Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/420

 has often been told with less than adequate reference to the ideas and work of Wyclif, and to the first of that historic series of religious movements in Oxford which, perhaps once in every century, have pricked the conscience and remodelled the creed of England.

It may help us to form our final estimate of the man whose career we have been following, to gauge his strength and to understand his dynamic force, if we place ourselves for a moment at a Continental and Roman point of view, and look at Wyclif as he is regarded to-day by some of the more learned, moderate, and perhaps unprejudiced writers of the Church of Rome.

"The History of the Popes," by Prof. Ludwig Pastor, which is recommended in a special brief by Leo XIII., and has been translated into English by Mr. Antrobus, a member of the Brompton Oratory, is a work of great research, containing much that is new to the historical student; and it is so far impartial that it frankly condemns many of the personal acts of Gregory XI., and his successors at Rome, especially during the Papal Schism. The German historian reflects the settled opinion of Roman Catholic writers when he says that "the errors of the Apocalyptics and the Waldenses, of Marsiglio, Ockham, and others, were all concentrated in Wyclif's sect." John Huss, he says again, "was not merely much influenced, but absolutely dominated by these ideas. Recent investigations have furnished incontestable evidence that, in the matter of doctrine, Huss owed everything to Wyclif."