John Wickliffe is often called “the morning star” of the Reformation. He was born in Yorkshire, England, about the year 1324. In his earliest years he developed unusual mental endowments, and graduated at Queen’s College, Oxford, with high honors. At the age of thirty-two he published a treatise upon “The Last Age of the Church,” in which he ventured to assail some of the assumptions of the pope, and severely to attack the encroachments of the mendicant friars. In 1372, Wickliffe, having received the title of D.D., delivered lectures on theology at Oxford with great applause. At that time a controversy was beginning to arise between the pope and Edward III., King of England. Edward, sustained by his parliament, refused to submit to the vassalage which the pope had exacted of his predecessors. Wickliffe with his pen very successfully defended the position taken by the king. He thus secured the favor of his monarch, but exasperated the pope, Gregory XI. Wickliffe was accused of heresy. The pope issued a bull, and nineteen articles of alleged false doctrine were drawn up against him. Gregory issued three bulls addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, ordering the seizure and imprisonment of Wickliffe. In the mean time, Edward III. had died; but the British court and the populace of London rallied so enthusiastically around Wickliffe, that no judgment could be taken against him. Soon after this, Gregory XI. died; and all proceedings against the English reformer were dropped. But the zeal of Wickliffe was thoroughly aroused; and, encouraged by the powerful support he received from the British court and from the people, he assailed with increasing freedom the exorbitant pretensions of the court of Rome. Speaking of his labors, McIntosh says,―― “The new opinions on religion which now arose mingled with the general spirit of Christianity in promoting the progress of emancipation, and had their share in the few disorders which accompanied it. Wickliffe, the celebrated reformer, had become one of the most famous doctors of the English Church. His lettered education rendered him no stranger to the severity with which Dante and Chaucer had lashed the vices of the clergy without sparing the corruptions of the Roman see itself. His theological learning and mystical piety led him to reprobate the whole system of wealth and worldliness, by which a blind bounty had destroyed the apostolical simplicity and primitive humility of the Christian religion.”