Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/237

 , of absolving every contrite person from any sin.

17. It is lawful for kings to take away temporalities from ecclesiastics who habitually abuse them.

18. Whether temporal lords, or holy Popes, or saints, or the head of the Church, which is Christ, have endowed the Church with goods of fortune or of grace, and have excommunicated those who take away its temporalities, it is notwithstanding lawful, by the condition implied in the endowment, to strip her of temporalities for an adequate offence.

19. An ecclesiastic, yea, even the Pope of Rome, may lawfully be corrected by subjects, and even by the laity, and may also be accused or impeached by them.

We have only to carry ourselves back in spirit to the intellectual and religious atmosphere of the fourteenth century in order to realise how overwhelming such a charge as that now brought against Wyclif must have appeared to every pious person who accepted the allegations as correct. Even those who thought with him, who were able to keep pace with his logic, and knew how reverently his beliefs were entertained, must have stood aghast in many instances at the temerity with which he assailed the position of the Popes and the current orthodoxy of his day. And Wyclif himself could scarcely hope to escape the censures of Rome, or even of the English bishops if they were compelled to pronounce a formal judgment on his conclusions. He knew that it was impossible to obtain a perfectly impartial tribunal within