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Wyclif's sanction of the old threefold division only perpetuates the old evil which Christ came to abolish. He came to make men free:
(He) bought this people to himself – not with silver and gold but with his own precious blood and terrible suffering. . . . The heavenly Lord redeems and buys the people for his inheritance. And the earthly lord buys them in order to (enslave them).92
God's wrath will punish terribly the ruling upper class which abetted social exploitation:
Look, you fat one, what a sodomitic life you have prepared for your people! What will you say on the Day of Judgment when the Lord will seat Himself on the judgment throne, and when all injustices committed against this people – yea, the very people which He Himself bought with His blood – will be arraigned against you? And He will say to you, "As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. Go to hell!"
And no high titles, no archives and records, no documents with seals . . . will save you from perdition.93
Chelc̄icky̍'s socialism is not a dialectic materialism; to speak figuratively, he stands on firm Biblical ground and examines his contemporary society with a strong searchlight of Christ's ethic. What he finds is devastating, and his conclusions are more radical than those of Marx or Lenin. Christian faith is dead unless it can show fruits
