ecclesiastical grievances under which the kingdom was then suffering.1

In the chapter preceding this, a brief sketch has been given of some of the prominent abuses to which the English nation was for a long time subject; by which the wealth of the kingdom was absorbed by the clergy-mendicant and regular-or drained off by the pope. These abuses had continued, despite of complaints, and protests, and temporary resistance. There had long been gathering in the breasts of the people, a spirit of opposition to the tyranny of Rome. This with difficulty had been kept under, by the united power of the throne and the clergy. England had now (in 1374) been ruled for more than forty years by one of her most accomplished and popular monarchs. Edward III., though guilty of many arbitrary acts of government, had the wisdom, or the policy, to consult the opinions and wishes of his subjects more than any one of his predecessors. He was a hero and a conqueror; and, as such, had acquired great applause and influence in that semi-barbarous age. His numerous warlike expeditions compelled him to call frequently for supplies from his parliaments; and his good sense, or his necessities, induced him to yield more to their pleasure, in granting privileges, and immunities, and protections to the people, than had been common previous to his time. The authority of the Great Charter was so often confirmed during his reign, that it became immovably fixed as a limitation of the royal power. The king was made to feel that there was a power under the throne, if not above it, whose heavings were not to

1 See an account of these grievances, and of the abortive embassy of Wickliffe and his associates to the pope, then at Avignon, in Vaughan, vol. i., ch. 4. A summary of the complaints against the papal court, urged by the several parliaments of Edward III., may be found in Fox, bk. v., A. D. 1376. This

be despised nor disregarded with impunity. The people, for whose benefit all government, civil and ecclesiastical, should be administered, but who had hitherto been least regarded in its administration; who had been trampled upon by their princes and nobles, and worst of all by their clergy, began now to rear their heads and raise their indignant voices.

With such teachers as John Wickliffe and his disciples, the English people were likely to understand something of their ecclesiastical rights, and to assert them with more courage and success than ever before.

The people moved parliament,

and the parliament moved the king-himself no-wise unfavorably disposed to inquire into the ecclesiastical abuses by which the pope and his creatures were eating out the vitals of the kingdom. The result of this inquiry was the discovery that more than one half of the landed property of the kingdom was in the hands of a corrupt and indolent clergy; that many of the most lucrative benefices were in the possession of foreigners, and some of them but boys, who knew not the language of the country, nor had even so much as set foot on English soil; that the pope's collector and receiver of Peter's pence, who kept "an house in London, with clerks and officers thereunto belonging, transported yearly to the pope twenty thousand marks, and most commonly more;" that other foreign dignitaries, holding ecclesiastical benefices in the kingdom, though residing in Rome, received yearly an equal, or greater sum (twenty thousand marks) for their sinecures; and finally, "that the tax paid to the pope of Rome for ecclesiastical dignities, [did] amount to five-fold as much as the tax of all the profits, as appertained to the king, by the year, of his whole realm."

Such were some of the results of the

"Whereby it may appear, that it was not for nothing that the Italians and other foreigners used to call Englishmen-good asses; for they bear all burdens that were laid upon them."

2 Fox, bk. v., A. D. 1376; Vaughan, vol. i., ch. 4, particularly pp. 332-335; Cotton's Abridg. in Henry's Eng., vol. viii., 65.

to the ecclesiastical abuses of that age. Wickliffe was one of the commissioners chosen by parliament to lay these complaints before the court of Rome.

The conference with the pope was appointed at Bruges, a large city of Austria. Thither the English commissioners repaired. They soon found, however, that they had brought their wares to a glutted market. Ecclesiastical abuses were things little regarded by the Roman traders. It was like carrying coals to New Castle, to carry their budget of complaints to Bruges. The mission was, nevertheless, attended with one advantage-it forced wide open the eyes of the Reformer; he no longer saw" men as trees walking;" but he beheld, as with open vision, the full grown Man of Sin, the Antichrist of the latter days. On his return to England, Wickliffe openly denounced "His Holiness," as "the most cursed of clippers, and purse kervers" (purse cutters); and made the kingdom ring with his descriptions of papal impostures and papal corruptions.

