Life And Times

I. RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE BEGINNING OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

The close of the twelfth century was marked by the first faint dawn of that noble literature, whose advances and triumphs throw the glories of conquest into deeper shade. The progress of a people in letters indicates the point of civilization and of culture at which they have arrived. Had the throne been filled by any other man than John—that embodiment and personification of human weakness—there can be no doubt that England would not only have taker the precedence of all the European nations in the race of intellectual and moral improvement, but would have left them at no common distance. The single act by which he sold his kingdom for a peace with Rome, for ever impresses with ignominy the character of this prince. We conceal not the fact, that the ecclesiastical hierarchy had been fast encroaching on the province of the civil power—that the government of John was in danger from the spirit of discontent which characterized the clergy — that his kingdom was under the interdicts of the Holy See — that he himself had been excommunicated, and was now threatened with deposition that his excommunication, by reaching to all who had any intercourse with him, amounted to the annihilation of government, law, and property — the impunity of crimes, as well as the invalidity of all contracts and dealings—that, in these circumstances, he had but a choice of evils, either to submit to the power which was bearing down upon him with such accumulated and crushing force, or lay himself prostrate at the feet of the pontiff; and that to this latter step he was counselled and advised by his barons; still, all this does not, and cannot extenuate his conduct. But for their manly struggle in securing the MAGNA Charta, his people would have been reduced to the most enthralling bondage. Under the sanction of the pope’s decree, the king recalled all the liberties which he had granted to his subjects, and wantonly broke the promises which he had sworn to observe. His doings rendered him obnoxious to the nation, and his kingdom was in danger. In their extremity, the barons offered the crown to Louis, the eldest son of the king of France. Just at this crisis, the monarch died, and England was saved, first from an ecclesiastical despotism, whose aim all along had been to render the civil power subordinate to the spiritual authority, and afterwards from the degradation of a foreign yoke.

Sir James Macintosh says : “When the barons originally took up arms against John, they exercised the indisputable right of resistance to oppression. They gave a wholesome warning to sovereigns, and breathed into the hearts of nations a high sense of their rights. But in this first stage they knew not how to improve their victory; they took no securities, and made no lasting provision for the time to come”. Hence it was that they found themselves in open collision with the next occupant of the throne; and Henry, thinking that his crown was far from being secure, stooped to swear fealty to the pope. His holiness released him from his solemn pledge to keep inviolate the several articles of the charter. He had no sympathy with his people, and it was in vain that he asked that people’s attachment and support. He depended on the power of the priesthood; a priesthood better known for its frauds, and forgeries, and laxity of morals, than for its self-denial and holy devotedness to the highest interests of the commonwealth. Society suffered more from the corruption of the church than from all the civil commotions which shook England to its center. The people were sunk in ignorance and superstition. The region of literary culture was approached by but few, nor did men of letters address their compositions to the vulgar. The popular mind was left almost untouched, and, taking its impressions from the manners and the life of the higher classes, became growingly corrupt and degraded.

It must be kept in mind that the art of printing was still a thing in the future, that the writings of the learned were confined almost exclusively to the priesthood, and that the Scriptures were unknown to the people. Had the capacity of reading been as general in that age as in the present—had the possession of books been as easy—above all, had the Bible found a place on every man’s table, and been, as God designed it to be, the book of the people, how different would have been the religious condition of England at the period now under review. Superstition could never have grown into such gigantic dimensions. The papacy could never have acquired such unparalleled power. Both had their foundation in ignorance. The people were not instructed in the truth of God, and very few of them were in circumstances to procure a copy of the sacred volume. As might be expected, they became the easy prey of cunning and unprincipled men. The most degrading authority was employed to intimidate and bring them into submission. Freedom of thought was denied them. They sank down to be the mere creatures of an enslaving power. The free and uplifting genius of Christianity was outraged in the vassalage which was imposed upon the human mind.

We do not say that the darkness which had settled and deepened on the human intellect was unbroken. Lines of light, more or less distinct, were to be seen in the depth of that long night. From the time of the Conquest, men had been raised up to protest against the corruptions of the church, and to be the honest expositors of God’s truth. Among the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries, were to be found those who had loftier objects and purer aims than the accumulation of wealth, or the cementing and strengthening of their political influence. While Lanfranc was “the stern foe of monastic corruption”; while Anselm, his successor in the see of Canterbury, “was better instructed in the doctrines peculiar to the gospel”, and held those doctrines, “associated with that feeling of spiritual humility and confidence which they so powerfully tend to produce when truly embraced”; while “the sentences of Peter Lombard illustrate the moral condition of man, and the articles of the Christian salvation”; and while Edmund could not have written as he has done “without censuring, at least indirectly, the false doctrines, the debasing customs, and indeed nearly the whole of the superstitions so prevalent in his day”,—such was the moral condition of the people, that archbishop Peckham represented them, in a congregation of his clergy, as in a state of utter religious destitution. “To supply this serious deficiency, the primate submitted to the council a list of topics which in future should constitute the matter of regular parochial instruction. This summary includes the Decalogue, the fourteen articles of faith, the seven deadly sins, the seven principal virtues, the seven works of mercy, and the usual sacraments. Of the fourteen articles of faith, the first seven relate to the mysteries of the Trinity, the remaining to the person, the sufferings, and the general mediation of the Saviour. The seven deadly sins include pride, anger, hatred, impiety, covetousness and intemperance. The seven works of mercy are to compassionate the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked, to bury the friendless, and to aid the sick, the neglected, and the poor. Of the principal virtues, faith, hope, and charity, are described as referring to God; while justice, fortitude, temperance, and prudence, are viewed as relating to men. These epitomes of religious instruction are thus particularly stated, because they are frequently mentioned in the history of the church, through several centuries preceding the Reformation. In the present instance, they were published with explanations, which, if really needed, imply the state of the inferior clergy to have been that of the lowest barbarism. Hence the extent of the improvement proposed by this metropolitan reformer consisted in providing that each clerk should deliver four sermons to his parishioners within a year. These discourses also were to be on some of the themes above described, each of which was so far explained as to demand from the preacher but little more than the mechanical effort of transcription”.

Such was the provision made for the perfecting of the moral and religious manhood of the people. Their teachers were to address them on subjects of personal and everlasting moment, four times during the year! And what was the character of the instruction? Was it of such a kind that it could not but contribute to quicken the life of the soul, and insure the development of true piety? How was it received, and to what extent? The answer to these questions would exhibit the clergy in no favorable light. When Reynolds was called to the primacy, the spirit of unprincipled traffic obtained to a fearful extent among the heads of the church, and the people, neglected and untaught, degenerated, till the whole framework of society became disjointed and broken. The fourteenth century set in like a night of deeper gloom. The reign of ignorance and of crime, of superstition and of profligacy, now reached its height. The most flagrant abuses were sanctioned in the church; cunningly devised fables were propagated in place of the gravest and most saving realities; and wherever the spark of truth was seen enkindled, every effort was made to extinguish it. Chaucer had already lashed the clergy for their vices, yet nothing could exceed the impiety of the monastic orders. Their conduct had become so openly and shamefully scandalous, as to bring upon them no common degree of odium and reprobation. Their wickedness was too notorious and too glaring to escape the censure and condemnation of some of the more pious and worthy doctors of their own communion. Shocked by the enormities and vices practiced by these monks, they ardently longed for a reformation of the church.

With these facts before us, we cease to wonder at the degeneracy of the public morals, and the little hold which religion took of the mind of the country. The marvel would be had it been otherwise. We know well how difficult it is in our own day, with a purer worship, a more faithful evangelical ministry, a more searching, salutary discipline, a more healthful vital influence, and with all the appliances of an unfettered Christianity, to keep alive in the popular mind a correct state of religious knowledge and feeling. And yet, in the absence of all these agencies and influences, there were some noble spirits sighing for deliverance from the corruptions of the times. Peculiar difficulties, however, stood in the way of a reformation. It was something too grand to be effected by the timid and the unbelieving. It demanded the faith and the fortitude of a martyr. Still, there were those who were ready not to shrink from either suffering or death in such an enterprise. Among these stands first and pre-eminent the magnanimous and immortal John Wycliffe, who arose as the morning star of the Reformation, and whose doctrines so deeply impressed the popular mind.

II. WYCLIFFE'S EARLY HISTORY.

IT is now generally admitted that to the little village of Wiclif, distant about six miles from the town of Richmond, in the county of York, belongs the distinction of being the birthplace of the reformer. And if, as tradition affirms, he was related to the family who claimed to be the lords of the manor and patrons of the rectory from the Conquest down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, (when, by the marriage of the heiress, the property passed to a house of another name,) we can at once perceive how he came to sustain the cognomen of De Wycliffe. Nothing was more common, from the Norman invasion, than for families to take an appellation derived from the place of their residence. The name of the reformer is certainly a local one, received, not from his parents, but from the parish in which he happened to be born. That no traces of intercourse between himself and his relatives should be found in his writings, may be accounted for from the fact, that the family continuing firmly attached to the superstitions and errors which he sought to destroy, refused to recognize, or at least to correspond with him, and that in the prosecution of his studies he was left to support himself by the application and employment of his own talents.

Of his childhood we know nothing. Where or from whom he received the rudiments of his education—what were the earlier dispositions and tendencies of his mind—to what extent either his intellectual or moral character was developed—or what indications there were of future pre-eminence, must all be passed over in silence. The fact that a star lies too far down in the field of space to come within the range of our own instruments, is no proof that it does not exist. And so the absence of all authentic record touching the early life and history of our reformer, does pot in the least affect the conjecture and the probability that his younger years were marked by some outcomings of that intellectual might and mastery, which rendered his subsequent course so conspicuous and so memorable. This is the more likely, inasmuch as the provisions for education were no longer confined to ecclesiastical and monastic establishments. Local schools had been set up in various parts of the kingdom, and extended from the towns even to the villages. Many of these schools were conducted with great ability, and by men of rare talents. In them were taught classics, mathematics, astronomy, belles lettres, and other branches of science. Nor can we doubt that in one of these institutions, or in one of the seminaries connected with religious houses, Wycliffe received that education which qualified him to enter the university of Oxford. He was first admitted, in the seventeenth year of his age, as a student at Queen's College; but its recent foundation, and the incompleteness of its arrangements, failed to offer those advantages and facilities which were necessary to a mind so earnest as his in the pursuit of knowledge and the prosecution of study. Dissatisfied with its provisions, he very soon left it, and entered Merton College, in which, not many years prim to Wycliffe's residence there, Bradwardine had delivered his famous lectures on the Cause of God, against Pelagius, and which, as a seminary of learning, was celebrated for many of the most illustrious names in letters and in theology.

Here he pursued his studies with unwearied application. His enemies being witnesses, he was second to none in the domain of philosophy, and in scholastic researches he was incomparable.He undervalued no one branch of science. He no doubt had his predilections for' one department of inquiry and of learning above another, but all of them he deemed important. With the study of scholastic philosophy, he combined that of the civil and the canon law, and, as deserving of not less attention, the study of the municipal laws and customs of his own country. "The canons of the church were collected principally from the decrees of the councils and of pontiffs, and formed an authority, not purely ecclesiastical, but one by which a multitude of causes, once pertaining solely to the magistrate, were at length attached to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Christian pastor. Hence a spirit of rivalry arose between the courts of princes and those of the bishops, such as in time rendered it a proverb, that to excel as a canonist required the learning of a civilian, the latter word being understood to denote the secular law as distinguished from the ecclesiastical. There were numerous provincial and national customs opposed to that imperial system of legislation which had disappeared with the fall of the empire, and to that dominion of canonical law which ecclesiastics had reared upon its ruins. This was considerably the case in England, and it ought not perhaps to excite surprise, that the ambition, aided by the pedantry of the times, should be found struggling to exclude the native jurisprudence from the class of liberal studies. But it appears that Wycliffe was not to be thus deterred from ascertaining the merit of customs which had descended with the generations of his fatherland, nor at length from preferring them openly to the collections of Gratian, or the laws of the empire".

