Wyclif’s Latin works

De ecclesia, chapter 1, part 2

The church is the predestinate; no vicar of Christ is its head

Loserth pp. 3.14–6.15

¶13.14–6.15

3Hec est sancta ecclesia catholica quam confitentur christiani immediate post fidem in spiritum sanctum propter tria: primo quia secundum Augustinum est summa creatura. Ideo immediate ponitur post trinitatem increatam. Secundo quia amore spiritus sancti Christo in matrimonio perpetuo copulatur. Et tercio quia posita trinitate oportet ipsam habere templum vel domum quam inhabitet. Oportet dico ex necessitate supposicionis atque de congruo. Ista autem ecclesia secundum partem peregrinantem non habet aliquem prescitum partem sui, sicut non 4habet secundum partem triumphantem, dum est huiusmodi, aliquem miserum vel quomodolibet maculatum, ut ostendit Augustinus, III° de doctrina christiana XXXII°, ubi, postquam ostenderat quod corpus Christi et caput eius Christus sunt una persona, increpat Tyconium in secunda sui regula qua vocat ecclesiam corpus domini bipartitum. Non inquit ita debuit appellare; non enim revera corpus domini est quod cum illo non manebit in eternum. Ideo vocat fideles ad tempus sed prescitos ad dampnacionem ecclesiam similatam ex ypocritis. Potest autem ista sentencia demonstrari ex scriptura Johannis VI°, 54, ubi dicitur Judeis et per idem cuilibet viatori: Nisi manducaveritis carnem filii hominis et biberitis eius sanguinem, non habebitis vitam in vobis. Sed nemo potest esse membrum corporis Christi, nisi fuerit membrum vivum: ergo nemo potest esse de illo corpore, nisi manducaverit corpus Christi. Quomodo queso potest continuari cum nervis capitis, nisi fide formata in caput crediderit? Quod est ipsum manducare, ut exponit Augustinus omelia XXVª. Habet autem iste cibus contrarie ad cibos corporales virtutem assimilandi sibi manducantem secundum quatuor digestiones, de quibus Rom. VIII°, 30, scilicet predestinacionem, vocacionem, iustificacionem et glorificacionem. Quamvis enim sic manducans moritur temporaliter, non tamen eternaliter, cum Christus, resurreccio et vita in finali iudicio vivificat omnia membra sua, quia leo rugiens suscitat suam ecclesiam. Caritas autem que nunquam excidit est vinculum 5continuans membra illius corporis; foret ergo contra racionem, vel quod sponsus in persona propria, vel quod alius ex permissione sua laniaret sponsam suam divisione eterna. Ymmo claudit contradictorium, si bene inspicitur; cum Jeremie XXXI°, 3, sibi dicitur: In caritate perpetua dilexi te. Ista igitur et non lapides est mater nostra per orbem terrarum confitens caput suum. Quomodo queso tam potens, tam sciolus et tam benivolus, sicut est increata trinitas, eternaliter eligeret sibi sponsam quam finaliter repudiaret? Patet ergo ex fide et signacione quid nominis ecclesie catholice quod ipsa est omnes predestinati presentes, preteriti et futuri. Ex istis sequuntur alique conclusiones. Prima, quod nullus vicarius Christi debet presumere asserere se esse caput ecclesie sancte catholice, ymmo nisi habuerit specialem revelacionem, non assereret se esse aliquod membrum eius. Patet ex hoc quod capitalem illius ecclesie oportet esse super omnes angelos beatos, cum ipsi sint membra illius ecclesie, quod soli Christo potest competere inter omnes predestinatos, ut patet Hebr. 1°, 4. Nam Rom. 1°, 4, dicitur Christum esse predestinatum; et sic ecclesia est solum numerus predestinatorum. Sicut igitur homo sine speciali revelacione non assereret sine formidine se esse predestinatum, sic nec assereret se esse membrum, et per consequens, non caput illius ecclesie. Unde Augustinus super psalmum CXXXIᵘᵐ postquam ostenderat quod nullum preterquam domum suam exaudit Deus ad vitam eternam: Ille inquit ad domum Dei 6pertinet qui est in caritate compaginatus lapidibus vivis; qui autem caritatem non habuerit, finalis perseverancie ruinam facit, sed domus stat. Et post docet quod nemo debet ex pretense potestatis vicaria pompare vel minari quod ab eo dependet status ecclesie, sicut fecerunt Judei ex filiacione et merito Abrahe, quia filiis imitacione virtutum et non filiis carnis degenerantibus promittitur hereditas. Et sic est indubie quoad Christi vicarios. Itaque inquit Augustinus in hiis est domus Dei quos predestinavit et prescivit perseveraturos, de quibus dictum est: Ubi steterunt sedes eius. Et hii qui non perseverant, non sunt ipsi ecclesia, non ipsi pertinent ad illud modo tabernaculum et tunc domum, sed solum in hiis qui perseveraverint usque in finem.

