In

pontiff's decision was against him, he and his associates were expelled, and the monks restored. He had, however, preferment enough for any reasonable mind; and he was not much influenced by avarice. Besides the profits arising from his lectures, he held two livings, the chief of which was Lutterworth. As he grew older, his controversial spirit grew warmer. From the commencement of his ministerial labours, he seems to have regarded with indignation the vices of the clergy. If his first attacks were directed against the friars, it was not that he was insensible of the worldly spirit, the luxurious living, and lax morals of the remaining portion of the clerical body. He now assailed all in their possessions, which he rightly considered as the root of the evil. these assaults he could not possibly have any private feeling to gratify: he was actuated by a high sense of duty; and he must have been equally so by uncommon courage, or he would not thus boldly have thrown down the gauntlet to the whole church. But he did not observe the proper line of proceeding. By teaching that poverty was obligatory on every minister of Christ's word; that personal holiness was no less indispensable to the efficacy of the sacerdotal character; that the want of either of necessity forfeited the grace of God; that the priest who sinned was, ipso facto, deprived of the essential character of the priesthood; that such a one ought to be deposed, and that it was a crime to pay him the accustomed tithes, he naturally evoked a feeling of hostility from those whose privileges and claims he thus condemned. Nor was he content with his own dissemination of his principles. He associated with him a body of “ poor clerks ;" of men who, having no benefice to lose, and no hope of gaining one, might easily incur the obligation of poverty; and they preached his doctrines with dauntless zeal. But whatever might be their motives, it is impossible to doubt the purity of his. He subjected himself to as many privations- he lived as meagrely and was clad as coarsely as the most rigid of the monastic orders; he proclaimed that this was the

evangelical poverty necessary to all who would imitate our Saviour; and the inflexibility of his moral corresponded with his austerities. He was evidently an enthusiast, a conscientious one, - and for that reason likely to do the more mischief.

The church took the alarm; and in the last year of the third Edward's reign, he was summoned to answer for his novel opinions before the primate and the bishop of London in the church of St. Paul. But he was not without friends; by his recent attacks on the temporal authority of the pope, he had won the favour of the government, and at his trial he was attended by the duke of Lancaster and Percy earl marshal, whose influence would, it was hoped, intimidate the judges. That such was their object is evident from their behaviour. Lancaster in particular treated the prelates with insult; an altercation followed 1; the duke grew still more violent; and he so enraged the spectators, that his palace of the Savoy was plundered, and he himself just escaped with his life. On this occasion, Wycliffe made an apology, and escaped with a reprimand. It was not likely to have much effect on one who had felt strong in his own conviction that he was defending the truth, and that he might rely on the support of the powerful. From temporal he proceeded to spiritual warfare with the church, he and his inferior clerks promulgated his opinions on both points with new zeal, and in 1382, a synod convoked by the primate was assembled at London to condemn his propositions. Fourteen of them were declared to be dangerous; ten absolutely heretical; in fact, he had insinuated, that after the consecration of the bread and wine, the elements still retained their nature; and that consequently there was no such thing as transubstantiation, which he represented as a vain invention; as contrary no less to Scripture than to common sense. Yet, that he held the real presence is indisputable, both from his express words on the subject*, and from his

"I acknowledge that the sacrament of the altar is very God's body in form of bread; but it is in another manner God s body than it is in heaven.

example. To the very last he celebrated mass with as much devotion as any other clergyman of the Roman catholic communion; and this he could not have done had he regarded the sacrament merely as a commemoration; had he not been fully convinced that he was offering a sacrifice. His own words, however, explicitly acquaint us with his opinions; for he distinctly condemns as heretics those who held that nothing after consecration remained in the eucharist beyond the mere elements. But his denial of transubstantiation was enough it revolted the feelings of the time; and neither the duke of Lancaster, to whom he appealed, nor the parliament, which had encouraged him so long as he confined his assaults to the temporalities and conduct of the clergy, would assist him. That in points of doctrine he should appeal to a lay tribunal, and make laymen the judges of recondite tenets of faith, was consistent enough with the opinions of one who taught that laymen might administer the sacraments, - that they might consecrate even our Lord's body; but it naturally cooled the attachment of his former supporters. They began to regard him as a bold visionary, who, unless he were arrested in his dangerous career, and taught in points of faith to submit to authority might, by his itinerant coadjutors, do much mischief. This impression was doubtless just: excellent as were the intentions of Wycliffe, he had not the calm powers of one who is required to define the limits of error and of truth. Hence it was that even Lancaster advised him to recognise the decisions of the church. To refuse might be dangerous; and though no man had greater intrepidity, he probably had no wish to sustain the crown of martyrdom. It is, however, equally pro

For in heaven it is seen in the form and figure of flesh and blood; but in the sacrament God's body is a miracle of God in form of bread."-"We believe, as Christ and his apostles have taught us, that the sacrament of the altar, white and round, and unadulterated, like our bread, is, after consecration, the true God's body in form of bread; and if it be broken in three parts, as the church uses, or even in a thousand, every one of those parts is the same God's body." No Roman catholic divine, at any period, could have used more explicit language.

