[London Institution.]
Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
WICLIF.
From a Print by G. White, after a Picture in the Collection of the Duke of Dorset.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.
WICLIF.
The village of Wiclif, distant about six miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, had long been the residence of a family of the same name, when it gave birth, about the year 1324, to its most distinguished native. The family possessed wealth and consequence; and though the name of the Reformer is not to be found in the extant records of the household, it is probable that he belonged to it. Perhaps the spirit of the times, and zeal for the established hierarchy, may have led it to disclaim the only person who has saved its name from absolute obscurity.
John Wiclif was first admitted at Queen’s College, Oxford, but speedily removed to Merton, a society more ancient and distinguished, and adorned by names of great ecclesiastical eminence. Here he engaged in the prescribed studies with diligence and success. In scholastic learning he made such great proficiency as to extort admiration from some who loved him not; and the direction in which his talents were turned is indicated by the honourable appellation, which he early acquired, of the Evangelic or Gospel Doctor. The terms, “profound,” “perspicuous,” “irrefragable,” were applied to mark the respective peculiarities of Bradwardine, of Burley, and of Hales; and so we may infer, that the peculiar bent of Wiclif’s youthful exertions was towards the book on which his subsequent principles were founded, and that he applied the ambiguous fruits of a scholastic education, not to enlarge the resources of sophistry, but to illustrate the treasures of truth. And on the other hand, in the illustration of those oracles, and in the accomplishment of his other holy purposes, it was of good and useful service to him that he had armed himself with the weapons of the age, and could contend with the most redoubtable adversaries on the only ground of argument which was at all accessible to them.
In 1356 he put forth a tract on ‘The Last Age of the Church,’ which was the first of his publications, and is on other accounts worthy of mention. It would appear that his mind had been deeply affected by meditation on the various evils which at that period afflicted the world, especially the pestilence which had laid waste, a few years before, so large a portion of it. He was disposed to ascribe them to God’s indignation at the sinfulness of man; and he also believed them to be mysterious announcements of the approaching consummation of all things. Through too much study of the book of the Abbot Joachim, he was infected with the spirit of prophecy; and, not contented to lament past and present visitations, he ventured to predict others which were yet to come. All however were to be included in the fourteenth century, which was to be the last of the world. That Wiclif should have been thus carried away by the prevalent infatuation, so as to contribute his portion to the mass of vain and visionary absurdity, was human and pardonable: but in his manner of treating even this subject, we discover the spirit and the principles of the Reformer. Among the causes of those fearful calamities, among the vices which had awakened to so much fierceness the wrath of the Almighty, he feared not to give the foremost place to the vices of the clergy, the rapacity which ate up the people as it were bread, the sensuality which infected the earth with its savour, and “smelt to heaven.” Here was the leaven which perverted and corrupted the community; here the impure source whence future visitations should proceed. “Both vengeance of sword, and mischiefs unknown before, by which men in those days shall be punished, shall befal them, because of the sins of their priests.” Thus it was that in this singular work, of which the foundation may have been laid in superstition, Wiclif developed notwithstanding a free and unprejudiced mind, and one which dared to avow without compromise, what it felt with force and truth.
The mendicant orders of friars were introduced into England in the year 1221; and they presently supplanted the antient establishments in the veneration of the people, and usurped many of the prerogatives, honours, and profits of the sacerdotal office. As long as they retained their original character, and practised, to any great extent, the rigid morality and discipline which they professed, so long did their influence continue without diminution, and the clamours of the monks and the priests assailed them in vain: but prosperity soon relaxed their zeal and soiled their purity, and within a century from the time of their institution, they became liable to charges as serious as those which had reduced the authority of their rivals. Accordingly, towards the middle of the following century, the contest was conducted with greater success on the part of the original orders; and some of the leading prelates of the day took part in it against the Mendicants. Oxford was naturally the field for the closest struggle, and the rising talents of Wiclif were warmly engaged in it. About the year 1360 he is generally believed to have first proclaimed his hostility “against the orders of friars;” and he persisted, to the end of life, in pursuing them with the keenest argument and the bitterest invective, denouncing them as the authors of “perturbation in Christiandome, and of all the evils of this worlde; and these errors shallen never be amended till the friars be brought to freedom of the Gospel and clean religion of Jesu Christ.”