The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 83
Wycliffe was a keen detector of error, and he struck fearlessly against
many of the abuses sanctioned by the authority of Rome. While acting as
chaplain for the king, he took a bold stand against the payment of tribute
claimed by the pope from the English monarch and showed that the papal
assumption of authority over secular rulers was contrary to both reason
and revelation. The demands of the pope had excited great indignation,
and Wycliffe’s teachings exerted an influence upon the leading minds of
the nation. The king and the nobles united in denying the pontiff’s claim
to temporal authority and in refusing the payment of the tribute. Thus an
effectual blow was struck against the papal supremacy in England.
Another evil against which the Reformer waged long and resolute
battle was the institution of the orders of mendicant friars. These
friars swarmed in England, casting a blight upon the greatness and
prosperity of the nation. Industry, education, morals, all felt the
withering influence. The monk’s life of idleness and beggary was not
only a heavy drain upon the resources of the people, but it brought useful
labor into contempt. The youth were demoralized and corrupted. By the
influence of the friars many were induced to enter a cloister and devote
themselves to a monastic life, and this not only without the consent of
their parents, but even without their knowledge and contrary to their
commands. One of the early Fathers of the Roman Church, urging the
claims of monasticism above the obligations of filial love and duty, had
declared: “Though thy father should lie before thy door weeping and
lamenting, and thy mother should show the body that bore thee and
the breasts that nursed thee, see that thou trample them underfoot, and
go onward straightway to Christ.” By this “monstrous inhumanity,” as
Luther afterward styled it, “savoring more of the wolf and the tyrant than
of the Christian and the man,” were the hearts of children steeled against
their parents.—Barnas Sears, The Life of Luther, pages 70, 69. Thus did
the papal
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