"ENGLAND," says Bishop Burnet in his History of the Reformation," had been for three hundred years the tamest part of Christendom to the Papal authority, and had been accordingly dealt with." We can only give our attention to one or two of the principal events which contributed to give the Pope such resistless sway over the island of our forefathers.

William, duke of Normandy, surnamed the Conqueror, in A. D., 1066, obtained the crown of England mainly through the favor of the Pope; and various unusual advantages were granted to the See of Rome in return. Further prerogatives were granted to the Popedom, under the reign of that weak and wicked king John, who took possession of the throne A. D. 1190. John quarrelling with his bishops, the Pope took occasion to interfere, and appointed on his own authority an archbishop of Canterbury. John refused to admit the Pope's nomination, and the Pope put the kingdom under an interdict. By the operation of that interdict, "The nation was deprived at once of all the exterior exercise of its religion. The altars were despoiled of their ornaments; the crosses, the relics, the images and the statues of the saints were laid on the ground: and as if the air itself had been profaned, and might pollute them by its contact, the priests carefully covered them up even from their own approach and veneration. The bells were removed from the steeples and laid on the ground." "The churches were shut. The dead were refused Christian burial, and thrown into ditches on the highways." According to the belief of the times, the nation was cut off from God and from heaven. No courage or patriotism could give any man heart to meet the power of such a horrible and mysterious curse. The king was excommunicated: and in those days the excommunicated person lost his civil rights, and was accounted not only an outlaw, but loathsome and accursed. No one, as he feared the like sentence upon himself, and perdition upon his own soul, might afford him a shelter or do him a kindness. subjects of John were, by the Pope, absolved from their allegiance; and the kingdom was given to Philip, king of France; who was required, as a dutiful son of the church, to come with an army and enter upon the possession.

The

JOHN, in distress and terror, submitted to the Pope, and took an oath to perform whatever stipulations the Pope should impose. Then kneeling, with his hands held between the hands of the legate, and under his dictation, he took the following oath: "I John, by the grace of God, King of England and Lord of Ireland, in order to expiate my sins, from my own free will, and advice of my barons, give to the church of Rome, to Pope Innocent and his successors, the kingdom of England, and all other prerogatives of my crown. I will hereafter hold them as the

Pope's vassal. I will be faithful to God and to the church of Rome; to the Pope my master, and his successors legitimately elected." Having done homage to the Pope's legate, and reinstated the archbishop of Canterbury appointed by the Pope, and paid tribute, the crown was restored to him, while the legate trampled the tribute money under his feet."

The ecclesiastical preferments of England were thus given into the hands of the Pope. Foreigners were put into the richest bishoprics; and enjoyed their revenues without residing in their dioceses, or so much as setting foot on English ground. Vacant preferments the Pope sold for the benefit of his own coffers; nay, without waiting for the death of the incumbent, he made provisional sales of dioceses, parishes, and canonries, to any who would pay his price; who were thus endowed with the right of succession whenever the void term should occur. He exacted the revenues of all vacant benefices; the twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues whatever: and where these revenues exceeded a hundred marks, he demanded a third: of the benefices of nonresidents he exacted one-half.

A century and more passed away while the kingdom was suffering under this foreign yoke with scarcely a hope of ever finding relief. At length the sceptre of England was grasped by a firmer and more sagacious hand. Edward III, A. D. 1352, ordained that all forestalling of benefices should cease: that the elections, presentments, and collations, should stand in right of the crown, or of any of his majesty's subjects, notwithstanding any provisions from Rome. An inquiry directed by Parliament, resulted in the discovery that more than half the landed property in the kingdom was in the hands of the clergy: that the most lucrative benefices were in the possession of foreigners; some of them mere boys, who had never set foot on English soil: that the collector of Peter's pence, who "kept a 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 at Rome, received an equal or greater sum for their sinecures; "that the tax paid to the Pope for ecclesiastical dignities doth amount to five fold as much as the tax that doth appertain to the king by the year, of this whole realm."

By the energy of Edward III, the evil began to be checked: it was not cured. All trials of titles to the right of presentations to benefices were still brought into the Romish courts beyond sea; appointments to benefices were still subject to the confirmation of the Pope; the canons and constitutions enacted by the clergy convoked without the king's authority, were binding without any voice of the king; so that the ecclesiastical power

was independent of the civil government, and had authority to oppress the people, in various ways, without limit or redress.

To remedy these evils, the famous statute, whose provisions are commonly referred to by the title of Premunire, was passed in the reign of Richard II. "That if any did purchase translations, benefices, processes, sentences of excommunications, bulls, or any other instruments from the court of Rome, against the king or his crown; or whoever brought them into England, or did receive or execute them, they were declared to be out of the king's protection, and should forfeit their goods and chattels, besides enduring further processes and penalties, at the discretion of the king and council."

