College, and as a lecturer and preacher he was termed brilliant. Any way one wishes to classify him, he stands as one of the leading men of his day.
Because of his untiring work as a writer, and also because he translated the Bible into the English tongue, he is considered by some authorities to be the first great master of English prose. He stands with Chaucer, if not in creating English literature, at least in giving form and beauty to it. It has been said that his efforts in bringing about two translations of the Bible did more to liberate England than was accomplished in any war. His serious mind and involved reasoning left his scholarly writing extremely intricate and completely without a trace of humor. An undeviating spirit, a caustic style, and a conduct void of blunders in behavior characterize both his writings and his life.
In features and form little remains to draw an acceptable likeness of this great Reformer, for the available portraits consist, so it is said, of figments of someone’s imagination. From fragmentary references he has been described as gaunt, lean to the point of emaciation, and with little bodily strength. His opponents were wont to say that his asceticism was used as a cloak to impress others with his piety. Lewis Sergeant, in his John Wycliffe, quotes others as stating that to this charge Wycliffe countered:
“I eat frequently, greedily, and delicately, leading a social life; and if I were to try like a hypocrite to make false pretense in this regard, they who sit with me at tables would bear witness against me.” — Page 12.
He never seemed to be in good health; but, in spite of appearances, he was hospitable, pleasant, and energetic, possessing an iron will with no
apparent sign of timidity.
His friends saw in him a man deeply devoted to the word of God. To him the Bible was the way of life. In his estimation society was in a chaotic state, for which the greatest need was the love of justice.
“He was the champion,”
says Lewis Sergeant,
“of the university against pope and hierarchy..of the nation against the papacy, of the new truth as he had seen it against friars,
bishops, and bulls. Men of all classes, from peasant to Parliament and kings, looked to him at one time or another for strength, inspiration, or protection, and they did not look in vain.” — Ibid., p. 100.
Wycliffe did not make his debut into national prominence over a
controversy about creed, as might be supposed. His first open clash with the papacy found its basis in a national issue growing out of his views on the relative status of church and state. The papacy had requested the English Parliament to pay the money in arrears from the time King John had recognized the pope as overlord of England. Wycliffe’s opinion denied the rights of all papal claims concerning taxation. His logic and
thoroughness aligned Parliament against the papacy, and his position won him many friends and apparently as many enemies among the proponents of the papal hierarchy.
This incident seems to have marked a turning point in his life, for, not long after, he advocated a ban on the export of all precious metals to Rome and also proposed that the church hold a subordinate status to the English government. His logic led him to the conclusion that revelation and reason denied the papal claim of having authority over all secular rulers. From the results of his analysis of the situation he found no reason why the pope, under his allegation as the vicar of Christ, could be, in feudal terminology, an overlord of a country. Such a pretension, Wycliffe asserted, had no authority in Scripture.
Naturally, once having opposed the papacy on one matter, his
thoroughness of scholarship and devotion to the study of the Bible, a book which he called “a charter written by God” and “the marrow of all laws,”
led him into conflict with the various religious views of the church. He maintained that the evils in the church developed from her wealth and temporal power, that such a condition was tantamount to idolatry, and that the church, in order to satisfy its pristine objective, needed to return to the simplicity of apostolic teaching.
True religion, he further averted, depended on a personal relationship between God and the individual, in which relationship the individual ought to be free from the control of priests, whom he at one time designated as
“fiends of hell.” He denied that the pope had any Scriptural or historic
right to set himself up as head of all Christendom. Had Wycliffe had his way, the entire monastic system would have been abolished, for he felt it to be evil in intent and results. The whole idea of monasticism, according to his views, constituted a deterrent to England’s greatness.
As time went on, he began to attack the entire papal organization. Any doctrine which emphasized externals to the loss of personal devotion to God, he condemned. Every sacrament, except marriage, received his rebuke.
