eddled the papal pardons in Germany. In combating the received
ideas of the age, Wyclif was even more remarkable than the Saxon
reformer, who was never fully emancipated from the Mediaeval doctrine of
transubstantiation; although Luther went beyond Wyclif in the
completeness of his reform. Wyclif was beyond his age; Luther was the
impersonation of its passions. Wyclif represented universities and
learned men; Luther was the oracle of the people. The former was the
Mediaeval doctor; the latter was the popular orator and preacher. The
one was mild and moderate in his spirit and manners; the other was
vehement, dogmatic, and often offensive, not only from his more violent
and passionate nature, but for his bitter and ironical sallies. It is
the manner more than the matter which offends. Had Wyclif been as
satirical and boisterous as Luther was, he would not probably have ended
his days in peace, and would not have accomplished so much as a
preparation for reforms.

It was the peculiarity of Wyclif to recognize occasional merits in the
system he denounced, even when his language was most vehement. He
admitted that confession did much good to some persons, although as a
universal practice, as enjoined by Innocent III., it was an evil and
harmed the Church. In regard to the worship of images, while he
denounced the waste of treasure on "dead stocks," he admitted that
images might be used as aids to excite devotion; but if miraculous
powers were attributed to them, it was an evil rather than a good. And
as to the adoration of the saints, he simply maintained that since gifts
can be obtained only through the mediation of Christ, it would be better
to pray to him directly rather than through the mediation of saints.

In regard to the Mendicant friars, it does not appear that his vehement
opposition to them was based on their vows of poverty or on the spirit
which entered into monasticism in its best ages, but because they were
untrue to their rule, because they were vendors of pardons, and
absolved men of sins which they were ashamed to confess to their own
pastors, and especially because they encouraged the belief that a
benefaction to a convent would take the place of piety in the heart. It
was the abuses of the system, rather than the system 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