The Mouth Of The Morningstar: John Wycliffe’s Preaching And The Protestant Reformation

By Caleb Cangelosi

The fourteenth-century English scholar and pastor John Wycliffe is well known as a forerunner of the Reformation, primarily because he instigated the translation of the Latin Vulgate into the vernacular English, and because of his Augustinian understanding of the church and his rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation. It is often overlooked, however, that the newly translated Scriptures and Wycliffe’s revolutionary doctrines most often made their way to the sixteenth century through the vehicle of preaching. In the days before the printing press [1] and because of widespread illiteracy even after Gutenberg’s mid-fifteenth-century invention, the proclamation of God’s Word by Wycliffe’s followers (known as the “Lollards,” the “Bible-men,” or the “poor preachers”) was integral to promulgating his views to God’s people in England and beyond. [2] Yet it is the sermons of Wycliffe himself that had a foundational influence on the Reformation—not only because they communicated his teachings to the people directly, [3] but also because they were preached and published for the sake of the preachers who heard and read them, so that they might use them as a guide in their own preaching.

Sean Otto recently noted that the importance of preaching to John Wycliffe has long been understood, yet “few have taken the time to read his extensive preaching corpus…[and] little has as yet been written about his pastoral theology and his preaching itself.” [4] Even Hughes Oliphant Old chose not to include Wycliffe in his incredibly full survey of Christian preaching, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church. [5] This article aims to throw a few shovels of dirt into the lacuna by examining Wycliffe’s understanding and practice of preaching, drawing much from his sermons themselves. It will also discuss the way his influence pervaded Europe, particularly his home island. The “Morningstar of the Reformation” shone brilliantly in his preaching, and he continues to lighten our path today.

The Man And His Times

Before John Wycliffe tells us his thoughts on preaching, it is important to recall his life in brief fashion to set his homiletics in context. The year of Wycliffe’s birth cannot be determined with confidence, though scholars pinpoint it sometime around 1330, in northern England. [6] He studied at Oxford University, in connection with which most of his life was spent. He became a Fellow of Merton College at Oxford in 1356, which means that he certainly had his Bachelor of Arts by this year. [7] In 1360, he became a Master of Balliol College (a position akin to a residence hall tutor). [8] In May 1361, Wycliffe was ordained and installed as the parish priest of Fillingham in Lincolnshire, but, in 1363, the bishop of Lincoln granted him a non-residency license so that he might return to Oxford to study for his doctorate of theology. In 1368, he transferred his priestly living to Ludgershall in Buckinghamshire, and, in 1374, he added Lutterworth to his ostensible pastoral charge—“ostensible,” for as a full-time teacher and student in the doctoral program, he was an absentee priest for most of the time of his pastoral service. [9] In 1372, he was awarded his doctorate, and he remained at Oxford until 1381, when his doctrines could no longer be endured.

Wycliffe wrote voluminously, and many of his writings landed him in hot water with the university and ecclesiological authorities. His book On Civil Dominion led to his first censure in 1377, by Pope Gregory XI himself, who condemned nineteen articles. [10] Conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and the kingdom of England, as well as Wycliffe’s political connections and the Great Schism of 1378, prevented him from being convicted by the Roman Catholic Church. But his next books, On the Church, On the Eucharist, and On the Truth of Sacred Scripture, were too controversial for even Oxford to tolerate, and when the University publicly condemned his views, he was forced to retire to his parish of Lutterworth. [11] There he preached and wrote until his death on December 31, 1384, somewhere around the age of fifty-four.

As evidenced from Wycliffe’s early life, the state of the pastorate and the preaching office was far from exemplary in fourteenth-century England. The practice of preaching was common enough; in a period bereft of the mass media that we take for granted in the twenty- first century, preaching was a mainstay of entertainment in the public square as well as a primary means of communicating information about political and theological controversies. [12] There was a vast number of preachers in an array of venues willing and able to preach: in addition to the regular pulpiteers (bishops and “curates,” or the beneficed priest), preaching was performed by those monks, mendicant (begging) friars, university graduates in theology, vicars, chaplains, pardoners, and others who had been licensed by the bishops. [13] As we have already noticed, some who should have been preaching were not. Owst cites “the failures, the negligences and ignorances” of bishops and curates, and Evans notes that absenteeism and pluralism (“the holding of several livings and benefices so that it was impossible to provide pastoral care personally in all of them”) were common problems in Wycliffe’s day. [14]

“Pardoners,” monks, and friars were three primary sources of preaching, and they supplied Wycliffe with much fodder for criticism; the first and last were itinerants, while the monks typically preached in their cloisters. Pardoners, or “questors,” traversed the land hawking relics and selling indulgences. In the opinion of Oxford scholars, they preached for filthy lucre:

Whereas the shameless pardoners purchase their vile traffic in farm with Simon, sell Indulgences with Gehazi, and squander their gains in disgraceful fashion with the Prodigal Son: but what is more detestable still, although not in holy orders, they preach publicly, and pretend falsely that they have full powers of absolving both living and dead alike from punishment and guilt, along with other blasphemies, by means of which they plunder and seduce the people, and in all probability drag them down with their own person to the infernal regions, by affording them frivolous hope and an audacity to commit sin: therefore, let the abuses of this pestilential sect be blotted out from the threshold of the Church. [15]

The golden era of monastic preaching had been the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and Owst states that by Wycliffe’s time, “all the great names in the history of monastic eloquence have disappeared, and the pulpit here seems to share in the general decline of cloister fame and cloister influence…. [V]ital, potent interest in preaching…appears to be dead.” [16] According to Thomas Renna, Wycliffe’s attacks on the monks fell into seven categories:

1. Monks constitute a private sect within the single body of the church. As a sect they promote schism and discord. Their isolation is the result of their arrogant belief that they embody a unique state of perfection, spiritually superior to all other states in the church.
2. Monks own land in excess of their basic necessities.
3. Their ascetic practices are unnatural and unnecessary. Their overly long prayers, both liturgical and private, benefit nobody. At any rate, they only pretend to pray.
4. Monks are the agents of Antichrist.
5. They waste their time in activities outside the cloister. Monks have no business teaching in universities or ministering in parishes.
6. They do not follow their own Rules or the intentions of their holy founders.
7. Many monks adhere to heretical doctrines, particularly those relating to the eucharist, the papacy, and sacerdotal power. [17]

Wycliffe’s fiercest criticisms, however, were reserved for the friars. Though unlike pardoners they were members of holy orders (Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians [18]), they too were widely tainted by a love of money and controversial practices.

