all but blind and deaf to the tempest as it rises, and bursts, and passes
away. Many causes had concurred to excite the insurrection which
temporarily destroyed the influence of John of Gaunt, and which for long
cast a deep shade upon the effects of the teaching of Wyclif. The
acquisition of a measure of rights and power by the middle classes had
caused a general swaying upwards; and throughout the peoples of Europe
floated those dreams and speculations concerning the equality and
fraternity of all men, which needed but a stimulus and an opportunity to
assume the practical shape of a revolution. The melancholy thought which
pervades Langland's "Vision" is still that of the helplessness of the
poor; and the remedy to which he looks against the corruption of the
governing classes is the advent of a superhuman king, whom he identifies
with the ploughman himself, the representative of suffering humility. But
about the same time as that of the composition of this poem--or not long
afterwards--Wyclif had sent forth among the people his "simple priests,"
who illustrated by contrast the conflict which his teaching exposed
between the existing practice of the Church and the original documents of
her faith. The connexion between Wyclif's teaching and the peasants'
insurrection under Richard II is as undeniable as that between Luther's
doctrines and the great social uprising in Germany a century and a half
afterwards. When, upon the declaration of the Papal Schism, Wyclif
abandoned all hope of a reform of the Church from within, and, defying the
injunctions of foe and friend alike, entered upon a course of theological
opposition, the popular influence of his followers must have tended to
spread a theory admitting of very easy application ad hominem--the theory,
namely, that the tenure of all offices, whether spiritual or temporal, is
justified only by the personal fitness of their occupants. With such
levelling doctrine, the Socialism of popular preachers like John Balle
might seem to coincide with sufficient closeness; and since worthiness was
not to be found in the holders of either spiritual or temporal authority,