they have made a heretic of Christ, it is an easy inference for them to count simple Christians heretics.”  He seems indeed to have been sick at the moment, but the announcement of the final sentence roused him to life again.  He petitioned the king and Parliament that he might be allowed freely to prove the doctrines he had put forth, and turning with characteristic energy to the attack of his assailants, he asked that all religious vows might be suppressed, that tithes might be diverted to the maintenance of the poor and the clergy maintained by the free alms of their flocks, that the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire might be enforced against the Papacy, that Churchmen might be declared incapable of secular offices, and imprisonment for excommunication cease.  Finally in the teeth of the council’s condemnation he demanded that the doctrine of the Eucharist which he advocated might be freely taught.  If he appeared in the following year before the convocation at Oxford it was to perplex his opponents by a display of scholastic logic which permitted him to retire without any retractation of his sacramental heresy.  For the time his opponents seemed satisfied with his expulsion from the University, but in his retirement at Lutterworth he was forging during these troubled years the great weapon which, wielded by other hands than his own, was to produce so terrible an effect on the triumphant hierarchy.  An earlier translation of the Scriptures, in part of which he was aided by his scholar Herford, was being revised and brought to the second form which is better known as “Wyclif’s Bible” when death drew near.  The appeal of the prelates to Rome was answered at last by a Brief ordering him to appear at the Papal Court.  His failing strength exhausted itself in a sarcastic reply which explained that his refusal to comply with the summons simply sprang from broken health.  “I am always glad,” ran the ironical answer, “to explain my faith to any one, and above all to the Bishop of Rome; for I take it for granted that if it be orthodox he will confirm it, if it be erroneous he will correct it.  I assume too that as chief Vicar of Christ upon earth the Bishop of Rome is of all mortal men most bound to the law of Christ’s Gospel, for among the disciples of Christ a majority is not reckoned by simply counting heads in the fashion of this world, but according to the imitation of Christ on either side.  Now Christ during His life upon earth was of all men the poorest, casting from Him all worldly authority.  I deduce from these premisses as a simple counsel of my own that the Pope should surrender all temporal authority to the civil power and advise his clergy to do the same.”  The boldness of his words sprang perhaps from a knowledge that his end was near.  The terrible strain on energies enfeebled by age and study had at last brought its inevitable result, and a stroke of paralysis while Wyclif was hearing mass in his parish church of Lutterworth was followed on the next day by his death.