§ 41. wyclif's teachings. 337
does not eat his soul. The opinion that the priest actually breaks Christ's body and so breaks his neck, arms and other members, is a shocking errpr. What could be more shocking, — horribilius, — he says, than that the priest should daily make and consecrate the Lord's body, and what more shocking than to be obliged to eat Christ's very flesh and drink his very blood. Yea, what could be thought of more shocking than that Christ's body may be burned or eructated, or that the priest carries God in bodily form on the tips of his fingers. The words of institution are to be taken in a figurative sense. In a similar manner, the Lord spoke of himself as the seed and of the world as the field, and called John, Elijah, not meaning that the two were one person. In saying, I am the vine, he meant that the vine is a symbol of himself.
The impossibility of the miracle of elemental transmutation, Wyclif based on the philosophical principle that the substance of a thing cannot be separated from its accidents. If accidents can exist by themselves, then it is impossible to tell what a thing is or whether it exists at all. Transubstautiation would logically demand transaccidentation, an expression the English Reformer used before Luther. The theory that the accidents remain while the substance is changed, he pronounced " grounded neither in holy writt ne reson ne wit but only taughte by newe hypocritis and cursed heretikis that magnyfyen there own fantasies and dremes." ^
Another proof of Wyclif's freedom of mind was his assertion that tlifi_£^man Church, in celebrating the sacrament, has no right to make a precise form of words obligatory, as the words of institution differ in the different accounts of the New Testament. As for the profitable partaking of the elements, he declared that the physical eating profits nothing except the soul be fed with love. Announcing it as his expectation that he would be set upon for his views, he closed his notable treatise on the eucharist with the words. The truth of reason will prevail over all things.
Super omnia vincit Veritas rationis.
1 De euch., pp. 78, 81, 132; Engl. Works, III. 520. z
338 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
In these denials of the erroneous system of the mediceval Church at its vital points, Wyclif was far in advance of his own age and anticipated- the views of the Protestant Reformers.
§ 42. Wyclif and the Scriptures.
Wyclif's chief service for his people, next to the legacy of his own personality, was his assertion of the supreme authority of the Bible for clergy and laymen alike and his gift to them of the Bible in their own tongue. His statements, setting forth the Scriptures as the clear an^ sufficient manual of salvation and insisting tliat the literal sense gives their plain meaning, were as positive and unmistakable as any made by Luther. In his treatise on the value and authority of the Scriptures, with 1000 printed pages,^ more is said about the Bible as the Church's appointed guide-book than was said by all the mediaival theologians together. And none of the Schoolmen, from Anselm and Abselard to Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, exalted it to such a position of preeminence as did he. With one accord tliey limited its authority by coordinating with its contents tradition, that is, the teachings of the Church. This man, with unexcelled precision and cogency, affirmed its final jurisdiction, as the law of God, above all authorities, papal, d^ecretist or patristic. What Wyclif asserts in this special treatise, he said over again in almost every one of his works, English and Latin. If possible, he grew more emphatic as his last years went on, and his Opus evangelicum^ probably his very last writing, abounds in the most positive statements language is capable of.
To give the briefest outline of the Truth of Scripture will be to state in advance the positions of the Protestant Reformers in regard to the Bible as the rule of faith and morals. To Wyclif the Scriptures are tlie autliority for every Catholic tenqj;.
1 De veritate Scriptures, ed. by Buddensieg, with Iiitrod., 3 vols., Leip., 11X)4. The editor, I. p. xci, gives the date as 1887, 1888. Wyclif starts out by quoting Augustine at length, I. (i-Ki. The treatise contains extensive digressions, as on the two natures of Christ, 1. 179 sqq., the salutation of Mary, I. 282 sqq., lying, II. 1-99, Mohammedanism, II. 248-206, the functions of prelates and priests. III. 1-104, etc.