It is not the hierarchical institution of salvation: . This true Church is in opposition to the mixed and hierarchical Church which is now living and is a distortion of the true Church, and nothing other than a distortion. The basic law of the Church is not the law of the Pope, but is the law of the Bible, and this is the law of God, or the law of Christ. All this was not meant to be anti-Catholic. Neither Bradwardine nor Wyclif thought of leaving the Roman church.
There was only one Church, and even Luther needed much time before he separated himself. This was not the idea. But there were dangers for the Roman church in the Augustinian principles. And therefore, as you remember, the semi- Pelagian and crypto-semi-Pelagian movements after Augustine, removed the dangers of Augustinianism from the Roman church. Here these dangers appear again under the name of Augustine, taken up by Thomas of Bradwardine, and by Wyclif. If predestination is applied, then that means that many people are not predestined – for instance, many of the hierarchs – and this gives the basis for finding symptoms in the hierarchy which show that they are not predestined.
These symptoms are found by the application of the law of Christ, which is, for instance, the Sermon on the Mount, or the sending of the disciples – all kinds of laws and ideas which are dangerous in an organized hierarchical church. From the criticism of the hierarchy, Wyclif revises the doctrines of the Church and its relationship to the state. This also has a long tradition. In England there was, since the 12th century, a movement represented in the name of the so-called Anonymous of York, a man who wrote for the king, making the king the Christ for the British nation. There was an anti-Roman tendency towards a British territorial church, similar to the Byzantine situation, where the king and the highest bishop of the English church are not identical but are at least spiritually the same thing. The king is the Christ, he is in hymns and in pictures depicted as the Christ, namely the Christ for the nation, as Constantine in Byzantium as the Christ for the whole Eastern church. Now these analogies are preparations for the revolt of the crown of England against the Pope. This revolt did not yet happen, but it was prepared.