One of their own number, John Bromyard (a noted antagonist of John Wycliffe), contended, “Preachers must not preach for gain of money, but for the gain of souls.” [19] In one of Wycliffe’s sermons, he lays seven charges at the feet of the friars:

[T]hey select preachers for their ability to entertain large crowds rather than their ability to teach; they do not direct their sermons toward repentance from sin; they choose an audience based on its capacity to produce the greatest income; they neglect preaching where gain is not to be had; the richer friars do not preach at all; friars in general refuse to preach to the very poor; and friars are more interested in the collection than in assuming the role of pastors to the people. [20]

He vigorously attacked the friars for taking money that they did not need: “Also friars say, that it is needful to leave the commandment of Christ, of giving alms to poor feeble men, to poor crooked men, to poor blind men, and to bed-ridden men, and give alms to hypocrites, that fain them holy and needy, when they be strong in body, and have over much riches, both in great waste houses, and precious clothes, in great feasts and many jewels and treasure….” [21] David Fountain remarks that the friars filled their sermons with “legends of saints, insipid stories, tragedies, fables, coarse buffooneries, unwholesome illustrations and interpretations of dreams.” [22]

It was in this milieu that John Wycliffe ministered, and it was to abuses such as these that he responded so vigorously. To be sure, not every bishop, curate, monk, or friar was guilty as charged, and Wycliffe was not the only one to criticize the low state of affairs in the church’s preaching.23 In the words of Owst, “The defiance of [Wycliffe and his followers]…we must consider as a last word in that long pulpit condemnation of prelacy, its utter incapacity, its foul behavior, and its negligence of this same instruction.” [24] But that last word resounded the longest, and so is best remembered by friends and foes of the Morningstar of the Reformation. To his understanding and practice of preaching we now turn.

John Wycliffe: The Preacher

His Audience

Wycliffe’s views influenced the Reformation as they did, in large part, because he aimed his sermons [25] not merely at his congregations, but at the preachers who followed in his train and propagated his doctrines. Scholars are agreed that such an aim was his deliberate intention. Johann Loserth writes,

[M]ost of his sermons are school or model sermons…with a view to and for the use of his travelling preachers…. Most frequently we find in the sermons instructions how to deal with the matter of a sermon, whether to compose it elaborately or shortly. In a good many passages he observes that the preacher must adapt his discourse to the capacities of his hearers. The character of these sermons as models for preachers was clearly perceived by the early copyists: thus one of them has inserted in the margin of the MS. the words: Magistri et students, notate. [26]

As an example of that which Loserth notes, in Wycliffe’s sermon on 2 Corinthians 6:1, after pointing out twenty-eight characteristics (“conditions”) that Paul says the church “should keep now,” he ends the sermon by declaring, “Each of these points that Paul tells may be enlarged to the people, and declared diffusely depending on how God moves the speaker.” [27] Likewise, in his sermon on John 15:12, he ends by saying, “This sermon should be adapted for the people, adding to what has been said here, as is suitable.” [28] In his sermon on Lazarus and the rich man, he concludes by directing the priests, “In this Gospel may priests tell of false pride of rich men, and of lustful life of mighty men of this world, and of long pains of hell, and joyful bliss in heaven, and thus lengthen their sermon as the time allows.” [29] Again, he finishes another sermon with the words, “Here may men touch of all manner of sin, and especially of false priests, traitors to God, that should truly call men to bless and tell them of the way of the law of Christ, and make known to the people the deceits of Antichrist.” [30] Another clear indication that spurring on the priests was clearly Wycliffe’s purpose is the series of sermons he preached on what he called “the six yokes”—six relationships in which the Christian life is lived. These six yokes were explained primarily with a view to preachers who could then expound them to their people: “So that the simple priests with zealous souls may have material for preaching, there are six yokes that draw Christ’s plow along in our age…. The dove of the church should choose and sing a song of love and peace for all of these….” [31] Further illustrations of the way Wycliffe instructed preachers directly through his preaching could be multiplied ad nauseum.

In light of the above, it is not surprising to find that Wycliffe elucidates his conception of the pastoral ministry in general and preaching in particular not only in his books, including On the Pastoral Office, [32] and On the Truth of Holy Scripture, [33] but also in his sermons, written, preached, and published for the preachers. Both his books and his sermons are replete with explanations of the vital importance of preaching, and how preachers should understand and approach the task to which God has called them.

The Good Shepherd’s Life And Preaching

Wycliffe believed that there were “two things which pertain to the status of pastor: the holiness of the pastor and the wholesomeness of his teaching.” [34] Regarding holy living, in On the Pastoral Office he particularly emphasizes the importance of imitating Christ in “evangelical poverty,” summarized in the Apostle Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 6:8, “Having food and wherewith we are clothed let us be content.” He attacks the four “sects” (the bishops, monks, canons, and friars [35]), stating that they “have departed from this principle of faith. For all these four ‘sects’ heap up for themselves superfluous goods by exceeding too far that apostolic rule, and this is clear from their withdrawal of their service in the labor of the people.” [36] According to Wycliffe, holiness of life is so important to the preacher because a lack of holiness would make his preaching useless: “[T]he first condition of the pastor is to cleanse his own spring, that it may not infect the Word of God…. God ordains for a good reason that by the teaching of the pastor and his own manner of life his preaching to his sheep may be made efficacious, since this acts more effectively than mere preaching…. The life of a good pastor is of necessity a mirror to be imitated by his flock….” [37] It is no wonder, therefore, that Wycliffe’s followers were “poor preachers,” for they had listened well to their teacher.

In his sermon on John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd,” after indicting popes and friars as evil shepherds and wolves, respectively, Wycliffe lays out three functions of a good shepherd: “It falls to a good shepherd to lead his sheep in whole pastures, and when his sheep are hurt or stabbed, to heal them and to grease them; and when other evil beasts assail them, then help them. And hereto should he put his life to save his sheep from such beasts. The pasture is God’s law, that ever more is green in truth, and rotten pasture[s] are other laws and other fables without ground.” [38] In On the Pastoral Office, he even more explicitly connects these three functions to the preaching of the Word: “The pastor has a threefold office: first, to feed his sheep spiritually on the Word of God…. The second pastoral office is to purge wisely the sheep of disease, that they may not infect themselves and others as well. And the third is for the pastor to defend his sheep from ravening wolves, both sensible and insensible. In all these the especial office of the pastor seems that of sowing the Word of God among the sheep.” [39] Wycliffe believed that preaching was the most important act of a pastor. In one of his sermons, he asserts, “The first and greatest work of the priest is the promulgation of religious truth…. The proclamation of the gospel is the most important pastoral duty.” [40] It was “on this basis that they retain the dignity of their office,” since “[i]nsofar as the…preached word is the truth, it is essentially God himself.” [41] That preaching is “the special work of the curate” is evident from the fact that “Christ advances more in his apostles by preaching to the people than by doing any miracle which in his own person he did in Judea.” [42] To Wycliffe, preaching was even more important than prayer or administering the sacraments: “Preaching the gospel exceeds prayer and administration of the sacraments, to an infinite degree…. Spreading the gospel has far wider and more evident benefit; it is thus the most precious activity of the Church.” [43] Elsewhere he asserted, “[I]t is evident that preaching God’s word is a more solemn act than consecrating the sacrament, since only one person receives the word of God when accepting the body of Christ. It is a far better thing, therefore that the people received God’s word than that a solitary person receive Christ’s body.” [44]

In light of Wycliffe’s obvious concern with rightly expounding the nature of the Lord’s Supper in his book On the Eucharist, it is likely that Evans is correct that “this [assertion of the superiority of preaching] is not a weighing of the sacramental and the pastoral ministry against one another in favour of the pastoral,” and that “we must be careful here not to read into this the thinking of the sixteenth-century Reformation.” [45] In contrasting the preached Word and the visible Word (the sacraments) as he does, Wycliffe is speaking in hyperbole (e.g., “to an infinite degree”) to make his point: preaching is paramount for the minister of the gospel. It is the principal task of the pastor primarily because it is “the work which most directly produces children of God.” [46]