These bold and violent attacks upon the sovereign pontiff and his dissolute clergy were neither unnoticed nor unheeded at Rome. The storm of hierarchal wrath had long been gathering; and its thunders at length began to mutter over the Reformer's head. King Edward was now aged and infirm, and nigh unto death; and Richard II., his grandson and successor, was a minor. The hierarchy, probably deemed this a favorable time to attack the obnoxious heretic. Accordingly, in 1377, Wickliffe was cited to appear before the convocation of the clergy, to answer to the charge of heresy. It was a moment of peril to the Reformer. His judges were his enemies; and without some better protection than their sense of justice would afford, the days of the good man's usefulness, and perhaps of his life, would have been quickly numbered. At this critical juncture, God raised up for his servant a powerful friend and protector, in the person of the duke of Lancaster, commonly known as John of Gaunt,

so called from the place of his birth. He was the third son of Edward III., and uncle to Richard II., and was principal regent of the kingdom during the minority. Henry Percy, earl marshal of England, also befriended Wickliffe. These noblemen bade him be of good cheer; and, for his encouragement and protection, attended him in person to the house of convocation. Immediately on the entrance of the party, a quarrel commenced between the high-blooded Percy and the bishop of London; which, from words had well-nigh come to blows. This personal quarrel between my lord clerical and my lord secular so disturbed the proceedings of the convocation, that it soon broke up in confusion, and its victim escaped untouched.

During the same year (1377), parlia ment called on Wickliffe to give his judg ment on the question:-" Whether the kingdom of England, on an eminent necessity of its own defence, might lawfully detain the treasure of the kingdom, that it might not be carried out of the land; although the lord pope required it, on pain of censures, and by virtue of the obedience due to him?" This question, so illustrative of the exorbitance of the pope and of the rising spirit of the nation, Wickliffe answered boldly in the affirmative. 1

These repeated good offices for his country, though they rendered the Reformer eminently popular in England, were treasuring up wrath for him in Rome. Before the close of the year 1377, the thunders of the Church were again pealing over his head. No less than four bulls were let loose by the pope against "the audacious innovator." In these instruments "His Holiness" laments and denounces "the pernicious heresy" and the "detestable insanity" which had induced "John Wickliffe, rector of the church of Lutterworth and professor of the sacred page (it were well if he were not a master of errors), to spread abroad 1 Vaughan, vol. i., pp. 343-347.; Fasciculi, 258-271.

opinions utterly subversive of the church;" and ordered secret inquiry to be made into the matters charged against him, and if found true, the heretic to be immediately seized, and imprisoned, and detained "until further directions should be received." Three of these papal bulls were addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London, who cordially reciprocated the dolors of His Holiness, and eagerly desired to glut their malice upon the impudent reformer. But the fourth bull, addressed to the university of Oxford, met with a very cold reception. A fifth bull, or rather letter, was addressed to the king of England, soliciting his aid in suppressing the doctrines of Wickliffe; which are described as opposed to the existence of the church, and to all the forms of civil authority. 1

The zeal of the primate soon prepared another inquisitorial court to try the heretic; and Wickliffe was summoned to Lambeth chapel, to give account of himself to the ecclesiastical powers. The Londoners, who were now "deeply infected by the heresy of Wickliffe"-and who, Walsingham affirms, were nearly all Lollards -getting wind of what was going on, surrounded the chapel of the archbishop, and gave such demonstrations of interest in the defender of the people's rights, as materially to disturb the equanimity of the papal conclave. To add to their discomfiture, in the midst of their deliberations a messenger arrived from the court, positively forbidding them to proceed to any definite sentence against Wickliffe. Thus, a second time, was the prey delivered from the jaws of the devourer.

These threatening dangers and narrow escapes rather inflamed than cooled the ardor of the Reformer. He boldly advocated a thorough reform of the church; and declared his willingness to suffer, and die, if necessary, in order to promote this desirable end.

1 Vaughan, vol. i., ch. 5., partic. pp. 352–356. The bulls and the epistle to the king may be found in the Appendix to Vaughan, vol. i., pp. 417-426. See also Wilkins' Concilia, vol. iii., pp. 116-118.

