Part Tractates Reprinted from Former Editions
I.—A TREATISE OF JOHN WYCLIFFE AGAINST ORDERS OF Friars. — 217
[D III. A man once professed to their religion may never leave it.. 222]
[IV. No preaching without licence of their sovereign how bad soever. 222]
[VI. Friars draw alms from poor and needy men to the maintenance _]
[VII. Traditions of Friars preferred before Christ’s commandments.. 225]
[z IX. Their stealing of children and enticing of them to their order.. 226]
[X. Curates defrauded of their dues by means of Friars… 227]
[XI. Friars come in under the name of saints, and forsake the rule. 227]
[XVIII. Friars teaching the Vow of Obedience contrary to God’s Law.. 233]
[XIX. How they forsake the perfection of their order for worldly respects 234]
[XX. Their rotten habit esteemed above Christ’s body… 285]
[XXI. Friars beg without need, when the poor want, without remorse. 285]
[XXV. Judas’s children selling Christ, and all for money… 289]
[XXVIL Friars most impatient of all men living in bearing reproof.. 240]
[“XXVIIL The holy Scriptures accused by these unholy men of falsehood. 241]
Part and Observations Concerning Life of Wycliffe
Facts and Observations Concerning the Life of Wycliffe
THE biographers of Wycliffe all mention the year 1324 as that of his birth.” The place of his nativity still bears his name—a village about six miles from the town of Richmond in Yorkshire. The name of Wycliffe, like that of William of Wykeham, is evidently a local one, being written John of Wycliffe; and in England there is no locality bearing the name of Wycliffe beside the place above mentioned. From the time of the Norman Conquest the parish of Wycliffe had been the residence of a family bearing that name, who were lords of the manor of Wycliffe, and patrons of its rectory. During the lifetime of our Reformer there were two rectors of the parish who bore this name: Robert Wycliffe, presented to the living by Catherine, relict of Roger Wycliffe; and William Wycliffe, presented by John de Wycliffe. In 1606 the possessor of this ancient property lost his only son, and by the marriage of his daughter, his patrimony passed to a family of another name.
Dr. Zouch, rector of Wycliffe in the last century, in the insoription attached to the portrait of Wycliffe, by Sir Antonio More, now an heirloom to the holders of that living, speaks of the
[Tanner, Bibliotheca Brit. 767. Lewis, chap. i. Baber ii. Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. 229—324. Appendix i.]
ii FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS Reformer without hesitancy—as a native of this parish.” Birk-beck, a clergyman, who officiated in an adjoining parish during the reign of Charles I. speaks no less decidedly on this point in a work intitled the “ Protestant Evidence.” But our best authority is that of Leland, who wrote his Collectanea” about a hundred and fifty years after the decease of Wycliffe, and mentioning the parish of Wycliffe, describes it as the place where Wycliffe the heretic was born.”
It is true Leland himself has elsewhere given & somewhat different account. In his “Itinerary,” he makes mention of Spresswell, “a poor village, a good mile from Richmond,” as the place where the Reformer was born.^ But no trace of such a name can be found anywhere in the neighbourhood of Richmond. Leland travelled for much of his information, but it is manifest, from his errors in respect to Richmondshire, that he could not have visited that county more than very partially. Indeed, an author who could describe the rise of the Tees as being in a meadow near Caldwell, at least fifty miles from its real source, must be supposed liable to mistake on a point of this nature.
Spresswell may have been the name of the family mansion of the Wycliffes, or of some property belonging to them in the neighbourhood; but we are more disposed to trust in the account given by Leland in his Collectanea,” than in that found in the “Itinerary,” and to connect the birth of Wycliffe with the spot which was certainly the home of his family, and from which, beyond all reasonable doubt, he derived his name.
It must be admitted that the name of the Reformer does not occur in the existing records of the Wycliffe family. But this omission will not occasion surprise, when it is known that all the members of that family continued their adherence to the existing religious system, and that, according to the notions and feelings of the middle age, the man who made himself so conspicuous as the opponent of that system, would be regarded, in the language of the Reformer himself, applied to such cases, as slandering all his noble kindred, who were ever held true men and worshipful.” 4
[^ Ed. Quarto, cent. xiv. p. 71. ^ Tom. i. part ii. 329. Itinerary, v 99. MS. On Wedded Men and Wives, C.C.C. Cambridge.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. iii It will appear the more probable that the Reformer spoke thus, from remembrances connected with his own history, if we bear in mind, that no examination of his writings has served to bring to light anything concerning his intercourse with his kindred. What Leland has said concerning Spresswell, accordingly, is not of sufficient weight to be allowed to disturb the uniform testimony both of tradition, and of the most trustworthy authorities on this subject.
Concerning the early years of Wycliffe, we possess not a vestige of information. At the age of sixteen, we find him entered as a commoner in Queen’s College, Oxford. This was in 1340, the year in which that college was founded. Queen’s College owed its origin in part to the munificence of Philippa, the queen of Edward III., but still more to the praiseworthy zeal of Sir John Eglesfield, her chaplain. Eglesfield was a native of Cumberland, and the new college was designed chiefly for the benefit of students from the northern counties; a fact which may account for its being chosen in favour of a youth from the borders of Westmoreland and Durham.
In the age of Wycliffe, the means of education were extended far beyond the precincts of the cathedral or the monastery. Not only in the larger cities, but in every borough or castle, schools are said to have been established. Besides a school in the Abbey of St. Albans, in which every branch of knowledge then cultivated was taught, there was one in the same town under Mathew, a physician, and Garinus, his kinsman. Garinus was much celebrated for his knowledge of the canon and civil law; and the praise bestowed by Matthew Paris on this school, implies that there were many such in the kingdom. Not less than five hundred religious houses had made their appearance in England ’ during the interval from the Conquest to the reign of John; and to those houses, schools were generally annexed. It is certain, also, that so early as the year 1138, the instituting of schools in a manner distinct from the monastic establishments, had extended itself in some cases from towns even to villages. No person, however, could act in the cupacity of schoolmaster until licensed by a clergyman; and the clergy, whether from jealousy or avarice, were often so exorbitant in their demands on such occasions, as ut
iv FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS length to provoke the intervention of authority. In a general council held in the Lateran church at Rome in 1179, and in another convened at Paris in 1212, all exactions for licences to teach as schoolmasters were forbidden.
Even the studies at Oxford and Cambridge in those times were for the most part of an elementary kind, and the pupils were children. Such scholars were received into the schools which Wood describes as the Nurseries of Grammarians,” until they became capable of ascending to ‘higher arts.” Children, however, would not often be sent from distant parts of the kingdom to the universities, merely for the sake of such elementary acquisitions as might be made with greater facility and equal effect nearer home. In the northern counties especially, the necessity for so doing was precluded. Edward I. speaks of an establishment as existing in one of the border districts in his time, where two hundred young clerks were receiving education. In some such establishment the northern students generally made such progress as qualified them when they came to the universities to enter upon those higher studies which were peculiar to those celebrated seats of learning. In the provincial schools the Latin language was sedulously taught, as being in those times the only key of. knowledge. When thus far instructed, the pupil passed to the study of certain approved works on grammar, rhetoric, and logic; and obtained some knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. These sciences, which, it will be observed, are seven in number, were supposed to be so explained as to present within their mystic circle whatever was deemed important, or even possible to be known. But it is not probable that the preliminary studies of the young clerks” in such seminaries often embraced much beyond the study of grammar; their progress in the higher arts being reserved to the course awaiting them at the university. These facts may suggest to our imagination the manner in which Wycliffe had been occupied up to the time of his becoming
[Wood’s Annals, i. 105—107; ii. 712—717. Colliers Eccles. Hist. i. 497.]
[Tanner, Notitia Monastica, Preface. Matthew Paris, Vit. Abbot. St. Alban. 62.]
[Baconi Opus Majus, Prefat Brompton Chron. 1348. Hoveden, 589. Dupin,]
[Cent XIII. 92. Henry’s Hist. Eng. vi. 195—198. Robertson’s View of Society,]
[sect. i. Hallam’s Middle Ages, ii. 24—29.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. v a commoner in Oxford. But the connexion of Wycliffe with Queen’s College was not of long continuance. Merton, to which he shortly afterwards removed, was a foundation of great celebrity. It could boast of some of the most scientific scholars of the age: it had supplied the English church with three primates: its divinity chair had been recently filled by the celebrated Bradwardine: and within its walls the great schoolmen Ockham and Duns Scotus had put forth those powers, the fame of which filled all Christendom, and was supposed to be immortal. So great was the eapacity of Scotus, that, according to his eulogists, had the genius of Aristotle been unknown, here was a disciple who could have supplied his place. His arrival at truth was rather with the readiness and certainty of tuition, than by the slow and doubtful processes common to ordinary minds. The Divine attributes he could describe as one descending immediately from the presence of Deity, and the nature of angels as though it were his own. The mysteries of Providence, he could explain as if apprised of all its secrecies; and the felicities of heaven he could set forth as if they had become the element of his own being. How natural that such a man should be described as the immortal Scotus, and the most powerful and ingenious of the sons of men! But his contemporary Ockham lived to better purpose. He presumed to question the infallibility of Pope John XXII. As a punishment of his temerity, he was compelled to seek the protection of Louis of Bavaria, emperor of Germany; and his publications in defence of the civil power as opposed to the undue pretensions of the ecclesiastical, if not friendly to his repose, contributed largely to his fame. One of his compositions is praised by Selden, as the very best performance published concerning the limits of the spiritual and temporal powers.” ^
Wycliffe appears to have felt the influence of the associations into which he thus passed, and to have given himself to the study of the scholastic philosophy with great ardour. Aristotle, according to that system, was the only safe guide to the meaning of St. Paul. Aided by the logic and metaphysics of that great
[Hist. Oxford, ii. 89, 113. Lewis, c. i. Brucker, Hist. Philos. iii. 826, 828.]
