If Wyclif believes proprietas to be antithetical to the evangelical dominium of the priests as well as ultimately threatening to the restored Natural dominium of the Elect, how can he argue that a civil lord, the chief owner in society, is an instrument of God's justice? Wyclif's answer to this will show how he believes the king, the primary civil lord of the kingdom, can bring about a just society for the church and for his kingdom as a whole.

IURISDICTIO IN DE CIVILI DOMINIO AND DE OFFICIO REGIS

Wyclif's views on secular earthly power, to which he refers as either kingship or civil dominium, appear mainly in De Civili Dominio (1375–76) and in De Officio Regis (1379), two non-consecutive treatises of his Summa Theologie (1375–81). His account of the more practical concerns of rule is brief; Wyclif offers no programmatic advice to rulers, no well-developed plans for class-harmony in the realm, no schemes for the increase of monarchic power in the world. If his discussion of monarchy is comprehensible only by conceiving it as an outgrowth of his theological and metaphysical assumptions, why did he treat it as a separate concern? Why not view it as an outgrowth of Wyclif's more theoretical concerns? One might also ask why Wyclif devotes two separate treatises to the subject in his Summa. Why has he paid such close attention to secular power, and why has he lavished so much attention to showing its superiority to ecclesiastical authority?