John Wycliffe left quite an impression on the church: 43 years after his death, officials dug up his body, burned his remains, and threw the ashes into a river!

It was an unlikely end for a tiny man who had been born in the hinterlands, on a sheep farm 200 miles from London. But by about age 30, Wycliffe was on the faculty of Oxford, where he developed into a brilliant and proud theologian. There his attacks on the church paved the way for the Reformation 150 years later.

When the church demanded financial support from England, a nation struggling to raise money to resist a possible French attack, Wycliffe advised Parliament not to comply. He argued that the church was already too wealthy and that Christ called his disciples to poverty, not wealth.

Wycliffe rejected as unbiblical the doctrine of transubstantiation, which says that during Mass the bread and wine become in substance the body and blood of Jesus.

Wycliffe even criticized the pope. When Urban VI and Clement VII were each claiming ...

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