fellowship with that body. In explaining the article "the holy church," in his version of the Creed
(which omits the epithet "catholic," and the additional clause "the communion of saints"), he says
that this surely means, the Catholic Church;" and adds, "Both heretics and schismatics style their
congregations churches. But heretics in holding false opinions regarding God do injury to the faith
itself; while schismatics, on the other hand, in wicked separations break off from brotherly charity,
although they may believe just what we believe. Wherefore, neither do the heretics belong to the
Church Catholic, which loves God; nor do the schismatics form a part of the same, inasmuch as it
loves the neighbor, and consequently readily forgives the neigbbor’s sin."^680 It is well known that
this great and good man even defended the principle of forcible coercion of schismatics, on a false
interpretation of Luke 14:23, "Constrain them to come in."
In the ninth century the visible Catholic Church was divided into two rival Catholic
churches,—the patriarchal church in the East, and the papal church in the West. The former denied
the papal claim of universal jurisdiction and headship, as an anti-Christian usurpation; the latter
identified the Church Catholic with the dominion of the papacy, and condemned the Greek Church
as schismatical. Hereafter, in Western Christendom, the Holy Catholic Church came to mean the
Holy Roman Church.
The tyranny and corruptions of the papacy called forth the vigorous protest of Wiclif, who
revived the Augustinian distinction between the true church and the mixed church, but gave it an
anti-Roman and anti-papal turn (which Augustin did not). He defined the true church to be the
congregation of the predestinated, or elect, who will ultimately be saved.^681 Nobody can become
a member of this church except by God’s predestination, which is the eternal foundation of the
church, and determines its membership. No one who is rejected from eternity (praescitus, foreknown,
as distinct from praedestinatus, foreordained) can be a member of this church. He may be in it, but
he is not of it. As there is much in the human body which is no part of it, so there may be hypocrites
in the church who will finally be removed. There is but one universal church, out of which there
is no salvation. The only Head of this church is Christ; for a church with two heads would be a
monster. The apostles declared themselves to be servants of this Head. The Pope is only the head
of a part of the church militant, and this only if he lives in harmony with the commandments of
Christ. This conception of the church excludes all hypocrites and bad members, though they be
bishops or popes; and it includes all true Christians, whether Catholics, or schismatics, or heretics.
It coincides with the Protestant idea of the invisible church. But Wiclif and Hus denied the certainty
of salvation, as taught afterwards by Calvinists, and herein they agreed with the Catholics; they
held that one may be sure of his present state of grace, but that his final salvation depends upon his
perseverance, which cannot be known before the end.
Wiclif’s view of the true church was literally adopted by the Bohemian Reformer Hus, who
depended for his theology on the English Reformer much more than was formerly known.^682 From
(^680) De Fide et Symbolo, c. 10 (in Schaff’s ed., III. 331).
(^681) Tractatus de Ecclesia, c. I., "congregatio omnium praedestinatorum ... Illa est sponsa Christl ... Jerusalem mater nostra, templum
Domini, regnum coelorum et civitas regni magni." Then he quotes the distinction made by Augustin, to whom he refers throughout the
book more frequent-ly than to all other fathers combined. This important tract was recently published for the first time from three MSS.
in Vienna and Prague by the "Wyclif Society," and edited by Dr. Johann Loserth (professor of history in the University of Czernowitz),
London (Trübner & Co.), 1886, 600 pp. But the same view of the church is taught in other books of Wiclif, and correctly stated by Dr.
Lechler in his Joh. von Wiclif, Leipz., 1873, vol. I. 541 sqq.
(^682) The close affinity has recently been shown by Joh. Loserth, Hus und Wiclif; zur Genesis der hussitischen Lehre (Prag and Leipz.,
l884), and is especially apparent from a comparison of Wiclif’s and Hus’s treatises De Ecclesia. Wiclif’s book exerted little influence in