But whatever were the nearer or remoter motives which influenced our reformer to take up these various branches of study, it cannot be denied that he made every acquisition subservient to the solemn functions of that ofce to which he had devoted his life. He was designed for the Christian ministry; and to the writings of the early fathers he applied himself with an energy and an earnestness which nothing could exhaust. If among schoolmen Aristotle was "the only safe guide to the meaning of Saint Paul", and if his philosophy was the only key by which the treasures of revealed theology could be unlocked, then Wycliffe soon possessed himself of this key. He committed to memory many of the more intricate portions of Aristotle, made himself familiar with the earliest and most distinguished writers of the Christian church, and became the most eminent doctor in theology in those days. He availed himself of every known or accessible means of widening the field of his knowledge, and of giving him clearer. insight into the deep things of God. His own university could boast of some of the most illustrious names in the sacred domain of theology. These stood high in his estimation, and their writings, in conjunction with those of Augustine and other distinguished fathers, challenged his closer and more devout attention. His intense application in this higher and more sacred department, must be regarded as indicating his supreme love of truth. It is not affirmed that he always reached his object, but it was the goal to which he pressed forward—the mighty prize which he had set before him.

As might be expected, he turned with intense interest to the study of the inspired writings. For some ages, the Bible had been all but a sealed book. The authority of the church still forbade any appeal to the Scriptures. The student of the sacred text came under the ban and proscription of the scholastic philosophy. The compilations of men were in higher repute than the teachings of Christ and his apostles. The reader of Peter Lombard might assure himself of a willing audience, while the mere Scriptural teacher would be rejected and treated with indifference. That illustrious friar of the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon, tells us, "The graduate who reads or keeps to the text of Scripture is compelled to give way to the reader of the sentences, who everywhere enjoys honour and precedence. He who reads the sentences has the choice of his hour, and ample entertainment among the religious orders. He who reads the Bible is destitute of these advantages, and sues, like a mendicant, to the reader of the sentences, for the use of such hours as it may please him to grant. He who reads the sums of Divinity is everywhere allowed to hold disputations, and is venerated as master; he who only reads the text is not permitted to dispute at all, which is absurd". With this testimony before us, it must be acknowledged, that "the Biblical method of instruction was trampled under foot by the overbearing authority of irrefragable and seraphic doctors. And yet, in this state of the public mind it was —that Wycliffe ventured to associate the study of the Scriptures with the keenest pursuit of the scholastic metaphysics, and to assign to the Bible the full supremacy which belongs to it, as disclosing to us the Way, the Truth, and the Life". His powers of debate in the scholastic exercises or public disputations were indeed unrivalled; but his proficiency in the science of theology challenges our highest admiration. In the writings of the schoolmen, he was careful to distinguish between truth and error, and to separate the precious from the vile. Following the advice of some of the better and more enlightened teachers, to lay aside philosophical abstraction and subtlety, and derive the sublime science of salvation from the Holy Scriptures with that purity and simplicity with which it was there delivered by the inspired writers, the reformer endeavoured to restore the ancient practice of lecturing on morals and theology from the book itself. This was a line of action which called for no ordinary courage. While he could compete with any of his fellows in metaphysics and philosophy, he far surpassed them all in Biblical science; so that, while one was renowned for his profoundness, another for his perspicuousness, a third for all that was venerable, and a fourth as the brightest light in a constellation that was all brilliant—it remained to Wycliffe to receive the higher honour still of being the evangelic or gospel doctor. That which had excluded other men from the leading universities of Europe, won for him the most honourable title and the most enviable which any mere man could wear. To be "mighty in the Scriptures", was something which was deemed worthy of apostolic commendation; nor can it be doubted that his ardent attachment to the inspired writirgs placed our reformer in circumstances of peculiar difficulty and of imminent peril.

We cannot suppose that so earnest and profound a student of God's word could be otherwise than personally and powerfully impressed with its momentous truth. This presupposes that he had experienced that great spiritual change which involves nothing less than the renovation of the whole man—"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God". "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new". At what period, or through what instrumentality, this change was effected in Wycliffe, it is impossible now to determine; but if the tree is to be judged by its fruit—if the life is to be taken as the index to the state of the heart, then there is evidence enough to satisfy us, that while the reformer was yet a student, he had the happy consciousness of his personal salvation. Scarcely had he more than reached his majority, when the most destructive pestilence in the annals of disease swept over Europe, and made the most fearful havoc in England. This was in the year 1347. Its ravages were such as might well have awakened deep thought in the most listless and unconcerned. The mind of Wycliffe was touched to the very inmost; nor did his impressions fade away till he himself had done with time, and lud passed into the unsuffering kingdom of God.

Happy had it been for England, had such a visitation left behind it those salutary and saving results for which it was designed. No sooner, however, had the plague subsided, than society returned to its wonted apathy and irreligion. The places of those godly and devoted men who had fallen a sacrifice by their unwearied attention to the interests of their flocks, were filled up by others who were grossly incompetent for the duties of any spiritual office. To chastise the vices of the clergy, among whom he conceived was the seat of that great national calamity which had passed over the land, and to awaken the people to the claims of true religion, Wycliffe penned a little tract, entitled "The Last Age of the Church". It appeared in 1356, when he had just reached the thirty-second year of his age. By many the pestilence had been regarded as a certain precursor of the final judgment; and, falling in with the popular apprehension, the reformer believed that the designs of God were hastening to an end, and that the close of the fourteenth century would bring with it the close of the world's history. To this conjecture he was led by the predictions of an Italian ecclesiastic of the name of Joachim, by certain cabalistic and scarcely intelligible computations, founded on the letters of the Hebrew and Latin alphabets, and by the notion that between the first and second advent of our Lord there were to be four periods of great tribulation in the history of the church; the first, pointing to the waste and wear of heathen persecutions; the second, to the spread and prevalence of open heresy; the third, to the more glaring sin of simony, which made merchandise of God's church; and the fourth, to the progress and final triumph of Antichrist, as belonging, with the one preceding, more immediately to the fourteenth century. Hence the origin and the designation of his tract. But though a genuine production of his pen, it adds little or nothing to his fame. Its chief value is in letting us know how he viewed the events which were then passing over England, the state of society, the prospects of the church, and the interests of God's truth.

With his mind so impressed with the corruptions of the church, and the vices of society in general, we may well conceive that as a reformer he set himself no common task. Difficulties and dangers crowded upon his path, but, nothing intimidated by the one, he never grew pale in the presence of the other. He was braced for action; and with his soul all on fire, he challenged every opposing force. Conscious of his intellectual might, and with the shield of faith over him, he was prepared to grapple with the sturdiest and the strongest of the enemy. To check the evils of the time, he was increasingly diligent in the dissemination of the truths of Christianity, and more than ever earnest in pressing home its claims and obligations. As an author, he disappears for a time from our view. He withdrew but to prepare and equip himself for future service. The mind has its periods of exhaustion, and therefore must have its seasons of refreshment and invigoration. There are times when it is wise and profitable to withdraw from the busiest scenes and theholiest activity, and be alone. The Saviour often went apart. He withdrew even from the closer circle and nearer fellowship of his chosen ones, and sought seclusion and separation. And no man has ever done anything great in God's church, who has not nurtured his faith and piety in deep retirement. It was not that Wycliffe had no felt or full idea of the claims of his age, that he now paused in his course. Like a man who steps backward to accelerate the spring and augment the bound of his next leap, he turned aside to gather strength, and brace up his spirit for something more resolute and more daring. Being a man of faith, he was a man of purpose ; and to effect his purpose, he threw himself on the resources of infinite wisdom and love. He was in communion with God, and believing that he was moving in harmony with His will, he challenged every opposing force.

III. DISSATISFACTION WITH ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS.

Though founded in the sixth century, it was not till the middle of the tenth that the monastic orders put forth in England any very positive symptoms of life and energy. Dunstan, their leader and apologist, was a man of most commanding abilities; and pretending to have received a Divine revelation in their favor, exerted his great talents and influence on their behalf. Their professed separation from the world, with their severer discipline and purer life, raised them high in public esteem. Nor can it be denied, that amidst the intellectual torpor and inactivity of the Middle Ages, the monastery offered the best retreat for letters and for learning, and, in many instances, proved the school of a stern and lofty virtue. We lose nothing by admitting, in common with the most eminent Protestants and Romanists, that but for the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Europe had in all probability become the prey of tyrants, or the theatre of perpetual wars, or had been reduced to a barren desert; that the hierarchy not only opposed the progress of despotism in Europe, but preserved the elements of civilization, and upheld in the recollection of men that which is so easily effaced—the ties which bind earth to heaven. But did not the hierarchy itself become a despotism? Was ever despotism more crushing or more destructive? Did not a supreme selfishness become the infecting genius of every order of the priesthood? The monks laid aside their severer habits, and gave themselves up to indulgence and personal aggrandizement. Wealth and luxury converted the monasteries into so many "castles of indolence". The ambition and avarice of the cathedral budded and blossomed, and bore their deadly fruits beneath the shade of the convent. Abuses multiplied daily. The people were scandalized and indignant. The demand for a change was loud, and all but universal. At this crisis, the papacy, environed by adversaries, and presenting so many vulnerable points, accepted with gladne'ss the services of an order, which promised to exhibit to the world an image of primitive simplicity and self-denial. In them the pontificate would be provided with a hardy and devoted militia, thoroughly prepared for all the various exigencies of her warfare. On the one hand, she would be effectually guarded against the hostility of princes, and on the other, against the encroachments of heresy. The most ample and honourable privileges were, accordingly, lavished on those fraternities which made a voluntary abjuration of property, and whose members were ready to disperse themselves throughout Christendom, relying for their support on the alms of the faithful, and for their influence on the example of an austere, laborious, and ascetic life. For a considerable time, the new institution did its office to admiration. The effect was like the transfusion of fresh life-blood into a decaying system. The genius of the institution penetrated quickly into every department of ecclesiastical agency, whether high or low, whether obscure or eminent. It intruded itself into the region of parochial duty; it seated itself in the confessional; it seized on the chair of the university; it grasped the crosier of episcopacy; it held the seals of civil office, and the portfolio of diplomatic intrigue; till, at last, it appeared probable that the confidence and veneration of nearly the whole Catholic world would be transferred from their established guides to these professors of primitive sanctity and perfection."*

It was in the beginning of the thirteenth century, that there arose this new religious order of the Mendicants, or begging friars, who professed to abjure all property or settled revenue, and to depend for their support on the charitable contributions or voluntary offerings of the faithful. It was pope Innocent III, himself irreproachable in private life, and deeply alive to the vices of the priesthood, who first instituted this order, and distinguished it with special marks of his protection and favour. The Mendicants rendered important service to the church, and continued to enjoy the patronage and support of succeeding pontiffs. The esteem in which they were held by the highest dignitaries so tended to multiply their numbers, that they began to swarm in all the states of Europe, till they became obnoxious to the people and burdensome to the church. To repress their growth and influence was now an object to be desired. With this view, Gregory X, in a general council which he assembled at Lyons in 1272, reduced them to the four orders of the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Hermits of Saint Augustine. The power of the first two orders far surpassed that of the other two. They were, in fact, prior to the Reformation, what the Jesuits have been since that memorable change—the very soul of the hierarchy, determining all political affairs and all ecclesiastical movements.

These four mendicant orders had liberty to travel at pleasure—to mingle in any circle—to take on themselves the education of the people —and began to assume a position and a preeminence but little consistent with their original professions of humility and self-denial. This was the natural consequence of the esteem and veneration in which they were held, as well as of the enthusiastic attachment with which the people adhered to them. They busied themselves in temporal and political affairs of the greatest moment, "in composing the differences of princes, concluding treaties of peace, concerting alliances, presiding in cabinet councils, governing courts, levying taxes", and doing many other offices not only remote from, but absolutely inconsistent with their more sacred character and profession. Nor was this all. They claimed superiority over every other order of the priesthood, and asserted that they had a Divine commission—that they enjoyed special intercourse with Heaven—that to them was revealed the true method of obtaining salvation, and hence the people should receive the sacraments from their hands alone, and should commit their souls to the care of none other. Encouraged and succoured by the pontiff, they usurped the office and invaded the privileges of the conventual clergy. According to Matthew Paris, "they, with overbearing insolence, frequently inquired of the devout, by whom they had been confessed. And if the answer was, By my own priest, they replied, And who is that ignoramus? He never heard lectures in theology; he never gave his nights to the study of the decrees; he never learned to unravel knotty questions. They are all blind, and leaders of the blind. Come to us, who know how to distinguish leper from leper". And to such a degree did they retain their credit and influence, that towards the close of the fourteenth century great numbers of both sexes sought admission into the orders, as the most infallible method of obtaining God's favour and of securing eternal life.

