25 minute read
JOHN WYCLIFFE: HERETIC OR REFORMER?
Mark Menacher
Controversy regarding the teachings of the Christian Church is as old as the Church itself. As St. Paul testifies in his letter to the Galatians, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed (ἀνάθεμα - anathama). As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed (ἀνάθεμα)” (Gal. 1:6-9 [ESV]).
Scripture as a Means of Resolving Controversy
In fact, it could be asserted that the New Testament was primarily written to remedy the deviations from and the disputes about the gospel of Jesus Christ in the nascent church. Consequently, time and again appellation has been made to scripture, especially to the New Testament, to identify and to address the controversies which each new generation of sinners seems to spawn. Unfortunately, as St. Paul also indicates (Gal. 2:1-14), the inception, manifestation, identification, and possible resolution of ecclesial controversies also raises questions about authoritative texts, instances of judgement from authoritative persons, and the implicit or explicit hermeneutical principles employed to affirm the truth of the gospel. Not infrequently, appealing to scripture while utilizing faulty methods of its interpretation have given rise to “cures” at least as accursed as the maladies needing to be alleviated.
Was Luther a Wycliffite?
Depending upon one’s perspective, one person’s reformer is another person’s heretic. Lutherans are long accustomed to Martin Luther being considered both. When Luther appeared at the Imperial Diet in Worms in April 1521, he was so charged, “You have come as a spokesman of great, new heresies as well as those long since condemned; for many of the things which you adduce are heresies of the Beghards, the Waldenses, the Poor Men of Lyons, of Wycliffe and Huss, and of others long since rejected by the synods.”1 In Luther’s subsequent letter to the people of Wittenberg in June 1521, he states, “Thus our greatest suffering is that they decry us in the most shameless way as ‘Wycliffites,’ ‘Hussites,’ and ‘heretics.’”2 Could this accusation, however, have some validity? To what extent might Luther have been a Wycliffite?
The Gospel Doctor
John (de) Wycliffe,3 also found spelled as Wyclif,4 Wickliff,5 Wyclyffe,6 Wigleff, Wycleph, and Wikleph7 to cite a few variants, was a fourteenth-century, English philosopher and theologian. “The biographers of Wycliffe all mention the year 1324 as that of his birth,”8 except for those more recently who cite 1330.9 Wycliffe hailed from the Yorkshire village of Wycliffe-upon-Tees, and in 1342 “the family village and manor came under the lordship of John of Gaunt (1340-1399), the Duke of Lancaster and the second son of King Edward III.”10 John of Gaunt was a patron of both Wycliffe and Geoffrey Chaucer, and some speculate “that Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales based his characterization of ‘The Parson’”11 on Wycliffe. Both Wycliffe and Chaucer spoke and wrote in Middle English. In the following excerpt, Wycliffe expresses his sentiments regarding the sacrament of the altar as the body of the Lord, which Lutherans on initial impression might welcome:
"Of al þe feiþ of þe gosþel gederen trewe men, wiþ opyne confescioun of þes newe ordris, þat men shulden rette hem eretikis, & so not comyne wiþ hem. for þei denyen þe gosþel & comyn bileeue, þat þat breed þat crist took in hise hondis & blesside it & brac it & ʒaf it to hise disciplis for to ete, was his owne bodi bi vertu of his wordis. & þus þei denyen þat þe oost sacrid, whijt & round, þat bifore was breed, is maad goddis bodi bi uertu of hise wordis... (see note for author’s translation)."12
In 1340 (or 1346),13 at the age of sixteen Wycliffe entered Queen’s College, Oxford as a commoner. Queen’s College was a new college designed for students from the northern counties of England. Remaining there briefly, Wycliffe moved to Merton College, Oxford where Ockham and Duns Scotus are claimed to have been fellows. Notably, Ockham questioned the infallibility of Pope John XXII, and he also advocated civil authority over against ecclesiastical power. This heritage perhaps explains why Wycliffe enthusiastically studied scholastic philosophy. In the scholastic view, Aristotle was deemed to be the safest way to ascertain the meaning of St. Paul. In addition to scholastic studies, Wycliffe diligently studied civil and canon law, with the former based on jurisprudence of the Roman Empire which was adopted in various ways by the nations of feudal Europe. Canon law embodied the decrees of councils and popes which sought dominion over both ecclesial and civil realms. Whereas civil laws often included national innovations, particularly in England, the church sought to recreate the Roman imperial empire. Wycliffe defended English civil law over foreign domination whether civil or ecclesiastical. In contrast to many of his day, Wycliffe sought to establish religious truth based solely on the authority of scripture which won him the name “Gospel Doctor.”14
