John Wycliffe
71
God’s providence still further overruled events to give opportunity
for the growth of the Reformation. The death of Gregory was followed
by the election of two rival popes. Two conflicting powers, each
professedly infallible, now claimed obedience. (See Appendix notes
for pages 50 and 85.) Each called upon the faithful to assist him
in making war upon the other, enforcing his demands by terrible
anathemas against his adversaries, and promises of rewards in heaven
to his supporters. This occurrence greatly weakened the power of
the papacy. The rival factions had all they could do to attack each
other, and Wycliffe for a time had rest. Anathemas and recriminations
were flying from pope to pope, and torrents of blood were poured
out to support their conflicting claims. Crimes and scandals flooded
the church. Meanwhile the Reformer, in the quiet retirement of his
parish of Lutterworth, was laboring diligently to point men from the
contending popes to Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
The schism, with all the strife and corruption which it caused,
prepared the way for the Reformation by enabling the people to see
what the papacy really was. In a tract which he published, On the
Schism of the Popes, Wycliffe called upon the people to consider
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whether these two priests were not speaking the truth in condemning
each other as the anti-christ. “God,” said he, “would no longer suffer
the fiend to reign in only one such priest, but ... made division among
two, so that men, in Christ’s name, may the more easily overcome
them both.”—R. Vaughan, Life and Opinions of John de Wycliffe, vol.
2, p. 6.
Wycliffe, like his Master, preached the gospel to the poor. Not
content with spreading the light in their humble homes in his own
parish of Lutterworth, he determined that it should be carried to every
part of England. To accomplish this he organized a body of preachers,
simple, devout men, who loved the truth and desired nothing so much
as to extend it. These men went everywhere, teaching in the market
places, in the streets of the great cities, and in the country lanes. They
sought out the aged, the sick, and the poor, and opened to them the
glad tidings of the grace of God.
As a professor of theology at Oxford, Wycliffe preached the word
of God in the halls of the university. So faithfully did he present the
truth to the students under his instruction, that he received the title
of “the gospel doctor.” But the greatest work of his life was to be the