The death of pope Gregory XI., which occurred the next year, 1378, and the notorious papal schism occasioned by the election of two popes as successors to Gregory, saved Wickliffe for some time from further molestation. Their Holinesses were too much occupied in forging and fulminating thunderbolts against each other, to pay much attention to the English heretic. This interval of rest from persecution was diligently employed by Wickliffe in writing ad circulating tracts and books, in which the corruptions of the clergy and the anti-christian character of popery were unsparingly exhibited. But the great work of Wickliffe during these years of rest from papal persecution (1379-1381,) and that which did more than all his other labors to promote the truth, and to open the eyes of the nation to the anti-christian character of the entire hierarchy, and which has handed down to posterity the name of this great man in the brightest halo of glory, was the translation of the entire Bible into the vernacular language of the country.

The enemies of the great Reformer, ancient and modern, very unwillingly admit this; and labor to deprive him of this high honor, or to depreciate the advantages of this great labor of christian love. Thus Dr. Lingard (Hist. Eng., vol. iv., chap. 3, p. 196), asserts, that “several versions of the sacred writings were even then extant "-i. e. at the time Wickliffe made his new translation. He admits, however, that " they were confined to libraries, or only in the hands of persons who aspired to superior sanctity." And to sustain his assertion, he quotes Sir Thomas More's Dialogues, iii., 14. But Sir Thomas-who was not born until about a hundred years after Wickliffe's death-is by no means unexceptionable authority. His object in making the assertion, however honest he may have been in his belief of its truth, was precisely the same as that of Lingard in repeating the assertion, viz: to screen the Romish Church from the scandal and the

crime of withholding God's Word from the people. But this they fail signally to do; for Knighton, a Romish historian who was contemporary with Wickliffe, and who doubtless expresses the current opinion of the churchmen of his times, inveighs bitterly against this rash and presumptuous measure of the great Reformer, in unveiling the mysteries of God's Word to the eyes of the vulgar multitude. He

says:

"Christ delivered his gospel to the clergy and doctors of the Church, that they might administer to the laity and to weaker persons, according to the state of the times and the wants of men. But this Master John Wycliffe translated it out of Latin into English, and thus laid it more open to the laity and to women who could read, than it had formerly been to the most learned of the clergy, even to those of them who had the best understanding. And in this way the gospel pearl is cast abroad, and trodden under foot of swine, and that which was before precious to both clergy and laity is rendered, as it were, the common jest of both. The jewel of the Church is turned into the sport of the people, and what was hitherto the principal gift of the clergy and divines, is made forever common to the laity."1

1 De Eventibus, col. 2, 1. 644. To the same effect is the decision of an English council in 1408, with Archbishop Arundel at its head: "The translation of the text of Holy Scriptures out of one tongue into another is a dangerous thing, as St. Jerome testifies, because it is not easy to make the verse in all respects the same. Therefore we enact and ordain, that no one henceforth do, by his own authority, translate any text of Holy Scripture into the English tongue, or any other, by way of book or treatise; nor let any such book or treatise now lately composed in the time of John Wycliffe aforesaid, or since, or hereafter to be composed, be read in whole or in part, in public or in private, under pain of the greater excommunication."- Wilkins' Concilia, iii, 317. The spirit of this enactment was evidently that of the majority of the clergy in the age of Wickliffe. He describes them as affirming it to be "heresy to speak of the Holy Scriptures in English ;" but this is said to be a condemnation of "the Holy Ghost, who first gave the Scriptures in tongues to the apostles of Christ, as it is written, to speak the word in all languages that were ordained of God under heaven."

This question of priority is ably discussed and satisfactorily settled in the Preface to the noble edition of Wickliffe's Bible, published from the University press of Oxford, England. The learned editors of that edition avow their conversion to the belief of Wickliffe's claim to priority over all others, as a translator of the entire Bible into the vernacular of the English nation. This was not their belief when they began their investigations. Influenced by the confident assertions of such men as More, and James, and Usher, they supposed that earlier translations than Wickliffe's had been made. But this opinion they were compelled to abandon after careful original investigation.