[Selden, De Synedriis, lib. i. cap. 10, p. 228.]
vi FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS master, there was nothing, either known or supposed to have being, which his disciples did not affect to describe and analyse. In attempting to establish any truth, it was common to state and refute the forms of error opposed to it; and debates conducted after the manner of a most technical and abstruse logic, became to the inmates of colleges much the same thing which the tournament had long been to knights, and nobles, and princes. In the subsequent portions of this volume, the reader will find sufficient illustration of the nature of this science, and of the skill with which the Reformer could avail himself of its weapons.
To his skill in the scholastic philosophy, Wycliffe has the reputation of having added a diligent study of the civil and canon law. The civil law was a system of jurisprudence which had descended from the times of the Roman empire, and in part even from the times of the republic. It was adopted in various degrees by the nations of feudal Europe; but as it had been moulded for the most part by men who acted in obedience to the will of a military despotism, however wise it may have been in some of its provisions, as relating to questions between man and man, it was in every way unfavourable to liberty as between sovereign and subject. The canon law consisted of the decrees of councils and of popes, and constituted an authority which not only took under its jurisdiction every thing properly ecclesiastical, but often infringed upon the province of the civil power. Hence a spirit of rivalry arose between the courts of princes, and the courts of bishops; between the authority of councils, and the authority of parliaments; and between the supremacy claimed by princes in regard to ecclesiastical matters within their own dominions, and the pretensions of the pontiffs, as extending to the control of all such matters, in all the nations of Christendom. Thus it came to be a proverb, that no man could be a good canonist, without being a good civilian—the limits of the canon and the civil law being in many things so difficult to determine, that no one could hope to be expert in the defence of either, without possessing an intimate knowledge of both. But the causes which proved unfavourable to the dominion of the old Roman law, were highly favourable to the growing power of the church; and the sort of empire which the court of Rome laboured to introduce by means
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. vii of its canons, may be said to have come very much into the place of the old empire of the Cesars. In most of the nations of Europe, however, there were many laws and usages of Gothic or feudal origin, which were much too free or national in their character to accord readily with either of the systems adverted to. This was eminently the case in England; and the writings of Wycliffe afford abundant evidence of the attention which he had bestowed on all these subjects. He clung with much tenacity to the authority of the civil power, as his own just means of defence against the intolerance of churchmen; and often appealed to the laws of the land as a sufficient warrant, especially when sustained by Holy Scripture, for opposing all foreign usurpation within the realm of England, whether civil or ecclesiastical.
We know not to what extent Wycliffe may have applied himself to mathematical studies, but his acquaintance with natural philosophy generally, as taught in those times, was considerable. His great distinction, however, among the distinguished men of his day, consisted in his manner of inculcating religious truth on the sole authority of Scripture, and in the strict exercise of — the right of private judgment, long before those terms had become as a watchword among us. It was this peculiarity which secured him the honourable appellation of the Gospel Doctor.”^ It is not without considerable effort of imagination, that we can at all realise the test which must have been applied in those times, to the courage of a man resolved on pursuing such a course. Mosheim, in his History of the Thirteenth Century, remarks, “The method of investigating the nature of Divine truth, by reason and philosophy, prevailed so universally, and was followed with such ardour, that the number of those who, in conformity with the example of the ancient doctors, drew their systems of theology from the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the fathers, and who acquired on that account the name of Biblicists, diminished from day to day. Itis true, indeed, that several persons of eminent piety, and even some of the Roman pontiffs, exhorted with great seriousness and warmth the scho-
[Hist. of Oxford, i. 53, 92, 94. Lewis, c. 1. Father Paul’s Council of]
[Trent, lib. ii.]
viii FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS lastic divines, and more especially those of the university of Paris, to change their method of teaching theology, and laying aside their philosophical abstraction and subtlety, to deduce the sublime science of salvation from the Holy Scriptures, with that purity and simplicity with which it was there delivered by the inspired writers. But these admonitions and exhortations were without effect; the evil was become too inveterate to admit of a remedy, and the passion for logic and metaphysics was grown so universal and so violent, that neither remonstrances nor arguments could check its presumption or allay its ardour.” To this course of things, however, Wycliffe had courage enough to oppose himself, and deduced his system of theology from the Holy Scriptures, in a manner which evinced as little dependence on the writings of the Fathers,” as on the logic and metaphysics of the schools.”
In the year 1345, a pestilence, the most destructive in the annals of the world, if we may credit contemporary writers, appeared in Tartary. Having ravaged various kingdoms of Asia, and spread itself over a great part of Lower Egypt, it passed to the islands of Greece, and making its way along every shore of the Mediterranean, fell with special violence upon the states of Italy. Even the Alps proved not a sufficient barrier against its inroads. It was felt in the most obscure recesses, and by every European nation. Two years had been occupied in its desolating progress, when, as the historians of the time relate, the continent of Europe was shaken from its centre to its borders by a succession of earthquakes. Irom June to December in the same year, England was visited with incessant rains. In the following August the plague appeared at Dorchester; it soon reached the metropolis, and there, in the space of a few months, added many thousands to its victims. The infected perished, for the most part, in a few hours; the strongest failed after the second or third day. Wycliffe was now in the twenty-third year of his age. He saw the distemper passing from men to the brute creation, covering the land with putrid flesh; the labours of husbandry suspended; the courts of justice closed; the timid resorting to every devide of superstition for security, and perishing around him,
[Hist. iii. 249, 250.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. ix sometimes buoyant with delusion, and sometjmes frenzied by despair. It was said that a tenth only of the human family had been spared. Even grave men supposed that the earth had lost full half its population. Whether the man of three-and-twenty, who was ere long to become distinguished as a Reformer of religion, believed in one of these rumours or the other, enough, we may be assured, became known to him, on the ground of unquestionable evidence, to place the calamity before him in aspects deeply affecting; and from his frequent references to it in after life, we learn that the impression made by it, on his humane and devout mind, was deep and abiding.”
The moral effect of this event was hardly less lamentable than the physical. The depravity of the people seemed to be maddened rather than subdued by their sufferings. The physician and the priest were often found alike negligent of their duties. The husband was deserted by the wife, and even children by their parents; and plunderers employed themselves in rifling the dwellings which the malady had depopulated. It has ever been thus with humanity, in the same circumstances. In some instances, such visitations have been found to soften the heart, and to produce penitence; but in a greater number their effect has been to give a greater force and desperateness to the selfish passions. When the pestilence passed away, the clergy who survived were unequal to the duties required from their order, and the same want was felt in every department of agriculture and handicraft. But the great lesson which the living appeared to have derived from what had befallen the dead, was the wisdom of exacting the highest possible remuneration for such services, sometimes at the rate of a tenfold increase. Laws, accordingly, were issued to repress this rapacity, both among priests and people.
In reading the lives of distinguished men, two departments of inquiry naturally engage our attention; the one relating to the degree in which such men have been influenced by their times—
[Gio. Villani Chron. lib. xii. c. 83. Matteo Villani, lib. c. 4 I1 Decamerone]
[premio. Knighton. col. 2599—2601. Walsingham, Hist. 198. Rot. Parl. ii. 234.]
[Rymer, v. 655, 658, 693. — Maitland’s Hist. London, book i. c. 2. Barnes’ Edward]
[III. book ii. c. 8. Caxton’s Chron. and Hollinshed, ad an. ^ Johnson’s Canons. A.p. 1362. “No rector shall give, and no curate shall]
[receive, more than one mark above what had been yearly given for the same services]
[before the plague.”]
x FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS and the other, tp the degree in which they have given to their age, the impress of their own genius and labour. The effect on the mind of Wycliffe of the direful scourge adverted to, appears to have been to possess him with very gloomy views in regard to the condition and prospects of the human race. At a little more than the age of thirty, he seems to have looked on the state of society generally with painful foreboding, being equally affected by its manifest depravity, by its present sufferings, and by the prospect of the further retribution regarded as assuredly awaiting it.
The pestilence subsided in England in 1348. The earliest of the works attributed to Wycliffe bears the date 1356, eight years later. This piece is intitled the ‘ Last Age of the Church.” We find in it a weakness of judgment, and the traces of an ill-regulated fancy, such as our general idea in regard to the character of Wycliffe would not have taught us to expect. Thus the passage in the ninety-first Psalm, which speaks of “the terror by night”—of the ’ arrow that flieth by day “—of the pestilence that walketh in darkness,” and of “ the destruction that wasteth at noon-day,” is described as setting forth successive stages in the history of the church. The “nightly dread” or the terror by night, denoted the time when those who slew the saints judged that they did God service. The arrow flying by day was significant of the deceit of heretics. The latter of these tribulations was “put off by the wisdom of saints,” as the former was cast out by the stedfastness of martyrs.” The pestilence walking in darkness points to “the secret heresies of Simonists;” and the mischiefs of this third tribulation will be so heavy, that ‘ well shall it be to that man of holy church that then shall not be alive.” The fourth tribulation, denoted by the evil which cometh at midday, is the coming of antichrist. The authorities cited in favour of this view, beside the historian Eusebius, the venerable Bede, and St. Bernard, are the abbot Joachim, and the prophet Merlin. In the same manner, the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet are allegorised, as the figure of two and twenty hundred years, and as having contained a prophetic meaning. A similar interpretation is given to the Latin alphabet, as relating to the times of the New Testament; and the conclusions deduced from
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xi those sources are said to be as certain ’ as that in the beginning God made heaven and earth.”
