manner, to conquer kingdoms, and exact tributes, appertain
to earthly dominion, not to the pope ; so that if he pass by
and set aside the office of spiritual rule, and entangle himself
in those other concerns, his work is not only superfluous but
also contrary to holy Scripture. It would however be a
mistake to regard Wycliffe s intention here as directed in
any sense to the overthrow of the papacy. He has not
only a clear perception of, a firm belief in, the supremacy
of the spiritual chief of the church; he goes so far as to
assert that no one can have even the goodwill of his
fellow-men, amicitia, except by grant of the pope, ratifying
the grant of God. This dignity, he feels, is in truth in
compatible with the business of the external world : he
would free it from those impediments.
In such an endeavour Wycliffe had forerunners in several of the controversial writers with whom we have been occupied in the preceding chapter. There was nothing new in his argument on this head, save only the way in which he fitted it into his framework of dominion. The pope, he explained, is indeed lord ; all men are lords : but just by virtue of mutual service. If any one should seek to raise himself above service, to make himself lord absolute, he becomes by this very act all the more a servant, all the less a lord. This paradoxical position is protected by the altogether ideal character of the scheme. To resume for a moment his salient conception, Wycliffe tries to withdraw himself from the thought of any civil polity; he insists that Q the law of the gospel is sufficient by itself, without the civil law or that called canonical (the qualification is noteworthy), for the perfect rule of the church militant ; human laws and ordinances, he considers but the consequence of the fall of man. He looks forward to a state of things in which it will be possible to dispense with everything but the divine and eternal law: he has not, as Thomas Aquinas had, the philosopher’s insight which could recognise a human law as some thing inextricably involved in the existence of an human
society.
