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Wyclif devoted many years of his life to the intensive study of Scripture, beginning formally with exegetical lectures that survive as a sequence of postils (probably written between 1371 and 1376), now collectively known as Postils on the Whole of the Bible , a unique and extensive commentary that won Wyclif considerable respect as an exegete. 1 In these, we witness his meticulous defence of the authority of scripture, and of the literal veracity of all of its parts. This is developed further in On the Truth of Holy Scripture (1377
This article on an early modern pamphlet which can be found in the John Rylands Library Special Collections asserts the importance of John Goodwin’s analysis of Zechariah 13:3 in A Post-Script or Appendix to […] Hagiomastix (1647). I argue that this pamphlet’s significance is not only its emphasis on toleration, but also that it is a striking example of Judaeo-centric millenarian thought in which Zechariah 12–14 is understood as prophesying a future time in which the Jews will be restored to the Land of Israel. I also analyse the pamphlet’s relationship to supersessionism and compare Goodwin’s interpretation with those of Samuel Rutherford, William Prynne, John Owen and, in particular, Jean Calvin. I explain that Goodwin’s use of the analogy of Scripture hermeneutic helps to explain his belief in Judaeo-centric eschatology. I then show how one of Goodwin’s followers, Daniel Taylor, used Judaeo-centric biblical exegesis to petition Oliver Cromwell for Jewish readmission to England.
John Wyclif (d. 1384) was among the leading schoolmen of fourteenth-century Europe. He was an outspoken controversialist and critic of the church, and, in his last days at Oxford, the author of the greatest heresy that England had known. This volume offers translations of a representative selection of his Latin writings on theology, the church and the Christian life. It offers a comprehensive view of the life of this charismatic but irascible medieval theologian, and of the development of the most prominent dissenting mind in pre-Reformation England. This collection will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students of medieval history, historical theology and religious heresy, as well as scholars in the field.
earliest and its most powerful expression. In Eradicating Errors Concerning Universals in General , he offers a defence of his metaphysical system and answers common objections to his stance on universals ( 1 ). It was not until he composed his definitive treatise on the topic shortly afterwards, however, that he offered a formal typology of universals ( 2 ). Despite its apparent simplicity, this five-part scheme would prove to play a fundamental role in Wyclif’s metaphysical system, and is also partially replicated in his fivefold conception of Scripture ( 7i
the Lord actually was the consecrated host. Correspondingly, I say that if this sleepy individual knew that the sick man who believed that he had sensed the dominical body in the way described was trustworthy, which cannot be proved experimentally or through Scripture, then he was not then therefore a saint, but, like too many people, a manifest idolater from Antichrist’s cult of signs. The people could actually be led astray so that they worshipped moles and bats, and creatures still more abominable, as God. In respect of the
his later theological and political ideas with little difficulty. From the position of Regent Master, a Master of Arts who had some responsibility for teaching, Wyclif progressed to his Doctor of Theology at some point in 1371 or 1372. The crowning achievement of this part of his academic career is his series of postils, or expository notes, on selected passages from the text of Scripture (now known as the Postilla super Totam Bibliam ). These together constitute perhaps the most important commentary of its kind since the influential
Wyclif’s views on the church and the papacy were recorded systematically in two roughly contemporary treatises, On the Church (1378–79) and On the Power of the Pope (late 1379). His conception of the church, like his understanding of the nature of Scripture, was underpinned quite conspicuously by his philosophical realism, which privileged the eternal over the finite and ephemeral. In the first chapter of On the Church , in response to his initial desire to describe the quiddity of the church, he therefore claims simply that the