JOHN WYCLIFFE; The Morning Star of the Reformation

SCHOLAR; PATRIOT; THEOLOGIAN

Crouching at Luther’s Feet

In the German city of Worms, the Reformation Memorial has a statue of Englishman, John Wycliffe, crouching at the feet of Martin Luther. His position, along with Peter Waldo of France, Jan Hus of Bohemia and Girolamo Savonarola of Italy, is indicative of Wycliffe’s international status as one of those whom God used to prepare the way for the 16th Century Reformation.

A 14th Century Man

John Wycliffe was shaped by the tumultuous events of a turbulent century, which he then proceeded to stamp with his personal imprimatur, as a reformer – two hundred years ahead of his time. This was a century dominated by the fifty-year reign of King Edward III. The Hundred Years War began most successfully with the capture and imprisonment of the King John of France. The status of England was elevated into one of Europe’s strongest leading nations. This was also the century of the Black Death, which decimated the work force and led to a popular uprising known as ‘The Peasant’s Revolt’, as those who survived the Black Death demanded increased wages, improved living standards and more freedoms.

During these years, the Papacy would renew the demand for the money agreed during the tenure of King John , which resulted in yet another dispute between England and Europe. Perhaps the most profound and lasting legacy of Edward III’s remarkable reign was the official recognition of English as the language of the realm. Against this backdrop, John Wycliffe, as not only a scholar and philosopher, but also a politician and a patriot – and, most importantly, as a Bible translator and preacher – would play a key role in shaping modern Britain.

Early Years

Of Wycliffe’s childhood, we know little, save that he was a Yorkshireman, born in 1324, in the parish of Wickliffe in the North Riding, where his family had resided since the Norman conquest.

His story begins in earnest, however, when he was despatched to Oxford at the age of 16 to receive a university education. Throughout his career, he would enjoy associations with both Merton and Balliol colleges. Merton was the theatre where the famous scholar, Thomas Bradwardine, lectured. Bradwardine was not a theological philosopher in the mould of the scholastics, of whom Thomas Acquinas and Anslem are famous examples. He was much freer in his thinking, as he challenged teachings that had crept into the Church. He was particularly well known for his expose of Pelagianism, which had dominated the medieval church and continues to influence the Roman Catholic Church today. Pelagianism, simply defined, denies the absolute sovereignty and free grace of God in salvation; it causes the individual to look to self, to his own free will and his personal endeavours to merit favour with God. Bradwardine was no Reformer but he was an academic influencer for good. His teachings had a positive effect on many, including the young Wycliffe.

Conversion

Of the details of Wycliffe’s conversion, we are unclear, though we know that the ravages of the Black Death had a profound impact upon his youthful mind. His extensive writings refer to it frequently. Mortality among clergy was especially high, as they tended faithfully to the dying. There was an extraordinary single-mindedness and passion which Wycliffe demonstrated throughout his ministry; a man who lived with eternity in view, a man whose convictions were moulded in the crucible of what some have called ‘King Death’.

“Wycliffe had been a witness of the passage of the destroyer; he had seen the human race fading from off the earth as if the ages had completed their cycle, and the end of the world was at hand”.
J. A. Wylie

Another Papal Challenge

It is often said that politics and religion do not mix; that we should avoid bringing politics into the Church. Many political debates spark differences among believers, rendering it unwise for the Church to be aligned to a political party. Such alliances will never aid the Gospel. From a much broader outlook, however, faith and politics do certainly mix from the perspective of conviction and propriety. Politics works best when those with their hands on the levers of power do so with the fortitude of Christian principles. This was to be Wycliffe’s first noble contribution to the life of his nation.

He spent twenty years at Oxford, recognised and highly acclaimed for his work in the realm of scholastic theology. But the year 1365 would transform all of that, when Pope Urban V renewed the demand that England’s King formally recognise him as ‘Liege Lord’, with payments in gold. England was now much stronger, the national mood was less compliant and Edward III was not minded to have England humiliated by the Papacy once again.

