Wycliffe Quotes

I believe that in the end truth will conquer

Thomas More still has some credit with the king. And he has written him a letter, saying,” he manages to smile, “that I am Wycliffe, Luther and Zwingli rolled together and tied up in string—one reformer stuffed inside another, as for a feast you might parcel a pheasant inside a chicken inside a goose.

Journalists obsess about their leads. Don Wycliff, a winner of prizes for editorial writing, says, “I’ve always been a believer that if I’ve got two hours in which to write a story, the best investment I can make is to spend the first hour and forty-five minutes of it getting a good lead, because after that everything will come easily.

English was the language of peasants. Therefore, in proposing that the Bible should be translated, Wycliffe was touching on issues of class prejudice which still confound society in England but which were then of exceptional sensitivity.”15

The true Christian was intended by Christ to prove all things by the Word of God: all churches, all ministers, all teaching, all preaching, all doctrines, all sermons, all writings, all opinions, all practices. These are his marching orders. Prove all by the Word of God; measure all by the measure of the Bible; compare all with the standard of the Bible; weigh all in the balances of the Bible; examine all by the light of the Bible; test all in the crucible of the Bible. That which cannot abide the fire of the Bible, reject, refuse, repudiate, and cast away. This is the flag which he nailed to the mast. May it never be lowered!

Scripture is infallible; other teachers... are liable to lead into error. To place above Scripture and prefer to it, human traditions, doctrines, and ordinances, is nothing but an act of blind presumption." From John Wycliff's 'Of the Truth of Holy Scripture', 1378 A.D.

Out of the corner of his eye Wycliff saw the little maid’s cheeks turn pink. He’d forgotten how adorably prudish and modest English women could be.

If the cross of Christ, the nails, spear, and crown of thorns are to be honoured, then why not honour Judas's lips, if only they could be found?

Surrounded by a sea of people, I felt more alone than ever.

I at this writing am an old man, only three years short of my three score and ten. And they tell me that Wycliffe’s bones have been dug up and burned and cast into the river that leads to the sea. The Church--she thinks--has had her revenge. But, as I hear it, Wycliffe’s writings had already touched one man in Bohemia, John Huss, whom the Church burned several years ago. And though both Wycliffe and Huss be dead, There are rumors of unrest in that small country, unrest caused by those who seek true religion. In England, King Henry rules hand in glove with the Pope, but not forever, I think. We are still here--the Lollards, I mean. Did you guess it? Yes, I have become a “poor priest.” And I will tell you this: the writings of Wycliffe have been driven out of Oxford, but they can be found in every other nook in England. Indeed, many a time I have talked with an Oxford scholar on the road and have seen God open his heart to the truth. This is what Saint Paul meant when he spoke of Christians as being pressed but never pinned. The Church rages, but the truth goes on. Many a stout English yeoman embraces it in these days and leads his family in true godly worship. John Wycliffe was our morning star. When all was darkest and England lay asleep in the deadly arms of the papacy, God sent him to us. The Scripture has come to England. What will it hold back? Soon--though perhaps not in my lifetime-- the dawn will break, and there will be a new day in England.