Not only does the preaching of the Word create heirs of the kingdom of God, it powerfully fits them for that kingdom. Johann Loserth writes that, for Wycliffe, “the preaching of the word of God is the work of a priest which contributes most to the building up of the Church, for God’s word is the seed which overcomes the strongly armed, which softens hard hearts, renews men brutalized by sins and departed far from God, and transforms them into men of godliness.” [47] Similarly, Gotthard Lechler has argued, “Before everything else Wycliffe lays stress upon the truth that the preaching of the Word of God is that function which serves, in a degree peculiar to itself, to the edification of the Church; and this is so, because the Word of God is a seed.” [48] These two authors have rightly recognized that one of Wycliffe’s favorite images in regard to the Word and its power is the Word as the seed, an image taken from the parable of the sower. In Wycliffe’s sermon on Luke 8:4, he declares, “This gospel tells in a parable how that holy Church grows by the gracious sowing of Christ, and the growing of his holy seed…the seed is God’s word.” [49] In another sermon, he exults in the power of this seed: “O marvelous power of the divine seed which overthrows strong soldiers, softens hearts made hard as stones, and recalls men, turned into beasts by sin and thus removed infinitely distant from God, and transforms them into men made godly.” [50] It is through the verbal sowing of this seed that faith is engendered and strengthened, and sin is consequently eradicated:

The more strength that sin gathers, the more essential it is to preach, since it is certainly impossible for anyone to sin unless he lacks faith. Now if anyone sins he fails to believe in God, and thus lacks the first article of faith. And since believing in God means firmly adhering to him through love, it is clear that the more someone sins the more he fails to adhere to God as he should…. How could anyone consent to sin, as much by act as by habit, if he fully believes both in the goodness and the retribution of God, as well as the falsity of the carnal world and that of the devil? Every sinner sins as a result of a poor choice, choosing what appears good to him because he thinks it is more useful to him than the suitable good he rejects. But he clearly does this because he lacks faith. [51]

Wycliffe elsewhere specifies nine ways the Word works in the heart of God’s elect (quoting the Scripture referenced after each phrase):

It breaks our heart through fear [Jeremiah 23:29]…it crushes through sorrow [Psalm 51:17]…it melts through love [Song of Solomon 5:6]…it draws upward through desire beyond the hardness of heart [Song of Solomon 1:4]…it drinks in through delight [Psalm 77:3]…it gives life through inspiration [Hebrews 4:12; John 5:25]…it heals the sick [Psalm 107:20]…it cuts off diseased limbs and inflicts wounds in order to save [Hebrews 4:12]…it illuminates so that the splinters of sin might be seen [Psalm 119:105]. [52]

For Wycliffe, the Word of God preached is effective and powerful to convert and sanctify; therefore, it must be proclaimed widely and promiscuously.

Who Could Preach?

We noted above that during the medieval era, many people other than bishops and beneficed clergy could preach in the medieval church, but only by license of the episcopacy. Wycliffe’s vision of a perfect church, however, according to Dolnikowksi, was one “in which the Gospel was preached freely and openly by all believers,” as compared to the church of his own day, “in which the Gospel message was controlled, trivialized and distorted by the religious establishment.” [53] Wycliffe believed that all Christians, especially all priests (whether beneficed or not [54]), should be free to preach without the permission and control of a bishop. Indeed, one of Wycliffe’s positions condemned as erroneous at the end of his life was that “any priest or deacon could preach without a license by virtue of his ordination.” [55] Owst calls this view “an innovation indeed…the crowning heresy of the Lollard position,” and cites one of Wycliffe’s sermons: “Christ was not prevented by feigned jurisdiction to preach among the folk, as if he feared the prelates; for this use in jurisdiction was not yet brought in by deceit of the fiend, as it now is, to prevent true preaching.” [56]

Related to the desire for freedom from ecclesiastical control, Wycliffe believed his disciples should be free to preach wherever they would like. “And this is another note, how Christ bade them…go and preach the gospel freely to all manner of men. And woe be to them that forsake this, for jurisdiction or other cause….” [57] Again, he proclaims in one of his sermons:

The gospel [Matthew 9:35] says how, ‘Jesus went about in the country,’ both to more places and less, ‘as cities and castles,’ to teach us to profit generally to men, and not to refrain to preach to a people for they be few, and our fame should be little…. Christ went to small uplandish towns, as to Bethphage and to Cana in Galilee; for Christ went to these places, where he knew to do good and he travelled not for winning of money; for he was not smitten with pride nor with covetousness…. [58]

With these controlling views in place, in Wycliffe’s later years a group of “poor preachers” gathered around and were sent out by him. [59] The effect of his views on those who came after him is most clearly evidenced by Archbishop Arundel’s 1409 legislation, which sought to diminish the influence of these unlicensed preachers. Not only did his mandates insist that beneficed priests preach only simple topics to the laypeople, and confine their criticism of the clergy to audiences of clergy alone, [60] but most significantly there was a

rigid tightening up of the system of licenses, by which no secular or regular might now venture to preach under any circumstances, to clergy or people, in church or outside, without prior examination by diocesans, and the subsequent issue of letters of authority. Moreover, there is further stipulation that licenses should be granted “to one specified parish, or more, as seems expedient to the Ordinary aforementioned, according to the quality of the person to be admitted.” Henceforth any “curate” who admitted a preacher lacking adequate credentials was to be dealt with severely. [61]

As we shall see when we trace Wycliffe’s influence on the Reformation, however, nothing could ultimately stop the preaching of the Word of God; indeed, the Word of God is what Wycliffe’s disciples preached.

What Did They Preach?

Wycliffe and those who imitated him were committed to the Pauline dictum, “Preach the word!” (2 Tim. 4:2). They preached God’s Word in the language of God’s people. Peggy Knapp has argued that the sufficiency of the Bible in preaching was the one element of Wycliffe’s views of preaching that can be seen as a new concept in the church. [62] Owst concurs, citing Wycliffe’s “insistence on ‘the naked text’ or exposition of the Gospel message” as his chief contribution to English medieval preaching. [63] According to Owst, “the ignorance and silence of parochial clergy [and] the scholastic refinements and analogues of the doctors and friars had made such a demand sooner or later inevitable.” [64] God raised Wycliffe up in the midst of pulpit abdication to call pastors back to their primary task.

We see this emphasis on preaching the pure Word of God repeatedly in his sermons. In a sermon on Luke 2:33, Wycliffe declares, “To some men it pleases to tell the tales that they find in saints’ lives, or outside holy writ; and such thing pleases often more the people. But we hold this manner good—to leave such words and trust in God, and tell surely his law, and especially his gospel; for we believe that they came of Christ, and so God says them all. And these words, since they are God’s, should be taken as believed; and more better they quicken men than other words that men know not.” [65] Wycliffe took exception to the preaching of the friars (as well as those who permitted them to preach) because they failed to preach the Word: “Lord! what reason should drive hereto, to prevent true priests to preach the gospel freely…and give leave to these friars to preach fables and heresies, and afterward to spoil [rob] the people, and sell them their false sermons. Certainly the people should not suffer such falsehood of Antichrist.” [66] He desired not only to avoid fables, but speculation as well. Knapp explains that, for Wycliffe,

