SOURCE: Smeeton, Donald Dean. “The Wycliffite Choice: Man's Law or God's.” In William Tyndale and the Law: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies Vol. 25, edited by John A. R. Dick and Anne Richardson, pp. 31-40. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994.

In response to Thomas More's assertion that acts of almsgiving contribute to one's righteousness and eternal bliss, William Tyndale demanded that More consider the giver's motive:

And so is it of the purpose to do them: one's purpose is good, and another's evil; so that we must be good ere a good purpose come. Now then, to love the law of God, and to consent thereto, and to have it written in thine heart, and to profess it, so that thou art ready of thine own accord to do it and without compulsion, is to be righteous. … And so far forth as a man loveth the law of God, so far forth he is righteous; and so much as he lacketh of love toward his neighbour, after the ensample of Christ, so much he lacketh of righteousness. And that thing which maketh a man love the law of God, doth make a man righteous, and justifieth him effectively and actually; and maketh him alive, as a workman and cause efficient.

(PS 3 [An Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue, The Supper of the Lord …, and Wm. Tracy's Testament Expounded. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1850] :204-205)

In other words, one must be good before one can do good. Deeds of righteousness do not precede justification by faith; they follow it. In Tyndale's thought, faith is the spring from which flows freedom from damnation, peace with God, total forgiveness, and a change in desire so that one will “begin to love the law” (PS 3:205). Obedience to God's law was the natural result (“the fruit”) of a right standing with God. The first English reformer understood that “faith to his [God's] promises” was wed to the “love to his laws” (PS 3:80), and what God has put together, no man should cast asunder.

The language of Tyndale's soteriological paradigm seems at odds with those reformers who stressed the law as useful exclusively, or even primarily, to demonstrate sinfulness by revealing the unrighteousness of the sinner. Tyndale's juxtaposition of “law” and “promises” has caused some consternation, if not confusion, among his modern interpreters. Because Tyndale has so much to say about God's law, David Broughton Knox claims that Tyndale was guilty of “overthrowing the whole basis of the Reformation.”¹ William Clebsch, noting that some of Tyndale's earlier works seem to stress faith while the later ones emphasize obedience, concludes that Tyndale shifts from a theology based on faith alone to one grounded on covenant alone.² The two concepts—“love of God's law” and “faith in God's promises”—are, however, never completely separated in the Tyndalian texts. For Tyndale, good works, that is, obedience to or love of God's law, must follow the right relationship with God established by faith (PS 1 [Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848] :399).

Tyndale's fusion of faith and law would not, however, have seemed incomprehensible to the English Lollard. For the century and a half preceding the Reformation, Wycliffites offered a spirituality that held that love of God's law offered irrefutable moral direction for one's earthly life as well as a qualified assurance of eternal bliss. This essay asserts that Tyndale's concept of law appears compatible with the Wycliffite tradition that makes the love of law—God's law—central to spirituality as well as to salvation.

The Lollard sermons recently edited by Anne Hudson,³ Gloria Cigman,⁴ and Pamela Gradon⁵ provide an opportunity to read Tyndale's theology in his English context. Even if one posits a strong and direct Lutheran influence on Tyndale,⁶ many of his English readers would probably have been more familiar with the English heresy than with Continental theology. They would have read his works in a social context tainted with Wycliffite criticism expressed in a Wycliffite vocabulary. Particularly Tyndale's foes, such as Thomas More, saw the similarities and reacted in horror.⁷

WYCLIFFITE'S DEFINITION

For the Wycliffite, the Bible was divided into two parts—not two testaments or covenants, but two “laws”—for there was a basic continuity throughout. The older Testament was not divided into books of law, history, poetry, and prophecy; they were all law. Citing Ps. 119:130, one sermon states that “Dauid seith in Goddes lawe. …”⁸ Elsewhere expressions such as “diuerse prophetes of the Olde Lawe”⁹ illustrate the inclusive meaning of the Wycliffite use of “law,” and suggest the unity rather than the diversity of the Hebrew writings.

