Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

CONSTANT APPEAL TO THE SCRIPTURES. 285
home. Wyclif speaks
of those who would reserve the
Scriptures
as
Antichrists, forbidding men to know their belief, and to speak of
Holy Writ. For they say openly that secular men should not inter
meddle themselves with the Gospel, to read it in the mother tongue, but
attend to a holy father s preaching, and do after such in all things. But
this is openly against God s teaching. For God commandeth generally
to each layman, that he should have God s commandments before him,
and teach them to his children. And Peter biddeth us be ready to give
a reason for our faith and hope to each man that asketh it. And God
commands His priests to preach the Gospel to each man, as the reason is,
because all men should know it. Lord !
why should worldly priests
forbid secular men to speak of the Gospel, since God giveth them great
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wit of kind (by nature) and great desire to know God and love Him ?
c: ^ 1i/>
beginning
^"j
woi-ld none have heard higher craft of Anti-
L
whereby to destroy Christian men s belief and charity, than is this
blasphemous tferesy that laymen should not intermeddle with the
Gospel. 1
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We are riot able to trace with any accuracy
the course
of Wyclif s instruction during his later years at Oxford ;
though -a fair notion of it may be gathered from a study
the test of the
01 iiio Trialogus. He^we^rt_n__applymg
WorcLof God to the principal ^dactrines and practices of
the Church, kindling ji burning enthusiasm in the one party,
in the other a vehement alarm and hate. About saints
days, for instance, he says, Not a few think it would be
well for the Church,
if all festivals of that nature were
abolished, and those only, were retained which have respect
immediately to Christ/ ^ftie most important theological con
troversy in which Wyclif was engaged
was that which he
carried on with so much vigour and earnestness in opposition
to the Romish dogma of Transubstantiation. Wyclif saw
clearly what it would be well for us to keep as clearly in
sight, that this
dogma
is at the heart of the sacerdotal
power of Rome. Sacerdotalists, if
they want to uphold
1
From the Tract de XXXII Erroribus Curatorum, in Vaughan, John de
Wydiffe, Lond. 1853, p. 526.