Wicliffe and His Times - James Aitken Wylie

original at small occasions, thereby opened himself
a way or mean to greater matters. First he assailed
his adversaries in logical and metaphysical
questions ... by these originals the way was made
unto greater points, so that at length he came to
touch the matters of the Sacraments, and other
abuses of the Church."
The rise of the monastic orders, and their rapid
and prodigious diffusion over all Christendom, and
even beyond it, are too well known to require
minute or lengthy narration. The tombs of Egypt,
the deserts of Thebais, the mountains of Sinai, the
rocks of Palestine, the islands of the AEgean and
Tuscan Seas, were peopled with colonies of
hermits and anchorites, who, fleeing from the
world, devoted themselves to a life of solitude and
spiritual meditation. The secularity and corruption
of the parochial clergy, engendered by the wealth
which flowed in upon the Church in early times,
rendered necessary, it was supposed, a new order,
which might exhibit a great and outstanding
example of virtue. Here, in these anchorites, was
the very pattern, it was believed, which the age
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