On the Truth of Holy Scripture
John Wyclif, De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae (1378)
John Wyclif
A very long Latin argument that the book on the lectern outranks every hand that has ever held it.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 186
- Stat total
- 320
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Burnt, dug up and burnt again, and still here. Fuller’s line about the ashes reaching the sea is not decoration — it is what actually happened to the man and did not happen to the argument.
It attacks, and that is unusual for a book about a book. Wyclif is not defending Scripture’s honour; he is using it to take ground off everything that had been put above it.
Middling on purpose. He was condemned in his lifetime, condemned again after his death, and his own university turned on him.
Latin, enormous, and written for doctors. What travelled was the English Bible and the preachers, not this.
Cited for this book
Oxford’s best philosopher turned on the machinery of his own church and argued, book by book, that nothing may be believed which is not founded on Scripture. He set men to putting the Bible into English. The Council of Constance condemned him thirty-one years after he was buried and had his bones dug up and burnt. Thomas Fuller: “They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into Swift, a neighboring brook running hardby… And thus the ashes of Wicliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed the world over.”
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | This Is My Hand | Bible | Argument | 76 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 4 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 8 | Nothing Is To Be Added | Bible | Argument | 78 | 100% | 15 |
| 14 | God’s Word Arouseth Insurrection | Ecclesiology | Argument | 80 | 100% | 10 |
| 20 | They Stand To Eternity | Bible | Argument | 82 | 100% | 10 |
| 28 | Where the Word Is Preached | Ecclesiology | Argument | 93 | 100% | 5 |
Read it: They Stand to Eternity
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Latin.
“Nothing is to be believed that is not founded upon this book, and to its teachings nothing is to be added.”
Wyclif, De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, as summarised in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church VI § 41 (public domain).
“Logic, as in Oxford, changes very frequently, yea, every twenty years, but the Scriptures are yea, yea and nay, nay. They never change. They stand to eternity.”
Wyclif, De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, as summarised in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church VI § 41 (public domain).
“For if I say, This is my hand, and if it be not a hand, then am I a liar…”
Wyclif, sermon on Matthew 26:26, in Grenville Kleiser, The World’s Great Sermons I (1908, public domain), elided.
“They said it in Wyclif’s day, and the hypocrites say now, that God’s Word arouseth insurrection.”
Tyndale, quoted in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church VI § 40 (public domain).
Oxford’s best philosopher turned on the machinery of his own church and argued, book by book, that nothing may be believed which is not founded on Scripture. He set men to putting the Bible into English.
The Council of Constance condemned him thirty-one years after he was buried, and had his bones dug up and burnt. Thomas Fuller: the ashes were cast into a brook, and “the ashes of Wicliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed the world over.”