The natural outcome of such an attitude was an open break with the church, a consummation which apparently was not his original intent. But it remained for his attack on the validity of the sacrament of
transubstantiation, the supposed transforming of the bread and the wine of the eucharist into the body and blood of Christ, to catapult him into his most serious altercation with the hierarchical system. He maintained that the doctrine of transubstantiation constituted a heresy brought into the church with the purpose of keeping the laity in blind subjection to the priesthood. Even his refusal to accept the veneration of saints, relics, and pilgrimages as valid presentation to heaven for justification was secondary to his attack on the doctrine of transubstantiation. Soon he repudiated the supreme authority of popes and ecclesiastical councils and refused to come to terms with the papacy.
As Wycliffe’s unalterable opposition to the church developed and people in most walks of life began to champion him and his views, the papal hierarchy had no recourse but to attempt to silence this “voice in the wilderness.” Doubtless his high standing in the government and his status as an intellectual and spiritual leader kept him from earlier effective papal attacks. A man who held the position of king’s chaplain, who was an intimate adviser to Parliament, and who stood in high esteem with the princess of Wales could not be cowed easily or attacked even by a church which claimed supremacy in religious and secular affairs.
But gradually the situation changed. His inflexible attitude and the shift in governmental personnel gave the papacy its opportunity to take effective steps to quiet this
“greatest of Reformers before the Reformation.”
The papacy instituted two trials against Wycliffe, one in 1377 and one the following year. At this time he still stood in too high esteem to be either greatly awed or severely hindered in his onslaughts against the church, but his friends advised moderation. The fact that the papacy sent five bulls containing nineteen charges against Wycliffe shows the determination of the church to curtail his work. One of these bulls reached the king, one arrived at the University of Oxford, and the other three were addressed jointly to the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London.
Records are at variance as to the actual number of heresies charged against Wycliffe, but they range all the way from the nineteen listed in the five bulls to the three hundred three enumerated by his opponents.
His body, always weak, had in the meantime been attacked by illness. At one time, when rumor spread that he lay dying, a few zealous friars hurried to his bedside to hear what they thought would be his recantation.
Instead they heard themselves denounced and threatened with the exposure of their misdeeds.
By 1382, papal pressure grew sufficiently strong to cause his expulsion from Oxford, a departure which marked for that institution the beginning of a considerable decrease in freedom of thought and for more than a century a progressive degeneration of religion, morals, and learning.
Wycliffe spent his few remaining years in charge of the Lutter-worth church in Leicestershire. On December 28, 1384, a final paralytic attack came while he was attending to his duties. He died on New Year’s Eve of the same year.
While Wycliffe was alive, the papal hierarchy had never been able to force his excommunication as a heretic; therefore apparently to vent its spleen or to demonstrate its frustration, or possibly both, the Council of
Constance ordered, on May 4, 1415, that Wycliffe’s body be disinterred and burned. This order reached fulfillment in 1428 with the consuming of his bones and the scattering of his ashes in the river Swift.
The evaluation placed on the influence and prestige of this man, who has been called the Morning Star of the Reformation, is outstanding and phenomenal. Apparently, apart from time, there is little that differentiates him from the Reformers of the sixteenth century. His influence remained
high as late as the time of Luther. In many ways he outlined the basic doctrinal views propounded by the later Reformers. As the first great scholarly opponent of the medieval papacy, he exerted an immortal influence. In fullness of outlook he stood above many of the Reformers of a century later, and from the time of his first abortive trial in 1377 to his death he stands as the most important religious personage in England. The heart of his teaching, by which he won practically half of England, consists of the infallibility of the Scriptures and salvation through faith in Christ.
His two great services to his country have been defined as providing the inspiration for a religious revival and the writing of the first English translation of the Bible.
Charles Bigg, in his Wayside Sketches in Ecclesiastical History, says of Wycliffe,
“The courage which he displayed, if we consider the forces arrayed against him, was extraordinary, and his intellectual moderation and good sense are hardly less so.” — Page 131.
Ellen G. White gives the following summation of the man and his work:
“In breadth of intellect, in clearness of thought, in firmness to maintain the truth, and boldness to defend it, he was equaled by few who came after him. Purity of life, unwearying diligence in study and in labor, incorruptible integrity, and Christlike love and faithfulness in his ministry, characterized the first of the
Reformers. And this notwithstanding the intellectual darkness and moral corruption of the age from which he emerged.” — The Great Controversy, page 93.