Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/386

 and notoriously suspected of heresy, we have taken the following proceedings both general and particular."

Long entries follow in the same register, detailing the inquiries held by Courtenay at the other sittings, as already recorded. But as they give us little or nothing in the shape of question and answer, and baldly recite the opinions and acts of the Archbishop himself, they are hardly worth the space which their transcription would occupy.

Courtenay had struck a shrewd blow at what he naturally considered a pestilent and fatal heresy; and perhaps there was not another bishop on the bench who would have done it half so thoroughly. But if he flattered himself that his end was gained when Wyclif had been declared a heretic, and his principal supporters had been excommunicated, he would soon be undeceived on that point. The probability is that he knew the strength of Lollardy too well to suppose that it had been absolutely crushed by his Synod, or that either pope or bishop or monk would be strong enough to stem and to turn the advancing tide of rationalism in matters of doctrine. None the less did he fight a strong and resolute battle for the faith as he conceived it. He fought, moreover, so far as one can see, fairly and aboveboard, taking no mean advantage, giving plenty of notice and warning, as ready to remove his censures as to impose them, whenever a rebel against the authority of the Church submitted himself to her maternal discipline. No one could be more unyielding, more stern and arbitrary in the