No more peeping through keyholes! No more mas turbating in the dark! No more public confessions! Unscrew the doors from their jambs! I want a world where the vagina is represented by a crude, honest slit, a world that has feeling for bone and contour, for raw, primary colors, a world that has fear and respect for its animal origins. I’m sick of looking at cunts all tickled up, disguised, deformed, idealized. Cunts with nerve ends exposed. I don’t want to watch young virgins masturbating in the privacy of their boudoirs or biting their nails or tearing their hair or lying on a bed full of bread crumbs for a whole chapter. I want Madagascan funeral poles, with animal upon animal and at the top Adam and Eve, and Eve with a crude, honest slit between the legs. I want hermaphrodites who are real hermaphrodites, and not make-believes walking around with an atrophied penis or a dried-up cunt. I want a classic purity, where dung is dung and angels are angels. The Bible a la King James, for example. Not the Bible of Wycliffe, not the Vulgate, not the Greek, not the Hebrew, but the glorious, death-dealing Bible that was created when the English language was in flower, when a vocabulary of twenty thousand words sufficed to build a monument for all time. A Bible written in Svenska or Tegalic, a Bible for the Hottentots or the Chinese, a Bible that has to meander through the trickling sands of French is no Bible-it is a counterfeit and a fraud. The King James Version was created by a race of bone-crushers. It revives the primitive mysteries, revives rape, murder, incest, revives epilepsy, sadism, megalomania, revives demons, angels, dragons, leviathans, revives magic, exorcism, contagion, incantation, revives fratricide, regicide, patricide, suicide, revives hypnotism, anarchism, somnambulism, revives the song, the dance, the act, revives the mantic, the chthonian, the arcane, the mysterious, revives the power, the evil, and the glory that is God. All brought into the open on a colossal scale, and so salted and spiced that it will last until the next Ice Age. A classic purity, then-and to hell with the Post Office authorities! For what is it enables the classics to live at all, if indeed they be living on and not dying as we and all about us are dying? What preserves them against the ravages of time if it be not the salt that is in them? When I read Petronius or Apuleius or Rabelais, how close they seem! That salty tang! That odor of the menagerie! The smell of horse piss and lion’s dung, of tiger’s breath and elephant’s hide. Obscenity, lust, cruelty, boredom, wit. Real eunuchs. Real hermaphrodites. Real pricks. Real cunts. Real banquets! Rabelais rebuilds the walls of Paris with human cunts. Trimalchio tickles his own throat, pukes up his own guts, wallows in his own swill. In the amphitheater, where a big, sleepy pervert of a Caesar lolls dejectedly, the lions and the jackals, the hyenas, the tigers, the spotted leopards are crunching real human boneswhilst the coming men, the martyrs and imbeciles, are walking up the golden stairs shouting Hallelujah!

If you share my frustration with the disparity between the church as Scripture talks about her and what we see reflected in our religious institutions, you’re not alone. You’re standing in a long line that includes the likes of Francis of Assisi, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Wesley, and nameless others who dared to ask the difficult questions and struggled with the uncomfortable answers.

Here’s a bargain. You can take him to a sermon if you don’t take him to a brothel.” Mercy, he suspects, comes from a family where John Wycliffe’s writings are preserved and quoted, where the scriptures in English have always been known; scraps of writing hoarded, forbidden verses locked in the head. These things come down the generations, as eyes and noses come down, as meekness or the capacity for passion, as muscle power or the need to take a risk.

If we refuse to cry, or mourn, or feel, then before too long, our souls would dry up. They would wither away and leave in their place a wide emptiness that cannot be filled. We would become not just broken, but ugly. And then we wouldn’t be able to feel anything at all.

Assim, esse riacho [Swift] conduziu as cinzas ao Avon, o Avon ao Severn, o Severn a mares estreitos e, estes, ao grande oceano. Dessa maneira, as cinzas de Wycliffe são o emblema de sua doutrina, que hoje está espalhada pelo mundo inteiro.

He expressed his own thoughts and teachings thus: “the holy universal Christian Church is a fellowship of the saints and a brotherhood of many pious and believing men who with one accord honour one Lord, one God, one faith and one baptism.” It is, he said, “the assembly of all Christian men on earth wherever they may be in the whole circle of the world”; or again, “a separated communion of a number of men that believe in Christ”, and explained,—“there are two churches, which in fact cover each other, the general and the local church,… the local church is a part of the general Church which includes all men who show that they are Christians.” As to community of goods, he said it consists in our always helping those brethren who are in need, for what we have is not our own but is entrusted to us as stewards for God. He considered that on account of sin the power of the sword had been committed to earthly Governments, and that therefore it was to be submitted to in the fear of God. Such gatherings were frequently held in Basle, where Hubmeyer and his friends zealously searched the Holy Scriptures and considered the questions brought before them. Basle was a great centre of spiritual activity. The printers were not afraid to issue books branded as heretical, and from their presses such works as those of Marsiglio of Padua and of John Wycliff went out into the world.

