Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

WYCLIFFE.
amble is couched in ambiguous language. Confusing
Papal infallibility with Papal impeccability, he
attacks the power of St. Peter under pretext that
perpetual1 political power is not from God. It is
impossible to believe in the sincerity of the man
who could gravely tell the world that the Pope was
peccable. St. Catherine of Siena, his contemporary,
had not feared to write to the Cardinals that if the
Popes were " devils incarnate,"1 they should still be
treated with the reverence due to our Lord's vicars.
Introduce the condition of impeccability into any
government, and no earthly authority will stand, for
that was in reality Wycliffe's standing-point: " The
Pope is a sinful man, therefore he cannot command
in God's name". But this "statement" gives no
adequate notion of his negations, nor did it cover
him with the public ignominy which was the heretic's
lot in those days. He has been accused of not having
the strength of his opinions. It was, in fact, the
Pope who stayed proceedings till the matter could
be thoroughly sifted. The slowness of the Roman
court is proverbial, and to its ordinary prudence was
now added the complication of the Schism.
Shortly afterwards, in the same year (1378), Wy-
cliffe attacked the doctrine of Transubstaiitiation,
the central dogma of the Christian Faith. His error,
shifting and ambiguous, well represents the present
mind of England, a fusion of consubstantiation with
a certain transitory presence, which depends 011 the
1 Pastor, i. 87.