Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/138

 shape or form, was in Wyclif's eyes abominable; and, however the presentation to this living had come into the hands of his family, he could not regard it in any other light than as a sacred responsibility, which would in no wise be discharged by nominating himself. In the English tract, Of the Last Age of the Church—though no stress is here laid for the purpose of argument on the authorship or date of this tract—we come upon this fine passage: "Both vengeance of sword and mischiefs unknown before, by which men in these days have had to be punished, were bound to happen for sin of priests. Men shall fall on them and cast them out of their fat benefices, and they shall say, 'One came into his benefice by his kindred, another by covenant made before; one for service and another for money came into God's church.' Then shall every such priest cry, 'Alas, alas! that no good spirit dwelled in me at my coming into God's church.'"

Now if it were accepted as a reasonable supposition that Wyclif was from 1363 the legal head of his family, and patron of the living of Wycliffe-on-Tees, there would be no further need to press the point that he was a man of gentle breeding and (at least potentially) of some private means. That he had character, tact, and the power of impressing and influencing his fellow-men, is proved by his high standing at Oxford, his popularity as a lecturer, and his selection to be master of a college. It is true that there were amongst his contemporaries "divinely gifted men" of humble origin, who broke their birth's invidious bar and rose to the highest