Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/292

 Order, the Order of service. Vows of virginity are a doctrine of devils; and the worship of saints borders on idolatry. It is needless to visit the shrines of saints; the miracles alleged to be performed there may be only delusions of the devil. It is lawful to appeal in ecclesiastical matters and matters of faith to the secular prince. All dominion is founded on grace, and God divests of all right the rulers who abuse their power. Christ was a man, and his manhood should receive the kind of worship which is known as "latreia"—that is, the worship of service and observance. God loved David and Peter as deeply when they grievously sinned as he does now, when they are possessed of glory. God gives no good things to his enemies; and he is not more willing to reward the good than he is to punish the wicked. All things come to pass by a fatal necessity. God could not have made the world other than it is made; and he cannot make that which is something return to nothing—a fatalism which leads up to the paradox that God must "obey" the devil.

It is evident in how many points Wyclif set up a standard for the Reformers who came after him, and especially for the Calvinists, Presbyterians, and Puritans. The reader will not need to be reminded that some of the opinions ascribed to him by those who considered him a dangerous heretic may be no more than their own interpretation of his casual expression of opinion, whilst all of them, as quoted above, are torn from their context, and not one of them could be accepted as accurate without verification