But amidst dreams of this nature, we find indications of thought and feeling in regard to the state of society, the existing religious system, and the doctrines of theology, in harmony with those which occur in the undoubted writings of Wycliffe at a later period. In this curious production, the many evils existing, and the greater evils expected, are traced mainly to the character and conduct of a vicious priesthood. Upon that class of men especially, the judgments predicted are about to descend, and the only refuge for the sincere believer, is in turning from dependence on the offices of men, and in looking with humility and devotion to the compassion and grace of their Redeemer. The vengeance of the sword,” he writes, ’ and mischiefs unknown before, by which men in those days shall be punished, shaH fall for the sin of priests. Men shall fall on them, and cast them out of their fat benefices, and they shall say, He came into his benefice by his kindred, this by covenant made before, he for his service, and this for money came into God’s church.” Then shall each such priest cry, Alas! alas! that no good spirit dwelt with me at my coming into God’s church!’ ” In a preceding passage he predicts, on the authority of John of Salisbury and St. Gregory, that The pestilent smiting together of people, and hurling together of vealms, and other harms, shall come to the earth, because the honours of holy church are given to unworthy men.” The tract concludes with the following illustration of a Hebrew tale. ’ There was a stork had a bird, and his bird was shut in under a vessel of glass; and when the Stork saw his bird, and that he might not come to him, he brought a little red worm out of the wilderness, and with his blood he anointed the glass. Then the glass burst, and the bird flew his way. So our Lord, the Father of heaven, had mankind in hell, which was glazen, that is to say, was as brittle as glass. To break it, he brought such a little red worm, which was our Lord Jesus Christ, as David saith in the 21st Psalm, ‘I am a worm and no man, and with his blood he delivered man’s nature. Zachariah writeth in the ninth chapter, Thou truly with the blood of witness, or the testament, hast led out them that were bound in the pit.’ So when we were sinful, and children of wrath,
xii FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS God’s Son came out of heaven, and praying his Father for his enemies, he died for us then; much rather now, that we are made righteous by his blood, shall we be saved. Paul so writeth to the Romans: He shall pray for us. Jesus went into heaven to appear in the presence of God for us. Paul to the Hebrews. The which presence may he grant us to see, that liveth and reigneth without end, Amen.”
We may not feel at liberty to applaud the judgment of the author in the selection of his allegory in this case, but the devout perception and feeling of the above passage is not uninstructive.
In the year 1360 Wycliffe began his disputes with the Mendicants. In Oxford, where this controversy originated, these new orders were possessed of great power, and numbered among them many of the most able men of the times. The indolence and worldliness of the regular clergy, by scandalising the more severe or the more consistent professors of the Gospel, had been the main causes, some centuries earlier, of the rapid diffusion of the monastic institute—a fault in one extreme disposing many to error in an opposite direction. In the same manner, the great abuse of wealth on the part of the endowed priesthood, taught the Mendicants to throw themselves on a kind of voluntary system; while the general neglect of preaching in the case of the parochial clergy, was the reason assigned by the Mendicants for giving
[No biographer of Wycliffe had examined this MS. previously to the publication]
[of the Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, but it has since been printed and edited with]
[much care—with more care I may say than candour—by Dr. Todd.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xiii themselves almost wholly to that office as preaching friars. With stricter vows of poverty than had been adopted by the monastic orders, the friars associated a claim to the most important functions of the clergy, and thus aimed to unite in themselves much of the reputation and power belonging to both those classes.
They made their appearance in Oxford in 1221. The causes which had given them such speedy popularity on the continent, were no less powerful in this country. Some wise men, dissatisfied with the conduct of the older clergy, became the zealous patrons of these new fraternities. “Their supposed separation from the corrupting influence of wealth, and their assiduity and ability as preachers, appeared to point them out as the sort of men especially demanded by the times. Among the persons by whom they were thus regarded, was the celebrated Grossteste, Bishop of Lincoln; but the men who were for a while favourites of that prelate, became the objects of his bitterest censure before his decease. At a later period, their zeal to proselyte the young in the universities, exposed them to much suspicion and disaffection. Loud complaints had been urged against them in Paris, before Fitz-Ralph, who was chancellor of Oxford in 1338, and became archbishop of Armagh in 1347, distinguished himself as an opponent of their opinions and encroachments. He denied the virtue of their voluntary poverty, censured their inroads on the province of the parochial clergy, and declared, that by their influence, the students of Oxford had been reduced, within his memory, from thirty thousand, to not more than a fifth of that number. In 1357, Fitz-Ralph, better known by the name of Armachanus, submitted his complaints on this subject to the pope at Avignon. But the decease of this zealous prelate three years later, left his purposes unaccomplished, and the event was hailed by the Mendicants as a triumph to their cause.
Wycliffe entered into the labours of Armachanus, and prosecuted the same object with even greater earnestness. None of the extant writings of Wycliffe against the friars can be attributed to so early a period as the year 1360. But his arguments against that class of men are of such constant occurrence in his later works, and are everywhere so much to the same effect, as to leave little room to doubt that the matter of the treatise published in this volume, under the title of Objections to Friars,” presents
xiv FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS the substance of the reasoning employed by him on this subject from the commencement of the controversy relating to it.
His language uniformly was, that if God might be said to have given the friars to the church, it was as he had given a king to Israel,—as a punishment, and not as a boon. But a sanction was supposed to be imparted to the practices of the Mendicants by the poverty of Christ and of his apostles; and this circumstance had imperceptibly induced a habit of appeal to thesacred Scriptures, as to a decisive authority. The volume of inspired truth was thus brought from its obscurity, and was vested, though for mistaken purposes, with something of the homage due to it as the only competent arbiter of religious opinion. Such as were displeased by the obtrusive services of the friars, were thus naturally directed to the records of the Gospel, that the justice of these novel pretensions might be thus ascertained or confuted; and the arguments opposed with most success to the peculiarities of these innovators, were derived from the source to which they had themselves been the first to appeal. It is scarcely to be questioned, that to these facts we are considerably indebted for Wycliffe’s early attachment to the doctrine which affirms the sufficiency of the Scriptures with regard to all the purposes of faith and duty—a doctrine in which the right of private judgment was obviously implied; and it will hereafter appear, that no modern theologian has been more aware of the importance of these maxims than Wycliffe, or more successful in defending them. It is probable, indeed, that he was very far from discerning the ultimate result of his inquiries, when he first became known as the opponent of the new orders; but we have sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion, that even then, these momentous sentiments had become in a hopeful degree fumiliar to his mind. The failure of Fitz-Ralph, in his more limited project of reform, had left no room to hope for improvement, as to originate with the papacy, or as to be sanctioned from that quarter; and this state of things appears to have suggested to his successor in the contest, the necessity of a less sparing exposure of existing abuses in the church, and of a more vigorous appeal to the common sense of every class among the people.”
[Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. 266, 267.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xv That which distinguished the efforts of Wycliffe in this connexion from those of Armachanus and others, was his setting forth the evils which he describes, as being the natural and necessary consequence of the rules which the friars had pledged themselves to observe. While other disputants were content to seek a reform of particular errors and abuses, Wycliffe sought nothing less than an extinction of the institute itself, as being repugnant to Scripture, and inconsistent with the order and prosperity of the church. Instead of supposing, as some good men had done, that the introduction of such agents would tend better than any other means that might be employed for that purpose to stimulate and improve the character of the parochial priesthood, he insisted strongly that the removal of these intruders was absolutely necessary, if harmony and vigour were to be restored to the ecclesiastical system. He is at the same time careful to distinguish between the institute and the men, being equally concerned to “destroy their errors,” and to save their persons.”
The men against whom the Reformer committed himself to this extent, were possessed of great power, and so little accustomed to hear reproof with meekness, that, in the language of their antagonist, “a lord would more patiently submit to a severe censuring of his least offence, than friars would hear the soft and mild reproving of their greatest sins.” Wycliffe of course had to lay his account with the utmost mischief that might proceed from the passions of such opponents. During nearly two centuries, the Inquisition had been pursuing its course of torture and destruction on the continent; and through the whole of that period its odious business had devolved chiefly on the orders of St. Dominick and St. Francis. In addition to their power in this form, they were, in the language of Wycliffe, the confessors, the preachers, and the rulers commonly of all men.”«
[”[ have in my diocese of Armagh,” says Fitz-Ralph, “about two thousand]
[persons, who stand condemned by the censures of the church, denounced every year]
[against murderers, thieves, and such like malefactors, of all which number scarcely]
[fourteen have applied to me, or to my clergy, for absolution; yet they all receive the]
[sacraments as others do, because they are absolved, or pretend to be absolved, by]
[friars.”—Fox, Acts and Monuments, ubi supra.]
xvi FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS
The year 1860 has been mentioned as that in which Wycliffe became distinguished by the part which he took in this controversy. In the following year the master and scholars of Baliol College presented him to the living of Fylingham, a benefice of considerable value in the diocese of Lincoln. In the same year we find the name of John de Wyoliffe entered as that of the newly-elected warden of Baliol. These facts seem to warrant the conclusion that his attempts to defend the regular clergy, and the university, against the obtrusive zeal of the Mendicants, were highly estimated, at least by the parties most interested in his efforts.
