than atheism.” It is true that with Wickliff God counted for little, for, according to his system, “every creature is God, everything is God.” It is easy to understand the effect of such doctrines as these upon the masses; the religious dispute was transformed into a social question. The followers of Wickliff, when condemned, refused to bow to the decisions of the ecclesiastical authority. Their books were burnt, their apostles were sent to the stake, while others were imprisoned or exiled. But, in spite of this rigorous treatment, Wickliff’s doctrines made a deep impression in England, obtained shortly afterwards the protection of the House of Commons, and disposed men’s minds to bend beneath the despotic will of Henry VIII. [Illustration: Fig. 313.--John Wickliff, a theologian Heresiarch, the Precursor of Luther, born at Wickliff, in England, about 1324, died in 1387.--After the “Vrais Pourtraits des Hommes Illustres:” 4to, Jean de Laon, Geneva, 1581.] The staunchest Catholic writers admit that the clergy are themselves responsible for the triumph of the heretics. Moeller says--“The relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline amongst the clergy and that in a great many religious communities, from which the pontifical court itself was not always exempt, gave the sectaries of the sixteenth century a pretext for their rebellion against the Church, its doctrines, its hierarchy, and its institutions. To this moral decadence of a great part of the clergy must further be added the profound ignorance of the upper clergy; and even those who cultivated literature and science confined themselves almost exclusively to the study of Greek and Latin literature, which directed the whole course of scientific research from the fifteenth century downwards. Many pagan ideas had pervaded men’s minds, and had contributed to create a feeling of contempt both for Christianity and for that beautiful Christian literature which had shed a lustre on the Church from the very earliest times. This condition of the clergy had a baneful influence upon the mass of the people, who lived in utter ignorance of religion, and who had lost their attachment to the Church and all respect for its pastors.”