the efficacy of the sacrament to the recipient depended upon the holiness of the priest. On the contrary, he asserted plainly more than once that an unworthy minister can administer the sacraments validly to the spiritual health of the faithful recipient, but to condemnation to himself.* He maintained that God himself worked in the sacrament and was not dependent therefore on the character of the minister. "Thes Antichrist's sophistris schulden knowe well that a cursed man doth fully the sacramentis, though it be to his dampnynge, for they ben not autoris of thes sacramentis, but God kepeth that dygnyte to hymself." Lechler has fully elucidated this.‡] In the third place, he recognized only the two orders of priests and deacons in the Church, and held that episcopal ordination was unnecessary for the ministry. A predestinarian in religion, a presbyterian in Church government, almost a Zwinglian in his latest views of the eucharist, he was the progenitor of the extremes of the Puritans. By his one-sided insistence on the supremacy of the Scriptures he fostered the unreasoning detestation of the cross in baptism or of the ring in marriage, ignored the functions of the Church to decree rites and ceremonies, denied the value of apostolic tradition, and let loose upon the interpretation of the Bible the caprice of human ingenuity. By this misconception of the nature and constitution of the Church he sacrificed historical continuity, founded the principles on which the reign of the "saints" was established, distorted the true view of the efficiency of the sacraments, and opened the door to the multiplication of sects. § This is a good indication of the differences between so-called Catholicism and Protestantism. In his idea of Church and State Wyclif is also thoroughly Protestant. The spiritual and temporal sovereignties are kept asunder. One has no right to interfere with the other. Each is responsible to God. The pope has no authority in the civil realm. "To rule temporal possessions," says Wyclif, "after a civil manner, to conquer kingdoms and exact tributes, appertain to earthly lordships, not to the pope; so that, if he pass by and set aside the office of spiritual rule, and entangle himself in those other concerns, his work is not only superfluous, but also contrary to Holy Scripture." Wyclif, in fact, looks forward to an ideal in which civil polity and law will be no longer necessary in the Church. "The law of the Gospel,” he || *See Trial, iv, 10, 12; De Ecclesia, xix; De Veritate Scripturæ Sacræ, xii. ↑ Wiclif's Select English Works, ed. by Thomas Arnold, iii, 27. Chap. viii, sec. 12. § Article "John Wyclif," in Church Quarterly Review, London, Oct., 1891, p. 135. De Civili Dominio, i, 11. R. L. Poole in his invaluable Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought, London, 1884, chap. x, has given a full exposition of Wyclif's views under the head of “Church and State." As says, "is sufficient by itself, without the civil law or that called canonical, for the perfect rule of the Church militant.” * to lordship itself, it is founded on grace. The meek “shall inherit the earth." Righteousness is the only test of valid property holdings. On the one hand this invalidates the claim of the pope and bishops to their immense estates, and on the other it puts in jeopardy the property of all men and absolves the people from allegiance to a wicked ruler. But this principle Wyclif did not push to an extreme. It was an ideal only. "In the perfect state," he said, "all things would be in common." In the meantime men must obey their rulers. Wyclif had "Some men It has been often asserted that Wyclif's principles here were revolutionary, that he taught insubordination and anarchy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He repeatedly inculcated obedience to rulers and masters. "If thou art a laborer," he says, "live in meekness, and truly and willingly, so thy master, if he be a heathen man, by thy meekness, willing and true service, may not have a grudge against thee, nor slander thy God nor thy Christian profession." And much more he writes to the same effect. Every man ought to live in quietness and obedience, in love and equity, according to the estate in which Providence has placed him. to meet this misrepresentation in his own day. that are not of charity slander poor priests [his itinerants] with this error, that servants or tenants may lawfully withhold rent and service from their lords when lords be openly wicked in their living." His earnest scriptural character-he appealed himself to 1 Pet. ii, 18, and Rom. xiii, 1-7-should save him from any charge of this kind. Wyclif's great service in relation to the doctrine of Church and State was in holding that the Church should keep to its spiritual functions purely, that "property has its duties as well as its rights," that property is responsibility-responsibility to the Suzerain of the universe to use it well for God's glory and the good of men, and that when wasted in evil ways God has a right to resume control.§ See Wyclif's tract, A Short Rule of Life for each Man in General, for Priests, Lords, and Laborers in Special. § See Burrows's Wiclif's Place in History, p. 16; John "Wicliffe: His Life and Work," in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Dec., 1884, pp. 750, 751. When we consider his attitude toward the Bible, the completeness with which Wyclif grasped the fundamental idea of Protestantism is apparent. In this respect nothing was lacking. He said: The Holy Scripture is the faultless, most true, most perfect, and most holy law of God, which it is the duty of all men to learn, to know, to defend, and to observe, inasmuch as they are bound to serve the Lord in accordance with it, under the promise of an eternal reward. .. The Holy Scripture is the one word of God, also the whole law of Christ is one perfect word proceeding from the mouth of God; it is therefore not permitted to sever the Holy Scripture, but to allege it in its integrity according to the sense of the author. If God's word is the life of the world, every word of God is the life of the human soul; how may any Antichrist, for dread of God, take it away from us that be Christian men, and thus suffer the people to die of hunger in heresy and blasphemy of men's laws, that corrupteth and slayeth the soul? . . . It is impossible that any word or deed of the Christian should be of equal authority with Holy Scripture.