because of the hardness of men's
hearts? Surely the holy women that ministered to Him of their substance
did well, not ill. Moreover, he would have all monkery done away, yea,
clean out of the realm, and he hath mighty hard names for monks,
especially the Mendicant Friars: yet of nuns was he never heard to speak
an unkindly word. Strange matter, in good sooth! it nearly takes away
my breath but to hear tell of it. But when he saith that the Pope
should have no right nor power in this realm of England, that is but
what the Church of England hath alway held: Bishop Grosteste did as
fervently abhor the Pope's power--"Egyptian bondage" was his word for
it. Much has this Father also to say against simony: and he would have
no private confession to a priest (verily, this would I gladly see
abolished), nor indulgences, nor letters of fraternity, nor pilgrimages,
nor guilds: and he sets his face against the new fashion of singing mass
[intoning, then a new invention], and the use of incense in the
churches. But strangest of all is it to hear of his inveighing against
the doctrine of the Church that the sacred host is God's Body. It is
so, saith he, in figure, and Christ's Body is not eaten of men save
ghostly and morally. And to eat Christ ghostly is to have mind of Him,
how kindly He suffered for man, which is ghostly meat to the soul.
[Arnold's English Works of Wycliffe, Volume 2, pages 93, 112.]

Here is new doctrine! Yet Father Wycliffe, I hear, saith this is the
old doctrine of the Apostles themselves, and that the contrary is the
new, having never (saith he) been heard of before the time of one
Radbert, who did first set it forth five hundred years ago [in 787]: and
after that it slumbered--being then condemned of the holy doctors--till
the year of our Lord God 1215, when the Pope that then was forced it on
the Church. Strange matter this! I know not what to think.

Joan says some of these new doctrine priests go further than Father
Wycliffe himself, and even cast doubt on Purgatory and the worship [this
word then merely meant "honour"] of our Lady. Ah me! if they can prove
from God's Word that Purgatory is not, I would chant many thanksgivings
thereon! All these years, when I knew not if my lost love were dead or
alive, have I thought with dread of that awful land of darkness and
sorrow: yet not knowing, I could have no masses sung for him; and had I
been so able, I could never have told for whom they were,