Though protected by pontifical authority from all opposition, whether more open or more secret, they began to be looked upon with growing suspicion and distrust. Even the illustrious Grosseteste, who had not only extended to them his patronage and support, but lavished on them his favour, was so impressed with their rapacity, pride, and ambition—with their restless and turbulent spirit, as it manifested itself in various parts of the kingdom, that he denounced them as the heaviest curse of the church, and the greatest obstacle to the cause of Christian truth. In the prosecution of their itinerant labours, they forced their way into the foremost ranks of society, and into the centre of every circle; and though they bore the name and clothed themselves in the attire of friars-mendicant, they yet lived luxuriously, revelled in indulgence, and drained the poorest of the people for their own personal aggrandizement. "It is matter of melancholy presage, that within the four-and-twenty years of their establishment in England, these friars have piled up their mansions to a royal altitude. Impudently transgressing the bounds of poverty, the very basis of their profession, they fulfil to the letter the ancient prophecies of Hildegara, and exhibit inestimable treasures within their spacious edifices and lofty walls. They beset the dying bed of the noble and the wealthy, in order to extort secret bequests from the fears of guilt or superstition. No one now has any hope of salvation but through the ministry of thepreachers or the Minorites. They are found at the court, in the character of councillors, and chamberlains, and treasurers, and negotiators of marriage. As the agents of papal extortion, they are incessantly applying the arts of flattery, the stings of rebuke, or the terrors of confession. They pour contempt on the sound orders of Benedict and Augustine; and, according to their estimate, the black-cowled brethren are as much superior to the monks, as the disciples of Epicurus would be to so many simpletons and boors."

As Oxford was the first seat and residence of the Mendicants, so there the first vigorous opponent of their errors and their encroachments made his appearance. Fitzralph, who was chosen chancellor of the university in 1233, fearlessly assailed the order, and laid bare their hypocrisy, ambition, arrogance, and the evil tendency of their doctrines, not only to the hierarchy, but to the general well-being of society. Their letters of fraternity were nothing less than indulgences, which they bartered and sold, whose benefits were multiplied and extended according to the wealth of the purchaser, and whose influence might reach beyond death itself. Such was the extortion practised by the order—such the positive pillage and robbery which they committed on the more credulous—that the reformer described their instruments of deception as "powdred with hypocrisie, covetise, simonie, blasphemie, and other leasings"; and such were the mean and sordid arts to which they had recourse to proselytize and draw away the people from the more ancient clergy—such the licentiousness and the vices which they encouraged—such the low devices which they employed to withdraw the young from the university, that we wonder not that the chancellor should have treated them with the most caustic application. In the year 1357, Fitzralph fearlessly arraigned the whole order before the pope at Avignon. His "Conclusions", published at the papal court, could not but be known to Wycliffe, whose soul burned with a just and holy indignation against the fraternity. In three short years after preferring his complaints, the archbishop died. His spirit, however, survived. The work of reformation passed into other and not less able hands. If the death of Fitzralph was regarded by his opponents as the triumph of their cause, the triumph was but short-lived. If for some years Wycliffe had not been so conspicuous on the field of action, he had only withdrawn to discipline and prepare himself for his next appearance. The crisis called for the man, and God, in his good providence, sent forth the man fitted for the crisis. The death of the archbishop left the reformer in the undisputed possession of the ground on which was to be conducted the great conflict between corruption and reformation. The principles of light and darkness, of good and evil, were now to be stirred to their very depth; and on the victory of the one or the other, depended the future weal or the future woe of England. The appeal was to be made, not to the papacy, but to the people.

Though Wycliffe commenced his attack on the notorious and widespread abuses of this sanctimonious order as early as the year 1360, it was not till 1380 that he published his treatise, entitled "Objections to Friars", in which he assailed them as the pests of society, the enemies of religion, the patrons and the promoters of every crime. These objections, which are arranged under fifty distinct heads or chapters, were but the accumulated and combined reasonings which the reformer had employed during the preceding twenty years. His writings abound with the severest invective against the life and practice of the order. His hatred of them never changed. His opposition to their conduct rather strengthened and became more inveterate. In the hour of sickness, even, he could not suffer them to escape. Being visited by a deputation from the body, who reminded him of the injury which they had sustained from his continued opposition and attacks, and who urged him to recant before his death, we are told that he heard them in silence; then, beckoning to his attendants to raise him in bed, and summoning all thestrength he could command, he cried aloud, "I shall not die, but live, and shall again declares the evil deeds of the friars."

Their first establishment having been at Oxford, and the university being provoked by their continued and but too successful attempts to seduce her youthful members, passed a statute, in which it was provided that no one should be received into the fraternity of the Mendicants until be had reached the age of eighteen. The friars, however, were not to be deterred by any authority which did not proceed immediately from Rome; and Rome, instead of interposing her influence to arrest them in their progress, cheered them on in their course, and seconded their efforts with dispensations of a character which reduced the statute of the university to mere waste paper. All the wealth and all the influence of the order were employed to render abortive each of its provisions. The strife deepened and became yet more severe. The attitude of both parties grew more resolute and more warlike. In the heat of the contest, Wycliffe appeared as the champion of the ancient institutions, and the uncompromising antagonist of the friars. So firm was his bearing, and so important was the service which he rendered, that, in the year 1361, and in the midst of his reform movements, he became the subject of special promotion and honour. The Society of Baliol College presented him with the church of Fellingham, a living of considerable value in the diocese of Lincoln, and then conferred on him the dignity of warden. This he resigned four years afterwards for the same office in Canterbury Hall, to which he was raised through the enlightened and liberal friendship of the primate, Simon de Islip, a man no less distinguished for his profound learning than for his love of truth and his piety. In originating this foundation, the archbishop designed it for the benefit of eleven scholars, eight of whom were to be clerks or secular clergymen, and the other three, with the warden or master, were to be chosen from the monks of Christchurch, Canterbury. The headship was first conferred on a monk of the name of Wodehall, or Woodhall, whose restless and turbulent spirit had greatly disquieted the university, and proved a fruitful source of disorder. Having thrown the whole force and violence of his temper into the disputes which distracted and divided the sacred and the secular clergy, Islip availed himself of a provision in the institution, which empowered him to remove both the warden and the three monks associated With him; and in supplying their places with an equal number of secular scholars, invited our reformer to the vacant office of master, as a man in whose honesty of life, in whose laudable conversation, and in whose knowledge of letters, as well as in whose fidelity, circumspection, and industry, he could implicitly confide. This was a stroke of consummate policy, but the appointment had little more than been perfected, when the primate was removed by death. Peter Langham, who had previously been a private monk, and abbot of Westminster, was translated from the see of Ely to that of Canterbury. His elevation was the signal for the downfall of Wycliffe. An appeal was preferred by Wodehall and his expelled associates to the new archbishop, and on the pretence that Islip had acted under the influence of misrepresentation, or in circumstances in which he was incompetent to form a rational decision, the monks were restored, and Wodehall reinstated in the office of master. Into the whole of this dispute it is not needful to enter. Suffice it to say, that Wycliffe, conscious of his own integrity, and assured that he had been raised to the wardership in conformity with the provisions of the institution and the will of its founder, made his appeal to the pontiff. Pressed and perplexed with the difficulties which beset the question, the pope transferred its investigation to one of his cardinals. Its settlement was delayed and still put off. While the matter was thus pending, Wycliffe "could not be ignorant that the slightest indication of feeling hostile to the claims of the Roman prelates would be marked by his opponents, and reported to the papal court with suitable comments and the darkest colouring. From December, 1365, to March, 1367, he had possessed his wardenship; and from his part in the appeal to the pontiff, he must be supposed to have felt somewhat solicitous to preserve it. Had his spirit been capable of subjection to a little calculating policy, he would doubtless have abstained, at least for a while, from his attacks on a class of men known as the most effective agents of the papal power. It was, however, while this cause was pending, that the zeal of Wycliffe, as the enemy of corruption, whether in the head or the members of the hierarchy, became so far conspicuous as to attract attention from the highest authorities in the realm. His pen was still employed, and his voice was still heard, in defence of the university, opposing that independence of its laws which the popes had attempted in favour of the Mendicants; nor was he less active in the cause of the parochial clergy, whose flocks were frequently estranged from them by the influence of those more devoted ministers of the superstitions and of the despotic authority of Rome".

It is again needful to refer to the historical fact that John had basely surrendered the British crown to pope Innocent III. England was the vassal of Rome. It is true that the act of homage had been on the part of the sovereign constantly and carefully evaded, that the annual tribute to the holy see had been frequently interrupted, that for more than thirty years it had not been paid at all, and that the people had ever been impatient under the iron bondage of a foreign yoke. Still, the pope claimed supremacy, and, in the year 1365, Urban V preferred his claim to the annual feudal acknowledgment of one thousand marks, together with all arrears for the three-and-thirty years preceding. In default of payment, the monarch was admonished that he would be cited by process to appear before the sovereign pontiff. It was not to be expected that a daring spirit like that of Edward III would ever submit to be the slave of the church and court of Rome. His conduct was such as became the prince of a mighty people and a growing empire. He not only declined the tribute, but in the following year appealed to his parliament for the settlement of a question in which the honour of the nation was so deeply and immediately involved. Happily for the future freedom and independence of the country, both houses were unanimous in maintaining that neither John nor any other prince had power thus to subject the realm of England without consent of parliament; that not only had such consent never been obtained, but that the king, in so acting, had violated his coronation oath. The nobility and the people ranged themselves on the side of parliament, and stood pledged to support the cause of the monarch against the pretensions and the claims of the pontiff. Yet there were men mean enough, and sycophantic enough, to betray their country to the pontifical claim. They dreamed, as others had dreamed before them, that the civil power should ever be in subordination to ecclesiastical authority; and to insure this subordination, they were prepared to enter into conflict with every opposing force. Resenting the doctrine of the parliament, ant anonymous monk took up the defence of the papal claim; but not satisfied with putting himself in the attitude of defence, he threw down the gauntlet, and challenged to a closer fight the force and fire of England's purest intellect. His aim was to draw our reformer into the arena, and by putting him in opposition to pontifical authority, render him obnoxious to the holy see. Nothing intimidated, and still trusting to the righteousness of his cause, Wycliffe accepted the challenge, and undertook to prove, in opposition to this monastic apologist, that the sovereignty of England had never been forfeited to the pope, and that the clergy were not, either as individuals or as communities, exempt in person and property from subjection to the civil power. As the controversy involved the whole question of the pontiffs temporal authority, and as this authority was so intimately blended with his spiritual power, our reformer was careful to guard himself at the very outset against the imputation of unfaithfulness to the church. Nothing was further from his thoughts at this time than the intention to damage her or her interests in the estimation of her own children. He was simply the opponent of proud and undue pretensions—the irreconcilable foe of existing and deepening corruption. Nor can we overlook the fact, that by this time his fame as one of the ablest disputants of the age must have been fully established. He was challenged, not by a friar, but by a member of the monastic order, between whom and the friars there had hitherto been anything but a feeling of brotherhood or of good will.

The grand proposition of the monk was this:—That all dominion granted under a condition is, by the violation of the condition, dissolved; that the lord pope granted to our king the realm of England, under the condition that England should annually pay seven hundred marks, and three hundred for Ireland, which condition has, from time to time, been disregarded; and therefore the king of England has long since fallen from the sovereignty of England. In his reply, Wycliffe maintained :—

1. That the sovereign is the supreme head of the state in things civil and ecclesiastical, and therefore has the right, in connexion with the parliament, not only to deny the tribute claimed, but even to alienate the property of the church. This doctrine he affirmed to be in conformity with law and the ancient practice of the realm.

2. That if in certain aspects this doctrine was at variance with certain ecclesiastical canons, it was yet in accordance with the claims of natural right, the maxims of civil law, and the teachings of the book of God.

3. That as first and "chief in the following of Christ", who had not where to lay his head, the pope's influence should be limited to his spiritual functions, and all civil homage denied him; that the influence of the pontiff and his cardinals had rather been to the detriment of the nation's religious life and privileges; that the conditions on which John first granted the disputed tribute were never agreed to by the people; that if it was paid for the benefit of personal absolution, or for the removal of the interdict laid upon his kingdom, it involved the head of the church in the sin of simony, since no man is permitted to barter spiritual blessings for temporal gain; that if the pontifical claim were not founded on the fact of spiritual benefit conferred, the despotism now imposed on thechurch might come in the course of time to press with equal force on the state, and the crown itself be looked upon as at the disposal of the Roman see; that if the property was ever the fair possession of his holiness, the goods of the church could not be lawfully disposed of without an adequate compensation, and surely the rich and broad lands of England were not to he given up for the paltry annual rent of seven hundred marks; that if the pope could thus far alienate the property of the church, he might dispose of it entirely; that if there is to be any superior lord or sovereign above the monarch, he must be no other than Christ himself; that the pope is a man, liable like other men to sin, and while in mortal sin is, according to the doctrine of the divines, unfitted for dominion; that the stipulation of the late king, as affecting the interests of the whole people could never be held as either valid or binding; that never having been made by the kingdom, the kingdom could never descend to recognise it; that the agreement obtained the sanction and the seal of only the monarch and a few of his apostate nobles, and that it was injustice to punish their sins on the liberties and the possessions of their posterity.