In 1345, the plague arose in the orient, and by August 1347 when Wycliffe was 23 it had reached England. The devastation in human and economic terms left a lasting impression on Wycliffe. The plague subsided in 1348, and Wycliffe’s first work, entitled the Last Age of the Church dated 1356, seems to reflect the apocalyptic nature of this devastation. Perhaps more importantly, this book allows Wycliffe to express his view of the recompense earned by the Church having grown greedy and haughty. Wycliffe opens his book with a reference to Psalm 107:10 (Vulgate [Latin Bible] 106:10) of “great priests sitting in darkness, in the shadow of death,” which refers to the prelates and friars who “make reservations, which they call tithes, first fruits, other pensions”15 to accumulate for themselves wealth at the expense of the country’s resources. With frequent biblical references and numeric-alphabetical symbols,16 Wycliffe decries this heretical simony as the work of the anti-Christ, which will elicit four tribulations to desolate the church.17 The apocalyptic proportions of this book foreshadow Luther’s critique of the calamitous state and fate of the papal church.18
In 1361, Wycliffe earned his Master of Arts, was ordained in the diocese of Lincoln, became the rector of Fillingham (or Fylingham) in Lincolnshire,19 and was elected the warden of Baliol College, Oxford, both seemingly as rewards for his opposition to the mendicant friars.20 In 1365, Pope Urban (Avignon, France)21 demanded from King Edward III the annual tribute of 1,000 marks, as papal-feudal acknowledgment of his sovereignty over England and Ireland, and also 33 years of arrears. “According to the ecclesiastical theory of the middle age, the church is the parent of the state, bishops are as fathers to princes, and the authority of all sovereigns must be subordinate to that of the successors of St. Peter.” In response, Wycliffe drafted a series of speeches based on feudal right, civil law, and the precepts of scripture. When parliament convened in 1366, these speeches were delivered by secular lords and affirmed that the king could deny paying the tribute to the pope, could subject all clergymen to civil law and its magistrates, and in certain circumstances could expropriate the church’s possessions.22 Subsequently, parliament also enacted laws to shield the universities from the exploitative proselytizing of the mendicant orders, from any injurious action by the pope, and from the ecclesiastical courts being allowed to favor the mendicant orders in seminary disputes. Wycliffe probably influenced this legislation too. Again, apparently as a reward for his efforts on behalf of the crown, Wycliffe was designated one of the royal chaplains in 1366.23
In 1369, Wycliffe received his Bachelor of Divinity, and in 1370, he started to challenge papal doctrines, particularly transubstantiation in the eucharist.24 Under the secret influence of John of Gaunt and with Wycliffe’s advocacy, in 1371 the English Parliament sought to exclude churchmen from holding high office, a common and pervasive practice. As Wycliffe writes, “Neither prelates, nor doctors, priests nor deacons, should hold secular offices, that is, those of Chancery, Treasury, Privy Seal, and other such secular offices in the Exchequer; neither be stewards of lands, nor stewards of the hall, nor clerks of the kitchen, nor clerks of accounts; neither be occupied in any secular office in lords’ courts, more especially while secular men are sufficient to do such offices.”25 Because the Avignon papacy was composed mainly of Frenchmen, Edward’s antipathy both to papal demands for the tribute and to other papal assertions of power on the British Isles should be viewed as yet another manifestation of Anglo-French national rivalries ever present during their Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). In 1372, Wycliffe received his doctor of divinity, and therewith his influence in academia grew.26
Wycliffe’s political and ecclesial endeavors won him many ecclesial enemies. In February 1377, William Courtney, newly elevated bishop of London and son of the powerful Hugh Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, sought to quell Wycliffe’s ideas and thus summoned him to appear before parliament “to answer to the charge of holding and publishing certain erroneous and heretical opinions.” Accompanied by John of Gaunt and Lord Percy, Wycliffe arrived on 19 February at St. Paul’s Cathedral, but a verbal dispute between Gaunt and Courtney caused the proceedings to descend into chaos with no action being taken against Wycliffe.27 In June 1377, King Edward III died and was succeeded by his ten-year-old grandson, Richard II, who was less accommodating of Wycliffe’s views.
