could be gently judged at the tribunal in the
Blackfriars' hall. Wycliffe's was a far more serious crime. He had dared
to attack the corruptions of the Church, and especially the enormities
of the begging friars; he had indignantly denounced pardons and
indulgences and masses for the soul as part of a system of gigantic
fraud; and worst of all, he had filled up the cup of his iniquity by
translating the Scriptures into the English tongue; "making it," as one
of the chroniclers angrily complains, "common and more open to laymen
and to women than it was wont to be to clerks well learned and of good
understanding. So that the pearl of the Gospel is trodden under foot of
swine."

The feeling of his opponents will be better understood if we notice the
position of the Church in England at the time. The meridian of her power
had been already passed. Her clergy as a class were ignorant and
corrupt. Her people were neglected, except for the money to be extorted
by masses and pardons, "as if," to quote the words of an old writer,
"God had given his sheep, not to be pastured, but to be shaven and
shorn." This state of things had gone on for centuries, and the people
like dumb, driven cattle had submitted. But those who could discern the
signs of the times must have seen now that it could not go on much
longer. The spread of education was rapidly increasing, several new
colleges having been founded in Oxford during Wycliffe's lifetime. A
strong spirit of independence, too, was rising among the people. Already
Edward III and his parliament had indignantly refused the Pope's demand
for the annual tribute to be sent to Rome. It was evident that a crisis
was near. And, as if to hasten the crisis, the famous schism of the
papacy had placed two popes at the head of the Church, and all
Christendom was scandalized by the sight of the rival "vicars of Jesus
Christ" anathematizing each other from Rome and Avignon, raising armies
and slaughtering helpless women and children, each for the aggrandizing
of himself.

The minds of men in England were greatly agitated, and Wycliffe felt
that at such a time the firmest charter of the Church would be the open
Bible in her children's hands; the best exposure of the selfish policy
of her rulers, the exhibiting to the people the beautiful,
self-forgetting life of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels. "The
sacred Scriptures," he said, "are the property of the people, and one
which no one should be a