was not anything made that hath been | tion discussed from the most remote and made. In him was life, and the life was far-drawn considerations as to the nature the light of men." Wyclif connects the of God and the eternal relations existing clauses differently, and translates: "And between him and his creatures. But how without him was not anything made. That can Wyclif argue otherwise? He can only which hath been made was life in him; deal with existing things by comparing and the life was the light of men.” them with the pattern in the Mount. He must reach that "one first" which is the measure of all others.* Let us turn to his philosophy. It is well known that he was a Realist, and this harmonizes exactly with what has been said, for the Realists, as distinguished from the Nominalists, believed that generals or universals have an existence prior to, and independent of, the individual objects to which they relate. In the words of the scholastic philosophy they were universalia ante rem. But Wyclif is right. He has followed the early fathers, and has apprehended the real meaning of the words. What St. John tells us is, that the Eternal Word was life, life absolutely, and therefore life that could communicate itself; that he was the fountain of all life; and that in him principally was the life of every creature before it was called into existence. The teaching will be better understood if we compare the words of the Gospel with those of the song of the four-and-twentyelders in the Apocalypse: "Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power; for thou hast created all things, and because of thy will they were, and they were created." All things were before they were created. In other words, it is St. John's principle appearing alike in the fourth Gospel and in the Apocalypse, that in God, and, if in God, therefore also in that Word to whom the Father, who hath life in himself, gave to have life in himself, there is an eternal pattern of all things that are realized on earth. By this pattern must all things on earth be judged, and to it all of them must, as far as possible, be conformed. This is the idealism of St. John, and Wyclif caught the inspiration. Here, then, we seem to obtain the key to most at least of what Wyclif both was and did to his philosophical system; his work as a reformer of ecclesiastical abuses; his views on property, so often misunderstood and harshly judged; and even to his method of reasoning upon any point he had in hand. Let us look for a moment at the last point first, and the reformer's idealism at once explains to us why he should always, in reasoning, go back to first principles. It is often in no small degree burdensome to the reader to find the commonest ques • John v. 26. But, above all, it was this same lofty idealism that lay at the bottom of Wyclif's career as a reformer of ecclesiastical abuses. His conception of the Church of Christ, gathered from Scripture, was essentially ideal. In almost every important particular it was directly the opposite of what he beheld around him. An outward and carnal institution had taken the place of the spiritual kingdom which Christ had founded. Even within this institution the clergy alone were regarded as the Church, the possessors of all her power, and the dispensers of all her privileges. The people were entirely in their hands, with no independent standing, no right of free access to the Father of their spirits, and no responsibility except that of obedience to ecclesiastical superiors who, even in the most favorable circumstances, treated them as children. Let us not blame the spiritual rulers of that day too much, as if nothing of the kind could occur again. The evil sprang from deeper than Romanist roots, from roots which will prob ably never be eradicated while human nature is what it is. Nay, it is often the ablest and best men who are in danger of being the first to yield to it. Their own motives are pure: they know how they will use the influence they may acquire. from a Vienna MS.: "In omni genere est unum priThe following words are quoted by Dr. Lechler mum quod est metrum et mensura omnium aliorum," vol. i., p. 472. note 1. -- They have such a vision of the glory of their beneficent work that they cannot believe in the existence of worldly ecclesiastics who will not be lightened and elevated by the same glory. Would that experience confirmed the justness of their expectation! There can be no nobler thought than that of upholding, vindicat ing, strengthening the Church of Christ, when the true idea of that Church is preserved the idea of service, toil, suffering for the sake of Christ's body and of mankind. There can be none more disastrous when there is substituted for this the thought of a great hierarchy with power, riches, splendor, and worldly pomp. Men say, you gain the world in this way; we say, no, you lose the Church. Thus Wyclif felt, and far more interesting, accordingly, in this point of view than any, even the most memorable, of his overt acts, is the principle upon which he proceeded. That principle reminds us again of the writings of the beloved disciple, and confirms what has been said as to the Johannine idealism which lay at the bottom of all the reformer's views and movements. Wyclif drew a distinction between the Church and the elect within the Church. He recognized the fact that false members must be included in the former. He proceeded upon the principles involved in our Lord's own parable of the vine, when, saying of himself, I am the true vine, Jesus immediately spoke, not only of fruit-bearing branches, but of branches that bear no fruit, that must be taken away, "and men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned." Still, these branches were a part of the vine, a part of the body of Christ, a part of that visible Church which, though by reason of their presence imperfect, was yet struggling towards perfection. The elect, however, within the outward Church were the true kernel; all of them, without distinction of clergy and laity, priests unto God and the Father, admitted to the same privileges, summoned to the same life, bound, except in so far as God had otherwise appointed, to the same duties. The distinction thus drawn by Wyclif is not the same as that drawn by the later reformers between the visible and the invisible Church, while it is possessed of infinitely more practical power. Accord ing to the later view the invisible Church | is the body of Christ, and it cannot be sought on earth, for it consists of "the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be." The visible Church, on the other hand, consists of all who upon earth "profess the true religion."