His Stand

HIS STAND AGAINST MONASTICISM

Early in his teaching career he gained wide fame and popularity by defending the university against the mendicant friars, i.e., begging friars who went around asking for handouts. Why would they be such a problem to the university? Miller gives the following explanation:

[Wycliffe] fearlessly and unsparingly attacked these orders, which he declared to be the great evil of Christendom. They were now four in number—Dominicans, Minorites or Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites—and swarmed in all the best parts of Europe. They strove hard in Oxford, as heretofore in Paris, to obtain the ascendancy. They took every opportunity of enticing the students into their convents, who, without the consent of their parents, were enlisted into the mendicant orders. To such an extent was this system of trepanning carried on, that parents ceased to send their children to the universities. Thirty thousand youths had at one time studied at Oxford, but from this cause the number was reduced to six thousand. Bishops, priests, and theologians, in almost every country and university in Europe were contending against those arch-deceivers, but it was all to little effect, for the Pontiffs vigorously defended them as their best friends, and conferred on them great privileges.

Wycliffe struck boldly, and we believe fatally, at the root of this great and universal evil….He published some spiritual papers entitled, “Against Able Beggary,” “Against Idle Beggary,” and on “The Poverty of Christ.” “He denounced mendicancy in itself, and all the orders as able-bodied beggars, who ought not to be permitted to infest the land....He denounced them for intercepting the alms which ought to belong to the poor; for their unscrupulous system of proselytising;…their habits of deluding the common people by fables and legends; their hypocritical pretensions to sanctity; their flattery of the great and wealthy, whom it would rather have been their duty to reprove for their sins; their grasping at money by all sorts of means; the needless splendour of their buildings, whereas parish Churches were left to decay.” [1]

A. H. Newman also describes Wycliffe's opposition to the excesses of these monks in A Manual of Church History Volume I:

The monks [Wycliffe] regarded as an abomination, and as the cause of much evil. They begged not for the supplying of their wants, but for the enriching of the monasteries, and used all sorts of methods for extorting money from rich and poor. Hence he aimed to abolish mendicancy. In some of his Latin polemical tracts he seeks to identify the mendicants with every class of evil-doers denounced in the New Testament. His exceeding bitterness against these “four sects” is one of the most marked features of these tracts, in which he passes by no opportunity to rebuke them. [2]

What sort of vessel was Wycliffe? Miller itemizes his outstanding characteristics:

His knowledge of Scripture, the purity of his life, his unbending courage, his eloquence as a preacher, his mastery of the language of the common people, rendered him the object of general admiration. He maintained that salvation was by faith, through grace, without human merit in any way. This was striking, not at the outward evils merely, but at the very foundations of the whole system of Popery. Led by Divine wisdom, he commenced his great work at the right place and in the right way. He preached the Gospel and explained the Word of God to the people in vernacular English. In this way he planted deep in the popular mind those great truths and principles which eventually led to the emancipation of England from the yoke and tyranny of Rome. [3]

Wycliffe was outstanding in his knowledge of the Scriptures. The Trialogus, a work completed toward the end of his life, is remarkable for the number of Scripture passages used. It demonstrated Wycliffe's extraordinary familiarity with the Bible. Even his opponents recognized they were no match for Wycliffe when it came to knowledge of the Word. This did not prevent them from attacking him, however, as Lechler indicates in the following comment:

...one of his opponents accuses him of being, on this point, an adherent of the “heretic Occam”; in other words, that he had borrowed from Occam the principle of resting exclusively on Scripture—as, in fact, men have ever been inclined, in the case of the manifestation of any tendency which appeared suspicious and erroneous, to identify it with, and to derive it entirely from, some earlier teaching which had been already condemned and branded as unsound doctrine. [4]

HIS INFLUENCE AT OXFORD
AND WITH THE GOVERNMENT

Wycliffe's position as a Doctor of Divinity made a significant impact on the university because it gave him the opportunity to lecture on theology. He used this as an opportunity to express his views, as indicated by Miller:

He spoke as a master to the young theologians at Oxford; and having such authority in the schools, whatever he said was received as an oracle. It would be impossible to estimate the wholesome influence which he exercised over the minds of the students, who attended in great numbers at that time. [5]

Disputes arose, and Wycliffe was in the midst of them. One dispute, in particular, arose when Pope Urban V demanded that King Edward III make immediate payment of all the tribute money which had not been collected for the previous thirty-three years. This tribute money was part of the feudal system and was the means by which kings annually acknowledged their dependence upon the pope. This was more than a religious question. The consensus of the populace was that money collected for the pope was money for support of foreign and sometimes hostile governments. When the King refused to pay, he received the support of the Parliament. Wycliffe, as a chaplain of the King, was given the responsibility of presenting the King's denial to the pope. England made no further payments to the papacy.

