The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

IV. Exposes Antichrist as False Church of Prophecy

The usurpations of the Papacy—its “spoliation” of the churches, its haughty pride, the worldly character of its government, and its claims to hierarchal domination over the world—were attacked by Wyclif as bearing the stamp of Anti christ—a name he applied to the pope and the Papacy in numberless passages in his later years. ³³ In chapter 2 of De Papa he asserts that “the pope is antichrist here in earth,” and in chapter 7 that the cardinals “are hinges to the fiend’s [devil’s] house.” ³⁴ Wyclif contrasts the true church with “the ‘Church of the malignants’ “—the members of the holy church with the disciples of Antichrist. ³⁵ He maintains “there are two flocks in the militant church, the flock of Christ and manifold flocks of Antichrist.” ³⁶ PFF2 52.2

Like those of Dante, Wyclif’s views on church and state fitted perfectly into the rising nationalism of the time. He denounced the temporal claims of the Papacy in De Dominio Divino (Concerning Divine Lordship), declaring the pope ought to have no authority over states and governments. It became a cardinal feature of his teaching, a position he never yielded. PFF2 53.1

1. ANTICHRIST IDENTIFIED ON BASIS OF BIBLE PROPHECY

Wyclif regarded the pope, in bloodstained garments at the high altar of the central church of Christendom, as the Man of Sin, the Little Horn, and the true Antichrist of prophecy. His treatises are replete with such references. ³⁷ In his translation of the “secounde epistle to Tessalonycense” (1380) and of the “Apocalips,” he beheld the real character of the Man of Sin and the woman of Revelation. His Speculum de Antichristo (Mirror of Antichrist) unveils the deceits of Antichrist and his “clerks” (clergy), who object to the preaching of Christ’s gospel ³⁸ To subject Christendom to the bishop of Rome is to subject her to the power of Antichrist. ³⁹ In his tract Of Good-Preaching Priests, Wyclif again inveighs against the “heresy and hypocrisy of Antichrist,” and calls his prelates “the clerks [clergy] of Antichrist.” ⁴⁰ Writing further on the “fiction” of the “keys of Antichrist,” he admonishes his readers to “sever from the church such frauds of Antichrist,” and to learn to “detect the devices of Antichrist.” ⁴¹ PFF2 53.2

In How the Office of Curates Is Ordained of God, which is in manuscript in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Wyclif’s point XXIV is explicit: PFF2 53.3

“The four and twentieth is, that they put the holy law of God under the feet of antichrist and his clerks, and the truth of the gospel is condemned for error and ignorance by worldly clerks, who presume by their pride to be doomsmen of subtle and high mysteries, proving articles of holy writ, and blindly condemn truths of Christ’s gospel, for they are against their worldly life and fleshly lusts, and condemn for heretics true men who teach holy writ, truly and freely, against their sins.” ⁴² PFF2 54.1

Wyclif applies the name Antichrist to all the popes collectively, and to individuals such as Clement VII, frequently referring to the pope as fulfilling the Pauline prophecy of 2 Thessalonians 2, concerning “the ‘Man of Sin.’ ” The cardinals who opposed Urban VI, before electing a rival pope, had issued a manifesto against Urban, declaring that he ought to be called Antichrist rather than pope. Small wonder that Wyclif called both popes (Urban VI and Clement VII) Antichrist, as well as popedom at large. ⁴³ PFF2 54.2