In the same manner, the Old Law (current usage would employ the word “testament”) is generally linked by continuity with the New Law (or “testament”). Although “the rites of the Olde Lawe weren dede,”¹⁰ the Old Law itself, especially its moral demands, was still valid and applicable.

Both parts of scripture were considered to be “God's law.” For example, one sermon demands that true priests “schulde haue kunnynge bothe of the Oolde Lawe and of the Newe.”¹¹ Thus, the various books of the New Testament were considered books of law. One Wycliffite sermon, for example, says that “Crist biddith hem also in the New Lawe … Gothe and prechith the euangelie to euery creature,”¹² which is, of course, a citation of the Gospel of Mark. Likewise, Paul's letters are called “the law of God.¹³

Old Testament morality was carried into the New, but rituals were made null and void. Other requirements such as circumcision were replaced by Christian baptism.¹⁴ Because Christ's mission was to fulfill, not abrogate, God's law, the Lollard understood “God's law” to be all of holy scripture or any part of it.

The Wycliffite considered the New Law, or “the lawe of the gospel,”¹⁵ to be much more perfect than the Old because it was equated with “the law of loue.”¹⁶ Love, for the Lollard, was foundational in Christian motivation and morality because it was “the bygynnyng and the endyng of Godis lawe.”¹⁷ Citing Rom. 13:10, one sermon affirms that all of God's love was simply “the lawe of loue.”¹⁸ Thus love and law were not contradictory because the former gave motivation to the latter. Another text explains:

And crist cam not to undo this lawe, but to fulfille it and teche it. For lawe of the Olde Testament techith not but charite, for alle stories [histories] and prophetis hangen in thes two wordis, love thi God and love thi neigbor, and this is to keep the ten commandementis. … Crist fillith [fulfilleth] the olde lawe and makith a perfit eende therof, for it is purged bi the newe lawe, and more ligt [light, i.e., easy] us to kepe.¹⁹

Tyndale echoes the appeal both for the unity of scripture and for the primacy of love in Christian behavior:

Furthermore, concerning the law of God, this is a general conclusion, that the whole law, whether they be ceremonies, sacrifices, yea, or sacraments either, or precepts of equity between man and man, throughout all degrees of the world, all were given for our profit and necessity only, and not for any need that God hath of our keeping them, or that his joy is increased thereby, or that the deed, for the deed itself, doth please him: that is, all that God requireth of us, when we be at one with him, and do put our trust in him, and love him, is, that we love every man his neighbour, to pity him, and to have compassion on him in all his needs, and to be merciful unto him … love is the fulfilling of the law.”

(PS 1:474-475)

Tyndale's ethical system was essentially internalized motivation to obey and, if possible, to exceed the demands of the law. Its direction was not derived from legalism, but grew from a personal union of the believer with Christ by faith. Faith was understood to be the spring of love, and love was to be the spring of Christian conduct. Moral behavior and acts of charity were to be expressed in unrequited loving service to others, thus fulfilling the law of God.

THE AUTHORITY: GOD'S LAW

To the Lollard, scripture was the ultimate authority for both doctrine and life. As one text affirms, “Godis lawe telluth alle trewthe that is nedful to men.”²⁰ It could be trusted in all its detail because “eche word of Godis lawe ys trewe.”²¹ Citing Ps. 24:14, one sermon concludes that God's law is a solid foundation to which true Christians are “stabelli festened as sterres in the firmament.”²² All doctrine needs to be “groundid in Goddis lawe,” and all life must be “rulid by Goddis Lawe.”²³ Obedience to biblical authority benefited both this life and the next. The Wycliffite was told that God's law brought spiritual health and victory over temptation, for if one lived according to God's law, he would never fall into the devil's net.²⁴ On the other hand, the immorality of both priest and people was the result of ignorance of God's law. Albion was evil paid because God's law was not available in English for laity.²⁵ One Lollard sermon proclaims that “al owre loue schilde stonde in the loue of God, for to kepe his lawe and meue othre to kepon hit [keep it].”²⁶

In addition to the spiritual benefits of obedience to God's law that are to be experienced now, the Lollard understood that “the weie toward the blisse of heuene is the commaundementis of God.”²⁷ When one understands the Lollard's confidence in God's law, one can appreciate his insistence on the vernacular scripture in the hands of laity. There is much evidence to indicate that Lollard lives were marked by an intense reading, studying, and memorizing of God's law.²⁸ The Lollards' insistence on access to the Bible in English became, in the hands of their opponents, the most powerful proof of heretical activity.

