Tractatus de apostasia

INTRODUCTION. XIII
their fringes' bv letters of fraternity, admitting laymen into the
Order; but this is concealed simonv, being based on the tacit un-
derstanding that the lay Brother will help them with his money :
take that away, and their spiritual aid is withdrawn. But merit,
God's grace, can be neither bought nor sold. And this has no
connection with the payment given to oratory-priests, which thev
deserve.
6 th Pravo corde machinatur malum. The root of all intrigues is
sectarian feeling. They consider only their sect's advantage, and thus
sin more grievously as a body than so many separate individuals.
Christ lived with His Apostles, but He knew whom to choose and
how to instruct them; and they were afterwards dispersed. The Friars
are as bad as the endowed monks. Their union crushes even the most
legitimate opposition, for they employ every influence to gain their
point. And all are responsible for this. Some good men remain
amongst them; others fly in despair, but if taken are put to death
or in prison for life. A curious quotation follows, comparing the
Friars to wild geese; then comes an urgent appeal to Wyclif's friends
amongst them to help him in exposing
the others.
7 th Et omni tempore jurgia seminat. Wyclif accuses them of
sowing divisions in their own order, wars throughout Christendom^
and dissensions in the Church; he attempts to prove the latter point
from history. They do good, but also harm; and we know by faith
and God's grace that the latter exceeds the former. — All this has no
bearing upon some Friars who are Wyclif s most dear sons (p. 44);
but if any do what is here denounced, it is the Holy Spirit, not
Wyclif, that calls them by the name of apostates. All this has been
said for the good of the Church, and of the Friars themselves.
Ch. III. Though the Eucharistic debates are, so far as I can
see, independent of each other, it is yet not impossible to introduce a
little order amongst them by classifying them as they stand. The
first, beginning with Ch, III and ending at the close of Ch. VII, is
so to speak a general attack upon the then universally received theory
of the Eucharist. The second, beginning with the VIII th Ch. and
ending
with the end of the IX th
, deals specially with the multiplication
of Christ's body in the Eucharist. The third (Ch. X) is an enquiry
into the essence or 'quiddity' of the Sacrament. The fourth (Chs. XI