The greater part of Europe became the scene of the cruel execution of many of its best citizens. Records of burnings abound. In 1391, 400 persons were brought before the courts in Pomerania and Brandenburg accused of heresy; in 1393, 280 were imprisoned in Augsburg; in 1395, about 1000 persons were “converted” to the Catholic faith in Thuringia, Bohemia, and Moravia; the same year 36 were burnt in Mainz; in 1397, in Steier, about 100 men and women were burnt; two years later 6 women and one man were burnt in Nüremberg. The Swiss cities suffered similar atrocities. During this time Pope Boniface IX issued an edict ordering that all suitable means should be used to destroy the plan of heretical wickedness. He quotes from a report in which those whom he calls his “beloved sons the inquisitors” in Germany, describe the Beghards, Lollards and Schwestrionen, who call themselves “the Poor” and “Brethren” and say that for more than 100 years this heresy has been forbidden under the same forms, and that in different towns several of this obstinate sect have been burnt almost every year. In 1395 an inquisitor, Peter Pilichdorf, boasted that it had been possible to master these heretics. Bohemia and England were places of refuge for many who fled to them, the teaching of Wycliff in England and of Jerome and Huss in Bohemia having powerfully influenced those countries.

John Wycliff, the most eminent scholar in Oxford, became prominent in this conflict. His attacks on the corrupt practices of the Church drew him at first into the political struggle then so fiercely raging; but those who thought to use him as an important ally for their own purposes, fell from him as they came to see the consequences of the principles he taught, and he became the leader of those who sought deliverance in a return to Scripture and in the following of Christ. In his treatise, “The Kingdom of God” and in other writings, he shows that “the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only source of true religion,” and that “the Scripture alone is truth”. The doctrine he called “Dominion” established the fact of the personal relation and direct responsibility of each man to God. All authority, he taught, is from God, and all who exercise authority are responsible to God for the use of what He has committed to them. Such doctrine, directly denying the prevailing ideas as to the irresponsible authority of Popes and Kings, and the necessity for the mediatory powers of the priesthood, aroused violent opposition, which was intensified when in 1381 Wycliff published his denial of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, thus striking at the root of that supposed miraculous power of the priests which had so long enabled them to dominate Christendom.

But his most important work was that which gave the people of England access to the source of true doctrine. His translation of the Bible wrought a revolution in English thought and the English Bible has proved one of the most effectual powers for righteousness that the world has known. Writing and circulating popular tracts and organizing bands of travelling preachers, Wycliff found to be the most effective means of spreading the teachings of Scripture. So great was his influence that all the power of his bitter enemies could not accomplish more than to drive him from Oxford to his retreat in Lutterworth, which became a centre from which instruction and encouragement went out over the country.

An ABC tearoom, 1992 vintage.

Whoever reads the Scriptures in ‘Wycliffe’s learning’ [the mother tongue, English], will forfeit land, cattle, goods, body, and life from themselves and their heirs forever; and be condemned as heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and complete traitors to England.” That was man’s reward to the true believers in Christ, but their Lord’s reward to them was an everlasting crown of righteousness.

The English Bible has often been called a preacher’s Bible. Written to be spoken, written to spread the word in the language of the land, a cause for which Wycliffe and Tyndale and hundreds of other English Christians had lived and died.

didn’t use excerpts from the Wycliffe Bible because of the Old English being difficult to understand. Neither did I substitute it with a more common translation. The reason being that the Latin Vulgate was later discovered later to have flaws, which is why modern translators defer to the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

Wycliffe’s remains were burned on a little bridge that spanned the River Swift, which was a tributary of the Avon. His ashes were thrown into the stream. Soon afterwards a Lollard prophecy appeared: The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea. And Wycliffe’s dust shall spread abroad Wide as the waters be. In English.

As a sodality, Wycliffe cannot be criticized for not administering sacraments or caring for the elderly any more than one could criticize True Value Hardware for not repairing a bridge or paving a road. The reason is that a modality and a sodality represent two fundamentally distinct structures.

This Master John Wycliffe translated from Latin into English - the Angle, not the angel speech - and so the pearl of the Gospel is scattered abroad and trodden underfoot by swine”.