The arguments of the schools have no place…but simple “practik, put in dede, how men shulde lyve by Goddis law…not speculative, or gemetrie, ne other sciencis” (I, 241). Nor do we need to “dreeme” about newe pointes that the gospel leveth” (I, 13). Therefore, “muse we not”, says Wyclif time and again, about the name of Tobies hound (I, 13), how the martyr Zacarie was killed (I, 323), how Jonah got out of the whale (II, 52), what Thomas doubted (II, 140), what country the three kings came from (II, 243), or how many thousands God killed for fornication (II, 334). Such “veyn curiouste were a tempting of God,” and a flaw in our belief that “Crist wroot here as myche as was needful us to cunne” (II, 88). [67]

Preachers should preach the Word of God, especially the gospel, because that is what Christ Himself preached: “Christ preached not fables, but the Gospel of God, that was good tidings of the kingdom of heaven.” [68]

Specifically, Wycliffe notes five things that a good shepherd should preach, in contradistinction to the wicked shepherds of Ezekiel 34:4 (“You did not strengthen the weak, did not heal the sick, did not bind up the broken, did not bring back the abandoned, did not seek after the lost, but you ruled over them with severity and might.”). In a hermeneutically questionable manner, he closely compares Ezekiel’s five censures to the “five words” that Paul desires to speak in the church in 1 Corinthians 14:19. The first word “in which the others are founded is the word of faith, on account of which he says, ‘you did not strengthen the weak.’” Second, pastors must teach people to turn away from sin; “in a certain way, rejecting what is evil comes before doing what is good. As such, it is significant that he says secondly, ‘You did not heal the sick.’ For sin is the disease of the soul, whose healing only begins when sin is extracted.” Third, the preacher must “instruct his sheep to proceed down the path of good moral conduct, which is expressed under these words: ‘you did not bind up the broken.’” Fourth, good shepherds “preach the terror of everlasting punishment, which is noted when he says fourthly, ‘You did not bring back the abandoned.’” Wycliffe views this sort of preaching as an antidote to wandering; “it is meant to frighten them with the very opposite of consolation, so that they will return to the flock. Though hardened by their vices, they are led back to Christ by revealing the grievousness and everlasting duration of hell’s punishment when compared to a bit of fleeting happiness.” The final word that preachers must preach is the enticing “hope of beatitude, which is noted in this saying: ‘You did not seek after the lost.’” [69] These five words are a pithy summary of Wycliffe’s understanding of the preacher’s general content: the doctrine of the gospel/the Word of faith; putting off sin; putting on righteousness; warnings of judgments to those who walk away from the Lord; and allurements of God’s grace and mercy to those who return to Him (note the parallels to 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and to the book of Hebrews).

Like Jesus, Wycliffe also sought to preach in the language of the people. To be sure, to scholars he preached in Latin. But to the common people, he spoke the common language. “By authority of the law of God men should speak her words as God’s law speaks, and strange not in speech from understanding of the people, and always beware that the people understand well, and so use common speech in their own person….” [70] In his On the Pastoral Office, he sounds the same refrain: “It seems first that the knowledge of God’s law should be taught in that language which is best known, because this knowledge is God’s Word.” [71] His conviction to translate the Bible into the vernacular English was an extension of beliefs that he first applied in his own preaching.

Fountain notes that there were three methods of preaching popular in Wycliffe’s day: “declaring,” or taking a subject or text and delivering an oration on it; “dividing” a text into many branches; and “postillating,” or reading a portion and explaining it. [72] Wycliffe’s method was the last. As one can quickly see from a glance at the table of contents of his Select English Works, each of his sermons arose from a text of Scripture (primarily the gospels, but he preached from the epistles as well), and his method was to preach the literal sense of the text, working through the text sentence by sentence, then applying the truth of the text to his hearers. [73] His applications were often particular to the abuses he saw in the church of his day, whether regarding the Pope, the friars, or the monks. [74] Wycliff was a man of his medieval times, holding that there were four levels on which Scripture should be read. “It is said commonly that holy writ has four understandings. The first understanding is plain, by letter of the story. The second understanding is called allegorical, when men understand by knowledge of the letter, what thing shall fall here before the day of doom. The third understanding is called tropological, and it teaches how men should live here in virtues. The fourth understanding is called anagogical, and it tells how it shall be with men that are in heaven.” [75] Wycliffe’s sermons contain many examples of hermeneutical allegorizing (to use the word in the way we most often do today, i.e., to see in the literal meaning a deeper “spiritual” meaning that is not warranted by the text itself), as we saw above with his handling of Ezekiel 34 and 1 Corinthians 14, and as illustrated when he waxes eloquent on Peter’s fishing net in his sermon on Luke 5:1:

Two fishings that Peter fished betokeneth two takings of men unto Christ’s religion, and from the fiend to God. In this first fishing was the net broken, to token that many men be converted, and after break Christ’s religion; but at the second fishing, after the resurrection, when the net was full of many great fishes, was not the net broken, as the gospel saith; for that betokeneth saints that God chooseth to Heaven. And so these nets that fishers fish with betokeneth God’s law, in which virtues and truths be knitted; and other properties of nets tell properties of God’s law; and void places between knots betokeneth life of kind, that men have beside virtues. And four cardinal virtues be figured by knitting of the net. The net is broad in the beginning, and after strait in end, to teach that men, when they be turned first, live a broad worldly life; but afterward, when they be dipped in God’s law, they keep them straitlier from sins. These fishers of God should wash their nets in his river, for Christ’s preachers should chevely [chiefly] tell God’s law, and not meddle with man’s law, that is troubled water; for man’s law containeth sharp stones and trees, by which the net of God is broken and fishes wend out to the world. And this betokeneth Gennesaret, that is, a wonderful birth, for the birth by which a man is born of water and of the Holy Ghost is much more wonderful than man’s kindly birth. Some nets be rotten, some have holes, and some be unclean for default of washing; and thus on three manners faileth the word of preaching. And matter of this net and breaking thereof give men great matter to speak God’s word, for virtues and vices and truths of the gospel be matter enough to preach to the people. [76]

We see the same in the way he expounds Jesus’ entering into Jerusalem: the disciples put their cloaks upon the foal and the ass in Matthew 21:7 “to teach us that heathen men, that were wanton as fools, should receive Christ and his laws, and after Jews as asses, for they shall bear to the end of the world the weight of the old law, as foaled asses bear loads what so ever be laid on him.” [77] Sometimes, as in the case of Jesus’ turning the water into wine, Wycliffe sees symbolism that is clearly a part of the inspired author’s meaning, though it is mixed with unwarranted hermeneutical leaps. [78] Yet in spite of his excesses, he was committed to unpacking and applying the plain meaning of the text to his own day and age. [79]

A good example of this commitment is seen in Wycliffe’s sermon on Philippians 4:4 (“Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I will say, rejoice!”), found in the second volume of his Select English Works. [80] From this verse and its context he expounds “five manners that a man should have.” The first manner “that God bids is to be joyful and glad.” Wycliffe connects joy to the three virtues of faith, hope, and love:

And without this manner of life Christian man fails always in faith, in hope, and love. The ground of joy that man should have should stand cleanly in his God, and this joy should evermore be here in part, and in heaven fully. For what man may have these three, faith, hope, and love, but if he think on God’s goodness, and by this have joy thereof? And thus he fails in faith that wants this joy in God. And who hopes to come to bliss, that faith tells is in heaven, but if he joy in this hope that he has of this bliss? Or who loves God by charity, but if he joy in God’s highness? And since each man should have these three, either in root or in fruit, each man should ever joy in God that is Lord of all.

