denies and denounces, declaring that "the evil of every sin is infinite." Praying to saints is not absolutely interdicted by him, but he says it is better to pray directly to Christ as God, adding, that "many are of the opinion, that when prayer was directed only to the middle person in the Trinity for spiritual help, the Church was more flourishing, and made greater advances than it now does, when many intercessors have been found out and introduced." Believers are described as soldiers of Christ, with a stern conflict before them; and then, as if already bracing his own spirit for the extremest possibilities of fortune, he adds these startling words: "We have only to declare with constancy the law of God before Cæsarian prelates, and straightway the flower of martyrdom will be at hand." The fourth. book of the Trialogus treats of the sacraments. Wycliffe accepts the seven sacraments of the Romish Church; but five of them, it is evident, are sacraments for him in a lower sense than the other two. Baptism, he teaches, is valid without the chrism and the trine immersion, the affusion of water, in the name of the holy Trinity, being all that is essential. The baptism of infants he holds to be requisite, even females being allowed, in cases of extreme urgency, to administer the rite; but he will not undertake to determine what becomes of infants who die without it. In regard to the eucharist, he rejects the dogma of transubstantiation, though he insists with emphasis upon the real presence of Christ in the elements.* Indulgences come in for a blow from his vigorous arm. Stoutly does he belabor "the sensual Simonists," who "chatter on the subject of grace, as though it were something to be sold and bought, like an ox or an ass." The monastic orders are handled by him without gloves. He exposes their sensuality, their frauds, and their meddlesome, malicious cunning. In conclusion, he discusses the intermediate state, holding to a sort of Purgatory, though not in the superstitious and coarser form of the doc

* Vaughan says he did not reject the dogma of transubstantiation till after 1378. But, on this point, see Boehringer's Johann von Wykliffe, p.

340.

trine; then passes on to the final judgment, and glances at the eternal destiny of the saved and lost.*

Such lecturing was a new thing at Oxford-new in Christendom. Its deep and solid learning commanded respect; its raciness was refreshing, while the gallant daring of it fascinated the youthful auditory, like the nodding crest and ringing steel of a noble knight. Lively discussion was, of course, provoked amongst the students, the buzz of which went far and wide over the kingdom. All ears were awake, and all eyes were turned towards Wycliffe as the acknowledged mastergenius of the University, the most accomplished scholastic of his age. Rome had her eyes on him, and the King and the Parliament; but, best of all, the young men and the masses, who always are the first to recognize a new hero.

Wycliffe next comes before us in the character of a Diplomatist. In 1374, the third year of his lecturing at Oxford, he was sent to Bruges, in the Netherlands, as one of four Commissioners, on the part of England, to meet Commissioners from the Papal Court at Avignon, for the adjustment of a dispute, which had arisen in regard to the disposal of English benefices, the Pope having, up to that time, exercised an authority in such matters, which the English Parliament and people were willing then no longer to concede. The embassy resulted in no immediate advantage to the cause of religious freedom, but in great ultimate advantage, in that it gave Wycliffe the intimate acquaintance and warm personal friendship of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was a member with him of the royal commission; a friendship, both the chivalry and the value of which were put to the test, not long afterwards, when the thunders of Papal wrath began to break about the Reformer's head.

On his return from the Continent, after an absence of some months, Wycliffe was rewarded for his services by a presentation, as we have already noticed, to the prebend of Aust. But

*For an outline of the Trialogus, in the briefest possible statement of the topics handled in it, see Le Bas's Life of Wycliffe, in the Appendix, pp. 437, 8.

while Fortune thus smiled upon him, she frowned upon his sturdy patron, the Duke of Lancaster. The king and his son Edward, the Black Prince, heir apparent to the throne, were both of them infirm, the former from age, the latter from disease, so that Lancaster had become the virtual sovereign of the realm. The French war, which brought glory at first, was now going on rather badly. Popular feeling had, therefore, begun to set somewhat against him. The priesthood, full of hate towards him on account of his patriotic and reformatory sympathies, took prompt and cunning advantage of this change of fortune, and did their utmost to mislead and poison the public mind in regard to him and his measures. The result was, that instead of the "good Parliament" of 1376, eager for almost any measure in opposition to Rome, discontented England confronted Lancaster, in 1377, with a Parliament clamorous against Wycliffe, and bent upon bringing him to trial as a heretic. This Parliament assembled in January, and on the 19th day of the month following, the two Houses of Convocation sat convened in St. Paul's Church, awaiting the appearance of the Reformer, who had been summoned down from Oxford, to answer the charge of heresy. In due time Wycliffe enters, tall, thin, and venerable; clad in a loose, long black robe, belted about the waist; his gray beard sweeping his breast, and the light of his keen gray eye as steady as the gleam of burnished steel. Behind him walks a servant, bearing books and papers, which he has need of in his defence, but especially the Book of books. It is plain that he is armed and ready for the encounter. But before the trial could open, a hot dispute arises between Courtney, the presiding Bishop, on the one side, and the Duke of Lancaster and Lord Percy, Earl Marshal of England, on the other. High words pass, and the whole assembly breaks up in an uproar.

