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LIFS OF WICLIF. 297

whole realm of England, then one of the fairest por<
tions of the Pontifical dcmiain. Why, he exclaims,
in one of his English treatises, do our wayward cu-
rates curse the souls of men to hell, and their bodies
to prison, and doom them to forfeiture of goods, and
loss of life, and all for the sake of paltry gain ? — and
this, too, while they themselves are accursed of God,
for entering on their office by simony, and betra^ng
it by abandonment of duty, and unholiness of living !
The pains of hell, rather than tithes and offerings,
are their proper recompense. They are rather mali-
cious tormentors, than spiritual fathers to the soub
of men. Pagan tyranny and persecution confined its
rage to the body, but these children of Satan seek to
plunge the soul into everlasting pain. Yea, they are
worse than the fiends themselves ; for the fiends tor-
ment no human soul, but for the measureless enormity
of sin : while these clerks of Satan doom souls to hell
for some trifling due,' which poverty may disable them
from paying, and which, after all, is no lawful d^t,
but a mere fraudulent exaction, founded on usages
that have no warrant in the commandments of God.*
He hesitates not to add, that when prelates extend
their execrations to all that shall commune with men,
whom ihey have declared to be accursed, they may
be said, virtually, to include the Almighty himself in
their maledictions ; for God assuredly does not cease
his communion with the vilest outcast, so long as he
affords him breath and sustenance, and is ready to
restore him to grace and for^veness. And well, he
says, may men wonder at this prodigality of cursing,
called forth, as it often is, not for false oaths, and in-
fernal ribaldry, and other offences against the .majesty
of God and Christ — ^but for some invasion of the in-
terests and privileges, and wayward customs, of the
priesthood.! Fearful, almost beyond imagining, must

* Great ientance of cune ezpoonded, c xrii. Bee Vaughan, voL li. fi
283,281 ^

tn>id.czx7.
