MR. ARNOLD thought this tract not improbably the work of Wyclif, but did not print it, because he "found it to be a remarkably dull composition and to contain not a single new idea." He may not be alone in this severe judgment; but after several fiercely polemical tracts, it is almost a relief to come upon a specimen of Wyclif's simple evangelical teaching. Even here his foes are not forgotten, and his attack on the friars, and on their teaching as to the Eucharist, marks the tract as a late one. I have very little doubt that it is authentic.
There is a curious reference in Chapter IV. to Antinomian opinions, which we should not have expected to be prevalent among Wyclif's hearers.
Copied from the MS. at New College, Oxford (Q), and collated with the Dublin MS. CC.
| CHAP. I. | Men must learn about Faith, Hope and Charity | p. 347 |
| What Faith is, and how needful to man | 347 | |
| II. | Ways in which Faith may fail | 348 |
| III. | What Hope is | 349 |
| IV. | The contraries of Hope and Faith | 350 |
| V. | Charity the wedding garment, without which no man can come to heaven | 351 |
| Friars go contrary to all three virtues | 352 | |
| VI. | The sixteen conditions of charity | 353 |
| These are enough to bring a man to heaven | 355 |
