t limited the King's prerogative,
would also give him security. For the Commons had been at last
admitted into the King's Council chiefly in order that they might
withstand the violence of the factions. The situation however was not
without its complications, for with the political movement one of yet
wider aim was connected.

When the kingdom was at the very height of its power there arose in a
college at Oxford the man who began that contest against the Papal
supremacy which has never since ceased. John Wiclif attached himself
first of all to the political movements of his time. One of his
earliest writings was directed against the feudal supremacy of the
Popes over England. He supported the Parliament's complaints of Romish
Provisions and exactions of money, with great learning and at great
length. Had his activity confined itself to these subjects, he would
be hardly more remembered than perhaps Marsilius of Padua. What gave
him quite a special significance was the fact that he brought into
clear view the contradiction between the ruling form of the Church and
the original documents of the Faith. From the claim of the Popes to be
Christ's representatives, he drew the conclusion that they ought also
to observe the Gospel which comes from the God-Man, follow His
example, and give up their worldly power.[56] The leading Church
dogma, that most closely connected with the hierarchic system, the
dogma of Transubstantiation, he attacked as being one which equally
contradicted Scripture and Reason. He urges his proofs with the
acuteness of a skilful Schoolman, but throughout he shows a deep inner
religious feeling. We may distinguish in him two separate tendencies.
His appeal to Scripture, his attempt to make it accessible to the
people, his treatment of dogmatic and religious questions which he
will allow to be decided only by Revelation,--all this makes him an
evangelic man, one of the chief forerunners of the German Reformation.
But, as he himself felt, his strength lay rather in destruction than
in construction. In asserting the doctrine that the title to office
depends for its validity on personal worth, that even the rule of
temporal lords rests on the favour in which they stand with God, and
in raising subjects to be the judges over their oppressive masters, he
entered on a path like that which the Taborites and the leaders of the
peasants in Germany afterwards took.[57]

And these were precisely the doctrines for