Heresy
John Wyclif and the True Church
Wyclif not only believed in the eternal and true Church of the Elect, he eventually rejected the visible Church entirely. This distinction had a long history among Christians, though few had yet drawn the line so clearly. The visible Church is the apparatus we see in the world: the buildings, the laws and administration, the priests, and the professing Christians. The true Church, on the other hand, was that which was created by Christ himself, consisting of only those Christians who are destined to be saved (the others are Christian in name only) along with those beliefs and practices that are consonant with salvation. The membership in this true Church was called the Elect, which literally means the ones chosen.
No one claimed to be able to identify the Elect, but a good many reformers claimed to be able to identify those beliefs and practices that belong to the true Church. This was the point on which most reformers disputed most strongly with the papacy or their local bishop. And it was here where Wyclif went further than his predecessors.
He began simply by criticizing the behavior of the clergy and various claims made by the papacy to religious authority. Working from his position of the ultimate authority of the Bible, his criticisms became sharper and he accepted less and less authority from the popes. By his last years, he was denying that the popes had any authority at all over Christians and that the visible Church root and branch was at best irrelevant, at worst the abode of Satan.
By the end of his life, Wyclif had gone a good way towards the later Protestant position. He rejected the pope and monasticism and canon law. The only true priests were the Elect, who could be anyone. He rejected most of the sacraments, though the Eucharist gave him much difficulty. Wyclif had already reached the point of heresy. With his teachings on the Eucharist, though, he also lost much of his support in England.