The opinions of the later Lollards can best be gathered from the
learned and unfortunate Pecock, who wrote his elaborate _Repressor_
against the "Bible-men," as he calls them. He summed up their
doctrines under eleven heads: they condemn the having and using images
in the churches, the going on pilgrimages to the memorial or "mynde
places" of the saints, the holding of landed possessions by the
clergy, the various ranks of the hierarchy, the framing of
ecclesiastical laws and ordinances by papal and episcopal authority,
the institution of religious orders, the costliness of ecclesiastical
decorations, the ceremonies of the mass and the sacraments, the taking
of oaths and the maintaining that war and capital punishment are
lawful. When these points are compared with the Lollard Conclusions of
1395, it is plain that Lollardy had not greatly altered its opinions
after fifty-five years of persecution. All the articles of Pecock's
list, save that on capital punishment, are to be found in the
Conclusions; and, although many writers have held that Wycliffe's own
views differed greatly from what have been called the "exaggerations
of the later and more violent Lollards," all these views may be traced
to Wycliffe himself. Pecock's idea was that all the statements which
he was prepared to impugn came from three false opinions or
"trowings," viz. that no governance or ordinance is to be esteemed a
law of God which is not founded on Scripture, that every humble-minded
Christian man or woman is able without "fail and defaut" to find out
the true sense of Scripture, and that having done so he ought to
listen to no arguments to the contrary; he elsewhere adds a fourth (i.
102), that if a man be not only meek but also keep God's law he shall
have a true understanding of Scripture, even though "no man ellis
teche him saue God." These statements, especially the last, show us
the connexion between the Lollards and those mystics of the 14th
century, such as Tauler and Ruysbroeck, who accepted the teachings of
Nicholas of Basel, and formed themselves into the association of the
Friends of God.
The persecutions were continued down to the reign of Henry VIII., and
when the writings of Luther began to appear in England the clergy were
not so much afraid of Lutheranism as of the increased life they gave to
men who for generations had been reading Wycliffe's _Wickette_. "It is,"
wrote Bishop Tunstall to Erasmus in 1523, "no question of pernicious
novelty, it is only that new arms are being added to the great band of
Wycliffite heretics." Lollardy, which continued down to the Reformation,
did much to shape the movement in England. The subordination of clerical
to laic jurisdiction, the reduction in ecclesiastical possessions, the
insisting on a translation of the Bible which could be read by the
"common" man were all inheritances bequeathed by the Lollards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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