ricardiis filius Radulphi) is expressly
mentioned as among the Fellows present and assenting to the decision.
The other fact in the career of Archbishop Fitzralph remaining to
be mentioned is that he, as well as Bradwardine, was for some time
private chaplain to the famous Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham,
who was consecrated December 19, 1333; and died April 14, 1345. This
bishop was the greatest book-lover and collector of his time, and wrote a
work on his favourite subject, entitled Philobiblos. His library was one
of the choicest in England, and passed, after his death, to Durh<am
College, in Oxford. The bishop's high appreciation of two such men as
Fitzralph and Bradwardine may perhaps be taken as an indication of his
own spirit and bearing on the great Church questions of the time. For
the fact of their connection with him as his chaplains, see Introduction
to Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, edited by Sir Thomas Duffus
Hardy, Deputy Keeper ofthe PubUc Records. — P. L.

II.
THE VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN.
Professor Lechler's numerous quotations from Langland's Poem, only a
few of which we have thought it necessary to reproduce for English readers,
are all taken from the text of the two editions brought out by Thomas
Wright in 1842 and 1856. But it may be useful to mention here, for the
benefit of English readers vvho would like to look farther into this really
great moral and religious aUegory of the age of WycUffe, that in 1867,
1S69, and, 1873, three editions ofthe poem, representing the three distinct
forms which its text assumed successively under the author's own hand,
were brought out by Rev. W. W, Skeat, in connection with the Early
English Text Society. This work of Mr. Skeat is characterised by Pro
fessor Henry Morley, in his Library of English Literature, as singularly
thorough. He publishes, with a special introduction, each of its three forms
separately, as obtained from a collation of MSS., with various readings

' PIERS plowman's VISION.' 471
and references to the MSS. containing each form. A fourdi section is
assigned to the General Introduction, Notes, and Index, Besides this
work on the whole Poem, Mr, Skeat has contributed to the Clarendon
Press Series the first seven Passus of 'The Vision of WiUiam concerning
Piers the Plowman, by AA^Uiam Longland, according to the version
revised and enlarged bythe author about A.D. 1377, with Introduction,
Notes, and Glossary,' as an aid to the right study of Eady English in
colleges and schools, and also as a guide to the reading of the whole
Poem by those to whom its English, without such help, would be obscure,
Mr. Skeat's thorough study of the Poem from all points of view makes
him our chief authority in any question concerning it.
Professor ]Moriey himself has given a long and lucid analysis of the
whole Poem, extending to twenty-five pages doubled-columned in the
second department of his Library of English Literature (Cassell's),
devoted to the literature of religion; and his high appreciation, both of
the Poem and the Poet, may be gathered from the closing paragraph of
his extremely painstaking account: — 'So ends the vision, wilh no victory
attained, a world at war, and a renewed cry for the grace of God ; a new
yearning to find Christ, and bring with Him the day when wrongs and
hatred are no more. The fourteenth century yielded no more fervent
expression of the purest Christian labour to bring man to God. Langland
lays fast hold of all the words of Christ, and reads them into a Divine
law of love and duty. The ideal of a Christian life shines through his
poem, while it paints with homely force the evils against which it is
directed. On points of theology he never disputes, but an ill life for him is
an ill life, whether in Pope or peasant. He is a Church Reformer in the
truest sense, seeking to strengthen the hands of the clergy by amendment
of the lives and characters of those who are untrue to their holy calling.'
It is gratifying J:o meet with so hearty a sympathy with aims so evan
gelical and holy as those of 'Piers Plowman,' in a literary critic of our time
of such mark as Professor Morley. Nor can we deny ourselves and our
readers the pleasure of bringing up again into view, side by side vvith the
appreciations of a German scholar and divine who has so much sympathy
with Wycliffe and all his English precursors as our learned author, the
noble words in which the illustrious historian of Latin Christianity has
put on record his estimate of the author of Piers Plowman's vision:
' This extraordinary manifestation of the religion, of the language, of the
social and political notions, of the English character, of the condition of
the passions and feelings of moral and provincial England, commences,
and vvith Chaucer and Wycliffe completes the revelation of this transition
period, the reign of Edward III. Throughout its institutions, language,
religious sentiment, Teutonism is now holding its first initiatory struggle
with Latin Christianity. In Chaucer is heard a voice froi^n the court, from
¦the castle, from the city, from universal England. In Wycliffe is heard a
voice from the University, from the seat of theology and scholastic philo
sophy, from the centre and stronghold of the hierarchy— a voice of revolt
and defiance, taken up and echoed in the pulpit throughout the land

472 APPENDIX.
against the sacerdotal domination. In the Vision of Piers Plowman is
heard a voice from the wild Malvern hills, the voice, it should seem, of an
humble parson, a secular priest. He has passed some years in London, but
his home, his heart, is among the poor rural population of central Mercian
England. . . . The visionary is no disciple, no precursor of WycUffe in
his broader religious views. The Loller of Piers Plowman is no Lollard
— he applies the name as a term of reproach for a lazy, indolent vagrant.
The poet is no dreamy speculative theologian^ie acquiesces, seemingly
with unquestioning faith, in the creed and in the usages of the Church. It
is in his intense, absorbing moral feeling that he is beyond his age. With
him outward observances are but hollow shows, mockeries, hypocrisies^
without the inward power of religion. It is not so much in his keen, cutting
satire on all matters ofthe Church, as his solemn installation of Reason
and Conscience as the guides ofthe self-directed soul, that he is breaking
the yoke of sacerdotal domination. In his constant appeal to the plainest,
simplest scriptural truths, as in themselves the whole of religion, he is a
stern Reformer. The sad, serious satirist, in his contemplation of the world
around him, the wealth ofthe world and the woe, sees no hope but in a new
order of things, in which, if the hierarchy shall subsist, it shall subsist in a
form, with powers, in a spirit totally opposite to that which now rules man
kind. . . . The poet who could address such opinions, though wrapt up in
prudent allegory, to the popular ear, to the ear ofthe peasantry of England ;
the people who could listen with delight to such strains, were far advanced
towards a revolt from Latin Christianity. Truth, true religion was not to be
found with, it vvas not known by Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Clergy, Monks,
Friars. It was to be sought by man himself, by the individual man, by
the poorest man, under the sole guidance of Reason, Conscience, and the
Grace of God, vouchsafed directly, not through any intermediate human,
being or even sacrament, to the self-directing soul. Jf it yet respected
all existing doctrines, it respected them not as resting on traditional or
sacerdotal authority. There is a manifest appeal throughout, an uncon
scious installation of Scripture alone, as the ultimate judge. The test of
everything is a moral and purely religious one — its agreement with holi
ness and charity' (Dean Milman's History of Latin Christiajiit'y, vi.,,
PP- 536, 544 Ed. 1855).

III.
BALLIOL COLLEGE IN WYCLIFFE'S TIME.
I. Illustrations of its Educational Discipline.
By the fundamental statutes of Devorguilla, which were still in full
force in AVycliffe's student days, it was provided as follows : —
' That the scholars speak Latin in common, and whoever acts any
thing against it, shall be rebuked by the principal. If they mend not:

BALLIOL COLLEGE IN WYCLIFFE'S TIME. 473
after twice or thrice admonition, they are to be removed from common
table, and eat by themselves, and be served last. If incorrigible after a
week's space, to be ejected by the procurators.
' Every week a sophism to be disputed and determined in the house
among the scholars by turns, so that they both oppose and ansiverp and
if any sophister profiteth so much that he may deserve in a short time
to determine in the schools, then shall the principal tell him that he
shall first determine at home among his fellows. At the end of every
disputation the principal shall appoint the next day of disputing ; and
shall moderate and correct the loquacious ; and shall appoint the
sophism that is next to be handled, and also the opponent, respondent,,
and determiner, that so they may the better provide themselves for a
disputation' [See AVood's History and Antiquities of the Colleges and
Halls in the University of Oxford, p. 71).
2. Provisions of the Statutes of Sir Philip de Somerville for the study of
Theology by the Fellows.
These statutes came into operation in 1341, and assuming, as a high
probability, that AVycliffe became a student of Arts and Theology at
Balliol on his first coming to Oxford, these provisions throw an inte
resting light upon the probable course of his theological studies. The
statutes empowered the Fellows, now increased from 16 to 22, to elect
six of their number to hold Theological Fellowships, which they
should continue to enjoy till, in due course, they obtained the usual
degrees in Theology ; and the curriculum of study laid out for them was
a singularly liberal one. The men elected ad intendendum sacrae theo
logiae were to become opponents in the theological disputations in the
sixth year of their studies, and were to continue to oppose for one year,
or, if it seemed expedient to the society, during two years. In the ninth
or tenth year they vvere to read the Book of Sentences ; and in the twelfth
or thirteenth year they should be held bound to commence, incipere, in
the same faculty, unless hindered by legitimate and honest cause. If, as
is highly probable, Wycliffe became one of these Theological FeUows of
BaUiol, his whole course of study in Arts and Theology must have ex
tended, allowing four years for his Arts course, to sixteen or seventeen
years, viz., from 1335 to 1351 or 1352.
The utmost care was to be taken in the election of men to these Theo
logical FeUowships ; under the sanction of a solemn oath, none were to
be chosen, ' praeter honestos, castos, pacificos et h.umiles, ad scientiam
habiles ac proficere volentes,' and none who were not already ' Regents
in Arts.' 3. Disputes amo7ig Philosophical University Sects.
The following extract from Wood's History of the Colleges and Halls
in the University of Oxford, under the year 1343, gives us a curious
glimpse of the condition of philosophical parties in the University
at the time when AVycliffe was engaged in the profound study of the
philosophy and theology of his age : —

474 APPENDIX.
' Clashing controversies in disputations and writings among the
learneder sort, especially the followers and disciples of the authors of
the Nominals and Reals (Occam and Scotus), both which sects were
now so fixed in every house of learning that the divisions between the
northern and southern clerks were now as great, if not more, as those
before. Those of the north held, as 'tis said, with Scotus, and those of
the south with Occam, and in all their disputations vvere so violent, that
the peace ofthe University vvas not thereby a little disturbed. . . . Now,
forasmuch as these controversies were frequent in Oxford, causing
thereby great emulation, which commonly ended in blows, the statutes
for the election of the Chancellor were, without doubt, made ; for whereas
about these times great variance fell out in the election of that officer,
some aiming to have him a northern, others a southern man, divers
statutes and injunctions, chiefly reflecting upon such disorders, were, I
say, this year en,acted, of which vvas that concerning two scrutators in the
elections — that is, that one should be a northern, the other a southern
man, lest underhand dealing should be used, and consequently parties
injured.' Wycliffe took side with the Scotists or Realists in these subtle dispu
tations and ' clashing controversies ; ' and it is curious to reflect how much
this philosophical preference may h,ive been owing to the accident of his
having been born a Borealis instead of an Australis. John Duns Scotus
himself was, of course, a north-countryman, and all north-countrymen in
Oxford appear to have belonged to his following. The Balliol scholars in
particular were the natural allies of the great Realist, for they claimed
him to have been a Balliol man before he connected himself with Mer
ton. For, as Savage dryly observes in his Ballio-fergus, ' There is as
much contending for the breeding-place of this rare man as hath been
for the birth of Homer. We conjecture him to have been of this College
of Balliol, inasmuch as he was by county of Northumberland, and of
Duns there, as might be seen not only in Pitsaeus, but before every
volume of his works in MSS. in our library, of the gift of Bishop Gray,
but torn off in the time of the late war ; and for that in Northumberland
vvas the first endowment of our College. He lived anno 1300, which vvas
after DevorguiUa's Statutes, but before those of Sir Philip Somerville,
yet not after the time when it was granted by the Pope that the scholars
might live in the house after they became Masters of Art ; and therefore
he might, for that reason, depart from this to Merton College.'
4. Wycliffes CoUege Conteinporaries.
The following names of learned Fellows of Balliol College in Wycliffe's
ime are given by Savage in his Ballio-fergus ; and we probably discern in
them two of the partners of the Reformer's studies in philosophy and
divinity : —
' William AVilton, professor in his faculty, which could be no. other
than divinity, by the statutes of this house made by Sir Philip de Somer-
vyll, after which he lived here and wrote many things : —

BALLIOL COLLEGE AND CANTERBURY HALL. 475
' Super Priora Aristotelis J Quaestiones dc Anima ; Super Ethica. He
vvas ChanceUor ofthe University in 1373.
' Roger AVhelpdale, feUovv of the house, afterwards Provost of Queen's,
•lastly Bishop of Carlisle, a great mathematician. He wrote many books,
whereof in our College library are there —
"¦ Summula}-um logicalium; De Universalibus ; De Aggregaiis j De
Quanto et Continuop De Compositione Coiitiiiui; De Rogando Deo. He
"lived in the time of Edward III., and was the first who enriched the
library with MSS., besides those of uncertain donation.' —P. L.