Having issued five bulls against Wycliffe in May 1377, Pope Gregory XI, who had moved the papacy from Avignon back to Rome, sent letters to the king of England, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London, and Oxford University calling upon them to condemn Wycliffe and to prevent the dissemination of his teachings.28 In response, Wycliffe issued a protestatio:
"First of all, I publicly protest, as I have often done at other times, that I will and purpose from the bottom of my heart, by the grace of God, to be a sincere Christian; and as long as I have breath, to profess and defend the law of Christ so far as I am able. And if, through ignorance, or any other cause, I shall fail therein, I ask pardon of God, and do now from henceforth revoke and retract it, humbly submitting myself to the correction of Holy Mother Church...[That said] I am willing to set down my sense in writing, since I am prosecuted for the same. Which opinions I am willing to defend even unto death, as I believe all Christians ought to do, and especially the pope of Rome, and the rest of the priests of the church. I understand the conclusions, according to the sense of Scripture and the holy doctors, and the manner of speaking used by them; which sense I am ready to explain: and if it be proved that the conclusions are contrary to the faith, I am willing very readily to retract them."29
Wycliffe continued by offering eighteen articles to defend his positions and subsequently agreed to “house arrest” in his parish in Lutterworth, to which he had been appointed in 1374. Neither Oxford University nor the government would condemn their prize scholar and patriotic servant, respectively.30 Wyliffe’s self-imposed “exile” became the most prolific period of his life.
The Trialogus
Among Wycliffe’s many volumes of collected works, his Trialogus, structured as a three-way conversation between Alithia (or Alethia), Pseudis, and Phronesis,31 arguably offers the most succinct summary of his theological positions and his arguments against his adversaries. Wycliffe begins Trialogus, Book VI, Chapters I-IX, with a discussion against transubstantiation in the eucharist. “I shall briefly set forth the doctrine as supported by the testimony of Scripture. In the first place, this sacrament is the body of Christ in the form of bread. ... Since this article of catholic belief is so broadly expressed in Scripture, the doctrine [of transubstantiation] contrary to it is manifestly heretical. ... It would be well for the church universal to attend to this matter, ... because this matter is decided with greater completeness, authority, and moderation, in the Gospel of Christ than in the court of Rome.”32 “But how then, by virtue of this sentence [This is my body], comes transubstantiation, or the accident without a subject? ... [T]hese heretics cannot state at what instant transubstantiation, or the accident without a subject, really takes place.” “No one of the saints, prior to the loosing of Satan, was acquainted with [transubstantiation].”33 “The believer, therefore, hesitates not to affirm, that these heretics are more ignorant, not only than mice and other animals, but than pagans themselves; while on the other hand, our aforementioned conclusion, that this venerable sacrament is, in its own nature, veritable bread, and sacramentally Christ’s body, is shown to be the true one.”34
For also denying transubstantiation, Luther in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church states, “Here I shall be called a Wycliffite and a heretic by six hundred names.”35 Despite this apparent endorsement, Wycliffe’s understanding of the “real presence” in a Lutheran sense, is not present. Further on, Wycliffe states, “The body of Christ is not co-extensive with the body of the bread ... it hath been stated already that the body of Christ is there spiritually ... it should be granted, that the body of Christ is there, beautifully, and really. Yet I dare not say, that it is there dimensionally, or in extent, though it may be bread which is there dimensionally, and in extent.”36
For also denying transubstantiation, Luther in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church states, “Here I shall be called a Wycliffite and a heretic by six hundred names.”