In the Lollard literature, there is even a subtle equating of God or Christ with the scripture. For example, using a metaphor worthy of John Wyclif, one sermon compares the light of the sun to a “clere cnowying [knowledge] of Christus liyf and his lawe.”²⁹ The listener is admonished to conduct his life “aftur Crist and his lawe” and to “love Christ and his law above everything else.”³⁰

On the other hand, to restrict in any way the circulation of God's law was to deprive the people of what they needed most, namely, God's law. Thus the popes and prelates were, for the most part, “enemyes to Crist and his lawe.”³¹

Appealing to scripture in much the same way, Tyndale states that God's word “ought to have all authority among them that have professed it” (PS 2 [Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scriptures, Together with The Practice of Prelates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849] :333). The scriptures (which Tyndale used interchangeably with the singular form, scripture) are “that wherewith God draweth us unto him” and they “spring out of God, and flow unto Christ, and were given to lead us to Christ” (PS 1:317). Like the Wycliffites, Tyndale used the biblical metaphor of light to explain God's law:

So now the scripture is a light, and sheweth us the true way, both what to do and what to hope for [i.e., this life and the next]; and a defence from all error, and a comfort in adversity that we despair not, and feareth us in prosperity that we sin not.

(PS 1:399)

The light of God's law, Tyndale affirmed, provided illumination enough for this life and for heaven.

Fearful of the proliferation of heresies, the medieval church was hesitant to allow laity unrestricted access to scripture. Even in the sixteenth century, this fear remained strong in the English church. Unlike Erasmus, Thomas More was driven by his dread that the free circulation of the scripture would lead to social chaos and spiritual disintegration. More than any other single event, the publication of Tyndale's New Testament in English drew the lord chancellor into unchivalrous and bitter polemics. The contest between Tyndale and More, as between Protestant and Catholic, hinged on authority.

THE ALTERNATIVE: MAN'S LAW

A century before the English Reformation, the Lollards contended that the supreme authority of God's law had been usurped by commands of human origin. Alternatively, the Wycliffite's direct appeal to scripture challenged the opinions of the established theological authorities and canon lawyers.

Such human law was understood, in Wycliffite judgment, to be antichrist's law, for it was founded on a false faith. God's law was far superior to canon law, and took precedence over it. It was only the most dangerous pride that would lead one to take from, or to add to, God's law.³² Because obedience given to antichrist's law was essentially obedience to antichrist, the Lollard concluded that one must be ruled only by Christ's law. The “rewle of Cristus lawe wolde that alle men shoulde renownce to hem obedience or othur seruyse but as thei schulden obesche to Crist.”³³ Another Lollard text proclaims:

Goddes lawe is aboue alle other lawes as the sunne is aboue all othr planetes, and so God hath maad also his lawe to schyne to alle men that wolen able hem to receyue it, and no men mai lyue goostli [spiritually] but thoru rule of that lawe.³⁴

Human law, the Lollard claims, is elevated above God's law by the popes and the prelates to control the people and to keep them from comparing scripture with the claims of the church. Furthermore, such human laws are not kept even by those who insist on them. One text claims that the church is more in prison now than in the time of the Old Testament.³⁵ Another states that such human traditions—creations of the priest, scribe, and pharisee—blind the people from the truth of God's law.³⁶ Antichrist's priests, obviously, tried to quench Christ's law.³⁷ For the Lollard, the choice was simple: one must obey God's law rather than man's.