* Our thoughts are thus divided between what is ideal but cannot be realized on earth, and what is realized on earth but must always be actual, not ideal. Our aspirations are transferred from earth to heaven, and we need not strive after the ideal here, because we cannot reach it here. There is upon this view, strictly speaking, no body of Christ upon earth at all, but only an institution, a family, a house, or rather many institutions, families, houses, in which we are trained to be members of that body. Wyclif's view again fastens our attention upon something which exists within the outward Church, which is ideally perfect, which is therefore entitled to our first regard, which shows us what the whole Church ought to be, and which, because it is ideal, must supply a standard of attainment to everything occupying a lower ground. Were one to follow out the thought he would perhaps say that the body of Christ is here, in the form of the outward professing Church, and that, like Christ's own earthly body, it is dwelt in by the spirit which is yet to pervade it whoky and to transfuse it wholly into a spiritual body when the appointed moment comes. Anyway, the main point is this, that there is a truly ideal element within the present outward framework, that there is a Church in the highest sense within the Church in a lower sense, and that upon this, and not upon a distinction between the visible and the invisible Church we are to fix our thoughts. The one may, indeed, although in a different way, be as visible as the other. Such was the principle, and a consequence of great logical importance flowed from it upon which Wyclif must have more or less acted whether he presented it clearly to his own mind or not. In looking upon the outward and professing Church as the body of Christ, it was of course possible to think only of Christ in his state of humiliation. The visible and professing body was not perfect enough to be identified with Christ in any higher state. But if so, it naturally followed that the inner circle of believers, the essence of the Church, those from whom we learn what the Church should be, were to be identified with the glorified Redeemer, with the Redeemer who had surmounted all imperfection and limitation, and who now, clothed with his "spiritual body," was complete. That thought cut in an • Westminster Confession, chap. xxv. instant at the root of all the secularization | he sent forth his itinerant preachers withand worldliness of the Church. What out gold or silver or brass in their purses, pretensions could she have to earthly believing that the laborer would be found honor and dignity, whose duty it was to worthy of his food. He was trying the take her Master's place in the world and ideal system which he discovered in the do his work? What desires could she New Testament, but it was by no means have for them, the distinguishing charac- necessary on that account to do away with teristic of whose position was that she the existing system either of parishes or was already passing out of the region of of parish tithes. The functions of the two earthly, and was seated in the region of sets of preachers, the parochial and the heavenly things? Her pretensions could itinerant, were indeed entirely different. only be to a cross, to more toil than other The former were to edify the Church, and men, to more suffering than other men, to to administer her ordinances for the sake self-denial and self-sacrifice, to do good of an already believing flock. The latter which would be unrewarded here, to rest were to awaken the careless, to reclaim which would be found only on the other wanderers, and to convert the unbelieving. side of the grave. Her desires could only In his relation to the two classes, therebe that she might walk more worthily of fore, the laborer might well be sustained her ideal standing in the heavenly places. in wholly different ways. No one will In proceeding upon these principles the deny that the ideal system upon which the great reformer of the fourteenth century Saviour sent forth his disciples to preach laid down lines which even the reformers would lend to the Church enormous power of the sixteenth century did not see with in dealing with the masses of a nation equal clearness, and which are not fully that have as yet refused to listen to the comprehended to this day. call of the Gospel. But it by no means follows that where a Christian congrega. tion has been formed the same system is equally important. Wyclif appears to have felt this. He saw no contradiction between drawing the tithes of his own parish and sending out his "poor priests" with nothing to depend on but the alms of those to whom they preached. He even complained at one time (A.D. 1366) that attempts were made to engage him in controversy in order to deprive him of his ecclesiastical benefices; * and, although he may have afterwards gone farther in his views, he retained his emoluments at Lut. terworth to the last, and no one has ever attempted to charge him with inconsistency. Out of this ideal view of what