John Wycliffe, England, Theologian

May 22. John Wycliffe. Wycliffe was a Protestant long before there were Protestants. The Protestant Reformation is a 16th century phenomenon, but Wycliffe lived in the 14th century.

Two-hundred years before Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the castle door, Wycliffe wrote and circulated 18 Theses, including outright challenges to the Catholic church’s authority. (Wycliff said their authority was second to the Scriptures.)

Obviously, his ideas got him in trouble with the Catholic Church, and on this date in 1377, Pope Gregory XI issued 5 public decrees against Wycliffe denouncing his 18 Theses as “erroneous and dangerous to Church and State.”

Wycliffe pointed out that Moses learned God’s law in his own language (Hebrew), and the Apostles learned it in their own language (Greek). Even the contemporary very rich could read it in Latin. But ordinary people had no translation they could read. Wycliffe set out to change that, and directed the production of Bibles handwritten in Middle English—at least fifty years before the invention of the Gutenberg printing press. Here’s his story.

Flattery means nothing to a man determined to obey God.

John Wycliffe spent most of his life standing up against the church’s hypocrisy. Over the decades, he had seen friars take advantage of the poor, kidnap young people and force them into ministry, and call preaching the gospel outside of religious places heresy.

John had just finished a work calling for the Bible to be translated into English. Regular people had been starved of the Word of God. He would spend his life making sure God’s Word was spread to the people! To make the Word easy to send out, and to make sure the most people possible could read it, John packaged the New Testament in small portions. It had a been a huge, important project.

But now, John could barely move and was confined to his bed. Whatever sickness had struck him had hit him hard with paralysis, and he had to rely on others for help. After so much division in the church and so much fighting, was he now going to be taken away? Surely, his work wasn’t finished. The rest of the Bible needed to be translated into English, and someone had to keep exposing the hypocrisy of the friars. As he lay there with nothing but his thoughts, he overheard his helpers say that visitors had arrived at Oxford, coming to wait on him.

The door opened, and eight men appeared: four senators from the city and four friars, each from different orders within the church.

John’s eyes wandered to meet their glances, but he was unable to sit himself up to greet them, and so remained stretched out on the bed. The friars approached and offered him their good wishes and flattery. Only months ago, they called him a heretic and wanted the Pope to punish him. Now, they offered sympathy in his plight, even daring to hope he’d recover.

John stayed silent and allowed them to speak.

The longer the friars stayed, the more critical their speech became. Sympathy turned into judgment. They reminded him how wrong he had been in his sermons and writings, how his views on Scripture and the Holy Orders had been contrary to the truth the friars taught.

With pouty lips, and shaking heads, they looked down on him—in every sense of the word.

His illness was so severe—surely John knew he was dying—they hinted. Heavily. So it would be wise for him to confess his sins against them, to recant all that talk about letting regular people read the Bible.

John stayed silent.

When they finished, he raised his hand. He was weak and barely lifted it off the bed. Servants hurried to him, and in a soft voice he asked if they might put some pillows behind his back and sit him up, so he could face his visitors.

The friars watched expectantly, doubtless wondering if their flowery speech had done the trick. But when John sat up, he eyed each of them, and his voice boomed. “I shall not die, but live, and yet declare the evil deeds of the friars.” The friars’ mouths dropped open. They were supposed to get a confession, not defiance.

But God was not done with John Wycliffe, and he would recover enough to finish his work.

Dumbstruck, the offended—and disappointed--friars hurried out of the room. Whatever rebuttal they’d planned had been preempted.

In the end, John Wycliffe did recover enough to resume his work, and his recovery allowed him to work on one of God’s biggest plans for his life: translating the Bible into English.

“For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people,” (1 Peter 2:15, NIV).

What can you do to make sure you stay on the right path—the path of God’s plan for your life? Flattery means nothing to a man determined to obey God.

“John Wycliffe.” English Bible History. Greatsite.com. Accessed August 10, 2020. https://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/john-wycliffe “John Wycliffe: Medieval ‘Protestant’.” Christianity Today. Christianitytoday.com. Accessed August 10, 2020. https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/moversandshakers/john-wycliffe.html. Murray, Thomas. The Life of John Wycliffe. Edinburg: John Boyd, 1829. Internet Archive. Web. 21 Jan. 2019. https://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/john-wycliffe.html

Story read by Chuck Stecker