RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Wyclif
lier Oxford period, miss the reformatory note which rings out in the others; these latter found an echo louder in Bohemia than in England, because in many circles they were regarded as the product of Huss. Simpler in form and content are his English sermons, but they do not lack the pointed turn of address and the warm feeling which stimulate the hearer. Many of his single teachings, such as that on purgatory, did not reach so adequate formulation.
His teaching on the sacraments occupies much space in his writings. If the sacrament is simply the symbol of a holy object, an invisible grace, then
seven is an insufficient number to ex-
8. The press the sacraments, since of such
Eucharist. signs there are many. For example,
preaching God’s Word is as much a sacrament as any one of the seven which bear that name. While according to this test the number seven is too‘small, it is too large if the Biblical basis of their ordination be the norm. For the Lord’s Supper the Scripture testimony is the strongest; for Extreme Unction (q.v.), the weakest. Among the sacraments the former, rightly administered, has saving power; but there is a further condition for the operation of grace in the sacrament which lies in the repentant attitude and the posture of the soul of the recipient. The operation of salvation does not depend upon the ethical condition of the priest who administers the sacrament—teaching contrary to this is not to be discovered in the writings of Wyclif. Upon the Lord’s Supper Wyclif spent much thought as the one which was of all the holiest and most worthy. But he fought his hardest against the Roman-scholastic doctrine of its transformation. The usual opinion has been that Wyclif made his first attack upon transubstantiation in 1381, but the date must be carried back to 1379, while the basis of his teaching is to be found in earlier writings and formulations. It was, however, in 1381 that he first cast aside in sermons and theses, in polemic tracts and philosophical treatises, and finally in a comprehensive work, the ecclesiastical teaching that after the consecration the bread and the wine are changed into Christ’s body and blood in such a way that only the appearance (the accidents but not the content) of bread and wine remained. The sacrament of the altar is rather natural bread and wine, but sacramentally it is body and blood. After the consecration the host remains local and substantial bread, but concomitantly in a figurative and sacramental sense it is the body of Christ which believers receive spiritually. Wyclif attempted to make this clear by the use of illustrations. Just as there is a double vision, the physical and the spiritual, so there is a double eating. Hence in the sacrament we do not see with the physical eye the body of the Lord, but by faith as in a mirror and by parable; similarly, as an image is complete at every point of a mirror, so is it with the body of the Lord in the consecrated host—we do not touch or grasp it, we do not masticate it, nor, in general, do we take it corporeally, but spiritually and completely intact. When Wyclif entered upon his campaign against what he called the “ novel ” -doctrine of transubstantiation, it was his express pur-
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pose to oppose those “ heathenish ”’ views according to which every priest was in a position to “ create’ the body of Christ, a thought which seemed to him horrible in that there was ascribed to the priest the transcendent power by which a creature gave existence to his creator. Moreover, God was humiliated when men asserted that the Eternal could daily be created, while that holy thing, the sacrament itself, was by this means desecrated. After Wyclif had once broken away from the doctrine of the Church on transubstantiation, he handled the subject with unwearying zeal in his philosophical and popular works, in his greater productions, his small tracts, and especially in his sermons. Similarly in the case of other sacraments, so far as he did not reject them outright, he‘did not cease to oppose the arrogated power of the 9. The priesthood in whose hands the admin- Other _ istration of those sacraments lay. He Sacraments. held that distinction must be made in baptism among the external symbols— there is a baptism with water and one with the power of God; or he distinguished a threefold baptism—by water, by blood (that of the holy martyrs), and by the Spirit; the last alone is unqualifiedly necessary to salvation, the first are so to speak the precedent signs, the necessary antecedents. Baptism by water is not to be superseded, however, for children who receive it are also baptized with the Spirit, since they receive the baptism of grace. Confirmation, according to Wyclif, has no foundation in the Bible; it is an arrogation of the bishops to assume that they have the gift of imparting the Holy Ghost. In it they seek an unwarranted increase of their power, without which they assert the Church can not exist. Similarly, consecration of the priests had as little basis in Scripture. He rejected the teaching that the priests received authority from the laying on of hands by the bishop appropriately to perform the offices of the Church, and that the bishop imparted to the priest the Holy Ghost and impressed upon his soul an inextinguishable quality, as well as the assertion that “as by baptism the believer is distinguished from the unbeliever, so by ordination the priest is distinguished from the layman.’ The apostolic Church had only two grades of clergy, priests and deacons; bishops and priests were the same. There is no priesthood mediating between God and man, no qualification for office dependent upon ordination by a bishop, and no indelible characteristic imparted by priestly ordination. Since Wyclif recognized only a simple priesthood, all episcopal privileges went by the board; the entire hierarchical gradation into orders from pope down to the lowest grades of the first tonsure he called the invention of an imperialized papacy. Once more, for extreme unction no Scriptural basis could be found. The sacrament of confession, too, was one introduced since the time of Innocent III. (1198-1216), for the sake of gain, supplanting confession to God and that of the apostolic Church in the presence of the congregation. The pronouncement of absolution is an encroachment upon the divine power; and there is as little justification for the imposition of penance, since the priest can not
Wyclif THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 466
Xaverian Brothers
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know its relation to sin, and for excommunication. Marriage Wyclif regarded as a sacrament, for it is a divine institution and demands divine sanction. Every hindrance to it not prescribed by Scripture he would throw aside, but would permit divorce when urgent reasons demanded it. He did not favor ostentatious nuptial ceremonies, but rather those that befitted the character of the institution.
