it was plain that he sought to usurp the
prerogatives of kings and secular rulers, and bring both the clergy and
laity under his spiritual yoke. It was not as the first and chief of
bishops--the head of the visible Church--that Wyclif attacked the Pope,
but as a usurper and a tyrant, grasping powers which were not conferred
by the early Church, and which did not culminate until Innocent III. had
instituted the Mendicant orders, and enforced persecution for religious
opinions by the terrors of the Inquisition. The wealth of the Church was
a sore evil in his eyes, since it diverted the clergy from their
spiritual duties, and was the cause of innumerable scandals, and was
closely connected with simony and the accumulation of benefices in the
hands of a single priest.

So it was indignation in view of the corruptions of the Church and
vehement attacks upon them which characterized Wyclif, rather than
efforts to remove their causes, as was the case with Luther. He was not
a radical reformer; he only prepared the way for radical reform, by his
translation of the Scriptures into a language the people could read,
more than by any attacks on the monks or papal usurpations or
indulgences for sin. He was the type of a meditative scholar and
theologian, thin and worn, without much charm of conversation except to
men of rank, or great animal vivacity such as delights the people. Nor
was he a religious genius, like Thomas a Kempis, Anselm, and Pascal. He
had no remarkable insight into spiritual things; his intellectual and
moral nature preponderated over the emotional, so that he was charged
with intellectual pride and desire for distinction. Yet no one disputed
the blamelessness of his life and the elevation of his character.

If Wyclif escaped the wrath and vengeance of Rome because of his high
rank as a theological doctor, his connection with the University of
Oxford, opposed to itinerating beggars with great pretensions and greedy
ends, and his friendship and intercourse with the rulers of the land,
his followers did not. They became very numerous, and were variously
called Lollards, Wyclifites, and Biblemen. They kept alive evangelical
religion until the time of Cranmer and Latimer, their distinguishing
doctrine being that the Scriptures are the only rule of faith. There was
no persecution of them of any account during the reign of Richard
II.,--although he was a hateful tyrant,--probably owing to the
influence of his wife, a B