Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/92

 One of the most interesting facts in connection with the life of John Wyclif, which has contributed as much as anything else to fix him in the popular imagination, and to place him permanently on the roll of English heroes, is that he elected to play the part of a politician as well as of a theologian, and that, being a priest and a Schoolman, he joined hands with the statesmen of his age, in order to secure what could not be obtained without their aid. No institution was ever reformed in the absence of co-operation from within; and reformers within the Church have always commanded a lively sympathy in England. Wyclif was the first conspicuous English clergyman who combined his aspirations for reform with a frank admission of the right (and corresponding duty) of laymen to interpose in matters of faith and discipline. We shall hereafter be in a position to judge as to the nature of his relations with King and Parliament, with princes and with peasants. It was through these relations that he became a popular Englishman, and that his name has stood out for five centuries like a patch of warm colour from the neutral tints of the later Middle Ages.

Now it is above all things important to remember that Wyclif took this significant stand as the direct heir of the Schoolmen—as a Schoolman himself, interpreting and giving effect to their views, wedding action to thought, not only by his individual energy and initiative, but in obedience to national character and scholastic training. Some injustice has been done to the Schoolmen by constantly speaking of them as though they were men of disquisition only,