Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/331

 if all mankind had first attained to counsels of perfection.

Kings, then, are responsible to the lord paramount from whom they derive their lordship; but they are lords only in as much as they are stewards for God, and by virtue of their service. And their service is due not only to God but to their fellow-men. As all things are God's, they cannot belong to the steward more than to anyone else, and, so far as there is any property in them, they must belong in common to all. Wyclif, says Mr. Poole, "had not yet learned the effect of his doctrine in practical life, as displayed in the rebellion of 1381; but he seems conscious of the danger of excusing by implication desultory attempts of this nature, when he warns his hearers against resort to force except it be likely to put an end to tyranny."

The reasoning of these Latin treatises, however, was too subtle and too academic to reach the minds of the serfs, except as interpreted to them in their own language; and the interpretation probably went in some cases beyond the intention of the original text. The arguments just cited are clearly not the conclusions of a visionary, but rather the opportunism of a reasonable man, who desired the gradual development of the State, and not asocial cataclysm. Wyclif did not fear a revolution in the Church itself. He doubtless thought that it would be highly beneficial; but there is nothing to show that he desired or even anticipated a national revolution in the political order of things. If, notwithstanding this, the tendency of his teaching was