Such was the ground taken and successfully maintained by our reformer in dealing with his masked and monastic opponent. According to Lingard, the treatise in which Wycliffe embodied his reasoning and conclusions, "does more honour to his loyalty as a subject, than to his abilities as a scholar or divine". It was neither scholarship nor divinity which was required in conducting this controversy. A simple collation of facts, and the legitimate inductions from those facts, were all which he deemed necessary to satisfy any honest mind; but his capacity and force of address in the treatment of the subject are not to be depreciated. Starting with the proposition that the condition on which John surrendered his kingdom to the Roman see, was in itself essentially dishonest, he proceeds, by a process of sound argumentation, to lay bare the fraudulent ambition and ever-advancing encroachment of the papal power, till he comes to set forth its pretensions as a vain thing, and concludes by saying—"If I mistake not, the day will first arrive in which every exertion shall cease, before the doctor [the anonymous monk] will be able to establish that a condition such as this can ever be consistent either with honesty or with reason". These sentiments and reasonings did but re-echo the decision of the English parliament, which had previously come to the resolution, that neither king John nor any other sovereign had power thus to subject the realm of England without consent of the legislature, and that such a surrender was nothing short of a violation of the coronation oath. And when the Mendicant controversy was subsequently submitted to the same august assembly, it was resolved that, in conformity with the Oxford statute, no university scholar under the age of eighteen should be received into the order; that no document tending in any way to the damage of the national seminaries should be hereafter received from the pope, and that all future differences between the parties should be decided in the civil courts, and without further appeal.

What share Wycliffe had in conducting the defence of Oxford it is impossible to say. That he was so engaged is highly probable. Nor is it less probable that it was owing to the conspicuous and successful parts which he played in this controversy, that he became the object of royal favour, and was elevated to the rank of peculiaris regis clericus, or king's private chaplain—a distinction this not more honourable to the priest who received it than to the prince who conferred it. About seven years afterwards, he was one of a commission appointed by the same prince to proceed to Avignon, where pope Gregory XI then resided, and treat with him about certain papal provisions against which the English parliament had recently passed several laws and resolutions. The fact that in this royal commission the name of Wycliffe stands second, is incontrovertible proof of the estimation in which he was held at court, and of the high reputation which he had acquired in connexion with the ecclesiastical questions and movements of his day. But to this we shall have occasion to refer at a more advanced point of our biographical sketch.

It is worthy of remark, that the simple circumstance of the Mendicants having laid claim to a closer correspondence to Christ and his apostles in their humility, self-denial, and devotedness, led at once to an appeal to the Scriptures as the highest and last authority. The friars themselves having been the first to challenge this appeal, they had no alternative but to abide by the decisions of this Divine standard. In the majority of instances, judgment went against them. Not only did they fail to approach their great Model, but their life exhibited a perfect contrast. Amidst all their pretensions, they had no claim to be classified with "the poor in spirit," or with the meek of the earth. They were men of pride and worldly ambition, and hence their novel pretensions were easily determined, and as quickly repudiated. But more and better than this, homage was done to the Bible. The authority of inspiration was placed before the authority of an institution—the voice of God was heard above the voice of the church. The very appeal to the book implied the sufficiency of Scripture in all matters affecting faith and practice, and the right of each individual man, in the exercise of his own private judgment, to determine what is or what is not in conformity with the mind of God. Wycliffe had the deep consciousness that the principles which he had espoused, and now maintained, were in harmony with the spirit of a free Christianity, and every successive appeal to the Christian Testament strengthened his attachment to those principles. It was not in the spirit of faction, but from the force of an interior Divine life that he spoke and acted ... With his mind under the influence of simple living truth, he could no more have pursued a different course, than a planet, obedient to the great central law of attraction, could wander from its appointed orbit. His aim was not the overthrow of the church as a sacred institution, but its purification and corresponding vitality. As the more skilful or experienced practitioner will have recourse to amputation only when life is more or less in danger, so the reformer wished to apply the knife only to those members of the body ecclesiastical which impaired the vital functions, and impeded the full development of the structure. He was all alive to the evils from within and from without which now threatened the church. He foresaw that either she must be purified, or fall beneath the weight of her own corruption. The failure of Fitzralph to effect a reform left little, if any room, to hope that the spirit of improvement would take its rise from within, and therefore Wycliffe appealed to the people, and both appealed to the Bible. It may be that our reformer did not foreseer whither his inquiries were conducting himself and the country. He was in advance of the age, as every man must be who would impress his age with some new element, and carry it forward in the march of progress and improvement. The fact that his own mind was possessed of a living principle, was the grand qualification for his undertaking the regeneration of the church and of society. If his own soul had not been quickened by the Spirit of life, he could not have acted with living power on the people.

IV. MARKED PECULIARITY OF OPINIONS.

The historical reader will bear in mind, that during the reign of the third Edward, not only did the prelates of the church enjoy equal dignity with the greatest barons of the kingdom, but that to them were intrusted the chief departments of government; while, as a body, the ecclesiastics of that day so entrenched themselves in their sacerdotal character and privileges, as openly to challenge exemption from all secular or civil jurisdiction. Such exemption would have been fatal to the liberties and the independence of England. The very idea was repudiated by the king and his parliament. In 1371, that assembly demanded the exclusion of all persons in clerical orders from offices of state. Whether they were moved to this step by the secret influence of John of Gaunt matters little. One thing is certain, that with this illustrious nobleman our reformer was on terms of great intimacy, and both were of opinion that it was a thing altogether incongruous, that men avowedly consecrated to the work of the Christian ministry should be so absorbed in the management of affairs purely secular. Encouraged and supported by his patron, the duke of Lancaster, Wycliffe set himself to expose and denounce the evil. Though the abuse existed as a deep-rooted custom, and was sanctioned by an aspiring and ambitious priesthood, he spared it not. With a courage which bespoke the strength of his principles and the depth of his piety, he demanded that the ministers of religion should give themselves wholly to their sacred calling, an leave the offices of state to be filled up from among the ranks of the laity.

The man who dared to complain that "prelates and great religious possessioners are so occupied in heart about worldly lordships and with pleas of business, that no habit of devotion, of praying, of thoughtfulness on heavenly things, on the sins of their own heart, or on those of other men, may be preserved—neither may they be found studying and preaching of the gospel, nor visiting and comforting of poor men", could hardly hope to escape the deep resentment of his own order. He was misunderstood, misrepresented, and charged with sowing the seeds of dissension and of civil discord. Strong in the righteousness of his cause, he faltered not, neither wavered. His reasonings and his teachings were giving an impression to the mind of the country. The parliament had already petitioned tha sovereign; the sovereign was prepared to take the advice of his council; spiritual functionaries began to vacate their secular offices; and it was recognised as a principle that the government of the kingdom should be restricted to the laity.

How it came to pass that the king, after conferring on the reformer the rank and dignity of royal chaplain, after nominating him as one of the commissioners to negotiate with the delegates of the pontiff as to the limits of the papal influence within the kingdom of England, and after bestowing on him other marks of his princely favour, should have agreed to the pope's edict by which Wycliffe was formally excluded from the wardenship of Baliol College, it is difficult to say. Whether the assent of Edward and of the ecclesiastical court was secured by bribery, or by any other unfair means, must be left undetermined. We have simply to do with the fact. The preferment, which had been so honourably bestowed on Wycliffe, was now as dishonourably wrested from him. Not that he courted preferment, or was in quest of the wealth which an advanced ecclesiastical status might bring with it. He looked on promotion and influence as means to an end. He depreciated nothing which could facilitate his movements in the work of reformation. In 1372-3, he took his degree of doctor in divinity, and was soon afterwards raised to the chair of theology in the first and leading' university of the kingdom. Perhaps it would be more proper to say, that "he now publicly professed divinity, and read lectures in it. This he did with great applause, having such an authority in the schools that whatever he said was received as an oracle."

It is so mewhat remarkable, that the man who wrote and laboured to restrict the duties and offices of government to the laity, should have held the doctrine of "dominion founded on grace." Great efforts have been made by some of his biographers to screen him from this charge. By some it is held needless to inquire whether he could for a moment have regarded it as expedient to become the abettor of any doctrine unfriendly to the influence of the civil power, since among the voluminous works of the reformer one only has been cited as really containing this dogma; and even in his English compositions—which were by far the greater number, and which alone were addressed to the people—it is not in more than two or three instances that the remotest indication of it occurs. By others it is admitted that the maxim of dominion being founded on grace, although fanatical and anarchical in its tendency, is yet to be found in a work of the reformer's, entitled Trialogus. They contend, however, that it is expressed in a very moderate and guarded manner, and that it amounts to nothing more than this, that, "as Christ, by the title of original righteousness, was master of all the possessions of the world, even so, all things belong to the just by the grace and favour of Christ; further, that as the law of Christ forbids his disciples to contend for temporal things, however clearly and rightly their own, then with this title of grace they must rest content; and since they must on no account enforce their right by any worldly means, the lords of the earth may hear, with great composure, a claim to all the good things in it, if accompanied by a law which positively forbids the claimants to take a single step towards realizing their visionary right". This is an apology, not a defence. Even a modern biographer is at a loss for an argument, when he says, "Such was the faith of Wycliffe with regard. to the mediation of Christ, that he considered every man as indebted to the grace of the Redeemer for the benefits of this world, no less than for the hope of a better; and accordingly, he viewed the sin which incurred the forfeiture of heaven, as separating the offender at the same moment from all claim, with respect to God, as to the honours or possessions of the earth. Such is the theology of the Scriptures. But it is insinuated that the reformer proceededfrom this general statement to infer, as a general consequence, that every such delinquent might be divested of property or office by the saints, as of things forfeited with respect to the supreme Lord. Could the rector of Lutterworth be shown to have adopted such a conclusion, it must have been in some moment of derangement. We are not dependent, however, on such a supposition. When this scene of probation shall reach its close, it will appear that the doctrine of Wycliffe, however much despised or calumniated, is a momentous truth, and that no dominion can have the element of duration but what is founded in grace; and though it was not his manner to blend the retributions of a future world with the arrangements peculiar to the present, he might deem it important to admonish the worldly and the powerful as to the ground on which the adjustments of that great crisis will take place; assuring them that the delay of those fearful decisions which will then be announced, arose less from any legal impediment than from the long-suffering of God". It would be far better, we think, to admit that the reformer had taken up a false position, and that the premiss being wrong, it vitiated all his reasonings and all his conclusions. His mind was not fully enlightened on all points, and hence there are certain things, both in his writings and in his procedure, which, when viewed in the clearer light of the nineteenth century, admit of no satisfactory solution. The mere fact of a man in the act of regeneration passing over from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son, can never lay the claim for earthly possessions and temporal dominion. In virtue of his filial relation to God, the Christian has a peculiar property, and a satisfaction altogether his own, in everything that is. Not only does he enjoy all things in, God, but all things are his, for he is Christ's, - and Christ is God's:—

" He looks abroad into the varied field

Of nature, and though poor, perhaps, compar'd

With those whose mansions glitter in his sight,

Calls the delightful scen'ry all his own.

His are the mountains, and the valleys his,

And the resplendent rivers. His t' enjoy

With a propriety that none can feel,

But who with filial confidence inspir'd,

Can lift to heav'n an unpresumptuous eye,

And smiling, say My Father made them all!'

Are they not his by a peculiar right,

And by an emphasis of int'rest his,

Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy,

Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind,

With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love,

That plann'd, and built, and still upholds, a world

So cloth'd with beauty for rebellious man?"

Nor do we forget that when this lower creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God—when the restitution of all things shall have taken place—when the Saviour shall have put down all rule and all authority and power, and shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Father, "that God may be all in all"—when the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, shall have appeared, and the new Jerusalem come down from God out of heaven, and the tabernacle of God be with men, and God himself be with them and he their God, that to them will be given dominion and power, and they will reign with Christ for ever and ever. But this is wholly independent of present possession and of present rule. Here, in all likelihood, lay the error or our reformer. He confounded a reign of saints on earth with their final reign in glory. And by admitting this simple inaccuracy in judgment and opinion, we get free of all the difficulty connected with his doctrine of dominion founded on grace.