But four years later we find the name of John de Wyoliffe as that of the person filling the office of warden in Canterbury Hall in the same university. Canterbury Hall was founded by Simon de Islep, Archbishop of Canterbury, a prelate who appears to have acquitted himself with much credit in some of the most important offices in the church and the government. The new hall was designed for the benefit of eleven scholars, eight of whom were to be secular clergymen; the remaining three, and the warden, were to be chosen from the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury. But discord soon arose between the two classes of scholars, and Woodhall the warden took part with the monks. Islep saw the community on which he had lavished his patronage &nd his substance, conspicuous for dissension rather than improvement, and availing himself of a provision in the founding of the institution, he removed the three monks and the warden, and supplying the place of the former by the same number of clerical scholars, he invited John de Wycliffe to the vacant office of warden. Islep died soon afterwards, and Peter Langham, the Bishop of Ely, who had been previously abbot of Westminster, and a private monk, was raised to the primacy. Woodhall and his expelled associates made their appeal to the new primate, alleging that the late changes in Canterbury Hall had been brought about by illegal and dishonest means; and after the interval of a few weeks, the three monks were restored, and Woodhall was reinstated as warden. It was pretended that what had been done, had been done without the sanction of the founder, or that if such sanction had been given, it was in his
[Life of Wycliffe, i. 272, 278.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xvii last sickness, when he had ceased to be competent to such an office. The only appeal from the judgment of a metropolitan, in such a case, was to that of the sovereign pontiff; and to him x appeal was made.
But some doubt has been raised as to whether the John de Wycliffe, of Canterbury Hall, was the same person who had been previously master of Baliol, and who is known to us as the Reformer. The decision of the pontiff, in the case submitted to him from Canterbury Hall, was unfavourable to the appellants; and as the enemies of Wycliffe have been forward to ascribe his zeal as a reformer to this loss of his wardenship, it appears to have been supposed, that service would be done to the reputation of Wycliffe, by throwing some doubt over the point of his ever having been in possession of the said wardenship. But slight incidents do not thus affect the course of great men. Minds liable to be thus influenced to-day, will be no less open to opposite impressions from opposite influences to-morrow, and will never evince steadiness in anything. Some difficulty indeed arises in accounting for the removal of a man from the office of warden in connexion with the older and larger foundation of Baliol, to so small and recent an establishment as that of Canterbury Hall. But we know not what may have happened at Baliol during the four years which intervened between the two appointments; and the fact that the founding of Canterbury Hall was a favourite project with the man who was ’ Primate of all England,” may go far to explain a circumstance which would otherwise seem improbable. It should be remembered, also, that the appeal in the matter of his wardenship was made in the spring of 1367, and that the decision of the pontiff was not given till the year 1370; and Anthony Wood, Fox the martyrologist, and others, agree in ascribing Wycliffes loss of his wardenship to the zeal which he had manifested on the side of ecclesiastical innovation, before the judgment of the court of Rome on that subject had been pronounced. The name of Wycliffe, as we have seen, is of local origin; and that there should have been two distinguished men
[The documents relating to this appointment and dispute may be seen in Lewis,]
[Appendix, Nos. 1—9, or, in the Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. Appendix 2—10.]
xviii FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS, in Oxford, bearing the name of John de Wycliffe, is most improbable. The confounding of the one person with the other would have been so natural, that in many instances care would have been taken to distinguish between them; and some traces of that dis-. tinction would have reached us. If a second John de Wycliffe flourished at the same time in Oxford, we seem shut up to the conclusion, that he must have been, of the same family with the Reformer,—a conclusion which it seems hardly possible to admit. While the suit relating to Canterbury Hall was pending, a somewhat violent dispute arose between the crown of England and the court of Rome, concerning the tribute-money which King John had stipulated to be paid by himself and his successors to the treasury of the pontiffs. Urban demanded of. the English monarch the annual payment of & thousand marks, as a feudal acknowledgment for the sovereignty of England and Ireland; those kingdoms being held in fee, it was said, of the successors of St. Peter. Since the decease of King John, this claim had been honoured or neglected, as the favour of the pontiff was felt to be important or otherwise.
Thirty-three years had passed since the last annual payment of this nature was made; and the demand of Urban now was, that the arrears for that interval should be sent to him, and that the annual sum should be regularly transmitted to him in future. In default of such payment, the king was further admonished that he would be cited duly to appear and answer for such neglect in the court of the sovereign pontiff, who had become his civil no less than his religious superior.
Edward received this communication in 1305: in the following year he submitted the question to the decision of parliament. Since the reign of John, the powers of the English parliament, and especially of the House of Commons, had become such that all the greater and more distinctive principles of our constitution may be said to have been called into vigorous exercise. The reign of Edward extended to fifty years, during which period more than seventy parliaments were convened. More than once
[See Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. 273, where I have touched on this subject;]
[also a piper in the Gentleman’s Magazine about two years since.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xix it was solemnly enacted that one such assembly at least should be annually summoned. Edward, in the person of his chancellor, requested the advice of parliament with regard to the answer which should be returned to the claim made upon him and upon the nation by the pope. — The prelates solicited a day for private deliberation. On the morrow, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the members of the commons, declared unanimously, that neither King John, nor any other sovereign, had power thus to subject the realm of England, without consent of parliament; that such consent had not been obtained; and that, passing over other difficulties, the whole transaction on the part of the king was in violation of the oath which he had taken on receiving his crown. By the temporal nobility and commons, it was farther resolved that, should the pope commence his threatened process against the king of England, as his vassal, all possible aid should be rendered, that such usurpation might be effectually resisted.
According to the ecclesiastical theory of the middle age, the church is the parent of the state, bishops are as fathers to princes, and the authority of all sovereigns must be subordinate to that of the successors of St. Peter. On the present occasion, men were not wanting to take this high ground in defence of this papal claim. In a treatise published by an anonymous monk, it was maintained, that the sovereignty of England had been legally forfeited to the pope, by the failure of the annual tribute; and that the clergy were exempt in person and property from all subjection to the authority of the magistrate. We may judge of the celebrity of Wycliffe, at this time, from the fact that he is called upon by name to show the fallacy of these opinions.
The Reformer was not ignorant concerning the motives of his anonymous antagonist in assailing him with this challenge. He assures us that he had reason to know, that the hope of his opponent was, to expose him to the resentment of the pontiff, that, laden with ecclesiastical censures, he might be deprived of his preferments; also to commend himself and his own order to the favour of the Roman court, and to augment the possessions of the
[Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. 278—280.. This document is printed in Lewis, Ap. No. 30..]
xx FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS religious orders generally, by placing the kingdom in greater subjection to the power of the popes. That he might guard himself 80 far as possible against the sinister purposes of his opponent, Wycliffe commences by describing himself as a humble and obedient son of the church, and as meaning to affirm nothing that may be reported to her injury, or that may reasonably offend the ears of the devout. The Reformer further describes himself as the king’s peculiar clerk, from which it appears that he had received the honorary distinction of royal chaplain. The right of the king in connexion with parliament not only to deny the tribute claimed by the pope, but to subject all clergymen to the jurisdiction of the magistrate in all civil matters, and in certain cases even to alienate the goods of the church, are all affirmed as doctrines shown to be just, both by the written law, and by the ancient practice of the realm. He does not deny that there may be much in the canons of the church opposed to such doctrines, but he insists that if truly examined these maxims will be found to be in strict accordance with the claims of natural right, with the maxims of civil law, and with the precepts of Holy Scripture.. Having thus stated the grounds on which it would be practicable to work out a full vindication of the above doctrines, he abstains from pursuing that course, and chooses rather to set forth his views, as contained in the substance of a series of speeches, said to have been delivered by certain secular lords, in reference to the demand lately made on the treasury of the king of England by the pope. By this method of reply, the humble Reformer may have hoped to shield himself,.under the authority of the said lords, against the resentment to which his opinions might otherwise expose him. The speeches which have been thus preserved may interest the curious reader as presenting a specimen of the manner in which our senators of the fourteenth century were deemed capable of treating questions demanding a good degree of information and discernment. What is reported from them in this document is not of course a complete account of the debate adverted to, but a selection of passages designed to place the series of difficulties inseparable from the claim of the pope in the most lucid form, and in the smallest compass.
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xxi To us the paper is chiefly valuable, as containing opinions which, by adoption at least, are those of Wycliffe himself, and which in the report made of them have lost nothing of their force, probably from coming into contact with the vigour and intrepidity of his own genius. -
The first lord declared all feudal subjection to be founded in the necessary subordinations of political power. But no subordination of this nature, he maintained, could have been the origin of the alleged subjection of England to the papacy; and the pretension of the pope accordingly being without any foundation of feudal justice, the dependence introduced by King John should not be regarded as a cempact at all proper to be continued. Should the pontiff attempt to supply the want of feudal law, in support of this feudal pretension, by resorting to force, the speaker expressed his readiness to place the question on the issue of a trial by such weapons. The next speaker extended this line of argument. Feudal tribute, he observed, could not be justly demanded except by a superior, capable of affording feudal protection. Such protection the pope could not bestow on those from whom he now demanded tribute and homage; nor could it become him to employ himself in such matters, whatever might be his power in relation to them, seeing that the character distinguishing his holiness should be that of chief in the following of Christ, the Saviour of the world having been without a place to lay his head, and having taught his ministers in this manner by example, the superiority they should evince to all the fascinations of secular possession and authority. The great duty in this case is therefore said to be not only to resist this pretension to civil dominion on the part of the pontiff, but to insist that the cares of his holiness be.restricted to the spiritual things proper to his office.
