Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/294

 Pressed by many questions as to what was the subject of those accidents, he began by replying, for some considerable time, that it was a mathematical body.' Later on, in consequence of many arguments urged against this, he would reply that he did not know what was the substance of the accidents; but he was firm as to their resting upon some substance. Now (that is, in 1381) in his conclusions and in his confession he expressly declares that the bread remains after the consecration, and that it is the substance of the accidents."

Nothing, surely, could be more eloquent of the moral struggle through which Wyclif had been passing, and was yet to pass, on a subject which has in all ages been the most searching and serious that can possibly engage the mind of a devout Christian transcendentalist. He had begun his life, so soon as his reasoning faculties had asserted themselves, with the familiar "late Roman" separation of the accidents from the substance or subject. For him, however, the essence of the sacrament was in the words of Christ, and in the act of faith which enabled him to see the body and blood of Christ; but, if he saw, it was with the eye of faith, and not with the physical sight. That was his first step—and already he was a heretic in comparison with those who declared that they saw a physical Christ with physical sight. The man of comfortable faith looked upon the bread and reverently declared: "I see no bread—it has gone though it has not disappeared. I see the physical body of Christ, wearing the shape of bread; but it is only because of my infirmity that it