The New Zealand Evangelist
Biographical Sketches. — No. II, — John Wickliff, D.D
Biographical Sketches.
No. II,
John Wickliff, D.D.
John Wickliff, justly termed the morning star of the English Reformation, was born about the year 1324, and derived his name from the place of his nativity, a small village six miles from Richmond in Yorkshire. From the era of the Norman conquest, the family to which he belonged had been lords of the Manor, and patrons of the Rectory of Wickliff; and it is to be inferred that his parents were able and willing to give him the best education which the kingdom then afforded. In due time he became a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, a seminary of very recent institution; but he speedily removed to Merton College, the most distinguished in the University, at a period when the number of students had recently been estimated at thirty thousand. He made great proficiency in all the ordinary branches of learning; language, logic, and rhetoric; in the civil, canon, and municipal law; but his greatest efforts were directed to the study of theology; not only as taught in the ponderous tomes of the subtile and sophisticating schoolmen; but especially as found in the unerring and infallible standard—the word of God. As Fuller observes, “The fruitful soil of his natural abilities, he industriously improved by acquired learning. He was not only skilled in the fashionable arts of that age, and in that abstruse, crabbed divinity, all whose fruit is thorns; but he was well versed in the scriptures, a rare accomplishment in those days.” In spite of formidable difficulties and great disadvantages, he prosecuted his study, of the scriptures with alacrity and perseverance. It is a characteristic of great minds, that if the object of pursuit is valuable and appear at all attainable, difficulties, instead of discouraging, tend only to stimulate to more energetic efforts. By these exertions he arrived at a degree of scriptural knowledge that had not been equalled for centuries and his veneration for the sacred writings procured for him the honourable appellation of the Evangelical Doctor. Like many great men, he was more distinguished for maturity of judgment and herculean labours in advanced life, than for precocity of genius and prominent appearances in his early years. It was not till 1356, when he was thirty-two years of age, that his first work appeared; a small volume entitled. “The last age of the Church.” It was occasioned by the fearful ravages of the “black death,” a pestilence that originated in Tartary, and pursuing a course similar to that of Asiatic cholera in late years, swept over Europe, and carried off in a short time twenty-five millions of the inhabitants, or one fourth of the entire population of this quarter of the globe. Wickliff's mind was deeply impressed with this awful calamity. He saw the sin of the Church in the punishment of the nations, and following the fanciful calculations of the Abbot Joachim, a reputed oracle of wisdom in that age, he concluded that the end of the world was at hand. This is the only one of his works in which there is anything fanciful, but it contains also the germs of those principles so fully developed in his after life and writings. He saw sin, and knew that it must be followed with punishment, and that nothing but repentance toward God and faith in Christ, could avert the righteous judgments of heaven.
In his thirty-sixth year, he became known at Oxford as the vigorous and successful opponent of the mendicant or begging Friars who under the pretence of voluntary poverty and inactive contemplative piety, had gained great popularity; but from idle habits and loose morals had become a burden to the public and a scandal to religion. Their zeal in proselytizing youths at the universities, and gaining them over to their order was such, that the students at Oxford were reduced in a few years from thirty to six thousand, and parliament had to pass an enactment that no youth under eighteen years of age was to enfer their order. Wickliff not only exposed their errors and vices, but laid open the unscriptural principles on which these institutions were founded. “There is no new thing under the sun.” “That which hath been is now.” A somewhat analogous state of things exists at Oxford at present. The Tractarian party have got private tutors so far to supersede the public professors, that such men as Dr, Buckland, who in the palmy days of the Bridge-water Treatises lectured with applause in crowded class rooms, are now attended by only four or five students. Wickliff's discussions with the Friars led him to a still closer study of the word of God, a circumstance of great importance in his subsequent history.
