to have touched even Wycliffe himself, and touched him in a point most deeply dangerous.
His theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ, had led him to the near confines of Anabaptism. Expanding his views upon the estates of the Church, into an axiom, he taught that 'charters of perpetual inheritance were impossible;' 'that God could not give men civil possessions for ever;'[1] 'that property was founded in grace, and derived from God;' and 'seeing that forfeiture was the punishment of treason, and all sin was treason against God, the sinner must consequently forfeit his right to what he held of God.' These propositions were nakedly true, as we shall most of us allow; but God has his own methods of enforcing extreme principles; and human legislation may only meddle with them at its peril. The theory as an abstraction could be represented as applying equally to the laity as to the clergy, and the new teaching received a practical comment in 1381, in the invasion of London by Wat, the tyler of Dartford, and 100,000 men, who were to level all ranks, put down the Church, and establish universal liberty.[2] Two priests accompanied the insurgents, not Wycliffe's followers, but the licentious counterfeits of them, who trod inevitably in their footsteps, and were as inevitably countenanced by their doctrines. The insurrection was
- ↑ Walsingham, 206–7, apud Lingard. It is to be observed, however, that Wycliffe himself limited his arguments strictly to the property of the clergy. See Milman's History of Latin Christianity, vol. v. p. 508.
- ↑ Walsingham, p. 275, apud Lingard.
