Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/88

 The enthusiasm and success of the early friars have been compared with those of the English Methodists in the days of Wesley and Whitfield. They would be fresh in the memory of the nation when John Wyclif, a century and a half later, sent out his own Poor Priests to emulate their spirit and to achieve a very similar success. The friars of the thirteenth century found a church in every street and field; they carried with them not only the evidences of their personal poverty, but the fullest sacerdotal authority, and the very altars and sacraments of religion. In the course of a generation we find Matthew of Paris complaining that the churches were deserted, and that the people would confess to none but friars. It is not to be wondered at that the secular qlergy, the hierarchy, and even the universities remonstrated against the privileges and favours which Rome continued to shower upon her new missionaries.

The doctrine of poverty was an essential part of the constitution of St. Francis. When the Franciscans began to hold houses and lands of their own, to live like Benedictine monks in their convents, and to relax their apostolical fervour as well as their evangelical poverty, they ceased to fulfil the purposes for which they were founded. Even the brightest ornaments of the Order, such as Bishop Grosteste (who left them his library), Adam Marsh, Roger Bacon, the "Irrefragable" Alexander Hales, the learned and influential Haymo, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham, were anything rather than the mendicant missioners whom St. Francis had pictured