In the early sixteenth century, Tyndale articulated these same themes. God's law, he said, was restricted—even annulled—by man's law. He claims that the pope “made a law that no man should rebuke the pope for whatsoever he did,” and asks rhetorically, “Is he not antichrist, that will not have his life tried by God's word?” (PS 2:299). Canon law is only the creation of scribes and pharisees, who use it not only to conceal the truth from the people, but also to bind them in the darkness of ignorance. Tyndale charges that the bishops try to keep their priests so busy by “ever noselling them in ceremonies, and in their own constitutions, decrees, ordinances, and laws of holy church” that they cannot get to the scripture at all (PS 2:299-291). The tragedy is compounded by the fact that the creators of man's law cannot, or at least do not, keep such law themselves. Tyndale admonishes his opponents to “look in the pope's law, and ye [will see that you] keep thereof almost nought at all” (PS 2:243).

Like the Lollards, Tyndale understood that human law had been elevated above God's law by the popes and prelates to control the people and to keep them from comparing scripture with the claims of the church. Tyndale, the translator, was motivated by the desire to restore God's law to its rightful place—far above man's. This conviction motivated Tyndale's escape from England and his life's leitmotiv as a translator of God's law.

THE ANTAGONIST: FALSE PRIESTS

Although Wycliffism is sometimes equated with anticlericalism, its criticism was not directed toward clerics as such. The Lollard complaint was that many, if not most, clerics not only failed in their duty to live according to God's law, but also neglected to proclaim it to the laity. A good—or to use a favorite Lollard term, a “true”—priest is ordained to study God's law, to live virtuously, and to be “in ful wille to preche Goddis word oute to the peple bisili, trueli, and freli.”³⁸

One text lists three opponents who fought “true” Christian men (i.e., the Lollards) as, first, the pope and cardinals, who did so “by false lawes that thei han mad”; second, the political bishops who “dispyse Cristus lawe”; and third, the pharisees, possessioners, and beggars [friars], who, by implication, live in disobedience to God's law. “Alle these three, Godis enemyes, traueylon [labor] in ypocrisy and in worldly coueytyse, and ydelnesse in Godys lawe.”³⁹

If clerics failed to live according to God's law, they did so to their own damnation, for “ther mai no man kepe a fals lawe but ef he be fals himself.”⁴⁰ Such false priests loved worldly things more than God's law.⁴¹ They were compared to the laborers in the parable of vineyard workers, who stood idly in the marketplace because no one had hired them (Matt. 20). Unfortunately, such idle priests lacked the “trewe techyng of Goddis lawe.”⁴² Thus they kept the church in the “dark night” and “thoru synne and ignorance of Goddis lawe, spoyleth Goddes peple thoru her priuei ypocrisie and her feyned lawes.”⁴³ Because God's law was not proclaimed, the light of God's law was withheld and spiritual darkness descended.⁴⁴ Thus nonpreaching priests caused a spiritual eclipse that blocked out the light of “the sunne of Christis lawe” from shining in the souls of common people.⁴⁵ Another sermon used an agricultural metaphor that compared the priest who does not preach God's law to a cloud that gives no rain and thus causes drought and famine.⁴⁶

On the other hand, there are “semple prestes that prechen now Goddes lawe faste aboute … maken ‘him’ knowen among his peple” who were held in darkness.⁴⁷ A “true” priest's duty was both to proclaim God's truth and to live it. The conduct of such a priest would be ruled by God's law.⁴⁸ The true priest, called “a crier of Goddis lawe,”⁴⁹ preaches what Christ commands in his law,⁵⁰ and his message would “gladden hem in Godus lawe.”⁵¹ Therefore the true workers in God's vineyard were understood to be the patriarchs, prophets, and “prechoures of his lawe.”⁵² A moral priest, by leading a godly life and offering the “truwe doctrine of Goddes lawe,” allows his light to shine among men.⁵³

Similar criticism of the religious establishment is commonplace in Tyndale, especially in The Practice of Prelates. A few citations, among the many possible, should suffice.⁵⁴ Tyndale accused the worldly prelates and evil priests of “wresting the scriptures to serve for their purpose, corrupting all the laws, both of God and man” to prove their theological claims (PS 2:260). Tyndale was critical of his experience at Oxford, where ministerial students were “noselled in heathen learning eight or nine years, and armed with false principles” so they could never understand God's law correctly (PS 2:291). Tyndale the reformer complains that the prelates and priests fail in their duty to live according to God's law and to proclaim it; Tyndale the translator provides the remedy—God's law in English. He fulfills the Lollard's aspiration by providing an English Bible to bring light to darkened England.