The second manner that men should have is a “sober rejoicing in God, and suffering for him with glad cheer.” To move men to joy even in the midst of great suffering, Paul says that the Lord is nigh. Wycliffe compares the Christian to a wife waiting for her husband: “Christian men take as faith, that Christ is the Lord and spouse of the Church; and that time till the day of doom is nigh to regard. But well we know that a wife, when she shall soon meet with her husband, she gladdens her heart and her cheer, in hope to be comforted by him. Why should not Christian souls do so, when they hope their Spouse is nigh?”

The third manner to which Paul exhorts us is a heart free from anxiety. “These men are anxious for naught, that are anxious for vanity,” writes Wycliffe. The fourth manner is that we should pray in the name of the Trinity. [81] And the fifth manner is the peace of God that will keep our wills and understandings, “and give us hearty lasting in these five manners to our Spouse.” Sober joy in suffering, a lack of anxiety, prayer, and peace—these are the things Paul calls us to in Philippians 4, and therefore these are the things Wycliffe points us to in his sermon on the text.

This summary of Wycliffe’s understanding of preaching has been short but full. He preached to the sheep of God and to the shepherds of the sheep, purposefully pointing the latter to becoming more skillful in the way they fed the flock with the Word. He called these shepherds to live a holy life and to preach a holy Bible. Both were necessary, and taken together they accomplished the work of building up the sheep in the faith and in holiness. He believed that all Christians should be allowed to preach freely, unhindered by ecclesiastical bureaucracy, and that the matter of their preaching was to be the Word of God alone in the language of the people. There is certainly more to discover from his writings and sermons, but these are some of the most important elements of his homiletical stance.

John Wycliffe: His Influence On The Reformation

John Wycliffe is called the “Morningstar” of the Reformation for ample reason. But how did the light of his teachings shine forth and spread? To answer this question, we approach it from the perspective of the European continent, on the one hand, and of the island of Great Britain on the other. In God’s providence, ecclesiastical and civil politics combined to catapult Wycliffe’s ideas onto the continent. France and England had already been opponents, but the Great Schism of 1378 divided France from Rome as well. Since England naturally followed the Roman pope rather than the French pope, Rome sought to persuade Bohemia to sever ties with France and to form an allegiance with England. The occasion of this alliance was a marriage between Princess Anne of Bohemia with King Richard II of England in 1382 (though Katherine Walsh notes that this marriage alliance “did not emerge in a vacuum,” as Anne’s birth had been announced to the English court in 1366). [82] When Anne arrived in England, she brought with her scholars to study at Oxford. Exposed to Wycliffe’s teachings and writings, the Bohemian scholars carried both back to their countrymen. [83] Wycliffe’s published sermons were brought to the Continent, and Johann Loserth tells us that a comparison of Hus’s and Wycliffe’s sermons demonstrates that the Bohemian Reformer in some cases took from Wycliffe’s work almost word for word. [84] Translating Wycliffe’s writings into Czechoslovakian contributed to Hus being burned at the stake.

Hus’s influence on the sixteenth-century Reformation was great. At and after the Disputation at Leipzig in July 1519, Luther acknowledged that he was a Hussite. When the debate turned to the subject of the church, Eck exclaimed, “No Pope, no Church!” Luther responded in Wycliffite fashion, “The Greek Church has existed without a Pope, and you are the first to call it no Church.” [85] When Eck accused Luther of being “as bad as Wycliffe and Hus,” Luther answered, “Every opinion of Hus was not wrong”—which belief on Luther’s part ended the debate as far as Eck was concerned. [86] Luther believed that he was the fulfillment of Hus’s prophecy from prison: “Jan Hus has prophesied about me when he wrote from his prison in Bohemia: ‘Now they roast a goose, but in a hundred years they shall hear a swan singing, which they will not be able to do away with.’” [87] He was unmoved by the prospect of his The Babylonian Captivity of the Church being labeled as “Wycliffite.” [88] Thus, while Luther obviously did not agree with everything Wycliffe or Hus wrote, [89] it is not improper to call Wycliffe, through Hus, a great-grandfather of the Lutheran Reformation.

Wycliffe’s impact on the Protestant Reformation in England and Scotland is more direct, though perhaps not as substantive in England as one would imagine. N. R. Needham states, “Wyclif’s ideas had a far greater success in the Holy Roman Empire than they did in England.” [90] T. M. Lindsay is more explicit:

It is very doubtful indeed whether his influence lasted among the English people down to the sixteenth century in such force at least as to count for much in the longings for reformation which were filling the minds of many pious people…. Lollardy was undoubtedly a preparation for the Reformation, and the Bible-men, as they were called, must have exercised great influence in preparing the people of England for a revival of heart-religion, if they had been in actual communication with the generation in whose midst the Reformation arose. It seems difficult, however, to trace any such direct connection, and, at all events, no trace of widespread sympathy with Bible-reading or the poor preachers is visible in England either during the reign of Henry VII or at the accession of Henry VIII. The English people as a whole seem to have had very little sympathy with the Reformation until the time of Elizabeth. [91]

The reason for the lack of influence in England is not hard to see, when one remembers that Wycliffe’s bones were exhumed and burned by the church in December 1427, and that the history of Oxford University “from the late fourteenth century down to the Reformation has to be seen as a reaction to Wyclif and his legacy.” [92] The largely personal, rather than theological, nature of Henry VIII’s later break with the Roman Church also leads one to be unsurprised by an unwillingness to embrace Wycliffe’s views wholeheartedly. Yet Spencer, astutely observing that “the significance of a movement is not reducible to its visible success or failure,” hastens to remind us that the conservative reaction to Lollardy in fourteenth-century England proves that the Reformers were getting their point across: “[T]he strength of feeling evinced by those who felt themselves or their principles under threat is itself a testimony to [the Lollards’] potency.” [93]

In Scotland, the story was somewhat different. Wycliffe’s influence began with Scottish students studying at Oxford while he was teaching. [94] It expanded as English Wycliffites escaped to Scotland, and as the Lollards went forth into Scotland in the fifteenth century in numbers large enough that W. Stanford Reid regards them as one of the significant sources of the Reformation in Scotland. [95] It is known that the Scottish Lollards in the early 1400s had a correspondence relationship with the Hussites in Prague, and the founding of St. Andrews University was directly related to the impact of Lollardy in the area. [96] John Knox, in his history of the Reformation in Scotland, mentions a James Resby, “an Englishman by birth, scholar of Wickliffe,” who, in 1407, was “burnt for having said, that the pope was not the vicar of Christ; and that a man of a wicked life was not acknowledged to be pope.” [97] He spread his Lollardy through his preaching. [98] Paul Crawar also held Wycliffite views; he was a Hussite Bohemian, and came to St. Andrews in 1432, most likely to evangelize the Scots. He was put to death there shortly after his arrival. [99]

From the 1440s to the 1490s, we do not have much proof of Lollardy in Scotland, but, in the 1490s, in Ayrshire, Reid affirms that there is “definite evidence that the heresy was gaining considerable influence.” [100] One Murdock Nisbet, forced out of Scotland because of his heretical views, came back later with a Wycliffite translation of the Scriptures, which he translated into Scots. The Campbells in particular embraced Wycliffe’s teachings; Reid argues, “It was these people who prepared the way religiously for the Reformation. Tracing their spiritual ancestry to the English refugees and Bohemian missionaries at the beginning of the fifteenth century, they had laid the ground for a religious revolution…. When Lutheran teachings began to filter into the country, the preparation laid by the Lollards became immediately apparent.” [101]

Thus John Wycliffe, though he died over a century previous to the epochal events of the Protestant Reformation proper, is clearly connected to this great revival of religion both on the European continent and the British Isles. In both locations, it was his preaching in particular, and the preaching of those who followed him, that tilled the ground and sowed the seed for the great harvest that was to come.