Church and State

Wycliffe, prior to this great crisis, had already been advocating for English independence from the Papacy. It was most fortuitous for the King that within his realm there was a man with such gifts, who could articulate sound, logical reasons why Urban V’s demands should be resisted.

“In Wycliffe, the mutterings of the nation, which had been heard against the foreign regime from the days of William the Conqueror, and especially since King John’s reign, found a staunch and uncompromising mouthpiece.”
Philip Schaff

Wycliffe argued that the Church should be subject to the civil law in temporal matters and that those called by God should not be the holders of offices of state. More controversially, he argued that God has made all those who are in a state of grace ‘lords’ having given us ‘dominion over the whole earth’. From this perspective no man has a right to assume lordship over humanity because we all are both ‘lords’ and ‘servants’. Therefore, by inference, power must have consent, and those who rule are servants. This was revolutionary in its time and was certainly a precursor of our modern concepst of democracy and public service.

England finally says ‘No’ to the Pope

It is believed that Wycliffe’s reasoning was the major influence behind the Barons, Parliament and Church uniting to repudiate the Pope’s demands. The matter was finally put to rest in 1374, when Wycliffe represented the King in a meeting with the Papal Commissioners, during a peace conference with the French in Bruges. While the subject of these negotiations was Church appointments in England (high offices in the English Church were filled with foreign clerics, who were taking the wealth of the realm), they brought Wycliffe’s significant contribution in matters of state to a conclusion. In many respects, the stage was set for an even greater controversy with Rome, but that was 160 years away. Needless to say, Wycliffe was now known to the Papacy, which ordered him to be deprived of the wardenship of Canterbury Hall. This was only the beginning of his sorrows. Quite significantly though, the King granted Wycliffe a ‘Crown Living’ in Lutterworth, Leicestershire, as a reward for his labours. This became his base, under royal protection, for the rest of his life.

Battling with the Monks

Wycliffe’s first theological controversy with the Church arose before he came to prominence as a patriot. A great grievance against the Church was the behaviour of the mendicant monks from the Franciscan and Dominican orders. In theory, these monks were called to evangelise through preaching. They had no income from the Church, so were forced to beg from the people, hence the term ‘mendicant’. The reality was very different – these monks grew wealthy through living off the people, yet continued to beg and prey upon the poor. Fitzralph, Chancellor of Oxford and Archbishop of Armagh from 1347, recognised the scandal these orders brought upon the Church. Despite taking his grievances to the Pope, nothing changed.

The year Fitzralph died, 1360, Wycliffe took up his pen against the two orders, going further than Fitzralph. Where the Archbishop had appealed for reform, Wycliffe now called for abolition. His criticisms went well beyond mere complaining about the financial corruptions. In his tract, ‘Objections to the Friars’, he charged the monks with “fifty heresies and errors”. Some of his lines in this publication read like a prequel to Luther’s 95 Theses, which had also been prompted by the actions of a member of one of these orders, (Tetzel the Dominican).

“Many think if they give a penny to a pardoner, they shall be forgiven the breaking of all the commandments of God, and therefore they take no heed how they keep them, But I say this for certain, though thou have priests and friars to sing for thee, and though thou each day hear many masses, and found churches and colleges, and go in pilgrimages all thy life, and give all thy good to pardoners, this will not bring thy soul to heaven”.
Wycliffe

So, in his controversies with these orders, Wycliffe preached the Gospel, using the axe of Scripture to strike at the priesthood, which is at the heart of the Roman apostasy.

The Papal Bulls

After examining the writings of Wycliffe, Gregory XI issued three Papal Bulls in 1377, the year that the ailing King Edward III died. These Bulls required the King, Parliament, the Church and Oxford University to deal with Wycliffe who, said the Pope, had been “vomiting out of the filthy dungeon of his wicked breast…most wicked and damnable heresies, whereby he might defile the faithful”. The trial proved to be a non-event, however, because of the strong support of John of Gaunt, Edward III’s second son, also known as the Duke of Lancaster. For a Parliament and nation which wanted to break free from Papal domination and be more independent, the trial served to strengthen Wycliffe’s status as a symbol of liberty and truth.