IV.
IDENTITY OF JOHN WYCLIFFE THE REFORMER WITH
JOHN AA'YCLIFFE THE WARDEN OF CANTERBURY HALL.
Dr. Lechler has omitted to bring forward a material argument in
•support of the identity of Wycliffe vvith the Warden of Canterbury Hall,
which is supphed by one of the original chronicles of the period, an
omission which may have been owing to the discredit thrown upon the
^authority of the chronicle by Professor Shirley in his Note on the Two
John Wiclifs, appended to the Fasciculi Zizattiorum.
This Chronicle has been given to the world in the series of Chronicles
-and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages,
brought out under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, under the
following title : Chronicon Angliae, ab anno domini 1328, usque ad annum
1388 ; A^ictore Monacho quodam Sancti Albani. Edited by Edward
Maunde Thompson, Assistant Keeper of the MSS. of the British
Museum, 1874.
It is printed from a MS. of the Harleian Collection, No. 3634, written
on vellum towards the close of the fourteenth century, which has hitherto
escaped the notice of historians. The MS. once belonged to Archbishop
Parker, and was lent by him to Foxe, the martyrologist, who several
times refers to it under the title of Chronicon Monachi D. Albani. John
Josceline, the archbishop's secretary, in his Catalogus Historicorum,
described it thus : ' In ea multa continentur de Wicliffo, Papali Schis
mate et de magna Rusticorum rebellione, quae facta fuit per id tempus.'
-'It contains,' says its discoverer and editor, Mr. Thompson, 'an im
portant detailed history of the close of Edward Third's and the beginning
-of Richard Second's reign, which is now printed in its original shape for
the first time, and which has hitherto been considered lost. The former
-existence of a Latin original for the translation used by John Stow
in his Chronicle of England [the same translation printed in the
A7'chaeologid\ has been generaUy admitted by historians. The only
writer who has thrown any doubts upon it is the late Professor Shirley,
in his edition of the Fasciculi Zizaniorum. The translation being one of

476 APPENDIX.
the authorities brought forward in support of a tradition that AVycliffe-
held the AVardenship of Canterbury Hall at Oxford, Mr. Shirley rejects
its testimony on the ground of its being a compilation of the sixteenth
centur>', while admitting, however, that the author had before him.
one, or perhaps two, contemporary authorities which he has indolently
interwoven with his narrative, without changing one even of those-
expressions which most clearly reflect the image of passing events.' AIL
this criticism is, of course, superseded by the facts that we have now
before us the original Latin text of the Chronicoji Angliae in a MS..
dating from the last quarter of the fourteenth century ; and that this was
indisputably the work of a contemporary historian. What, then, is the
testimony of this contemporary of Wycliffe, who evidently shared largely
in all the ecclesiastical passions and prejudices of his time, upon the-
point of the Reformer's connection with Canterbury Hall ? It is contained
in the following passage of his Chronicon .•— -
' Dux (referring to John, Duke of Gaunt) aggregaverat sibi quendam
pseudo-theologum, sive, ut melius eum nominem, venim theomachum,
qui jam a multis annis in scholis, in singulis actis suis contra ecclesiam
oblatraverat, eo quod juste privatus extiterat per archiepiscopiim Can-^
tiiariensetn quodam beneficio, cui injuste incubuerat in Universitate
Oxoniensi situato.' The words of the translation published in the-
Archaeologia are, that 'he was justly deprived by the Archbishopp of
Canterburye from a certayne benefice that he unjustly was incumbent
upon within the cytye of Oxforde.'
The incident, then, in question, in the life of Wycliffe, viz., his short
AVardenship of Canterbury Hall, may now be considered to be put
beyond the range of reasonable doubt. Shirley admitted that 'great.
weight must undoubtedly be allowed to the contemporary statement of
Woodford ; ' to which has now to be added a second contemporary state
ment by the Monk of St. Albans, as it now stands before us cleared of
all the doubts which were thrown upon it by the acute and learned editor
of the Fasciculi Zizatiiorum. — P. L.

ON THE LATE DATE AT WHICH AVYCLIFFE BEGAN,
HIS ATTACKS UPON THE MENDICANT ORDERS.
It is one of the most valuable contributions which Dr. Lechler has-
m,ade to the biography of Wycliffe that he has been able to produce from
the Reformer's unpublished writings ' direct proofs ' of the fact ' that
AVycliffe continued to speak of the Begging Orders with all respectful
recognition during the twenty years which elapsed between 1360 and
1380, and that it vvas in connection with the controversy opened by hin^
on the subject of Transubstantiation, and therefore after 1381 at the--

WYCLIFFE AND THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 477
•earliest, that he began to oppose himself to the Mendicants, who had
come forward as his antagonists on that fundamental question.'
I am happy to be able to bring forward an important testimony to the
historical accuracy of this representation from the same contemporary
source which was laid under contribution in the preceding section,
viz., the Chronicon Angliae of the Monk of St. Albans. At p. 1 1 6 occurs the
following remarkable passage. Describing AA'ycliffe, the hostile chronicler
-writes : — Erat utique non solum facundus, sed simulator et hypocrita
solidissimus, ad unum finem intendens omnia, ut videlicet ejus fama et
¦opinio se inter homines dilataret. Simulabatque se spernere temporalia
tanquam instabilia et caduca, pro aeternorum amore ; et ideo non erat
cum possessionatis ejus conversatio, sed ut magis plebis mentes deluderet,
ordinibus adhcusit mendicantium, eorum paupertatem approbans, pcr-
Jectioneni extollens, ut magis falleret commune vulgus.
The distinction here taken between AA'ycliffe's bearing towards the
fiossessionati, the ' monks possessioners,' or the old endowed orders, with
whom he had little or no famiUarity, and his good opinion of the Mendicant
Orders, with whom he cultivated personal intercourse, agrees exactly with
the view taken by Professor Lechler, and is a weighty corroboration of its
historical truth. This view, however, is of so recent a date, and the opposite
view, that AA'ycliffe had begun as early as 1360 to take up the old quarrel
(A Armachanus with the Franciscans, has been so long received, that it
is not surprising that both Professor Shirley and Mr. Thompson have
regarded this passage of the Chronicon as one which throws grave doubt
¦on the authority or the accuracy of the compiler. Referring to the chapter
•on AVycliffe as it stands in the old translation of the Chronicle from
-which he quotes, Shirley speaks of the single sentence which I have given
above in the original as enough to set aside the authority of the whole
•chapter {^uide p. 523 ofthe Fasc. Zizan.'-. This is the more unaccountable
on his part, as he had previously remarked (Introduction, p. xiv.), that the
^ story which connects AA'ycliffe with the controversies of 1360 is implicitly
¦contradicted by contemporary authorit)-, and receives, to say the least, no
sanction whatever from the acknowledged writings of the Reformer ; '
that, in short, ' it is a part of AA''ycliffe's Ufe only by courtesy and re
petition.' The editor of the Chronicon Angliae has naturaUy and justly
a much higher respect for the authority of its author than Professor
Shirley, who had never seen it in its original text ; but he is not a little
embarrassed by the very statements about Wycliffe, which, from Dr.
Lechler's point of view, create no difficulty at all, but are welcome con-
irmations of historical truth. ' It is curious to note,' he remarks, in his
Introduction, p. 53, 'that our Chronicler, either from ignorance, or per
haps from a natural hostility to the Mendicant Orders, has represented
Wycliffe as a favourer of their views. It is, indeed, almost hopeless to
account for such a glaring perversion of facts, otherwise than by an asr
sumption of the writer's ignorance ; and yet one hardly dares to allow
such ignorance in a contemporarj' writer. His further statement that the
Duke of Lancaster appointed four friars to plead AA'ycliffe's cause at his

478 APPENDIX.
trial may have some truth in it ; and it is possible that this fact led hii«
to assume that WycUffe was not now opposed to his former antagonists.'
The discovery of the truth of the case by Dr. Lechler puts an end at
once to all these embarrassments. It vindicates the accuracy of the-
Chronicon, as to the important point now before us ; while the testimony
of the Chronicon becomes a valuable corroboration of the biographical
datum which Lechler has ascertained from the unpublished writings of
Wycliffe.— P. L.

VI.
THE POPULARITY OF WYCLIFFE AND HIS EARLIEST
DISCIPLES AS PREACHERS IN LONDON.
If Wycliffe had confined his teaching to the schools of Oxford, it would
have been only slowly and indirectly that his Reformation principles
would have reached the ears and the convictions of the general public.
But there is some evidence to show that he was occasionally a preacher
in the pulpits of London, and that he spoke out as boldly in the crowded
churches of the capital of the kingdom as he had done for many years
before in the learned disputations ofthe University. Nor is proof want
ing as to the effects which his preaching produced among the London
citizens. The Chronicon Angliae, referred to above, is again available
here, and supplies us, in particular, vvith some curious facts, which are
new to history, touching the moral and religious influence which the
Reformer's preaching began to exercise even upon the municipal
administration of the city during the mayoralty of John of Northampton.
At p. 1 16 of the Chronicon we read as follows : — ' Haec et his multo
graviora,' referring to the new doctrines, ' cum palam non tantum Oxonise
tractasset in scholis, sed etiam in civitate Londoniarum publice praedicasset
. . . invenit quod diu quaesiverat, videlicet quosdam regni dominos, vet
magis recte diabolos qui ejus amplecterentur deliramenta. . . . Quorum
suffultus patrociniis multo audacius et animosius communicavit excom-
municatam materiam, ita ut non solum dominos sed et simplices quosdam
Londoniensium cives secum attraheret in erroris abysmum. Erat utique
non solum facundus sed simulator, etc. . . . ut magis falleret commune
vulgus. Qui profecto nuUis argumentis, nulla scientia in Deo fulcie-
batur et floruit, ut opiniones suas probabiles demonstraret, sed sola
compositione verborum quae satis eructavit. Unde intricavit minus
doctorum aures audientium et ventos pavit inaniter sine fructu. Dux
tamen et dominus Henrieus Percy ejus sententias coUaiidabant, et
scientiam et probitatem coelotenus extoUere satagebant. Accidit que ut
eorum elatus favore, suas vanitates multo amplius dilatare non per-
timesceret, sed de ecclesia in ecclesiam percurrendo auribus insereret
plurimorum insanias suas falsas, Unde, licet sero, episcopi stimulati^
excitarunt patrem suum archiepiscopum quasi de gravi somno, et quasi

WYCLIFFE IN LONDON. 479
potantem crapulatum a vino, vel potius mercenarium avaritiae inebriatum
toxico, ut ovem errantem revocaret a tam manifestae perditionis pabulo,
et curandum committcret stabulario, aut, aliud si res exigeret, uteretur
abscissionis ferro.'
Here, then, we learn for the first time what it vvas in Wycliffe's doings
that first stimulated the bishops to take public action against him— not so
much his quiet teaching at Oxford, nor his learned judgments given to
the King and Parliament on the points in debate between the kingdom
and the Curia, but the wide-spreading effects of his preaching in the
churches of London, de ecclesia in ecclesiam percurrendo. He was gain
ing the ears of the multitude, and vvas making proselytes not only among
the highest nobles of the land, but among the masses of the common
people. Nor was it long before his preaching began to tell even upon the pro
ceedings of the mayor and common council of the city. One of Wycliffe's
loudest complaints in the pulpit was directed against the corrupt remiss
ness of the clergy in the exercise of the discipline of the Church against
adulterers and fornicators of both sexes. Transgressors of the seventh
commandment had been long allowed to compound for their immoralities,
and the clergy put money into their pockets by betraying the interests
both of public and domestic virtue. The Reformer's indignation passed
into the hearts of his London congregations. Many of the citizens resolved
to take steps to reform so crying a social disorder, and the Monkish
Chronicler of St. Albans has handed down to us the following long-
forgotten record of the rough-handed discipline which vvas brought to
bear upon a batch of the most notorious offenders.
' Londonienses isto tempore coeperunt ultra modum insolescere in per-
niciosum exemplum urbium aliarum. Revera freti Majoris illius anni
(1382), Johannis Northamptone auctoritate superciliosa, praesumpserant
episcopalia jura, multas dehonestationes inferentes in fornicationibus vel
adulteriis deprehensis. Captas nempe mulieres in prisona quae vocatur
Dolium apud eos primo seclusas incarcerarunt, postremo perductas ad
conspectum publicum, descissa caesarie ad modum furum quos appellatores
dicimus, circumduci fecerunt in conspectu inhabitantium civitatem, prae-
cedentibus tubicinis et fistulatoribus, ut latius innotescerent personae
earundem. Nee minus hujusmodi hominibus pepercerunt, sed eos injuriis
multis et opprobriis affecerunt. Animati enim fuerant per Joannen
Wyclife et seqiiaces ejus ad hujus modi perpetrandiim, in reprobationem
praelatorum. Dicebant quoque se abominari curatorum non solum
negligentiam, sed et detestari avaritiam, qui studentes pecuniae, omissis,
poenis a jure limitatis, et recepds nummis, reos fornicationis et incestus
favorabiUter in suis criminibus vivere permiserunt. Dicebant se utique
pertimescere, ne propter talia peccata in urbe perpetrata sed dissimulata,
tota civitas, quandoque, Deo ulciscente, ruinam pateretur. Quapropter
velle se purgationem facere civitatis ab hujusmodi inquinamentis, ne forte
accideret eis pestis aut gladius, vel certe absorberet eos tellus.' — Chronicon.
Angliae, p. 349.

480 APPENDIX,
I add the Monk-Chronicler's portrait of the Lord Mayor of the time,
John of Northampton, by whose authority these disciplinary severities
had been carried out. He was evidently a follower of Wycliffe, and an
,admirer of his preaching ; and the influence of this first Lollard Lord
Mayor was, upon the Chronicler's own showing, of great account in the
¦city. ' Erat autem Major eorum homo duri cordis et astutus, elatus propter
divitias et superbus, qui nee inferioribus acquiescere, nee superiorum
allegationibus sive monitis flecti, valeret, quin quod inceperat proprio
ingenio, torvo proposito ad quemcumque finem perducere niteretur.
Habebat plane totius communitatis assensum ad nova molienda.' — P. L.

