assiduity to the study which gave the
greatest intellectual position and influence in the Middle Ages, and
which required a training of nineteen years in dialectics before the
high degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred by the University. We
know nothing of his studious life at Oxford until he received his
degree, with the title of Evangelical or Gospel Doctor,--from which we
infer that he was a student of the Bible, and was more remarkable for
his knowledge of the Scriptures than for his dialectical skill. But even
for his knowledge of the Scholastic philosophy he was the most eminent
man in the University, and he was as familiar with the writings of Saint
Augustine and Jerome as with those of Aristotle. It was not then the
fashion to study the text of the Scriptures so much as the commentaries
upon it; and he who was skilled in the "Book of Sentences" and the
"Summa Theologica" stood a better chance of preferment than he who had
mastered Saint Paul.

But Wyclif, it would seem, was distinguished for his attainments in
everything which commanded the admiration of his age. In 1356, when he
was thirty-two, he wrote a tract on the last ages of the Church, in view
of the wretchedness produced by the great plague eight years before. In
1360, at the age of thirty-six, he attacked the Mendicant orders, and
his career as a reformer began,--an unsuccessful reformer, indeed, like
John Huss, since the evils which he combated were not removed. He merely
protested against the corruptions which good men lamented; and that is
nearly all that great men can do when they are beyond their age. They
are simply witnesses of truth, and fortunate are they if they do not die
as martyrs; for in the early Church "witnesses" and "martyrs" were
synonymous ([Greek: _martyres_]). The year following, 1361, Wyclif was
presented to the rich rectory of Fillingham by Baliol College, and was
promoted the same year to the wardenship of that ancient college. The
learned doctor is now one of the "dons" of the university,--at that
time, even more than now, a great dignitary. It would be difficult for
an unlearned politician of the nineteenth century to conceive of the
exalted position which a dignitary of the Church, crowned with
scholastic honors, held five hundred years ago. It gave him access to
the table of his sovereign, and to the halls of Parliament. It made him
an oracle in all matters of the law. It created for him a hearing on all
the great poli