360

to

1384.

bable that he did not consider his slight difference with
the church on the nature of the eucharist
for assu-

redly there is no gulf between the real presence and
transubstantiation as sufficient to encounter the risks
before him. Yet, that he might at the same time satisfy
his conscience, he composed a confession of faith so
cautious, so full of scholastic subtleties, so pervaded by
those nicer distinctions, which, as an accomplished dis-
putant, he could introduce at pleasure, that by the
synod (held at Oxford) it was regarded as orthodox, by
his own partizans as a vindication of his own opinions.
It may be said that there was something dishonourable
in this studied ambiguity; but we at least are not dis-
posed to condemn him. On the subject of the eucharist,
he felt that, if his opinions were not novel, they were
uncommon; and he might probably at times have his
misgivings, whether, in deviating from the recognised line
of orthodoxy, he was acting a wise or a humble part,-
whether, of all his countrymen, he alone was infallible.
On other points, where he felt more strongly, he was
more firm.
The tone in which he assailed the abuses of
the papal power, found an echo in many a breast; for
those who were most forward to acknowledge the legi-
timate dignity, were not slow to censure the monstrous
usurpations of the popes. He boldly assailed the
pope as Antichrist; and though suspended from all
scholastic arts, and compelled to retire to his living at
Lutterworth, his pen was active to the very last. At
the close of 1384, while assisting at the altar, just as
the host was elevated, he was seized with a stroke of
palsy which in ten days brought him to his grave.*

-

That Wycliffe held some dangerous doctrines begins at length to be admitted. He maintained that every

* Wycliffe, Trialogus, lib. iv. Wilkins, Concilia, tom. iii. pp. 116-167. passim. Knighton, de Eventibus Angliæ, lib. v. pp. 2644-2664. Knighton is very minute, and very severe on the opinions of Wycliffe, to whose talents and virtues, however, he bears willing testimony. Walsingham, Historia, pp. 190-284. passim. Lewis, Works of Wycliffe, with Life pp. 1-251. Turner, History, vol. v. p. 181, &c. Lingard, History, vol. iii. p. 158, &c. On this subject, however, Mr. Turner is not to be followed. "Wycliffe held some erroneous opinions, some fantastic ones, and some

clergyman was imperatively bound to imitate the poverty no less than the virtues of Christ; that his temporalities were given him for a specific purpose,- the honour of God, and the relief of the poor; that if these temporalities were not thus expended, they might be and ought to be taken from the possessors; that in such a case it was the duty of a layman to withhold the tithes and other sources of clerical emolument; that if he continued to pay them, he rendered himself responsible for the sins of the minister; that under no less a penalty than damnation, he was compelled to deprive a delinquent thurch of its possessions. A proposition which should make the illiterate laity judges, not merely of the conduct but of the doctrine of their pastors; which should enable them to decide what was and what was not conformable with the precepts and example of Christ; which should furnish selfishness with a pretext for eluding the obligation of supporting the altar, was, however monstrous in its nature and perilous in its consequences, too flattering not to be eagerly received. But the reformer went much further than this: by a mixture of feudal, theological, and scholastic subtlety, he shook the foundation of lay no less than of ecclesiastical possessions. The sum of his eleven arguments on this subject is, that the dominion or right of property is founded in grace; and that it is forfeited when that grace is lost; in other words, that men not religious, not in communion with Christ, ought not to possess any property whatever, which by implication should be taken from them and given to the saints. When a vassal commits treason, he is rightly punished by the forfeiture of his fief; but sin is treason against God; therefore the sinner forfeits whatever he holds of God,—all right to property, which, however derived through an inferior medium, is in fact held of God, the lord paramount, the sovereign

which, in their moral and political consequences, are most dangerous.". Southey, Book of the Church, i. 347. Mr. Turner omits whatever may place Wycliffe in a disadvantageous light.