VII,
WYCLIFFE'S WRITINGS.
Three catalogues of these writings are extant, which date from the
fifteenth century, and in all probability were drawn up not much later
than about thirty years after Wycliffe's death. They are preserved in
two MSS. of the Imperial Library of Vienna, but were only lately pub
lished. They thus remained virtually unknown to the learned world,
which for centuries was obliged to have recourse to catalogues of a much
later date.' § I. The Chief Wycliffe Catalogues.
I. The first man who attempted to draw up a comprehensive list ofthe
writings of Wycliffe vvas John B.4LE, Bishop of Ossory (d. 1563), in his
Illustrium Majoris iBritanniae Scriptorum Summarium in Quasdam
Centurias Divisum, which first appeared in 1548. At that time it included
only five centuries of writers. During his exile in Germany, he enlarged
the work by four additional centuries, and carried it down to a.d. 1557,
in which year the enlarged edition appeared at Basel. It reckons in this
form no fewer than 900 writers. In this collection, p. 451, Bale gives 242
of Wycliffe's writings, with their titles, and in 149 cases he adds their
commencing words ; but he does not aim at any systematic arrangement,
and it is no part of his plan to indicate where the MSS. enumerated are
to be found. But Bale's principal fault was the hasty way in which he
picked up titles of writings of Wycliffe wherever he came upon them,
and gathered them together vvithout a trace of criticism. Hence his
catalogue is entitled to very little confidence.
2. More than 1 50 years passed away before Bale had a successor in
¦the same field. Wycliffe's first biographer, John Lewis, in his Life of
' Shirley printed in the appendix to his Catalogue of the MSS. of the Imperial
Catalogue the first fwo of tliese Old lists ; Library of Vienna, v. £. '
-.the third was unknown to hira. See the

wycliffe's writings. 481
Dr. John Wichf, 1720 (new edit., O.xford, 1820) gave a catalogue
extending to 284 numbers, which, while resting upon Bale's, is in some
respects an improvement upon it. Lewis's catalogue is not only richer
than Bale's, but it notes also, whenever possible, the libraries where the
MSS. are to be found, adding also the commencing words of the books
and tracts, and sometimes also mentioning, after the title, the contents,
or the occasion of each piece. But we miss in this catalogue, as much
as in Bale's, any suitable classification, and even any critical sifting.
Larger works and short tracts, Latin and English pieces, are all mixed
miscellaneously together ; many pieces enumerated by Lewis are not
AA'ycliffe's at all, and otliers are entered in his list twice over.
3. The catalogue which was prefixed by H. H. Baber to his Reprint
of Wycliffe's, or rather Purvey's Translation of the New Testament, in
1810, was drawn up on the basis of Bale's and Lewis's, but is not so
complete as the latter. The only advance made by Baber was that he
was the first to give a more exact account of the Wycliffe MSS. in the
British Museum, as weU as of the MSS. preserved in Vienna, in regard
to the latter of which he made use of the catalogue of Denis.
4. Eighteen years later, in the first edition of his Life and Opinions of
John de Wiclif, Dr. R. Vaughan gave a catalogue, which was the fruit of
personal investigation, carried out especially in Cambridge and Dublin,
and which, besides a classification of the writings, contained a fuller
account of the libraries where they are preserved, and some criticism on
the genuineness of the several pieces. And in his last work on WycUffe
— John de Wycliffe, a Monograph, 1853 — he inserted a new list which is
in many respects more accurate and minute than his earlier one, although
we cannot help thinking it inferior in point of comprehensiveness. In
point of accuracy, too, it still leaves much to be desiderated, e.g., more
than one writing is twice introduced under different titles, e.g., B. 544,
No. 103, De Dotatio7ie Ecclesiae, and 125, Supple-inentum Trialogi, which
is one and the same work. Another instance is in the observations which
he repeatedly makes, pp. 537 and 542, on the subject of Wycliffe's .yy^wzwzir
Theologica, which are very inexact, and even confusing ; for, according to
these, we should have to suppose that the Summa is a single work, con
sisting of twelve chapters, whereas it is rather a comprehensive Collection
or Corpus, embracing no fewer than twelve treatises, many of which would
fill a goodly printed volume.
5. The most important advance in this field was made by the late Dr.
Walter Waddington Shirley, Professor of Church History in
Oxford. As a preparatory work to a projected edition of Select Works
of Wyclif which he did not live to take part in, he published, in 1865^
A Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wyclif, Oxford, at the
Clarendon Press. This work, though very modest in bulk, was the fruit
of considerable labour, and of correspondence and laborious collections
reaching through ten or twelve years. The peculiar recommendations of
this catalogue are numerous. Shirley divides the Latin and the English
writings entirely from each other; he distributes the Latin works into
33

482 APPENDIX,
certain classes according to their contents ; he adds testimonies and
notices to aid, as far as possible, in determining the genuineness of
the several writings ; he endeavours to fix their several dates, at least
approximately ; and lastly, he indicates accurately the MSS. which con
tain the several works. To the catalogue of the genuine and still extant
works of Wycliffe, the author adds a list both of his lost writings, and of
writings which have been incorrectly attributed to him,. He prints in an
appendix two of the old catalogues of Wycliffe's works, mentioned above
as dating from the commencement of the fifteenth century, which are
found in the Vienna MSS. The little work ends with an alphabetical
register of all the extant works, arranged according to their commencing
words, and separated off from each other as Latin or English.
6. Last of all, Thomas Arnold, in the third volume of the Select
English Works of John Wiclif, Oxford, 1871, has given a catalogue of
the English writings exclusively which are ascribed to Wycliffe, in which
he places first the writings which are 'probably genuine, forty-one in
number, and next those which are doubtful, twenty-eight in number, add
ing at the close a short list of others, which, in his judgment, are certainly
spurious. Arnold has added to Shirley's list one English piece which he
was the first to discover (Select Works, vol. ill., pp. 130-233). It bears
the title of Lincolniensis (Grossetete), but is nothing else than an appeal
for sympathy on behalf of the persons and work of the itinerant preachers,
after several of them had been tried and thrown into prison. For the
rest, Arnold has directed his chief attention to the critical question of the
genuineness of the several pieces, though aiming also as much as possible
at the determination of their respective dates. The result reached was that
he contested the genuineness of a considerable number of pieces. Of
the sixty-five English works brought forward by Shirley, he pronounces
decidedly against the Wycliffe authorship of eight or thereabouts, while,
with respect to from fifteen to twenty others, he is unable to go further than
a non-liquet. He has not, however, proceeded upon his own individual
judgment as decisive, but has printed in his third volume, among the
Miscellaneous Works, several of the pieces whose genuineness he does
not allow. § 2. Language of Wycliffes Writings.
To come more closely to the Works themselves, we have first of all to
offer some remarks upon their difference in respect of language. Dr.
Vaughan says of the English writings of Wycliffe that they are by far the
more numerous. This is an error. Even looking to numbers only,
Shirley's catalogue contains not fewer than ninety-six Latin works, while
the English works number only sixty-five. But when we compare the
two classes of pieces in respect to bulk, the Latin pieces have still more
the advantage ; and hence, in Arnold's judgment, the Latin works of
Wycliffe ' are by far the more numerous and more copious.' In fact, the
English pieces are for the most part nothing more than mere tracts of a
couple of pages, and the largest of them fill at most three or four sheets ;
while the series of Latin works includes from ten to twelve equal to the

wycliffe's writings. 483
Trialogus in bulk, every one of which would fill a good-sized octavo
volume. But the importance of their contents, too, in the case of many
of the Latin works, is far superior to that of the English. Scientifically
considered, it is only the Latin writings which are of value. Wycliffe's
philosophical and theological position can only be learned from them
with certainty and thoroughness ; while his English writings are chiefly
valuable in part for the history of the English language and literature,
and in part for our knowledge of the influence of AVycliffe upon the
English people.
And here we must not omit to mention that the genuineness of the
most important of the Latin works is sufficiently attested and indeed
placed beyond all doubt, partly because Wycliffe himself is accustomed to
quote his own earlier works in the later, and partly because his several
opponents cite different works of AA'ycliffe in their controversial writings.
In this way a pretty copious list of his works can be gathered from the
waitings of William AVoodford, from a mandate of Archbishop Sbynjek of
Prague against Huss, from the anti-Hussite works of Friar Stephen of
Dolan, but most of all from the great work of Thomas Netter, of Walden.
But friends and admirers too, like Huss, mention several of his writings,
and give exact quotations from them. In the Vienna MSS. his name
occurs by no means unfrequently attached to his several pieces. But the
¦case is entirely otherwise with the English writings : not one of them is
mentioned in any other writing, either of Wycliffe or of his literary
opponents. His popular tract on the Lord's Supper, The Wyckett, stands
alone in being expressly mentioned as his in several of the Acts of Process
brought against particular Lollards, but not earlier than the beginning of
the sixteenth century ; and in the MSS. containing these English tracts
. it is marvellous that his name should so rarely occur. In other words,
there are almost no external testimonies in existence for the genuineness
of the English writings of Wycliffe ; we are thus thrown entirely upon
internal grounds either for or against their AVycliffe authorship ; and, as
may be easily understood, the work of deciding becomes, in these cir-
<;umstances, precarious and difficult.
Further, it is a very remarkable fact that of the Latin writings of
AVycliffe comparatively few old MSS. are extant in England itself and in
Ireland, while the whole of his EngUsh writings are to be found in EngUsh
and Irish libraries. Of the ninety-six Latin works enumerated by Shirley,
there are only twenty-seven of which MSS. dating from the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries are in the possession of English or Irish libraries
— i.e., not fully a third. And among' those which are wanting in England
itself are not a few works of the greatest importance— ^..o^., the Trialogus,
Be furamento Arnoldi, one of the earliest memorials of Wycliffe which
is of high interest, etc. On the other hand, the libraries of the Continent,
.and chiefly the Imperial Library of Vienna^ the University and Archi
episcopal Library of Prague; and even the National Library of Paris, and
the Royal Library of Stockholm, are in possession of MSS. of WycUffe's
latin works. In fact, the state of matters is this, that of the ninety-six.

484 APPENDIX.
Latin works, including tracts, there are only six of which MSS. are extant
exclusively in England or Ireland, while ofthe English writings not a single
MS. is to be found in the Continental Ubraries. The latter fact finds an
easy explanation in the ignorance of the English language which prevailed
on the Continent, even in Bohemia, during the Hussite movement. But
less easy of explanation is the fact that so few in proportion of Wycliffe's
Latin writings should have been preserved in England. To impute this
to the destructive inquisition of the English bishops, is forbidden by the
circumstance that only two ofthe purely philosophical tractates enumerated
by Shirley are extant in MS. in England ; and in the case of essays on
logic and metaphysics such as these, it is impossible to see why the
inquisition should have troubled itself about their detection and destruction^
§ 3. Classified List.
In now proceeding to an orderly enumeration of the several writings of
Wycliffe, the object which we aim at is to present a picture of his activity-
as an author. With fhis end in view, it did not appear to me so advisable
as it did to Shirley, whose object was different, to make the difference of
the two languages employed in the writings the chief principle of dis
tribution in arranging the latter. It seemed better here to subordinate^
the^ linguistic point of view, and to aira, in the first instance, at a material
classification according to subject and contents. Shirley himself has
always made a material division within the two chief classes of works set,
out by him — i, Latin works, and 2, English works. But in carrying
through this material classification, we shall follow a method of our own,
while rejoicing in the coincidence of his judgment with our own, as often
as it occurs. In our indication of MSS. and the libraries containing them,
we allow ourselves to refer simply to Shirley's admirable work ; and a.
Table at the end of our Catalogue shows the correspondence of Shirley's
lists with our own.
We divide the works into six chief classes :
I. Scientific Works, Philosophical and Theological.
II. Sermons and practical Expositions of Scripture.
III. Practical catechetical pieces.
IV. Judgments, personal explanations, pamphlets, etc.
V. Polemical writings and pamphlets.
VI. Several letters form a species of appendix.
In the following list, the pieces that have been printed in Arnold's
Select Works are marked * ; those in Matthew's English Works hitherto
¦unprinted (Early English Text Society) -I- ; and those in the Wyclif
Society's volumes (to i£

I.— Scientific Works (all Latin).
I. Philosophical.

I. Logica.
2. Logicae Continuatio.
3. Quaestiones Logicae et Philosophicac.

wycliffe's writings. 485
4. De Entc, sive Summa Intellcctualium (includes two books, each
¦with six tractates).
5. De Universalibus.
6. Replicatio de Uni7'crsalib//s.
7. De Ente Particulari.
8. De Materia ct Forma.'
9. De Materia.
10. De Compositione Hominis.
II. De Anima. n. Theological.
I. Systematic.
1 2. Here deserves to be put in the foremost place, both on account of
its great extent and its inherent value, the great work of Wycliffe entitled
in three catalogues of the Hussite period, Summa Theologiae, or Summa
in TJieologia, a name not unusual in the scholastic theology, though this
name for it does not occur anywhere in his own writings, so far as I have
observed. From the thirteenth century it had been customary to give
this title to works of a more than ordinary comprehensive character, in
which the doctrinal system of a doctor of the schools was set forth in an
independent method, and not by way of commentary on the Sentences of
Peter the Lombard ; with, at the same time, a close connection and
interdependence ; and this even when the author had given to his work
a different title. So, e.g., I find that to the great work of Bradwardine,
which he had entitled De Causa Dei, the title is given in some MSS. of
Summa de Causa Dei. The voluminous work, too, of Richard Fitzralph,
Archbishop of Armagh, Adversus Errores Armenorum, is constantly
called Summa.
This Summa of Wycliffe comprises no fewer than fifteen books, some
of them large and elaborate, e.g., the 6th book, Of the Truth of Holy
Scripture. To the main work, which is purely theological, is prefixed
a more general work, of a mixed philosophico-theological character,
De Dominio. The Sum?na, then, consists of the following series of
treatises : —
(i) De Dominio. This appears, from the preface in several MSS,,
to have been the general title, with which agrees the old
catalogue contained in Vienna MS. 4514.
De Dominio, Lib. I. (fragment in 19 chapters).
De Dominio Divino, Lib. 11. (fragment in 6 chapters).
De Dominio Divino, Lib. in. (fragment in 6 chapters).
I As a supplement to what Shirley instantis, in 12 chapters, pp. 1-33. 2.
{Catalogue, p. 2) has communicated, it De Ydeis,- pp. 34-52. 3. De Materia
should be noted here that the Royal et Forma, pp. 53-76. 4. Replicatio de
Library of Stockholm, according to Du- Universalibus, pp. 77-86. 5. De veris
aik's Forschungen in Schweden fiir Mali- Universalibus, pp. 87-134. This MS.
reii's Geschichte, 1852, p. 198, possesses a was part of the booty carried off by
paper MS. in 410, probably written by General Konigsmark, at the taking of
Huss himself in 1398, which contains the the Hradschin in Prague, July 26, 1648,
following philosophical tracts of Wy- from the ' Schatzkammer ' and Library
cliffe : — I. De individuatione temporis et of the royal castle. See above, p. 461.

486 APPENDIX.

(2) Summa Theologiae, in 12 Books.
De Mandatis Divinis.
De Statu Innocentiae.
De Dominio Civili, Lib. I.
De Dominio Civili, Lib. II.
De Dominio Civili, Lib. ill.
De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae.

De Ecclesia.
De Officio Regis.
De Potestate Papae.
De Simonia.
De Apostasia.
De Blasphemia.