Lessons For The Modern Church

John Wycliffe’s preaching impacted the church in his own day and through the centuries. It is a shame that his sermons remain locked behind Latin and Middle English, and scholars would do the church a fitting service to translate them into the vernacular English. The Morningstar of the Reformation continues to shine brightly in the sky, and we have much to learn from his understanding of preaching as we approach our own ministries.

First, Wycliffe’s example of preaching with an eye to the preachers is exemplary for those involved in training men for the ministry. As professors (or even pastors who have seminary students in their congregations) preach, whether in seminary chapels or local churches, they must be aware that their students are going to imitate the manner and matter of their preaching. They ought not to ignore this reality, but at times should capitalize upon it by interspersing their sermons with hints and directions to the preachers-to-be. Modern homileticians may frown upon students using their sermons, or even sermon outlines, verbatim, but even as they encourage students to do their own spadework, they should take the opportunity in their own preaching (as well as in their homiletics classrooms) to instruct in the difficult art of proclaiming God’s Word.

Second, Wycliffe teaches us the importance of preaching the Word in the language of God’s people. Our calling as preachers is to preach and teach God’s Word. That means, first, that preachers need to be preaching. As our denominations grow bigger, far too many ministers become administrators and bureaucrats alone, ignoring their call to proclaim the gospel from pulpit and lectern. A minister who does not sense the compelling need to open the Scriptures with God’s people ought to question his call to the ministry. When preachers do preach, Wycliffe powerfully reminds us to stick to the text. His medieval commitment to expounding the Scriptures puts some modern evangelicals to shame.

Likewise, Wycliffe’s commitment to preaching, publishing, and translating the Bible into the vernacular is an ever-present reminder of the great need of all of God’s people for all of God’s Word. We may not have to deal with the Scriptures being in a foreign tongue that none of the sheep can read or comprehend, but we still have to deal with the reality that the sheep do not understand many of the words and concepts God Himself uses in the Bible. We must beware of throwing around terms like “propitiation” or “justification” and assuming that our flock knows what we mean. Certainly, we must familiarize them with the words that God has chosen to use in His Word, but we must be conscious about defining terms and explaining ideas in ways that even the most uneducated of God’s people might be able to grasp and understand.

Third, Wycliffe’s twin emphasis upon the life and the preaching of the minister must be heeded. “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine,” wrote the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 4:16. Particularly helpful is Wycliffe’s reminder that the effectiveness of our teaching is related to the holiness of our life. Because of his ecclesiological milieu, he was keen to call preachers to a standard of poverty in imitation of Christ Himself. While we might disagree with the depth of poverty that he expects ministers to endure, yet the Gehazian “golden handcuffs” are a constant temptation for those who labor among God’s people. We must learn to be content with whatever the Lord provides us. In a day in which pastors build eight thousand square-foot mansions and have reality TV shows touting their wealth, Wycliffe’s words are extremely apropos.

Fourth, the history of John Wycliffe and the impact of his preaching across Europe and down through the ages is an encouragement to those who preach and wonder if anyone is listening. The Lord has promised that His Word will not return void (Isa. 55:10-11), and Wycliffe stands as a living example of the way the Lord delights to use the foolishness of preaching and teaching to overturn centuries of false doctrine and unbiblical ecclesiology. We never know who our preaching is reaching, nor how or when the Lord might choose to leverage His Word through our mouths on behalf of the church at large.

Yet we must not embrace Wycliffe’s views unhesitatingly. In particular, his understanding of who may preach and where they may preach raises questions. Though the distance in time and the difference in situation make an exact comparison difficult, his views are reminiscent of the Old Side/New Side controversy in eighteenth- century American Presbyterianism. During this time of dissension, preachers from one presbytery were travelling into other presbyteries and preaching without permission of the presbyteries in whose geographic bounds they preached. [102] Wycliffe’s practices were not very different from that of the New Side men. It is easy to look favorably on the Lollards’ free preaching of the Word of God. Yet few presbyteries today would smile upon an unordained or unlicensed member of one of her churches, or even an ordained or licensed man from another presbytery, beginning to preach within her bounds without any oversight. The Presbyterian Church in America, for one, insists that anyone who preaches regularly must be at least licensed by the presbytery, and that candidates for the ministry must be under the care of a local session and their presbytery.

Conclusion

We conclude our examination of John Wycliffe’s preaching by hearing from one of his contemporaries. In the late fourteenth century, just a few years after John Wycliffe’s death in 1384, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales. It is likely that Chaucer knew Wycliffe, and his depiction of the Parson is credibly held to be a picture of one of Wycliffe’s “poor preachers,” possibly even Wycliffe himself. [103] In the General Prologue, we see and hear the elements of Wycliffe’s life and ministry that have been presented above:

A holy-minded man of good renown there was, and poor, the Parson to a town,

Yet he was rich in holy thought and work. He also was a learned man, a clerk,

Who truly knew Christ’s gospel and would preach it devoutly to parishioners, and teach it.

Benign and wonderfully diligent, and patient when adversity was sent

(For so he proved in much adversity) he hated cursing to extort a fee,

Nay rather he preferred beyond a doubt giving to poor parishioners round about

Both from church offerings and his property; he could in little find sufficiency.

Wide was his parish, with houses far asunder, yet he neglected not in rain or thunder,

In sickness or in grief, to pay a call on the remotest, whether great or small,

Upon his feet, and in his hand a stave. This noble example to his sheep he gave

That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught; and it was from the Gospel he had caught

Those words, and he would add this figure too, that if gold rust, what then will iron do?

For if a priest be foul in whom we trust no wonder that a common man should rust;

And shame it to see—let priests take stock—a shitten [104] shepherd and a snowy flock.

The true example that a priest should give is one of cleanness, how the sheep should live….

Holy and virtuous he was, but then never contemptuous of sinful men,

Never disdainful, never too proud or fine, but was discreet in teaching and benign.

His business was to show a fair behavior and draw men thus to Heaven and their Savior….

Christ and His Twelve Apostles and their lore he taught, but followed it himself before…. [105]

“You’ll get no fable or romance from me, for Paul in his Epistle to Timothy

Reproves all those who waive aside the truth for fables that are wretched and uncouth.

And unclench my fist on your behalf, I that can scatter wheat, to give you chaff?

And therefore if you care to hear my preaching I’ll offer virtuous matter, moral teaching.

So if you’ll hear me, granting that sufficed, I would be glad in reverence of Christ

To give you lawful pleasure if I can.” [106]

As we spend time getting to know the writings and preaching of John Wycliffe, he by God’s grace can give us lawful pleasure as well as a sound education in preaching God’s Word, the most important aspect of a pastor’s ministry.

