The position of Wyclif was as strong as it was before he was attacked. Nor could he be silenced except by the authority of the Pope himself,--still acknowledged as the supreme lord of Christendom; and the Pope now felt that he must assert his supremacy and interpose his supreme authority, or lose his hold on England. So he hurled his weapons, not yet impotent, and fulminated his bulls, ordering the University, under penalty of excommunication, to deliver the daring heretic into the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London; and further commanding these two prelates to warn the King against the errors of Wyclif, and to examine him as to his doctrines, and keep him in chains until the Pope's pleasure should be further known. In addition to these bulls, the Pope sent one to the King himself. It was resolved that the work should be thoroughly done this time.
Yet it would appear that these various bulls threatening an interdict did not receive a welcome from any quarter. The prelates did not wish to quarrel with such an antagonist as the Duke of Lancaster, who was now the chief power in the State, the King being in his last illness. They allowed several months to pass before executing their commission, during which Wyclif was consulted by the great Council of State whether they should allow money to be carried out of the realm at the Pope's demands, and he boldly declared that they should not; thus coming in direct antagonism with hierarchal power. He also wrote at this time pamphlets vindicating himself from the charges made against him, asserting the invalidity of unjust excommunication, which, if allowed, would set the Pope above God.
At last, after seven months, the prelates took courage, and ordered the University to execute the papal bulls. To imprison Wyclif at the command of the Pope would be to allow the Pope's temporal rule in England; yet to disobey the bulls would be disregard of the papal power altogether. In this dilemma the Vice-Chancellor--himself a monk--ordered a nominal imprisonment. The result of these preliminary movements was that Wyclif appeared at Lambeth before the Archbishop, to answer his accusers. The great prelates had a different spirit from the University, which was justly proud of its most learned doctor,--a man, too, beyond his age in his progressive spirit, for the universities in those days were not so conservative as they subsequently became. At Lambeth Wyclif found unexpected support from the people of London, who broke into the archiepiscopal chapel and interrupted the proceedings, and a still more efficient aid from the Queen Dowager,--the Princess Joan,--who sent a message forbidding any sentence against Wyclif. Thus was he backed by royal authority and the popular voice, as Luther was afterwards in Saxony. The prelates were overcome with terror, and dropped the proceedings; while the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, who had tardily and imperfectly obeyed the Pope, was cast into prison for a time and compelled to resign his office.
Wyclif had gained a great triumph, which he used by publishing a summary of his opinions in thirty-three articles, both in Latin and English. In these it would seem that he attacked the impeccability of the Pope,--liable to sin like any other person, and hence to be corrected by the voices of those who are faithful to a higher Power than his,--a blow to the exercise of excommunication from any personal grounds of malice or hatred, or when used to extort unjust or mercenary demands. He also maintained that the endowments of the clergy could be lawfully withdrawn if they were perverted or abused,--a bold assertion in his day, but which he professed he was willing to defend, even unto death. If the prelates had dared, or had possessed sufficient power, he would doubtless have suffered death from their animosity; but he was left unmolested in his retirement at his rectory, although he kept himself discreetly out of the way of danger. When the memorable schism took place in the Roman government by the election of an anti-pope, and both popes proclaimed a crusade and issued their indulgences, Wyclif, who heretofore had admitted the primacy of the Roman See, now openly proclaimed the doctrine that the Church would be better off with no pope at all. He owed his safety to the bitterness of the rival popes, who in their mutual quarrels had no time to think of him.
And his opportunity was improved by writing books and homilies, in which the anti-christian claims of the popes were fearlessly exposed and commented upon. In fact, he now openly denounces the Pope as Antichrist, from his pulpit at Luttenworth, to his simple-minded parishioners, for whose good he seems to have earnestly labored,--the model of a parish priest. It is supposed that Chaucer had him in view when he wrote his celebrated description of a good parson,--"benign" and diligent, learned and pious, giving a noble example to his flock of disinterestedness and devotion to truth and duty, in contrast with the ordinary lives of the clergy of those times, who had sunk far below the levels of their calling in purer ages and such as neither popular nor churchly standards of intelligent times would tolerate.