1366[1]: perhaps at this very time, hardly in any case very long after, he was engaged in his treatise Of the Divine Dominion. About five years later he supplemented the work by a more extensive treatise Of civil Dominion; so that by 1371 or 1372 his views on this characteristic subject were fully formed and given to the world.[2]
Dominion and service, in Wycliffe's scheme, are the two ends of the chain which links humanity to God. Dominion is not indeed a part of the eternal order of things, since it only comes into existence by the act of creation: God in the first chapter of Genesis becomes Lord in the second, because there are now creatures to be his servants; just as the lower animals are put in the relation of servants by the creation of man. Dominion and service are thus necessarily correlative terms, including, but not identical with, other terms of human relation. Dominion for instance presupposes right and power, and the exercise of either; but it is not the same with them: it cannot exist without the coexistence of an object to operate upon;[3] whereas a man may
- ↑ [Dr. Loserth has brought forward convincing arguments to show that the tract cited was written at least eleven years later. See his papers in the English Historical Review, 11. 319-328, 1896; and in the Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch-historische Classe, 136. pt 1. 31-44, 1897.]
- ↑ These works I am now preparing for publication by the Wyclif society. I have not at present found reason to modify the view put forward by Shirley, intr., pp. xvii, xxi n. 2, with respect to their date. My citations are taken from transcripts in my possession of the original codices which are preserved in the palace library at Vienna: the De dominio divino from nr 1339 (which I sometimes correct from two other copies in the same library, numbered 1294 and 3935); and the De civili dominio from the only copy known to be in existence, books i, ii from nr 1341, and book iii from nr 1340. I should perhaps add that, as my work on these treatises is still incomplete, the following account of the doctrine they contain is only a tentative sketch. [My edition of the De civili dominio liber i was published in 1885. The second and third book was edited by Dr. J. Loserth in 1900-1903. It has not been necessary to insert references to the pages of my edition either of this book or of the De dominio divino, which I published in 1890, because the folios of the manuscripts are regularly entered in the margin of my editions.]
- ↑ Ius ergo, cum sit fundamentum dominii, licet sapiat relacionem respectu cuius dicitur ius, non tamen est formaliter ipsum dominium; sicut vis generativa patris non est formaliter ipsa paternitas, sed ad ipsum ut fundamentum pro aliquo tempore requisita. Et per
