JOHN WYCLIFFE

Evening Star, Issue 20033, 26 November 1928, Page 5

JOHN WYCLIFFE

ADDRESS BY REV. E. S. TUSKWELL At the Hanover Street Baptist Church last evening: the Rev. E. S. Tuckwell, 8.A., delivered t’no Jmirth of his scries of lectures on Christian pathfinders, dealing with the life and work of John AVycliffc, whom Fo.xe, the martyrologist, long ago named “ The Morning Star of the Reformation,” and who rendered such splendid sendee to our national religion and language by his translation of the Bible from the Lai in version into our mother tongue. The marvellous career of the eminent scholar and preacher was ably portrayed, and hold the close attention of the largo congregation, in which, wore many representatives of the various Protestant lodges of the city wearing their regaha. The address was based on St. Matthew vli., Id: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” This, said the preacher, was the ultimate criterion of truth Every movement must pass that test, and if Protestantism failed in the characters it produced and the work it effected in the world it dcscrvcd < to die. It must not merely adopt a definite attitude, lint must he positively constructive. The great leaders in Protestant history bad passed the test which Christ laid down, and none bad done it more truly than John Wycliffe, Born in 1325 (350 years before Luther), and educated at Oxford, bo early (sprang into intellectual prominence, and with all his power and popularity was a simple and an unassuming man. He wrote pamphlets which revealed his attitude towards the dominant Roman Church, and his intense loyalty to England. He became popular with the nobles because of Ins firm and decisive protest against all Papal encroachments upon the liberties of England; and with the people because ho gave them the Bible in their mother tongue, and because he sent among them a. band of preachers pledged to poverty and devoted to the simple gospel of Jesus Christ. John of Gaunt championed the reformer and protected him. In 1377 Wycliffe was cited to appear before Archbishop Sudbury to answer for his heresies; hut the assembly broke up in a Hot. Then came the election of Urban AM. and Clement VII. ns rival Popes, each infallible, and each anathematising the other, which led Wycliffe to argue that it would he better for the church to bo without Pope or Prelate. In L‘!S() he renounced the doctrine of transuhstanliation—the central doctrine of the Roman Church. Wycliffe was condemned for his heresies, lint was too popular, and had too many friends among the ruling classes, for any injury to he inflicted upon him, and ho died peacefully at Lutterworth in 1381. His influence in England was unbounded, and in Bohemia ho influenced John Tlnss and Jerome of Prague, who paved Die way for the great Reformation under Luther and Calvin in the sixteenth century. There was wonderful charm about Wyclilfe’g manner. He was sincerely trank and of splendid courage, and not even Iris bitterest enemies could lay any charge against bis unblemished character. Thirty years after his death the Council of Constance decreed in It 15 that his body and bones should be disinterred from the cemetery at Lutterworth, where be lay amid bis beloved people; but the inhuman and stupid decree was not carried out until thirteen years later, when, under the. direction of the Bishop of Lincoln, the foul deed was done. The. body was exhumed and burned, and the ashes flung into the River Swift. “ Thus,” says Thomas Fuller, “ this brook did convey bis ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow sea, and this into the wide ocean. And so the ashes of_ Wycliffe are the emblem of bis doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over.”