13. Trialogus,
14. Supplementum Trialogi, sive de Dotatione Ecclesiae j both edited by
Lechler, Oxford, 1869.
15. De Incarnatione Verbi.
16. De Ecclesia ct Membris. This appears to be the correct title, and'
not as Shirley gives it (13) from two AHenna MS. catalogues, De Fide
Caiholica. This book is not the same with the book De Ecclesia, which
forms the seventh part of the Summa.
17. De Officio Pastorali, edited by Lechler, Leipzig, 1863.
18. De Eucharistia tractatus Major.
19. De Eucharistia et Poenitentia, sive de Confessione.
2. Polemical Works.
20. Contra Kilingham Carmelitam Determinationes.
21. Contra Magistrum Outredum de Ornesima (?) Motiachtim Deter-
minatio. 22. Contra Wilhelmum Vynham Monachu-m de S. Albano Determina-
tione. 23. De Dominio Determinatio conti-a unum Monachum.
24. Responsiones ad Radulfum Strode.
25. Responsiones ad Argumenta cujusdam aemuli veritatis.
26. Responsiones ad XLIV. Quaestiones, sive ad Argiitias Monachales.
27. Responsum ad Decem Quaestiones.
II. — Sermons and Practical Expositions of Scripture.
I. Collections of Sermons.
I. In Lati7i.
28. Super Evangelia Dominicalia — Sermons on the Gospels for Sundays.
29. Super Eva7tgelia de Sa7ictis — Sermons on the Gospels for Saints'
Days. 30. Super Epistolas — Sermons on the Epistles for Sundays.
31. Miscellaneous Sermons — 64 in number, in two series; one of 40
containing Wycliffe's earlier Sermons ; the other, of 24. See p. 497, No. 7,
under Vienna MS. 3928.
Single Sermons transcribed from the collections are separately men
tioned in Shirley's Catalogue, e.g., Sermo Pulcher on Ruth ii. 4 (39), which
is identical with the 24th sermon in the 24 Miscellaneous Ser7n07is ; and
Mulierem fortem quis inve7iiet? on Proverbs xxxi. 10 (41), identical with
he 5 th of the 24 sermons. The Exhortatio novi Docto7-is (38) is also

wycliffe's WRITINGS. 487
a sermon, delivered at a doctoral promotion. Last of all, the tractate, De
Se.v Jugis (40), is a combination of several sermons.
2. I/i E7iglish.
1. Eva7igelia Dominicalia — Sermons on the Gospels for Sundays — from
the First Sunday in Trinity to the close of the Church year.*
2. Ib., Sermons on the Gospels for Sundays — from the First Sunday in
Advent to Trinity Sunday.'''
3. Comniu7ie Sanctoi~um— Sermons for Saints' Days, on Texts from the
Gospels.* 4. Propriitm Sanctorum — Sermons for Saints' Days.*
5. Evangelia FeiHalia — Week-day Sermons on Texts from the Gospels,
besides several occasional sermons.*
The whole number of these sermons on the Gospels amounts to 239.
6, Epistolae Dominicales — Sermons on the Epistles — fifty-five in
number.* 7. The tract on the Holy Supper entitled Wyckett, appears as a single
sermon. This has been repeatedly printed (Oxford, Vaughan, R.T.S.).
II. Practical Expositions of Scripture.
1. I7t Latin.
32. Opus Evangelicu7n, sive de Sermone Domini in Monte, in four
parts ; the last two parts also bear the title De Antichristo.
33. Expositio S. Matt. c. xxiii. sive de Vae Octuplici,
34. Expositio S. Matt. cap. xxiv., sive de Antichristo.
35. In oi7t7tes Novi Testa7nenti Libros, praeter Apocalypsin, Com-
jiicntarius. 2. I71 English,
8, Vae Octtiplex — Exposition of 23rd chapter of Matthew.*
9. Of Mynystris in the Chirche — Exposition of 24th chapter of
M atthew.*
These two tracts stand in all complete collections, of the English
Sermons of Wycliffe. The English explanations of the Gospels of
Matthew, Luke, and John, as well as the explanation of the Revelation of
John, which Shirley describes, pp. 35, 36, under Nos. 6-9, were not, in all
probability, written by Wycliffe ; comp. Arnold in the Introduction to
Select Works, vol. I., p. iv.
Probably, on the other hand, Wycliffe vs'as the author of
10. The twelve pieces which occur in a collected form in several MSS.,
under the title Super Cantica Sacra;'- and are published by Arnold, Select
Works, vol. III., 5-81. The order in which they occur in the MSS. and
in print is not regulated either by their dates or subjects. We enumerate
them in a different order. (i) Old Testament Cantica.
I. Song of Moses, Exodus xv.
2. Hymn of Moses, Deuteronomy xxxii.

488 APPENDIX.
3. Hannah's Song, I Samuel ii.
4. Israel's Song of Thanksgiving, Isaiah xii.
5. Hezekiah's Hymn of Praise, Isaiah xxxviii. 10-20.
6. Habakkuk's Prayer, iii. 2-19.
(2) Old Testament Apoc7ypha.
7. ' Song of the Three Children,' or Be7tedicite.
(3) New Testament Hy7n7is.
8. The Magnificat, Luke i. 46-55.
9. Benedictus — Prayer of Zacharias, Luke i. 68-79.
10. Simeon's Hymn, Luke ii. 29-32.
(4) Hy77ins of the Ancient Church.
II. The Te Deum.
12. The ' Athanasian Creed' Quicunque, considered as a Psalm.
These Pieces are all arranged in one way ; viz., the verses one after
another are first given in Latin after the Vulgate, and then in an English
translation, to which a short explanation is added.
in. — Practical Catechetical Pieces.
We here use the liberty of carrying back the modern name Catechism
to the Middle Age, although, as is well known, it was not then used in
the sense of the present day. We also include among pieces designed
for popular use a great many more classes than have been ranged under
the name of Catechism since Luther's day. These works, being designed
for the benefit of the people at large, are for the most part written in
English. Only a few tracts belonging to this category are written in
Latin. I. In Latin.
36. De septem Do7iis Spiritus Sancti. \
yj. De Oratio7ie Domi7iica.
38. De Salutatio7ie Angelica.
39. De triplici Vi7iculo A7noris. |
40. Differentia i7iter Peccatum mortale et veniale.
2. In English.
11. Of the Ten Commandments.*
12. Ofthe seven Works of mercy bodyly ; and
13. The seven Werkys of mercy ghostly, or Opera caritatis.^''
The two pieces evidently form one whole.
14. On the seven deadly Sins. '¦••
15. The Mirror of Christian Life. "-•' It is to be remarked, however
that according to the investigations of Arnold and Bishop Stubbs the
pieces marked by Shirley i and 7 in this collection certainly did not
belong to Wycliffe, but to a Manual of Religious Instruction drawn up
by Archbishop Thoresby of York in 1357, and circulated among clergy

wycliffe's WRITINGS. 489
and laity in his diocese ; vide Arnold, Select Works, vol. iiL, Introd.
p. vi. The remaining five pieces of this collection are printed by Arnold
in vol. III., namely : —
(2) On the Lord's Prayer.
(3) On the Ave' .Maria.
(4) Explanations of the Apostles' Creed.
(5) On the Five Bodily Wits.
(6) On the Five Spiritual AVits.
Besides the tract on the Lord's Prayer, just named, two other explana
tions of the Prayer by Wycliffe are found, which are to be carefully
distinguished from this one, namely —
16. The PatcT^ioster.
17. Ib. The latter piece, which is the larger of the two, is printed in
Select Works, vol. ill., pp. 98-110.
18. On the Ave Maria,-\: to be distinguished from the tract which
has been already mentioned under 15 (3).
19. Of Faith, Hope, and Charity.* Arnold's judgment on this tract
is somewhat unfavourable, vol. HI., Introd. p. vi.
Last of all, we think we should add here some tracts which, in Luther's
phrase, form a sort of House-Table, namely : —
20. Of Wedded Men and Wifis, and of their Children also. "¦=
21. Of Servants and Masters ; how each should keep his degree. J
22. A Short Rule of Life. *

IV. — JuDGiiENT.?, Personal Explanations, and the Like.
I. Judgments.
All i/t Lati/t.
41. Ad Quaesita Regis et Concilii. Printed in Fasciculi Zizanioru7n,
pp. 258-271.
42. De Captivo Hispa/tensi.
43. De Jura7nento Arnoldi.

II. Petitions, Personal Explanations and Defences,
addressed to Public Bodies.
I. In Latin.
44. Ad Parlia7ne7itu7n Regis. Published first hy Lewis, p. 382, and
then by Shirley, Fasciculi Zizanioru77t.
45. Declarationes Johannis Wickliff. Printed in Walsingham's His
toria A7iglicana, ed. Riley, vol. I., 357-363-
46. De Condemnatione XIX. Conclusionium. Printed in Appendix
to Fasc. Zizan., No. HI., pp. 481-492,
47. De Eucharistia Confessio. Printed in Lewis, pp. 323-332 ; in
A'^aughan, Life and Opiniotis, vol. 11., 428 ; and Monogi-aph, 564, following

490 APPENDIX.
Lewis word for word ; lastly, in an independent and critical manner in
Shirley, Fasc. Ziza7i., pp. 1 15-132.
48. De Eucharistia Confessio, shorter than the preceding.
2. In E7iglish.
23. Wycliffe's Petition to King and ParUament, entitled Four Articles. *
Published by Dr. James. Oxford, 1608, in Two Short Treatises, etc. ;
but in a more correct form by Arnold, under the title : A Petition to the
King and Parliament.
24, Two Confessions on the Sacrament of the Altar-* — (i) 'I know-
leche that the Sacrament,' etc., printed in Select Works, ill., 499; (2) ' I
beleve as Crist,' etc., iil, 501.
v.— Polemical Writings and Pamphlets.
I. I71 Latin.
These writings all relate to the Church — its worship, especially the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper ; its members and ranks ; its duties and
rights ; its needs and mischiefs ; its improvement and reform. These
numerous tracts are, in fact, no more than fly-sheets ; and in attempting
to reduce them to several chief classes, the following order may perhaps
be adopted, admitting, however, in advance, that it is all the more easy to
fall into errors here, that only a very small proportion of these fugitive
pieces have been printed. I. 'Worship.
49. De Eucharistia Co7iclusiones XV,
50. Quaestio ad Fratres de Sacramento Altaris.
51. De Imaginibus. II. Organisation of the Church.
52. De Ordi7ie Christiano.
53. De Gradibus Cleri Ecclesiae sive de Ordi/tibus Ecclesiae,
54. De Graduationibus scholasticis.
55. De Praelatis co7itentio7ium.
56. De Clavibus Ecclesiae.
57. Errare in materia fidei quod potuit Ecclesia milita7ts.
58. De Officio Regis Co7iclusio.
59. Speculum secularium Dominoru7n.
60. De Servitute civili et Do7ni7iio seculari.
III. Monachism, especially the Mendicant Orders.
61. De Religione Privata, \.\
62. De Religione Privata, \\.%
63. De Religt07iibus vanis Monachoru7n.\
64. De Perfectio7ie statiium. \

wycliffe's writings. 491
65. De 7ioi.'a pr-aevaricantia 7nandatorum.% A short fragment of this
piece is De Purgaiorio, Shirley, No. 31.
66. Dc Concorda7itia F7-atrum cum secta simplici Clmsti, sive De Sectis
J\Ionachoru7n I {Dc Ordinationc Frat7-um, AA'^yclif Society).
67. De Paitpertate Christi, sive X. XXIII. Conclusiones.
68. De 7ioz'is Oi-dinibus.\
69. Desci^ptio Fratris.\
70. De 7nendaciis F7-af7tim :l
71. De Fratribus ad Scholares.
72. De Mi7toribus F/atribus se cxtollentibus, against the boasting of the
Franciscans, in the A'ienna MS., 3930 (Denis, DCIV.), pp. 178-187. The
tractate, which Shirley seems to have overlooked, begins with the words
Cutn viantes ctfi-at7-cs.

IV. Decay of the Church, and Church Reform.
73. De contrarietate duorum Do7ninorum, suai'U7n partium ac etiam
rcgularum.X 74. De Ch7-isto et suo adversa7-io A7itichristo.\
75. De Diabolo et membris ejus.X
76. De Dae monio mcridia7io.\
TJ. De Solutione Sata7iac.\
78. De detectione perfidiarum A7itichristi.\
79. De Citationibus frivolis et aliis versutiis Antichristi.\
80. De dissettsione Paparttm, sive de Schis7nate.\
81. Contra Cruciatam Papae. %
82. De quatuor Sectis 7wvellis.\ This tract does not refer, as Shirley
gives us to understand by the place which he assigns to it under the
heading of Monastic Orders, exclusively to the Monastic system, and
to the four Mendicant Orders in particular, which Wycliffe, it is true, often
puts together ; but, according to the author's own explanation at the outset
(A''ienna MS. 3929, fol. 225, col. 2), and the whole course of the piece itself,
he means by the four modern sects — (i) the priests, endowed with lands
and lordships — sacerdotes caesarei j (2) the landed mo7iastic Orders ; (3)
the ca7ionsj (4) the beggi7ig 7nonks.
83. De fundatio7te Sectarum.X
84. De quatuor l7nprecationibus\ (some MSS. read i7iterp7-etationibus).
This tract seems to be only a fragment of Matthew xxiv. ; vide p. 487,
No. 34, under Practical Expositio7is of Scriptu7-e in Lati7i.
85. De duobus generibus Haereticorum, i.e., Si7noniaci et Apostatici.\
86. De Prophetia.
87. De Oratio7te et Ecclesiae purgatione.X
88. Dialogus, sive Speculum Ecclesiae 7nilita7ttis.
It is a fact worthy of remark that of this book more MSS. have come
down to us than of any other work of WycUffe, with the exception of
some about ten very short fly-sheets. The reason of this, no doubt,
was the nature of its contents, which all relate to the reformation

492 APPENDIX.
ofthe Church, and discuss this subject on more than one side. The date
of the Dialogue may be determined wilh tolerable exactitude. It must be
placed later than 1378, because the Papal schism is mentioned in cap. 12.
Further, as Wycliffe is already attacking the doctrine of transubstantia
tion, cap. 18, and opposing with warmth the Mendicant Orders, cap. 32,
the book cannot have been written before the year 1381.' On the other
hand, the Dialogus was, without doubt, written earlier than the Trialogus p
for, first of all, the Dialogue is a simpler form of colloquy than the
Trialogue; and, secondly, the speakers introduced in the Dialogus are
more than in the Trialogus abstract ideas, namely Truth (meaning
Christ, as in John xiv. 6, to which there is an express reference in the
Introduction) and Falsehood ; whereas the speakers in the Trialogus,
viz., Alithia, the philosopher ; Pseustis, the sophistical unbeliever ; and
Phronesis, the ripe and deep divine, while also somewhat too abstract,
still bear a much nearer likeness to living personality than Veritas or
Mendacium. Last of all, the conversational forin itself is kept up much
more persistently in the Trialogus than in the Dialogus, whose first
seven and last five chapters (1-7, 8-30) are rather monologues than
dialogues ; for in these Truth alone speaks, and it is only in the inter
vening chapters that the form of dialogue is introduced. These three
differences of literary form taken together may suffice to support our con
viction that the Dialogus is to be looked upon as Wycliffe's first attempt
in this literary style, and is to be placed earlier than the Trialogus. But
as the latter vvas written either in 1383 or 1384, the date of the Dialogus
may be set down as 1382.
We have still to remark in this place that the tract De Triplici Ecclesia,
which Shirley brings forward under No. 63, as an independent writing, is,
in fact, nothing more than a fragment of the Dialogus, which, dropping
the preface, begins with the first chapter and goes on to the seventh.
2. In English.
I. Doctrine of the Church.
25, Octo iti quibus seducuntur simplices Christiani.-''
26, On the Sufficiency of Holy Scripture (a fly-leaf).*
II. A/Vorship.
27. De Co7ifessione et Poenitentia — against auricular confession. Here
might properly be added the tract marked No. 49, in Shirley's Catalogue,
Of Antecristis Song in Chirche, and also the tract Of Prayer, marked
No. 50, which, however, are both only extracts from No. 63 of that
catalogue, in case they belonged to Wycliffe. But Arnold, while indeed
including the last-named piece, entitled On the XXV. Articles, has, at
the same time, made it appear probable (p. 454) that this writing was a
' Herewith I recall and correct what I in the Prolegomena to my edition of the
have put forth on the date of the Dialogus Trialogus.

wycliffe's writings. 493
reply to accusations which vvere brought against the Lollards by the
clergy in 1388, and was therefore written, at the earliest, four years after
Wycliffe's death.