On his elevation to the theological chair of Oxford, he was introduced into a position of almost incalculable importance. His prelections were listened to with eagerness and with interest. He was engaged in quickening the minds of those who were destined, in the arrangements of Infinite wisdom, to move and act in the midst of other and still wider circles. He had the future teachers of the nation at his feet. His lectures were to become the embodied and living utterances of many a pulpit; nor can we doubt that, between his academical instructions and his more popular compositions, there was the most perfect and unbroken harmony. Many of the scholastic pieces which he read from that chair are still extant, but his exposition of the Decalogue, which dates from about this period, is entitled to special notice, as furnishing the best compendium of his views at this interesting period of his history.

If dependence be a necessary condition of creation, then both creation and dependence carry with them the corresponding idea of law. That which is created cannot be independent. It must be subject to the Creator. In other words, it must be under law. Now, what is the universal law of moral being but that which the Decalogue reveals? If its sum and substance can be resolved into supreme love to God, and corresponding love to our neighbour, then there is no portion of God's universe exempt from its obligation. It is the law of heaven as well as of earth. The only difference is to be found, not in the principle of the law, but in the mode of fulfilling it. In consequence of his fallen condition, the position and circumstances of man differ from the position and circumstances of a pure spirit that has kept his first estate. This difference does not release man from the law of his being, nor can the law be lowered and modified in its claims to meet the exigency of his case. Let the change be what it may which takes place in the creature, the law remains the same—unchanged and unchangeable. If the law is violated, it has its penalty and its punishment. These must fall on the transgressor, or some method of forgiveness and reconciliation must be revealed for his relief in harmony with the requirements of law itself. If these views be correct and true, then it was the part of consummate wisdom and piety in the reformer to undertake the exposition of that moral code, which could not fail to lead him into the very centre of evangelical truth and discovery, by shutting man up as the breaker of law to the one Divine method of justification and acceptance through an appointed and all-sufficient Mediator.

In his commentary on the Decalogue, he not only deplores the listlessness of man to the lofty claims and requirements of religion, but sets forth in the strongest colours those sins which stand opposed to the supreme homage, and love of the Creator; he treats the all but universal practice of swearing and oath-taking with the most caustic severity, and with the most solemn earnestness; he inculcates the observance of the sabbath by specifying the exercises of private meditation, public worship, and the works of a pious charity; he brings out the principles on which honour is due to parents and to all superiors; he expounds the injunction, "not to kill", as not only prohibiting the taking away of life, but as interdicting any attempt to damage the character and stain the reputation of another; he deals with the sins of the flesh, with lust and vice in every form, as only a man could do who was conscious, in the deep recess of his own heart, of that inward purity which is one of the grand qualifications for the world of perfected spirits; and then concludes thus : —"Many think if they give a penny to a pardoner, they shall be forgiven the breaking of all the commandments of God, and, therefore, they take no heed how they keep them. But I say to thee, for certain, though thou have priests and friars to sing for thee, and though thou each day hear many masses, and found charities and colleges, and go on pilgrimages all thy life, and give all thy goods to pardoners—all this shall not bring thy soul to heaven. While, if the commandments of God are revered to the end, though neither penny nor halfpenny be possessed, there shall be everlasting pardon, and the bliss of heaven." Practical, however, as was the character of his religion, he was far from manifesting any spirit of dependence on his own works, as a ground of acceptance before God.

It may be that his views were neither so wide nor so matured at this period as they were some years later, still it is refreshing to find what prominence he gave to the cross of Christ, and how tenaciously he adhered to the perfection of his sacrifice as an atonement for sin. He uniformly spoke of the church as the purchase of the Saviour's blood, and of the necessity for the dependence, by a living faith, of every sinner on Christ's merits alone for remission of Sins and eternal life. The constant aim of his teaching was to take the man away from the outward and the ceremonial, to the inward and the spiritual; from the priest to Christ; from the sacrament to the atonement; and leave him in the presence of a righteous God with nothing but that atonement on which to adventure his soul and his everlasting interests. Through the efficacy of the cross had the harmony of his own moral and spiritual nature been restored, and therefore did he beseech men to be reconciled unto God. He felt that he could never sufficiently exalt the merits of that Sacrifice which bad been offered once for all, and whose remedial power is for ever the same. In his exposition of the law, he thus writes :—"Bethink thee heartily of the wonderful kindness of God, who was so high and so worshipful in heaven, that he should come down so low, and be born of the maiden, and become our brother, to buy us again, by his hard passion, from our thraldom to Satan. He was beaten, and buffeted, and scourged, so that there was not left a whole spot of his skin, but all his body was as one stream of blood. He was crowned with a crown. of thorns for despite; and when the crown, as some writers say, would not set fast down to his head for the long thorns, they took staves and beat them down, until the thorns pierced the place of the brain. He was then nailed, hand and foot, with sharp nails and rugged, that his pain might be the more, and so at last he suffered a painful death, hanging full shamefully on the hard tree. And all this he did and suffered of his own kindness, without any sin of himself, that he might deliver us from sin and pain, and bring us to everlasting bliss. Thou shouldst also think constantly, how, when he had made thee of nought, thou hadst forsaken him, and all his kindness, through sin, and hadst taken thee to Satan and his service, world without end, had not Christ, God and man, suffered this hard death to save us. And thus see the great kindness, and all other goodness, which God hath shown for thee; and thereby learn thy own great unkindness; and thus thou shalt see that man is the most fallen of creatures, and the un- kindest of all the creatures that ever God made. It should be full sweet and delightful to us to think thus on this great kindness, and this great love of Jesus Christ". Like the great apostle of old, the love of Christ constrained him. From the cross he drew all the mightiest motives by which to enforce a life of practical holiness :—the strongest incentives to obedience and perseverance, the highest impulses of love and zeal, the purest inspirations of hope and joy, the warmest and most enkindling flame of devotion and of praise.

To return to our narrative. The fact of his occupying the divinity chair of Oxford, did not remove Wycliffe from the arena of contest.

He was but getting into the heat of ecclesiasticcal strife. The statutes of provisors and praemunire, passed in 1350, though meant to act as an effectual check on papal usurpation, had produced but little effect. The provisions of the holy see were pressed to a point at which the power of endurance was no longer possible. Deep and ominous were the murmurs which came up from the depth of the nation's burdened heart. To silence these murmurs, Edward sent an embassy to the papal court, to convey to Gregory XI, who then filled the papal chair, the impression which his conduct had made, and to put it before him as the claim of the English people, "that the pontiff should desist from the reservation of benefices in the Anglican church; that the clergy should henceforth freely enjoy their election to episcopal dignities; and that it might be sufficient, in the case of electing a bishop, that his appointment should be confirmed by his metropolitan, as was the ancient custom". So little disposed was the head of the Roman Catholic church to grant any concession, and so limited was his measure of relief, that the parliament, in conformity with a petition laid upon the table of the house, passed a law against the provisions of the pope, in which they declared the election of bishops to be wholly independent of the papal sanction. An inquiry was then instituted into the exact number and value of the alien benefices in the Anglican church. Armed with this information, a second embassy, including our reformer, was sent to the pope. It was arranged that the meeting of the delegates should take place, not at Avignon, where Gregory resided, but at the far-famed, city of Bruges. The negotiation was continued through two long years. And in what did it result? That for the future, the pope should desist from the reservation of benefices; but with this proviso, that the king should no more confer them by his writ! What a mockery! Well might our reformer burn with righteous indignation. He returned to England, not only dissatisfied, but with his mind more than ever impressed with the corruptions of the church. What he saw and learned during those two years he turned to the most practical account. His soul was filled, as it were, with a fresher and a purer inspiration, and he was more than ever resolved to prosecute the work to which he believed God had called him. Pope, prelate, and friar, now came under his severest castigation. He had no sympathy with their vices and their wrong-doing: his soul had no desire to come into their secret. On the contrary, he kept himself at the greatest possible distance, that by increased purity and holiness he might be the better qualified to act the part of a practical reformer. If, in taking this manly attitude, he fell in the estimation of a secular and worldly-minded hierarchy, he proportionally rose in the esteem of all the pious and the good—in the esteem of his country and his sovereign. Either while he was still abroad, or immediately after his return home, he was presented by the king to a prebendal stall in the collegiate church of Westbury, in the diocese of Worcester; and shortly afterwards he was nominated by the crown to the rectory of Lutterworth, in the county of Leicester. Whether he now left the city and the chair of Oxford for the parish and the pulpit of Lutterworth, it is not easy to determine. All that is certainly known is, that at the latter place he spent the larger portion of his time in the duties of a most exemplary and unwearied pastor. His ministry told with quickening and edifying effect upon his parishioners, while in that scene of comparative retirement his own soul was getting into deeper communion with God—into still closer contact with the spiritual and the invisible. Of his strong devotional feeling there is abundant evidence; a living faith in Christ was the spring of his devotion, and if faith determined the character of his devotion, it was by prayer that he nourished both his faith and fortitude. Depending on the resources of Omnipotence, and appropriating to himself the promises of Infinite Love, he felt that he was equal to any duty and to any conflict.

The hour of conflict came. On his return from Bruges in 1376, the duke of Lancaster, owing to the age of the king and the impaired health of the heir-apparent, became charged with the administration of the kingdom. But such was the state of parties, that the peculiarity of his position involved him in corresponding difficulties. On the death of Edward and the accession of his grandson Richard II, the coun-3 try was involved in a war, the expenses of which, together with a want of economy in the administration, had entirely exhausted the royal treasury, and in the same proportion had so ruffled the public temper, that the murmurs of the people daily became deeper and more emphatic. All parties felt that something must be done to relieve the country in its extremity, and at the same time to repress the risings of popular discontent. The source of the evil was traced to the luxury, extravagance, and malpractices of the leading members of the hierarchy. The pope was held guilty of enriching himself by the reversion of benefices; of accepting bribes for the promotion of unlearned and unworthy men to the cure of souls, who never saw nor cared to see the flocks; of levying a subsidy from the whole English clergy for the ransom of Frenchmen as the avowed enemies of the king; of making a gain by the translation of bishops and other dignitaries within the realm; and of appropriating to himself the first-fruits of all benefices. Lay patrons, taking advantage of the simony and covetousness of the pope, were accused of selling their benefices. The pope's collector and receiver of his pence not only kept a house in London, with clerks and officers thereunto belonging, as if it had been one of the king's solemn courts, but annually transported to the papal see twenty or more thousand marks. Cardinals, and other aliens retained at the court of Rome, were raised to the highest offices and dignities within the realm. On these grounds, it was represented to parliament, that it would be good to renew all the statutes against provisions from Rome, since the pope reserved all the benefices of the world for his own proper gift, and had within one single year created twelve new cardinals, thus raising the number to thirty, while all of them, with two or three exceptions, were the known enemies of the king. It was further suggested, that the provisors of the pope should be most strenuously resisted, and that no papal collector or proctor should remain in England upon pain of life and limb; and that no Englishman, on the like pains, should become such collector or proctor, or remain at the court of Rome.

The parliament which entertained such views and sentiments was opposed to the administration of Lancaster, and in the beginning of the year 1377 a new parliament was convened, more attached to his principles and his policy. But John of Gaunt was the friend and patron of John of Wycliffe; and in order to reach the former through the latter, objection was now taken, for the first time, to the doctrine of the reformer, as involving tenets which loudly called for the interference of the civil power. Through the intermeddling activity of Courtney, who had been lately raised to the see of London, our reformer was cited to appear before his ecclesiastical superiors, to answer certain charges, touching his erroneous and heretical doctrines. The place appointed for hearing his defence was St. Paul's Cathedral, which was so densely crowded with the populace, that it was with difficulty that lord Percy, as earl marshal, and even the duke of Lancaster himself, could procure an avenue of approach for the accused reformer. These two noblemen, the most powerful subjects of the crown, entered the court with Wycliffe as his avowed friends. This called forth the indignation of Courtney, the presiding judge in the case. No very temperate altercation ensued between the parties, and a scene, which it would be difficult to describe, was witnessed. Wycliffe was a silent spectator. But to such a height did feeling and passion rise, that the disputants were compelled to separate, and the prosecution was delayed. The report of what had taken place within the cathedral was eagerly caught up by the multitude without, who, siding with the prelate against Gaunt and Wycliffe, were led into acts of violence and spoliation. The palace of the Savoy, the most magnificent in the kingdom, was assailed by a band of rioters, and the arms of the duke, its owner, reversed as those of a traitor. The property of lord Percy suffered less; but a clergyman, mistaken for the earl marshal, was slaughtered by the mob. In these proceedings, the mayor and aldermen appear to have been in some degree implicated. They are said to have been removed by the influence of the duke, that their places might be supplied by persons who were deemed more worthy of confidence.

