Tractatus de apostasia

INTRODUCTION. XXIII
sentences that seem in his favour, thus turning them against him;
and he no doubt wishes to show that, to use a homely expression,
two can play at that game. Besides, his great contention is that
Scripture alone is to be followed, and that both the Pope and the
Fathers can mistake; so he is all the less scrupulous in explaining
their
that
words.
is all.
If the
— In
explanation be unsatisfactory,
the answer to the quotation
they mistake, and
of Grosseteste, we
find a clue to his doctrine of the existence, at once figurative and
real, of Christ's Body in the Host. After consecration, he says, we
think Christ's Body present, the bread having become the sign of
that presence. Time, the Universal, and the Sensible, have no actual
and real esse, except in so far as the mind knows them;
and so it
is of the esse of every sign, qua tale. And yet every sign, besides the
real esse that it acquires on becoming a sign, has also an independent
natural esse. Thus, the bread being the sign of Christ's Body is
Christ's Body in reality, according to Wyclif 's system; while, at the
same time it is mere bread from another point of view. Logicallv,
I suppose that Wyclif would admit that a statue has two entities;
the one, as being of stone, &c, shaped in a certain fashion; the other,
as representing this or that person. St. Dionysius is also explained in
the same manner; St. Ambrose likewise (pp. 62— 65). Innocent III
may have declared that the accidents remain without a subject; but
besides his accustomed explanation of the sense (see above, for
Grosseteste), Wyclif points
out: i
st that any other sense would imply
annihilation, which is inadmissible;
2 nd that Innocent neither spoke
by inspiration, nor grounding his decision on Scripture; and that
therefore, 3 rd he may have been as wrong as when he levied a tribute
of 900 marks upon England. 1 Here Wyclif goes out of his way to
deplore the growing perversity of the times, the doctors that uphold
lving in Oxford, and the multiplication of heretics who consent to
simony; concluding that Innocent's decree went no farther than did
Nicolas' decision against Berengarius; and that if it did, we ought to
respect it only in so far as it agrees with Scripture (pp. 65— 68).
When, v. g. Innocent goes beyond Scripture to determine doctrines
1
Wyclif often returns to those 000 'marks, which evidently rankle in his
memory, as a good patriot. See p. 204, 1. 20— 2 3.