JOHN WYCLIFFE
The Papacy was at one of it’s lowest points. Two men, Clement and Urban, both claimed the Papacy and each had raised an army to fight the other. Each was promising indulgences to those who would fight, and in a modality similar to the Muslim terrorists of the 21st century, the soldiers were promised ascendancy to Heaven if they fell in battle for such a holy cause. The armies of the popes marched under the cross as their banner, and Wycliffe found that obscene and actually wrote a treatise saying so. See {618087}.
Wycliffe had come down with a serious illness and appeared to be dying. The friars gathered at his bedside assuming that he would repent his attacks on the church, the friars and the Pope with his last rites. Instead, he pronounced this famous line. The churchmen left in disgust waiting for him to die. But he did not and vexed the established church and its representatives for a few more years. Wycliffe was castigated and had his books burned for his attacks on priests and bishops. A thousand years earlier another man was canonized as a Saint for similar attacks. See {618186}
For that, the Church burned him at the stake. Note the phraseology and compare it to Gettysburg Address {458852}. It is not known whether Lincoln was aware of this quotation or others that used similar wording.
John Wycliffe was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford. He became an influential dissident within the Roman Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism.
