ld have been greatly changed.

Powerful individual reformers exercised great influence in bringing on
the religious revolution. The voices of John Wyclif, John Huss, John
Tauler, and John Wessel, like the voice of John the Baptist, cried out
for repentance and a return to God. These reformers desired among
other things a change in the constitutional government of the church.
They sought a representation of the laity and the re-establishment of
the authority of the general councils. Through influence such as
theirs the revolution was precipitated. Others in a different way,
like Savonarola, hastened the coming of the revolution by preaching
liberty of thought and attacking the abuses of the church and its
methods of government.

Wyclif in England advocated a simple form of church worship, rebelled
against the arbitrary power of popes and priests, preached against
transubstantiation, and advocated the practice of morality. He was
greatly influenced by William of {379} Occam, who asserted that the
pope, or even a general council, might err in declaring the truth, and
that the hierarchy might be given up if the good of the church demanded
it. Wyclif, in England, started a movement for freedom and purity
which never died out. His translation of the Bible was the most
valuable of all his work. Though he preceded the religious revolution
by nearly two centuries, his influence was of such great importance
that his enemies, who failed to burn him at the stake in life, ordered
his grave to be desecrated.

At first Wyclif had the support of the king and of the university, as
well as the protection of the Prince of Wales. But when, in 1381, he
lectured at Oxford against transubstantiation, he lost the royal
protection, and by a senate of twelve doctors was forbidden longer to
lecture at the university, although he continued preaching until his
death. As his opinions agreed very nearly with those of Calvin and
Luther, he has been called "the morning star of the Reformation." The
Council of Constance, before burning John Huss and Jerome of Prague at
the stake, condemned the doctrines of Wyclif in forty-five articles,
declared him a heretic, and ordered his body to be removed from
consecrated ground and thrown upon a dunghill. Thirteen years later
Clement VIII, hyena-like, ordered his bones to be burned and the ashes
thrown into the Swift. Thus his short-sighted enemies thought to stay
the tide of a great reformation.