THE SEVEN
DEADLY SINS
by John Wycliffe
It should come as no surprise that Wycliffe, the first to challenge the authority of the corrupted church in a meaningful way, the first to translate the entire Bible into the language of the common man, the “Morning Star of the Reformation[1],” would conclude that the Gospel teaches peace and condemns any killing of one’s fellow man. The fact that his pacifism is all but forgotten is an indication that the purification and restoration that began with him has not yet been completed.
This excerpt is taken from Select English Works of John Wyclif, Volume III, Miscellaneous Works, pages 119-167, edited from original manuscripts by Thomas Arnold M.A. of University College, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1871. Wycliffe’s tract, written circa 1384, is organized as follows: (chapter 1) introduction, (2-7) pride, (8-11) envy, (12-16) anger, (17-20) sloth, (21-24) greed, (25-28) gluttony, and (29-32) lust. Wycliffe classified pride, envy, and anger as sins of the devil; anger, sloth, and greed as sins of the world; and greed, gluttony, and lust as sins of the flesh. He called these sins “sisters” that are so knitted together that one brings in all of the others.
The original editor’s preface is transcribed here together with the chapters on envy, anger, and sloth, which contain nearly all of what Wycliffe had to say in this tract about war and fighting. This transcription is under no copyright protection. It is our gift to you. You may freely copy, print, and transmit it, but please do not change or sell it. And please bring any mistakes to our attention. We are indebted to the University of Michigan’sMiddle English Dictionary for help in puzzling out the meaning of Wycliffe’s text, but mistakes were surely made nonetheless.
Please refer to Carl Rogers’ excellent thesis for more information regarding the pacifism of John Wycliffe, and please contact us if you know of an English translation of his De Civili Dominio or his De Officio Regis.
Transcribed and edited by WWW.NONRESISTANCE.ORG.
Preface
The evidence connecting the following tract with Wycliffe may be deemed tolerably satisfactory. Besides being mentioned by Bale[2] under the title of De Peccatis fugiendis, it is the first tract in a small manuscript volume (Bodleian 647), nearly all the contents of which are known or reputed to be by Wycliffe. The Bodleian Library (University of Oxford) has a second copy of it (Douce 373), and there is a third at Dublin (Trinity College v.6). This text is based on the Bodleian 647 manuscript, which is written in the West Midland dialect. The internal evidence proves the tract to be of Lollard origin, but no more. Yet the passage about the right to take back church endowments if misused (chapter 24) sounds like the voice of Wycliffe, as does also the rough humor in the comparison of the feats of a knight to those of a hangman (chapter 15). The mention of the romance of the battle of Troy, if it were a reference to the version penned by Lydgate, would indeed fix the date of the composition to a period subsequent to Wycliffe’s death. But, besides the old and well-known French version of Guido delle Colonne, which had been long in circulation, an English metrical version was written by John Barbour[3], author of The Brus.
Chapter 8
The next sister of pride is the sin of envy. Envy is called an evil desire of a man, by which he desires harm to fall upon his neighbor, and if the desire is fulfilled, he rejoices in his neighbor’s misfortune. Just as pride, the first of these seven sins, is inordinate desire of a man’s own loftiness, envy, the second sister of sin, is inordinate desire of man toward his neighbor. And so envy always begets evil, and is entirely contrary to love. Scholars dispute that envy exists, since no man can desire a thing unless he thinks that it is good, or that good will come from it, and neither of these qualifies as envy. But here shall the devil be certain that envy is his sin, for a man thinks something is good that is harmful to someone else. And so, just as God’s children have a liking for good, the devil and his children have a liking for harm. The devil finds no advantage in a close relationship with envious men, for such a relationship would show his involvement in their evil desires, and appearing to be unassociated does them more harm. And so, as goodness profits a good man, so also wickedness pleases an evil man. Each envious man is obviously foolish, for he thinks that an evil thing is good.