Notes

1. J. Patrick Hornbeck II, Stephen E. Lahey, and Fiona Somerset, eds., Wycliffite Spirituality (New York: Paulist Pres, 2013), 39.
2. Margaret Aston asserts, “It was taken for granted at the outset [of the Lollard controversy], that if the people were learning false doctrine, they were learning it from preachers.” She cites another authority who states, “Christianity in the fourteenth century was still an oral religion…. [P]reaching was considered the fundamental didactic tool for reaching a wide audience.” Margaret Aston, “Wyclif and the vernacular,” in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 289n21. Cf. also T. M. A. Macnab, “The Beginnings of Lollardy in Scotland,” Records of the Scottish Church History Society 11 (1953): 257; he writes, “In an unlettered age, preaching was the chief means of instruction.”
3. Ian Christopher Levy, “Wyclif and the Christian Life,” in A Companion to John Wyclif, Late Medieval Theologian (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 302.
4. Sean Otto, “The Authority of the Preacher in a Sermon of John Wyclif,” Mirator 12 (2011): 77, www.glossa.fi/mirator/pdf/i-2011/theauthorityofapreacher.pdf (accessed December 30, 2013). One reason few have read Wycliffe’s sermons is that they are almost entirely in Latin and Middle English.
5. Old laments, “Regrettably, this volume does not have a study of John Wycliffe. In a work of this sort selections have to be made, and I have chosen to study Hus, and the circle around him, rather than Wycliffe because he seems more typical of the late medieval revival of prophetic preaching.” Hughes Oliphant Old, The Medieval Church, vol. 3 of The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 472n30.
6. For discussions of Wycliffe’s family background and birthday, see Herbert B. Workman, John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), 1:21ff; and G. R. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 14ff. For a succinct biography, see the entry for “Wycliffe, John,” in F. L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1781.
7. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 87.
8. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 89.
9. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 95.
10. See Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 172, for a summary of Wycliffe’s condemned teachings.
11. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 181ff., gives a detailed account of Oxford’s rejection of Wycliffe’s positions.
12. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 126-27.
13. G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England: An Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts of the Period c. 1350-1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), 1. Canon 10 of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215-1216 had mandated that bishops ordain “capable men to profitably carry out the office of holy preaching…whom the bishops might use as their helpers and co-workers, not only in the office of preaching but also in hearing confessions and imposing penances and doing whatever else belongs to the salvation of souls.” Quoted in Siegfried Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England: Orthodox Preaching in the Age of Wyclif (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 229. Discussions of the preaching in Wycliffe’s day can be found in these two sources and in H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). These books supply a far more detailed and qualified account than I am able to give in this article.
14. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 25; Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 95.
15. Quoted in Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 105.
16. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 49.
17. Thomas Renna, “Wyclif’s Attacks on the Monks,” in From Occam to Wyclif, 268.
18. Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England, 288; Hornbeck II, Lahey, and Somerset, Wycliffite Spirituality, 35.
19. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 87.
20. Cited in Edith Dolnikowski, “The Encouragement of Lay Preaching as an Ecclesiastical Critique in Wyclif’s Latin Sermons,” in Beverly Mayne Kienzle, et al. (eds.), Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons: Proceedings of the International Symposium (Kalamazoo, 4-7 May 1995) (Louvain-la Neuve: Federation international des instituts d’etudes medievales, 1996), 202.
21. John Wycliffe, Tracts and Treatises of John De Wycliffe, D. D. (London: Blackburn and Pardon, 1845), 224. For more on Wycliffe’s views of the friars, see Workman, II:103ff.
22. David Fountain, John Wycliffe: The Dawn of the Reformation (Southampton: Mayflower Christian Books, 1984), 58. Owst provocatively opines that “Wycliffe and his followers owed a good deal to the very men they abused the most”—including the fact that the friars had sometimes given the sermon a superior place to the Mass; they had accustomed the ears of the people to criticisms of the bishops; they had accustomed the people to political sermons; and they had paved the way for (in his words) an “unhappy” and “abnormal” Puritanism in the church. See Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 93.
23. See Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, chapters 1-4, for a more encouraging picture of preaching in the medieval period, though the reader must realize that Owst does not take a very favorable view of Wycliffe or the Puritans of the seventeenth century.
24. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 134.
25. Some modern scholars dispute the assertion that Wycliffe actually wrote what is attributed to him. See Hornbeck II, Lahey, and Somerset, Wycliffite Spirituality, 4; Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 9-10; cf. Anne Hudson, “Wyclif’s Latin Sermons: Questions of Form, Date and Audience,” Archives D’Histoire Doctrinale et Litteraire du Moyen Age 68 (2001), 223-48. Evans is skeptical that the English Wycliffite sermons can be considered Wycliffe’s work. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 235. Cf. Peggy Knapp, The Style of John Wyclif’s English Sermons (Paris: Mouton, 1977). The question of authorship is worthy of further consideration, but in this article I follow the scholars who attribute the English Wycliffite sermons to Wycliffe himself.
26. Iohannis Wyclif, Sermones, Volume I, ed. Johann Loserth (London: Wyclif Society, 1887), xv–xvi; see also Hudson, “Wyclif’s Latin Sermons,” 233-34; Knapp, The Style of John Wyclif’s English Sermons, 23; Hornbeck II, Lahey, and Somerset, Wycliffite Spirituality, 71.
27. John Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume II, ed. Thomas Arnold (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), 271 (my translation). Cited in Knapp, The Style of John Wyclif’s English Sermons, 24. These English sermons by Wycliffe are in Middle English and are difficult to read; modern English translations are found in Fountain, John Wycliffe: The Dawn of the Reformation 106ff. (unfortunately with no accompanying bibliographic citations); and in Ray C. Petry, ed., No Uncertain Sound: Sermons That Shaped the Pulpit Tradition (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1948), 250ff.
28. Hornbeck II, Lahey, and Somerset, Wycliffite Spirituality, 71.
29. John Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, ed. Thomas Arnold (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869), 3 (my translation). The editor’s note reads, “The language of this concluding paragraph shows that these homilies were written rather with a view to publication than to delivery from the pulpit.”
30. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 6.
31. Hornbeck II, Lahey, and Somerset, Wycliffite Spirituality, 71-72. The six yokes were the yokes between Christ and the simple, faithful viators [travelers]; between spouses; between parent and child; between master and servants; between secular lord and subjects/tenants; and between those who are neighbors.
32. English translation found in Matthew Spinka, ed., Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1953), 32-60.
33. John Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, trans. Ian Christopher Levy (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001).
34. Spinka, Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, 32.
35. Spinka, Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, 44.
36. Spinka, Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, 33. Workman explains the reason Wycliffe called these four groups “sects”: “When we try to disentangle Wyclif’s main argument against monasticism from the mass of his polemics we find that it lies in Wyclif’s conception of the Church as one body—‘the order of Christ’— without hierarchy, and without divisions. Distinctions of a sort there must be, but such distinctions should not be of spiritual status; they are, as we should now express it, distinctions of convenience or function. Essentially all are one, just as presbyter and bishop originally were one. Against this unity the monks and friars were at war by their proclamation of a religion founded upon a law superior to the law of the Gospel…. They profess a ‘private religion’ as distinct from the religion laid down for all….” Workman, John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church, 2:93.