While it was shown after this manner that the feudal tribute demanded, could not be exacted on the ground of any feudal benefit supposed to be conferred, the third speaker declared that it could not be claimed with greater justice upon any religious ground, inasmuch as the influence of the pope and his cardinals was scarcely otherwise felt in England, than in conveying large portions of its treasure to the hands of its enemies. This nobleman was succeeded by a fourth, who stated that one-third
xxii FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS of the property of the kingdom had become that of the church, and that over all such property the pope had long claimed dominion, and that in virtue of such claim, the court of Rome exacted the first-fruits from every vacant benefice in England. This interference of the pope in regard to temporal things, it was observed, must be either as vassal to the king, or as his superior. If the former doctrine would be rejected by the court of Rome, the latter should be no less spurned by the people of England; and it is accordingly recommended that a forcible check should be given to this spirit of usurpation, which may otherwise be found powerful enough, in some interval of disorder, to extend the despotism already imposed on the church, in an equal measure to the state. The remarks of the next speaker were not less pertinent. He professed himself curious to know the expressed condition on which this disputed tribute had been first granted. If granted that absolution might be conferred on the king, or that the papal interdict might be removed from the kingdom, then the whole transaction was a piece of simoniacal dishonesty, proper to be denounced by lords and churchmen. The gifts of the Christian priesthood had been freely bestowed that they might be as freely dispensed; but the pope, according to this view of his conduct, is heard to say, I will absolve thee, only upon condition that I receive so much money annually and for ever!” If it should be said that the claim preferred had not been made on the ground of any spiritual benefit bestowed, but on the principle of a strict feudal subjection, it is then argued that a plea to dispose of the crown itself might be some day urged with as much appearance of justice. By another lord it was observed, that supposing the land ever to have been the just possession of the pope, his right so to dispose of the goods of the church as to barter an opulent kingdom for the trivial acknowledgment of seven hundred marks a year, was hardly consistent with an honest stewardship. Certainly, the functionary who could depreciate ecclesiastical property after this manner, might alienate it entirely, and must be an authority not greatly to be coveted in the relation of a feudal superior. The samo speaker proceeds to state, that “Christ is the supreme Lord, while the pope is a man liable to sin; and if in mortal sin, according to divines, is unfitted for
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xxiii dominion.” And he concludes by observing, ‘ manifestly, therefore, it is enough for us to keep ourselves from mortal sin, to the service of one lord of the kingdom, to communicate of our goods virtuously to the poor, and as in former time to hold our kingdom immediately of Christ, who, as chief Lord, teaches whatever is most lawful and perfect with regard to man’s authority.” The last speaker exposed the injustice of the papal demand still more forcibly, as an attempt to visit the sins of the monarch on the freedom and property of the subject, and that to remote generations. In the supposed compact it is argued, the people were all certainly interested, and according to the good usage of the realm, the assent of all should have been obtained, in place of which, the seal of the king and of a few apostate lords had been deemed sufficient to bring thraldom upon a whole nation. The grant, accordingly, as being one to which the kingdom had never been a party, is treated as a matter which it should never descend to recognise.”
Wycliffe speaks of having heard the speeches of which he makes this report^ But the reasonings of these secular lords are so pertinent, and for the most part so identical with opinions subsequently published, and reiterated in almost every shape in the writings of the Reformer, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion, either that the supposed debate is altogether a fiction, or at least that Wycliffe has given to the utterances of the speakers a strong colouring from his own views and impressions. His opponent
[Lewis, Col. No. 30. ^ The speeches, he writes, “quam audivi in quodam Concilio a Dominis]
[secularibus.” This is especially observable in respect to the doctrine so often imputed to him,]
[but so generally misunderstood, concerning the doctrine of dominion founded en]
[grace,” —in other words, the doctrine which was said to declare every person in mortal]
[sin as having forfeited all title to any worldly office or possession. But the doctrine]
[of Wycliffe on this subject, whatever it may have been, he states as being that of St.]
[Augustine and St. Bernard, and it will not accordingly be regarded, by any man of]
[sense and honesty, as being very favourable to anarchy. In the seventeenth chapter of]
[the fourth book of the Trialogus, he writes, that “a man may possess temporal]
[things by a two-fold title—by a title of original righteousness, and by a title of]
[worldly righteousness. Christ possessed all the good things of the world by the]
[former title—as St. Augustine often declares, that it is by thattitle, the title of grace,]
[that all things are the right of the godly. But possession in a civil sense, is widely]
xxiv. FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS had stated the claim of Urban in a form of logic from which the escape of an adversary was supposed to be impossible. Having laid down as an axiom, that every dominion granted on condition, is dissolved on a failure of that condition, he proceeds to say, that the pope, as supreme lord, presented the realm of England to King John, after it had been surrendered into his hands, on condition that England should pay annually seven hundred marks to the Roman court. But this condition, he adds, has not been observed, and the king has thereby fallen from the true dominion of England. Wycliffe replied, that the condition assumed in this agreement had been assumed falsely; neither the king, nor those who acted with him, being competent to transfer the realm and the people of England after this manner to the pope. Having challenged the monk to show the contrary of this opinion,. Wycliffe concluded by observing, “If I mistake not, the day will come in which all exactions shall cease before such a condition will be proved to be either honest or reasonable.”
By the parliament which disposed in this manner of the arrogant claim of the pope to be regarded as the feudal sovereign of England, some wholesome regulations were made with a view to protect the universities against certain mischiefs which had resulted from the conduct of the friars. It was determined that no scholar under the age of eighteen should be admitted into any mendicant order, that no document tending in any manner to the injury of the universities should be hereafter received from the pope. and that all differences between the mendicants and the older authorities in those seminaries should be decided in future in the court of the king, and without further appeal We have no direct evidence on the subject, but it is highly probable, from the part which Wycliffe had taken in this controversy, that the suit of the universities against the friars was not conducted without his assistance; and this becomes the more probable if we
[different from a title of that sort” And Wycliffe never appealed to the former kind]
[of title, to the disturbance of the latter, though he could sometimes speculate on the]
[peculiarity of the former title as a theologian, and in the case of priests, never ceased]
[to declare that the priest in mortal sin ceased de facto to be a priest. See Life and]
[Opinions of Wycliffe, ii. 288—236.]
[Cotton’s Abridgment of Records, 102, 103. Collier’s Eccles. Hist., i. 560.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. XXV suppose him to have been present, as he states, when the parliament discussed the question of the tribute claimed by the pope in the manner described. The parliament adverted to, it will be remembered, was the assembly convened in 1866, and Wycliffe, who was then warden of Canterbury Hall, was soon afterwards numbered, as we have seen, among the royal chaplains..
The reign of Edward the Third, who had now reached the fiftieth year of his age, is one of the most remarkable in English history. It was distinguished by military enterprise, but hardly less by general social advancement. The battle of Cressy belongs to the year 1846. The victory of Poictiers belongs to 1856. In the latter year, the king of Scotland was a prisoner in the Tower of London, and the king of France was placed at the head of the many illustrious captives in the hands of Edward the Third. It was natural that such successes should diffuse and strengthen the war passion among the people of England in those times. But much collateral benefit resulted from this course of affairs. During the reign of Edward, the pontiffs resided at Avignon, and being, together with their cardinals, commonly Frenchmen, the animosity against France disposed the people of England to regard the policy of the papal court as that of a power naturally allied to - France, and to look on all its proceedings with a suspicion and disaffection which might not otherwise have been felt The great expense, moreover, inseparable from a protracted war, both in Scotland, and through the provinces of France, obliged the king to assemble his parliament every year, the effect of which was greatly to strengthen the power of such assemblies, to define parliamentary usage, and to familiarise the mind of the people to such a mode of government; while the redress of grievances almost always preceded new grants of money. Commerce also made great progress during this period, and in its train came a marked revival of taste, literature, and general intelligence.
[From 1304 to 1378 the following popes succeeded each other, and all were]
[Frenchmen. Clement V.; John XXII.; Benedict XII.; Clement VI.; Innocent]
[VI.; Urban V.; and Gregory XI. By a variety of mean and selfish contrivances,]
[having “no other end than the acquisition of riches, these inconsiderate pontiff]
[excited a general hatred against the Roman see, and thereby greatly weakened the]
[papal empire, which had been visibly upon the decline since the time of Boniface.”]
[Hist. iii. 816—318.]
xxvi FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was the patron of Chaucer and of Wycliffe, and is the only male member of the royal family whose name is conspicuously associated with the religion of those times. This prince was born at Ghent in the year 1340, sixteen years subsequent to the birth of our Reformer. At the age of twentytwo, he succeeded, as Earl of Richmond, to the title of his deceased father-in-law, Henry, Duke of Lancaster, and to estates which rendered him the most opulent subject of the realm. He unsheathed his sword in Scotland, France, and Spain, but is less known from his military exploits, than as possessing some taste for literature, and as having evinced a strong sympathy, up to a certain point, with the reforms contemplated by Wycliffe. It has been stated that Wycliffe dedicated a collection of his works to the Duke of Lancaster so early as the year 1368. But this is an error. There is a manuscript volume in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, containing several pieces from the pen of Wycliffe, and along the upper line of the first treatise in that collection, is an insertion describing the volume as consisting of the works of Wycliffe which were so dedicated. But this entry is made by a modern hand, and it is certain that the piece on which it was written was not composed earlier than 1880—that is, subsequent to the papal schism. This description, however, has been copied in a well-known printed catalogue of existing manuscripts, and from that source has been widely adopted.
