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Rh confined to the schools; he now determined to carry it down into the streets. For this purpose he chose two means, both based on the thesis which he had long maintained as to the supreme authority of Holy Scripture, as the great charter of the Christian religion. The first means was his institution of the “poor” or “simple” priests to preach his doctrines throughout the country; the second was the translation of the Vulgate into English, which he accomplished with the aid of his friends Nicholas Hereford and John Purvey (see 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bible, English). This version of the Bible, and still more his numerous sermons and tracts, established Wycliffe's now undisputed position as the founder of English prose writing.

The choice of secular priests to be his itinerant, preachers was significant of another change of attitude on Wycliffe's part. Hitherto he had been on good terms with the friars, whose ideal of poverty appealed to him; as already mentioned, four doctors of the mendicant orders had appeared with him at his trial in 1377. But he had come to recognize that all organized societies within the church, “sects” as he called them, were liable to the same corruption, while he objected fundamentally to the principle which had established a special standard of morality for the “religious.” On the other hand, Wycliffe's itinerant preachers were not necessarily intended to work as rivals to the beneficed clergy. The idea that underlay their mission was rather analogous to that which animated Wesley four centuries later. Wycliffe aimed at supplementing the services of the church by regular religious instruction in the vernacular; and his organization included a good number of men who held or had held respectable positions in their colleges at Oxford. The influence of their teaching was soon felt throughout the country. The common people were rejoiced by the plain and homely doctrine which dwelt chiefly on the simple “law” of the gospel, while they no doubt relished the denunciation of existing evils in the church which formed, as it were, the burthen of such discourses. The feeling of disaffection against the rich and careless clergy, monks and friars was widespread but undefined. Wycliffe turned it into a definite channel.

Meanwhile, in addition to his popular propaganda and his interventions in politics, Wycliffe was appealing to the world of learning in a series of Latin treatises, which followed each other in rapid succession, and collectively form his summa theologiae. During the years 1378 and 1379 he produced his works on the truth of Holy Scripture, on the church, on the office of king, on the papal power.

Of all these, except the third, the general character has already been indicated. The De officio regis is practically a declaration of war against the papal monarchy, an anticipation of the theocratic conception of national kingship as established later by the Reformation. The king is God's vicar, to be regarded with a spiritual fear second only to that due to God, and resistance to him for personal wrong suffered is wicked. His jurisdiction extends over all causes. The bishops—who are to the king as Christ's Humanity is to his Divinity—derive their jurisdiction from him, and whatever they do is done by his authority. Thus in his palpable dignity, towards the world, the king is superior to the priest; it is only in his impalpable dignity, towards God, that the priest is superior to the king. Wycliffe thus passed from an assailant of the papal to an assailant of the sacerdotal power; and in this way he was ultimately led to examine and to reject the distinctive symbol of that power, the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Wycliffe himself had for some time, both in speech and writing, indicated the main characteristics of his teaching on the Eucharist. It was not, however, till 1379 or 1380 that began a formal public attack on what he calls the “new” doctrine in a set of theses propounded at Oxford. These were followed by sermons, tracts, and, in 1381, by his great treatise De eucharistia. Finally, at the close of his life, he summed up his doctrine in this as in other matters in the Trialogus.

The language in which he denounced transubstantiation anticipated that of the Protestant reformers: it is a “blasphemous folly,” a “deceit,” which “despoils the people and leads them to commit idolatry”; philosophically it is nonsense, since it presupposes the possibility of an accident existing without its substance; it overthrows the very nature of a sacrament. Yet the consecrated bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, for Christ himself says so (Fasc. Zizan. p. 115); we do not, however, corporeally touch and break the Lord's body, which is present only sacramentaliter, spiritualiter et virtualiter—as the soul is present in the body. The real presence is not denied; what Wycliffe “dares not affirm” is that the bread is after consecration “essentially, substantially, corporeally and identically” the body of Christ (ib.). His doctrine, which was by no means always consistent or clear, would thus seem to approximate closely to the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation, as distinguished from the Zwinglian teaching accepted in the xxviii. Article of Religion of the Church of England, that “the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.”

A public attack by a theologian of Wycliffe's influence on the doctrine on which the whole system of the medieval church was based could not be passed over as of mere academic interest. The theologians of the university were at once aroused. The chancellor, William Barton, sat with twelve doctors (six of whom were friars), and solemnly condemned the theses. Wycliffe appealed, in accordance with his principles, not to the pope, but to the king. But the lay magnates, who were perfectly ready to help the church to attain to the ideal of apostolic poverty, shrank from the responsibility of lending their support to obscure propositions of the schools, which, for no practical end, involved undoubted heresy and therefore the pains of hell. John of Gaunt, accordingly, hastily sent down a messenger enjoining the reformer to keep silence on the subject. The rift thus created between Wycliffe and his patrons in high places was, moreover, almost immediately widened by the outbreak of the great Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the result of which was to draw the conservative elements in church and state together, in defence of their common interests.

With the Peasants' Revolt it has been supposed that Wycliffe had something to do. The only positive fact implicating him is the confession of one of its leaders, John Ball, that he learned his subversive doctrines from Wycliffe. But the confession of a condemned man can seldom be accepted without reserve; and we have not only the precise and repeated testimony of Knyghton that he was a “precursor” of Wycliffe, but also documentary evidence that he was excommunicated as early as 1366, long before Wycliffe exposed himself to ecclesiastical censure. Wycliffe in truth was always careful to state his communistic views in a theoretical way; they are confined to his Latin scholastic writings, and thus could not reach the people from him directly. At the same time it is very possible that his less scrupulous followers translated them in their popular discourses, and thus fed the flame that burst forth in the rebellion. Perhaps it was a consciousness of a share of responsibility for it that led them to cast the blame on the friars. In any case Wycliffe's advocates must regret that in all his known works there is only one trace of any reprobation of the excesses that accompanied the outbreak.