the Church of Christ was, all Wyclif's efforts as a reformer flowed. It was thus that, nega. tively, he set himself with so much determination against the worldliness, pride, luxury, and selfish ease of the prelates and priests of his time. He went back to the early Church. He contrasted in a thousand ways the condition of our Lord and his apostles with that of those around him who arrogated to themselves the name of the Church. He attacked them with reproach, scorn, indignation, with every species of invective. And yet through all, the reader is chiefly overpowered, as he is overpowered in St. John, with the wail of melancholy. It is the thought of Christ's little flock untended, uncared for, that rends his heart, and that dictates these passionate appeals to the Almighty, to the God of holiness and mercy. Nor was it otherwise with his efforts after positive reformation, with his attack upon the citadel of Romish error, the doctrine of transubstantiation, with his devotion to preaching, with his institution of "poor priests," and with his translation of the Bible into the tongue of the people. Upon these things individually it is not necessary to dwell. Enough to observe that all of them may be traced to the operation of the same great principle, of the same ideal view of the position and privileges of the true members of Christ's Church on earth. Nor need it in the least degree surprise us that, while himself retaining his living at Lutterworth, In all these ecclesiastical and religious movements, then, we appear to trace the working of a high New Testament idealism as the chief guiding principle of Wyc. lit's life. He has been upon the Mount with God, and his great aim is to find as far as possible practical expression for the pattern that has been shown him there. But Wyclif's idealism not only explains his work as an ecclesiastical reformer, it goes far also to explain his views on property. Upon this point it is desirable to say a few words, partly because of its immense importance, and partly because Wyclif's position in connection with it has been often misunderstood. Even so emi. nent an historian as Dr. Stubbs declares Vaughan, Monograph, p. 108. that "his logical system of politics applied to practice turns out to be little else than socialism."* One point seems to be clear. The system must be applied to all property. The attempt has been made, but unsuccessfully, to separate between its application to Church property and to property of other kinds. Wyclif did not hold that every man's private property was his own, but that the Church's property belonged to the State. He applied his principle to the latter; but the principle covered all. That principle is expressed by the celebrated apothegm that "dominion is founded on grace; " and the meaning is that no inan, and no body of men, could claim an absolute and inherent right to the goods possessed by them. All things belonged to God, and were granted by him as fiefs are by a feudal superior. As originally bestowed they were forfeited by sin, but were restored by grace or mercy, on conditions opposed to sin, and which sin must again invalidate. It follows as a natural consequence that the man who uses his possessions ill forfeits them in principle, and ought to lose them. The difficulty is of course to find out the point at which the goods are forfeited, and who has a right to take them. Until the treatise in which Wyclif's views are fully explained is published, it is not possible to say precisely how he would have met these difficulties in the case of civil or personal property. We know, however, that he strenuously denied that, upon his principle, a debtor might escape payment of his debt, a tenant of his rent, or a servant of his obligations, whenever these several persons were satisfied that the creditor, the landlord, or the master was a wicked man. We know that he maintained that by the law of God "common men should serve meekly God and their lords, and do true service to God, and their masters. By the law of Christ if the lord be an untrue man and tyrant to his subjects they should yet serve him." "Pay to all men debts," he says, "both tribute and custom, and fear, and honor, and love. Our Saviour Jesus Christ suffered meekly a painful death from Pilate; and St. Paul said that he was ready to suffer death by doom of the emperor's justice, if he deserved to die." In such cases he seems to have satisfied himself with the general statement that to property misapplied and abused the owner had no longer a rightful claim. • Constitutional History, vol. ii., p. 440. The case of Church property opened an easier and clearer path to his conclusion. In judging of his argument it is essentially necessary to bear in mind the precise state of matters with which he had to contend. It was urged by his opponents that under no circumstances whatever could either the persons or the property of the clergy be touched by the civil power. Both were sacred. God had granted his Church an indefeasible and inalienable claim to freedom from all interference on the part of the State. The State had no right to touch the persons of churchmen, whatever their deserts, or the property of the Church, however it might be abused. With his keenest irony, therefore, Wyclif showed to what absurdities this contention led. For such abuses there must be a remedy, and the remedy rests upon the principle that dominion, which is distinct from power, is founded on grace. Here, too, he had another advantage, for his principles led him, as we have seen, to maintain that the clergy were not the Church. The whole people of the land, the king, the Parliament, and the nation, were as much a part of the Church as the clergy were. For them the clergy existed, not they for the clergy. The latter were not masters; they were ministers or servants for the common good, and all servants must be