Wycliffe's fame as a defender of truth and liberty now spread beyond Oxford. The pope and the cardinals began to fear him. They carefully watched his comings and goings and scrutinized his public speeches. On the other hand, the King, the Parliament, and the populace appreciated his integrity and judgment to the extent that he was regularly consulted in matters affecting both church and state.

THE DECLINE IN POWER OF THE PAPACY

The pope at this time was not in Rome but in Avignon, France, due to the so-called Babylonian captivity of the papacy. It had been carried away to France through stealth and intrigue. In 1378 a papal schism began when a pope in Rome and a pope in France vied for power. This schism caused the papacy to decline in power. The crusades also resulted in the weakening of the papacy. This was not only because not one crusade was successful and millions of crusaders lost their lives, but as the crusaders traveled beyond their local environs the scope of their thinking became broadened to the extent that cities began to spring up. The increase in the size and number of cities was accompanied by the growth of more powerful governments at the expense of papal power.

HIS STAND AGAINST THE PAPACY

In 1374 Wycliffe was sent as an ambassador to the papacy. He saw firsthand the utter corruption—the greed, lust, dishonesty, etc.—that characterized the papal court in France. This confirmed the conclusions of his prior thought and inquiry, that the pretensions of the papacy were without foundation in the truth. As a result of what he saw, Wycliffe could make statements like this:

“I believe...that the gospel of Christ is the whole body of God's law. I believe that Christ, who gave it to us, is very God and very man, and by this it passes all other laws. I believe that the bishop of Rome is bound more than all other men to submit to it, for greatness among Christ's disciples did not consist in worldly dignity or honours, but in the exact following of Christ in his life and manners. No faithful man ought to follow the pope, but in such points as he hath followed Jesus Christ.” [6]

Miller points out Wycliffe's bold stand of opposition to the pope in the following passage:

“The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said, “is the only source of true religion. The Pope is Antichrist, the proud worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers and purse-carvers.” The pride, the pomp, the luxury, the loose morals of the prelates, fell under his withering rebuke. And being a man of unimpeachable morals himself, of profound devotion, undoubted sincerity, and original eloquence, numbers gathered around the dauntless professor. [7]

Bernard of Clairvaux had said the following concerning the Catholic bishops:

They are ministers of Christ, but servants of antichrist; the gold on their spurs, their reins and saddles, is brighter than on their altars; their tables are splendid with dishes and cups, thence their drunkenness and gluttony; their larders are stored with provisions, and their cellars overflow with wine—and for such rewards as these men seek to become bishops; for these things are not bestowed on merit but on things which walk in darkness. [8]

It is evident that in this point Wycliffe was a follower of Bernard.

HIS STAND AGAINST TRANSUBSTANTIATION

Wycliffe began preaching the fact of the believer's personal and direct responsibility to God. He taught that all authority is from God and that all who exercise authority are responsible to God for the use of what He has committed to them. His teaching denied the prevailing ideas of the absolute authority of popes and kings, and the necessity for the mediatory powers of the priesthood. This teaching aroused controversy and intense opposition. However, it was not until he published his denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation in 1381 that his own university forsook him. He had strongly supported the doctrine of transubstantiation until 1378, when he began to see that this is not the teaching of Scripture. D'Aubigne describes Wycliffe's realization concerning this teaching:

...Wycliffe denied this doctrine with tremendous energy. Indeed he was now asserting that there never had been a heresy more cunningly smuggled into the church than transubstantiation. The reasons for his complete change of [stand] are clear: he denounced it as contrary to Scripture (both Gospels and Epistles), as unsupported by early church tradition, as plainly opposed to the testimony of the senses, and as based upon false reasoning. He proclaimed furthermore, with immense vigour, that the doctrine was essentially idolatrous, and productive of arrogant priestly claims without warrant in Scripture. In sum, the doctrine of the mass was to Wycliffe in the closing years of his life a “blasphemous deceit,” or to use his exact language, “a veritable abomination of desolation in the holy place.” [9]