The Life of John Wycliffe

JOHN WYCLIFFE, called the "Morning star of the Reformation" was the principal academic of the 14th century and an English priest. He was born around the year 1328 in Yorkshire, England. His parents were well-to-do, and he received his early education from the parish priest. At fifteen, he was admitted to Oxford. Here, his theology was influenced and shaped by the work of Thomas Bradwardine, the archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote 'On the Cause of God against the Pelagians,' an intrepid retrieval of the Pauline-Augustine doctrine of grace. After receiving his doctorate, he rapidly became Oxford's foremost philosopher and theologian. He was a promoter of church reform, censuring priests who spent their time "frequenting the ale-houses," instead of applying themselves to study and ministration to the infirm in body and spirit. According to the author, G.H.W. Parker, ""Wycliffe defined the church as the predestined body of the elect. The doctrine of election, going back to Augustine, who found it in the Bible and especially in the writings of the apostle Paul, had been rejected or ignored by the medieval church because it was a threat to the authority of the church and its sacramental system as the only means of salvation." Wycliff would set the wheels in motion to change this attitude.