Well, our next pre-reformer, John Wycliffe, the morning star of the Reformation. In the 14th century, Oxford was the most outstanding university in the world, and John Wycliffe was its leading theologian and philosopher. Now, the bubonic plague also known as the Black Death, which killed a third of the population of Europe, led Wycliffe to search the scriptures to find salvation in Christ. Of course, he only had access to a Latin Bible, but you can imagine when one out of every three people he knows dropped dead in a matter of a few months. Makes people think about eternity and, where will I be when I die? As a professor at Oxford University, Wycliffe represented England in a controversy with the Pope. Now Wycliffe championed the independence of England from papal control. He supported King Edward III's refusal to pay taxes to the Pope. Now, it's only one step away from denying the political supremacy of the Pope over nations to questioning his spiritual supremacy over the churches. The Pope claims a triple crown. He claims power over the state, power over the church, and power over heaven. He's got the keys to the kingdom. That's part of the papal flag of the crossed keys. He claims to have the keys to determine who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. blasphemers. The royal favour which Wycliffe earned from this confrontation with the paper legates protected him later in life. Now, to give you the background, in the century before, there were the crusades, massive crusades, and England was very vigorously involved in especially the second and third crusades, and King Richard the Lionheart the only king of England called the Lionhearted. He was a phenomenally popular king, a brave king. Of his 11 years as king of England, he only spent four months in England. He spent the rest of the time on crusades and fighting the Turks, and very, very brave, effective man. When you go to the Palace of Westminster, which includes the House of Lords and the House of Commons in England, there's only two statues within the precinct, within the outside in the garden of Parliament. And one of them is of King Richard the Lionheart. He dominates the landscape there. Very brave, very bold. And it is King Richard the Lionheart, with his double-handed sword in his hand, who gave England its flag. The flag of England today, the Red Cross on white, or the St. George's Cross, is the personal flag of Richard the Lionheart on the Second Crusade. And that's why there's a lot of Muslims who campaign to, you've got to change the flag of England. Tough luck. Saudi Arabia's got a scimitar of Islamic sword there. Must they take the scimitar of their flag because of jihad? Well, the cross is in many flags of Europe, all in Scandinavian countries, Switzerland and so on too. Well, England's got the St. George's cross. That's the flag of England, which now is part of the Union Jack of the United Kingdom as well. Well, it's King Richard's flag. Well, King Richard was a great and courageous king, but his worthless, low-life brother, John I, who's also known as John the Worst, he is the one who messed up England while Richard was in the crusades. And unfortunately, King Richard, shortly after returning from the crusades, got shot from a castle front with a crossbow in the neck and died. and John is worthless brother. became king of England. And he was so bad, he was so reprehensible, and he did so many evil things. He even took the throne of the crown of England and laid it at the foot of the papal legate, the representative of the pope, and pleaded for help from the pope to protect him from his own barons and things like this. He took the crown of England, dressed in sackcloth, and laid it at the feet of the papal legate, the ambassador for the pope. He paid taxes to the pope. And the papal legate literally came and trampled, as indicated here, on the English gold. He rubbed his feet over it, indicating contempt for England, that the king of England, the crown of England, the gold of England is under the feet of the Pope's own ambassador. And so enter Robin Hood. He's not just a legend and a myth, but there's some truth. There was a Sir Robert of Loxley, and there's some truth that led to these extravagant legends, which is now part of English culture. And the reason is John was so bad that he made people, even noblemen, into outlaws. And this Sir Robert of Loxley had all of his possessions, lands, and castle taken from him. And he ended up fighting against the evils of King John and his Sheriff of Nottingham and all the others because of how the average English people were being crushed under John. And there's all kinds of films and books like Ivanhoe and so on that immortalize what is going on there. But that is the background to 1215, the barons of England rebelling with the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, writing Magna Carta, which called on the barons to unite, to rebel against the King of England, to force him to adhere to basic standards like freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, all these things which Magna Carta epitomizes. And so at point of the sword of these knights, King John the Worst was first forced to accede to Magna Carta, which is considered one of the most important legal documents in history, the first statute, the first written restriction of powers of government. And it's said in the History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Sir Winston