In Chapter XIV “On the Avarice of the Clergy,” Wycliffe seeks to separate clergy from worldly corruption by liberating them from being “possessed” by worldly possessions. “It is plain that the man imbibing the spirit of the Gospel pleases Christ the more, other things being equal, the greater the poverty in which he fulfils his office. ... Thus some understand the words of Christ, "And ye shall carry nothing on your journey, neither scrip,’ &c.; for apostolic men should not be delayed by anything temporal that may impede their affections or their efforts in the discharge of duty. ... [F]or possession in a civil sense, since it necessitates a carefulness about temporal things, and the observance of human laws, ought to be strictly forbidden to the clergy.”37 Philip Melanchthon in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XVI, takes a different view. “It is also false (vanissimum) to claim that Christian perfection consists in not holding property. What makes for Christian perfection is not contempt of civil ordinances but attitudes of the heart, like a deep fear of God and a strong faith. ... Wycliffe was obviously out of his mind (furebat Vuiglefus) in claiming that priests were not allowed to own property.”38
Regarding the mendicant (begging) orders, Wycliffe viewed begging in two ways. The first pertains to begging from God, as petitioning in prayer, “for it became Christ thus to beg, for the interests of his church.” Other begging seeks something from human beings. “But if the friars make a sophistical use of such begging, and beg stoutly from the people with clamour and annoyance, who can doubt that this begging is a diabolical and sophistical perversion of this act of Christ’s, so full of goodness, and so serviceable to his church? Beyond this the friars defend their falsehood, by adding, that it is not only proper, but absolutely meritorious thus to embrace a life of voluntary poverty.”39 “I see clearly, from the reasons adduced, and from many others that might be brought forward, if need were, that this mendicancy of the friars is not only without scriptural authority, but a manifest blasphemy.”40
In Chapter XXIV “On Indulgences,” Wycliffe states, “I confess that the indulgences of the pope, if they are what they are said to be, are a manifest blasphemy, inasmuch as he claims a power to save men almost without limit, and not only to mitigate the penalties of those who have sinned, by granting them the aid of absolutions and indulgences, that they may never come to purgatory, but to give command to the holy angels, that when the soul is separated from the body, they may carry it without delay to its ever lasting rest.” “In such infinite blasphemies is the infatuated church involved, especially by the means of the tail of this dragon, that is the sects of the friars, who labour in the cause of this illusion, and of other Luciferian seductions of the church.”41 Plainly, Wycliffe’s attacks on the papal institution of indulgences resonate strongly with Luther’s positions.
How Did the Lutheran Reformers View Wycliffe?
Regarding the doctrine by which the church stands or falls, “Melanchthon considered [Wycliffe] unsound on the doctrine of justification.”42 “On the great doctrines of Justification and Merit,” however, “Dr. James quotes passages, which prove Wickliff to have taught ‘That faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, is sufficient for salvation, and that without faith it is impossible to please God; that the merit of Christ is able, by itself, to redeem all mankind from hell, and that this sufficiency is to be understood without any other cause concurring; he persuaded men therefore to trust wholly to Christ, to rely altogether upon his sufferings, not to seek to be justified but by his righteousness; and that by participation in his righteousness, all men are righteous.’”43 Unfortunately, this particular source provides no citations to support such assertions, but more apparent, Wycliff’s writings are by and large devoid of discussion about or concern for the doctrine of justification.
