EXCERPT FROM:
“THE GLORIOUS HISTORY OF
THE KING JAMES BIBLE”
July 2, 2011
by David Cloud
http://wayoflife.org
Wycliffe’s Doctrine
Wycliffe was a Catholic priest but began to preach against Rome’s errors in his mid-30s. He did not reject Rome’s dogmas all at once but gradually grew in his understanding of Scripture. There is a lot we do not know about his doctrine, as some of his writings have perished, but we do know that Wycliffe exposed many of Rome’s errors.
Wycliffe’s foundational doctrine was that the Bible is the sole authority for faith and practice and that men have the right to interpret Scripture for themselves before the Lord (and not be dependent upon Rome). He said, “Believers should ascertain for themselves what are the true matters of their faith, by having the Scriptures in a language which all may understand.”
Wycliffe believed the Bible to be the Word of God without error from beginning to end. One of Wycliffe’s major works was “On the Truth of Sacred Scripture,” which was “a defence of the authority and inerrancy of the Bible.” He testified, “It is impossible for any part of the Holy Scriptures to be wrong. In Holy Scripture is all the truth; one part of Scripture explains another” (David Fountain, John Wycliffe, p. 48).
Wycliffe believed that the Scripture was “a divine exemplar conceived in the mind of God before creation, and before the material Scriptures were written down” (Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 1998, p. 230). This is the testimony of Psalm 119:89: “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.”
He taught that the apostolic churches had only elders and deacons “and declared his conviction that all orders above these had been introduced by Caesarean pride” (Henry Shelton, History of the Christian Church, II, 1895, p. 415).
Wycliffe was very bold against the pope, contending that “it is blasphemy to call any head of the church, save Christ alone” (Thomas Crosby, History of the English Baptists, I, 1740, p. 7).
Consider some other statements by Wycliffe on the subject of the papacy:
“It is supposed, and with much probability, that the Roman pontiff is the great Antichrist.”
“How then shall any sinful wretch, who knows not whether he be damned or saved, constrain men to believe that he is head of holy Church?” (Shelton, II, p. 415).
“Antichrist puts many thousand lives in danger for his own wretched life. Why, is he not a fiend stained foul with homicide who, though a priest, fights in such a cause?” (John Eadie, History of the English Bible, I, pp. 46, 47).
Wycliffe taught that men have the right to have the Bible in their own languages and was willing to endure the wrath of the Catholic authorities by translating the Scriptures into English. When Wycliffe began the translation work, the pope in Rome issued “bulls” against him. Wycliffe’s reply was as follows:
“You say it is heresy to speak of the Holy Scriptures in English. You call me a heretic because I have translated the Bible into the common tongue of the people. Do you know whom you blaspheme? Did not the Holy Ghost give the Word of God at first in the mother-tongue of the nations to whom it was addressed? Why do you speak against the Holy Ghost? You say that the Church of God is in danger from this book. How can that be? Is it not from the Bible only that we learn that God has set up such a society as a Church on the earth? Is it not the Bible that gives all her authority to the Church? Is it not from the Bible that we learn who is the Builder and Sovereign of the Church, what are the laws by which she is to be governed, and the rights and privileges of her members? Without the Bible, what charter has the Church to show for all these? It is you who place the Church in jeopardy by hiding the Divine warrant, the missive royal of her King, for the authority she wields and the faith she enjoins” (Fountain, John Wycliffe, pp. 45-47).
Wycliffe eventually rejected Rome’s key dogma of transubstantiation. He wrote: “May the thing made turn again and make him that made it? Thou then that art an earthly man, by what reason mayst thou say that thou makest thy Maker? Were this doctrine true, it would follow that the thing which is not God today shall be God tomorrow; yea, the thing that is without spirit of life, but groweth in the field by nature, shall another time be God. And yet we ought to believe that God is without beginning or ending” (Wycliffe, Wyckett).
There is some evidence that Wycliffe rejected infant baptism, at least toward the end of his life.
There is evidence of this from his own writings. Wycliffe taught that “baptism doth not confer, but only signify grace, which was given before.” This principle undermines the doctrine of infant baptism, as the baptism of a baby cannot signify grace that was previously given as it does in believer’s baptism. The Martyrs Mirror, first published in Dutch in 1660, states that in 1370 Wycliffe issued an article “declared to militate against infant baptism” (p. 322).
There is also evidence of this from the Catholic authorities. Thomas Walden and Joseph Vicecomes claimed that Wycliffe rejected infant baptism and they charged him with Anabaptist views. Walden, who wrote against the Wycliffites or Hussites in the early part of the 1400s, called Wycliffe “one of the seven heads that came out of the bottomless pit, for denying infant baptism, that heresie of the Lollards, of whom he was so great a ringleader” (Danver’s Treatise; cited by Joseph Ivimey,History of the English Baptists, 1811, I, p. 72).
Even if Wycliffe did not entirely deny infant baptism, it is certain that many of his Lollard followers did. The term “Lollard,” like that of “Waldensian,” was a general term that encompassed a wide variety of doctrine and practice. While many of the Lollards retained infant baptism, it is certain that others did not. (For more about the Lollards, see the Advanced Bible Studies Series on Church History, available from Way of Life Literature.)