In 1871 an attempt was made by the English parliament to exclude churchmen from those high offices of state which hitherto had been almost invariably sustained by them. At that time the ’ offices of Lord Chancellor, and Lord Treasurer, and those of Keeper and Clerk of the Privy Seal, were filled by clergymen. The Master of the Rolls, the Masters in Chancery, and Chancellor and Chamberlain of the Exchequer, were also dignitaries, or beneficed persons of the same order. One priest was Treasurer for Ireland, and another for the Marshes of Calais; and while the parson of Oundle is employed as surveyor of the king’s buildings, the parson of Harwick is called to the superintendence of the
[Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Anglis et Hiberniee. Lewis, p. 20, Life]
[and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. 304, 305.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xxvii royal wardrobe. It is known, also, that the clergy often descended to much lower occupations, and gave themselves to such employments in a manner most inconsistent with the proper duties of their office. The attempt to put an end to this usage by authority of parliament, is attributed by historians to the secret influence of John of Gaunt; and concerning the judgment of Wycliffe as strongly opposed to it, the reader will find abundant evidence in the present volume. Neither prelates,” he writes, nor doctors, priests nor deacons, should hold secular offices, that is, those of Chancery, Treasury, Privy Seal, and other such secular offices in the Exchequer; neither be stewards of lands, nor stewards of the hall, nor clerks of the kitchen, nor clerks of accounts; neither be occupied in any secular office in lords’ courts, more especially while secular men are sufficient to do such offices.” The prayer of the parliament, and a prayer in which its members appear to have been unanimous, was fully to the effect of the above language. Edward, on receiving it, replied that he would act in the matter with the advice of his council. But in the following month William of Wykeham, the celebrated Bishop of Winchester, resigned his office of Chancellor, and the Bishop of Exeter ceased to be Lord Treasurer. It is hardly probable that the originators of this movement should.have regarded their first effort as likely to be attended by a greater measure of success.
This proceeding belongs to the year 1371. It was in the year preceding, that the papal court gave its judgment against the claim of Wycliffe with regard to the wardenship of Canterbury Hall. Against the last will of the founder, Woodhall and the three monks were restored, and two years later they rendered their illegal triumph secure, by paying the sum of two hundred marks, as the price of obtaining a confirmation of the decision of the pope from the crown. We have no reason to suppose that Wycliffe was
[Cotton’s Abridgment, 45 Edward III. Fox, Acts and Mon. i. 547. Collier’s]
[Eccles. Hist., i. 438—460. MS. Ecclesie Regimen. Brit. Museum. Cott. MSS. Titus, D. i. The]
[substance of this work is, no doubt, the production of Wycliffe, but the copy in the]
[British Museum has been transcribed, and in one or two instances interpolated by]
[the transcriber. Much of its sentiment and language will be found in the work on]
[Prelates, and in other pieces. Lewis, 15—17.]
xxviii FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS greatly disappointed by what had happened in this respect. We are not aware of a single reference to it in any of his subsequent writings.
In the year 1372, he performed his novitiate for the degree of doctor of divinity; that degree authorised him to open his own school, as a public teacher of theology in the university. In this capacity he, no doubt, read many of those scholastic pieces still extant among his works, and from this time the influence of his opinions began to be more sensibly felt in the university.
The next point with which the name of Wycliffe is connected in our history, relates to the abuses of the papacy in the matter of provisors.” In the sixteenth year of Edward III. the recentlyelected pontiff, Clement the Fourth, declared the two next vacancies in the Anglican church which should amount to the annual value of two thousand marks, to be, by provision, the property of two among his cardinals. The moment was not favourable to such a proceeding. Complaints which had been often uttered, both by nobles and commons, on this subject, were now loudly repeated. Edward, in his letter to the pope, declared that the effect of this custom of provisors had been to transfer the property designed for the support of religion, to the hands of men who neither dwelt in the country nor understood its language, and who, while seizing on the emoluments of office, were alike unable and unwilling to discharge its duties. This custom, he declares to be alike at variance with his own prerogative, with the authority of the chapters, and with that of patrons in general. His claim accordingly is, that this usage in respect to livings may be forthwith abolished. But the redress of these grievances was difficult to obtain. In 1850 it was found necessary to pass the celebrated statute against ‘provisors;” and in 1353 to provide a further enactment, well known since that time by the word premunire. The first declared the collation to any dignitary or benefice in a manner opposed to the rights of the king, the chapters, or the patron, to be void; the second was directed against the custom of appealing on questions of property, from the decision of the English courts, to the court of the pontiffs. But in 1378
Walsingham, 161. Collier, i. 546, 547, 554
aum.
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xxix complaint is still made against the evils resulting from these practices. The spoliation carried on under such pretexts, is said to be even greater than at any former period. Hence, to save the property of the realm, and to silence the murmurs of his subjects, Edward commissioned Gilbert, bishop of Bangor, Bolton, a monk of Dunholm, and William de Burton and John de Shepey, to lay his own complaint, and that of his parliament, before the papal court. Gregory the Eleventh then filled the papal chair, and resided at Avignon. The change demanded was, that the pontiff should desist in future from the reservation of benefices in the Anglican church; that the clergy should henceforth freely enjoy their election to episcopal dignities; and that in the case of electing a bishop, it should be enough that his appointment should be confirmed by his metropolitan, as was the ancient custom.”
In answer to this complaint some fair promises were made; but from the spirit in which the English parliament returned io the subject in the same year, it is plain that the promise of amendment was regarded either as too restricted, or as not trustworthy. In the following year—the year 1374—an inquiry was instituted as to the exact number of benefices in England which, by means of this custom of provisors, had passed into the hands of foreigners» As the result. of this inquiry, a second embassy was appointed, to present a further and stronger remonstrance against these encroachments. The first name in the list of the persons now appointed, is that of the prelate who had been included in the previous commission, and the second is that of John de Wycliffe. Had the seat of the negotiation which followed been at Rome, or even at Avignon, it is probable that such nearer observation of the temper and policy of the papal court, would have given to the mind of the Reformer a strong impulse in the direction toward which it now tended. But the diplomatists met at Bruges. Wycliffe reached that city in August, 1371; and in September of the following year, the result of the commission appeared in the shape of six bulls, addressed by the pope to the king of England, and treating of
[Barnes’s Edward IIL, 864. Lewis, c. iii. 5 Fox, Acts and Mon.,, i. 561. Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. Ap., No. x.]
XXX FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS the questions then at issue between the nation and the papacy. In these documents it was provided that no person at present in possession of a benefice in England. should be disturbed in such possession by any intervention of authority from the pope; that such benefices as had been disposed of. in anticipation of their vacancy. by Urban the Fifth. but which had not yet become vacant. should be left to be filled according to the pleasure of their patrons; that the titles of certain clergymen which had been questioned by the late pope. should be confirmed, and that all demand on the first-fruits of the livings to which those clergymen had been appointed. should be remitted; and also that an assessment should be made of the revenues derived by certain cardinals from livings in England. to effect the repair of the churches and other ecclesiastical buildings holden by them, and which had been allowed to fall into decay—the extent of such assessment to be determined by the verdict of a jury convened from the neighbourhood.
These provisions point with sufficient clearness to one class of abuses then prevalent in the English church, consequent on its relation to the papacy. It is plain that it was scarcely within the power of the king. or of the parliament, or of both conjointly, to protect the ecclesiastical revenues of the kingdom against the rapacity of the popes and their dependents. In the documents adverted to, it will be marked that the onlv admission of error had respect to certain things done by the preceding pontiff, not to any error in principle as regarded the practice of usurping the place of the crown, the chapters, and the patrons of livings, and alienating their legal property from them, and from the nation, in favour of aliens and enemies. It is admitted that in certain cases the last pope had not exercised this sort of power wisely; but the only solace to the impoverished nation is, that in future these schemes of spoliation are to be conducted with more precaution and sagacity.
That such were the views entertained in England with regard to the papal letters, may be inferred from the continuance of the embassy which produced them. In the April of the following Rymer, vii. 49 Edward IIL, Sess. 1. Cotton’s Abridgment, ad an. 1376.
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. XXXi year, the parliament again petitioned the king on this subject, and Edward replied, that the matters in dispute were still in the hands of his commissioners at Bruges. But the health of the aged king was declining rapidly, and his power had waned in a degree not less observable. On the continent his authority and influence were almost annihilated. At home, faction brought its weakness and perplexities. The court of Rome, which never failed to perceive the advantage to be derived from delay, or the policy of seizing on some interval of weakness to embrace or extend its power, could not be brought to more than vague and partial reformation, always connecting such conditions with the points which it appeared to concede, as might furnish, ere long, a sufficient pretext for resuming whatever may seem to have been abandoned. The pope promised not to dispose of English benefices — in the way of reservation, on condition that the crown should be found to abstain from all similar liberties with ecclesiastical property; and this was all the fruit of a negotiation of two years continuance. It is probable that to the insight into the spirit and policy of the papal court thus obtained, we are to ascribe the severity which subsequently marks the strictures of Wycliffe concerning the higher clergy generally, and especially concerning the popes, and their immediate coadjutors. Two years of precious time expended to so little purpose, must have been anything rather than soothing in its influence on a man of such a temperament.
During his absence, however, the Reformer was not forgotten by his sovereign. In November, 1375, he was presented by the king to the prebend of Aust, in the collegiate church of West-bury, in the diocese of Worcester. About the same time the rectory of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, became vacant. Lord Henry de Ferars, the patron, was then a minor; it, in consequence, devolved upon the crown to appoint the next incumbent, and the royal patronage was again exercised in favour of Wycliffe.