III. Constitution of the Church.
28. How the office of Curatis is ordeyned of God, or De XXXHL
Erroicibus Curatorum. \
29. For the ordre of presthod. |-
30. Of Clerkis Possessioners. f
31. De P7-ecatio7iibus sacris.* An exhortation to priests to pious prayer,
a good Ufe, and pure preaching of the gospel.
32. De Stipendiis Ministrorum, or How men schuUen fynde prestis.*
33. Of Prelates, f
34, Dc Obcdientia Praelatorum, or How men owen obesche (obey) to
Prelates, drede curs, and kepe lawe.
35. The grete sentence of curs expounded. *
36. De Papa. Nos. 33-36 treat of the Hierarchy up to the Pope, of the
authority of the higher clergy, and the power of the Keys. The tracts
which follow occupy themselves with the monastic system, especially
with the Mendicant Orders.
37, How men of privat religion shulden love more the Gospel,
Goddis heste (commandment), and his Ordynance then ony new lawis,
neue rulis, and ordynances of synful men.
38, Rule of St. Francis, and
39. Testament of St. Francis.
40. Tractatus de Pseudo-freris.\
41. Fifty Heresies and Errors of Friars.* Only that Shirley, as
Lewis before him, gives to the book the less distinctive title of Objections
of Freres, which has only the marginal note of a MS. to support it.
Arnold gives the writing in Select Wo7-ks, ill., 366-401. It contains
fifty chapters, and forms a comprehensive attack upon the Mendicant
Orders. 42, De Blasphemia contra Fratresfi To be carefully distinguished from
the book De Blasphemia in Latin, which forms the last part of Wycliffe's;
Sunpma. IV. Decline and Reform of the Church.
Among all these eighteen English writings last enumerated (25-42),
there is not one which had not in view the disorder and corruption of the
Church, and did not work for its purification and reform. But in the
writings now to be named the reformation spirit and standpoint are
incomparably more prominent and prevailing. I place in the front a
work which equally inquires into both subjects, the Church's decline and
reform. 43, The Church and her Members. * First pubUshed by Dr. Todd

494 APPENDIX.
in Dublin, 1851, in Three Treatises by John W-ycliffe, pp. iii.-lxxx.).
Arnold's edition is after a much better MS. in the Bodleian Library.
The next following tracts occupy themselves chiefly with proving the
fallen condition of the Church and opposing its corruptions.
44. De Apostasia Cleri:'-- Also printed in Todd's Three Treatises.
Let us not omit to mention here that the piece entitled ' Of Antecrist
and his Meynee ' (Shirley, No. 48), which Todd also published in the
Three Treatises, was pronounced spurious by Vaughan in his Monograph,
p. 539, and has also been referred to by Arnold {Select Works, I., Intro
duction, p. vii.) to a later date.
45. Antecrist and his Clerkis traveilen to destroie Holy Writt.f
46. How Sathanas and his Prestis casten to destroie alle good
lyvynge. \
47, Speculum de Antichristo, or How Antecrist and his clerkis feren
true Prestis fro prechyng of Cristis Gospel bi four disceits,
48, Of feyned contemplative lif, of songe, and worldly bisynesse of
Prestis, etc. ¦!¦
49. How Sathanas and his Children turnen werkes of mercy ypso-
down and decevyn men thereinne, etc. J
50. De duobus generibus hereticorum"'-- (Simony and Apostasy).
51, De Dominio Divino : more correctly. Of Church lands and lord
ships of the Clergy. *
52. Thre thingis distroien this world, false confessoures, false men of
law, and false merchauntis. J
53. De Po7itificuin Ro7na7iorum Schismate. "•'=
The following pamphlets occupy themselves chiefly with Church
reform itself, with the ways and means to be adopted to bring it about,
with the defence of the persons labouring to that end, especially the
itinerant preachers, and with exhortations to others to come to the help
of this work.
54, Of good prechyng prestis. f
55, Why pore prestis have non benefices, f
56. Lincolniensis,* a pamphlet hitherto unknown, which Arnold was
the first to discover in a MS. of the Bodleian Library, which is of great
importance for the English tracts of Wycliffe, and has been largely used
by him. The short but interesting tract begins with Grossetete's descrip
tion of a monk outside his cloister (hence the title Lincolniensis) ; but it
treats chiefly of the attacks of the Begging Orders upon ' poor priests,'
and calls upon knights and lords to take the persecuted men under their
protection, and to join the battle for Christ's cause and the reformation
of His Church.
57. For the skilles (reasons) Lordis schulden constreyne Clerkis to
lyve in niekenesse, wilful povert, * etc.
58. De Vita Sacerdotum.'^'' The subject is the necessity of seculari-
,sing the property of the Church, and reducing the priests to apostolic
poverty.

wycliffe's writings. 495
VI.— Letters.
I. I/i Lati7i.
89. Litera /nissa Archiepiscopo Cantuariensi. The letter first estab
lishes AVycliffe's principle that the clergy should possess no secular
lordships, in connection with which it opposes the crusade in the cause
of Pope Urban VI. The second chief subject of the letter is the doctrine
of transubstantiation, which the writer desires to see brought to a decision
by the Primate, agreeably to the standard of Holy Scripture. The earliest
date to which the letter can be assigned is the year 1382, but possibly it
might fall in the year following.
90. Litera missa Episcopo Li7icol7iiensi — i.e., manifestly to Bishop John
Bokyngham — is shorter than the preceding, and treats exclusively of the
Lord's Supper and the doctrine of change of substance ; written either at
the end of 1381, or at the beginning of 1382.
91. Litera parva ad quenda/n Socium (so in the Vienna MS. 1387,
fol. 107), a short letter of commendation to some one who shared his
views and his struggles.
92. De Octo Quaestio7iibus propositis discipulo. The letter noticed
by Shirley in his Catalogue, 61 (6), under the title De Peccato in
Spiritui/t Sanctu7n, appears to have been nothing more than an integral
part of this letter, De Octo Qttaestionibus, viz., the answer to the first
question. The letter i?!? Amore, numbered (5) in Shirley, is a Latin translation of
an English original (see Eng. No. 59). On the other hand, the pieces num
bered (i) and (4) in Shirley, viz.. Ad Urbanum Papa77i and Ad Simplices
Sacerdotes, are both only letters by supposition, but not in reality. As to
the latter of the two, we refer the reader to what is said upon this point
above, p. 417 and note. The alleged letter to Pope Urban VI., published
by Shirley in the Latin original, in Fasc. Ziza7i., p. 341, was early trans
lated into English in the form of a free paraphrase. This English version
of it was first printed by Lewis in the appendix to his Life and Opinions,
II., 122. In the Select Works, ill., 504-506, Arnold has published the
fragment with critical exactness upon the basis of the two original MSS.
of it which are extant in England. As to its contents and form, I refer to
the remarks which have been already made, chap. ix.
2. In English.
59, Ad Quinque Quaestionesfl Here Wycliffe answers five questions of
a friend and sympathiser on the subject of the love of God. There is no
doubt that the English text is the original, and the Latin a translation
(vide Shirley, Nos. 61, 5), for more than once the writer speaks in such
a way of the Latin and the English that we must suppose that the letter
-was originally written in English. And as Wycliffe remarks that it is
difficult to give a right answer to these questions in the English tongue,
I think I may infer from this that the letter may have been written at a

496 APPENDIX.
comparatively early date ; for in his later years Wycliffe wrote so much
English that in these years an expression of that kind could no longer
be expected to come from him.
Note on the Vienna MSS. of Works of Wycliffe.
It may not be without interest to many readers to obtain more exact information con
cerning the contents of the Wychffe MSS. preserved in the Imperial Library of Vienna,
which are so frequently referred to in the above catalogue of the Reformer's works.
The interest felt would be still greater if we were able to give in all cases a history of
the transcripts themselves, and of all the changes of hands through which they have
passed. But it is only in rare instances that we find any notices of this kind in the
MSS. themselves. The following notes have been drawn up, with the help of the
Catalogue of the Latin MSS. of the Imperial Library, which was published in 1864
by the Imperial Academy 'of Sciences. It seemed requisite, however, to add, in all
cases, where possible, the numbers attached to the several volumes in the excellent
catalogue of the learned Dtois.
The following list of volumes is confined to those which are of chief importance,
to the exclusion of others which contain only duplicate or triplicate transcripts of the
same works, and also of several volumes which contain only a small proportion of
Wycliffe material, mixed up with the productions of other writers.
The numbers, -which stand first in Arabic numerals, are those of the Catalogue
now in use in the Imperial Library. The numbers in Roman numerals are those of
the Dinis Catalogue.
1. No. 1294 (i. DCV.), 4to, 251, written in very small hand, in two columns, is of
particular value, because the volume contains a complete copy of Book vi. of Wycliffe's
Summa — viz., the Treatise De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, pp. 1-127. At the end
occurs this notice, Correctus graviter, anno Do-mini 1407, in Vigilia Purificationis
S, Mariae, Oxonii, per Nicolaum Faulfish et Georgium de Knychnitz. This volume
also contains the seventh book of the Summa de Ecclesia, and the work which forms
the Introduction to the Summa, De Dominio Divino,
a. No. 1337 (i. cccLXViii.), 4to, pp. 258, contains for the most part only smalt
tracts, all by Wycliffe, many of them extending only to a single chapter. The longest
of them is the Treatise De Trinitate, pp. 182-243. At the end of the tract stand the
initials M. F. W.
3. No. 1339 (cccLXXX.), 4to, pp. 248, contains the first portions of tSie Summa—
viz., the first three books, De Dominio Di~aino, which form the Introduction -to the
work, but all three only in a fragmentary form, followed by the first two books of the
Summa itself — viz. , the Liber Mandatorum, otherwise entitled De Mandatis Divinis,
and De Statu Innocentiae.
4. No. 1341 (CCCLXXXII,), 4to, pp. 234, forms the continuation to No. 1339, con
taining the third and fourth books of the Summa proper — viz. , the first and second
books De Civili Dominio,
These MS. volumes 1337, 1339, 1341, and two others of less importance (one of them
a duplicate of 1339), were originally the property, as appears from several notices
found in them, of some one in the small town of Nimburg, which lies about ten German
miles north-east of Prague. In No. 1339 occurs the date mccclxxxiii., which.
however, it is certain, does not indicate the date of the execution of the MS. Possibly
this date stood in the original copy written in England, from which this was a transcript
made in Bohemia. Dinis found in the volume a business letter in the Czech language,
addressed by a bootmaker to the Dean of Nimburg, from which he inferred, not
without reason, that the volume was at one time in possession of this priest ; it is
a conjecture of my own that the Dean may have obtained it from Hussite hands, or
may have confiscated it.