Churchill that English people owe more to the vices of King John than to the virtues of any man. Now, what does he mean? Nobody would have forced someone as honorable and courageous as who'd sacrificed his life so much in the field as Richard. Nobody would have been forcing Richard to sign a Magna Carta. But this John was so bad that he forced everyone from the bishops through to the barons to unite together, forcing him to sign a document which limited his powers. And it's the first statute in history where a government And all future monarchs have to swear to uphold Magna Carta, even King Charles when he gets inducted and all of that crowned officially. he'll have to swear to uphold Magna Carta, which is part of the coronation oath. And of course, John was pretty angry, and within a few months, he was going against it. And this is a portrait of when he is fleeing the barons who are after him in just 1216, the next year. And he lists all of his crown jewels and possessions being lost in a flash flood in a river as he's trying to flee from justice. Well, at any rate, good was left in the form of Magna Carta. We are more to the vices of Prince and King John than to the virtue of any man. Well, fast forward now from the 12th century into the 13th century. And Wycliffe's patron and protector was John of Gaunt. John of Gaunt was an immensely important figure. This English prince was the most powerful political figure in late 14th century England. Gaunt, known in his day as the Duke of Lancaster, was effectively the Prime Minister, the Chancellor. He was the right-hand man for the King. During the last years of his father, King Edward III, who ruled a 50-year reign, but in the last years he was pretty senile, and so effectively it was his son who was running England in his name. That was John of Gaunt, or the Duke of Lancaster. Gaunt was a wise diplomat, a bold soldier, the epitome of chivalry, hard on his enemies, always faithful to what he believed was best for England, and during his tenure, he was involved in the Hundred Years' War with France, and he fought in all important battles, and he was always one of the most courageous and effective of those in battle. Now, in 1399, Gaunt's son ascended the throne as King Henry IV. In Wycliffe's book, Civil Dominion, he maintains that the ungodly have no right to rule. All authority is granted by God, but God does not grant any authority to those who are in rebellion to him. You cannot quote Romans 13, say all authority is given by God, and think that you can live in rebellion to God. All authority is delegated by God. It's answerable to God. All authority is limited authority under God. If you rebel against God, you lose your authority. I mean, it's just fair enough. As Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, you would have no authority over me unless it had been given to you from above. And so all authority is delegated. All authority is limited. Those who rule unjustly are in breach of the terms under which God delegates authority. Romans 13 says, for rulers hold no I hold no terror to those who do good, but to those who do evil. They are God's servant to do you good. And the word is deacon, they are God's deacon, God's servant to do you good. And so Romans 13 says more to the government than it says to the citizens. It says government is to be God's servant, God's deacon. They are to be an agent of wrath. to bring punishment on the wrongdoer, they to protect those who do good, they to punish those who do evil, they to be God's servant. And so the idea grew that just as the state is the minister of justice, symbolized by the sword, so the church is a minister of grace, symbolized by the keys of the kingdom. And both are under God, they're both God's servant, they're both God's deacon. The state is under God and the church is under God. It's not that the church is under the state, it's not that the state is under the church. Both the state and the church are separate, to be mutually supportive. The state should protect the church, and the church should pray for and advise and guide and speak prophetically to the state. But the state is not to try and do the work of the church. Church is not to try and do the work of the state. And you can see in society, when a church tried to rule a state, like the Roman Catholic did in the Middle Ages, bad. When a state tries to run a church, like Communist Soviet Union, catastrophic and disastrous. The church and state are both separate, minister of justice, minister of grace, both under God. And so wicked rulers have forfeited their right to rule. In fact, all those who lead blatantly sinful lives forfeit their rights in this world. So Wycliffe also taught that the clergy of his time was so corrupt that the secular authorities had the right, in fact the duty, to confiscate their properties. That's pretty revolutionary talk. The Roman Church at that time owned about one third of all the land in England, and they claimed exemption from taxation. Yet the Pope claimed the right to tax the King of England and the whole people of England to finance his own wars against Florence and all these other powers that were going on in Italy. So the Pope was running his own wars and taxing other people while he claimed his lands, which constitute a third of the Kingdom of England, were exempt from tax. Very bizarre. Wycliffe maintained that the English government had the God-given responsibility to correct the abuses of