On the topic of free will, Luther extolls Wycliffe. In the Bondage of the Will, over against Erasmus and the like, Luther sees only himself, Wycliffe, Laurentius Valla (the Italian humanist who exposed “Donation of Constantine”44 as forged), and Augustine on the right side of the debate.45 Later, Luther reduces this group to two. “The third and hardest opinion is that of Wycliffe and Luther, that free choice is an empty name and all that we do comes about by sheer necessity. It is with these two views that Diatribe quarrels.”46 “For I take the view that Wycliffe’s article (that ‘all things happen by necessity’) was wrongly condemned by the Council, or rather the conspiracy and sedition, of Constance.”47 Wycliffe himself, however, seems to advocate more free will than Luther might be willing to accommodate:
"Here true men say that as God has ordained good men to bliss, so has God ordained them to come to bliss by the preaching and keeping of God’s word; and so that they shall necessarily come to bliss, they must necessarily hear and keep God’s commands, and herewith serves preaching to them;... [F]or this each man has free will and choosing of good and evil. No man shall be saved unless he has willfully and eternally kept God’s commands, and no man shall be damned unless he has willfully and eternally broken God’s commands and forsaken thus and blasphemed God [author’s translation]."48
Finally, similar to the preceding, Wycliffe regards the catholic Church as the sum of all the predestined.49 This Church is composed of three parts, the blessed in heaven, the sleeping in purgatory, and the militant engaged in conflict on earth. The election of the predestined is solely God’s prerogative. The church has only one head, Jesus Christ. No Christian has the power to determine that the pope is either the head or even a member of the church, for such consists again by God’s predestination and grace.50 According to Wycliffe, Christ came to effect a separation in humanity, however not like their separation from God due to sin. Ecclesially considered, Christ came so that the church could discern and separate heretics from itself. “For this reason, therefore, it is necessary for every catholic to know the holy scriptures.”51 This explains why Wycliffe spent the remainder of his life, until death by a stroke on New Year’s Eve in 1378, working to produce a full translation of the Vulgate Bible into English. Like his richly productive life, the Roman Church could not accommodate Wycliffe’s natural death. In 1415, the Council of Constance condemned Wycliffe of 267 heresies, and in 1428, the pope ordered Wycliffe’s remains to be dug up, burned, and scattered on the River Swift.52
For many, Wycliffe was a heretic. For others, he was the “morning star of the Reformation.” For Lutherans, Wycliffe is a bit of both, not substantially a heretic and yet not truly a reformer, perhaps primarily so because prioritizing St. Paul’s law-gospel hermeneutic seemed not to dawn on him.
The Council of Constance condemned Wycliffe of 267 heresies, and in 1428, the pope ordered Wycliffe’s remains to be dug up, burned, and scattered on the River Swift. For many, Wycliffe was a heretic. For others, he was the 'morning star of the Reformation.' For Lutherans, Wycliffe is a bit of both, not substantially a heretic and yet not truly a reformer, perhaps primarily so because prioritizing St. Paul’s law-gospel hermeneutic seemed not to dawn on him.
Rev. Dr. Mark Menacher is Pastor of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, La Mesa, CA.
Notes:
1Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols., editors, J. Pelikan and H. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House and Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955), 32: 129 [hereafter LW]. See also, D. Martin Luthers Werke - Kritische Gesammtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883-2009), 7:837,13-16 [hereafter as WA].
2LW 48:249 = WA 8:210,22-23.
3John de Wycliffe, Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe, ed. Robert Vaughan (London: Blackburn and Pardon, 1845), [hereafter Tracts and Treatises]. Heretic genealogies have been common in the history of the church, see Ulrich G. Leinsle, “Kollektive Identitäten in spätmittelalterlichen Häresien” in Geschichtsentwürfe und Identitätsbildung am Übergang zur Neuzeit - Geschichtsentwürfe und Identitätsbildung am Übergang zur Neuzeit, vol. 41,2, eds. Ludger Grenzmann, Udo Friedrich and Frank Rexroth (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 53-54 [hereafter Leinsle].
4Iohannis Wyclif, Tractatus de Ecclesia, ed. Iohann Loserth (London: Wyclif Society by Trübner & Co, 1886) [hereafter Tractatus de Ecclesia].
5John Wickliff, Writings of the Reverend and Learned John Wickliff, D.D. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1842) [hereafter Writings].
6John Wyclyffe, The Last Age of the Church, ed. James Henthorn Todd (Dublin: University Press, 1890) [hereafter Last Age].