In the year following, the Society of Baliol College presented him to the rectory of Fillingham, in the diocese of Lincoln, and he become Master of that College in the same year. But font years after, in 1365; he accepted the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall, being appointed to this office by Simon de Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury. Islip appointed him to this office, “for the honesty of his life, his laudable conversation, and his knowledge of letters.” But the Archbishop dying soon after, Langham, his successor in the primacy, displaced Wickliff. This led to an appeal to the Pope, who decided against Wickliff; and two years after the King confirmed the sentence of the Pope, gold it is said being the procuring cause of the sentence.
In the same year in which he was appointed War- den of Canterbury Hall, Pope Urban V. revived the claim on England of an annual tribute of 1,000 marks and all the arrears for thirty-three years. Edward III. submitted this question to parliament, which went so far as to threaten the Pope with war in case he should attempt to enforce his claim. But the Pope had his advocates in England; an anonymous monk wrote strongly in behalf of the Pontiff, calling upon Wickliff by name, if he were able, to disprove his arguments. Wickliff who before this time had been nominated a royal chaplain, replied without reluctance, disproved the statements of the monk, and demonstrated the principle of simony involved in the claim of the Papal See.
In 1368, Wickliff exchanged the rectory of Fillingham for that of Ludgershill in the archdeaconry of Bucks, a benefice of inferior value but situated at a more convenient distance from Oxford.
Four years thereafter, in his forty-eighth year, he took his degree of Doctor of Divinity, and became a Theological lecturer at Oxford. Energetic, learned, and eloquent the professor's chair, in a University so numerously attended, afforded him the best opportunity in that age, when printing belonged to the future, of exposing error, promulgating truth, and stamping the impress of his own mind upon the age, by instilling his doctrines into the minds of those, who were to be the public instructors of the nation.
Two years afterwards, in 1374, he was sent by Edward III. with the Bishop of Bangor, and others, on a mission to Pope Gregory XI., respecting certain encroachments with regard to the reservation of benefice. This negotiation was carried on at Bruges, in Belgium the Papal Court being then at Avignon in the South of France, and lasted two years. The Bishop of Bangor appears to have favoured the interests of the Pope, but Wickliff opposed the claims of Rome and supported faithfully the interests of England. During this period he was presented by the king to the prebend of Aust, in the Collegiate church of Westbury, and also to the rectory, of Lutterworth in Leices- tershire. The protracted stay of Wickliff at Bruges was not a lost period of his life. He gained a deeper insight into the workings of the Papal system. He returned from this treaty, like Luther and Cranmer from Rome, more than ever convinced of the necessity of a thorough reformation in ecclesiastical affairs. He now styled the Pope “anti-christ, the proud, worldly priest of Rome, the most cursed of clippers and purse kervers.” At Bruges he became acquainted with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who had repaired thither on another diplomatic matter. “The Duke,” says Vaughan,” is the only son of Edward III. whose name is connected with the religion of that period, and who is known as the patron of Chaucer and Wickliff.” But as the opposition of Lancaster to the popish hierarchy was wholly on political grounds, and as Wickliff's controversy was chiefly based on religious principles, the patronage of Lancaster from the secular and worldly elements it brought into the contest, proved injurious rather than beneficial to the cause of truth, as was shortly afterwards seen. In 1377, Wickliff was cited before the convocation to answer for his novel and unwelcome doctrines. On this occasion St. Paul's was crowded to excess, and Wickliff and his friends could with difficulty find their Way to the place where the bishops were seated to try him. He was supported by the Duke of Lancaster and Henry, Lord Percy, Lord Marshal of England; but the patronage of John of Gaunt, however well Meant, produced only disastrous consequences; for instead and Wickliff having an opportunity of defending himself, and testifying for the truth in an assembly where his arguments and eloquence would have carried conviction to the hearts of many, the Convocation became a scene of disgraceful contention between the Duke and the Bishop of London, in which the Courtier appeared to more disadvantage than the Ecclesiastic, and Wickliff's cause seemed to owe more of its support to the mutable breath of princely favour, than to the immutable principles of God's holy word.
( To be Continued.)