This is the holy catholic churchecclesia: church which Christians confess immediately after faith in the Holy Spirit, for three reasons.1 First, because according to Augustine she is the highest creature;2 therefore she is placed immediately after the uncreated Trinity. Second, because by the love of the Holy Spirit she is joined to Christ in perpetual marriage. And third, because, the Trinity being posited, it must have a temple or house which it may inhabit: "must", I say, by necessity of suppositionnecessitas supposicionis / ex supposicione: necessity of supposition / necessity on supposition and by congruityde congruo / de condigno: by congruity / by condignity.3 And this church, in its pilgrim partpars peregrinans; peregrinari: the pilgrim part; to be a pilgrim, has no one foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown as a part of itself,4 just as, in its triumphant part, 4it has no one wretched or in any way stained, while he is such,5 as Augustine shows in On Christian Teaching III.32. There, after showing that "the body of Christ and its head, Christ, are one person", he rebukes Tyconius over his second rule, in which he calls the church the Lord’s bipartite body. "He ought not", he says, "to have called it so; for what will not remain with him for ever is not truly the Lord’s body." Therefore he calls those who are faithful for a time but foreknown to damnation a simulated church, made of hypocrites.6 And this teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence can be demonstrated from the scripture of John 6:54, where it is said to the Jews, and by the same token to every wayfarerviator: wayfarer:7 "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you." Now no one can be a member of the body of Christ unless he is a living member; therefore no one can be of that body unless he has eaten the body of Christ. How, I ask, can he be joined to the sinews of the head unless he has believed in the head with formed faithfides formata / informis: formed faith / unformed faith? And that is what eating is, as Augustine expounds in Homily 25.8 Now this food, contrary to bodily foods, has the power of assimilating the eater to itself9 according to four digestions, of which Romans 8:30 speaks: namely, predestination, calling, justification and glorification.10 For although one who eats in this way dies in time, yet he does not die eternally, since "Christ, the resurrection and the life", at the final judgement gives life to all his members, because the roaring lion raises up his church.11 Now charitycaritas: charity, which "never falleth away", is the bond 5joining the members of that body; it would therefore be against reason that either the bridegroomsponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom in his own person, or another by his permission, should tear his bridesponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom apart by an eternal division. Indeed, if it is well considered, it implies a contradiction,12 since it is said to her in Jeremiah 31:3: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love."13 This, then, and not stones, is our mothermater nostra: our mother, confessing her head throughout the world.14 How, I ask, would one so powerful, so knowingsciolus: knowing, wise and so benevolent as the uncreated Trinity is,15 choose eternally for itself a bride whom it would finally repudiate? It is clear, therefore, as faith teachesex fide: as faith teaches; with a genitive, from the faith of [scripture] and from the signification [of the term], what the namequid nominis: what the name means "catholic church" [means]: that she is all the predestinatepredestinatus, -i: the predestinate (sg. "a predestinate [person]"), present, past and future.16