The Papacy would not have given up their quarry so easily, however, were it not for Gregory XI’s sudden death in 1378. Unable to agree a successor, in the sovereignty of God, the Papal world was split down the middle, as two rivals staked their claim for the office; Urban VI took possession of the Vatican, while Clement VII took up residence in Avignon. With these two alleged ‘successors of Peter’ hurling their anathemas at one another across the Alps, Wycliffe was reprieved and given space to complete the great project which was to be the work for which our God had been preparing him.

THE EVANGELICAL DOCTOR

The English Bible

In theology, Wycliffe’s greatest departure from the teachings of the scholastic theologians was the high priority he gave to the Scriptures. Where they restricted the Bible by elevating the traditions of the Church, he claimed the unique authority of Scripture in all matters, with all the clarity of the Protestant Reformers who came 150 or so years later. In his work on the value and authority of the Scriptures, Wycliffe expends over 1,000 pages contending for the supremacy of the Bible in matters of faith. This was the inspiration behind his translation of the Word of God from the Latin into the English language:

“…for as the lords of England have the Bible in French, it would not be against reason if they had the same material in English…The New Testament is of full authority and open to understanding of simple men, as to the points that are most needful to salvation”.

Wycliffe’s Bible had its limitations owing to his lack of expertise in Hebrew and Greek, and the unavailability of the original texts. His work was much maligned, incurring the censures of Rome. Over the following centuries, English people would die for having Wycliffe’s English Bible in their possession or for reciting its sacred contents. This, however, exposed Rome as the great enemy of the translation and dissemination of the Word of God. The fact that even in the days of Henry VIII people were still reading Wycliffe’s translation indicates that the work was printed (after the printing was invented in the mid 15th Century), then reprinted, and had been spread abroad, generating a thirst for truth.

The Dawn of the Reformation

It was English artist William Yeames who in 1867 produced his famous painting depicting Wycliffe as ‘The Dawn of the Reformation’. The Rector of Lutterworth is portrayed with outstretched hands, sending forth preachers who were clutching the precious manuscripts, which were the Word of God. Having the Word was good – but Wycliffe saw the necessity of having men called of God to read and preach its precious truths among the people. The presence of such men, presumably young men owing to the arduous travelling involved, is indicative of a profound work of the Spirit of God working in the hearts of many throughout the nation. The age of the printing press had not yet dawned. Wycliffe and his scholars translated the Scriptures by hand, then passed passages out to the preachers, who went forth bearing their precious seed. These preachers, who later became known as ‘Lollards’, travelled throughout the British Isles and across the channel to the European continent.

Lollards

It is believed the term ‘Lollard’ is Dutch and that it predated Wycliffe’s ministry by several decades. It was most likely a term of abuse hurled at these preachers on account of their status as unordained men. The Lollards grew and continued long after Wycliffe’s death. Schaff records that by the dawn of the 15th Century “we hear of the Lollards in all directions, so that the contemporary chronicler was able to say that of every two men found on the roads, one was sure to be a Lollard”. This good work continued through to the Reformation, as God prepared the hearts of the people for a thorough reform of the Church. Many of these preachers suffered horribly for their faith, many dying at the hands of the inquisitors. Their doctrine, like that of Wycliffe’s, was almost identical to that of the Protestant Reformers in so many respects; denial of purgatory, denial of the literal presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the ‘necessity of faith alone’ are prime examples. .

Hus, successor to Wycliffe

It was in Bohemia and the city of Prague, however, that the teachings of John Wycliffe would find deeper roots than even in England. Concourse between England and Bohemia had been flowing since the marriage of the Scripture-loving Anne of Luxembourg; the sister of Bohemian King Wensel to Richard II. It was in the city of Jan Hus, who was cruelly betrayed and burned to death at the Council of Constance (1414-15), that the English translator was simply called ‘The Evangelical Doctor’.