The basis of the reform of the Church advocated by Wyclif rested upon the fact that he designated the Bible as the one authority for believers, and so teachings, traditions, bulls, symbols, and censures go by the board so far as they do not rest on Scripture. He carefully distinguished Church and State, and relegated the former to control purely in the spiritual realm; upon that principle are abolished the rights of inflicting penalties and granting immunities, temporal offices and positions, temporal power and possessions, as held by the Church. Inasmuch as he would go back to the apostolic Church for church polity, the fall of the hierarchy and abolition of monasticism were involved. In worship the chief element was the preaching of the Gospel.
The Reformer lived and died in the hope that church reform was something that was soon to be
realized, ‘‘ for the truth of the Gospel 10. Wyclif- may perhaps for a time by the hostility ism after of Antichrist be obscured in silence,
Wyclif. but can not be entirely done away.”
In fact, in the period immediately succeeding the death of the Reformer, Wyclifism made significant progress in England; under the leadership of such men as Nicholas of Hereford, John Aston, and John Purvey it penetrated all ranks of society, and eleven years after Wyclif’s death claimed the cooperation of parliament (1395) in its reforms. But after Thomas Arundel (q.v.) became archbishop of Canterbury, and particularly after the change in dynasty and the House of Lancaster occupied the throne (1399), Church and State united to extirpate Wyclifism. In the earliest years of the new dynasty there issued the notorious statute, De heretico comburendo, which made it a duty to surrender heretical writings and sacrificed public heretics to the flames. This was the first English statute that made heresy a capital offense. In spite of the union of the forces of Church and State, it was a difficult task to reestablish the unity of the faith against the Lollards in England. The adoption of severe measures in England was doubtless stimulated by the transformation of state affairs in Bohemia within the short space of two decades. The measures which were especially pressed were those against the itinerant preachers, then against the University of Oxford, where the Wyclifite traditions remained in strength; in 1408 there issued the “‘ constitutions,” the seventh article of which forbade the translation of Biblical texts and books into English; finally, the attack was directed against the advocates of Wyclifism among the nobility, whose most prominent representative was Sir John Oldcastle (q.v.), martyred by burning in 1417. Some of the English followers of Wyclif sought a new home in Bohemia, the most prominent of whom was Peter Payne (q.v.). In general, Wyclifism survived the period of persecution, and in the sixteenth century
put forth new branches which finally met and coalesced with the reform movement which originated in Germany (see LoLLARDSs). (J. LogertH.)
BrsrtrocrapHy: A brief statement of the early editions of such works of Wyclif as were published before the editions now authoritative is made in Hauck-Herzog, RE, xii. 225. For a survey of the list of Wyclif’s writings use W. W. Shirley, Catalogue of ‘the Original Works of John Wycltf, Oxford, 1865 (lists 96 Latin and 65 English writings), and ef. Lechler’s Life (as below), pp. 483-498, and DNB, Ixiii. 221-222. Under the auspices of the Wyclif Society a definitive edition of the Latin works of the Reformer is in progress, 34 vols. having appeared up to 1912, London, 1883 sqq. These volumes have marginal analyses, so that it is easy to follow them throughout. Of the other works there are available the Select English Works of John Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, 3 vols., Oxford, 1869-71; English Works of Wyclif hitherto Unprinted, ed. F. D. Matthew, London, 1880 (contains also a valuable introduction on the life of Wyclif); Wyclif’s Translation of the Bible, ed. Forshall and Madden, 4 vols., Oxford, 1850; his New Testament, with Glossary, ed. W. W. Skeat, Cambridge, 1879; J. Loserth, Die éiltesten Streitschriften Wiclifs, in the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy, vol. clx., of the philosoph.-historical class, 1908.
The chief early sources for knowledge of Wyclif, apart from his own writings, are: T. Netter, Fascicult zizantorum Johannis Wyclif ... ed. W. W. Shirley, in Rolls Series, London, 1858 (a series of important documents, with a very admirable preface); R. Pecock, The Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy, ed. C. Babington in Rolls Series, 2 vols., ib. 1860 (the introduction is valuable); Chronicon Anglie, ed. M. Thompson, ib. 1874; H. Knighton, Chronicon, ed. J. R. Lumby, vol. ii., ib. 1895; Eulogium historiarum sive temporis, ed. F. S. Haydon in Rolls Series, vol. iii., ib. 1863; T. Walsingham, Historia Anglicana in Rolls Series, 2 vols., ib., 1863-64.
The authoritative biography is still G. V. Lechler, Johann von Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der Reformation, 2 vols., Leipsic, 1873, Eng. transl. by P. Lorimer, John Wiclif and his English Precursors, 2 vols., London, 1873, new ed., 1 vol., with summary of vol. ii. by 8S. G. Green, 1884, reissue 1904. Books of high importance, after that of Lechler, and dealing with the life, are: John Fox, Book of Martyrs, London, 1632 and often; J. Lewis, Life of Wicliffe, new ed., Oxford, 1820 (valuable for documents cited); R. Vaughan, Life and Opinions of Wyclif, 2 vols., London, 1828, superseded by his John de Wycliffe, ib. 1853; J. Loserth, Hus und Wiclif, Prague, 1884, Eng. transl., Wiclif and Hus, London, 1884; idem, in English Historical Review, xi (1896), 319-328; A. R. Pennington, John Wiclif, London, 1884; R. L. Poole, Wycliffe and Movements for Reform, ib. 1889 (cf. his Illustrations of the Hist. of Medieval Thought, chap. x., ib. 1884; both of these to be taken well into account); L. Sergeant, John Wyclif, Last of the Schoolmen and First of the English Reformers, New York, 1893; G. S. Innis, Wiclif the Morning Star, Cincinnati, 1907; W. Walker, Greatest Men of the Christian Church, Chicago, 1908; J. N. Figgis, T'ypical English Churchmen, London, 1909.