✪ "Wickliffe's observant mind penetrated into the constitution and policy of Rome, and he returned more strongly than ever determined to expose its avarice and ambition. Having recovered his former situation, he inveighed, in his lectures, against the pope—his usurpation—his infallibility—his pride—his avarice—and his tyranny. He was the first who termed the pope Antichrist." Ref-1306, loc. 9406. "About the end of the year, Wickliffe was seized with a violent disorder, which it was feared might prove fatal. The begging friars, accompanied by four of the most eminent citizens of Oxford, gained admittance to his bed-chamber, and begged of him to retract, for his soul's sake, the unjust things he had asserted of their order. Wickliffe surprised at the solemn message, raised himself in his bed, and with a stern countenance replied, "I shall not die, but live to declare the evil deeds of the friars."" Ref-1306, loc. 9425. "Wyclif was, among other things, a critic of Church corruption, which mainly meant its wealth. His advocacy of Church disendowment won approval in elite political circles and support in Oxford. . . . His other ideas were even more far-reaching, . . . including attacks in the 1370s on papal authority and on transubstantiation, the doctrine that the sacramental bread and wine really became the body and blood of Christ. This caused horror among the orthodox and denunciation of Wyclif as “the great heresiarch,” the first major English heretic and the most subversive thinker of the later Middle Ages, who influenced the Bohemian Hussite movement and indirectly Martin Luther. Wyclif’s writings were repeatedly condemned by the Pope, but he was sufficiently protected by his patrons to be allowed to retire unmolested to his benefice at Lutterworth, where he died in 1384. In 1428 his remains were exhumed and burned on papal orders." Ref-1509, p. 133.