But Wycliffe has roused the fears of the Papal Court, and is not thus to be dropped and let alone. In 1378, a new king meanwhile having mounted the throne, and a new protest against the usurpations of Rome having issued from the Reformers, five bulls were sent from Rome to England, three of

them addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, one to the King, and one to the University of Oxford, denouncing Wycliffe as a heretic, and calling for his commitment to prison. This led to the famous Synod at Lambeth in April, before which Wycliffe is said, by his enemies, to have answered feebly and evasively to the charges entered against him; as though he quailed in the presence of his ecclesiastical superiors, and dared not say at Lambeth what he had said so often, and in so many forms, at Oxford. The charge is false. Wycliffe understood himself, and his judges, and the occasion. It was not a popular harangue that was called for, discussing all the matters at issue between the Church and himself as a theologian and a Christian. It was mainly the question of Papal authority, or, wider still, of ecclesiastical authority, in its relation to the authority of the civil power. It was the original question of jurisdiction; and Wycliffe chose to handle it with precision and subtlety as a schoolman. We may be tempted to regret that he did not bear himself more loftily in the defence, taking a wider range, and striking a blow which would have resounded through Europe, and through the ages; but there certainly was no faltering or feebleness. The glove was of velvet, but the hand it covered was as firm as hammered steel. Retracting nothing he had ever uttered, he propounded principles which, logically, made an end of the Papal Hierarchy. To theologians, diplomatists, and scholars, it was palpable enough, that he and Rome were parting company.

The Synod had no authority given it to visit Wycliffe with pains and penalties, and, if it had, would hardly have dared to use it, such was the attitude of the English government, and such the temper of the people, towards him. It therefore only rebuked him for his heresies, and charged him not to promulgate them any more, either in the pulpit or the schools. The result was a sort of victory for Wycliffe, but victory only in a preparatory skirmish; the battle was yet to come. No bolt had fallen, but the cloud was over him, and lightning was in it.

In this state of the case, while awaiting the action of the

Papal Court, Wycliffe prepares a second document, in which he makes his appeal to the Christian public, touching the points at issue. In this document, for obvious reasons, his language is bolder than it was at Lambeth. The infallibility of the Pope, clerical power of absolution, and the authority of the Church in temporal things, he denounces as "Luciferian," and avows himself ready to defend the positions he has taken, "even to the death, if by such means he might reform the manners of the Church."

But the excitement occasioned by such a struggle proves too severe for his slender frame, and his nervous system gives out under it. Near the beginning of 1379, a violent sickness falls upon him, and carries him down to the brink of the grave. Tradition, so nearly silent in regard to all personal matters pertaining to Wycliffe, has handed down a report of one scene. in the sick man's chamber, minute and vivid enough for an artist's pencil. Four doctors, called regents, representing the four orders of Friars, informed of the probably fatal nature of his disease, take with them four aldermen of the city, and hasten to his bedside, to extort from him a dying confession of the injustice he has done the Mendicants in his war against them. Wycliffe lies silent till they have finished what they had to say, then beckoning to his servant to raise him on his pillow, he fixes his eyes on the astonished group, and exclaims, with all his remaining strength, "I shall not die, but live, and again declare the evil deeds of the Friars." The deputation depart discomfited, and Wycliffe is shortly on his feet again, more resolute than ever against the unscriptural assumptions of the Hierarchy.

But a battalion of Wycliffes, launched all at once upon Christendom, could not have done so much to damage the Roman Church as she was now doing to damage herself. Close on the heels of her return from the Avignon exile, the great schism. occurred, commencing in 1378, and continuing for nearly forty years, during which Pope fulminated against Pope, to the boundless distress and distraction of all honest and godly men. It was this confusion at home, which hindered proceedings