Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/328

 reason by and by to regard this statement with particular caution so far as Ball is concerned—it maybe fully admitted that the teaching of the Wycliffites must have 'helped to breathe spirit and resolution into the rural classes. It is well that this accusation should be taken out of the mouths of Wyclif's enemies, who not only gave him the treatment of a malefactor in his lifetime but burned his bones and corroded his memory when he was dead; but it is better still that the admission should come frankly from the mouths of his friends, who can have no object in denying that he was both a reproach and a danger to the authorities of his day.

Wyclif taught, as we have seen, that the ultimate power and authority resided in the people at large. "The right to govern depends upon good government; there is no moral constraint to pay tax or tithe to bad rulers, either in the Church or in the State; it is permitted to put an end to tyranny, to punish or depose unjust rulers, and to resume the wealth which the clergy have diverted from the poor." No further argument would be needed to justify starving peasants in refusing to pay an oppressive poll-tax, when their only means of paying it was to take the food out of the mouths of their wives and children. Wyclif may not have expected that the seed which he sowed would bear fruit in this particular fashion, and with such raw haste. On the other hand, he was not a man of delays and misgivings, wherever he was clear and convinced in matters of principle. It is true that he recognised the necessity of caution, and more than once exposed the