THE AFTERMATH: SUFFERING

With such polarization of good and evil, a clash was inevitable. Throughout the fifteenth century, the Lollard and the Lollard sympathizer faced formidable, and often hostile, opposition. The Lollard understood that it was illegal to have the Bible in English, and thus it was illegal—according to man's law—to know what God required. The laity were forbidden to know “the blesside lawe of the gospel of oure Lord Jesus Crist.”⁵⁵ But, if one really loved God and his law, one should be prepared to suffer, to suffer death if necessary.⁵⁶ If one chose to live by God's law and to proclaim it, he could expect to be accused of heresy, put into prison, and threatened with burning. This was the fate of “all suche men that kepe well Cristis lawe and his promysses.”⁵⁷

In spite of such opposition, the “true” preacher had a responsibility to proclaim God's law. But if one did fail because of “cowardyse to telle Godis lawe to men that synnen,” the preacher failed God; if he did so, he put his own life in danger.⁵⁸ Evil men would persecute and torment the Lollard because, as a true preacher, the Wycliffite would confront his opponents with God's law.⁵⁹ The Lollard could expect that the enemies of God and his law would use diverse painful methods to silence the true preachers of the Gospel.⁶⁰ Yet, this suffering was not simply suffering for God or for godliness; it was understood to be suffering for God's law. “For Crist suffrede for this lawe al the peyne that he suffrede, and hise martirs aftur hym suffredon for this same lawe.”⁶¹ All true martyrs, claims one text, die for God's law.⁶²

Likewise, Tyndale saw God's law to be the cause of persecution. In his opening comments of The Obedience of a Christian Man, Tyndale writes:

Let it not make thee dispair, neither yet discourage thee, O reader, that it is forbidden thee in paine of life and goods, or that it is made breaking of the king's peace, or treason unto his highness, to read the word of thy soul's health … which word is ever hated of the world, neither was ever without persection … neither can be, no more than the sun can be without his light.

(PS 1:131)

According to Tyndale, the forces of antichrist—those unwilling to conform to the demands of God's law—persecute “God's word and the preachers thereof” (PS 1:337). Their hostility to God's law is the irrefutable proof of their ungodliness. Thus it is understandable that Tyndale could tell Thomas More:

to love the law of God, and to consent thereto, and to have it written in thine heart, and to profess it, so that thou art ready of thine own accord to do it and without compulsion, is to be righteous. … And that thing which maketh a man love the law of God, doth make a man righteous, and justifieth him effectively and actually; and maketh him alive, as a workman and cause efficient.

(PS 3:205)

Tyndale, like the Lollards, made his choice for God's law.

Notes

1. David Broughton Knox, The Doctrine of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII (London: James Clarke, 1961), 6. Tyndale's view of law has been investigated by Paul Alan Laughlin, “The Brightness of Moses' Face: Law and Gospel, Covenant and Hermeneutics in the Theology of William Tyndale” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Emory University, 1975).

2. William A. Clebsch, England's Earliest Protestants, 1520-1535 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 137-204.

3. Anne Hudson, ed., Selections from English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), herein cited as SEWW. In all subsequent notes from Wycliffite material the shortened book designation will be followed by the sermon or document number or name and the line(s). In all of the Wycliffite texts cited, I have found it necessary to change the thorn into the current th, and the yogh into a y or g, or, sometimes, to omit it altogether. I have changed th^e into the appropriate then or them, ye into the, and yt into that.

4. Gloria Cigman, ed., Lollard Sermons, Early English Text Society, 294 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); herein cited Cigman, Lollard Sermons, followed by the sermon number or name and line(s).

5. Pamela Gradon, ed., English Wycliffite Sermons, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988); herein cited as EWS 2, followed by the sermon number or name and line(s). Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 378-382, treats the Lollards' view of civil and ecclesiastical law.

6. To cite but one recent example, James Edward McGoldrick, Luther's English Connection: The Reformation Thought of Robert Barnes and William Tyndale (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1979).

