Among John Wycliffe’s many ‘heretical’ opinions was that of calling worship of the consecrated ‘transubstantiated’ host
the abomination of desolation as cited by Christ, Matthew 24:15:
When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand (Douay-Rheims).
In his classic treatise,
Wycliffe’s Wicket, the Oxford scholar explains the reference to that of Daniel 11:31, which prophesied the setting up of the pagan god, Jupiter Olympius, in the Jewish Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, a forerunner of the Antichrist.
Wycliffe understood Christ’s warning to speak to a future age, when an equally blasphemous sacrilege was to take place in the Christian Church: the sacrifice of the Mass, whereby bread is worshipped as God…..a god whom the early Church Fathers knew not.
Wycliffe recounts in Acts 17 similar idolatrous worship was seen by Paul when he visited Athens:
Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. [The Greek literally reads, ‘you are demon worshippers.’] They, like their modern counterparts, Roman Catholics, worship a god they do not know.
To Wycliffe, Paul’s admonition to the Corinthian Church against the practice of sacrificing as do the pagans is apropos to the Roman Church. For their sacrifices are to demons, not to God (1 Cor. 10:20).
Additionally, Wycliffe explains how the doctrine of Transubstantiation contradicts the very creedal positions of the Catholic Church:
(1) We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven;
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered, died, and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end (The Nicene Creed).
(2)
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father Uncreate, the Son Uncreate, and the Holy Ghost Uncreate (The Athanasian Creed).
In the Nicene Creed we are taught Christ remains in Heaven until His Second Advent. The Athanasian Creed emphasizes the eternity of the Son of God who is neither created nor made.
Wycliffe then asks, “How is it you, an earthly man, claims to make thy Maker? Can the thing made say to its Maker, Why hast thou made me thus? Or may it turn again and make Him that made it? Answer me. For you say every day thou makest from bread the body of the Lord; flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, God and man.”
Wycliffe compares the Roman Catholic hierarchy to that of the Jews in Christ’s day. They both mistake metaphors as signifying that which is literal. “Have you not read John 2 when Christ came into the Temple, they asked of him what token he would show that they might believe him. And he answered unto them, Cast down this temple and in three days I shall raise it again. These words were fulfilled in his rising again from death….but they were deceived, for they understood it carnally of the Jerusalem Temple…….[Similarly, the Roman Church] has a carnal understanding of the bread Christ broke among His disciples.”
He goes on to say, “On this false understanding they make
abomination of desolation as said by Daniel the Prophet, chapter 11; and Mathew 24;
standing in the holy place, he that readeth let him understand. Now therefore we pray heartily to God that this evil time be made short for the chosen men, as he promised in his blessed gospel Matthew 24. And the large and broad way that leadeth to perdition may be stopped, and the straight and narrow way [‘wicket’] that leadeth to bliss may be made open by holy scriptures, that we may know which is the will of God to serve him in sincerity and holiness in the fear of God, that we may find by him a way of everlasting bliss.”