Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/327

 That Wyclif was in some degree, however indirectly, responsible for the popular discontent is probably quite as true as the charge of direct complicity and encouragement is ludicrously false. It was alleged against him by his enemies that he deliberately prepared the way for an outbreak, and that certain of his utterances on lordship, and on the rights of subjects as against their rulers, were distinctly subversive in their character. If these utterances had been written and spoken in English, instead of Latin, there would have been a great deal more force in the accusation. But, even as it was, the doctrine was there; it had been written and preached; every disciple of Wyclif, and every Poor Priest to whom he gave his commission, had learned it, was proud of it, and would naturally teach it on the village greens and on the roadside. The germs would spread and grow in fertile soil; the crop would inevitably spring up, grow rank, and whiten to the harvest. Is anything gained by denying that principles which would justify revolution in one order of government must be held to justify it in another, and that Wyclif himself did not simply argue from divine to civil government, but drew his inferences from the general to the particular, and claimed that the Church might correct the Pope because the nation might justly correct its own leaders?

It was afterwards stated that John Ball, on the eve of his execution, declared that he and his friends had been misled by the teaching of Wyclif and his followers. Even if it were so—and we may see