John Wickliffe undoubtedly, then, deserves the honor of having given to his country the first translation of the whole Scriptures in the English language. With great personal labor, and by the aid of learned assistants, he wrote out an entire English version of the Sacred Word. Copies of this were multiplied by transcribers for there was no printing in those days; and the " 'poor priests," as Wickliffe's preaching disciples were called, scattered them over the kingdom. To the Scriptures the Reformer appealed for the truth of his doctrines; and men were everywhere urged to search the Scriptures and "see if these things were so."

The minions of the hierarchy were in the terrors of death when they saw this light streaming through the land. They hated the light, because their deeds were evil; and they would not come to it, lest their deeds should be reproved. Wickliffe was denounced as a sacrilegious wretch, who had presumed to rend the veil from the holy of holies, and expose the secret of God's honor to the unhallowed gaze of the profane multitude. For centuries the reading of the Bible, by the common people, had been prohibited. A needless exercise of papal im

-Wicket. See Vaughan's Life of Wycliffe, vol, ii., p. 44; Wycliffe's Bible, Preface, p. vi., Oxford, 1850.

piety, to be sure, when the Sacred Treasure was locked up in a language unknown to the mass of the people, and when the scarcity and cost of a single copy was such as to defy the ability of nine hundred and ninety-nine men in a thousand to procure the prohibited book. Still, the prohibition was a fair exhibition of papal principles; and should not be forgotten by the friends of the Bible.

But while the clergy declaimed against the impious version, the "poor priests" multiplied and scattered "the seed of the word; and the poor people, so long doomed to endure "a famine of the word of God," devoured the bread with great avidity and, like the honey tasted by Jonathan in the wood, it enlightened the eyes of all who partook of it. It enabled them to see, not only the corrupt and anti-christian character of the entire system of popery, to which they had so long been dupes and willing slaves; but it taught them also the corruption of their own natures, and their need of the washing of regeneration. It became to the people of England what it did to the children of Israel, when in the days of Josiah “the Book of the Law" was discovered among the rubbish of the temple, and was brought out and "read in their ears"-the means of an extensive revival of pure religion in the nation. Wickliffe, profiting by the example of the Man of Sin, reared up numerous preachers of his doctrines, and sent them forth as the mendicant orders had at first gone-or rather as Christ's disciples first went forth with their staves in their hands and the sacred word in their bosoms, preaching everywhere that men should repent and turn from their vanities, to the worship of the only living and true

1 Some notion may be formed of the difficulty of getting a copy of the Bible before Wickliffe's translation appeared, from the fact, that although his ver

God, and to the exercise of faith in the only Saviour of man and Intercessor with God, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And so wonderfully successful were these preachers, that Knighton, a contemporary, tells us, that above one half of the inhabitants of the kingdom in a short time became Lollards, or Wickliffites.

We are now approaching the end of the good man's eventful life. His last days, if his best days, were not the most peaceful. Though worn down by incessant labor, and harrassed by opposition and persecution, and admonished by repeated attacks of sickness, he still manifested no disposition to cease from his labors; he seemed resolved to die in the harness. During the last three years of his life, his mind, his tongue-when he could speak-and his pen, were incessantly busy in the great work to which he had consecrated himself-the reform of the church. His search into the Scriptures and into ecclesiastical antiquity opened the eyes of the Reformer, to see more and more of the anti-scriptural character of the entire hierarchal system of those days. He boldly attacked the wealth, and pride, and pomp, and ornaments of the established orders, and his thundering artillery threatened the utter overthrow of the ancient fortress of popery itself.

Hitherto Wickliffe seems to have enjoyed the protection and patronage of the court; and God had used this to keep at bay the bulls of Rome. But now, John of Gaunt openly forsook his old and faithful friend. Le Bas attributes this to the doctrine about this time (1381) advanced by Wickliffe respecting the sacramental symbols, viz., that the consecrated host we see upon the altar, is neither Christ nor any part of him, but an effectual sign of him; and that transubstantiation, identification, or impanation, rest upon no

and scattered over every part of the kingdom-yet a copy of his New Testament alone cost from thirty to forty pounds, or from one hundred and thirty-three, to one hundred and seventy-seven dollars, Federal money. See London Encyclopædia, Art. Scriptures.

solution of this matter, however, may, I think, be found in the fact that Wickliffe's doctrines were beginning to threaten the English, as well as the Romish hier