To attempt even an abstract of the thought of the English Reformation
would lead too far, however fascinating the subject might be. It must
suffice to say briefly that theology had little or nothing to do with it.
Wycliffe denounced the friars as lazy, profligate impostors, who wrung
money from the poor which they afterwards squandered in ways offensive to
God, and he would have stultified himself had he admitted, in the same
breath, that these reprobates, when united, formed a divinely illuminated
corporation, each member of which could and did work innumerable miracles
through the interposition of Christ. Ordinary miracles, indeed, could be
tested by the senses, but the essence of transubstantiation was that it
eluded the senses. Thus nothing could be more convenient to the government
than to make this invisible and intangible necromancy a test in capital
cases for heresy-Hence Wycliffe had no alternative but to deny
transubstantiation, for nothing could be more insulting to the
intelligence than to adore a morsel of bread which a priest held in his
hand. The pretension of the priests to make the flesh of Christ was,
according to Wycliffe, an impudent fraud, and their pretension to possess
this power was only an excuse by which they enforced their claim to
collect fees, and what amounted to extortionate taxes, from the people.
[Footnote: Nowhere, perhaps, does Wycliffe express himself more strongly
on this subject than in a little tract called _The Wicket_, written
in English, which he issued for popular consumption about this time.] But,
in the main, no dogma, however incomprehensible, ever troubled
Protestants, as a class. They easily accepted the Trinity, the double
procession, or the Holy Ghost itself, though no one had the slightest
notion what the Holy Ghost might be. Wycliffe roundly declared in the
first paragraph of his confession [Footnote: Fasciculi Zizaniorum, 115.]
that the body of Christ which was crucified was truly and really in the
consecrated host, and Huss, who inherited the Wycliffian tradition,