* Wyclif accepted unreservedly the principle of the sole and sufficient authority of the Holy Scriptures as the only rule of faith and practice, thus anticipating the Reformation in announcing the formal principle of Protestantism. This gave him among his contemporaries the title of "Doctor Evangelicus," as embodying the distinctive trait of his teaching and character, just as Adam Marsh was called a "Doctor Illustris;" Alexander of Hales, "Doctor Irrefragabilis;" Albertus Magnus, "Doctor Universalis;" Henricus de Gandavo, "Doctor Solemnis;" Brad wardine, "Doctor Profundus;" Bacon, "Doctor Mirabilis;" Duns Scotus, "Doctor Subtilis ;" and Thomas Aquinas, "Doctor Angelicus." He declared his faith in the plenary inspiration of Holy Scripture, which he identifies with the incarnate Word, rejected the apocryphal writings by which the Church supported her doctrines, and stigmatized those who read the decretals as fools. Wyclif's opponents charged him with borrowing the opinions of Occam in regard to the Bible, but this he denied, saying that his views on this matter were taken from Scripture and the writings of the fathers. In this he was correct. Occam appeals to the Bible *See De Veritate Scripturæ Sacra, Trialogus, De Civili Dominio, and De Ecclesia, passim. constantly, but his appeal is to the Bible and Church teaching combined, and it does not occur to him that the doctrines of the Church should first be independently judged to find ont whether they are in accordance with Scripture, and thence received or rejected.* But Wyclif with a bound swept away all other supports, and appealed to the word of God and to that word alone. In the reaction from Ullmann's excessive emphasis on the evangelical elements of the pre-Reformation reformers,† Karl Müller has gone to the other extreme in denying them any evangelical conception whatever. He says that the teaching of Wyclif and Hus, namely, that Church membership depends on keeping God's law and not on the recognition of the hierarchy, and that this law is in the Bible and not in the hierarchy, does not leave the medieval ground, because the Church as a means of grace with clergy and sacraments is still recognized and honored. But Protestantism constantly recognizes Church and sacraments as a means of grace, only insisting with Wyclif that everything must be true to the norm, the word. If otherwise it is not Protestantism, but Rationalism and the new Unitarianism. There is a degree of truth, however, in Müller's thought that Wyclif's doctrine of dominion is congenial with mediæval ideas. All mankind form a great complex life under God as supreme feudal lord, from whom every man receives in fee his worldly possessions; and they may rightly be lost by a breach of vassal obligations. But so much is conceded to the minimizing judgment of Karl Müller concerning Wyclif's Protestantism as to say that it is not to be expected that he should have attained to the fullness of the evangelical assurance of faith. He swept away all notions of merit and of works of supererogation. He denied utterly the idea of a treasure house of merits held in heaven to the credit of the pope, an idea which played such an important part in the Middle Ages and on which the doctrine of indulgences was founded. *See Lechler on this, chap. viii, sec. 2, whose treatment of Wyclif's attitude to the Bible is exhaustive and admirable. ↑ See his well-known book, Reformers Before the Reformation, in German, 1842, 2d ed., 1866; in English, Edinburgh, 1842, 4th ed., 1874. ↑ Bericht uber den gegenwärtihen Stand der Forschung auf dem Gebiet der vorreformationschen Zeit, in Vorträge der theol. Konferenz zu Giessen, 1887. § H. M. Scott, in Current Discussions in Theology, vi, 229. He held to the necessity of repentance and conversion, and his ideas on both were quite satisfactory; but he does not grasp the simplicity and freedom of faith as taught by Paul and received by Luther and given its rightful place and power by Wesley. With Wyclif faith is still too much a belief with the intellect and not enough a trust of the heart. In his doctrine of faith as a belief of the Gospel, Wyclif still stood on mediæval ground. Every man is the product of his age; and, however far Wyclif went beyond it in many of his ideas, it was perhaps absolutely impossible for him to arrive at the material principle of Protestantism-that principle which makes it what it is, which forms its matter or substance the doctrine of justification by faith. And it was this failure which marks the gap between Wyclif and Luther. But it was not until two hundred years after Luther that this doctrine was made a prin ciple of evangelism. Professor Shirley was the first to call attention to Wyclif's anticipation of Wesley's itinerancy-the resemblance between the "poor priests" and "Wesley's lay preachers, such as they were while his strong hand was upon them."* Nothing illustrates better Wyclif's practical genius than his determination to sow England deep with evangelical principles by sending out priests and laymen-for he employed both-armed with copies. of the gospels and epistles which he had just translated, and with his vigorous English tracts and pamphlets. They went forth in long garments of coarse woolen cloth-barefooted, with staff in hand, as pilgrims wandering from village to village, town to town-preaching, teaching, warning, wherever they could find hearers, in church, churchyard, street, and market place. The Church authorities were deeply enraged by this itinerant propagandism of heresy; and Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, calls attention to "certain unauthorized itinerant preachers, who set forth erroneous, yea, heretical, assertions in public sermons, not only in churches, but also in public squares and other profane places, and they do this under * Fasciculi Zizaniorum, London, 1858, p. xli. The first modern biographer of Wyclif, Lewis, hardly mentions the poor priests; but that enthusiastic Wyclifite, Robert Vaughan, does full justice to this aspect of the reformer's work. See his Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, 2d ed., rev., London, 1831, ii, 163, f. Lechler is full and satisfactory here, as everywhere. 2d ed., London, 1884, 189, ff. Wesley himself never mentions Wyclif. |