John Wycliff

[JustAsIam77]

He came before Martin Luther, Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli, how important was his contribution to the Reformation?

I know he personally translated the bible from Latin into English so that the common class could read what was God breathed in scripture and was at the fore front of exposing the heresy of Roman catholic man made doctrine such as paying friars to absolve someone of their sin and the non biblical concept of purgatory, to put it bluntly, he saw the danger of a imperialized papacy.

One of the chief accomplishments during his life was understanding a major Reformation doctrine of justification by faith.

What say you about Wycliff whether good or bad?

 

[JM]

He was probably a credo:

There is some evidence that Wycliffe rejected infant baptism, at least toward the end of his life.


There is evidence of this from his own writings. Wycliffe taught that “baptism doth not confer, but only signify grace, which was given before.” This principle undermines the doctrine of infant baptism, as the baptism of a baby cannot signify grace that was previously given as it does in believer’s baptism. The Martyrs Mirror, first published in Dutch in 1660, states that in 1370 Wycliffe issued an article “declared to militate against infant baptism” (p. 322).


There is also evidence of this from the Catholic authorities. Thomas Walden and Joseph Vicecomes claimed that Wycliffe rejected infant baptism and they charged him with Anabaptist views. Walden, who wrote against the Wycliffites or Hussites in the early part of the 1400s, called Wycliffe “one of the seven heads that came out of the bottomless pit, for denying infant baptism, that heresie of the Lollards, of whom he was so great a ringleader” (Danver’s Treatise; cited by Joseph Ivimey,History of the English Baptists, 1811, I, p. 72).


Even if Wycliffe did not entirely deny infant baptism, it is certain that many of his Lollard followers did. The term “Lollard,” like that of “Waldensian,” was a general term that encompassed a wide variety of doctrine and practice. While many of the Lollards retained infant baptism, it is certain that others did not. (For more about the Lollards, see the Advanced Bible Studies Series on Church History, available from Way of Life Literature.)
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WYCLIFFE vs. ROME Circa 1300′s – Great Read! | GRACE PARADISE





http://www.reformedreader.org/history/ford/chapter04.htm

 

[JM]

“Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on his sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation.”


“God gives His grace to whomever He wishes, and has predestined each individual, an eternity before birth, to be lost or saved through all eternity. Good works do not win salvation, but they indicate that he who does them has received divine grace and is one of the elect. We act according to the disposition that God has allotted to us; to invert Hericlitus, our fare is our character.”


“God is sovereign lord of us all. The allegiance that we owe Him is direct, as is the oath of every Englishman to the king, not indirect through allegiance to a subordinate lord, as in feudal France. Hence the relationship of man to God is direct, and requires no intermediary; any claim of Church or priest to be a necessary medium must be repelled.”


“Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation, and that without faith it is impossible to please God; that the merit of Christ is able, by itself, to redeem all mankind from hell, and that this sufficiency is to be understood without any other cause concurring.”


John Wycliffe | Feileadh Mor

 

[JustAsIam77]

Thanks for your input and the link, I appreciate it. The reason I brought his name up was I had virtually no knowledge of him but saw a TV program mentioning his contributions to early Reformed thinking. It was interesting to say the least, the program stated he was so disliked by the RCC they exhumed his body and cremated the remains then spread the ashes far and wide.