From these some conclusions followsequitur: it follows. The first: that no vicar of Christ ought to presume to assert that he is head of the holy catholic church; indeed, unless he has had a special revelation, he should not assert that he is any member of it.17 This is clear from the fact that the head of that church must be above all the blessed angels, since they are members of that church; and this can belong to Christ alone among all the predestinate, as is clear from Hebrews 1:4.18 For in Romans 1:4 Christ is said to be "predestinated"; and so the church is only the number of the predestinate. Therefore, just as a man without a special revelation would not assert without misgiving that he is predestinate,19 so neither would he assert that he is a member, and consequently not that he is head, of that church. Hence Augustine on Psalm 131, after he had shown that God hears no one unto eternal life except his own house:20 "He belongs", he says, "to the house of God 6who is fitted together in charity with the living stones; but he who has not had the charity of final perseverance falls in ruin, but the house stands."21 And afterwards he teaches that no one ought, on the ground of the vicarship of a pretended power, to make a show or to threaten that the state of the church depends on him, as the Jews did on the ground of their sonship to Abraham and his merit; because the inheritance is promised to sons by the imitation of virtues, and not to degenerate sons of the flesh. And so it is, without doubt, as regards the vicars of Christ.22 "So then", says Augustine, "the house of God is in those whom he predestined and foreknew would persevere, of whom it is said, 'Where his seats have stood.'23 And those who do not persevere, they are not the church, they do not belong to that which is now a tabernacle and will then be a house; but [it is] only in those who will have persevered to the end."24