In the month of October, was assembled Richard's first parliament. Its composition indicated that the influence of Lancaster was on the decline. Though invited to become the president of a council of twelve peers, which was to be appointed to confer with the lower house on the business before it, the duke refused to take any office or perform any act till some imputation which had been lately cast upon him were removed, and he were assured of obtaining the most severe enactment against the authors of any such calumnies for the future.

His triumph was complete. The first business of the parliament was to provide against the encroachments of the ecclesiastical power, and to lighten those burdens which had been entailed on the nation by a long-continued and disastrous warfare. It was, therefore, submitted, as a question, whether, in case of necessity, and, as the means of self-preservation, it might not be lawful in a kingdom so to detain its treasure, although in express opposition to papal authority, and on the pain of censure or excommunication, that it should not be conveyed to foreign nations. The solution of the question was referred to our reformer. Abandoning the legal ground altogether, he made his exclusive appeal to the principles of the law of Christ.

The following passage is memorable and worthy of record :—"Christ, the Head of the church, whose example should be followed by all Christian priests, lived upon the alms of devout women. He hungered, thirsted, was a stranger, and suffered in many ways, not only in his members, but in himself. As the apostle testifies, he was made poor for your sakes, that ye, through his poverty, might be enriched. Accordingly, when the church was first endowed, whoever among the clergy were then holders of any temporal possessions, held the same in the form of a perpetual alms. This is evident from histories, and from other writings. Hence St. Bernard, in his second book to the pope Eugenius, declares that no secular dominion could be challenged by him on the ground of his office, as the vicar of St. Peter, and writes thus: —'It may, indeed, be claimed by you, in virtue of some other plea, but assuredly by no right or title derived from the apostles; for how could an apostle give unto you that which he did not himself possess? That care over the church which he really had he gave you; but when did he give you any worldly rule or lordship? Observe what he saith—'Not bearing rule as lords over God's heritage, but yielding yourselves as examples to the flock.' And that ye may not think these words spoken in a show of humility, and not in truth, mark the words of our Lord himself in the gospel:'The kings of the nations have lordships over them, but it shall not be so with you'. Here lordly dominion is plainly forbidden to the apostles; and wilt thou venture to usurp the same? If a lord, thine apostleship is lost; if an apostle, thy lordship is no more; for certainly the one or the other must be relinquished. If both are sought, both shall be lost. Or, shouldst thou succeed, then judge thyself to be of that number respecting whom God so greatly complains, saying—'They have reigned, but not through me; they have become princes, but I have not known them'. And if men will keep that which is forbidden, let us hear what is said :'He who is greatest among you, shall be made as the least, and he who is the highest shall be your minister', and to illustrate this saying, he set a child in the midst of his disciples. This, then, is the true form and institution of the apostolic calling—lordship and rule are forbidden, ministration and service are commanded. From these words of a blessed Man, whom the whole church hath agreed to honour, it appears that the pope has no right to possess himself of the goods of the church, as though he were lord of them; but that he is to be, with respect to them, as a minister or servant, and the proctor for the poor. And would to God that the same proud and eager desire of authority and lordship, which is now discovered by this seat of power, were aught else than a declension, preparing the pathway of Antichrist!"

The validity of this document has been disputed, as also the fact whether the parliament ever referred the matter to the judgment of the reformer. We confess that we see no reason to dispute either the one or the other; and certainly Wycliffe could not publish such sentiments, and yet hope to be treated with impunity by the see of Rome. The man who maintained that the pope's temporal supremacy was a gross usurpation—that all ecclesiastical property is held conditionally, or for certain specified purposes, and that it is the duty of the magistrate to confiscate the temporalities of the priest who habitually abuses them—that no ecclesiastic, however exalted, can either by his benedictions or his anathemas impart either good or evil, except as these are in conformity with the law of Christ—and that the highest dignitaries, not excepting the supreme pontiff, may be lawfully corrected by their inferiors—could not fail to be obnoxious to the see of Rome. We therefore find, that on the 22nd of May, 1377, pope Gregory addressed a bull to the archbishop of Canterbury and his lordship of London, directing them to cite Wycliffe before them, in order to answer for his conduct. Another bull, bearing the same date, was sent to the king, requesting his favour and assistance in the business; and a third was despatched to the university of Oxford, desiring them to withdraw their protection from a man who stood accused of heretical teaching and contumelious conduct.

Before these letters had reached England, having been, from some unknown cause, delayed till the month of November, his majesty Edward III, as we have found, had gone down to the grave; Richard, a child of eleven years of age, occupied the throne; and Lancaster, though he had been reassured of the confidence of parliament, no longer ruled in the cabinet. Sudbury, now archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to the chancellor of Oxford, reminding him of the papal mandate, and demanding his written judgment on the doctrines and practices of the reformer. The chancellor moved with caution, and shrank from the responsibility of committing Wycliffe to the mercy of his enemies. Towards the close of December, the primate issued his mandate for the appearance of the rector of Lutterworth before his ecclesiastical superiors in the church of St. Paul, on the thirtieth court-day from the date of citation. Early in the following year, Wycliffe, attended by a crowd of citizens, among whom his opinions prevailed, and who now espoused his cause, appeared before an ecclesiastical synod convened in the archbishop's palace at Lambeth. No sooner had they entered the place, than the demonstration of popular feeling on behalf of the accused was such as to throw the court into consternation and alarm. The scene was still further heightened by the arrival of sir Louis Clifford, with a message from the queen-mother, positively forbidding the court further to proceed with the cause. Again defeated in the attempt to seize the person and repress the opinions of the reformer, we are informed by Walsingham that the delegates, "shaken as a reed with the wind, became soft as oil in their speech, to the open forfeiture of their own dignity, and the injury of the whole church; and Wycliffe left the court with a simple admonition to abstain for the future from the publication of his opinions, that the laity might not be made to stumble by his perversions". But the mind which had learned to view the spiritual weapons of the church as powerless, except when employed according to the teaching of holy writ, was not to be dismayed by them as directed against conclusions which had been adopted as the result of much painful and devout investigation. The injunction of the court fell pointless and blunt on the ear of the reformer. Not that he was disposed to trifle with established authority, or that he wilfully put himself in opposition to his superiors, but simply because be was committed to a work of inestimable moment, and the abandonment of which would have been unfaithfulness to God.

V.REFORMATION PRINCIPLES.

The supremacy of the pope has ever been regarded as the key-stone of the papacy. Remove this, and the whole thing falls to pieces. Subject the ecclesiastical to the civil power, and leave the propagation and support of Romanism to its own inherent life and energy, and it is found comparatively innocuous. The force of Christian truth is sufficient to overcome every form of superstition and error. A spiritual Christianity can gain nothing by an appeal to the sword. There is no conceivable connexion between mental conviction and physical coercion. The two things are absolutely antagonistic. Human steel can never be put in the room of the Divine Spirit. It is just as the governments of this world befriend and patronise Popery, that it dares to come abroad, and lift its head in the light of heaven. In proportion to its influence in the state, is its capacity for self-propagation and extension; and what, in other circumstances, it could not even attempt, it is then prepared to enforce. Armed with an authority which none might dispute, it has turned the keenest edge of the magistrate's sword against the disobedient. Where it could not command the homage of the inward spirit, it has punished and tortured the outward man. The history of papal supremacy is the history of suffering and of blood.

To aim a blow at this supremacy was to lay the axe to the root of the tree. More than convinced of the evils arising out of this proud usurpation, Wycliffe devoted his most strenuous efforts to undermine the basis on which it rested. Nor can he be said to have been either unwarranted or premature in adopting this line of action. The church had raise herself above all law. The hierarchy claimed universal empire and universal possession. The priest of Rome was held to be "the master of the emperor—the fellow of God—the Deity on earth". Wycliffe was, therefore, justified saying :—"Commonly, the new laws which the clergy have made, are cunningly devised to bring down the power of lords and kings, which God ordained, and to make themselves lords and to have all things at their doom. Certainly, it seemeth that these worldly prelates would more completely destroy the power of kings and lords, which God ordained for the government of Christian men, than God destroyeth the power even of the fiend. For God, in setting a term which Satan may do, and no more, still suffereth his power to last, for the profit of Christian men, and the just punishment of evil doers. But these worldly clerks would never cease, if unchecked, until they had destroyed kings and lords, with their regalia and power. . .. For the prelates of this world, and the priests, high and low, say freely, and write in their law, that the king hath no jurisdiction nor power over their persons, nor over the goods of holy church. And yet Christ and his apostles were most obedient to kings and lords, and taught all men to be subject to them, and to serve them truly and cheerfully in bodily works, and to fear them, and honour them above all other men. The wise king Solomon, also, put down a high bishop, who was unfaithful to him and his kingdom, and exiled him, and ordained a good priest in his room, as the book of Kings telleth. And Jesus Christ paid tribute to the emperor, and commanded men to pay him tribute. St. Peter also commandeth Christian men to be subject to every ordinance of man, whether unto the king as more high than others, or unto dukes, as sent of him to the vengeance of evil doers, and the praising of good men. Also, St. Paul commandeth, by the authority of God, that every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but of God. 'Princes are not to the dread of good works, but of evil. Wilt thou not dread the power? Do good, and thou shalt have praise of the same; for he is God's minister to thee for good. If thou bast done evil, assuredly thou shouldst fear, for he beareth not the sword in vain. Therefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience. For therefore ye give tribute, they being the ministers of God serving to this same thing. Therefore yield ye to all men's debts; to whom tribute, tribute; to whom toll, toll; to whom dread, dread; to whom honour, honour. Our Saviour Jesus Christ meekly suffered a painful death under Pilate, not excusing himself from that jurisdiction by virtue of his office. And St. Paul professed himself ready to suffer death by the doom of the emperor's justice, if he were worthy of death, as the deeds of the apostles teach. And Paul appealed to the heathen emperor, from the priests of the Jews, to be under his jurisdiction, and so to save his life. Lord, who hath made our worldly clergy exempt from the king's jurisdiction and chastening, since God bath given kings this office over all misdoers? Clerks, and particularly high-priests, should be most meek and obedient to the laws of this world, as were Christ and his apostles; and thus be a mirror to all men, that they may yield this meekness and obedience to the king, and to his righteous laws. What sturdy robbers and traitors, then, are these to lords and kings in refusing this obedience, and in thus giving an example to all the men of the land to become rebels against the king and the lords! For in this, and in what they teach, they instruct the commons of the land, both in words and deeds, to be unfaithful and rebellious against the king. And this seemeth Well, according to their new law of decretals, where proud clerks have ordained that our clergy shall pay no subsidy nor tax, nor anything for the keeping of our king and our realm, without assent from the worldly priest of Rome. And yet many times this proud worldly priest is an enemy of our land, and secretly maintaining our enemies in war against us with our own gold. Thus an alien priest, and the proudest of all priests, they make the chief lord over the whole of the goods which clerks possess in this kingdom, and that is the greater part thereof. And where are there greater traitors, either to God or holy church, and especially to our liege lord and his kingdom? An alien worldly priest, and an enemy to us, is made chief lord over the greater part of our country!"

T he sentiments which he thus exposed werel enunciated and defended in England towards the close of the fourteenth century, by men who looked upon the doctrines of our reformer with apprehension and fear for the stability of the church and the safety of the commonwealth. Wycliffe, clearly discovering, as every man who would open his eyes to the facts of the case might have perceived, that the principles against which he contended were subversive of all civil and social order, fatal to the freedom, the interests, and the happiness of the individual subject, the stability of the throne, and the life of the sovereign—was man enough and Christian enough, not only to enter his most solemn protest, but to breast the darkest storm that might burst upon him in opposing such boundless pretensions. He not only spoke of the pope as an Antichrist—not only continued to assert the subordination of the ecclesiastical to the civil power—not only maintained the authority pertaining to secular lords with respect to the temporalities of the church, and that not the mitre but the crown should constitute the final appeal in determining the application of ecclesiastical property; but falling back on the decision of parliament, that the procuring of any benefice by papal provision should be punished with outlawry— that the same penalty should be incurred by the man who should farm any of the livings in the Anglican church that had been conferred upon foreigners—that the pope should be prevented making reservations to dignities elective, as being against his treaty with Edward—that all aliens should within a given time quit the realm, and that during the war all their lands and goods should be applied thereto —he took advanced ground, and advocated a radical change in the whole ecclesiastical system. His recent visit to the papal court had given him a deeper insight into its corruption. His very soul loathed and turned away from the injustice and the abominations which were practised under the sacred name of piety. His voice waxed louder and still more earnest for reform. The time, however, was not yet. He stood rather as the herald of the coming deliverer—the seer of a future and more glorious epoch.

