About the year 1349, when Wycliffe had reached his twenty-fourth year, and was rising to some renown in the college, this country was visited by a terrible pestilence, called the "black plague." It is supposed to have made its appearance first in Tartary, and after ravaging various countries in Asia, proceeded by the shores of the Nile to the islands of Greece, carrying devastation to almost every nation of Europe. So prodigious was the waste of human life that some say a fourth part of the inhabitants were cut off; others, that the half of the human race, besides cattle, were carried off in certain parts. This alarming visitation filled the pious mind of Wycliffe with the most gloomy apprehensions, and fearful forebodings as to the future. It was like the sound of the last trumpet in his heart. He concluded that the day of judgment was at hand Solemnized with the thoughts of eternity, he spent days and nights in his cell, and no doubt in earnest prayer for divine guidance. He came forth a champion for the truth; he found his armor in the word of God.
By his zeal and faithfulness in preaching the gospel, especially to the common people on Sundays, he acquired and deserved the title of the "evangelic doctor." But that which brought him such fame and popularity at Oxford, was his defense of the university against the encroachments of the mendicant friars. He fearlessly and unsparingly attacked these orders, which he declared to be the great evil of Christendom. They were now four in number—Dominicans, Minorites or Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites—and swarmed in all the best parts of Europe. They strove hard in Oxford, as heretofore in Paris, to obtain the ascendancy. They took every opportunity of enticing the students into their convents, who, without the consent of their parents, were enlisted into the mendicant orders. To such an extent was this system of trepanning carried on, that parents ceased to send their children to the universities. Thirty thousand youths had at one time studied at Oxford, but from this cause the number was reduced to six thousand. Bishops, priests, and theologians, in almost every country and university in Europe were contending against those arch-deceivers, but it was all to little effect, for the pontiffs vigorously defended them as their best friends, and conferred on them great privileges.
Wycliffe struck boldly, and we believe fatally, at the root of this great and universal evil. Next to the decline of the papal power, which we have already noticed, we may begin to mark that of the mendicant orders. He published some spiritual papers entitled, "Against able Beggary," "Against idle Beggary," and on "The poverty of Christ." "He denounced mendicancy in itself, and all the others as able-bodied beggars, who ought not to be permitted to infest the land. He charged them with fifty errors of doctrine and practice. He denounced them for intercepting the alms which ought to belong to the poor; for their unscrupulous system of proselytizing; for their invasion of parochial rights; their habit of deluding the common people by fables and legends; their hypocritical pretensions to sanctity; their flattery of the great and wealthy, whom it would rather have been their duty to reprove for their sins; their grasping at money by all sorts of means; the needless splendor of their buildings, whereas parish churches were left to decay."
Wycliffe was now the acknowledged champion of a great party in the university and in the church; and dignities and honors were conferred upon him. But if he had gained many friends, he had many enemies whose wrath it was dangerous to provoke. His troubles and changes now began. The friars supplied the pope with information as to all that was going on. In 1361 he was advanced to the mastership of Balliol college and rectory of Fillingham. Four years after he was chosen warder of Canterbury hall. His knowledge of scripture, the purity of his life, his unbending courage, his eloquence as a preacher, his mastery of the language of the common people, rendered him the object of general admiration. He maintained that salvation was by faith, through grace, without human merit in any way. This was striking, not at the outward evils merely, but at the very foundations of the whole system of popery. Led by divine wisdom, he commenced his great work at the right place and in the right way. He preached the gospel and explained the word of God to the people in vernacular English. In this way, he planted deep in the popular mind those great truths and principles which eventually led to the emancipation of England from the yoke and tyranny of Rome.