Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/293

 from Wyclif's own writings. Even without such a deduction in his favour from the allegations of Netter, there is very little in the record which was not frankly adopted and endorsed by the Reformed Church in the sixteenth century; but, if the common belief of Romanists in the fourteenth century is taken as the standard of orthodoxy, then no doubt Wyclifs opinions must be admitted to have been steeped in the rankest heresy. And, even if we agree with every one of the conclusions attributed to him, our judgment to-day might be fairly expressed in the terms employed by the University of Oxford in response to Pope Gregory's bull—that the conclusions are true, and essentially orthodox, but framed in such a way as to leave room for misconceptions.

The denial of transubstantiation was the special cause of proceedings taken against the Reformer in 1381 and 1382, of which we shall have to speak further on. It is, however, pertinent to the present phase of his development—in the years 1378 to 1380—to quote what was said of him by Wodeford, whose words are cited by Dr. Shirley from a Latin manuscript in the Bodleian Library. "So long as Wyclif was sententiarius, and even baccalaurius responsalis he openly and in the schools maintained that, although the sacramental accidents rested upon some substance, yet in the act of consecration the material bread had ceased to exist.