Note: Sense 1.(d) was glossed in the print MED as "the whole body of Christian people," which indeed corresponds to some, mostly early Protestant, interpretations of 1 Peter 5.3. The Greek word literally means something like 'lot', hence, that which is allotted or allocated: 'heritage, legacy, allotted office, possession, or charge.' The Vulgate merely Latinizes this as 'clerus' (plural 'in cleris'). Modern translations have tended to interpret the Greek here, in the plural, as denoting the 'charges' given to different priests (e.g. different congretations, parishes, or more abstractly, duties, or spheres of action or authority. A different strand of interpretation, often blended with the foregoing, and often traced to Beza, has identified the 'heritage' involved with the church as a whole, regarded as the 'heritage of God' (rather awkwardly finessing the plural as a collective, or as denoting distinct churches as distinct 'heritages' of God.) This was apparently the interpretation of the English (which simply anglicizes the Latin 'cleris' as 'clergie') adopted by the print MED. However, how the Wycliffite translators interpreted 'cleris,' and therefore what they intended by 'clergie' (or what the Douay translators meant when they used the same rendering) if anything other than a convenient, if ambiguous, substitution, is difficult to say. Pecock clearly intends it to refer to the ecclesiastical hierarchy of bishops and priests (i.e. 'clerics' collectively, MED sense 1.(a)); the Wycliffite 'Lantern' likely intended the same, though a translation of 'in the clergie' as 'by virtue of ecclesiastical office, or 'clergyhood'' (MED sense 2.(a)) cannot be ruled out.