7Leinsle, 43 and 55.
8Tracts and Treatises, i.
9Donald I. Roberts, “The Dawn of the Reformation,” Christian History - Special Commemorative Issue Devoted to John Wycliffe and the 600th Anniversary of Translation of the Bible into English, II, 2 (1983), 10 [hereafter Roberts, Dawn].
10Roberts, Dawn, 10. Vaughn considers John of Gaunt, a statesman, military leader, and literary, who had sympathies with Wycliffe’s ecclesial reforming views, to be the fourth son of Edward III (Tracts and Treatises, xxv].
11“A Gallery of his Defenders, Friends and Foes,” Christian History - Special Commemorative Issue Devoted to John Wycliffe and the 600th Anniversary of Translation of the Bible into English, II, 2 (1983), 15, see also 33.
12John Wycliffe, The English Works of Wyclif: Hitherto Unprinted, ed. F. D Matthew (London: Trübner & Co., 1880), 356-357 [hereafter Hitherto Unprinted]. “Although true men assemble in the faith of the gospel, with open confession against these new orders [of mendicant friars], that men should consider them heretics and not commune with them, for they deny the gospel and common belief, that that bread that Christ took in his hands and blessed it and broke it and gave it to his disciples to eat, was his own body by virtue of his words, and thus they deny that the host, sacred, white, and round, that was bread before, is made God’s body by virtue of his words...”
13Roberts, Dawn, 10.
14Tracts and Treatises, ii-iii, v-vii.
15Psalm 106:10 in the vulgate reads, “Sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis; vinctos in mendicitate et ferro,” translated as “Ones sitting in darkness and the shadow of death; bound in beggary and iron.” One wonders for Wycliffe whether mendicitate (beggary) provided biblical grounds to refer to the greed and hypocrisy of the supposedly poor mendicant friars.
16Wycliffe uses the number of letters in the Hebrew and Latin alphabets multiplied by 100 to signify various aspects of biblical and church historical chronology.
17Last Age, xxiii-xv.
18“For ... the pope’s church is full and swarming with falsehood, devils, idolatry, hell, murder, and every kind of calamity. Thus it is time to hear the voice of the angel in Revelation 18 [:4–5], ‘Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven,’ etc.” (LW 41:206 = WA 51:499,28-32). “Thus we are warned in Revelation (18:4) to depart from Babylon and forsake her; that is, we should completely separate ourselves from the pope’s church, unless we want to perish with it” (LW 3:280 = WA 3:75,40-42).
19“Christian History Timeline: Wycliffe’s World,” Christian History - Special Commemorative Issue Devoted to John Wycliffe and the 600th Anniversary of Translation of the Bible into English, II, 2 (1983), 19 [hereafter Timeline).
20Tracts and Treatises, vxi.
21Under pressure from French King Phillip IV, Pope Clement V, also a Frenchman, moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon, France in 1309, where it remained until 1377, when it was returned to Rome by Pope Gregory XI.
22Tracts and Treatises, vxiii-xx.
23Tracts and Treatises, xxiv-xxv.
24Timeline, 19.
25Tracts and Treatises, xxvi-xxvii. “At that time the offices of Lord Chancellor, and Lord Treasurer, and those of Keeper and Clerk of the Privy Seal, were filled by clergymen. The Master of the Rolls, the Masters in Chancery, and Chancellor and Chamberlain of the Exchequer, were also dignitaries, or beneficed persons of the same order. One priest was Treasurer for Ireland, and another for the Marches of Calais; and while the parson of Oundle is employed as surveyor of the king’s buildings, the parson of Harwick is called to the superintendence of the royal wardrobe.”
26Tracts and Treatises, xxvii.
27Tracts and Treatises, xxxiv-xxxv.
28Tracts and Treatises, xxxvi-xxxvii. See also “Five Bulls of Pope Gregory XI against Wycliffe,” Christian History - Special Commemorative Issue Devoted to John Wycliffe and the 600th Anniversary of Translation of the Bible into English, II, 2 (1983), 22.
