houses with glass windows, there to be privily worshipped, is denounced as gross idolatry. He complains that if a layman attempts to teach the people the truth of God's words, as bounden by the commandment of charity to do, he is forbidden and imprisoned. Such observations are repeated again and again, showing that, as in the primitive church, lay-Preachers had endeavoured to edify the people; but that the Priests, unlike the men of the apostolic age, persecuted the Lord's people that were Prophets. This also will have to be borne in mind when we come to speak of those lay-Preachers who assisted Wycliffe. Opposition to the payment of tithes is also frequently expressed; an opposition which soon became prominent in the followers of that eminent man, and was inseparable from the re-action of those times against the cupidity of the Clergy, the encroachments of the Popes, and the rapacity of the nobles. The Ploughman describes the manner in which Priests proceeded against persons accused of heresy, with a minuteness that confirms the fact that although the tribunal of the Inquisition was not formally established in England, its forms were observed, in compliance with the wish of the Pope, as communicated to Edward III., (A.D. 1335,) on occasion of the discovery of some heretics in Ireland.* He objects to the canon-law, as different from that of the Old and New Testaments, and partly taken from "heathen men's laws." Frequent allusions to the sufferings of his brethren, then put in bodily thraldom, and even suffering death by fire, and to the cruelty of Priests, exceeding the severity of laymen that were Lords, exactly coincide with other evidences that even then the number of dissentients from the Church of Rome, and of confessors, perhaps also of martyrs to the truth, was far from inconsiderable.† He even speaks as if there were an open secession of persons who recognised each other as brethren, but without any Minister at their head. But, Lord," he says, we laymen know no God but thee, and we, with thine help, and thy grace, forsake Nebuchadnezzar, (the Pope,) and his laws." The celibacy and luxury of the Priests, and their alliance with the rich to oppress the poor, are so described within the same paragraphs, as to indicate that the seceders were generally poor persons, and the wealthy indifferent to the doctrinal corruptions of the Church.‡ Such were the dawnings of divine truth in England when it pleased God to raise up John de Wycliffe. A native of Yorkshire, and student at Oxford, he was early distinguished as a scholar, and acknowledged even by his enemies to be a skilful dialectician. With unanswerable argument he unmasked the errors of Churchmen; but the Mendicants chiefly dreaded the force of his invective. Superior to the prejudices of his age, and willing to be counted a fool for Christ's sake, he soon renounced the prospect of honours which must have been awarded to him, had he cultivated the unprofitable learning then in vogue; and he applied himself to the exposition of holy Scripture, a work which was thought beneath the dignity of a scholar by those who had been taught to esteem the traditions of men more than the Raynaldi Annales Ecclesiastici, an. 1335, num. 60. † Idem, An. 1355, num. 28. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, book v., an. 1360. revelation of God. But many there were among the laity who appreciated his diligence in teaching them the way of life, and who gave him the familiar appellation of " Gospel Doctor." In the spirit of those few predecessors to whom we have alluded, he inveighed against the avarice and hypocrisy of the begging Friars; but, having thrown himself into constant controversy with them, and profoundly studied some questions of right which were involved in the dispute between the Sovereign of England and the Pope, he gained a clearer view of the absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ over both Church and State, and of the sufficiency of the merits of the Saviour to deliver souls from death, and maintained that the word of God alone suffices to teach men the way of salvation. For several years he was supported by the temporal power, a power which he always defended against the encroachments of the Papacy; and, even when most hotly persecuted, was so far shielded from the fury of his adversaries as neither to suffer imprisonment nor death. In the heat of his earlier disputation with those Monkish beggars he was in high favour at Oxford, and received from the Master and scholars of Baliol College the living of a country parish, Fylingham,* in the diocess of Lincoln, said to have been a valuable benefice (A.D. 1361). He was then elected Warden of that College, and afterwards occupied the same station at Canterbury-Hall. Thus did members of the University of Oxford avow their respect for a man soon to be regarded as a heretic by the Bishops. He maintained and taught that the Pope had no power to exclude any one from the kingdom of heaven; but that if the power of binding and loosing were