The gospel alone is sufficient to rule the lives of Christians everywhere - any additional rules made to govern men's conduct added nothing to the perfection already found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Interpretation
The gospel is complete and does not need additional rules for governing Christian behavior.
In this quote, John Wycliffe emphasizes the sufficiency of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the ultimate guide for Christians. He asserts that the teachings of the Gospel are perfect and encompass all that is necessary for moral and spiritual conduct, implying that any additional rules are redundant and do not enhance the moral framework established by the Gospel.
In practice
In a sermon about faith, one might use this quote to highlight the completeness of the Gospel.
We should know that faith is a gift of God, and that it may not be given to men, except it be graciously. Thus, indeed, all the good which we have is of God; and accordingly, when God rewardeth a good work of man, he crowneth his own gift.
The New Testament is of full authority and open to the understanding of simple men as to the points most needful to salvation.
No man is to be credited for his mere authority's sake, unless he can show Scripture for the maintenance of his opinion.
By the law of Christ, every man is bound to love his neighbour as himself; but every servant is a neighbour of every civil lord; therefore every civil lord must love any of his servants as himself; but by natural instinct, every lord abhors slavery; therefore, by the law of charity, he is bound not to impose slavery on any brother in Christ.
The higher the hill, the stronger the wind: so the loftier the life, the stronger the enemy's temptations.
I shall not die, but live; and again declare the evil deeds of the friars.
It has come to be a dreadfully common belief in the Christian Church that the only man who has a “call” is the man who devotes all his time to what is called “the ministry,” whereas all Christian service is ministry, and every Christian has a call to some kind of ministry or another.
Every Mass is a memorial of that one sacrifice and that passover which restored life to the world. Every Mass puts us into intimate communion with her, the mother, whose sacrifice 'becomes present' just as the sacrifice of her Son 'becomes present' at the words of consecration..... At the root of the Eucharist is the virginal and maternal life of Mary
The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it's too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?
Somewhere along the way we have subtly and tragically taken the costly command of Christ to go, baptize, and teach all nations and mutated it into a comfortable call for Christians to come, be baptized, and listen in one location.
Do not forget, read a passage from the Gospel every day. It is the power that changes us, that transforms us, it changes life and it changes the heart.
Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church... nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that every where I am in Thy Presence
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