§ 40. JOHN WYCLIF. 319
enough to shake confidence in the divine origin of the papacy. In sermons, tracts and larger writings, Wyclif brought Scripture and common sense to bear. His pen was as keen as a Damascus blade. Irony and invective, of which he was the master, he did not hesitate to use. The directness and pertinency of his appeals brought them easily within the comprehension of the popular mind. He wrote not only in Latin but in English. His conviction was as deep and his passion as fiery as Luther's, but on the one hand, Wyclif's style betrays less of the vivid illustrative power of the great German and little of his sympathetic warmth, while on the other, less of his unfortunate coarseness. As Luther is the most vigorous tract writer that Germany has produced, so Wyclif is the foremost religious pamphleteer that has arisen in England ; and the impression made by his clear and stinging thrusts may be contrasted in contents and audience with the scholarly and finished tracts of the Oxford movement led by Pusey, Keble and Newman, the one reaching the conscience, the other appealing to the aesthetic tastes ; the one adapted to break down priestly pretension, the other to foster it.
But the Reformer of tha.,14th ■CentiiiLYJS£aS--mDxe than a. scholar and publi(3ii^. Like John Wesley, he had a practical bent of mind, and like him he-^'^ttempted to provide England with a_neAy j)roclamation of the pure GospeL To counteract the influence of the friars, whom he had begun to attack after his return from Bruges, he conceived the idea of developing and sending forth a body of itinerant evangelists. These " poxe priests," as they were called, were taken from the list of Oxford graduates, and seem also to have included laymen. Of their number and the rules governing them, we are in the dark. The movement was begun about 1380, and on the one side it associates Wyclif with Gerrit de Groote, and on the other with Wesley and Avith his more recent fellow-countryman. General Booth, of the Salvation Army.
Although this evangelistic idea took not the form of a permanent organization, the appearance of the pore preachers made a sensation. According to the old chronicler, the disciples who gathered around him in Oxford were many and,
320 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 12U4-1517.
clad in long russet gowns of one pattern, they went on foot, ventilating their master's errors among the people and publicly setting tliem forth in sermons. ^ They had the distinction of being arraigned by no less a personage than Bishop Courtenay "as itinerant, unauthorized preachers who teach erroneous, yea, heretical assertions publicly, not only in churches but also in public squares and other profane places, and who do this under the guise of great holiness, but without having obtained any episcopal or papal authorization."
It was in 1381, the year before Courtenay said his memorable words, that Walden reports that Wyclif " began to determine matters upon the sacrament of the altar." ^ To attempt an innovation at this crucial point required courage of the highest order. In 12 theses he declared the Church's doctrine unscriptnral and ipi'slftading, For the first time^since ?lTei)romulgation of the dogma of transubstantiation by the Pourth Lateran was it seriously called in question by a theological exj^ert. It was a case of Athanasius standing alone. The mendicants waxed violent. Oxford authorities, at the instance of the archbishop and bishops, instituted a trial, the court consisting of Chancellor Berton and 12 doctors. Withoutjnentioniug Wyclif by name, the judges condemned as pestiferous the assertions that the bread and wine remain after consecration, and that Christ's body is present only figuratively ox tropicallyln the eucharist. Declaring that the judges had not been able to break down his arguments, Wyclif went on preaching and lecturing at the university. But in the king's council, to which he made appeal, the duke of Lancaster took sides against him and forbade him to speak any more on the subject at Oxford. This prohibition Wyclif met with a still more positive avowal of his views in hisConfession, which _clpses with the nohh wf^ydfy-^^T beliRVPi thatTn tlui end tlie truth will coiiCjii©*."
The same year, the Peasants' Revolt broke out, but there is no evidence that Wyclif had any more sympathy with the movement than Luther had with the Peasants' Rising of 1525. After the revolt was over, he proposed that Church
1 Chron. Angl., p. 395 ; also Knighton, II. 184 sq. ^ jTasc, p. 104.