The humble Christian, the bold witness, the faithful preacher, the able professor, and the great reformer, has passed off the scene. He has gone to his rest and his reward is on high. But the doctrines which he propagated with so much zeal can never die. His name in his followers continued formidable to the false priests of Rome. "Every second man you meet in the way," said a bitter adversary, "is a Wycliffite." He was used of God to give an impulse to christian inquiry which was felt in the most distant corners of Europe, and which rolled on through future ages. No person has expressed a juster sense of the influence of Wycliffe's Biblical labors than Dr. Lingard, the Roman Catholic historian. Thus he writes, "He made a new translation, multiplied copies with the aid of transcribers, and by his poor priests recommended it to the perusal of his hearers. In their hands it became an engine of wonderful power. Men were flattered with the appeal to their private judgment; the new doctrines insensibly acquired partizans and protectors in the higher classes, who alone were acquainted with the use of letters; a spirit of inquiry was generated; and the seeds were sown of that religious revolution, which, in little more than a century, astonished and convulsed the nations of Europe." Many of Wycliffe's doctrines were far in advance of the age in which he lived. He anticipated the principles of a more enlightened generation. "The scripture alone is truth," he said; and his doctrine was formed on that foundation alone. But it was the translation and circulation of the Bible that gave lasting efficacy to the holy truths which he taught, and was the imperishable crown of all his other labors—the treasure which he bequeathed to future and to better ages.
So long as Wycliffe confined his vehement denunciations to the anti-christian spirit of the court of Rome, the wealth of the clergy, and the peculiar tenets of the papacy, so long he could count on many powerful protectors. He might sweep away one by one the many abuses of the system; but no sooner did he rise into the higher region of the positive truth and free grace of God, than the number and enthusiasm of his followers rapidly declined. His doctrinal controversy secured his banishment from Oxford about two years before his death. But this, in the providence of God, was overruled to give him a period of repose at the end of a laborious and stormy life. For many years he had preached the most distinguishing doctrines of the reformers of the sixteenth century, especially those held by Calvin. But his opposition to the Romish doctrine of salvation by works would naturally lead him to speak strongly. "To believe in the power of man in the work of regeneration," he would say, "is the great heresy of Rome, and from that error has come the ruin of the church. Conversion proceeds from the grace of God alone, and the system which ascribes it partly to man and partly to God is worse than Pelagianism. Christ is everything in Christianity; whosoever abandons that fountain which is ever ready to impart life, and turns to muddy and stagnant waters, is a madman. Faith is a gift of God; it puts aside all human merit, and should banish all fear from the mind. Let Christians submit not to the word of a priest, but to the word of God. In the primitive church there were but two orders, bishops and deacons: the presbyter and the bishop, or overseer, were one. The sublimest calling which man can attain on the earth is that of preaching the word of God. The true church is the assembly of the righteous for whom Christ shed His blood."
Such were the essential points of Wycliffe's preaching and pamphlets for nearly forty years, proclaimed with great fervor and ability in the midst of papal darkness, superstition, and the worst forms of worldliness. To write the words which hand down to posterity so great, so glorious, a work of God's Spirit in our land, causes the heart to expand and arise to the throne of grace in praise and thanksgiving unfeigned, unmingled, unending. The popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and doctors, who thirsted for his blood, have either perished from the page of history, or they are associated in our minds with the demon of persecution, while the name and the memory of John Wycliffe continue to be held with unimpaired and increasing veneration.