It cannot now be known how far Wycliffe’s conduct in connection with the claim for the payment of the feudal tribute influenced the papal decision in his appeal; but that decision was given after the publication of Wycliffe’s treatise, “De Dominio.” And there can be no doubt that from May 1366, Wycliffe was marked at Avignon as a dangerous man. To be nearer to Oxford he exchanged, in 1368, the rectory of Fylingham for that of Ludgershall in Buckinghamshire, and he became Doctor in Divinity about the year 1370. The ability, prudence, and courage with which Wycliffe had vindicated the action of the Parliament and of the Crown against the papal claim, as asserted and defended by the anonymous monk, recommended him as singularly qualified to be one of the Royal Commissioners appointed in 1374 to meet with the papal Nuncios at Bruges, to negotiate a settlement of the questions in dispute between England and the Papacy. In this Commission the name of Wycliffe holds the second place, being inserted immediately after that of the Bishop of Bangor. The negotiations terminated in a sort of compromise, according to which it was concluded “that for the future the Pope should desist from making use of reservations of benefices, and that the King should no more confer benefices by his writ Quare impedit.” Although this was but a very partial and unsatisfactory settlement of the matters in dispute, yet the part taken by Wycliffe in the negotiations at Bruges appears to have met with the approbation of the King and his advisers. For in November 1375, he was presented by the King to the prebend of Aust, in the Collegiate Church of Westbury, in the diocese of Worcester. He had previously, in April 1374, received from the Crown, in the exercise of the patronage that devolved on it during the minority of Lord Henry Ferrars, nomination to the rectory of Lutterworth, and had resigned his charge of Ludgershall.
In the same year in which the treaty was concluded (1376), a most elaborate and detailed indictment against the usurpations and exactions of the Papacy and its minions was submitted to Parliament, and after being considered, was passed in the form of a petition to the King, craving that measures of effective redress and remedy should be taken against the notorious and intolerable evils complained of. The Parliament which presented this complaint and petition to the King so commended itself to the people of England that it received the singular designation of “The Good Parliament.” Although the royal answer to the petition was far from being satisfactory or encouraging, yet the Parliament that met in January 1377 presented another petition to the King, craving that the statutes against Provisions passed at former times should be put into effective operation, and that measures should be taken against certain cardinals who had violated those statutes, and against those who in England collected the papal revenues, and by so doing oppressed and impoverished the English people. So vividly do the propositions of these two Parliaments express and represent the ideas and opinions of Wycliffe, that Dr. Lechler concludes that he was a member of both of these Parliaments. But there is no necessity for this inferential assumption. Wycliffe’s doctrines respecting the kingly sovereignty and national independence, and his sentiments regarding the intolerable abuses of the papal officials, were by this time the doctrines and the sentiments of not a few among the lords and commons of England. And without being himself a member of Parliament, Wycliffe had ample opportunity and means for using his influence to stimulate, direct, and guide those who in the National Assembly gave voice to the complaint and claim of the English people as against the usurpation and exactions of the Papacy. To this sort of influence on the part of Wycliffe, as also to the weight attached to his judgment in a case involving a knowledge of canon and civil law, significant testimony was borne by the action of the first Parliament of Richard II., which met at Westminster on the 13th of October 1377. By this Parliament the question was referred to the judgment of Dr. Wycliffe, “Whether the kingdom of England, on an imminent necessity of its own defence may lawfully detain the treasure of the kingdom, that it be not carried out of the land, although the lord Pope required its being carried out on the pain of censures, and by virtue of the obedience due to him?” As might be expected, Wycliffe answered that it was lawful, and demonstrated this by the law of Christ, urging at the same time the common maxim of divines, that alms are not required to be given but to those who are in need, and by those who have more than they need. “By which,” says Lewis, “it appears that Dr. Wycliffe’s opinion was, that Peter-pence paid to the Pope were not a just due, but only an alms, or charitable gift”[16]
The action of the English Parliament referring this question to the judgment of Wycliffe, is all the more interesting and significant if respect be had to the time and circumstances in which Wycliffe’s opinion was required by Parliament. It was not only after the death of Edward III., which occurred on the 21st of June 1377, but also after the almost tragical though picturesque incident in Wycliffe’s life, when, accompanied and protected by the Duke of Lancaster and Lord Henry Percy, he appeared in the Ladye Chapel of St. Paul’s Cathedral on the 19th of February in the same year, to answer for himself and his doctrines before a convention of ecclesiastics, presided over by Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by Courtenay, the Bishop of London. It was, also, after no fewer than five papal bulls, dated at Rome on the 22d of May, had been sent forth against Wycliffe. These things give great significancy to the action of Richard II.‘s first Parliament, when for its guidance it desired to have the opinion of Wycliffe respecting the lawfulness of refusing to comply with certain papal exactions.
