Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/289

 like the stones on Salisbury Plain, concerning which there is a proverb that no two men can count them alike. Thus Pope Gregory in his bulls made them come to nineteen. Courtenay advanced upon that number in 1382; and Archbishop Arundel strikes one as remarkably moderate in stopping short at twenty-three errors, of which he reckons only ten as actually heretical. Nevertheless an Oxford.Committee under his auspices, a quarter of a century after Wyclif's death, discovered as many as two hundred and sixty-seven. The Council of Constance enumerated forty-five; and not long after this Netter of Walden arrives at a round fourscore. The orthodox of Bohemia had a still keener scent, for John Lücke jumped up to two hundred and sixty-six, whilst Cocleus (who wrote a history of the Hussites) detected no fewer than three hundred and three.

No one helped so much to build up Wyclifs reputation as the enemies who tried to write him down; and these lists of his heresies are really very convenient records for such as wish to see the more characteristic opinions of the Reformer concisely stated. If we take Netter's list as it stands, and bear in mind that it is in the nature of a series of allegations made by a writer in the reign of Henry V., who distinctly regarded Wyclif as a mischievous heretic, we shall at any rate know the worst that was brought against him.

According to this authority, Wyclif held and taught that it is blasphemy to call any man Head of the Church save Christ alone; or that Peter had greater power than the other apostles; or that Rome