committed to sinful men, then might any simple Priest absolve even him whom the Pope had thought proper to condemn. This he enforced with no less eloquence than reason, proving it out of the Bible; and yet with so great modesty, and with such a simplicity of demeanour and purity of conversation, that his opinions took root beyond the power of the priesthood to eradicate them from the heart and mind of Englishmen. Admiring a state of true poverty as much as he abhorred the dissembling of those who professed to follow it, he went barefoot and poorly clad, as did several who associated themselves with him, and began to preach after his example. Passing from points of discipline to articles of doctrine, he became convinced that the fable of transubstantiation was contrary to God's word, and boldly declared that the host, after consecration as before, was no more than bread, yet reverently acknowledged the sacramental presence of the Saviour. Having taken away their god, he embittered the hatred of the Clergy against himself, by teaching that if Priests sinned habitually, as unquestionably they did with but few exceptions, the temporal Lord was bound, under pain of damnation, to take away their living. Affirming that the Gospel alone was sufficient to rule the life of any Christian man, he denied at once the whole system of domination over conscience by Confessors; and declaring that the divers rules by which "religious persons were governed, added no more perfection to the Gospel than doth the white colour to the wall, he lifted the finger of scorn *Now spelt Fillingham. JOHN DE WYCLIFFE. 583 against the Monks, those whited sepulchres, whose inward corruption had become notorious. And while Popes were labouring to establish the Inquisition on this island, and Bishops did actually imprison heretics, so called, he preached that neither the Pope, nor any other Prelate of the Church, ought to have prisons wherein to punish transgressors. He even went so far as to declaim against the supremacy of the Pope, and against monasticism, as an ecclesiastical institution; and contended that tithes were pure alms, not to be exacted by any human authority, but freely given, if given at all. Many extreme opinions were laid to his charge; but although it was to have been expected that a mind suddenly emancipated from its bondage would fall into some opposite error, the colouring of fanaticism thrown over his character by Popish historians is, to say the least, considerably removed by candid examination of his writings; and it is demonstrated that eminent ecclesiastical historians have been misled in their notions of his doctrine by the false representations of Monkish writers, who published, as propositions of Wycliffe, errors and extravagances contradicted by the general tenor and express testimony of his works.* Many circumstances contributed to bring him to these bold conclusions. His predecessor in the Wardenship of Canterbury-Hall had been displaced, together with three Friars who were expelled from that foundation in consequence of their proceedings in opposition to the other Fellows, who were secular Priests, and with whom Regulars could not possibly agree. Islep, Archbishop of Canterbury, himself the founder, removed the Monk, Woodhall, and put our Reformer in his place; but no sooner did the aged Archbishop die, than Langham, his successor, restored the Monk, and ejected Wycliffe. Wycliffe appealed to the Pope, but unsuccessfully; and, after the lapse of about three years, his ejection was confirmed (A.D. 1370). But the sentence of the Pope raised him higher in the estimation of Edward III., who had already made him a royal Chaplain; and in the quarrel with Rome, that Sovereign, together with his son, John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, gladly availed themselves of the antagonist of Monkish impostors, and subject of Papal suspicion, to prosecute their cause. One year after his definitive ejection, (A.D. 1371,) when the English Parliament petitioned the King to remove Ecclesiastics from the administration of the high offices of State, which had been entirely in their hands, Wycliffe's judgment was given in favour of the measure: he was necessitated to defend himself by argument, and, in doing so, became daily more decided in dissent from Romanism. Then it was that he took his degree of Doctor of Divinity, and began to teach a reformed theology in the University of Oxford (A.D. 1372). At the same time Edward, as we have just observed, was engaged in a dispute of long standing with the Court of Rome, whose abstraction of an immense revenue from England could no longer be allowed without endangering the kingdom; a con * Since Lewis, his elder biographer, and Foxe, Le Bas, in his Memoir, and especially Dr. Vaughan, in his "Life and Opinions of John de Wycliffe, D.D.," and his introductory Memoir to the tracts and treatises of Wycliffe, have placed the real principles of that holy man in clear light, and enabled modern readers to judge of him for themselves. |