By such enactments the kingdom was in a measure relieved from the extraordinary impositions laid upon it under the hands of William the Conqueror, and king John. In other respects, the iron hand of the Papacy still lay heavy upon England. Ignorance and superstition reigned. Though parts of the Scripture had been translated into Anglo-Saxon, a few rare copies of which might be in existence among the rubbish of the monasteries; no Englishman had as yet possessed the Bible in his native tongue. Few even of the clergy were able to expound the prayers and forms of divine service, which were all in Latin; few were even able to read. Yet their power over the superstitious feats of the people was almost without limit. Under the dominion of ignorance and superstition, oppressed and plundered by a rapacious and debauched priesthood, subject to a government just emerging from the barbarous feudal system, with no knowledge of their rights, the people enjoyed not the least degree of freedom of conscience, and scarcely knew anything of the security of just and equal laws.

It was in the midst of this darkness that WICKLIFFE arose, the morning star of the Reformation.

Π.

WICKLIFFE AND HIS TIMES.

His early Life and Writings. Negotiation with Rome. His Principles : Contrast between these and modern Puseyism. Persecution of his followers for a succeeding century.

WICKLIFFE was a child, three years old, when Edward III. ascended the throne, A. D. 1327. He lived, therefore, a century and a half before Luther; and died A. D. 1384, or 108 years before the discovery of America by Columbus.

At an early age he entered the University at Oxford, where he earned the name of a hard student and a profound scholar. One of his bitterest enemies described him as "second to none in philosophy, and in scholastic discipline altogether incomparable." But most of all he was distinguished for his early and profound acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures; so that by the common consent of his cotemporary scholars he was styled "the Evangelical Doctor;" a rare distinction in those days; and one which, if conferred on a man of inferior genius and attainments, would have been a token of equivocal praise, or even of contempt. Who can doubt that it was the Bible that lighted up his genius, and that gave a distinctness and vigor to the productions of his pen, which rendered them the wonder of that age?

Drinking the waters of Christianity at their fountain, the Word of God, Wickliffe saw even while a student, the gross superstition and corruption of the prevailing religion. What he saw he dared to speak, and to write: nor did he hesitate to adapt his writings to the capacity of the common people;-setting forth the way of holiness, and pointing out the worldliness, the corruptions, and the errors of those, who by their office ought to be guides and ensamples to the people, in the way of life.

Next, he set himself to resist the imposition of the "Black Friar Mendicants;" who had spread themselves over the kingdom, absolving the sins of the vilest wretches for money,usurping the offices of the regular clergy,-drawing away the youth of the universities to their monasteries; and who thus, says an early historian," By their numerous arts and efforts of lying and begging, and confessing; by frightening the ignorant,

and flattering the rich, succeeded,-in twenty-four years from their establishment in England,-in piling up their mansions to a royal altitude."

These efforts secured for Wickliffe the admiration of the learned, and the gratitude of his country. He was raised to the wardership of Baliol College; and afterwards to that of Canterbury Hall. But, continuing to proclaim the Gospel by every possible exertion of his voice and his pen, he was soon hurled from this station by the mandate of the Archbishop. Yet he ceased not to preach the Gospel, and to inveigh against the prevailing superstitions and vices of the clergy.

His vigorous writings were the dawn of independence as well as of light to England. To these it was owing, that the public mind had become so far disabused with regard to the ghostly power of the Pope, that the king and parliament ventured to inquire how far the Pope might bind them, under penalty of perdition, to yield to his enormous exactions. Wickliffe was now summoned by name, to declare whether the king and nation might not refuse to pay the odious tribute extorted from the superstitious and imbecile King John. If the people could not be so far enlightened as not to fear the interdicts and excommunications of the Pope, the king and parliament could not venture to withhold the tribute, without certain ruin. Wickliffe obeyed the summons. His arguments and eloquence prevailed. The tribute was withheld.

If to the vigorous and politic Edward III. the praise is due of beginning to wrest the kingdom from the grasp of papal power; the laws by which this was effected owed their existence and efficiency not less to Wickliffe than to the king. Edward's sword and sceptre would have been impotent in this matter, without the pen of Wickliffe; nor is it probable that, without this, the project of such laws would ever have been conceived. THE BIBLE EVEN THEN, CHAINED AND IMPRISONED AS IT WAS, WAS ENGLAND'S BEST FRIEND: nor is it possible that the Pope should ever cease to consider it his deadliest foe.

Wickliffe was now raised to the chair of Theology in Oxford; where he shone equally the learned professor, and, to borrow a phrase of his own, the diligent teacher "of simple men and women" in the "way to heaven." From this station he was called into the public service of his country, and sent by the King on an embassy to procure from the Roman Court a redress of grievances. Bruges was the appointed place of meeting. A negotiation with the Commissioners of the Holy See opened the eyes of Wickliffe to a clearer perception of the deep iniquities and incurable corruptions of the whole scheme of popery. He returned a Reformer in earnest. He denied the