In the mean time the disposition of the commons, and, we have reason to suppose, of the people at large, to indulge in loud
[Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. 345, 346.]
xxxii FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS complaint against the court of Rome, rather strengthened than diminished. We can suppose the statistics of the commons, in 1376, to have been somewhat inaccurate when they state that the kingdom, within the memory of the present generation, had lost not less than two-thirds of its wealth and population. But it is instructive to observe, that the disasters, whether of war abroad, or of disease and poverty at home, which were regarded as having changed the condition of the kingdom to such an alarming extent, are imputed mainly to. the mal-practices of popes and cardinals. In the preamble to their petition, they state that the taxes paid to the court of Rome for ecclesiastical dignities amounted to five times more than those obtained by the king from the whole produce of the realm. “For some on bishopric or other dignity,” the pope they say reserves, by way of translation and death, three, four, or five several times; and while for money the brokers of that sinful city —Rome—promote many caitiffs, being altogether unlearned and unworthy, to a thousand marks’ living yearly, the learned and worthy can hardly obtain twenty marks: whereby learning decayeth, aliens and enemies to their land, who never saw, nor care to see, their parishioners, having those livings; whereby they despise God’s sorvice, and convey away the treasure of the realm, and are worse than Jews or Suracens.” Against these customs they plead “the law of the church,” which requires that all such preferments should be disposed of in charity, without praying or paying.” They insist further, that it is the demand of reason, that establishments which owe their origin to devout and humane feeling should continue to be subservient to religion and hospitality; and they are not afraid to add, that God has given his sheep to the pope to be pastured, and not to be shorn or shaven; and that lay patrons, perceiving the simony and covetousness of the pope, do thereby learn to sell their benefices to mere brutes, no otherwise than Christ was sold to the Jews.” By such means the pope is said to derive a revenue from England alone, exceeding that of any prince in Christendom. It is stated, accordingly, that the pope’s collector, and other strangers, the king’s enemies, and only lieger spies for English dignities, and disclosing the secrets of the realm, ought to be discharged.” It is added, that the said
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xxxiii collector, “being also receiver of the pope’s pence, keepeth a house in London, with clerks and officers thereunto belonging, as if it were one of the king’s solemn courts, transporting yearly to the pope twenty thousand marks, and most commonly more: that cardinals and other aliens, remaining at the court of Rome—whereof one cardinal is a dean of York, another of Salisbury, another of Lincoln, another archdeacon of Canterbury, another archdeacon of Durham, another archdeacon of Suffolk, and another archdeacon of York, another prebendary of Thane and Nassingdon, another prebendary of York, in the diocese of York—all these, and divers others, have the best dignities in England, and have sent over to them yearly, twenty thousand marks, over and above that which English brokers lying here have; that the pope, to ransom Frenchmen, the king’s enemies, who defend Lombardy for him, doth always, at his pleasure, levy a subsidy of the whole clergy of England; that the pope, for more gain, maketh sundry translations of all bishoprics and other dignities within the realm; and that the pope’s collector hath this year taken to his use the first fruit of all benefices; that it would be good, therefore, to renew all the statutes against provisors from Rome, since the pope reserveth all the benefices of the world for his own proper gift, and hath, within this year, created twelve new cardinals—so that now there are thirty, whereas there were wont to be but twelve in all; and all the said thirty cardinals, except two or three, are the king’s enemies.” It is further argued from these facts, that the popes, if left without check, may ere long proceed to confer the civil offices and the states of the realm upon their creatures, after the manner in which they had accroached” to themselves the appointment of heads to ’ all houses and corporations of religion.” As the only adequate means of protecting the country against a system of spoliation which doomed it to perpetual poverty, and which drained from it the emolument that should be as a bounty to its learning and intelligence, it is urged, not only that the provisors of the popes should be sternly resisted in all cases, but that “no papal collector or proctor should remain in England, upon pain of life and limb; and that no Englishman, on the like pain, should
xxxiv FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS become such collector or proctor, or remain at the court of Rome.”
Such were the proceedings of an assembly, which, from its enlightened public spirit, in regard to secular as well as to religious questions, obtained the honourable appellation of the good parliament.” About six months intervened between the dissolution of that parliament and the meeting of another; and the opening of the next parliament is connected with a remarkable event in the life of Wycliffe. It is manifest that the doctrines of the Reformer were now widely diffused, both among the people, and among that class of persons from whom tho representatives of the people in parliament were chosen. The clergy began to be alarmed. It was deemed expedient that something vigorous should be done to prevent the scattering of these seeds of religious change through the land. Courtney, one of the most imperious churchmen of the age, had been recently elevated to the see of London. In the last parliament this prelate had committed himself in a marked degree against the Duke of Lancaster, the known patron of Wycliffe; and the bishop now employed himself to rouse and concentrate the indignation of his order against the opinions and conduct of the Reformer. The houses of convocation met on third of February, in 1377, a week after the opening of the new parliament, and one of its earliest proceedings was to issue a summons requiring Wycliffe to appear before it, and to answer to the charge of holding and publishing certain erroneous and heretical opinions. The nineteenth day of the same month was fixed for the hearing of his defence, and, in expectation of his appearance, the place of assembling, which was the cathedral of St. Paul’s, was crowded with the populace. Wycliffe and the Duke of Lancaster had met recently at Bruges, the Duke to negociate a peace with France, while the Reformer was employed in the matter of his treaty with the delegates of the papacy. When Wycliffe presented himself to the convocation in St. Paul’s, it was in company with John of Gaunt, and with Lord Percy, who then filled the office of Earl Marshal. It was with difficulty that the authority even of such persons secured an
[Cotton’s Abridgment, 128. Fox, Acts and Mon. i. 561.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. XXXV avenue through the crowd for the approach of the Reformer to the presence of his judges. The disturbance thus occasioned attracted the attention of Courtney, and the sight of Wycliffe, as sustained by the presence of two such powerful personages, was manifestly as unwelcome as it was unexpected. The following dialogue is given by Fuller, as having passed on the occasion:—
Bishop Courtney. Lord Percy, if I had known what maisteries you would have kept in the church, I would have stopped you out from coming hither.
Duke of Lancaster. He shall keep such maisteries here, though you say nay.:
Lord Percy. Wiclif, sit down, for you have many things to answer to, and you need to repose yourself on a soft seat.
Bishop Courtney. It is unreasonable that one cited before his ordinary, should sit down during his answer. He must, and shall stand.
Duke of Lancaster. The Lord Percy’s motion for Wiolif, is but reasonable. And as for you, my lord bishop, who are grown so proud and arrogant, I will bring down the pride, not of you alone, but of all the prelacy in England.
Bishop Courtney. Do your worst, sir.
Duke of Lancaster. Thou bearest thyself so brag upon thy parents, which shall not be able to help thee; they shall have enough to do to help themselves.
Bishop Courtney. My confidence is not in my parents, nor in any man else, but only in God, in whom I trust, by whose assistance I will be bold to speak the truth.
Duke of Lancaster. Rather than I will take these words at his hands, I would pluck the bishop by the hair out of the church.”
These last words were uttered in an under tone, but sufficiently loud to be heard by some of the by-standers. Great pains had been taken by the clergy during the sitting of the last parliament, to conciliate the popular feeling, and to direct it against the duke, as meditating a suppression of the mayoralty of London, and
[His father was the powerful Hugh Courtney, Earl of Devonshire. Fuller’s Church Hist. b. iv. cent. xiv.]
xxxvi FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS other grave inroads upon the liberties of the citizens. The crowd nearest the place of this dispute, consisting probably in great part of the dependents of the clergy, as well as of persons who had been filled with suspicion and disaffection by the above means, raised their voices against the duke, and the disturbance altogether became such, that the meeting separated without anything being said by Wycliffe, or any of its proper business being entered upon.
This meeting, it will be remembered, took place in February, 1877. In the following June, Edward the Third expired; and in, October of the same year, Richard the Second assembled his first parliament. This parliament included nearly all the members who had constituted the good parliament” and they returned with more determination than ever to their former labour—the labour of concerting measures to prevent the court of Rome from draining the land of its treasure. As a remedy against evils which had hitherto resisted every influence opposed to them, it was urged that the procuring of a benefice by papal provision, should be punished with outlaw; and that the same penalty should be incurred by the man who should farm any living in the English church holden by a foreigner. It was also urged, that proclamation should be issued, requiring that all aliens, as well religious as others, do, by Candlemas next, avoid the realm; and that during the war, all their lands and goods should be applied thereto.” The war with France had for some time taken a disastrous course. The people had been heavily burdened to sustain it; and the victories which distinguished it, brilliant as they were, yielded no substantial fruit. The temper of the nation, accordingly, was that of irritation and bitter disappointment; and no power felt the effect of this popular disaffection more immediately or strongly than the court of Rome. The above language, set forth as the grave resolution of parliament, seems to bespeak an almost desperateness of feeling on the subject of papal encroachment; and it was by this parliament that a question is said to have been submitted to the judgment of Wycliffe, to the fol-
[Fuller’s Church Hist. 185. Cont. Murim. 137. Walsingham affirms with]
[fndignation that the Londoners were nearly all Lollards. Hist. 191. Spelman, ii. 625.]
[Cotfon’s Abridgment, 160—162.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xxxvii lowing purport:—’ Whether it would not be lawful in a kingdom, in case of necessity, and as the means of defending iteelf, to detain its treasure, that it might not be conveyed to foreign nations, though even the pope himself should demand the same, under pain of his censures, and in virtue of the obedience said to be due to him?” Wycliffe, as may be supposed, answers this question in the affirmative. The paper setting forth the reasons of this decision, will be found among his works printed in this volume.
In the month of June, 1377, several letters were sent to England by the pontiff, concerning certain false and dangerous opinions said to be holden and promulgated by John de Wyoliffe, rector of Lutterworth, and professor of theology in the University of Oxford. One of these letters was addressed to the king, another to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a third to the university. The purport of these letters was to require that measures should be immediately taken to ascertain the opinions of the party accused; to condemn such as should be found erroneous or heretical; and to prevent the diffusion of such doctrines by every means adapted to that end.