His opinions rapidly spread among the people. The citizens of London, who stood aloof from him at St. Paul's, and put themselves in the attitude of antagonists, were seen rallying round him at Lambeth. The evils which he laid bare with so much freedom and fidelity were so notorious, and the usurpations which he denounced were so unjust and so monstrous, that the most incredulous and the most stolid could not fail to be impressed. Nor was the impression confined to the metropolis. It extended to the provinces. It passed the narrower limits of the kingdom, and was felt as deeply in some parts of the continent as in England itself. Long had the best of men been degraded and enslaved. A despotism more crushing than the most cruel oppression had broken and bruised them. That despotism was in its height and power. England must resist it, or she might become unto perpetuity the vassal of Rome. The assumptions and the excesses of the hierarchy had produced such a deep and general disgust that the people every day became more determined to withstand the encroachments of a body, which seemed to live and act only to enrich and aggrandize itself by exhausting the resources of the country. The most sacred interests of religion were sacrificed to the pride of ambition. From the pontiff down to the humblest priest that ministered at the altar, all ranks of the clergy were infected with a worldly, selfish spirit. On this point, the testimony of the reformer is most explicit. Touching the pope, he says: —"Let him not be ashamed to perform the ministry of the church, since he is, or at least ought to be, the servant of the servants of God. But a prohibition of reading the sacred Scriptures, and a vanity of secular dominion, and a lusting after worldly appearances, would seem to partake too much of a disposition toward the blasphemous advancement of Antichrist, especially while the truths of a Scriptural faith are reputed tares, and said to be opposed to Christian truth, by certain leaders who arrogate that we must abide by their decision respecting every article of faith, notwithstanding they themselves are plainly ignorant of the faith of the Scriptures. But by such means there follows a crowding to the court (of Rome,) to purchase a condemnation of the sacred Scriptures as heretical, and thence come dispensations, contrary to the articles of the Christian faith." Of his estimate of these indulgences we may form some faint idea, when we hear him exclaiming:—"These, opposed to the Scriptures of truth, like the crimson blossom of foul revenge, provide sustenance for Antichrist. Of this the infallible sign is, that there reigns in the clergy a Lucifer-like enmity and pride, consisting in the lust of domination, the wife of which is covetousness of earthly things, breeding together the children of the fiend—the children of evangelical poverty being no more. A judgment of the fruit thus produced may be formed also from the fact, that many, even of the children of poverty, are so degenerate, that either by what they say, or by their silence, they take the part of Lucifer, not being able to stand forth in the cause of evangelical poverty; or not daring, in consequence of the seed of the man of sin, sown in their hearts, or from a low fear of forfeiting their temporalities". These utterances, which ought to have flashed like lightning across the conscience, revealing to the priesthood their guilt and condemnation, fell with electric force upon thousands of the community, and lifted them into the manly attitude of defence. Their sympathies were stirred to their lowest depth, and with the reformer they were prepared rather to die in the conflict than yield those liberties which they held dearer than life.

That by which the priesthood wrought more effectually on the superstition and the fears of the people, was the dogma that their sentences 0f excommunication extended to the future state. To pretend that they had power beyond this life to visit the sins of men—that they could raise and lower at pleasure the temperature of purgatorial fire—that they could either lengthen or shorten the term of punishment—above all, that their sentence might run out into everlasting torments—was to clothe themselves with a power before which the most stout-hearted might well have trembled. Nor could a more subtle snare have been laid for the souls of men. Every individual member of the church was thus in the hands and at the mercy of the priest. Hence the plea for confession and absolution. Absolution depends on confession, and confession brings the offender in prostration to the feet of his ghostly superior, with a submission and a dependence which never can be due from one creature to another. So impressed was Wycliffe with this fact, that he laboured with great solicitude and with growing earnestness, to deliver men from what he conceived to be nothing inferior to the bondage of corruption. He not only disputed, but positively denied the power here assumed. His words are : —"Let it once be admitted that the pope, or one representing him, does indeed bind or loose whenever he affects to do so, and how shall the world stand? For if, when the pontiff pretends to bind all who oppose him in his acquisition of temporal things, either movable or immovable, with the pains of eternal damnation, such persons assuredly are so bound—it must follow, among the easiest of things, for the pope to wrest unto himself all the kingdoms of the world, and to subvert or to destroy every ordinance of Christ. And since, for a less fault than this usurpation of a Divine power, Abiathar was deposed by Solomon, Peter was reproved to the face by Paul, nay, and many popes have been deposed by emperors and kings—what should be allowed to prevent the faithful uttering their complaints against this greater injury done to their God? For, on the ground of this impious doctrine, would be easy for the pope to invert all the arrangements of the world; seizing, in connection with the clergy, on the wives, the daughters, and all the possessions of the laity, without opposition, inasmuch as it is their saying, that even kings may not deprive a church-man of aught, neither complain of his conduct, let him do what he may, while obedience must be instantly rendered to whatever the pope may decree!"

The power to bind or to loose being thus denied to the supreme pontiff, we wonder not to find the reformer calling in question his authority to confer that power on the inferior priesthood :—"We know that it is impossible that the vicar of Christ, merely by his bulls, though concurring with his own will, and that of his college of cardinals, should really qualify or disqualify any man. This is evident from that point of catholic doctrine which requires our Lord, in every vicarious operation, to maintain the primacy. Therefore, as in every qualifying of a subject, it is first required that the subject to be qualified should be meet and worthy of it; and as, also, in every act of disqualification, there must first be some demerit in the person disqualified requiring it; it follows, that the act of qualifying is not simply from the ministry of the vicar of Christ, but from above, or from some other cause". He proceeds further, and asserts, that "then only does a Christian priest bind or loose, when he simply obeys the law of Christ; because it is not lawful for him to bind or loose, but in virtue of that law; and, by consequence, not unless it be in conformity to it".

Tyranny may have its rule, but justice eventually has its reign. The rod of oppression must yield to the sceptre of righteousness. The triumph may be delayed, but it is not the less certain. The husbandman must first labour before he partake the fruit. The hero must first take the field before he can proclaim a victory. Close was the conflict in which Wycliffe was engaged, and mighty were the issues involved in that conflict. The advanced ground which he assumed brought him into direct collision with the concentrated power of the hierarchy, and that power employed every expedient, even the meanest and most unworthy, to reduce and overcome his influence. The infliction with which, at this moment, he might have been visited, was happily averted by the breaking out of the great schism of the west, which so enfeebled the papal power in England, and everywhere else, as to leave very little of either strength or disposition to proceed to extremities against its avowed enemies.

The death of Gregory XI in 1378, rendered vacant St. Peter's chair. The cardinals assembled to elect his successor. The honour which had for so long a period been confined to Frenchmen the Romans were resolved should be now transferred to an Italian. The election fell on Bartholomew di Pragnano, a Neapolitan by birth, and then archbishop of Bari, who assumed the name and title of Urban VI. But having soon fallen in the esteem of all parties, some of the leading cardinals retired from Rome to Anagni; and at Fonde, a city of Naples, they chose a successor to Gregory, who was immediately proclaimed as Clement VII. Thus there were two popes at one and the same time; and. though England adhered to Urban, so involved did the Roman see become in internal strife and faction, that our reformer was allowed to go on for years, preaching and writing with little, if any molestation. Availing himself of this period of respite from the fury of his enemies, he assailed the sins of the hierarchy with augmented force, and proclaimed it as a fit occasion for all the princes and potentates of Christendom to combine in overthrowing the entire superstructure of the Romish dominion. In the division created by the election of two popes, he believed that Christ had cloven the head of Antichrist, and made the two parts fight against each other.

Under the pressure of his numerous duties, and the force of great mental anxiety, the health of the reformer became so sensibly impaired as to threaten a speedy dissolution. He was then at Oxford, the scene of his former labours, and in the midst of the order which he had condemned aloud. From the four orders of friars, four doctors were deputed to wait on the dying man, receive his confession, and urge him to revoke whatever he had said or published tending to the injury of the church, and especially of those holy fraternities which they represented. Wycliffe had nothing to revoke, and no confession to make. He felt assured that his sickness was not unto death, and the four regents left his room with the painful impression, that should he be raised up again, their orders could not expect for the future any gentler treatment at his hands. He recovered,and as the tide of health returned and flowed, he addressed himself with deeper earnestness to the work of reformation. He first published his tract on the "Schism of the Popes", which he adverts to the division in the hierarchy—to the degeneracy of the clergy, through the accumulation of wealth—to the necessity of a more equal and righteous application of ecclesiastical property—to the superstition which had clothed the priesthood with such mysterious power—to the priestly pretensions as the assumptions of human weakness or of human folly—to their anathemas as pointless—to confession as not essential—to the power of the keys as not derived from Christ—and to dominion over disembodied or departed spirits as the grossest imposition on the credulity of an over-credulous people. The schism thus created in the body-ecclesiastic became a frequent topic in all his subsequent writings, and even in his pulpit addresses. His aim was to undermine the influence of the priesthood. He believed that Simon Magus never laboured more in the work of simony than did the priests; and he gave it forth, that "God would no longer suffer the fiend to reign in only one such priest; but, for the sin which they had done, made division among two, so that men, in Christ's name, might the more easily overcome them both."

This was a consummation which he devoutly wished, and for this he more than ever lived, and wrote, and laboured.

The principles from which he acted were those which ultimately carried the Reformation of the sixteenth century. But that great organic change was delayed till the nations were riper for it. Just as our Lord never performed a miracle till the mind of the individual on whose behalf it was to be performed was brought to a certain stage of faith, so events linger in the rear of Providence till men are prepared and qualified to apprehend and appreciate them.

VIII. HOSTILE INFLUENCES AND AGENCIES.

IT is a question how far the insurrection of 1381 is to be attributed to the doctrines of Wycliffe and his followers. It is true that, more effectually to imbue the public mind with his opinions, the reformer kept a number of his disciples itinerating through the country, under the name and the character of poor priests. It is true that these men were most assiduous and unwearied in their labours. It is true that thousands listened eagerly to their teaching, and as eagerly adopted their opinions. But to say that the civil commotion with which the name of Wat Tyler is so intimately and inseparably associated, and in which the commons of England played so strange a part, is to be traced immediately to the teaching of the reformer and his disciples, is a mistake. It was to replenish an exhausted exchequer that the parliament imposed a new and unusual tax of three groats on every person, male and female, above fifteen years of age. This impost, known by the name of the POLL-Tax, led to more than one crisis in the future history of the people. It was levied with great rigour. Tyler, who was a blacksmith, and resided in Essex, was the first who roused the populace to a sense of its injustice, and led them to take arms in resisting it. He had a daughter, for whom, on the ground of her age, he claimed exemption. This the tax-gatherer disputed; and, to ascertain the fact, was guilty of some most unmanly and unpardonable indignities. The father was enraged, and aiming a blow with his hammer at the collector, levelled him with the ground. The bystanders applauded the spirit of the blacksmith, and resolved to defend his conduct. Having proved himself, as they thought, a champion in the cause of freedom, he was appointed the leader of the thousands who had avowed their willingness to follow him. The men of Kent were all in readiness; those of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and other of the eastern counties, assembled at Blackheath, to the number of sixty thousand, proceeded to the metropolis, attacked and took possession of London, and committed fearful havoc on life and property. At Smithfield an interview took place between the king and Tyler, in which the latter entered into a detail of the grievances of which he and his followers complained. They required the abolition of poundage, the liberty of buying and selling in fairs and markets, a general pardon, and the reduction of the rent of land to an equal rate. If we except this last item, there was nothing either unjust or extravagant in their claim. Having ordered his companions to retire till he should give them a signal, Tyler now lifted his sword in a most menacing manner, when treasurer Walworth, apprehending some evil intent on his royal master's life, plunged a dagger in Tyler's throat, and one of the king's knights soon despatched him. On the loss of their leader, the mutineers prepared to take revenge. Perceiving their design, Richard, who was not more than sixteen years of age, rushed into their midst, and with an affable and intrepid countenance, asked them if they would kill their king. Then he offered himself as their leader, and promised to redress their grievances. His words acted like a charm. They immediately lowered their arms, and followed the youthful prince into the fields, where he conferred on them a charter of liberty.

