them in the MSS. "Vae Octuplex," or "Eight Woes denounced against the Friars," and "Of Mynystris in the Chirche," an exposition of Matthew xxiv. The third of Mr. Arnold's volumes is divided mainly into two parts, containing severally Exegetical and Didactic Treatises, and Controversial Tracts; but there is also a small Third Part of Letters and Documents.

Mr. F. D. Matthew, in his volume of after gleanings, "The English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted," published in 1888 by the Early English Text Society, added a very interesting series of eight-andtwenty English Tracts, which set forth Wyclif's views on the Papacy, on Prelacy, on Priesthood and on Preaching, on Dominion, on the holding of Property by the Clergy, on Faith, Hope, and Charity.

CHAPTER V.

WYCLIF'S LATER YEARS.

The

Jack Straw
Rebellion.

WYCLIF'S English works probably all belong to the last eight years of his life, and he was busy with them to the end. To the end we pass now, through the years that remained to him after the schism in the Papacy had made him a schismatic to the Pope. Although in his teaching of the people he had acted on the counsel he gave to his Simple Priests-to draw close, in the spirit of love, all the great bonds of society as first aid to the right sowing of the Word,. yet when the Jack Straw rebellion broke out in May, 1381,* Wyclif's opponents sought to make men believe that it was caused partly by the spread of his doctrines, which were subversive of the rights of property. His attack on the wealth of the Church was to be warded off by the suggestion that it was based on a theory of Dominion founded on Grace that threatened equally the property of laymen. Wyclif's ideal principle was argued only in the schools, and carefully guarded by him against misapprehensions that his opponents cherished and desired to spread. In his instructions to his preachers, "De Sex Jugis," he not only made it the very ground on which to build religious life that all bonds of society should be strengthened and not weakened, but in his detailed instructions under each of the six heads he made his view emphatically clear. Servants, he said, were to be taught to

* "E. W." iv. 174-177.

obey their masters, whether just or unjust, as they were taught by the Apostle, for in so doing they obeyed their Master Jesus Christ. "The law of patient sufferance of injury is," he said, "easy and sure, the law of invasion and resistance difficult and unsure. Therefore, it would be a teaching of the devil to leave the sure and take the doubtful way. Christ suffered thankfully the hardest death, and taught that word to the Apostle, 'In patience possess ye your souls.'” As doctor in the Church Wyclif had taken part in arguments that touched its welfare, seeking to save, not to destroy, by making the Church an embodiment on earth of the meek spirit of the Saviour; in its own humbler sense, the Word made flesh, dwelling among us, full of grace and truth. Such striving was for peace and for the strengthening of all the ties by which God in His wisdom has bound men together.

The first of the three books on Civil Dominion which, in Wyclif's "Summa," follow the book on the Church, has been edited by Dr. Reginald Lane Poole for the Wyclif's "De Dominio Wyclif Society,* from the unique MS., which Civili." probably was carried to Prague in or before 1407, by Nicolas Faulfisch. It is a scholastic working out of an ideal of society based on the teaching of the Gospel. When purged of sin, earthly society would be a community united by the graces of religion, each man bearing other's burdens, and predominance of power would come of predominance in virtue. That would be at last a visible realisation of the dominion founded on grace which Wyclif knew to be in his time as unattainable as it remains in ours, but which is not the less a true ideal of humanity made

* "Johannis Wycliffe Tractatus de Civili Dominio Liber Primus. Now first edited from the Unique Manuscript at Vienna, by Reginald Lane Poole, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, Doctor in Philosophy of the University of Leipzig, formerly of the Department of MSS., British Museum."-Published for the Wyclif Society, 1885.

perfect. It was utterly removed from Wyclif's purpose to allow anyone in the existing state of society to say to another, I am a holy man, you are a sinner, therefore the Word of God entitles me to knock you down and take your money. But the worldly-minded were much puzzled by Wyclif's argument, that in the existing world, whose usages have gone astray through sin, the elect of God have all in having Him, and that the wicked have no real dominion over them. In Wyclif's sense the wicked cannot have that which they cannot put to its right use; they cannot have, spiritually, by the gift of God; they can only hold, naturally, by the grant of God, donatio, not donum. The lordship of the wicked is not real. So long as it seems to exist it is not the building up, but is the ruin of its possessor. As a man's good name does not depend on the opinion of an evil world, but- -as a later thinker said of it-lives and spreads aloft by that pure eye and perfect witness of all judging Jove; so is it with all other earthly goods: God counts their worth, not man. God gives to the just man, in laity and clergy, a Civil Dominion that he can only lose by sin; and every just man is lord over his brethren in as far as he is, in the spirit of Christ, their servant. In that sense, all who have the grace of God are lords over one another. Wyclif's bold ideal is of a Heaven upon earth, towards which way may be made by long patience in making known the message of the Gospels, and slowly teaching more and more men that they have to imitate the lowly Saviour, and learn from him to love God and their neighbour. In dealing with the seeming rule of the unjust, Wyclif trusts so absolutely in the spiritual force, that he holds obedience to be due to tyrants. But he defines in theory, as he showed in practice, the limit of a just resistance. "If it were very likely that a man by withdrawals of temporal help could destroy the tyranny or the abuse of power, then he ought with that intention to withdraw it." Wyclif distinguished

always clearly between such withholding or withdrawal of temporal help, when there was reasonable hope that some great evil could be conquered by it, and the violence of a direct assault. Other reasoners might justify that also, if success were very likely. Wyclif never did. He was a pure Christian idealist, with an immense practical energy, who, strictly within his own determined bounds of duty, laboured to subdue the evil of the world and spread the knowledge of the Grace of God.

Wyclif's

Wyclif's "Trialogus," or Four Books of Dialogues, was the first piece of his put afterwards in print. It was published in 1525, without the name of the place of "Trialogus." publication, or of the printer, who was, perhaps, Frobenius. There is only the date, on the last page. This was for a long time the only one work that had been made more widely accessible, and knowledge of Wyclif's opinions was chiefly drawn from it. In 1869 it was edited again, together with a first printing of its Supplement, by Dr. Lechler.* As there is reference in it to Pope Clement VII., it was written after the schism in the Papacy (1378). As it contains Wyclif's latest reasonings on Transubstantiation, which wholly repudiate the doctrine, it was written after 1381. The same date is implied in the fact that the "Trialogus" inveighs against the mendicant friars, with whom the repudiation of that doctrine first brought Wyclif into active controversy. In the thirty-sixth chapter of the fourth book of the "Trialogus" there is reference to a date, which stood in the first printed edition, 1372; but in three out of four manuscripts the date is 1382, and this is made sure by the reference to an earthquake shock that

"Joannis Wiclif Trialogus cum Supplemento Trialogi. Illum recensuit, hoc primum edidit, utrumque commentario critico instruxit, Gotthardus Lechler Philosophiæ ac Theologiæ Doctor, Hujus Professor Publicus Ordinarius in Academia Lipsiensi." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869.