With the sincerity of a zealot he persisted, and in the course of May, 1382, a Synod was held by Courtney, who had been just promoted to the primacy, and the heresies of Wiclif became, for the third time, the subject of ecclesiastical consultation. We have no space to pursue the details of these proceedings. The result was, that he was summoned to answer, before the Convocation at Oxford, respecting certain erroneous doctrines, the most prominent of which was that regarding the Eucharist. He prepared to defend them. And it was then that the Duke of Lancaster, who had been his faithful protector throughout all his previous troubles—whether it was that he sincerely differed with Wiclif on that particular question, or whether he was unwilling to engage in a struggle with the whole hierarchy, supported by much popular prejudice, for the sake of an abstract opinion, which might appear to him entirely void of any practical advantage—withdrew his support, and abandoned the Reformer to his own resources. Yet not then was his resolution shaken. In two Confessions of Faith, which he then produced, he asserted his adherence to his expressed doctrines. And though one of them is so perplexed with scholastic sophistry, as to have led some to imagine that it was intended to convey a sort of retractation, yet it was not so interpreted by his adversaries, six of whom immediately entered the lists against it. Neither did it persuade his judges of his innocence. He was condemned—but not, as the annals of that age would have led us to expect, to death. And whether the praise of this moderation be due to the Prelates who forbore so far to press their enmity, or to the State, which might have refused to sanction the vengeance of the Prelates, Wiclif was merely condemned to banishment from the University of Oxford. He retired in peace to his rectory at Lutterworth, and there spent the two remaining years of his life in the pursuit of his theological studies and the discharge of his pastoral duties.