VIENNA MSS. OF WYCLIFFE'S WORKS. 497
5. No. 1343 (cccxcii.),4to, pp.230, contains the last three books of Wycliffe's 5K/«/«fl:,'
the tenth, De Simonia ; the eleventh, De Apostasia; and the twelfth, De Blasphemia.
At the end of the eleventh book stand the words — Explicit tractatus de Apostasia per
revcreudum doctorem J. W. Cujus aiiima per -misericordiam. alt'issimi requiescat in
Jiace. Amen.
6. No. 1387 (ccCLXXXiv.), fol. 215, a miscellaneous volume, containing fourteen
¦different pieces by Wycliffe, some of them of larger size, such as the Trialogus,
pp. 163-215, and the Treatise De Eucharistia, pp. 1-43 ; others of small bulk, e.g.,
letters, some controversial pieces, and several commentaries on Scripture passages.
7. No. 3928 (dc), fol. pp. 253, contains several collections of Wycliffe's sermons — ¦
I. Sixty sermons for saints' days ; 2. Twenty-four miscellaneous sermons ; 3. Tractate
¦on the Six Yokes ; 4. A small tractate by a disciple of Wycliffe on t'ne power ofa prince
¦over his clergy when sunk in mortal sin ; 5. Thirty-eight sermons of Wycliffe — origi-
mally forty.
8. No. 3930, fol. pp. 359, a very miscellaneous collection, comprising several works
of Wycliffe — the Dialogus, the Trialogus, etc. — raixed with pieces by Huss and several
¦of the leading Hussites, e.g. , Jacob von Mies and Johann von Rokyzana.
9. No. 3932 (cccLXXXViii.), fol. pp. 211, bears the exact date of its transcription,
T4i8, while the name of the transcriber, originally inserted, has been erased. The
-volume begins with the Trialogus, which is followed by the Dialogus, and next by
sennons and tracts.
10. No. 3933 (cccxci.), fol. pp. ig6. This volume was once the property of a
•certain Paul von Sla-wikcwich. It contains -eleven writings of Wycliffe, all of them
smaller pieces, except one entitled Dc Officio I^egis, which formed the eighth book
of the Summa. The volume closes with a Catalogue of Wiclif's Latin Writings,
-which was printed by Shirley in his Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wyclif,
1865. II. No. 3934 (cccxcviii.), fol. pp. 151. The only writings of Wycliffe found in this
-\'olume are a collection of his Latin Sermons, pp. 1-132, extending through a whole
_year. 12. No. 3935 (ccccx.), fol. pp. 343. Of this MS. only two-thirds contain writings of
¦Wycliffe — viz., De Dominio Divino, the nth and 12th books of the Summa, De
Apostasia, and De Blasphemia, followed by the third book De Statu Innocentiae, and
De Trinitate. The remaining third part of the MS. gives the articles of Archbishop
Fitzralph against the Begging Friars, along with a sermon of his, and, in addition,
several pieces relating to the disputation between Peter Payne, the zealous Wyclifiite,
and Johann von Pribram, -\vhich took place in Prague in 1426-1429.
13. No. 4302 (dcccii.), 4to, pp. 274. A miscellaneous collection, written partly in the
thirteenth and partly in the fifteenth! centuries. It comprises three genuine works of
Wycliffe— pp. 2^.-'io, Speculum Militantis Ecclesiae ; pp. ^-^-1^, Pastorale, oxDeOfficio
Pastorali ; and pp. 75-96, the tract De Compositione Hominis.
14. No. 43o7(ccccvi.), 4to, pp. 242, contains six of Wycliffe's writings, almost all on
philosophical subjects — p. 38, ~De Compositione Hominis; p. 62, De Universalibus ;
115, De Incarnatione ; p. 158, De Ente in Co-mmuni ; p. 167, De Ente Primo ; p.
190, De Ente Particulari. The MS. bears the name of the copyist, Peter von Czaslaw,
and also the date and place of t-caxiscription, finibus Glatovie (Klettau), sub anno
do-mini, 1433, et eodem anno fuit Synodus Generalis Concilii cum Dominis. Bohemis
JBasilie. 15. No. 4343 (dlxv.), Bvo, pp. 303. A miscellaneous collection, including several
small pieces of Wycliffe, e.g. , the Speculum Dominorum ; also a tract by Bishop
GrossetSte, De Oculo Morali, and a defence of Wychffe by Peter Payne.
16. No. 4483 (cccLXii.), 4to, pp. 327, contains a sermon by Wycliffe, De Sacramento
Corporis et Sanguinis Christi, in addition to pieces by Huss, Stanislaus, ¦Von Znaim,
and others.
17. No. 4505 (cccciii.), 4to, pp. 227. This MS. contains only Wycliffe pieces,
33

498 APPENDIX.
especially the following :— (i) The Decalogus, (2) the Trialogus, (3) the Supplement
to the Trialogus. Comp. Lechler's edition of the Trialogus, Oxford, 1869 ; Pro
legomena, p. 23.
18. 4514 (cccxciii.), 4to, pp. 184, contains (i) an alleged commentary of WycUffe on
the Song of Songs ; (2) the book De Blasphemia ; (3) an alphabetical catalogue of the
writings of Wycliffe (published by Shirley, Catalogue, etc., 1865) ; (4) De Officio
Pastorali. ,
19. No, 4515 (ccccii.), 4to, pp. 236, contains several pieces of Wycliffe, e.g., the
Dialogus, the De Simonia, the De Septem Donis Spiritus, in addition to several
writings by Huss, and against him.
20. No. 4523 (cccxc), 4to, p. 156. This MS. contains only writings of Wycliffe, and
these exclusively on philosophical subjects, viz., the Logica, the Continuatio Logicae.
the De Uni~aersa libus, and the De Ideis.
21. No. 4527 (cccLXXXix.), 4to, pp. 229, a volume including, among the forty-one
short pieces which it brings together, letters, tracts, and controversial pieces of
Wycliffe. 22. No. 4529 (cccxcix.), 4to, pp. 188. The largest part of this MS., pp. 1-1564
contains Wycliffe's Sermons on the Gospels.
23. No. 4937, 4to, pp. 296. Among a miscellaneous collection of pieces referring for
the most part to the Hussite controversies, occur, Nos. 13-15, several small pieces of
Wycliffe, e.g. , De DaemoJiio Meridiano.
24. No. 5204, 4to, pp. 100. This MS, contains the De Universalibus and the De
Propositionibus Insolubilibus of Wycliffe, P. L.

[On the References in this Edition to Wycliffe's Manuscripts.
It has not been thought necessary to repeat the numbers of the -Vienna MSS. in
every reference, as Dr. Lechler has been careful to do. The foregoing list will remove
any difficulty. But it may be useful here to note, with regard to the works most
frequently cited, that —
The Latin Sermons (Miscell. and Saints' Days) are quoted from MS. 3928.
De Ecclesia and De Veritate Scripturae Sacrae from MS. 1294.
De Dominio Divino and Liber Mandatorum from MS. 1339.
De Civili Dominio from MS. 1341.
De Apostasia and De Blaspliemia from MS. 1343 or 3935.
De Eucharistia and Dialogus from MS. 1387.
Other works will be easily traced by reference to the foregoing list. The folio and
the column of the MS., as a rule, are given.]

Comparative View of the Catalogues of Wycliffe's Works as
GIVEN BY Shirley and Lechler respectively,
I.— The Latin Works.

No. in

No. in

No. in

No. in

No in

No. in

No. in

No. in

Shirley.

Lechler.

Shirley.

Lechler.

Shirley,

Lechler.

Shirley.

Lechler,

I

I

25

S7

49

39

73

76

2

T

26

51

50

44

74

80

3

3

27

36

51

45

75

81

4

7

28

40

52

46

76

74

S

IO

29

75

S3

20

77

52

6

8

30

77

54

21

78

64

7

9

31

65'

55

22

79

65

8

4

32

57

56

23

80

63

9

6

33

28

57

24

81

61

lo

S

34

29

58

25

82

62

II

II

35

30

59

26

83

73

12

15

36 1

60

27

84

66

13

i6

37 )

31

61

17

85

82

14

12(1)

38 )

62 I

88

86

70

15

12(2)

39

ib.

63 J

87

68

i6

13

40

64

67

88

70

17

14

41 1

65
41
89
69
i8
i8
42
32
66
42
90
71
19
47
43
33
67
59
91
83
20
48
44
34
68
60
92
55
21
49
45
35
69
5?
93
84
o->
50
46
17
70
56
94
54
23
19
47
37
71
43
95
53
24
86
48
38
72
79
96
50
' In part.
II.—
The English
Works.
No. in
No. in
No. in
No. in
No. in
No. in
No. in
No. in
Shirley.
Lechler.
Shirley
Lechler.
Shirley
Lechler.
Shirley.
Lechler.
I
1-5
18
30
35
57
52
42
2
6
19
28
36
20
53
5^
3
7
20
29
37
54
54
24(1)
4
8
21
32
38
35
55
Omitted.*
5
9
22
31
39
23
56
50
6
Omitted.'
23
25
40
II
57
59
7
JJ
24
22
41
19
58
51
8
5)
25
52
42
12
59
53
9
JJ
26
48
43
13
60
26
10
10
27
16
44
14
61
Omitted.^
II
IS
28
18
45
43
62
36
12
34
29
49
46
44
63
Omitted.^
13
38
30
37
47
40
64
17
14
39
31
21
48
Omitted.^
6S
24(2)
15
41
32
55
49)
3
16
33
33
45
sol
J)
17
47
34
46
51
27
See under 9. ' See under 44.
•> The alleged letter to Urban 'VI. See under 92.
3 See under 27.
s De Officio Pastorali.
INDEX,

Abbrc-jiations. — W. signifies Wycliffe ; n. signifies Note.

Adbotesley connected with Bal
liol College, 99.
Abendon, Henry, 39.
'Abomination of Desolation,' 349 «.
Absolution, W. on, 341.
' Accident and Substance,' 346.
Acrostic, a singular, 323.
Administrators of Sacraments,
question concerning their worthi
ness, 336, 338.
Aelfric, his Bible versions, 205.
Aevui/i or aevitas, 255.
Age, its corruption, W. on, 304.
Albigenses in England, 53.
Alfred, King, 14, 16; his Bible
versions, 205.
Alliterative rhyme in Early English,
72.
Angels, W.'s doctrine of, 261.
'.'Vnglican Church,' the, 18.
Anglo-Saxon language, 14 ; Bible
versions, 204.
Anne of Bohemia, consort of
Richard iL, 460.
Anteferri, the clause, 151.
Anthropology, W.'s, 261.
Antichrist, the Papal, 317, 318,
366.
Apocalyptic views, W.'s, 326.
' Armachanus,' 54, 95, 477.
Annagh, Richard Fitzralph, Arch
bishop of, 54 ; his preferments,

55 ; early connexion with Balliol
College, 469 ; chaplain to the
Bishop of Durham, 470; oppo
sition to the Mendicants, 55;
sermons on evangelical poverty)
56 ; defends his views before the
Pope, 57 ; compared with Grosse
tete and W., 61 ; his death, 62.
Armenian Church, the, 55.
Arnold of Brescia, 437.
Arnold, Thomas, editor of W.'s
Select English Wo7'ks, v., 11,
482; qnottd passitn.
Artes liberales, 90.
Articles, nineteen, from W.'s
writings condemned, 165 ; his
defence, 172.
Arundel, Thomas, Archbishop of
Canterbury, 450 ; on W.'s Bible
work, 219 ; banished and rein
stated, 451 ; a persecutor of the
Lollards, 451 ; on the University
of Oxford, 456 ; death of, 457.
Assurance, Christian, W. on, 295.
Aston, John, 196, 394, 395, 396, 399,
441.
'Atomistic' view of conduct, 282.
Augustine, St., rules of interpreta
tion, 247 ; affinity with W., 263
265.
Augustine, 'the apostle of the
English,' 119.

502

INDEX.

Augustinians, an order of mendi
cant friars, 120, 323.
Aust, W. prebendary of, 156.
Australes, 88.
Authority, Positive Revelation, W.
on, 234
Avignon, the Papal court at, 49 ;
conferences at, 141 ; removal
from, to Rome, 163.
Baber, H. H., edition of W.'s New
Testament, 221 71. ; catalogue of
W.'s writings, 481.
Bacon, Roger, acquainted with
. Greek, 89 ; his scientific great
ness, 92.
Badby, John, his martyrdom, 453.
Bagster's ' English Hexapla,' edition
of W.'s New Testament, 221 7i.
Bale, John, Bishop of Ossory, 120 ;
catalogue of W.'s writings, 480.
Ball, John, 71, 371, 373, ^¦ji^
Balliol College, Oxford, 86 ; con
nected with Richard of Armagh,
469 ; W. probably studied at, 87 ;
W. master of, 98 ; he resigns, loi ;
statutes of, 99, 472 ; supposed
poverty of, 99 ; W.'s contem
poraries at, 474.
Banishment, W.'s alleged, 418.
Baptism, W. on, 338.
JBarons, the, become truly English,
19 ; and the Church, 41.
Beaufort, Henry, Bishop and
Cardinal, 459.
Bedeman, Laurence, 400.
Becket, Thomas, Archbishop, 17,
119, 421 n.
Bede, ' the Venerable,' 204.
Benedictines, the, opposed by W.,
321.
Benefices declined by W.'s
preachers; 195.
Berengarius of Tours, 368.
Bernard of Clairvaux, 437.
Berton, William, Chancellor of
Oxford, 369.

Bethlehem Chapel, Prague, 461.
Bible. See Scripture.
Bible Translation, W.'s, 209 ; his
silence respecting, 210; made
from the Latin Vulgate, 215;
completion and revision of, 219 ;
MSS. multiplied (with facsimile),
ib., 444 ; circulated among the
Lollards, 458 ; printed editions
of, 220.
Bishop and Presbyter originally
the same, 310.
Blackfriars, '. council at, 379 ; the
condemned articles, 381.
Body of Christ, the Church, 294.
Body of Christ in the Lord's Sup
per, W. on, 356.
Bohemia, W.'s alleged exile to, 418;
connexion with England, '461 ;
reforming movements in, 462.
Boniface, mission to Germany, 15.
Boreales, 88.
Bracton, Henry, 40.
Bradwardine, Thomas, 64 ; his Uni
versity career, 65 ; spiritual
awakening, 66 ; lectures at Ox
ford, 67 ; royal chaplain, ib. ;
Archbishop of Canterbury, ib. ;
his death, ib. ; compared with
the Reformers, 68 ; his theology,
69 ; relations to the Church of
Rome, 70 ; compared with W.,
262, 264.
Braybrook, Bishop, 399.
Bretigny, Peace of, 134.
Britain, early evangelisation of, 14 ;
British and Saxon Churches, 15.
Brown, Edward, editor of Ortuin
Gratius, Fasciculus, 4.
Bruges, Conference at, on the peace,
141 ; on' ecclesiastical questions,
142 ; names ofthe commissioners,
142 ;. effects of W.'s visit to', 143 ;
his part in the transactions, 312
Brute, Walter, 448.
Buckingham, John, Bishop of Lin
coln, 399.

INDEX.

