  Wyclif's theology of grace is the key to understanding how his theory of human dominium relates to divine dominium, its causal paradigm. Man's lordship is at once ownership and jurisdictive mastery, but when a human lord governs, or gives, or receives, or lends, these acts are only just insofar as the lord recognizes that his authority is that of a steward: “Any rational creature is only improperly called a lord, and is rather a minister or steward of the supreme Lord, and whatever he has to distribute, he has purely by grace” ([De Dominio Divino III, ch. 6, p.250.25–29). The essential characteristic of every instance of human dominium is the grace God lends to the individual lord, which itself is grounded in the grace of the Holy Spirit. The human lord appears to have proprietary and juristictive authority by virtue of his own excellence, but this is really only an instantiation of divine dominium, a grace-realized agent of God's lordship. This makes the human lord both master and servant; from the divine perspective, the lord is God's servant, but from the viewpoint of the subject, he is master. Wyclif is tireless in his emphasis on the illusory nature of this mastery; grace allows the human lord to recognize that he is, in fact, the servant of his subjects, ministering to them as a nurturing steward, not lording over them as would a powerful sovereign.  