Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/387

 face of defiant opposition. No one, if his acts have been read aright, could be more magnanimous in victory.

In Wyclif, if in Wyclif only, he found a will and a resolution to match his own. Wyclif never yielded to him nor to Parliament, nor to King, nor to Pope. There is one thing stronger than 'the strongest authority that was ever set up, and that is the spirit of revolt against wrong based upon an overwhelming conviction of truth. Wyclif had such a conviction, and nothing on earth could shake him.

And assuredly Wyclif had suffered and was yet to suffer more than enough to convulse a stronger man. His life had been a perpetual struggle, and within the last seven or eight years he was never free from keen antagonism. The friars and monks had poured the vials of their wrath upon him. One Pope had launched five bulls against him, and another was already being urged to summon him to Rome. The Primate and nine bishops had solemnly denounced him as a heretic. The Chancellor of his beloved University had condemned him in the open schools, and forbidden him to teach what he believed to be true. He had passed through dark clouds of suspicion; the mother and the uncle of the King had ceased to defend him; Parliament, which used to ask for and follow his advice, had arraigned him as a disturber of the public peace. His most formidable enemy, at