Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/232

 due to his failure to punish an outrage on a member of the king's household. At present even the theologians were in Wycliffe's favour. The chancellor and doctors unanimously affirmed Wycliffe's conclusions to be true, although they were ill-sounding propositions (‘male sonare in auribus auditorum,’ ib. pp. 348–9).

When at last the accused heresiarch appeared before the two prelates in the archbishop's chapel at Lambeth (February or March 1378), the Princess of Wales, widow of the Black Prince and mother of the young king (belonging, of course, to the anti-Lancastrian party), sent a message to forbid the prelates to interfere with him, and the citizens of London, the bitterest enemies of the duke, but, like him, sympathetic hearers of Wycliffe's London sermons, burst into the chapel and interrupted the proceedings. The second trial was as abortive as the first (Chron. Angl. p. 183). The archbishop, if not his suffragan, was probably half-hearted, and willing enough to avail himself of a show of violence as an excuse for inaction. (From, i. 325, it might appear that the first trial at St. Paul's was in pursuance of the papal bulls, and it is true that the summons to Wycliffe in the summer of 1377 is to appear at St. Paul's. If Walsingham be right, we should have to place both the trials in 1377–8, but the attack on the Savoy in February is expressly said to have been in Lent, which would not have been the case had it taken place in February of what we should call the year 1378.)

The charges now made against Wycliffe (Chron. Angl. pp. 181 sq.), with his answers and explanations (intended apparently for transmission to Rome), enable us to trace the progress of his theological development since 1366. The accusations are established by the usual controversial device of extracting propositions from a writer's works without the context, qualification, and explanation which are needed to represent his real mind, or even to make them intelligible. Still, they are in most cases verbally—in all substantially—identical with positions maintained in his writings. For historical purposes it will be most instructive to give the actual ‘conclusions’ in all their bald crudity, as formulated by Wycliffe's accusers, with an occasional word of explanation. The articles were eighteen in number, though some authorities give only thirteen, and we are told that they are only a selection from the fifty sent to Rome by his enemies (Chron. Angl. p. 396; also in, iii. 123).

(1) The whole human race, apart from Christ, has no power of ordaining absolutely that Peter and all his successors shall have political dominion in perpetuity over the world [for all human dominion must cease at the last judgment].

(2) God cannot give a man civil dominion for himself and his heirs in perpetuity [because, Wycliffe explains, God could not, consistently with his nature, defer indefinitely the attainment of complete beatitude by his church].

(3) Humanly invented charters cannot possibly confer a perpetual right of civil inheritance [i.e. they are conditional upon the fulfilment of certain conditions and may be forfeited by misconduct].

(4) Any one being in a state of grace, such as confers grace finally, has not merely in right but in actual fact all the gifts of God [based on Matt. xxv. 21 and Augustine's ‘Justorum sunt omnia’].

(5) Man can only ministerially confer either on a natural son or a son by imitation [Walsingham's and Wycliffe's texts have ‘imitationis’] in the school of Christ either temporal or eternal dominion [1 Cor. iv. 1].

(6) If there is a God, temporal lords can legitimately and meritoriously take away earthly goods from a delinquent church [i.e. God can authorise them to take them away, but only, Wycliffe explains, ‘by the authority of the church in the cases and forms defined by law’].

Whether the church is in such a state or not, it is not for me to discuss, but for the temporal lords to examine, and in the case contemplated to take away her temporalities under pain of eternal damnation.

(7) We know that it is not possible that the vicar of Christ should habilitate or inhabilitate any one either merely by his bulls or by them with the will and consent of his college [of cardinals, i.e. a man cannot be saved without grace, which must be conferred directly by God].

(8) It is not possible for a man to be excommunicated, unless he be first and principally excommunicated by himself [Wycliffe adds that even an unjust excommunication is to be treated with respect, but in that case it will turn to the salvation, and not to the damnation, of the humble excommunicate].

(9) Nobody is [i.e. ought to be] excommunicated or suspended or punished with other censures for his deterioration, but only [should be excommunicated at all] in a cause of God [i.e. for just cause].

(10) Anathema or excommunication does not bind simply, but only in so far as it is directed against an adversary of the law of Christ.

(11) There is no example of the power of