For the regeneration of the Church Wycliffe turned from the hierarchy to the laity. That which makes a man a member of the Church is his own personal sanctity, and the Church therefore consists of those predestined to salvation, of none others.[144] The mere fact of being a pope or a cardinal, for example, is nothing. The Church can dispense with bad popes.[145] They are antichrist. _Per contra_, a layman might be pope, however unlearned, even if unordained, so long as God had chosen him.[146] It is not man’s appointment, but God’s choosing—that is to say, spiritual excellence—that matters. The extraordinarily radical character of these theories is obvious. They were subversive of the whole contemporary conception of the character of the Church. For a universal society Wycliffe substituted a small body of the elect. In all this he was emphasizing the spiritual nature of religion, as an inward force, the possession of the individual soul. Confession, he declared, was superfluous for the contrite;[147] no man could be excommunicated unless he had first been excommunicated _by himself_, and no prelate ought ever to excommunicate anyone unless he knew that he had already been excommunicated by God.[148] Like Luther after him, then, Wycliffe insisted upon the inner reality of religion, of which the individual is conscious in the depths of his own being. Like Luther also he insisted on the necessity of appeal direct to the Scriptures, as to the supreme authority for the Christian life. As he looked to the laity to reform the Church, so it was necessary that they should be well acquainted with its text. The translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue became, therefore, an integral part of Wycliffe’s scheme. There were extant in Wycliffe’s day portions of the Scriptures in the vernacular.[149] He conceived the idea of translating all. Probably he himself translated only the Gospels, or perhaps the whole of the New Testament; one of his disciples did the translation of the Old Testament, and may have completed most of it before Wycliffe’s own death.[150] The significance of this great undertaking lies partly in its completeness; but even more in the intention with which it was adopted. The laity must be able to read the actual text of the Scriptures for themselves without the glosses of traditional interpretation and theologians’ exegesis, so that they may know the gospel in its simplicity and view the realities of religion clearly for themselves. To the Bible in the vernacular as such the Church had no objection, but there must be proper safeguards. The people must be taught how to read the Scriptures with understanding by their spiritual masters. The gospel of Christ had been entrusted to the clergy for them to ‘administer gently’ to the laity. Wycliffe’s method meant that the ‘gospel pearl’ was ‘cast forth and trodden down by swine.’[151]