Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/296

 life—condemned by the Pope, condemned by the Primate and the Bishop of London, a byword amongst the monks and friars, distrusted henceforth by all who looked to Pope and bishops as authoritative exponents of the faith—he had not yet brought himself to utter the answer which must have trembled on his lips. But there, in the home of his youth and manhood, he nursed the secret of his soul. He taught in the schools with increasing zeal, preached and wrote in English, at Oxford and at Lutterworth, with feverish activity, and passed, perhaps, some of the happiest and yet the saddest moments of his life with the friends who loved him so well—with Nicholas Hereford and Laurence Bedenham, with Rygge and Repyngdon, with John Aston and Flemmyng, with John Purvey, William Jamys, and many others. They used to call him Johannes Augustini, as well as the Evangelical Doctor, and they were brave enough to bear with him the suspicion and obloquy which were his lot. But the worst days of his persecution were yet to come.

It is told of Jamys that in a sermon before Chancellor Berton—somewhat later than the time we are now considering—he made use of the expression, "There is no idolatry if not in the sacrament of the altar." Whereon the Chancellor broke in with a sarcastic comment. "Jam loqueris ut philosophus!"—"Now you are talking like the philosopher!" And if Wyclif was present, doubtless the eyes of all were turned upon him, for they knew whose feather had impelled that shaft. The story is sometimes told as referring to Rygge instead of Berton, in which