29Tracts and Treatises, xxxix.
30Roberts, Dawn, 12.
31Writings, 36. Printed in 1524, Trialogus “contains a series of dialogues between three persons, characterised as Alethia, or Truth, Pseudis, or Falsehood, and Phronesis, or Wisdom. Truth represents a sound divine, and states questions; Falsehood urges the objections of an unbeliever; Wisdom decides as a subtle theologian. This work probably contains the substance of Wickliff’s divinity lectures, with considerable additions. It embraces almost every doctrine connected with the theology of that day, treated however in the scholastic form then universal.” The editors of Luther’s Works speculate, “Luther may have read Wycliffe’s Trialogue, which had been printed in 1525, but his knowledge of the Englishman’s writings was fragmentary” (LW 37:294 note 222).
32Tracts and Treatises, 133.
33Tracts and Treatises, 136-137.
34Tracts and Treatises, 140.
35LW 36:28 = WA 6:508,3.
36Tracts and Treatises, 154. See also LW 37:294 note 222.
37Tracts and Treatises, 170-172.
38The Book of Concord, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 224.9 and 224.11. See also Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, 13th edition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 309.9 and 309.11 which rendered more accurately from the Latin says, “Wycliffe was furious.”
39Tracts and Treatises, 186.
40Tracts and Treatises, 188.
41Tracts and Treatises, 195 and 198.
42Life and Times of John Wycliffe: The Morning Star of the Reformation (London: Religious Tract Society, 1884), 151 [hereafter Morning Star].
43Writings, 41.
44The Donation of Constantine was a forged document of the Middle Ages which claimed that Constantine the Great (ca. 280-337) gave Pope Sylvester I (314–335) extensive property and temporal power.
45LW 33:72 = WA 18:640,8-9.
46LW 33:116 = WA 18:670,25-27.
47LW 33:160 = WA 18:699,15-17.
48Hitherto Unprinted, 111. Excerpt from Tract V: Speculum de Antichristo, “Here seyn trewe men þat as god haþ ordeyned goode men to blisse, so god haþ ordeyned hem to come to blisse bi prechynge & kepyng of goddis word; and so as þei schullen nedis come to blisse, so þei moten nedis here & kepe goddis hestis, & herof serueþ prechynge to hem; and summe wickid men now schullen be conuertid bi goddis grace & herynge of his word. And who knoweþ þe mesure of goddis mercy, to whom herynge of goddis word schal þus profite? eche man schal hope to come to heuene & enforce hym to here & fulfille goddis word, for siþ eche man haþ a free wille & chesyng of good & euyl, no man schal be sauyd but he þat willefully hereþ and endeles kepiþ goddis hestis, and no man schal be dampnyd but he þat wilfully & endeles brekiþ goddis comaundementis, & forsakiþ þus & blasphemeþ god. & herynge of goddis word & grace to kepen it, frely ʒouyn of god to man but ʒif he wilfully dispise it, is riʒt weie to askape þis peril & come to endeles blisse; & here-fore synful men owen wiþ alle manere mekenesse & reuerence & deuocion heren goddis word & grucchen not ne stryue aʒenst prechynge of cristis gospel.”
49Tractatus de Ecclesia, 405. “...descripcio autem ecclesie catholice est condicionis opposite, dum recte breviter et plane dicitur quod ecclesia catholica est universitas predestinatorum.”
50Tractatus de Ecclesia, 19. “...non est in potestate alicuius christiani constitucione, eleccione vel acceptacione statuere quod dominus papa sit caput vel membrum sancte matris ecclesie. Nam hoc consistit in predestinacione et gracia Dei nostri.”
51Tractatus de Ecclesia, 41. “Christus ergo venit non ad faciendum primam separacionem que est proprie per peccatum, sed ad faciendum sequentem, ut per eum discernantur heretici et ab ecclesia separentur. Et hec racio - quare oportet omnem catholicum cognoscere scripturam sacram.”
52Timeline, 20.
53Cf., note 41.
