§ 42. WYCLIF AND THE SCKIPTURES. 339
They are the Law of Christ, the Law of God, the Word of God, the Book of Life — liber vitce. They are the immaculate law of the Lord, most true, most complete and most wholesome.^ All things necessary to belief for salvation are found in them. They are the Catholic faith, the Christian faith, — fides Christiana,— the primal rule of human perfection, the primal foundation of the Christian proclamation.
This book is the whole truth which every Christian should study .2 It is the measure and standard of all logic. Logic, as in Oxford, changes very frequently, yea, every twenty years, but the Scriptures are yea, yea and nay, nay. They never change. They stand to eternity.^ All logic, all law, all philosophy and all ethic are in them. As for the philosophy of the pagan world, whatever it offers that is in accord with the Scriptures is true. The religious philosophy which the Christian learns from Aristotle he learns because it was taught by the authors of Scripture.* The Greek thinker made mistakes, as when he asserted that creation is eternal. In several places Wyclif confesses that he himself had at one time been led astray by logic and the desire to win fame, but was thankful to God that he had been converted to the full acceptance of the Scriptures as they are and to find in them all logic.
All through this treatise, and in other works, Wyclif contends against those who pronounced the sacred writings irrational or blasphemous or abounding in errors and plain falsehoods. Such detractors he labelled modern or recent doctors — moderni, novelli doctores. Charges such as these would seem well-nigh incredible, if Wyclif did not repeat them over and over again. They remind us of the words of the priest who told Tyndale, 150 years later, " It were better to be without
1 lex domini immaculata . . . verissima, completissima et saluberrima, I. 156.
2 Ulum librum debet omnis christianus adiscere cum sit omnis Veritas, I. 109, 138.
3 I. 54. Alice logiccB scepissime variantur . . . logica scripturm in eternum Stat.
* I. 22, 29, 138. Christianus philosophiam non discit quia Aristotelis sed quia autorum scripturce sac. et per consequens tamquam suam scientiam qu<z in libris theologioe rectius est edocta.
340 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
God's laws than to be without the pope's." What could be more shocking, — horrihilius^ — exclaimed Wyclif, than to assert that God's words are false. ^
The supreme authority of the Scriptures appears from their contents, the beneficent aim they have in view, and from the witness borne to them by Christ. God speaks in all the books. They are one great Word of God. Every syllable of the two Testaments is tjue, and the authors were nothing more than scribes or heralds. ^ If any error seem to be found in them, the error is due to human ignorance and perverseness. Nothing is to be believed that is not founded upon this book, and to its teachings nothing is to be added. ^
Wyclif devotes much time to the principles of biblical exposition and brushes away the false principles of the Fathers and Schoolmen by pronouncing the " literal verbal sense " the true one. On occasion, in his sermons, he liimself used the other senses, but his sound judgment led him again and again to lay emphasis upon the etymological meaning of words as final. The tropological, anagogical and allegorical meanings, if drawn at all, must be based upon the literal meaning. Wyclif confessed his former mistake of striving to distinguish them with strict precision. There is, in fact, only one sense of Scripture, the one God himself has placed in it as the book of life for the wayfaring man.^ Heresy is the contradiction of Scripture. As for himself, Wyclif said, he was ready to follow its teachings, even unto martyrdom, if necessary.^
» I. 161, 200, 394, 408; Lat. serm., 179; De eccles., 173, 318, etc.
2 Tota scrip, est unum magnum Verbum Dei., I. 269. Autores 7iisiscrib(B vel precones ad scrib. Dei legem. I. 392. Also I. 86, 156, 198, 220 sqq., III. 106 sqq., 143.
" Falsitas in propnsito est in false intelligente et non in Scrip, sac, p. 193. Ntilli alii in quoquam credere niisi de quanta se fnndaverit ex script. I. 383. De civ. dom., p. 394.
* De ver., 114, 119, 123. Smsjis litrralis script, est utrohiqne vrrns, p. 73. Solum nicest se7isus script, quern dens et beati legunt in librovitte qui est uni talis et alteri viatoribus, semper verus, etc., p. 126.
^ Oportet conclusiones carnis et seculi me deserere et sequi Christum in pauperie si debeam coronari, I. 357. Also II. 129-131. In view of the above statement, it is seen how utterly against the truth Kropatschek's statement is, Man wird den Begriff Vorrefurmntoren getrost in die historische Rumpel-