37. Spinka, Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, 48.
38. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 140 (my translation).
39. Spinka, Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, 48. See also Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, 288ff.
40. Cited in Wyclif, Sermones, Volume I, iii.
41. Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, 280, 287.
42. Spinka, Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, 49.
43. Spinka, Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, 49.
44. Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, 286. Spinka, Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, 49n54, also cites Wyclif, Sermones, Volume I, 110.
45. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 123.
46. Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, 287.
47. Wyclif, Sermones, Volume I, v.
48. Quoted in Otto, “The Authority of the Preacher in a Sermon of John Wyclif,” 79.
49. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 102.
50. Quoted in Otto, “The Authority of the Preacher in a Sermon of John Wyclif,” 79-80.
51. Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, 291.
52. Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, 286-87.
53. Dolnikowski, “The Encouragement of Lay Preaching as an Ecclesiastical Critique in Wyclif’s Latin Sermons,” 193.
54. Levy, “Wyclif and the Christian Life,” 303.
55. Levy, “Wyclif and the Christian Life,” 303.
56. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 134 (my translation).
57. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 361.
58. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 197-98.
59. In some ways, Wycliffe’s vision was very similar to that of the friars; Ian Levy argues that the reason the mendicant orders receive the harshest criticism from Wycliffe is precisely because “their ideal was all the more noble.” Levy, “Wyclif and the Christian Life,” 302. Some scholars (cf. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 254) reject the notion that Wycliffe sent out this band of poor preachers, arguing from the absence of evidence. But the editors of Wycliffite Spirituality write, “More recently, scholars have adopted the corollary that an absence of evidence does not indicate evidence of absence and, following Michael Wilks and Anne Hudson, have regarded the ‘poor preachers’ movement as having been instigated by Wyclif.” Hornbeck II, Lahey, and Somerset, Wycliffite Spirituality, 33; cf. Hudson, Premature Reformation, 62ff.
60. See Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages, 66.
61. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 140-41. Owst notes the views of one Dr. Gascoigne, who judged Arundel’s Constitution of 1409 to be a “cruel death- blow to English preaching,” for it “was little else than the official seal of approbation upon [the] policy of silence [by the bishops]. The non-preaching bishops had at last their full opportunity, and…right well they used it. Hardly for great sums of money or gifts would they now concede even a temporary license to preachers, much less preach themselves. Pulpit silence became golden. Worthy and unworthy together were excluded from the privilege of exhortation and rebuke, the word of God was as it were imprisoned and in chains with the prophet, and evil ran riot unchecked.” Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 41.
62. Knapp, The Style of John Wyclif’s English Sermons, 31.
63. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 132.
64. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 132-33.
65. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 332 (my translation).
66. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 176 (my translation).
67. Knapp, The Style of John Wyclif’s English Sermons, 25. Her references are to the several volumes of Wycliffe’s Select English Works.
68. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 198 (my translation).
69. Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, 296-98.
70. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 78-79 (my translation).
71. Spinka, Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, 49.
72. Fountain, John Wycliffe: The Dawn of the Reformation, 62.
73. Cf. Knapp, The Style of John Wyclif’s English Sermons, 28.
74. See, for example, Sermon 52 in Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 148ff.
75. Wyclif, Select English Works: Volume I, 30 (my translation). For more on this topic, see Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality, 117ff.; Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, 41ff.; and Evans, “Wyclif on Literal and Metaphorical,” in From Ockham to Wyclif, 259ff.
76. Henry Craik, English Prose: Volume I, Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 30ff.
77. Wyclif, Select English Sermons, Volume I, 66 (my translation).
78. Wyclif, Select English Sermons, Volume I, 86ff.
79. See Knapp, The Style of John Wyclif’s English Sermons, 26.
80. Wyclif, Select English Sermons, Volume II, 232ff. All translations from this sermon are my own.
81. Wycliffe quotes the text thus: “in all manner pray in the name of the Father of heaven; and all manner special prayer in the name of God the Son; and in all manner of thanksgiving in the name of the Holy Ghost.”
82. Katherine Walsh, “Wyclif’s Legacy in Central Europe in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries,” in From Ockham to Wyclif, 402.
83. Christopher K. Lensch, “The Morningstar of the Reformation: John Wycliffe,” Western Reformed Seminary Journal 3, no. 2 (August 1996), 18. There was already a native reformation movement in Bohemia, and Wycliffe’s teachings only spurred on these forerunners.
84. Wyclif, Sermones, Volume I, xxiii–xxvii. For more on the connection between Wycliffe and Hus, see Walsh, “Wyclif’s Legacy in Central Europe.”
85. John Wycliffe was one of the first to use this form of argumentation. See N. R. Needham, 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power, Part Two: The Middle Ages (London, Grace Publications Trust, 2005), 387.
86. T. M. Lindsay, The Reformation: A Handbook (1882; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2006), 12.
87. Quoted in Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 18. Oberman states that Luther did not receive a copy of Hus’s work On the Church until October 3, 1519, and that in response to reading it he wrote, “I have taught and held all the teachings of Jan Hus, but thus far did not know it. Johann von Staupitz has taught it in the same unintentional way. In short we are all Hussites and did not know it. Even Paul and Augustine…” (212). The date of his receiving Hus’s book is after the Leipzig Disputation, so it is unclear why Luther would write at this particular point that he did not realize that he held Hussite views, since he had already acknowledged his familiarity with Hus’s writings at the Disputation.
88. Guy Fitch Lytle, “John Wyclif, Martin Luther and Edward Powell: Heresy and the Oxford Theology Faculty at the Beginning of the Reformation,” in From Ockham to Wyclif, 466.
89. See, for example, Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation, 10.
90. Needham, 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power, Part Two: The Middle Ages, 389.
91. Lindsay, The Reformation: A Handbook, 166-67.
92. Lytle, “John Wyclif, Martin Luther and Edward Powell,” 469.
93. Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages, 7.
94. W. Stanford Reid, “The Lollards in Pre-Reformation Scotland,” Church History 11, no. 4 (1942): 269-70; Lindsay, The Reformation: A Handbook, 144.
95. Reid, “The Lollards in Pre-Reformation Scotland,” 269.
96. Reid, “The Lollards in Pre-Reformation Scotland,” 271-72.
97. John Knox, The History of the Reformation of Religion in Scotland (Glasgow: Blackie, Fullarton, & Co., 1831), 3. This note states that the reference to Resby is found in David Buchanan’s edition. Cf. Reid, “The Lollards in Pre-Reformation Scotland,” 270.
98. Macnab, “The Beginnings of Lollardy in Scotland,” 257. He opines, “In all probability Resby was one of [Wycliffe’s poor preachers]. It was in this way, at any rate, that he gained the ear of the simple and unlettered by whom he was held in high esteem.”
99. Reid, “The Lollards in Pre-Reformation Scotland,” 276.
100. Reid, “The Lollards in Pre-Reformation Scotland,” 278, 280ff.
101. Reid, “The Lollards in Pre-Reformation Scotland,” 283. For more on the way that Lollardy influenced the Scottish Reformation, see also James Edward McGoldrick, Luther’s Scottish Connection (1989; repr., Birmingham, Ala.: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2008), 9ff. McGoldrick also discusses the way that Patrick Hamilton brought Luther’s teachings into Scotland (37).
102. D. G. Hart and John R. Muether, Seeking a Better Country (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 2007), 56-57.
103. For a recent discussion of this question, see Hudson, The Premature Reformation, 390ff.
104. I.e., “covered in excrement.”
105. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, trans. Nevill Coghill (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 32-33.
106. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, 504.