Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/291

 keepeth that divinity to himself"]. The Church consists only of such as are predestinated. The Church had no immovable goods before the time of Constantine; and it is no sacrilege for the State to take for its own needs the temporal goods of the Church. There is a savour of hypocrisy in the beautiful buildings and decorations of the Church. Tithes are to be considered as pure alms, and ought not to be extorted by censures; parishioners would do well not to pay tithe at all to dissolute priests. Whatever is not plainly expressed and enjoined in the Scriptures is irrelevant and impertinent. Many of the ecclesiastical teachers since the completion of the first millennium of Christianity were heretical. It is vain for laymen to bargain for the prayers of priests. There is no superiority in set prayers repeated by a priest; men should trust rather in personal holiness. The alms of the Church should be refused to persons living in open sin.

With regard to the sacraments, it was alleged against Wyclif that he spoke slightingly of the act of chrism, and denied the absolute necessity of baptism, which, he said, does not confer grace, but only symbolises a grace given before. It is idolatry to worship the host; the bread and wine remain just what they were before consecration. God could not make his natural body exist in two places at once. Confirmation is not necessary to salvation. Confession of sins to a priest is superfluous for a contrite man. Extreme unction is unnecessary, and not a sacrament.

All kinds of religious Orders confound the unity of the Church of Christ, who instituted but one