the church within its realm and to remove from office those churchmen who persisted in corruption and immorality, because the state is meant to be protecting the church. And if the church has been seized by corrupt, evil men who are not even regenerate, who despise God, your job is to protect the good Christian citizens of this land, subjects, they would have called them, the good Christian subjects of this land from abuse of false prophets, false teachers, false shepherds, and so on. So he follows reasoning. Wycliffe taught that a personal relationship with God is everything. Now remember, he's the number one philosopher in England. He's the number one professor of Oxford. He is the theologian who represented England in its controversies with the Pope. So he's got immense respect and stature in England. And now he teaches character is the fundamental basis of any leadership. You might recall during the days of President Bill Clinton, President with a small P, in inverted commas, they were saying your character is irrelevant if you're in political office. That's not the issue, it doesn't matter, it's your policies that matter. Well, I think you've seen again and again evidence that character does matter. If your character is bad and rotten and selfish and corrupt, then your leadership is corrupt. You can't say, well, he's got good policies, even though he's a corrupt character. A good tree doesn't bear bad fruit. A bad tree doesn't bear good fruit in general. So Wycliffe emphasized apostolic poverty, insisting those who claim to sit on St. Peter's chair should, like the apostle, be without silver and gold. It's apostle Peter who said to the layman in the temple, silver and gold have a nun. but such as I have given to thee, rise up and walk." To Wycliffe, those who claim to follow the apostles should live poor and humble lives spent in the service of the church, setting an example of holiness. Therefore, the Pope of Rome should be a shepherd to the flock and a preacher who brings men to Christ. Wycliffe denounced the worldliness and the luxury of the popes and the spiritual bankruptcy of the office of the papacy. The papacy had departed from the simple faith and the practice of Christ and his apostles. Wycliffe wrote, Christ is truth. He is the truth. The Pope is a principle of falsehood. Christ lived in poverty. The Pope lives for worldly magnificence. Christ refused temporal political dominion. The Pope seeks it. In his book, The Power of the Papacy, published in 1379, Wycliffe argued that papacy is an office instituted by man, not God. Where do you read of the papacy in the Bible? Jesus said, call no man on earth father. Where do you read of Holy Father in the Bible? In the upper room. I should say, after upper room, in the Garden of Gethsemane, our Lord Jesus prays to the Father as Holy Father. Holy Father is a title addressed to God the Father alone. You can't call a human being on earth Holy Father. Jesus said, no one on earth is good. except God alone. So where do you get His holiness and the Holy Father from? No pope's authority could possibly extend to secular government. Where do you see Peter telling secular government what they've got to do? For example, in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. The only authority that any pope might have would depend upon him having the moral character of the Apostle Peter. Any pope who doesn't follow Jesus Christ is anti-Christ. There he used the word anti-Christ. Wycliffe proclaimed Christ alone is the head of the church, the first to proclaim that in the modern era or since the time of the Middle Ages. The church on earth Wycliffe defined as the whole community of the elect, those chosen by God. The church is a body of Christ, a unity that knows nothing of popes and hierarchies and monks and friars and priests and nuns. Where do you read of those in the Bible? Nor can salvation of the elect be affected by masses, indulgences, penances, or any other device of what he called priestcraft. Hocus pocus. There is nothing in the Bible about transubstantiation, pardons, absolutions, worship of images, adoration of saints, treasury of merits laid up at the reserve of the pope to dish out as he needs, the distinction between venial sins and mortal sins, confession to a priest. Where do you read any of this in the Bible? Compulsory confession Wycliffe considered the bondage of Antichrist. Wycliffe declared the reading and the preach of God's word is of more value than administration of any sacrament. In a letter written by Wycliffe to Pope Urban VI, he maintained the gospel of Christ is the body of the law of God. Christ is true God and true man. The Roman pontiff is most bound to this law of the gospel. Christ's disciples are to be judged according to the imitation of Christ in their mortal life, not by some paper wall. Christ was the poorest of men during his earthly pilgrimage. He eschewed He rejected all worldly dominion. Never should any of the faithful imitate the Pope himself. Christ is an example, not the Pope. Nor any of the saints except insofar as he may have imitated the Lord Jesus Christ. We are not to follow saints except insofar as they followed Christ. The Pope should leave temporal dominion, secular dominion, political dominion to the secular arm. Ministry of justice. God has always taught me to obey God rather than man. In his letter, Wycliffe also refers to the deceitful council, the malicious council, anything contrary to