503

Buddensieg, Dr. R., ed. of W.'s
Polemical Tracts, vii. n., 11.
Bulls, Papal, against W., 167.
Bury, Richard, Bishop of D urham,
470.
Caedmon, the monk, 204.
Cain (Caym), type of the Mendi
cant Orders, 323.
Calixtines, the, 359.
Canon Law, W.'s studies in, 95.
Canonists, the, opposed by W., 321.
Canonisation, W. on, 300.
Canterbury Hall, Oxford, 103 ; W.
warden of, ib. ; his exclusion, ib. ;
attestations to the fact, 109, 475 ;
was it legal according to the
statutes? Ill; the Pope's decision,
ib. ¦ the reasonable solution, 1 14 ;
the hall now merged in Christ
Church, 116.
Carmelites, an order of mendicant
friars, 120, 323.
Catalogues of W.'s writings, 480,499.
Causa Dei, Bradwardine's, 67.
Celibacy of the clergy, 309.
' Cesarean Bishops,' 312.
Chaucer, his character of a 'country
priest,' 188.
Chichely, Henry, Archbishop, 457,
460.
Christ : Occam maintains His sole
Headship of the Church, 47 ; the
Author of Holy Scripture, 236;
W.'s doctrine concerning Him,
267, 436 ; the Incarnation, 268 ;
the Centre of humanity, 268 ;
exalted views of, 270 ; the ex
clusive source of salvation, 271 ;
threefold dignity and work of, ib. ;
Prophet, 272 ; Example, ib., 281 ;
Priest and Sacrifice, 273 ; extent
of His saving work, 274; King
of kings, ib.
Christ Church, Oxford, Canterbury
Hall incorporated with, 116.
' 'Rea.d Lewis

Christian life, W.'s view of the, 281.
Chronico7i A7tgliae, on W. and
Canterbury Hall, 475 ; on W.
and the ¦ mendicants, 477 ; on
the popularity of Wycliffite
preaching in London, 478.
Church, ,W.'s doctrine concerning
the, 287, 293, 436 ; constitution
of the, 305 ; moral character of
the, 303 ; worship of the, 296 ;
reform of the, 325 ; secularisation
of its revenues, 327.
Citation of W. to Rome, 415.
Clergy, the, W. on, 289, 305, 308,
309 ; delinquent, 329.
Clifford, Sir Lewis, 172', 442.
Cobham,^Lord, assists the Lollards^
458 ; apprehended and con
demned, 459 ; his martyrdom, ib.
Commentaries attributed to W.,210.
Commons, the, privileges of,violated,
406.
Concordat between England and
the Pope, 147.
Confession, Fitzralph on, 58.
Constance, Council of, 39, 464.
Constantine, alleged ' donation ' of,
311, 325, 422 «.
Convocation, W. summoned before,
158, 173 71.
Conway, Roger, Franciscan, 63.
Councils, general power of, 46,
' Counsels of perfection,' 282.
Courtenay, William, Bishop of
London, 158, 172 ; Archbisho j
of Canterbury, 378, 401; his man
date against Itinerants, 197 n. ;
his death, 450.
Courthope, Mr., on the Canterbury
Hall question, 104.
Creation and Creator, the, W, on,
254.
Critical spirit of W., 425.
Crump, Henry, 395, 398.
Crown and Church, W. on, 329 «.
Cruciata, 411.
for Henry.

304:

INDEX.

Crusade for Urban vi. promoted
by Bishop Spencer, 366, 408, 410,
411 ; its ignominious end, 414;
for Gregory xil., 463.
Cup, denial of, to the laity, 350.
Dante on the ' Donation of Con
stantine,' 325.
DeDo7ninio Divino, 117.
De Haeretico Combure7ido, Act, 452.
De Veritate Scripturae Sacrae,
236 n.
Delamere, Speaker of the Com
mons, 155.
Devorguilla Statutes of Balliol
College, 472.
Dialectics a favourite study, 91.
Dialogus, 196.
Docetism, 353.
Doctor Evangelicus, 241, 249.
Doctor Mirabilis, 92.
Doctor Profinidus, 64, 87, 262.
Doctor of Theology, duties of, 116 ;
W. attains the degree, 117.
Dominicans (Jacobites), the, on
apostolic poverty, 44 ; W. and
the, 120, 323.
Do7ttinium, one form of, corre
sponds with Ministerium, 259.
Donatism, alleged, of W., 337, 339.
Duns Scotus, 414.
Earnestness and. pathos of W.,
429.
' Earthquake Council.' See Black
friars.
Ecclesiastics in secular ofKces, 29,
136.
Edward L, 41,; suggests the canon
isation of Grossetete, 38, 43 ;
contests the claims of Boniface
VIII. in Scotland, 42.
Edward 11., feeble reign of, 41.
.Edward HI. and the Pope, 49 ; re
fuses Papal tribute, 122 ; Jubilee
of his reign, 150 ; troubles of his

declining years, 153 ; his death,
167.
Edward the Black Prince,his death,
134-
Election, W.'s doctrine of, 288, 29 1-
Endowments, ecclesiastical, W. on,
166.
England and the Papacy, 17, 119
Church of, in the fourteenth cen
tury, 49.
English language, its growth, 14 ;
its three periods, and Bible trans
lations in each, 206.
English nation, its components, 13.
Episcopalianism, GaUican, 314.
Epistles, Pauline, Latin and Eng
lish versions, 214.
Ethical System of W., 278.
Evangelical Reformer, W. the first,,
437.
' Evangelical State,' the, 330.
Evil, W.'s doctrine of, 263, 265.
Example of Christ the standard of
conduct, 281.
Excommunication, articles on, 382.
Exhumation of W.'s remains or
dered by Council of Constance,
464 ; effected, 467.
Faber, John, Bishop of Vienna, 3.
Fable of the Owl and Feathers, 135.
Faith, saving, W. on, 276 ;- and in
tellect, ib. ; and feeling, 277 ; and
justification, 278.
Fall, the, W.'s doctrine of, 267.
Festivals, Church, W. on, 300.
Fillingham, W. rector of, loi ; ex
cused residence, ib. n.
Fitzralph. See Armagh.
Flacius, Matthias, 4.
Fleming, Richard, Bishop of Lin
coln, 467.
Foreigners in English Church liv
ings, 148, 149, 168.
' Foreknown ' and ' reprobate,' 290.
Forshall and Madden, the Wyclif
fite Bible, 10, 210, 218 71., etc.

INDEX.

505

Foxe, John, 4 ; Acts and Moiiu-
7iients, quoted passim.
France, war with, 134.
Franciscans (Minorites), the, 44,
257 ; on apostolic poverty, 56 ; W.
and the, 120, 323.
Franco-Norman ascendency in
England, 13.
Francis of Assisi, 437.
Franciscan Friars, the contest with
the Papacy, 44.
Frederick of Lavagna and Grosse
tete, 35.
French Crown, claim to, renounced
by England, 134.
Fuller, Thomas, 467,
Garnier, Amold, Papal Nuncio,
137, 148,151-
Gascoigne, Thomas, Chancellor of
Oxford, 39.
Gerhard, anti-Romish leader, 52.
Gerson, John, 65.
Gilbert, John, Bishop of Bangor,
141; of Hereford, 147.
' Glosses,' method of study by, 94.
Goch, John of, 7.
God : His existence and attri
butes, as taught by W., 250 ; not
the author of sin, 263.
Gospel, the, 208.
Gospels, Harmony of the, attri
buted to W., 212.
Gratius, Orthuinus (Ortuin), 4, 450.
Greek language, neglected in the
Middle Ages, 89 ; W.'s igno
rance of, ib.
Grossetete, Robert, Bishop of Lin
coln, his character, 20, 40 ; dates
of his birth and death, 21 ; his
works, especially his Letters, ib.
n. ; life in Oxford, and religious
awakening, 22 ; elected bishop,
23 ; reforming measures, ib. ;
journey to Lyons to the Pope,
24, etc. ; firmness and conscien
tiousness, 25 ; supports the Men

dicant Orders, 30 ; resists the
nepotism of the Pope, 32, 35 ;
his death, 38 ; canonisation pro
posed, 38, 43 ; knovi'n as Lincobi-
ie7tsis, 39, 95.
Guter, John, Dean of Segovia, 142.
Hardt, Von der. Annals of the
Cou7icil of Consta7ice, 7.
Heathen reactions in England, 14,
16.
Henry II. and Becket, 17.
Henry in., political movements in
his reign, 19, 41.
Henry iv., accession of, 451 ; be
gins to persecute, 451.
Henry v. present at Badby's marr
tyrdom, 453 ; accession to the
throne, 457 ; death, 459.
Henry VL, accession to the throne,
459-
Hereford, Nicholas, helper in Bible
translation, 216; sudden stop
page of his work, ib. ; proceed
ings at Oxford, 389, 395, 397,
399 ; summoned to Rome, 400,
415 ; preacher among the Lol
lards, 401,441; his relapse, 441, «.
'Heretics' in England (1150), 52 ;
Act for the burning of(i4oo),45i.
Hierarchy, development of the,
311-
Historical studies, i.
Horn, John, W.'s curate, 407 ;
his account of W.'s death, 421.
Hofler, Constantin, his Historia7is
of the Hussite Movement, 10.
Hugate, John, Master of Balliol
(1366), loi.
Humour of W., 431.
Huss, John, and Luther, 2 ; W.'s
true successor, 438, 466 ; birth of
Huss, 461 ; his University work,
ib. ; proceedings against, 462 ;
opposes crusade and retires to
voluntary exile, 463 ; summoned
before the Council at Constance,

5o6

INDEX.

' 465 ; condemnation and death,
466 ; indebtedness to W., 464.
Hussite historians, the, 10.
Ideas, W. on, 228.
Idolatry, prevailing, 303.
Images and pictures in churches,
297.
Immorahty checked by W.'s
' preaching, 479,
' Impanation,' 357.
Incarnation, the, W.'s doctrine of,
268 ; and the Eucharist, 352.
Infallibility, Papal, W. on, 313.
Investiture controversy, the, 17.
Irony and sarcasm of W., 432.
Islip, Simon, Archbishop, founder
of Canterbury HaU, 103, ill.
Itinerant preachers, or ' poor
¦ priests,' sent out by W., 189 ;
trained in Oxford (and probably
Ludgarshall), 190 ; Lutterworth
afterwards their centre, 407 ;
relation to the parochial clergy,
• 192'; two stages in the move
ment, 195 ; their garb and
methods, 196, 444 ; W.'s tracts
on, 199 ; Courtenay on, 379,
386 ; Lingard on, 445 ; their
gradual disappearance, 457.
James, Thomas, Bodley Librarian,
Apology for- Wiclif, 6.
Jerome, St., views on the Lord's
Supper, 345 ; on the episcopate
and presbyterate, 311.
Jerome of Prague at Oxford, 461.
Joan, Princess, mother of Richard
IL, 161 ; protects W., 172.
John, King, and the Pope, 17 ;
political movements in his reign,
19-
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,
141, 143, 144, 153, 155, 159, 172,
375, 404-
Jubilee of Edward III., 150.
Justification by Faith, inadequacy

of W.'s teachings on, 277, 283,
287.
Knighton, Henry, Canon of Lei
cester, De Eventibus AngUae, 53
71., 208, 443 ; quoted passim.
Laity, W. on the, 305.
Lambeth, citation of W. to, 172.
Langham, Stephen, Archbishop,
114, 133-
Last Age of the Church, not W.'s,
63, 468.
Latimer, Lord, 154, 155, 160.
Latimer, Sir Thomas, 442, 446.
Law, the evangelical, 237, 239.
Lay preaching introduced by W.,
195-
Le Bas, Life of W., 9 7t.
Legends, Church, W. on, 426.
Leipzig University, 88, 462 7t.
Leland, Itinerary, 79.
Lewis, John, History of Joh7t
Wiclif, 6 ; quoted passim; Life
of Pecock, 6 ; edition of the
Wiclif New Testa7nent, 221 n.;
catalogue of W.'s writings, 480.
Lincoln, extent ofthe diocese of, 23.
Lincolniensis. See GrossetHe.
Literary methods of W., 428.
Ldgical Treatises, W.'s, 226*
' Logos,' the, W. on, 253.
' LoUard,' derivation of the word,
439 n.
Lollards, the term applied to W.'s
foUowers, 395, 439 ; their statis
tics, 443 ; their ' Conclusions,'
447 ; their doctrines according to
Pecock, 460 ; their opponents,
445 ; martyrs, 452, 453 ; abortive
rising in London, 458 ; and Hus
sites, 351.
London, riot in, 160 ; expiated, 161 ;
citizens of, protect W., 172 ; out
break of revolt in, 372 ; penitential
procession in, 385 ; popularity
of W.'s preaching in, 478 ; at
tempted rising of Lollards in, 458.

INDEX.

507

Longland, Robert, author of Piers
Plow/na7is Vision, 71.
Lord's Supper, the, W. on, 339,
352-
l.osevth,Dr.J. ,lFichfandHtis,^637t.
Love the centre of Christian vir
tues, 280.
Louis of Bavaria and the Papacy,
257.
Luard, edition of Grossetete, 21 «.,
36 «.
Ludgarshall, W. rector of, 156.
Luther, 324, 350, 351, 360 ; on W.,
2 ; and Huss, 466 ; translation of
the Bible by, 215.
Lutterworth, W. rector of, 157, 187,
402, 406, 419 ; burning of his
remains at, 467.
Madden, Sir Frederic, and Rev. J.
Forshall, the Wycliffite Bible,
10, 210, 218 71., etc.
2Iagdeburg Centu7ies, the, 4.
Magna Charta, 18, 119.
Manuscripts of W.'s Bible, 221 ; of
W.'s works, in Vienna, 496.
Martyrdom, W. prepared for, 331,
416.
Martyrologies, English,- French,
German, and Bohemian, 5.
Mass, the, W.'s early belief in, 340.
Masses for the dead, W. on, 303.
Matthew, F. D., Wyclif s Un
printed English Works, 11 ; on
the spelling of W.'s name, 83 «.
Mayfield, a W. rector of, 104.
Mayor of London a Lollard, 480.
Meier, F. K., his Savonarola, 9.
Melanchthon on W., 287, 339.
' Men of the Gospel,' a name for
W.'s adherents, 241.
Mendicant Friars, 320, 321, 322,
277 ; and Grossetete, 30 ; and
Richard of Armagh, 56 ; their
insidious ways, 59 ; their mischief
in the Universities, 60 ; their en
croachments, 62 ; attacked by

W,, 120 ; dateof his first opposi
tion, 121, 476.
iNIerit, human, W.'s doctrine con
cerning, 261, 283 ; four questions
on, 284.
Merton College, Oxford, Bradwar
dine's, 65 ; question as to W.'s
connexion with, 87, 97.
Metaphysical writings, W.'s, 227.
Millennium, the, W. on, 326.
Milman, Dean, on Chaucer and
Longland, 471.
Mixtim Theologi, li/a.
Monastic Orders, W. on, 319.
Monks ridiculed by W., 433.
More, Sir Thomas, on mediaeval
translations ofthe Bible, 202.
'Nations' in the mediasval Uni
versities, 87.
Nature, the Light of, W. on, 233.
Netter, Thomas. See Walde7i.
Nicholas of Lyra, 247.
Nominalists and Realists at Oxford,
474
Norman Bible Versions, 205.
Norman Conquest and the Papacy,
16;
Norman element in England, its
decline, 18.
Normandy incorporated in France,
19
Nottingham, Lollards at, 451.
Occam, William, a Franciscan,
43 ; a keen independent thinker,
ib. ; on apostolic poverty, 44 ;
banished, ib. ; protest against
Papal- absolutism, 46 ; writings
and infiuence, 48 ; recognition
of Scripture authority, 242.
Oldcastle, Sir John. See Cobha77t.
Or7nulu7n, the, 206.
Otho, Cardinal Legate (1240), me
naced, 19.
Oxford, in the diocese of Lincoln,
23 ; University, number of stu-

5o8

INDEX.

dents, 60 ; troubled by the Men
dicant Friars, 59 ; colleges before
1350, 86 ; course of study, 90 ;
length of course, 96 ; W.'s chief
field of labour, 97 ; summoned by
the Pope to proceed against W.,
169 ; reception of mandate, 171 ;
measures against W., 369, 388 ;
tumultuous proceedings, 393 ; ex
communications at, 397 ; provin
cial synod at, 403 ; testimony to
W., 455 ; authenticity of the
document challenged, 456 ; re
action against Wycliffite doc
trines, 457 ; decadence of the
University, ib.
Palacky, Dr., on Huss, 10.
Pantheistic conceptions, narrowly
escaped by W., 254.
Papal absolutism resisted by Oc
cam, 46 ; claims ostensibly aban
doned, 146 ; exactions, resistance
to, 136 ; pretensions repelled, 42 ;
primacy, the, 312 ; ' reservations,'
151 ; ' schism,' the, 174, 315, 362,
413-
Pardons and Indulgences, 411.
Parliament, the English, and the
Papal tribute, 123 ; W.'s record
of the debate, 125, 130 ; consti
tution of Parliament in W.'s
time, 130; W. probably a mem
ber, 131 ; the 'Good,' 147 ; me
morial of, to the king, 148 ; first
of Richard IL, 168; of 1382,
387 ; W.'s memorial to, 405.
Parliamentary debate, the first re
ported, 130 71. ; rights, growth of,
41.
Parochial clergy in W.'s time, 193.
Pastoral Office, 07ithe, by W., 193.
Pateshull, Peter, 446.
Payne, Peter, 456.
Peace of Bretigny, 134.
Peasants' Revolt, the, 371 ; false
charges against W., 373.