‘The Earthquake Council’

There was to be one more great controversy in the history of John Wycliffe, which firmly cements his place as the greatest pre-Reformation witness for truth. In the spring of 1381, he posted at Oxford twelve propositions denying transubstantiation. He wrote:

“The consecrated Host, which we see upon the altar, is neither Christ, nor any part of Him, but an efficacious sign of Him”.

This was beginning of three earthquakes which shook England in the space of one year. Wycliffe was the catalyst for a theological earthquake, where he challenged the sacrificing office of the priesthood, which is fundamental to Romanism. He was accused of heresy. Parliament was summoned; he had aroused considerable commotion.

The second earthquake was social, as Wat Tyler and John Bull led the Peasant’s Revolt. The Church, with its power and riches, came under severe attack, which resulted in the beheading of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury. His successor, Courtenay, was determined to deal with Wycliffe, filled with a sense of revenge – and under pressure from the Pope. When the court met in Blackfriars in May 1382, it was adjourned twice, because Wycliffe’s supporters stormed the building. On the third occasion, a physical earthquake shook the building, causing considerable alarm. Wycliffe, however was found guilty of heresy. The net of persecution was closing fast upon him, as his supporters in high places melted away, afraid of the power of the Church.

Resting from His Labours

Wycliffe valiantly defended himself before Parliament, and while he had many enemies, it was evident that there was no appetite to prosecute the charges. Eventually, Pope Urban VI summoned him to appear before the Papal Court. By this time, Providence was intervening to take the Lord’s servant away from his toils. He had suffered a stroke, and could not have travelled, even if he had been inclined so to do. Instead he addressed the Pontiff in writing in a most gracious manner.

On the last Sunday of 1384, he collapsed with a third stroke, while dispensing the Eucharist in Lutterworth. Gently, he was carried to his death-bed, where he slipped out of this life into eternity on 31st December.

The Heresy Act

But as Wycliffe died, his successors in the faith, the Lollards, carried his torch around the country. While Richard II remained on the throne, little was done to restrain the activity of the Lollards, but soon after Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne in October 1399, becoming Henry IV, the notorious Heresy Act 1401 (De Heretico Comburendo – ‘An Act for the Burning of Heretics’) was passed by Parliament, in March that year. That same month, the saintly William Sawtrey was the first to be burnt at the stake under the new Act. Before long, most Lollards were driven to worship in secret, rather than meet openly and risk an inquisition by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel. A magnificent testimony by William Thorpe can be found in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. He was arrested on 17 April 1407 whilst preaching at St Chad’s Church, Shrewsbury, on suspicion of preaching Lollard doctrines, and was taken to Kent for questioning by Thomas Arundel, never to be heard of again, except that his brilliant, 26,000-word defence of the true, Protestant faith can still be read online today (https://www.exclassics.com/foxe/foxe92.htm).

Burning His Bones

Not content to leave the man whom Wylie called ‘The Father of all the Reformations of Christendom’ alone, the Council of Constance, in addition to burning the gallant Hus, determined that Wycliffe’s bones be dug up and refused re-burial. In 1428 the Bishop of Lincoln cremated the man of God’s bones, scattering his ashes in the River Swift that flows through Lutterworth.

While the enemies of the Gospel could destroy Wycliffe’s bones, they could not destroy the message that he represented. It was Wycliffe himself who wrote, “I believe that in the end, truth will conquer”. It has been observed that as his ashes travelled with the waters of the Swift into the seas and oceans of the world, so Wycliffe’s message has gone into all lands; the truth continues to conquer. Therefore our English reformer, the forerunner of all reformers, sits humbly at Luther’s feet as the originator of a great and noble legacy that blesses continually, wherever the Bible is read, preached and obeyed.