Ecclesia Militans: Where we got the Bible

Why Wycliff was condemned

But here we are likely to be met with an objection by those who have not a very profound or accurate knowledge of the history of this question. ‘Why, then,’ they will say, ‘why, if the Catholic Church approved of the Bible being read in the tongue of the people, why did she condemn Wycliff, one of her own priests, for translating it into English, and forbid her people to read his version of the Sacred Scriptures?’ I answer, because John Wycliff’s version of the Bible was not a correct version, and because he was using it as a means of corrupting the people’s faith and of teaching them false doctrine; and it seems to me at least that that was a perfectly good reason for condemning it. For, please observe, that whilst the Church approves of the people reading the Scriptures in their own language, she also claims the right to see that they really have a true version of the Scriptures to read, and not a mutilated or false or imperfect or heretical version. She claims that she alone has the right to make translations from the original languages (Hebrew or Greek) in which the Bible was written; the right to superintend and supervise the work of translating; the right of appointing certain priests or scholars to undertake the work; the right of approving or condemning versions and translations which are submitted to her for her judgment. She declares she will not tolerate that her children should be exposed to the danger of reading copies of Scripture which have changed or falsified something of the original Apostolic writing; which have added something or left out something; which have notes and explanations and prefaces and prologues that convey false doctrine or false morals. Her people must have the correct Bible, or no Bible at all.

Rome claims that the Bible is her book; that she has preserved it and perpetuated it, and that she alone knows what it means; that nobody else has any right to it whatsoever, or any authority to declare what the true meaning of it is. She therefore has declared that the work of translating it from the original languages, and of explaining it, and of printing it and publishing it, belongs strictly to her alone; and that, if she cannot nowadays prevent those outside her fold from tampering with it and misusing it, at least she will take care that none of her own children abuse it or take liberties with it; and hence she forbids any private person to attempt to translate it into the common language without authority from ecclesiastical superiors, and also forbids the faithful to read any editions but such as are approved by the Bishops. All this the Catholic Church does out of reverence for God’s Holy Word. She desires that the pure, uncorrupted Gospel should be put in her people’s hands as it came from the pen of the Apostles and Evangelists. She dreads lest the faithful should draw down upon themselves a curse by believing for Gospel the additions and changes introduced by foolish and sinful men to support some pet theories of their own; just as a mother would fear lest her children should, along with water or milk, drink down some poison that was mixed up with it. There are then, let it be clearly understood, versions and versions of Holy Scriptures: some that are correct and guaranteed by the Church; others that simply bristle with mistakes and falsities. The former are permitted to Catholics to read and study; the latter, it need hardly be said are utterly forbidden. Now, to the latter class belonged the version of John Wycliff, first put into people’s hands in 1382. A very slight knowledge of the man himself and of his opinions and of his career might persuade any reasonable person that a version made by him was the very last that would be allowed to Catholics.

(2) What are the simple facts about the man? He was born in 1320, became a priest and theologian and lecturer at Oxford; and at first caused notoriety by taking part with the State against the claims of the Pope in regard to tribute money and benefices. But in course of a few years he went further and began to oppose the Church not only in matters of policy or government (a course which might conceivably at times be pardonable), but in the things of faith. Being accused of preaching novel and uncommon doctrines, he was, at the instance of Pope Gregory XI, summoned before his Archbishop in 1378, and inhibited from teaching any further on the matters in dispute. No more proceedings were taken against him (though he did not desist from his anti-Papal teaching) until 1381 when again he was making himself notorious. He attacked the friars and Religious Orders with great bitterness; impugned transubstantiation, and seemed to advocate the theory that was afterwards peculiarly Luther’s, ridiculed Indulgences and flooded the country with pamphlets and tracts reeking with heresy. He was, in short, a kind of Lollard. ‘The Lollards’ (says the National Cyclopedia) ‘were a religious sect which rose in Germany at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and differed in many points of doctrine from the Church of Rome, more especially as regards the Mass, Extreme Unction, and atonement for sin.’