Other Quotes from Wycliffe’s Writings
John Wycliffe’s writings are truly amazing, not only in their number and breadth, but in their simplicity. His was a day of affectatious writing, a day when the educated wrote in Latin or French rather than in English, to tickle the ears of the scholarly rather than to edify the humble. Though Wycliffe was one of the greatest scholars of that day, though he was intimate with kings and princes and nobles, he wrote for the common man. The simplicity of his writing is testified by the fact that we can understand him today, more than 600 years later, merely by modernizing his words to a small degree.
Wycliffe typically wrote short tracts. By this means his writings were multiplied widely even in that day before printing. Religious tracts are powerful things, and Wycliffe understood this. They are more read than books.
“I should be worse than an infidel were I not to defend unto the death the law of Christ; and certain I am, that it is not in the power of the heretics, and disciples of antichrist, to impugn this evangelical doctrine. On the contrary, I trust through our Lord’s mercy to be superabundantly rewarded, after this short and miserable life, for the lawful contention which I wage. I know from the Gospel, that antichrist, with all his devices, can only kill the body; but Christ, in whose cause I contend, can cast both body and soul into hell-fire. Sure I am, that he will not suffer his servants to want what is needful for them, since he freely exposed himself to a dreadful death for their sakes, and has ordained that all his most beloved disciples should pass through severe suffering with a view to their good” (quoted from Conant, Popular History of English Bible Translation, pp. 49, 50).
“To any degree of true love to Jesus, no soul can attain unless he be truly meek. For a proud soul seeks to have his own will, and so he shall never come to any degree of God’s love. Even the lower that a soul sitteth in the valley of meekness, so many the more streams of grace and love come thereto. And if the soul be high in the hills of pride, the wind of the fiend bloweth away all manner of goodness therefrom” (Wycliffe, The Poor Caitiff). Caitiff was a name for a common person. The Poor Caitiff is a collection of Wycliffe’s tracts.
“Singular love is, when all solace and comfort is closed out of the heart but the love of Jesus alone. Other delight or other joy pleases not; for the sweetness of him is so comforting and lasting, his love is so burning and gladdening, that he who is in this degree may well feel the fire of love burning in his soul. That fire is so pleasant that no man can tell but he that feeleth it, and not fully he. Then the soul is Jesus loving, on Jesus thinking, and Jesus desiring, only burning in coveting of him; singing in him, resting on him. Then the thought turns to song and melody” (Ibid.).
“God playeth with his child when he suffereth him to be tempted; as a mother rises from her much beloved child, and hides herself and leaves him alone, and suffers him to cry, Mother, Mother, so that he looks about, cries and weeps for a time; and at last when the child is ready to be overset with troubles and weeping, she comes again, clasps him in her arms, kisses him and wipes away the tears. So our Lord suffereth his loved child to be tempted and troubled for a time, and withdraweth some of his solace and full protection, to see what his child will do; and when he is about to be overcome by temptations, then he defendeth him and comforteth him by his grace” (Ibid.).
“For, no doubt, as our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles profess plainly, Antichrist and his cursed disciples should come, and deceive many men by hypocrisy and tyranny; and the best armor of Christian men against this cursed chieftain with his host, is the text of holy writ” (Wycliffe, prologue to Luke’s Gospel).
“As the faith of the Church is contained in the Scriptures, the more these are known in their true meaning the better; and inasmuch as secular men should assuredly understand the faith they profess, that faith should be taught them in whatever language may be best known to them. Forasmuch, also, as the doctrines of our faith are more clearly and exactly expressed in the Scriptures, than they may probably be by priests–seeing, if I may so speak, that many prelates are but too ignorant of Holy Scripture, while others conceal many parts of it; and as the verbal instructions of priests have many other defects–the conclusion is abundantly manifest, that believers should ascertain for themselves what are the true matters of their faith, by having the Scriptures in a language which they fully understand. For the laws made by prelates are not to be received as matters of faith, nor are we to confide in their public instructions, nor in any of their words, but as they are founded on Holy Writ–since the Scriptures contain the whole truth. And this translation of them into English should therefore do at least this good, viz.: placing bishops and priests above suspicion as to the parts of it which they profess to explain. Other means, such as the friars, prelates, the pope, may all prove defective; and to provide against this, Christ and his Apostles evangelized to the people in their own language. To this end, indeed, did the Holy Spirit endow them with the knowledge of tongues. Why, then, should not the living disciples of Christ do in this respect as they did?” (Wycliffe, written after his retirement to Lutterworth after being evicted from Oxford, quoted by Conant, pp. 53, 54).
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“The History of the King James Bible” is a new Bible conference DVD featuring three messages commemorating the 400th anniversary of the publication of the KJV. These messages cover the life and times of John Wycliffe, William Tyndale and the King James translators. This series was preached in Singapore in March in recognition of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. 2.5 hours on one DVD, only $14.95: http://www.wayoflife.org/publications/dvds.html
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From: “FBIS News Service”
Date: July 2, 2011 11:27:19 AM EDT
Subject: New Bible Conference DVD Available
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