The position and influence of Wycliffe, his standing in the University and among the representatives and leaders of the people, may be judged of by the elaborate and complicated measures taken against him. One of the Pope‘s missives was addressed to the King, another to the University of Oxford and no fewer than three to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. These documents were accompanied by a schedule or syllabus of nineteen articles which had been reported to the Pontiff, “erroneous, false, contrary to the faith, and threatening to subvert and weaken the estate of the whole Church,” said to be held and taught by Wycliffe. Acting on these instructions, and proceeding in the business with the greatest wariness, the Archbishop summoned Wycliffe to appear before a synod to be held in the chapel at Lambeth early in the year 1378.[17] On this occasion the Duke of Lancaster and Lord Percy were not with him to protect him, but he received effective though tumultuous and boisterous help from the citizens, who might be heard by the bishops shouting such sentences as, “The Pope‘s briefs ought to have no effect in the realm without the King‘s consent;” “Every man is master in his own house.” But even more effective help than that of the angry citizens was at hand. “In comes a gentleman and courtier, one Lewis Clifford, on the very day of examination, commanding them not to proceed to any definitive sentence against the said Wycliffe.” “Never before were the bishops served with such a prohibition; all agreed the messenger durst not be so stout with such a mandamus in his mouth, but because backed with the power of the prince that employed him. The bishops, struck with a panic-fear, proceeded no further”[18]— or as a contemporary historian (Walsingham) says: “Their speech became soft as oil; and with such fear were they struck, that they seemed to be as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs.” Wycliffe passed as safely out of Lambert Chapel as on a former occasion he had passed out of the Ladye Chapel of St. Paul‘s. Not long after the sudden conclusion of this Lambeth synod, intimation of the Pope‘s death, on the 27th March 1378, was received in England. This so arrested the process against Wycliffe, that no further action was taken under the five elaborate bulls of Pope Gregory XI. A new chapter in the life and work of Wycliffe begins with the great papal schism of 1378.
Till recently it was supposed that Wycliffe had early assumed the attitude towards the friars which had been taken by Richard Fitzralph, who, after he had been Chancellor of Oxford in 1333, and Archbishop of Armagh in 1347, died at Avignon in 1359. This supposition now appears to be historically without ground; and Dr. Lechler‘s researches tend to show that Wycliffe‘s controversy with the friars belonged not to the earlier but to the later period of his life. This view agrees with all that we know of the method according to which Wycliffe conducted and developed his great argument against the Papacy. Wycliffe‘s study of the papal claims, pretensions, usurpations, and exactions, led him to investigate the grounds and foundations not only of the political, but also of the ecclesiastical and spiritual, power and authority of the Popedom. In his reply in 1366 to the anonymous monk champion of the Papacy, he had represented or reported, with manifest approbation, the statement of one of the secular lords, declaring that the Pope was a man and peccable (peccabilis), and that he might be in mortal sin, and liable to what that involves. After he had taken his degree of Doctor in Divinity in 1370 or 1371, he expounded and vindicated from the Scriptures the doctrines which, by his long study of the Divine Word, he had been led to receive as articles of faith founded on the written Word of God. These views, derived directly and immediately from Holy Scripture, he illustrated by quotations from the early fathers—more particularly from the writings of Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, the four fathers of the Latin Church. From the time when he became Doctor in Divinity, “he began,” says a contemporary opponent, “to scatter forth his blasphemies.” And as we know, it was after his return from Bruges in 1376 that he began to speak of the Pope not merely as peccable—fallible, and liable to sin—but as “Antichrist, the proud, worldly priest of Rome.”