If it’s true that “all roads lead to Rome,” then there needs to be somebody standing at the crossroads, directing traffic. It is true, and there was such a man. His name was Eugene Nida, a founding organizer of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a founding member of Wycliffe Bible Translators, Executive Translations Secretary of the American Bible Society, a founding delegate of the United Bible Societies, and an adjunct professor at the Jesuit Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.

be ye renewed [or made new again] in the spirit of your soul; 24 and clothe ye the new man, which is made after God in rightwiseness and (in the) holiness of truth. [and clothe ye the new man, which after God is made of nought (or out of nothing) in rightwiseness and holiness of truth.]

to mention it to Captain Beale because I

John Wycliffe ha traducido el evangelio, que Cristo confió al clero y a los doctores de la Iglesia, para que pudieran administrarlo convenientemente a los laicos... Wycliffe lo ha traducido del latín al inglés, que no es precisamente el idioma de los ángeles. Como resultado, lo que antes solo estaba en el conocimiento de estudiados clérigos y de personas de buen entendimiento, ahora se ha convertido en algo corriente y al alcance de los seglares; de hecho, hasta las mujeres pueden leerlo. Como resultado, las perlas del evangelio han sido esparcidas y echadas a los cerdos.13

I have often thought ’tis better to say later what one should have said than to unsay later what one should not have said.

Knowledge is power, and knowledge known to all is power diluted.

Yes, he was wonderful and noble and charismatic—but he was also thoughtless and greedy and unfeeling.

Voices all around continued to caress me, but they were drowned out by him winding his way through the crowd, unnoticed, until he was close enough to slip me a small piece of paper and then disappear from sight.

John Wycliffe had argued – and indeed very persuasively – that the Bible should be translated into English, so that any man might read its words for himself.

(two of the most expensive things with which men may entertain themselves being war and women).

Deveraux asked, “Do you remember how irate Doctor Wycliffe became whenever a student stated a proposition and then picked a bible passage that would support it?” “Oh yes, quoting a text out of its intellectus is the worst kind of cart-before-horse and is exactly what accurate translations are meant to curtail, for you cannot stoop to such lazy and selfish beliefs if you understand the bible’s broad themes and their supporting passages. If you do put your ideas before God’s, you are not only practicing idolatry by following a false god but you are stealing the true God’s bible.

The darkness of evil may have its hour, but the eternal day of goodness will always prevail.

Then why do I still make you blush?” Emma felt an even deeper flush creeping up her cheeks. “I may not be able to keep myself from blushing in sympathetic embarrassment at your exceeding arrogance, Your Grace, but don’t think that means I intend to turn tail and run.” Wycliffe lifted an eyebrow. “But I don’t want you to run,” he said softly. “Where would the fun be in that?” Oh, goodness. She needed to attend her own class on rake avoidance again.

first century CE, the Bible was available in Latin and therefore became

John Wycliffe was born around 1328 in England, and in many truly remarkable ways he prefigured Luther and Luther’s eventual reforms. Wycliffe agitated for a vernacular translation of the Bible so that the people could read God’s Word, and he himself translated most of the New Testament into English—although of course in the fourteenth century it was not the so-yclept Modern English of our own time but the Middle English of Chaucer.* Thus John 3:16 was rendered as “For God louede so the world, that he Ȝaf his oon bigetun sone, that ech man that bileueth in him perische not, but haue euerlastynge lijf.” Wycliffe also worked with others to translate the Old Testament and was as passionate in his day as Luther would be in his own that everyone should know the Gospels in his own spoken language. “Christ and his apostles taught the people in that tongue that was best known to them,” he said. “Why should men not do so now?

Another reformer before Luther was the Bohemian Jan Hus, who was born in 1369 and became a theologian at Prague University. Hus was greatly influenced by Wycliffe and spoke strongly against indulgences and the papacy, specifically criticizing the pope for his use of military power, holding that the church could not wield the sword. Hus was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance and suffered burning at the stake in 1415. But his followers, known as Hussites, continued the movement long after his death.

Monsters and mystery are the seeds of religion and religion is the adult fairy tale,

Wycliffe’s and Huss’s views were the basic views of the Reformation which came later, and these views continued to exist in parts of the north of Europe even while the Renaissance was giving its humanist answers in the south.

Truly aware I am that the doctrine of the gospel may for a season be trampled underfoot. Equally sure I am, that it shall never be extinguished; for it is the recording of truth itself.” —John Wycliffe

There was a large measure of hypocrisy in the way William had scolded me yesterday for playing with a man’s heart, only to insist upon teaching me how to do it well.