Although it was now well known that Wycliffe held many anti-papal opinions, he was not yet committed to direct opposition to Rome. But in the year 1374 he was employed in an embassy to the pope, Gregory XI., whose residence was at Avignon. The object of this mission was to represent and have removed the flagrant abuses of the papal reservation of benefices in the English church. But we doubt not the Lord allowed this, that Wycliffe might see, what strangers were slow to believe, namely, that the papal court was the fountainhead of all iniquity. On his return from that mission he became the open, direct, and dreaded antagonist of Rome. The experience of Avignon and Bruges added to the results of his previous thought and inquiry, and satisfied his mind that the pretensions of the papacy were without foundation in truth. He published indefatigably the deep convictions of his soul, in learned lectures and disputations at Oxford, in pastoral addresses in his parish, and in spirited tracts written in clear English prose, which reached the humbler and less educated classes. He denounced with a burning and long-treasured indignation the whole papal system. "The gospel of Jesus Christ," he said, "is the only source of true religion. The pope is Antichrist, the proud worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers and purse-carvers."
The pride, the pomp, the luxury, the loose morals of the prelates, fell under his withering rebuke. And being a man of unimpeachable morals himself, of profound devotion, undoubted sincerity, and original eloquence, numbers gathered around the dauntless professor.*