It was not in England alone that such scenes were witnessed. All Europe was convulsed. In the disturbed and distracted state of public feeling, the tumult might have occurred without any such stimulus as that supplied by the labours of the rector of Lutterworth. In France, in Germany, in Italy, such outbreaks were not unusual, and these were equally menacing to the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities of the age. There was nothing in her internal condition to exempt England from danger, on the contrary, in their address to the king, the parliament affirmed that unless the administration of the kingdom were speedily reformed, it must become wholly lost, and that the injuries done to the poorer commons had caused them to rise and commit the mischief done in the late riot, while there was cause to fear still greater evils if a sufficient and timely remedy were not provided. They, in fact, charged the late insurrection upon the government. In these representations and statements even the lords concurred, and therefore nothing could more happily free our reformer from the odium which has been sought to be cast upon him and his doctrines in connection with this affray. He was no enemy to civil order. He was the last man of his age to encourage the spirit of rebellion. He threw out no flag of opposition to established authority. Rather did he labour to exalt the civil power, and to inculcate the subordination of every other.

Such teaching, however, was obnoxious to the hierarchy; and taking advantage of the late riots, they represented to the young monarch that those convulsions which had so recently endangered the interests and the stability of the kingdom, might be expected to return, unless some effective measures were adopted to put down Wycliffe and his followers. Nor let it be forgotten that Courtney had been elevated to the primacy—a man who was not only regarded as "the pillar of the church", but by birth and marriage stood connected with the first and most noble families of England. Soon after his elevation, he convened a synod to decide on the best course to be taken to repress those opinions which were being so widely diffused, as well among the nobility as among the people. They met at Grey-friars on the 17th day of May, 1382, and were proceeding to pass, a formal condemnation of the tenets of our reformer, when suddenly the metropolis was shaken by an earthquake, which so disturbed and alarmed the assembly, that they would immediately have broken it up as displeasing to Heaven, but for "the ready genius of the primate who presided, and who conferred a different meaning on the incident, comparing the dispersion of noxious vapours produced by such convulsions, with the purity which should be secured to the church, as the result of the present struggle to remove the pestilent from her communion."

Some of the reformer's doctrines having been declared erroneous, and others heretical, a fierce and fiery persecution was commenced against him and his disciples. They were represented as teaching that the bishop of BRome had no legislative authority in the Christian church—that the pomp and dignity of the higher orders of the priesthood should be done away—that the clergy should have no power, either to farm or to live away from their benefices—that auricular confession is superfluous—that the power of granting indulgences, or of binding and loosing, is a delusion—that the worship of images is idolatry, and that the miracles attributed to them are a deception. Irritated and provoked the clergy preferred their complaints in a petition to the monarch and the court. By surreptitious and unworthy means, they obtained the sanction of the king, and of certain peers, to a statute which provided for the punishment of heresy. Its real object was to compass the arrest and imprisonment of Wycliffe's poor priests. The sword of the magistrate was henceforth to leap from its scabbard at the bidding of the priest, and no process instituted against any offender was to terminate, except as the party accused should justify himself according to the law and the reason of holy church.

The synod which had condemned the doctrines of Wycliffe met again in June, and a letter was addressed by the primate to the chancellor of Oxford, requiring him, within a certain period, to publish the proscribed articles in the schools and churches, and intimating the archbishop's determination to suspend all persons suspected of holding the reformer's views from all scholastic exercises, until such time as they should have purified themselves from the offence. The university was in favour of Wycliffe. The chancellor himself was rather inclined to his opinions. Several meetings of the synod were convened. Prosecutions were taken out and carried on against several men of note, who were known to be friendly to the new doctrines. Wycliffe, who was then at Lutterworth, waited the issue of these prosecutions with intense anxiety, and on several occasions referred to them in his pulpit administrations. Against Courtney, who had assumed to himself the name and office of the chief inquisitor, his very soul burned with the fire of a righteous displeasure. "He pursueth", he said, "a certain priest, because he writeth to men this English, and summoneth him, and traveleth him, so that it is hard for him to bear it. And thus he pursueth another priest, by the help of Pharisees, because he preacheth Christ's gospel freely, and without fables. Men who are on Christ's behalf, help ye now against Antichrist, for the perilous times are come which Christ and Paul foretold."

Among the opinions condemned as heretical, were those of the reformer on the nature of the eucharist. He believed, in opposition to the church, that in the Lord's supper the bread and wine undergo no change, but remain the same after consecration as before it. Nor was he alone in this opinion. It was not till the ninth or tenth century that the dogma of transubstantiation became known, and no sooner was it propounded than it was opposed. A French divine and prelate, of the name of Berenger or Berengarius, who lived and died in the eleventh century, subjected the doctrine to the most rigid investigation, and had the manly fortitude to disavow it. It formed no part of the creed of the simple-minded and pious Vaudois. It was unknown in England in the tenth century. Lanfranc, an Italian by birth, and who, on the deposition of Stigand, became archbishop of Canterbury, was the first who wrote against Berengarius, and maintained the doctrine of the real presence. It was then taken up by the great body of the Anglo-Norman clergy, and met with little, if any opposition, till the time of Wycliffe.

This leading error of the Romish church is thus defined :—"By the sacramental words, duly pronounced by the priest, the bread and wine upon the altar are transubstantiated, or substantially converted into the true body and blood of Christ; so that after consecration there is not in that venerable sacrament the material bread and wine which before existed, considered in their own substances or natures, but only the species of the same, under which are contained the true body of Christ and his blood, not figuratively, nor tropically, but essentially, substantially, and corporally; so that Christ is verily there in his own proper bodily presence." It was against this false dogma that our reformer lifted his voice in loud and solemn protestation. This he first did in a course of divinity lectures, which he read at Oxford, and in the face of the greater excommunication, suspension from all scholastic exercises, and the forfeiture of personal liberty,—for an assembly of twelve doctors, summoned by the chancellor, had already condemned his conclusions, and decreed imprisonment and excommunication as the punishment of all who should embrace and maintain them. As he had often declared it to be the duty of the magistrate to protect the life, the property, and the personal freedom of the subject, apart from all ecclesiastical relations and duties, so now he appealed on his own behalf to the civil powers; parliament was not then sitting, nor would it meet for some time to come. On its assembling, in November, 1382, be presented, in the form of a petition, a summary of his views and opinions. In this document he not only repudiated the idea of the real presence in the sacrament, but prayed that the doctrine of the eucharist might be openly taught in all the churches, as Christ and his apostles had left it. He asserted that tithes and other voluntary offerings should be withdrawn from prelates and priests who were guilty of great and notorious sins—that it was in many cases lawful and meritorious in temporal authority to take away the temporal property of the church—and that religious vows were a mere human device, and of no obligation. The effect upon the parliament of this teaching was, that the obnoxious statute of the Synod was annulled, and it was declared that men were no further bound to the prelates than were their ancestors in former times. Wycliffe was then summoned to appear before a convocation at Oxford. Though deserted by Lancaster, he was nothing daunted. True to his purpose, he threw himself, with renewed confidence, on God. He conducted his own defence with consummate skill and dexterity. The confessions which he then made were rather a re-assertion than a renunciation of his peculiar doctrines. At such a crisis, and in such circumstances, he was not the man to shrink from the open avowal of his opinions. Sentence wa passed upon him. Silenced at Oxford, and his connection with the university dissolved, he retired to Lutterworth, where, with enfeebled strength and growing infirmities, he devoted his time to such writings as might tend still more widely to diffuse his principles, and bring about that grand consummation to which his life and labours had been devoted.

Transubstantiation was not the only dogma which he disputed and denied. To auricular confession, the sale of indulgences, the invocation of saints, the worship of images, prayers for the dead, the celibacy of the clergy, he was decidedly opposed. Lingard avows that Wycliffe inculcated the doctrine of purgatory, and strenuously maintained the efficacy of the mass. On which Dr. Vaughan remarks: —"Surely the man who could go through his pulpit services for twelve months together without more than a single reference to the mass, except to censure its imperfections and abuses, can hardly be said to have been a strenuous advocate for its efficacy. Mr. Lewis may be right, in stating that Wycliffe believed in 'the bitter pains of purgatory; for during a large portion of his life he did so. But in inquiries of this nature, nearly everything must depend upon dates. To a correct acquaintance with this subject, it was strictly necessary to know the frequency, or the variety of the reformer's allusions to it; to know, also, something of the distinctness or obscurity that may have marked those allusions; and to know, above all, that before his death Wycliffe had learned to use the word purgatory as referring merely to an intermediate state, through which the most holy of mankind must pass to their final rest. Such an apology is altogether unsatisfactory. It is undeniable, that to several of the Romish tenets he adhered till the hour of his death. Up to the last, his mind was but partially enlightened, and as partially informed. The marvel is, not that he was on a few points in error, but that he was on so many points in the right; and that, amidst so many adverse agencies and influences, he reached so advanced a stand-point.

After his separation from Oxford, he was summoned to appear before the pope, to answer the charges which had been preferred against him. Paralysed and enfeebled in body, he was not in a condition to undertake a journey to Rome, and therefore he addressed a letter to his superior, in which he professes his joy in the opportunity now given him of telling the pope the belief which he held; for if his faith was right, and given of God, his holiness would gladly preserve it; and that if his faith was in error, his holiness would wisely amend it. He then intimates, that he took it as a part of faith that no man should follow the pope, no, nor any saint that is now in heaven, but inasmuchas he followed Christ; that he took it as wholesome counsel, that the pope should leave his worldly lordship to worldly lords, as Christ enjoins; and that he should speedily move all his clerks to do so, for thus did Christ, and so taught his disciples. Instead of going to Rome he remained at Lutterworth, and produced those compositions, which were to prove like seed-corn cast on the waters, which would find a congenial soil, in which they would vegetate, and spring up, and yield a hundred-fold.

Many of the theological opinions of our reformer the reader must have gathered from the preceding pages. Believing in the election of grace, he could not fail to assert that the exclusive dependence of the sinner for the remission of sins must be on the satisfaction and the sacrifice of Christ; that to this sublime doctrine of a free remission were directly opposed the laws of penance and the practice of pilgrimage; that without the grace of God and the merits of Christ, all that any saint ever did could not bring a soul to heaven; that the merit of saints was a purely human invention; that a man is justified by faith; that justification is always accompanied by sanctification; that there is an eternal distinction between virtue and vice; that whomsoever the Spirit quickens he purifies, whom he enlightens he transforms; that the Spirit is the first and producing cause of all those holy affections and higher graces which enter into and complete the character of the Christian. However far he carried the doctrines of free grace, it is clear that he held them in righteousness of life. He says :—

"Let us then deny ourselves in whatever we have made ourselves by sin; and such as we are made by grace, let us continue. If a proud man be converted to Christ, and is madehumble, he hath denied himself. If a covetous man ceaseth to covet, and giveth of his own to relieve the needy, he hath denied himself. If an impure man changeth his life, and becometh chaste, he hath denied himself. He who withstandeth and forsaketh the unreasonable will of the flesh denieth himself. The cross of Christ is taken when we shrink not from contempt for the love of the truth; when man is crucified unto the world, and the world is crucified unto him, and he setteth its joy at nought. It is not enough to bear the cross of a painful life, except we follow Christ in his virtues, in meekness, love, and heavenly desire.

"What is turning to God? Nothing but turning from the world, from sin, and from the fiend. What is turning from God, but turning to the changing things of this world, to delight in the creatures, the lusts of the flesh, and the works of the fiend? To be turned from the world is to set at nought its joys, and to suffer meekly all bitterness, slanders, and deceits, for the love of Christ; to leave all occupations unlawful and unprofitable to the soul, so that man's will and thought become dead to the things which the world loveth and worshippeth".

It is, perhaps, impossible exactly to define or determine the creed of the reformer. Unless his writings were all collated and authenticated, and some competent and unprejudiced mind were to sift and examine his opinions, with all their modifications and changes, and give the result to the world, it would be vain for us to attempt to fix the boundary line of his faith. Though opposed, alike to the doctrine and the polity of the Romish church, he yet remained in her communion, accepted and enjoyed her preferments, and yielded up his life before her altar. Had he lived at a later period, he would, doubtless, with the advantages of purer and increasing light, have entirely quitted her pale.