A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

WICLIFITES. The followers of John Wickliff. He was of Merton college in Oxford, where he took his doctor’s degree with great reputation. He was once sent ambassador by Edward III. to the pope. He preached against the real presence, pilgrimages, purgatory, &c., so strenuously at Oxford, that the monks prevailed with Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, to silence him. He was rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, much favoured by the great men in his time, and is justly reckoned the first reformer. The fame of him reached to Rome, and occasioned Pope Gregory XI. to write to Richard II. to assist the bishops in suppressing Wickliff and his followers. In Henry IV.’s time, his books were condemned at Oxford; and at last, when the Council of Constance met, about 1428, they condemned him, with this sentence: “That John Wickliff, being a notorious heretic, and obstinate, and dying in his heresy, his body and bones, if they may be discerned from the bodies of other faithful people, should be taken up out of the ground, and thrown away far from the burial of the Church.” The bishop of Lincoln executed this sentence, and forty-one years after his burial he burnt the remains, (which was more than the sentence commanded,) and cast them into a neighbouring brook called the Swift. The followers of Wickliff were called Lollards. Wickliff’s notions were: “The Scriptures ought to be in the vulgar tongue, contain all things necessary to salvation, may be understood by every well-disposed man: he declared against traditions, the pope’s authority, their power over the temporalities of kings, and pronounced the pope to be the chiefest antichrist. He taught that the Church of Rome may err; he rejected merit of works, transubstantiation, and owned but two sacraments; he was against images, auricular confession, pardons, indulgences, and monastic vows; he approved the marriage of priests.”

WILL, FREE. (See Free Will.)

WISDOM, THE BOOK OF. An apocryphal book of Scripture; so called, on account of the wise maxims and useful instructions contained therein.

The Book of Wisdom is commonly ascribed to King Solomon, either because the author imitated that king’s manner of writing, or because he sometimes speaks in his name. It is certain Solomon was not the author of it; for it was not written in Hebrew, nor was it inserted in the Jewish canon, nor is the style like Solomon’s: and therefore St. Jerome observes justly, that it smells strongly of the Grecian eloquence; that it is composed with art and method, after the manner of the Greek philosophers, very different from that noble simplicity, so full of life and energy, to be found in the Hebrew books. It has been attributed by many of the ancients to Philo, a Jew, but more ancient than he whose works are now extant. But it is commonly ascribed to an Hellenistical Jew, who lived since Ezra, and about the time of the Maccabees.

It may properly be divided into two parts: the first is a description and encomium of wisdom; the second, beginning at the tenth chapter, is a long discourse in the form of prayers, wherein the author admires and extols the wisdom of God, and of those who honour him; and discovers the folly of the wicked, who have been the professed enemies of the good and virtuous in all ages of the world.

WORD, THE. (See Jesus.) The only-begotten Son of the Father, the uncreated Wisdom, the second person of the most Holy Trinity, equal and consubstantial with the Father. St. John the Evangelist, more expressly than any other, has opened to us the mystery of the Word of God, when he tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The Chaldee paraphrasts, the most ancient Jewish writers extant, generally use the name Memra, or Word, where Moses puts the name Jehovah. In effect, according to them, it was Memra who created the world; who appeared to Abraham in the plain of Mamre; and to Jacob at Bethel. It was Memra to whom Jacob appealed to witness the covenant between him and Laban. The same Word appeared to Moses at Sinai; gave the law to the Israelites; spoke face to face with that lawgiver; marched at the head of that people; enabled them to conquer nations, and was a consuming fire to all who violated the law of the Lord. All these characters, where the paraphrast uses the word Memra, clearly denote Almighty God. This Word therefore was God, and the Hebrews were of this opinion at the time that the Targum was composed.

WORKS. (See Good Works, Justification, and Sanctification.) The doctrine of our Church on the subject of works is contained in the following articles:

“XI. Of the Justification of Man.

“We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings; wherefore, that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.

“XII. Of Good Works.