John Wyclif The Morningstar of the Reformation

John Wyclif – The Morningstar of the Reformation

The Authority of the Bible • “Scripture was to him the magistrum optimum, higher than reason of Church tradition, and doctrines were to be upheld only if they agreed with Holy Scripture” (John Stacey, John Wyclif and Reform, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964, p. 81).

The Authority of the Bible • “…he became devoted to the aim of giving the Bible to the masses as the book of true religion and the guide to salvation” (John T. Mc. Neill, Makers of the Christian Tradition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961, p. 165).

The Authority of the Bible • Nicholas of Hereford, one of Wyclif’s supporters, worked with perhaps John Purvey, or John Wyclif himself, and other men to bring about the translation of the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate (F. F. Bruce, The English Bible: A History of Translations from the Earliest English Versions to the New English Bible, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961, pp. 13 -14).

Church Services • His thought on church services was that, “the degree to which a rite increased the real devotion of the people was…the test of its propriety. He found that intoning and elaborate singing took the mind off the meaning of prayer” (George Macaulay Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe (London: Longmans, Green and Co. , 1899, p. 176).

The Temporal Rule of the Clergy • “His reform ideas stress particularly the perniciousness of the temporal rule of the clergy and its incompatibility with the teachings of Christ and the apostles” (J. Loserth, “Wyclif, John, ” The New Schaff. Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. XII, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, n. d. , p. 456). • That destructiveness began with the very head of the church, the pope.

The Papacy • “He saw the influence of the Papacy in England as an element in the general corruption. Searching the scriptures and the fathers, he boldly concluded that the papal institution had no divine authority and no modern justification. It had usurped the place of Christ and was antichrist” (Stacey, pp. 30 -31). • All this sickened and enraged him.

The Papacy • He decided the pope, just like any other man, must be judged by the standard of the gospel (F. L. Cross, ed. , The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, London: Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 1480). • “The ‘Bible Papacy’ consisted in a poor and humble life, spent in the service of the Church, setting before God’s people an example of Christian goodness. The Pope must be the shepherd of the flock and the preacher who brought men to Christ” (Stacey, p. 30).

The Papacy • Wyclif thought there would be nothing wrong with having the right kind of leader, but the church could exist without a visible leader on earth (Loserth, p. 459). • Finally, “He says explicitly that it is not necessary to go either to Rome or Avignon in order to seek a decision from the pope. Every place is sufficient for the penitent, since the triune God is everywhere. Our pope is Christ” (Loserth, p. 459).

The Bishops • The bishops were shrewd businessmen who held secular offices. • “They…worked hard, not at the visitation of their dioceses and the supervision of their spiritual courts, but at the administration of the country and at the royal finance and diplomacy” (Trevelyan, pp. 106 -107). • The bishops usually were chosen by the king and appointed by the pope. • Many worldly men corrupted the office.

The Bishops • “But to a man like Wycliffe, to whom the practice and teachings of religion were questions of life and death, such an attitude on the part of the prelacy seemed treason. He ascribed their indifference to their wealth and to their secular employment” (Trevelyan, p. 110). • The remedy, as he saw it, was to cut off their money and the state.

The Priests • The priests used excommunication as a weapon in every quarrel that came up and to defend their privileges (Trevelyan, p. 165). • “Wyclif regarded that priest a sinner who incited the pope to excommunicate laymen when these had deprived wicked clergy of their temporalities, and enunciated the dictum that a man in a condition of sin had no claim upon government” (Loserth, p. 456).

The Priests • To Wyclif, every “elect” person could be a priest, even without “episcopal ordination—he is a real priest made of God. • His most serviceable work is the preaching of the Gospel, more precious than the distribution of the sacrament, and among all works charity is the noblest, best, and most desired” (Loserth, p. 456).

The Priests • He defined the duties of a “pastor” in his book, On the Pastoral Office, saying they were the cleansing of the sins of the church and the feeding of that church on Christ’s word (Matthew Spinka, ed. , Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, from The Library of Christian Classics, Vol. XIV, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953, p. 25).

Solving the Problem with the Clergy • Wyclif believed in “the divinely appointed duty of the state to deprive unworthy clerics of their possessions, since the state has the responsibility for the temporal order” (Spinka, p. 24). • He noted Jesus and the apostles paid tribute to the emperor and Paul appealed to Caesar. • “Sinful indeed is he who opposes the power of the king, since this is derived immediately from God” (Loserth, p. 458).

The Lollards • In place of the existing hierarchy, Wyclif put “the ‘poor priests’ who lived in poverty, were bound by no vows and had received no formal consecration, and preached the Gospel to the people” (Loserth, p. 460). • They went by twos wearing dark-red robes, carrying a staff and barefoot. • In a bull of Gregory XI they were given the name “Lollard” (Ibid), “a word imported from the Netherlands where it had been applied to singers of popular religious songs” (Mc. Neill, p. 166).

The Lollards • Wyclif believed preaching was the best way to cause men to feel a personal relationship with God, which made men see the importance of their actions. • “Absolution, masses, pardons, and penance commuted for money were so many ways of keeping all real feeling of responsibility out of the mind” (Trevelyan, p. 177).

Transubstantiation • Wyclif’s “objections to transubstantiation were that it exaggerated unduly and even dangerously the importance of the priestly office, that it exposed Christ’s body to the chances of daily accident and indignity, and that its grossness encourages men to become idolatrous” (K. B. Mc. Farlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of the English Nonconformity, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953, p. 94).

Transubstantiation • It was also horrifying to him to think that every priest that celebrated the mass was creating the body of Christ (Trevelyan, p. 174). – As he saw it, this meant the creature in the mass brought into existence the Creator.

Transubstantiation • “If Christ’s body was present, it was present not essentially nor even corporeally but only figuratively” (Mc. Farlane, p. 94). • Interestingly, he could not clearly state what he thought was right.

Penance • “Penance means ‘peona’ i. e. punishment. ” • “It was apparently the doctrine of the early Church that sins must be atoned for in part by the punishment of the sinner, on the ground that it was better to endure the punishment in this world than in the next” (Cross, p. 1041).

Penance • It was often meted out to the poor since, “The wealthy not only paid fines instead of penance, but sometimes gave annually a lump sum to the more corrupt courts, to prevent inquiry” (Trevelyan, p. 117). • Indulgences were not in the New Testament. • People went so far as to pay a dead person’s way out of punishment in purgatory.

Penance • “If the pope had the power to snatch souls from purgatory, why did he not in Christian charity take them out at once? ” asked an alert Wyclif (Will Durant, The Reformation, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957, p. 34). • He saw the sale of pardons as an encouragement to the people to do evil and condemned such action (Trevelyan, p. 142).

Wyclif’s End • Wyclif died of paralysis on December 31, 1384. • “In 1428 his body was disinterred and burned, and the ashes cast into the Swift, a tributary of the Avon” (Mc. Neil, p. 163). • However, his ideas were not so easily put of the way and many followed his path.