Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/282

264 manner, to conquer kingdoms, and exact tributes, appertain to earthly dominion, not to the pope; so that if he pass by and set aside the office of spiritual rule, and entangle himself in those other concerns, his work is not only superfluous but also contrary to holy Scripture. It would however be a mistake to regard Wycliffe's intention here as directed in any sense to the overthrow of the papacy. He has not only a clear perception of, a firm belief in, the supremacy of the spiritual chief of the church; he goes so far as to assert that no one can have even the goodwill of his fellow-men, amicitia, except by grant of the pope, ratifying the grant of God. This dignity, he feels, is in truth in compatible with the business of the external world: he would free it from those impediments.

In such an endeavour Wycliffe had forerunners in several of the controversial writers with whom we have been occupied in the preceding chapter. There was nothing new in his argument on this head, save only the way in which he fitted it into his framework of dominion. The pope, he explained, is indeed lord; all men are lords: but just by virtue of mutual service. If any one should seek to raise himself above service, to make himself lord absolute, he becomes by this very act all the more a servant, all the less a lord. This paradoxical position is protected by the altogether ideal character of the scheme. To resume for a moment his salient conception, Wycliffe tries to withdraw himself from the thought of any civil polity; he insists that the law of the gospel is sufficient by itself, without the civil law or that called canonical (the qualification is noteworthy), for the perfect rule of the church militant; human laws and ordinances, he considers but the consequence of the fall of man. He looks forward to a state of things in which it will be possible to dispense with everything but the divine and eternal law: he has not, as Thomas Aquinas had, the philosopher's insight which could recognise a human law as some thing inextricably involved in the existence of an human society.