After his return Wycliffe lived chiefly at Lutterworth and Ox ford, making prolonged visits to London, where his fame as a popular preacher was established. It is from this period that dates the development of his systematic attack on the established order in the church. It was not at first the dogmatic, but the political elements in the papal system that provoked his censure. The negotiations at Bruges had strengthened his sympathy with the anti-curial tendencies in English politics from Edward I.'s time onwards, and a final impulse was given by the attitude of the "Good Parliament" in 1376; in the autumn of that year he was reading his treatise on civil lordship (De civili dominio) to his students at Oxford. Of its propositions some, according to were taken bodily from the i4o titles of the bill dealing with ecclesiastical abuses introduced in the parliament; but it may perhaps be that Wycliffe inspired the bill rather than the bill Wycliffe. For the first time he now publicly proclaimed the doc trine that righteousness is the sole indefeasible title to dominion and to property, that an unrighteous clergy has no such title, and that the decision as to whether or no the property of ecclesiastics should be taken away rests with the civil power.
If the position at which Wycliffe had now arrived was originally inspired, as Loserth asserts, by his sympathy with the legislation of Edward I., i.e., by political rather than theological considera tions, the necessity for giving to it a philosophical and religious basis led him to criticism of the doctrinal standpoint of the church. As a philosopher Wycliffe was no more than the last of the con spicuous Oxford scholastics, and his philosophy is important in so far as it determined his doctrine of dominium, and the direction in which his political and religious views were to develop. In the controversy between Realism and Nominalism he was on the side of the former, though his doctrine of universals showed the influ ence of Ockham and the nominalists. To Wycliffe the doctrine of arbitrary divine decrees was anathema. The will of God is his essential and eternal nature, by which all his acts are deter mined; God created all things in their primordial causes, as genera and species, or else in their material essences, secundum rations absconditas seminales (ibid. p. 66). The world is therefore not merely one among an infinity of alternatives, but is the only possible world; it is, moreover, not in the nature of an eternal emanation from God, but was created at a given moment of time— to think otherwise would be to admit its absolute necessity, which would destroy free-will and merit. Since, however, all things came into being in this way, it follows that the creature can produce nothing save what God has already created. This leads to pre destination and free-will. Wycliffe takes a middle position. God does not will sin, for He only wills that which has being, and sin is the negation of being; He necessitates men to perform actions which only become right or wrong through man's free agency. All human lordship is derived from the supreme overlordship of God and is inseparable from it, since whatever God gives is part of himself. But, in giving, God does not part with the lordship
of the thing given; whatever lordship the creature may possess is held subject to due service to the supreme overlord. Thus, as in feudalism, lordship is distinguished from possession. Property is the result of sin; Christ and his apostles had none. The service by which lordship is held of God is righteousness and its works; it follows that the unrighteous forfeit their right to exercise it, and may be deprived of their possessions by competent authority.
The question follows as to what this authority is, and this Wycliffe sets out to answer in the Determinatio quaedam de dominio and the De civili dominio. Briefly, his argument is that the church has no concern with temporal matters at all, that for the clergy to hold property is sinful, and that it is lawful for statesmen (polltici)—who are God's stewards in temporals—to take away the goods of such of the clergy as no longer render the service by which they hold them. That the church was actually in a condition to deserve spoliation he refused to affirm; but his theories fitted in too well with the notorious aims of the duke of Lancaster not to rouse the bitter hostility of the endowed clergy.
Hitherto Wycliffe had made no open attack on the doctrinal system of the church. Early in 1377, however, Archbishop Sud bury summoned him to appear before the bishop of London, and on Feb. 19 Wycliffe made his appearance at St. Paul's, accom panied by the duke of Lancaster, by Lord Percy, marshal of England, and by four doctors of the four mendicant orders. Before Wycliffe could open his mouth, the court was broken up by a rude brawl between his protectors and Bishop Courtenay, the affair developing into a general riot.
Wycliffe had escaped for the time, but probably before this his enemies had set their case before the pope; and on the 22nd of May five bulls were issued by Gregory XI., condemning eighteen of Wycliffe's "conclusions." All the articles but one are taken from his De civili dorninio. The bulls truly stated Wycliffe's in tellectual lineage ; he was following in the error of Marsilius of Padua; and the articles laid against him are concerned entirely with questions as to how far ecclesiastical censures could lawfully affect a man's civil position, and whether the church had a right to hold temporal endowments. The bulls were addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London, the uni versity of Oxford, and the king. The university was to send Wycliffe to the prelates, who were to examine the truth of the charges and to report to the pope, Wycliffe being meanwhile kept in confinement. The execution of the papal bulls was impeded by three separate causes—the king's death on the 21st of June; the tardy action of the bishops, who enjoined the university to make a report ; and the unwillingness of the university to admit the pope's right to order the imprisonment of any man in England. The convocation of the university merely directed Wycliffe to keep within his lodgings at Black Hall for a time.