When the heads of the university were apprised that such a communication had been sent to them, the propriety of allowing it to be read, or of declining to receive it, became a matter of serious discussion. This hesitation may be attributed in part to the sympathy of many with the opinions of the Reformer, but still more probably to that feeling of jealousy in respect to all papal interference, which was so often manifested by the universities of the middle age. Walsingham, the monastic historian of the time, expresses his astonishment that any such hesitancy should have been shown; but it is evident, from the letters of the pope, that the persons holding the opinions of the Reformer, in a greater or less degree, were known to be numerous and powerful, and that the execution of the papal mandates was expected to be attended with difficulty.
The call made upon the hierarchy to be vigilant and resolute in this affair, was met by a more prompt and cordial response.? See pp. 295, 296. ^ Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. Ap. Nos. xi.—xv,
xxxviii FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS Sudbury, now Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to the Chancellor of Oxford, reminding him of the commands received from the pope, and requiring the execution of them with all diligence and faithfulness. The chancellor. is required especially to obtain, by the assistance of the most orthodox and skilful divines, correct information in regard to the alleged heresies and errors, and to send along with his statement of the doctrines certainly propagated by Wycliffe, his own judgment respecting them, delivered under the university seal. It was, moreover, enjoined upon him, that, as chancellor, he should cite the erroneous teacher, or cause him to be cited, personally to appear before his ecclesiastical superiors, in the church of St. Paul’s, London, on the thirtieth day from the date of the citation.
This letter was written on the eighteenth of December, and early in the following year—the year 1378—Wycliffe appeared before a synod convened at Lambeth. On this occasion the Reformer appeared alone. But though the distinguished men who accompanied him when he last fronted his enemies, were absent, the favour of the powerful, as well as of the people, was still with him. The citizens of London surrounded the place of meeting: numbers forced their way into the chapel where the synod was assembled, proclaiming their attachment to the person and doctrine of Wycliffe. The dismay produced by this tumult was augmented, when Sir Lewis Clifford entered the chapel, and, in the name of the queen-mother, forbadé the bishops proceeding to any definite sentence concerning the conduct or opinions of the Reformer. Walsingham, in relating this disastrous course of things, censures the pusillanimity of the synod in the strongest terms. ” The delegates,” he remarks, shaken as a reed with the. wind, became soft as oil in their speech, to the open forfeiture of their own dignity, and the injury of the whole church. With such fear were they struck, that you would think them a man who hears not, or one in whose mouth are no reproofs.” Such interferences with regard to matters of public interest, were not unusual in those times. A little previously, the queen-mother had interposed in the matter of the dispute between the Londoners and the Duke
[Spelman, ii. 625. Walsingham, ad an.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. XXXiX of Lancaster. The persons delegated “to entreat the citizens to be reconciled with the duke,” were Sir Alfred Lewer, Sir Simon Burley, and this same Sir Lewis Clifford: and “the Londoners answered, that they, for the honour of the princess, would obey, and do with all reverence what she would require.” Walsingham also relates, that a similar tumult arose, some four years later, during the trial of Ashton the Lollard.
First of all, I publicly protest, as I have often done at other times, that I will and purpose from the bottom of my heart, by the grace of God, to be a sincere Christian; and as long as I have breath, to profess and defend the law of Christ so far asl am able. And if, through ignorance, or any other cause, I shall fail therein, I ask pardon of God, and do now from henceforth revoke and retract it, humbly submitting myself to the correction of Holy Mother Church. And as for the opinion of children and weak people concerning the faith which I have taught in the
[Fox, Acts and Mon. i. 559.]
[Bale describes this paper as Answers to Objections. Murimuth, Contin. 137.]
[Walsingham, 206—208.]
xl FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS schools and elsewhere, and which by those who are more than children has been conveyed beyond the sea, even to the court of Rome; that Christians may not be scandalised on my account, I am willing to set down my sense in writing, since I am prosecuted for the same. Which opinions I am willing to defend even unto death, as I believe all Christians ought to do, and especially the pope of Rome, and the rest of the priests of the church. I understand the conclusions, according to the sense of Scripture and the holy doctors, and the manner of speaking used by them; which sense I am ready to explain: and if it be proved that the conclusions are contrary to the faith, I am willing very readily to retract them.
I. The first conclusion is, that all mankind, since Christs coming, have not power, simply or absolutely, to ordain that Peter and all his successors should rule over the world politically for ever. And this is plain, as it is not in the power of man to hinder the coming of Christ to the last judgment, which we are bound to believe according to that article of the creed, from thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. For after that, according to the faith delivered in Scripture, all human polity wil be at an end. But I understand that political dominion, or civil secular government, does pertain to the laity, who are actually living, whilst they are absent from the Lord: for of such a political dominion do the philosophers speak. And although it be styled periodical, and sometimes perpetual (or for ever); yet because in the Holy Seripture, in the use of the church, and in the writings of the philosophers, perpetuum is plainly used commonly in the same sense as eternal; Y afterwards suppose that term to be used or taken in that more famous signification, for thus the church sings, Glory be to God the Father, and to his only Son, with the Holy Spirit the Comforter, both now and for ever [ín perpetuum]. And then the conclusion immediately follows on the principles of faith; since it is not in the power of men to appoint the pilgrimage of the church to be without end.
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xli which, in his view, it would be preferable to connect his more peculiar opinions relative to the nature of that power.
II. Gop cannot give civil dominion to any man for himself and his heirs for ever; in perpetuum. By civil dominion, I mean the same that I meant above by political dominion, and by perpetual, or for ever, the same as I did before, as the Scripture understands the perpetual or everlasting habitations in the state of blessedness. I said, therefore, that God, of his ordinary power, cannot give man civil dominion for ever. I said, secondly, that it seems probable that God, of his absolute power, cannot give man such a dominion, in perpetuum, for ever, because he cannot, as it seems, always imprison his spouse on the way, nor always defer the ultimate completion of her happiness.
Here the same kind of argument occurs. It is merely saying that the natural power of God has been restricted to a given course by his moral purposes.
III. Charters of human invention concerning civil inheritance for ever, are impossible. “This is an incident truth. For we ought not to reckon as catholic all the charters that are held by an unjust occupier. But if this be confirmed by the faith of the church, there would be an opportunity given for charity, and a liberty to trust in temporalities, and to petition for them; for as every truth is necessary, so every falsehood is possible on supposition, as is plain by the testimony of Scripture, and of the holy doctors, who speak of the necessity of things future.
Under this article we have the same method of reasoning. But in a second paper, containing answers and explanations concerning these alleged errors and heresies, and made public by Wyocliffe a short time after the meeting at Lambeth, the Reformer states, in regard to this conclusion, that it was a passing remark which arose in conversation with a certain divine, who magnified such charters so far as to prefer their authority to that of the Scriptures. “To which,” he states, “I replied, it would be much better to attend to the defence and exposition of the Scriptures, since many such charters were necessarily such as could not be executed.” He complains, accordingly, that opinions should have been imputed to him from hearsay, or as reported by “children and weak persons.”
But if the reader will pass on from the first three articles in this series, to the last, he will perceive that the Reformer had simply
xlii. FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS reserved his obnoxious doctrine on this subject, that it might be set, forth more fully at the right point, and that it is simply scholas ticism, and not a timid concealment, with which he is chargeable. In that article he is described as saying, that in certain cases an ecclesiastic, and even a bishop of Rome, may be corrected by his inferiors, and not merely by his inferiors among the clergy, but by the laity. He is described also as teaching that this may be done whenever the good of the church shall be thought to require it. W’ycliffe does not disown this doctrine, offensive and alarming as he knew it to be. In support of this opinion, he assumes the pontiff to be a peccable brother, sharing, in common with other men, in a tendency to what is sinful; and he thence infers, that popes, in common with other men, are subject to the laws of brotherly reproof and correction. He accordingly writes, If it be evident, therefore, that the college of cardinals are remiss in performing their service for the necessary welfare of the church, it is manifest that others, and it may chance principally the laity, may reprove and implead him, and bring him to a better life.” It is admitted that the impeachment of a pontiff is a grave business, not to be rashly entered upon; but it is added, that where ground for such a proceeding really exists, to shrink from the duty is not only to know that the pope is an offender, but to conclude that he is an offender beyond the hope of recovery. In conclusion, he exclaims, “God forbid that truth should be condemned by the church of Christ, because it sounds unpleasantly in the ear of the guilty or of the ignorant, for then the entire faith of the Scriptures will be exposed to condemnation!” If the laity might be justly employed in impeaching a pontiff, and in bringing even the successors of St. Peter to a better life, of course the subordinate mombers of the hierarchy must be regarded as subject to the same kind of discipline. The right of the people also, to judge in such case as to what is, or is not, for the good of the church, is clearly assumed as the foundation of this doctrine. Yet the doctrine is avowed, committed to writing, and delivered into the hands of the papal delegates: we wonder not that their counsel was, that such opinions should “not be published in schools or pulpits.” It is important also to observe, that it does not appear from any source that Wycliffe had committed himself
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. xlii against the papacy, previously to this time, in any stronger form than in the matter of the article adverted to: such of his writings as contain stronger expressions on that subject, I have shown elsewhere to be the productions of a later period.
IV. Every one being or existing in grace justifying finally, has not only a right unto, but in fact hath all the things of God; or, has not only a right unto the thing, but, for his time, has by right a power over all the good things of God. This is plain from Scripture, Matt. xxiv., because the Truth promises this to those citizens who enter into his joy: Verily I say unto you, that he shall make him ruler over all his goods. For the right of the communion of saints in their own country is founded objectively on the universality of the good things of God.
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