Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/332

 towards such a revolution, who will say that he was personally and morally responsible for the evils which attended the Peasants' Revolt?

The question is of so much importance, both in the history of the period and in the biography of Wyclif, that it would be misleading to go on to the details of this Revolt without making some further effort to appreciate the relations of the Reformer himself, and of his disciples and interpreters, towards the men who actually rebelled and revolted against the intolerable conditions of their existence.

Of the exact manner and degree in which Wyclif impressed his own personality, socially and religiously, on the poorest of his fellow-countrymen throughout his laborious life, whether as parish priest in his three successive livings or as a man of wide sympathies and self-sacrificing benevolence, we have unfortunately very little direct evidence. It is true that we cannot require much evidence of this kind for the mere purpose of proof, when those who think least favourably of his actions are most disposed to magnify their influence with the common people. All that we know of this single-minded devotee of truth and "Goddis law" (the term became a symbol and watchword of the Wycliffites ) points one way as to his absolute superiority to personal aims and self-seeking. It was one of the central points of his teaching that not a penny should be taken from the trust-funds of the Church, which are the patrimony of the poor, either for "covetise of