mother tongue that he now almost invariably wrote, as though he would turn aside from the language of the men who had condemned his teaching, and seek a reversal of their judgment from those who, after all, had always commanded his best service and sympathies.
Before he left Oxford he had collected his English sermons, and had written some at least of the expositions in which he sought to simplify theology for unlearned readers. The last stage of Wyclif's life saw him virtually transformed into a writer of tracts for the times—not so much of controversial and political pamphlets as of expository tracts, clearly intended to give popular interpretations of Scripture and religious worship, for the benefit of humble folk who could understand no language but their mother tongue. He evidently believed that in thus writing he was
sacraments, and on the four ends of man. Written as it was towards the close of Wyclif 's life, it embodies most of his deliberate conclusions, and has consequently been a happy hunting-ground for the orthodox in search of heresies. The gist of what Wyclif has to say on every point is practically this: that where the Church and the Bible do not agree, we must prefer the Bible; that where authority and conscience appear to be rival guides, we shall be much safer in following conscience; that where the letter and the spirit seem to be in conflict, the spirit is above the letter. If the foundations of these maxims are true, it is clear that they afford scope for any number of logical hyperboles; and no acute writer of that age could by any possibility resist the tendency to hyperbole. Amongst the charges brought against Wyclif on the strength of the Trialogus was that he made light of the sacrament of marriage; and this merely because he wrote that "I will take this woman" is a stronger pledge than "I take this woman." He only meant that the intention was of greater importance than the act which displayed the intention; but his enemies twisted the saying into something very serious.
