Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/423

 account for the fact and for the bitterness of these wars without attributing them in any measure to the imported seditions of the Oxford professor. Wyclif did not even seduce the people of Bohemia and Germany from their spiritual obedience and orthodoxy. They were Waldensians or Beghards before they had heard his name. They were heretics, and well on the way to being rebels, before the Church of Rome began to turn against herself the fatal weapon of her own corruption. "Too little attention," to cite Professor Pastor once more, "has hitherto been bestowed on the revolutionary spirit of hatred of the Church and the clergy, which had taken hold of the masses in different parts of Germany. Together with the revolt against the Church, a social revolution was openly advocated. A chronicler, writing at Mayence in the year 1401, declared that the cry of 'Death to the Priests' which had long been whispered in secret, was now the watchword of the day."

It is evident that, both on the Continent and in England, these two revolutions were proceeding side by side, and that, although they assisted each other, they' were due to different predisposing causes. That they should have been confounded together by the authorities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was no more than natural; and it would have been strange if the champions of orthodoxy had not availed themselves of every opportunity of impressing upon temporal rulers and magnates that their interests were attacked by the teachers of heresy. The papal legates in the fifteenth century, adopting the