liable to give an account of their stewardship. Thus looked at, the interference of the State with the property of the Church was not the interference of an extraneous power. The magistrate was the vicar of God,* the nation was a Christian nation acting through its natural representatives, who disowned neither their duty nor their responsibility to represent it. It was taking stock of goods which had been bestowed upon it from a divine source, and for divine purposes. The source had been lost sight of. Even in pleading that their dotations were divine the clergy had forgotten what the divine meant. The purposes had been abused; instead of being divine they were become worldly, sensual, devilish. The Christian nation had need to reform itself, and in doing so it was entitled to see that Church property was applied to the Christian objects for which it was intended. All this, it will be seen, was the very re. verse of what is nowadays urged as the voluntary view. But although Wyclif's path was thus easier in the case of Church than of per Comp. extracts from the reformer's works in "Life," by Vaughan, vol. ii., p. 282, and in "Monograph," by the same author, p. 450. personal property, it is more easily ap plicable to the property of the Church. Wyclif had certainly not the slightest idea of secularizing the latter when it was well used. It was never more than "the superfluity of the temporal goods" of the Church that he desired to attain, and his very assertion that dominion was founded in grace, rendered it necessary to maintain that where this grace was, nothing should be permitted to interfere with the dominion. The principle may come to be needed again; and it will be well that, in any changes that may be before us, it be interpreted in its author's sense, and for such ends as he would have proposed. sonal property, his principle really embraced both. What are we to think of it? Professor Shirley has endeavored to defend it by the consideration that it "was put forth by its author as an ideal, and with the full admission that it was incompatible in many of its results with the existing state of society;" and Canon Pennington pleads on behalf of the promulgation of it that it was "only a theory." Both apologies are unsatisfactory. Ideals may not be capable of being at once reduced to practice, but there is nothing so truly practical as they are. Nor is there anything that a man is less justified in putting forth than a false the ory. Both ideals and theories present an We have said enough. It has been no end which we are not simply to admire, part of our plan to sketch the life of but towards which we are to work. They Wyclif, to describe his enormous labors, contain in them the seeds of an endless or to follow him into all those varied growth. Much of Christianity is in the spheres of activity in each of which he best sense ideal; and because it is so, it accomplished enough to make any man is entitled to the admiration of men now, famous, though he had done nothing else. and will command the allegiance of the We have simply aimed at pointing out a best of men until they have a higher ideal view of the man which has been too little (and when will that be?) set before them. noticed, and which yet seems to supply The true justification of Wyclif is that the real key to all he did. The lesson is his principle is sound. No man has in an obvious one. We ought to encourage all circumstances an absolute right to idealism in the Church, and especially in what he has acquired or inherited. Why the clergy. Many fear both, and dread — should we hesitate to say so? Even if what is by no means impossible even in we look at the principle in its relation to our daya return to the old oppression mere worldly movements, it will, perhaps, exercised by the clergy over the laity. To appear not so absurd or dangerous as we counteract this they would lower the conmight at first sight suppose. The diffi- ception of the Church's and the minister's culty of the application may be granted, work. The true prevention is to heighten but upon what other principle shall we both. That is the New Testament plan; justify the expulsion of the Stewarts, the and, if the spirit of the New Testament Bourbons, or the Napoleons? We may be adhered to, it will be found wise to folnot always see clearly when to enforce it. low it. Wealth, ease, luxury, pomp, great The principle is ideal. We are commonly worldly state, are the very last things to very far from the ideal. But there come which our Lord or his apostles would have moments in history when, under the pres-pointed as what ought to characterize the sure of mighty wrongs, the divine righteousness and justice rise before a nation's eyes like a vision of the third heaven. In moments of that kind the nation is in an ideal world; and, under the influence of the ideal, it executes righteousness and justice with a decision and a swiftness of which, when it afterwards returns to its normal state, it can only say that it was then hearing unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. That seems to be the real meaning of Wyclif's principle; and, thus applicable even to Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. lxii. ↑ Life of Wyclif, p. 74. ministry which they founded the very last, unless there be something still more remote from their thoughts, dominion over the souls of men. The true glory of the ministry does not lie in such things, but in humility, love, self-denial, self-sacrifice, a heavier cross than is given other men to bear, and labors from which there shall be rest only in eternity. That is the Christian ideal; and when the Church strives to realize it in ever increasing measure, men will have no need to fear her. They will rather encourage her, and say, "While you keep to paths like these we will go with you, for we see that God is with you." WILLIAM MILLIGAN. |