assaults of so well known a man on church property must have encouraged the movement (of this there is a good deal of evidence), and the "poor priests", who were less closely connected with laymen of position and property, are sure to have gone further than their master in the communistic direction. Wyclif's attack on the property of the monastic orders and of the Church would necessarily bring him before long into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities, and he was led to guard himself against the results of excommunication by maintaining that, as he put it, "no man can be excommunicated unless he first be excommunicated by himself" (viz. by sin), a statement which may be true of the effect of excommunication on the soul, but which cannot be applied to the external government of the Church. Thus by 1380 Wyclif had set himself in open opposition to the property and government of the Church, he had attacked the pope in most unmeasured terms, he had begun to treat the Bible as the chief and almost the only test of orthodoxy, and to lay more and more stress on preaching. Yet he would have protested against an accusation of heresy. Great freedom was allowed to speculation in the schools, and there was much uncertainty about clerical property. Even the exclusive use of Scripture as a standard of faith was comprehensible at a time when the allegiance of Christendom was being claimed by two popes. It must be added that Wyclif frequently inserted qualifying or explanatory clauses in his propositions, and that, in form at least, he would declare his readiness to submit his opinions to the judgment of the Church. It seems to have been a time of much uncertainty in matters of faith, and the Lollard movement in its earlier stages is remarkable for a readiness of recantation. Wyclif's heretical position became, however, much more pronounced when he denied the doctrine of Transubstantiation. His own position is not quite clear or consistent, bu...