the law of God as antichrist. So he's the first to be referring to the papacy as antichrist. In 1378, Wycliffe completed the book, The Truth of Holy Scripture. In it, he wrote, holy scripture is the preeminent authority for every Christian and the rule of faith and of all Christian perfection. It is necessary for all men, not for priests alone. Christ and his apostles taught the people in the language best known to them, whether Aramaic, Hebrew, or Greek. Therefore, the doctrine should not be in Latin, but in the vernacular. The more these are known, the more the local languages are known, communicating the scriptures. Believers should have the scriptures and language which they fully understand. Wycliffe taught that scripture contains everything that is necessary for our salvation. All other authorities must be tested by scripture. Christ's law is best and enough, and other laws men should not take but as branches of God's law. Therefore, Wycliffe supervised a handful of scholars at Oxford in translating the Latin Bible into the English language. This was the very first translation of the entire Bible into the English language. Now, the only source that Wycliffe's translators had to work with was a Latin handwritten manuscript of a translation made 1,000 years previously. Wycliffe is called the father of English prose because of the clarity and effectiveness of his writings and sermons, which did much to unify and shape the English language. In his foreword to the English translation of the Bible, he wrote, the Bible is given for the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That should ring some Pavlovian bell somewhere in the back of one's recesses. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Oh yes, isn't that something that Abraham Lincoln said? Yes, he actually plagiarized that from the 14th century writer in the 1300s. John Wycliffe wrote, the Bible is given for the government of the people, by the people, for the people. And it's a pity that at St. Gettysburg Address, Lincoln didn't refer to the Bible and refer to John Wycliffe writing in the Bible, but that was the source. From Oxford, Wycliffe trained and sent out the poor priests who were called the Lollards, which was doubtless a term of derision. because it was, it kind of can mean mumblers, but could also mean that they sing lullabies. It was a term of derision, these people are mumbling or they're singing or they sing lullabies, but they were called lullabies. They didn't call themselves the lullabies, but they were called lullabies. into fields, villages, marketplaces, churches. They preached the marketplace. They read the scriptures. They sang the scriptures in English to win people to Christ. They were the field workers of the Reformation. And this map shows in the lifetime of Wycliffe and Lollards before the death of Richard III, the blue areas were reached. The red were reached in the next century by the, you can see that plainly before the end of the 15th century, the red areas had been reached. So they really were the field workers of the Reformation. Some people said, every second person you meet on a road these days is a Lollard. So they were obviously very effective. These itinerant traveling evangelists became a tremendous power land. They spread knowledge of the scriptures throughout England. And so you can see what the Waldensians were doing on the continent, the Lollards were doing in England, laying foundations for the Reformation, which is what we want our field workers to be doing. to prepare the way through the literature and through preaching and teaching and leadership training to prepare a way for a new reformation. As a result of these activities and these teachings, one pope issued five bulls against John Wycliffe for heresy. What could be more heretical than translating the scriptures and preaching the gospel? The Catholic Church tried him three times and two popes summoned him to Rome. However, Wycliffe wisely refused each summons or he would have doubtless been killed, burned at stake, and the political protection of the Duke of Lancaster and Queen Anne kept Wycliffe alive and free. Here is a portrait of the Duke of Lancaster that John have brought, standing up and defending him while Wycliffe reclines here. What happened was that the Archbishop ordered Wycliffe to stand, to be charged. And John of Gaunt told him to remain seated and that he was not going to be tried by this authority and so on. And this symbolizes this very tumultuous attempted trial of Wycliffe. And you can see Wycliffe looks completely calm. He's got his prayer book by his side and John of Gaunt is protecting. Well, not only the Duke of Lancaster, but Queen Anne. kept Wycliffe alive and free. He was never imprisoned. However, his followers were hunted down, expelled from Oxford, and mercilessly persecuted. One of his followers, Sir John Oldcastle, was imprisoned, escaped, imprisoned again, and burned alive for being a Lollard. And he was a member of Parliament. He was a knight and noble. And there's a picture of the hangings and burnings of diverse persons counted for Lollards. in the fifth year of the reign of King Henry V. Now, King Henry V has a tremendous publicist marketer in William Shakespeare. We generally think of Henry V as a great king because, you know, he made the spectacular speech on St. Crispin's Day after the Battle of Agincourt, but he wasn't a friend of Christians. He sadly persecuted, or allowed under his realm, the persecution of the low lords very viciously. and this took part in what they called the Lollards' Pit. And today, you can go in England and find a pub called the Lollards' Pit, and here's the sign, the Lollards' Pit Freehouse, where Lollards were murdered for their faith. To get an idea of the scandal and controversy engendered by Wycliffe's reformation, we should note what was written by Henry Knighton, a Catholic chronicler. Christ gave his gospel to the clergy, but this master John Wycliffe translated the gospel from Latin into English, common to all and more open to laity and even to women. That woman can read the Bible. And so the pearl of the gospel is thrown before swine and trodden underfoot, and the jewel of the clergy has been turned to the jest of the laity, has become common. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Arundel, said that pestilence, the most wretched John Wycliffe of damnable memory, a child of the old devil, himself a child of or pupil of Antichrist, crowned his wickedness by translating the scriptures into the mother tongue. What an evil thing to do. Make the Bible available in English. If anyone here read the Bible in English today, shame on you. You should not read the Bible. A synod of clergy in 1408 decreed it is dangerous to translate the text of Holy Scripture. We decree and ordain that no one shall in future translate on his authority any text of scripture in the English tongue or into any other tongue, by way of book, booklets, or treaties. Everything done by Literature Africa is condemned by this archbishop. Nor shall any man read in public or in private that kind of book booklet or treaties now recently composed in the time of the said John Wickliffe on penalty of the greater excommunication. So the scriptures we've read even tonight in English would come under that condemnation. In 1382, at a church council called by Archbishop Courtney, 24 Wycliffe's teachings were condemned. During that council, there was an earthquake. A literal, physical earthquake shook the whole council. And Wycliffe and the Lollards interpreted the earthquake as a sign of God's displeasure with a corrupt, non-biblical Roman clergy. And it shook them, literally. Wycliffe scorned the idea that because Peter died in Rome, therefore, Every bishop of Rome is to be set above all of Christendom. By the same reasoning, he noted, the Muslim Turk might conclude that because they controlled Jerusalem, where Christ died, their muhalla had power over the pope. I mean, if Peter's death in Rome gives him supremacy over England, then surely the muhalla who's running Jerusalem has power over everyone, because isn't Jerusalem more important than Rome? Wycliffe attacked the corruptions, the superstitions, the abuses of the friars and monks. He exposed disempowered powers to forgive sins. Who can forgive sins? That's an important question. God alone can forgive sins. Christ alone is head of the church, and only God can forgive your sins. Any priest who claims he can forgive your sins is a fraud. So Wycliffe's field workers, the law lords, helped to prepare the way for the English Reformation, which came in the 16th century. They did this by reading the scriptures, preaching the gospel, singing the scriptures in English in marketplaces, fields, and homes throughout the land. Summoned to appear before a church council, Wycliffe rebuked the bishops for being priests of bar, selling blasphemy and adultery in the mass indulgences. He then walked out of the assembly and refused the summons from the pope. The best form of defense is attack. They couldn't even start their indictment of him, and he had attacked them. When Wycliffe was excluded from teaching at Oxford, He withdrew to the congregation at Lutterworth, and I've been to this church, in Leicestershire, where he devoted himself to writing during his few remaining years. Now, one reason why Wycliffe got away with all this, not just the political protection, but this was during the Great Schism, when suddenly Rome had two and then three popes, and there was a pope in Avignon, a French pope, and that was supported by Scotland, Spain, and France, and then you had the pope in Rome who was supported by the rest of Europe. And so while they were distracted, Wycliffe got on with the Reformation. Well, in 1428, 44 years after Wycliffe's death, by order of the Pope, they got around to digging up the bones of Wycliffe and burning them. They didn't manage to burn them during his lifetime, but they did the next best thing. They burned his bones. As one historian commented, they burned his bones to ashes and cast them into the swift, a neighboring brook running close by. Thus, the brook conveyed his ashes to the Avon, and the Avon into the seven, and the seven into the narrow seas, and they into the main ocean. And so the ashes of Wycliffe are symbolic of his doctrine, which is now spread throughout the world. Wycliffe was the father of the Reformation, its morning star. Wycliffe's writings and example inspired Jan Hus and Martin Luther. And so he is also one of the foundational pillars under the Martin Luther Memorial in Worms. The fear of the Lord is a beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One brings understanding. Lots we can learn from Wycliffe and on the Law Lords. In fact, they've got a full volume on Law Lordry and the Reformation in England. This is also part of the second chapter in the Grace Centre Reformation book.