That, of course, is a very bald and crude statement of their tenets. The extent of their ‘differences from the Church of Rome’ will appear in a clearer light if we consider the ‘Lollards Petition to Parliament’, 1395. It contained among other novelties the famous ‘twelve conclusions’ against the temporal possessions of the Church, the celibacy of the clergy, and all vows of chastity; against exorcisms and blessings of inanimate objects; transubstantiation and prayers for the dead; pilgrimages; compulsory auricular confession; veneration of images; and the holding of secular offices by priests. Many also objected to the taking of oaths, denied the necessity of Baptism for salvation, held marriage to be a mere civil contract, and spoke of sacramentals as ‘jugglery’. (See Chambers Cyclopedia and The Catholic Cyclopedia, under ‘Lollards’.) Now, you may sympathize with these amiable persons if you like, but you would hardly expect the Catholic Church of that century (or of any century) to sympathize with them, and still less to suffer them to issue her Scriptures expurgated according to their ideas. But thus did John Wycliff. ‘He held views,’ (says the devout Anglican, Dore, in his most interesting work Old Bibles), ‘he held views which, if carried into practice, would have been totally subversive of morality and good order, but he never separated himself from the [Catholic] Church of England’. Another Anglican says the Lollards were political martyrs rather than religious; that their actions tended to a Revolution in the state as well as in the Church; and that both civilians and ecclesiastics regarded their principles as subversive of all order in things temporal as well as things spiritual. (Dr. Hook; Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury.) Can we be surprised, then, at reading that in 1382, in consequence of the monstrous heresies that he was now spreading, John Wycliff was again put on trial by the Ecclesiastical Courts, and that 22 propositions taken from his works were condemned? Thereupon he retired to Lutterworth, of which he had been Rector for many years. He was gently dealt with, and his declining years were not harassed by any of the persecution and torture which it pleases some to depict him as suffering; and he died, after a stroke of paralysis while hearing Mass, on 31^st December, 1384. In later years, two separate Councils, one at London, the other at Constance, selected 45 propositions from the teaching of Wycliff, and condemned them, declaring some to be notoriously heretical; others erroneous; others scandalous and blasphemous; others seditious and rash; and the rest offensive to pious ears.

(3) Now, I ask any unprejudiced person, was this the kind of man to undertake the translation of the Bible into the common language of the people? Was he likely to be trusted by the Church at that time to produce a version thoroughly Catholic and free from all error or corruption – a man, notoriously eccentric, guilty of heretical and suspicious teaching, attacking the Church in its authorities from the Pope down to the friars, and associated with sectaries abroad who were at once revolutionaries and heretics? The question answers itself. You may cry out that Wycliff was right and Rome was wrong in doctrine; that he was a glorious Reformer and ‘morning star of the Reformation’, and that he taught the pure word of the Lord as against the abominable traditions of the Scarlet Woman of Babylon. But I humbly submit that that is not the point. The point is this: you ask why did the Catholic Church condemn Wycliff’s version, and at the same time allow other versions of the Bible in English? And I am showing you why. I am telling you that Wycliff was heretical in the eyes of Rome; that he produced a heretical version for the purpose of attacking the Catholic Church of that day, and of spreading his heresies; and that to blame the Church for forbidding him to do so, and for condemning his version, is about as sensible as to blame an author for interdicting someone else from publishing a copy of his work that was full of errors and absurdities, and contained opinions and sentiments which he detested. The Catholic Church certainly could never allow a version of Holy Scripture, (which is her own book) like that of Wycliff to go forth unchallenged, as if it were correct and authoritative, and bore her sanction and approval. As well might we expect the British Sovereign to sanction some hideous caricature from a comic paper as a true and faithful picture of his coronation.

