Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/419



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE WORK THAT LIVED.

HE story of Wyclif's life would not be complete if it did not take into account the effect of his work on those who came after him, and the strength of the links with which he bound himself to posterity. We have seen how he was allied in his intellectual origin to the Schoolmen and the earlier Fathers of the Church; it is right that we should ask ourselves what was the measure of the return which he made to humanity for the influences under which he came to maturity. We have watched him, in the spring-time of the Modern Ages, sowing the seed of a new faith and a new devotion, whereof he must have seen for himself, before he died, the first green blades of a harvest that was to cover the land. Yet it is certain that the history of the Anglican 337