7. Thomas More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, ed. Thomas M. C. Lawler, Germain Marc'hadour and Richard C. Marius, The Yale Edition of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 6 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 6.1.379, lines 11-17. Evidence of Wycliffite survival into the sixteenth century has been amply set forth by Hudson, [Anne. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.] The Premature Reformation, A. G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York 1509-1558 (Oxford: University of Hull, 1959); Norman P. Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich 1428-31, Camden Fourth Series, vol. 20 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), and John A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards 1414-1520 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965). Elsewhere the author has suggested numerous parallels between aspects of Wycliffite thought and Tyndale's theology; Donald Dean Smeeton, Lollard Themes in the Reformation Theology of William Tyndale, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 6 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1986).

8. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 3/193.

9. Ibid., 4/242, 7/61, passim.

10. Ibid., 6/131-134, 270-275, passim.

11. Ibid., 1/143-144.

12. Ibid., 13/221-229.

13. Ibid., 2/105-111. See also SEWW 20/5, 33-35, 43-45.

14. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 6/14-18, 128-134, 269-279.

15. EWS 2, 62/48.

16. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 10/400-409.

17. ESW 2, 57/2-3.

18. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 15/105-106.

19. Sermon CCVII,” Select English Works of John Wyclif, ed. Thomas Arnold, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1869-71), 2:171-172, as cited by Smeeton, Lollard Themes, 98.

20. ESW 2, 65/122-123.

21. Ibid., 63/77-78.

22. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 2/478-479.

23. Ibid., 1/367, 2/107-109.

24. Ibid., 2/126-131; 12/254-256.

25. ESW 2, 64/80-101.

26. Ibid., 57/18-20.

27. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 8/296-297.

28. See Margaret Aston, “Lollardy and Literacy,” Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion, History Series 22 (London: Hambledon Press, 1984), 193-216. Although now surpassed by more recent research, the foundational work on this subject is still Margaret Deansley, The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920).

29. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 2/128. See also 2/345-346.

30. ESW 2, 62/85; 62/17 and 130-132.

31. Ibid., 67/73-74.

32. ESW 2, 62/98-100. See also SEWW 20/80-81.

33. EWS, 62/145-147.

34. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 2/54-58.

35. SEWW 20/85-87 and Arnold, Select English Works, 2:240.

36. ESW 2, 65/114-117.

37. Ibid., 58/42-43.

38. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 1/128-130. See also the essay by Anne Hudson, “A Lollard Sect Vocabulary?” Lollards and Their Books (London: Hambledon Press, 1985), 165-180. Such a person was the only true priest, because one living “against God's law” was no priest at all. This conclusion threatened the entire organizational and economic structure of Christendom. See Peter McNiven, Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV: The Burning of John Badby (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1987), 45.

39. ESW 2, 66/110-120.

40. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 7/63-66, 2/340.

41. ESW 2, 57/57.

42. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 8/96-101.

43. Ibid., 2/180-184.

44. Ibid., 2/483-484.

45. Ibid., 2/311-322. See also ibid., 2/322-345. Again one might note Wyclif's personal fascination with the light and movement of the heavenly bodies.

46. Ibid., 2/237-245.

47. Ibid., 4/220-225.

48. Ibid., “Sermon of Dead Men,” 555-558, cf. 530-536.

49. Ibid., 2/243.

50. ESW 2, 65/46-47.

51. Ibid., 55/17-19.

52. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 8/28-29.

53. Ibid., 5/368-375. An obvious paraphrase of Matthew 5:19.

54. Smeeton, Lollard Themes, 159-220.

55. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 2/323-324.

56. ESW 2, 59/98-101.

57. EWW, 17/136-141.

58. ESW 2, 63/82-83.

59. Ibid., 57/48-49.

60. Cigman, Lollard Sermons, 16/331-333.

61. ESW 2, 67/2-4

62. Ibid., 63/44-45.

Abbreviations

PS 1: Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848.

PS 2: Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scriptures, Together with The Practice of Prelates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849.

PS 3: An Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue, The Supper of the Lord …, and Wm. Tracy's Testament Expounded. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1850.