(4) We do not shrink from giving John Wycliff and Nicholas of Hereford an equal share of praise for their laborious work of translating the whole of the Bible into the English tongue, if the work was really theirs, (which some scholars like Gasquet, however, have doubted). What we assert is that it was a bad translation, and hence useless, and worse than useless, for Catholics. It was condemned and forbidden to be used by a Decree of Archbishop Arundel at Oxford in 1408, which also prohibited the translation of any part of the Bible into English by any unauthorized person, and the reading of any version before it was formally approved. This was a natural and wise and necessary decree. It did not forbid the reading of any of the old approved versions of Scripture before Wycliff, as we have seen already. Nor does it forbid new versions to be made or read, if under proper supervision and approval by ecclesiastical superiors. It only banned false and unauthorized translations like Wycliff’s; and Protestant writers, like Dr. Hook, have often declared their belief that it was not from hostility to a translated Bible as such that the Church condemned Wycliff; and that she never would have issued her decree, if his sole purpose had been the edification and sanctification of the readers. It was only when the design of the Lollards was discovered, and Wycliff’s subtle plot unmasked of disseminating their pestilential errors through his translation, that the Church’s condemnation fell upon him. A great authority even than Dr. Hook, I mean the veteran historian, Dr. James Gairdner – an English Churchman who spent more than 60 of his four score years in research among the State papers of England dealing with the period about the Reformation, and who was recognized as easily the most profound and comprehensive student of those times – Dr. Gairdner, I say, expressed some very strong conclusions to which his historical enquiries have driven him in regard to the Wycliffite revolt and its results, and about Rome and the Bible. (See his book Lollardy and the Reformation, reviewed in December Month, 1908.) ‘The truth is,’ he says, ‘the Church of Rome was not at all opposed to the making of translations of Scripture or to placing them in the hands of the laity under what were deemed proper precautions. It was only judged necessary to see that no unauthorized or corrupt translations got abroad; and even in this matter it would seem the authorities were not roused to special vigilance till they took alarm at the diffusion of Wycliffite translations in the generation after his death.’ (Vol. I, p. 105.) Again, ‘To the possession by worthy lay men of licensed translations the Church was never opposed; but to place such a weapon as an English Bible in the hands of men who have no regard for authority, and who would use it without being instructed how to use is properly, was dangerous not only to the souls of those who read, but to the peace and order of the Church,’ (p. 117). From a deep, calm scholar like Dr. Gairdner words like these are more valuable than whole volumes of partisan and unenlightened assertions from anti-Catholic controversialists; and (as Father Thurston suggests) we cannot but feel grateful to this honored old scholar in the evening of his days for thus vigorously and boldly identifying himself with an unpopular cause. Simply honesty of purpose and love of truth compelled him, out of his vast and prolonged studies, to expose the revolutionary character of the Wycliffite and Lollard rebellions against Rome, as well as to sympathize with the glorious martyrs like More and Fisher, and to defend the Catholic authorities like Archbishop Warham and Bishops Bonner and Tunstall, and to vindicate the good reputation and piety of the monasteries so cruelly suppressed by Henry VIII. But we are anticipating. I was speaking of the Church’s condemnation of Wycliff’s undesired and undesirable version.

(5) This was the first time in England that the Church ever felt herself obliged to lay some restrictions on Bible reading in the vulgar tongue; and that fact in itself is surely sufficient to prove that there must have been some very special reason for her acting os differently from what she had been accustomed to do before. Her action at this time was precisely similar to the action of the Church in France nearly 200 years previously. Then (that is in the 12^th and 13^th centuries) some heretics called Waldenses and Albigenses revolted against all authority, and overran the country, spreading their wild and blasphemous doctrines. They taught, among other enormities, that there were two Gods (creator of the good and creator of the evil), that there was no Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Eucharist, that there was no forgiveness for sins after baptism, and that there was no resurrection of the body. They declared oaths unlawful, condemned marriage, and called the betting of children a crime. All these impieties they professed to base on Holy Scripture. Consequently, to save her people from being ensnared and led away, the Church in Toulouse, 1229, passed an enactment forbidding to laymen the possession of the sacred books, especially in the vernacular, though anyone might possess a Breviary or a Psalter or Office of our Blessed Lady for devotion. Will anyone blame the Church for taking these measures to suppress the poisonous heresy and prevent its spreading, and to save the Sacred Scriptures from being made the mere tool and war-cry of a certain sect? In like manner we may not blame the Church at Oxford under Archbishop Arundel for her famous constitution against Wycliffite and other false versions of the Bible, but rather admire and applaud her wisdom and zeal fro the purity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And in the same way we may examine and investigate the action of the Church in various countries and in various centuries as to her legislation in regard to Bible reading among the people; and wherever we find some apparently severe or unaccountable prohibition of it, we shall on enquiry find that it was necessitated by the foolish or sinful conduct on the part either of some of her own people, or of bitter and aggressive enemies who literally forced her to forbid what in ordinary circumstances she would not only have allowed but have approved and encouraged. It is true that the approving or condemning of Bible reading in particular centuries or countries is a matter of policy and of discipline on the part of the local Catholic authorities, and depends largely upon the prudence and wisdom and zeal of the Bishops lest over them, and does not necessarily involve any action on the part o the Pope as Supreme Head of the Church; and hence one cannot declare infallibly off-hand that there has never been a case of unwise or indiscreet legislation in regard to the matter at the hands of individual Bishops. I do not know of any case myself; and never read of any instance where Bishops have been proved in the course of time to have made mistakes in issuing decrees about the matter. But supposing some mistake had been made, that would not affect the general principle on which the ecclesiastical authorities always are supposed to act; and in the light of Rome’s principle, and her clear and definite attitude towards the Bible as her own Book, we may safely challenge anyone to convict her either of inconsistency or hatred towards God’s written Word. Once grasp her doctrinal position in regard to the Bible and the Rule of Faith, and you will have no difficulty in accounting for her uncompromising hostility to versions like Wycliff’s, and for her action in condemning the Bible Societies which spread abroad a mutilated, corrupt, and incomplete copy of the Holy Scriptures, (generally accompanied by tracts) with the design of undermining the faith of Catholics.

Chapter Twelve