Pecock, Bishop, the Repressor;
vii., 460 71.
Peculiaris Regis Clericus, an office
held by W., 132.
Pelagianism, 282 ; opposed by
Bradwardine, 67.
Pelican, the, an emblem, 449 «.
Percy, Lord Henry, Grand Mar
shal, 159.
Perrers, Alice, 153, 155.
Phihp IV., 'the Fair,' and the
Papacy, 43, 257, 330.
PhiUp VI., of France, 49.
Pickards, the 3.
Pictures in churches, 297.
Piers Plow7na7t's Creed, 450.
Piers Plow7nan's Vision, 70 ; edi
tions of]" 73 71. ; , Morley 's analysis
of, 471.
Pilgrimages, W. on, 301 ; Lollards
on, 446.
Plow7na7t's Tale, the, 449.
Pluralities, 157.
Polemical writings by W., list of,
490.
Poor Caitiff, not W.'s, 468.
' Poor Priests.' See Itinerant.
Pope Silvester, and Constantine,
108, 311,
 Gregory I., 'the Great,' 15.
 Gregory vil. (Hildebrand),
46, 293, 307, 319, 437.
 Innocent III. and King John,
17, 122.
 Innocent iv., 35, 56.
 Alexander IV., 56.
— — Boniface VIIL, 41, 43, 257, 437,
 John XXIL, 44, 257.
 Clement VL, 49, 3I5, 363-
 Urban v., 122, 146, 157.
 Gregory XL, 141, 146, 152;
removes from Avignon to Rome^
163 ; his bulls against W., 163 ;
published in England, 167 ; his
death, 174; a great opponent of
W., 310, 321,362.
 Urban VI., 314, 362, 415. ,

INDEX.

'509

Pope Benedict xiii. [(' anti-pope'),
464.
 Gregory XII. ('anti-pope'),
464.
 John XXIII., 464.
 Martin v., 464 n.
 Clement vm., 467.
Popes possibly unnecessary, 365.
Poverty of Jesus, 56; apostolical,
57-
Practical aims of W., 427.
' Praemunire,' statute of, 51.
Prague, University of, and W.'s
teachings, 463 ; and Huss, ib.
Prayer of Bradwardine, 68 n.
Preachers, Dominican and Fran
ciscan, 179 ; W.'s 'poor priests.'
See Iti7iera7it.
Preaching, W.'s views respecting,
176, 178, 183, 296 ; prevalent
faults of, criticised by W., iSo,
182 ; effect of W.'s, in London,
479-
Predestination, W. on, 290.
Prediction, a remarkable, 323.
Prefaces to the books in W.'s Bible,
215.
Presbyter and bishop originally
one, 310, 317 ; and deacon,,3ii.
Presence, the Real, W. on, 354 ;
threefold, 355.
Priesthood of Believers, the univer
sal, 307.
Princes, secular, power of, in the
Church, 328.
Progress in W.*s views, 223 ; illus
trated, 224 ; on the Church, 294 ;
on Papal Primacy, 312 ; on Mo
nastic Orders, 320 ; on the Lord's
Supper, 340.
'Provisions,' Papal, 49, 141, 151,
168 ; statute of Provisors, 51.
Psalter, the, early translations of,
207.
Pulpit, abuse of the, in W.'s time,
178.
Burgatory, W. on, 287.

Purvey, John, W. coadjutor in
Bible translation, 407, 441 ; his
revision of the work, 220 ; his
trial, 452 ; recantation, 453 ; re
turns to evangelical views, ib.
Quadrivium, 90.
Queen's College, Oxford, iiot W.'s
alitia 7nater, 86 ; he resided there,
IOL
Realism, W.'s, 229.
Reason and Revelation, 232, 246,
Redingate, John, nominated war
den of Canterbury Hall, 114.
Reformation of the sixteenth cen
tury, I.
Reformation-views of W., 435.
Reformers before the Reformation,
2,
' Regent Masters ' at Oxford, 97.
Relics, veneration of, 301.
Repentance and conversion, W. on,
275.
Repyngdon, Philip, 390, 392, 395,
397, 399, 440, 467-
Richard IL, son of the Black Prince,
154 ; declared heir- apparent to
the crown, 154 ; his accession,
168, 172, 387 ; his deposition and
murder, 451.
Richard of Armagh. See Fitzralph.
Richmond in Yorkshire ; two places
of the name, 80 ; ' Richmond
shire,' 81.
Rigge, Robert, Chancellor of Ox
ford, 390, 391, 393.
Rolle, Richard, of Hampole, 207.
Roman records shed no light on
W.'s history, 416 «.
Rome and England in the thir
teenth century, 19; W. never at,
142 71.
Rudelbach, his Savo7iarola, 9.
Sacrament of the Altar, the, 360.
Sacraments, W.'s doctrine of, 333 ;

510

INDEX.

number of the, 334 ; efficacy of,
335 ; worthiness of administra
tors, 336.
Saint worship, W. on, 298.
St, Paul's, London, W. in, 1 59.
Saints' Days, W. on, 301.
Salvation, W.'s doctrine on, 275.
Satan, ' the loosing of,' 326, 345 ;
his permitted power, 383 ; mis
representation of W.'s views re
specting, ib.
Savonarola, 324, 438.
Savile, Henry, editor of Bradwar
dine, 65.
Sawtree, John, first English LoUard
martyr, 452.
Saxon element in England, its
growth, 18.
Saxons, conversion of the, 15 ;
their Church Roman, ib.
Sbynjek, Archbishop of Prague,
¦462, 483.
Schism, the Papal, 315, 363.
Schwab, Dr., on John Gerson, 9,
Science, mediaeval study of, 92 :
W.'s knowledge of, 425.
Scotland, rival claims of Edward I.
and Boniface vm., 42 ; persecu
tion extended to, 454.
Scottish Church, the, 42,
Scotus, Duns, 414.
Scripture, Holy, W, asserts its
supremacy, 141 ; a book for all,
202, 249 ; ' for the people '^ — W.'s
thought, 214 ; too much ignored
in preaching, 180 ; W.'s constant
appeal to, 185 ; and Church teach
ing, 243 ; and tradition, 234, 244;
the Word of God, 236 ; its autho
rity, suffidiency, and infallibility,
238 ; the charter of Christian
liberty, 239 ; meaning revealed
by the Holy Spirit, 245 ; selfrin-
terpreting, ib. ; and the Fathers,
246 ; and reason, ib. ; literal and
spiritual sense of, ib. ; W.'s great
knowledge of, 241 ; the absolute

standard of truth, 435. See
Bible.
Sehnsucht und Drang, 332,
Self-denial of W., 434.
Sentences, the, of Peter the Lom
bard, 94, 102,
Sermons, W.'s, in two great classes,.
176; Latin, 177; list of, 486;
English, 187, 407 ; list of, 487 ;
his topics, 184 ; standard of ap
peal, 185 ; method, 186 ; earnest
ness, 187.
Seventy-two Queries, Woodford's,
106, 121 n.
Shepherds, true and false, 308.
Shiriey, Prof. W. W., on the Can
terbury HaU question, 105 ; edi
tion of Netter's Fasciculi Ziza-
nioru77t (i858),ir; quoted ^ajjzwzy
on the date of W.'s attack on the
mendicants, 320 ; catalogue of
W.'s writings, 481.
Sigismund, King of Hungary and
Rome, and Emperor, 464.
Simony, 148.
Sincerity of W.'s character, 431,
Smith, William, 442.
SomerviUe, Sir P., Statutes of
Balliol College, 473,
Sovereignty, Divine, W. on, 291.
Spencer, Henry, Bishop of Nor
wich, 408.
Spresswell, W.'s birthplace, 79.
Stages, successive, in W.'s career
435.
Stephen, Friar of Dolan, 462, 483.
Stockholm, W.'s MSS. in, 461, 485.
Stokes, Peter, Carmelite, commis
sioned to Oxford, 384, 390, 391,
392, 394, 398.
Story, Sir Richard, 442, 446.
' Substance and Accident,' 346.
Sudbury, Simon, Archbishop, 141,
147, 172 ; murdered by rebels,
372,378.
Su7n77ia in Theologia, W.'s great
work, 256, 485 ; analysed, 258.

INDEX.

511

Sit»i7)iae, theological text-books,
95-
Swinderby, William, 442.
Swift, the river, 467.
Tees, valley ofthe, 81.
Testaments, the two, how related,
248.
Theocracy, 239.
Theology, ' queen of the sciences,'
93 ; as studied in the Middle
Ages, 94
Thorpe, Wm., Wycliffite preacher,
191, 194 196, 454.
Tracts, W.'s later, 407 ; by W. and
his successors, 443.
Tradition, 234, 240 ; and Scripture
interpretation, 244.
Translation. See Bible.
Translations, episcopal, a profit to
the Pope, 149.
Transubstantiation, renounced by
W., 341, 343, 359 ; contrary to
Scripture, 344 ; unsupported by
early tradition, 345 ; opposed to
the senses, 346 ; supported by
false metaphysics, 346 ; conse
quences of, 347 ; idolatry, 348 ;
blasphemy, 349 ; openly attacked
by W., 367 ; his ' twelve theses,'
368.
Treasure, English, claimed by the
Pope, W. on, 169.
Trialogus, W.'s, first printed at
Basel (1525), 2; Oxford ed. by
Lechler (1869), v., 11; quoted
passi77i.
Tribute claimed by Rome, 313 «. ;
imposed on England, 122 ; re
fused by Parliament, 123.
Trillek, Bishop of Rochester, 131,
152.
Trinity, the, W. on, 252.
Triviu77i, 90.
Ullmann, Carl, his Reformers be
fore the Refor77iation, 9.

Unbelievers do not truly partake
the Lord's Supper, 358.
Universals, reality of W.'s views
on, 228.
Universities, mediasval, 85 ; their
studies, 89.
Vaughan, Dr. Robert, his Life of
Wycliffe, 8 ; John Wycliffe, a
Monograph, ib. ; quoted ^aw«wy
catalogue of W.'s writings, 481.
Vienna, Wycliffe MSS. at, 483,
496.
Virgin Mary, the, W. on, 298 ; As
sumption of, 302.
Virtue, W.'s doctrine of, 279.
Vulgate, Latin, version of Scripture,
importance attached to the, 94 ;
W.'s translation made from the,
215.
Walch, his Monu7nents of the
Middle Age, 7.
Walden, Thomas Netter of, Car
melite monk, 3 ; his Fasciculi
Ziza7iioru7n. See Shirley. His
Doctrinale, 460 «. ; on W., 337,
Waldenses, the, 53 ; compared
with W., 243.
Walsingham, Thomas, Chronicler
of St. Albans, 145, 173 ; on the
death of W., 421, 423.
Walworth, Mayor of London, 373.
War taxes on Church property, 135.
Wars of Edward HI., 49,
Wat the Tyler, 372.
Waytstathe, Richard, 442.
Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia, 462.
Wessel, John, 2, 9.
Wessenberg, Von, on the * Reform
ing Councils,' 9.
Why Poor Priests have 710 Be7tefices,
193-
Wilkinson, Prebendary, on W.'s
connexion with Oxford, 100 7t.
Woodford, William, Franciscan
106, 450, 483.

512

INDEX.

Woodhall, Henry, of Canterbury
Hall, 103, III, 114.
Word of God, the, 236.
Worship, sensuousness in, 296.
Wright, Thomas, Political Poe7ns,
II, 54 ; Piers Ploiximan, 73 «.
Writings of W., their scientific
value, 424 ; drawbacks in their
style, ib. ; manysidedness of,
429; arranged in six classes,
484 (96 Latin and 65 English).
¦Wycclyve^ or Wyclyve, John, of
Mayfield, 82, 98.
¦ Wyckett, the, 249, 349 «., 371, 483.
Wycliffe, a village on the Tees, 80 ;
the manor-house and familj', ib.,
•' 82 ; the family for many genera-
• tions strong Romanists, 83.

Wycliffe, family name, orthography
of the, 83 n.
Wycliffe, John, events of his
life, topics and character of his
teachings. See Table of Co7ite7tts
at the begin7ii7ig of this volu7ne.
Wycliffes, the two, 193, 475.'
Wykeham, William, founds New
College, no; Bishop of Win
chester, Lord Chancellor, 136,
394-
Yorkshire, character and dialect,
81.

Zwingli and W., 353, 360.

the end.

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