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The Great Controversy 1888
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
whether these two priests were not speaking the truth in condemning
each other as the antichrist. “The fiend,” said he, “no longer reigns in
one but in two priests, that men may the more easily, in Christ’s name,
overcome them both.”
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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
translation of the Scriptures into the English language. In a work on
“The Truth and Meaning of Scripture,” he expressed his intention to
translate the Bible, so that every man in England might read, in the
language in which he was born, the wonderful works of God.
But suddenly his labors were stopped. Though not yet sixty years
of age, unceasing toil, study, and the assaults of his enemies, had told
upon his strength, and made him prematurely old. He was attacked
by a dangerous illness. The tidings brought great joy to the friars.