itself, which made him so wrathful on the “vagrant friars preaching their catchpenny sermons.”  And so of other abuses of the Church:  he did not defy the Pope or deny his authority until it was plain that he sought to usurp the prerogatives of kings and secular rulers, and bring both the clergy and laity under his spiritual yoke.  It was not as the first and chief of bishops—­the head of the visible Church—­that Wyclif attacked the Pope, but as a usurper and a tyrant, grasping powers which were not conferred by the early Church, and which did not culminate until Innocent III. had instituted the Mendicant orders, and enforced persecution for religious opinions by the terrors of the Inquisition.  The wealth of the Church was a sore evil in his eyes, since it diverted the clergy from their spiritual duties, and was the cause of innumerable scandals, and was closely connected with simony and the accumulation of benefices in the hands of a single priest.

So it was indignation in view of the corruptions of the Church and vehement attacks upon them which characterized Wyclif, rather than efforts to remove their causes, as was the case with Luther.  He was not a radical reformer; he only prepared the way for radical reform, by his translation of the Scriptures into a language the people could read, more than by any attacks on the monks or papal usurpations or indulgences for sin.  He was the type of a meditative scholar and theologian, thin and worn, without much charm of conversation except to men of rank, or great animal vivacity such as delights the people.  Nor was he a religious genius, like Thomas a Kempis, Anselm, and Pascal.  He had no remarkable insight into spiritual things; his intellectual and moral nature preponderated over the emotional, so that he was charged with intellectual pride and desire for distinction.  Yet no one disputed the blamelessness of his life and the elevation of his character.

If Wyclif escaped the wrath and vengeance of Rome because of his high rank as a theological doctor, his connection with the University of Oxford, opposed to itinerating beggars with great pretensions and greedy ends, and his friendship and intercourse with the rulers of the land, his followers did not.  They became very numerous, and were variously called Lollards, Wyclifites, and Biblemen.  They kept alive evangelical religion until the time of Cranmer and Latimer, their distinguishing doctrine being that the Scriptures are the only rule of faith.  There was no persecution of them of any account during the reign of Richard II.,—­although he was a hateful tyrant,—­probably owing to the influence of his wife, a Bohemian princess, who read Wyclif’s Bible; but under Henry IV. evil days fell upon them, and persecution was intensified under Henry V. (1413-1422) because of their supposed rebellion.  The Lollards under Archbishop Chicheley, as early as 1416, were hunted down and burned as heretics.  The severest inquisition was instituted to hunt up