Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/244

 Oxford and Cambridge. It was perhaps not he who would be most disconcerted by that mutual recognition.

He had brought with him a written paper of declarations, by way of defence against the charges. After the preliminaries were over, and Sudbury had reminded him what it was that he was called upon to answer, he would be allowed to read his defence; and the paper in which his apology was comprised has been handed down to us—carefully preserved by his stern censor, Thomas of Walden. This document, practically re-stating and justifying all the conclusions which had been attributed to him, opened in a strain of dignified humility.

"To begin with," he said, "I make my public profession, as I have often done elsewhere, professing and claiming with my whole heart to be, by the grace of God, a sound Christian, and that so far as I am able, whilst there is breath in my body, I speak forth and defend the law of Christ. Furthermore, if, by ignorance or any other cause, I fall short in this, I beseech my God for pardon, and I do here and now revoke and withdraw it, submitting myself to the correction of holy Mother Church. . . . I desire to state in writing my conviction in regard to that whereof I have been accused, which I will defend even to the death, as I hold that all Christians ought to do—and in particular the Roman Pontiff, and the other priests of the Church."

Then the indomitable man set himself to expound and expand his conclusions, and stated them all over again with increased clearness and pungency,