Notes

  1. 1 In the Apostles’ Creed the article on the church immediately follows credo in Spiritum Sanctum. Wyclif gives three reasons for the order. B’s margin (apparatus to 3.14): Nota quare immediate post fidem in spiritum sanctum ponitur fides de sancta matre catholica.
  2. 2 Summa creatura: not identified by Loserth, and not yet traced.
  3. 3 Ex necessitate supposicionis: conditional necessity. Given that the Trinity is posited as dwelling somewhere, it must have a house. De congruo: by fittingness, not by strict necessity. The double qualification keeps the church from becoming something God is absolutely compelled to have.
  4. 4 Prescitus, "foreknown": Wyclif’s term for those whom God foreknows will be damned. It is the counterpart of predestinatus, and it is not the same word as reprobus (though Loserth’s side-note at 3.23 says "reprobate"). The claim is that no one who will finally be damned is a part of this church, whatever his office or present standing. See the glossary, .
  5. 5 Dum est huiusmodi: the subject of est is ambiguous. It could be the triumphant part ("while it is such") or the wretched person ("while he is such"). We follow the early reader of MS B, whose gloss Loserth prints (apparatus to 3.24). He takes it of the person: the predestinate still wayfarers, "involved in miseries and stains", will later be parts of the church triumphant, but are not counted such while they are so involved, "and therefore it is said pointedly, while he is such".
  6. 6 Augustine, De doctrina christiana III.32.45, on Tyconius’s second rule, de Domini corpore bipartito; the first rule (III.31.44) is the one on Christ and his body as one person. Augustine proposes de Domini corpore vero atque permixto, aut, vero atque simulato, "the Lord’s true and simulated body", the source of Wyclif’s ecclesiam similatam. Augustine has quod cum illo non erit in aeternum; Wyclif’s manebit stands for his erit (PL 34:82). Loserth: Opp. III.1, p. 58.
  7. 7 Per idem, "by the same token": the saying to the Jews applies by parallel argument to every Christian (Thakkar, p. 365). Loserth glosses viator "a traveller on earth" (cf. De civ. dom. I, p. 4).
  8. 8 Augustine, Tractates on John 25–26: crede, et manducasti (25.12; PL 35:1602). Loserth corrects the MSS' XXVI to XXV and refers to Opp. III.2, p. 489.
  9. 9 The reversal of ordinary nourishment echoes Augustine, Confessions VII.10.16: nec tu me in te mutabis sicut cibum carnis tuae, sed tu mutaberis in me (PL 32:742; our identification, not Loserth’s).
  10. 10 Digestiones: the metaphor of eating continues. The chain of Rom. 8:30 is the four stages by which the food assimilates the eater. Wyclif gives the nouns; DR has the verbs ("whom he predestinated … called … justified … glorified"). B’s margin: Christus (sic) digestio.
  11. 11 John 11:25 (DR "I am the resurrection and the life") with 6:40 (Loserth). The lion is the bestiary lion, whose cubs are born dead and are raised on the third day by their father’s roar (Ps.-Hugh, De bestiis, PL 177:150C, tertia die ad rugitum patris excitatur; in the Physiologus form, PL 177:57C, the father breathes on them). The leo rugiens of 1 Pet. 5:8 is the devil; Wyclif gives the phrase to Christ.
  12. 12 Claudit contradictorium is stronger than contra racionem just before, and the step up (ymmo) is the argument: given Jer. 31:3, it is not only unreasonable for Christ to lose a member of his bride but impossible.
  13. 13 DR’s wording; the Latin is in caritate perpetua, so the bond just named ("charity") is the very word of the prophecy.
  14. 14 Non lapides: the church is not the stone buildings. Per orbem terrarum confitens echoes the Te Deum, Te per orbem terrarum sancta confitetur Ecclesia.
  15. 15 Sciolus without contempt (the glossary, ). Power, knowledge and goodness are the three attributes appropriated to Father, Son and Spirit.
  16. 16 Ipsa est omnes predestinati: singular verb, plural predicate. The church is the predestinate, not a body in which they hold membership, and the English keeps the identity. Ex fide et signacione pairs the two grounds: what faith teaches, and what the term signifies. The definition as Hus restated it heads the articles condemned at Constance (sess. XV, 6 July 1415, art. 1, Unica est sancta universalis ecclesia, quae est praedestinatorum universitas; DS 1201).
  17. 17 Nullus vicarius Christi: the quantifier governs the whole: no vicar, the pope included (A’s margin: Nullus papa debet se presumere esse caput huius ecclesie). Assereret (imperfect subjunctive) is potential: "he should not assert", "would not assert".
  18. 18 Capitalem: literally "the capital [one]", the one who is head. Heb. 1:4: Christ "made so much better than the angels". Rom. 1:4: "Who was predestinated the Son of God in power". Numerus is the number, the full count, of the predestinate.
  19. 19 Sine formidine: formido is the schools’ "fear of the opposite", the doubt that attends opinion as against knowledge. Hence "without misgiving", not "without fear".
  20. 20 Ostenderat: Loserth’s correction (B ostenderet, AA₁ ostenderit). Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 131; Loserth: Opp. IV.2, p. 1477.
  21. 21 Qui autem caritatem non habuerit, finalis perseverancie ruinam facit. We take finalis perseverancie with caritatem: "the charity of final perseverance". It could instead hang on ruinam: "he falls in ruin from final perseverance". Either way the person falls and the house stands. Finalis perseverancie is Wyclif’s addition: Augustine has only ruinam facit; et illo ruente domus stat (PL 37:1722). Compaginatus lapidibus vivis: 1 Pet. 2:5.
  22. 22 Vicaria: Loserth’s correction of the MSS' vicarie (apparatus to 6.4); ex pretense potestatis vicaria, "on the ground of the vicarship of a pretended power". Pompare, "to make a show". The last sentence is Wyclif’s application of Augustine to the vicars of Christ. Filiis imitacione virtutum: cf. John 8:39, Rom. 9:8.
  23. 23 Ps. 131:7: Vg adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus (DR "where his feet stood"). The print has sedes, "seats"; Loserth records no variant. We translate the print; sedes may be a slip for pedes, which Augustine reads here (Enarr. in Ps. 131.13, PL 37:1722). Loserth: Augustine, loc. cit., p. 1480.
  24. 24 Prescivit perseveraturos: here the verb is neutral ("foreknew would persevere"), of the predestinate, not the technical prescitus of 3.24. Modo tabernaculum et tunc domum: the tabernacle of the wayfaring church now, the house of the homeland then (Ps. 131:7 tabernaculum).
How the Latin of this chapter was established
  • Plate readings; page · reading · note):
    • 3: non (side-note text glued in OCR)
    • 4: III°
    • 4: Christi
    • 4: XXVª
    • 5: fide (f with crossbar, clear)
    • 5: nullus (15 is the line number)
    • 5: vicarius
    • 6: pertinet (first word of line, italic)
    • 6: Christi
    • 5: domum
  • 4.21 omelia XXVª: Loserth’s correction ("In codd. XXVI. Correxi").
  • 5.28 ostenderat: Loserth’s correction (n. 20). 6.4 vicaria: Loserth’s correction (n. 22).
  • OCR scars corrected in the Latin against the plates: 4.10 stray stop after similatam; 4.24 3o → 30; 5.21 numerUS → numerus; 5.27 CXXXI""' → CXXXIᵘᵐ.
  • Variants noted but not affecting the English: 3.5 AA₁ que, B peregrinat; 4.8 B reverencia corpus (for revera); 4.16 B Igitur nemo; 5.1 B foret igitur; 5.10 B Patet igitur; 5.29 B preter domum.