It has been said that the language of Wycliffe in his tract entitled “De Papa Romana et Schisma Papae” was too strong, too vehement and sweeping; and that his work was, in tendency and effect, destructive rather than constructive. So far is it from being true that his language is that of passion, or of vehemence proceeding from passion, that, on the contrary, it is the language of a reflective, circumspect, and keen-eyed observer of the evils and abuses of the papal system, which he contrasted with the primitive and apostolic model of the Church. When compared with the language of some other assailants of the Papacy, Wycliffe‘s fiercest invectives are but the calm, measured, and temperate declaration of truth and reality, spoken by one who so loved the truth, and was so earnest in his endeavors for the reformation of the Church and the morals of the clergy, that he avowed himself willing, if need be, to lay down his life, if by so doing he could promote the attainment of this end. If the portraiture of the Papacy and of the papal dignitaries, officials, and underlings, given by Petrarch, in his “Letters to a Father,” be compared with the statements of Wycliffe, we shall be constrained to say that the Oxford professor uses the language of reserve characteristic of the well-bred and well-disciplined Englishman who means to give practical effect to his words, as distinguished from the language used by Petrarch, who neither intended, nor had the courage, to add deeds to his words. Historically, Wycliffe‘s work appears to have been more destructive than constructive. But this was not because Wycliffe set himself to root out, to pull down, and to destroy, without, at the same time setting himself to build and to plant. The reason why Wycliffe‘s work appears historically defective or incomplete as a constructive work is that, by the malice, ingenuity, and power of his adversaries, his work in planting and in building—that is to say, his work as constructive—was to the utmost impeded, pulled down, or rooted up. “And,” says Milton, “had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wycliffe, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known; the glory of reforming all our neighbors had been completely ours.”[19]
The last six years of Wycliffe‘s life—1378-1384—were packed full with work. For in these years, besides developing and expounding his ideas of the Church, the Papacy, and the hierarchy, and prosecuting his controversy with the mendicant friars, he trained and sent forth evangelists, “poor priests” to preach the Gospel in all places of the land; he expounded and taught the doctrine of Scripture concerning the Eucharist or the “real presence” in relation to the bread and the wine in the sacrament of the Lord‘s Supper; he professed and taught theology in Oxford; he preached and discharged the duties of an evangelical pastor in Lutterworth; and with the assistance of a few fellow-laborers, who entered into his purpose and shared with him in the desire for the evangelisation of the people of England, he translated the Scriptures out of the Latin Vulgate into the English tongue. “His life,” and more especially this part of it, “shows that his religious views were progressive. His ideal was the restoration of the pure moral and religious supremacy to religion. This was the secret, the vital principle, of his anti-sacerdotalism; of his pertinacious enmity to the whole hierarchical system of his day.”[20] Hence as his views of truth became deeper, wider, and more fixed, instead of attacking Popes and prelates, he assailed the Papacy and the hierarchy; and instead of attacking friars, he attacked mendicancy itself—denouncing it in common with the Papacy as contrary to the doctrines of the Word of God, and inconsistent with the order instituted by Christ within the Church, which is the house of God,—the pillar and ground of the truth.
When Wycliffe appeared to answer for himself before the Pope‘s delegates at Lambeth, in 1378, he is said to have presented a written statement explanatory of the articles charged against him. The first sentence of that documentary confession is: “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 as I am able.”[21]
A document of a somewhat similar kind, called by Wycliffe “A Sort of Answer to the Bull sent to the University,” was presented by him to Parliament.
It is as a true and sincere Christian, and as a faithful and laborious Christian pastor and evangelist, that Wycliffe appears before us in the closing period of his truly heroic life. The written word of God is now to him the supreme, perfect and sufficient rule of faith and morals: it is what, in his protestation, he calls “the law of Christ.” The watchword of his life—the standard test, rule, directory, and measure of faith and duty—is the Word of God written. His appeal is, first and last, to that Word—“To the law and to the testimony; if men speak not according to that Word, there is no light in them;” they are but blind guides of the blind. He had evidently made progress in his study of the writings of Augustine, and had so profited by the study that he is bold to say that “The dictum of Augustine is not infallible, seeing that Augustine himself was liable to err”—“Locus a testimonio Augustini non est infallibilis, cum Augustinus sit errabilis.” The Bible is a charter written by God; it is God‘s gift to us: “Carta a Deo scripta et nobis donata per quam vindicabimus regnum Dei.” This is what a pre-eminently illustrious poet denotes by the words—“Thy gift, Thy tables.” “The law of Christ is the medulla of the laws of the Church.” “Every useful law of holy mother Church is taught, either explicitly or implicitly, in Scripture.” It is impossible that the dictum or deed of any Christian should become, or be held to be, of authority equal to Scripture. He is a mixtim theologus—a motley or medley theologian—who adds traditions to the written Word. He is theologus purus who adheres to the Scripture. “Spiritual rulers are bound to use the sincere Word of God, without any admixture in their rule or administration. To be ignorant of the Scriptures is to be ignorant of Christ.” “The whole of Scripture is one word of God.” “The whole of the law of Christ is one perfect word proceeding from the mouth of God.” “It is impious to mutilate or pervert Scripture, or to wrest from it a perverse meaning.” The true preachers are Viri evangelici, Doctores evangelici. Ignorance of Holy Scripture, or the absence of faith in the written Word of God, is, he says, “beyond doubt, the chief cause of the existing state of things.” Therefore it was his great business, in life or by death, to make known to his fellow-countrymen the will of God revealed in the Scriptures of Truth. The highest service to which man may attain on earth is to preach the law of God. This is the special duty of the priests, in order that they may produce children of God—this being the end for which Christ espoused to Himself the Church.”