First of all, Edward III. was on the throne of England-perhaps the greatest prince that had ruled since the days of Alfred. Again, the people of England were flushed with the glory-such it was considered-of most brilliant achievements on the continent. Under the lead of that great warrior, the Prince of Wales-known in history as the "Black Prince,”—the small army of England had filled the realm with exultation by the wonderful victories of Crecy and Poictiers-victories whereby France, the "natural enemy," was humbled to the dust. In such a moment Englishmen were not in a mood to brook insult, or submit to gross exaction from any quarter; but Pope Urban was a Frenchman, and in reviving the claim to the tribute, no doubt was actuated by a spite against the victorious enemy of his countrymen, quite as much as by a regard to the rightful interests of the church. The victories of England, though splendid, had been costly, and the realm was too much impoverished to pay the tribute, had it been disposed to do so.

The absurd demand met with the fate which the reader has already anticipated. It was unanimously agreed by the parliament-even the prelates of the realm concurring -that no king of England had power to bind the realm to any such tribute as that now claimed by Urban V., and it was further unanimously agreed, that if the pope attempted to enforce the claim, his power should be contested by the arms of the kingdom! And here the matter ended, so far as the parliament is concerned. It was, however, the occasion, of advancing Wickliffe an important step in his career as a reformer.

The members of the mendicant order, as we have said, outstripped all classes in devotion to the interests of the pope; and in all the differences which sprung up. between the pope and the parliament, they were always to be found on the side of their papal head. It so happened that a leading friar, having zealously declared himself for pope Urban in the matter of the tribute, challenged Wickliffe to discuss with him the justness of the claim; which challenge was eagerly accepted. In the course of the discussion, the friar put forth, among others, the two following propositions: that the clergy were not amenable to the secular power-that whatever offences they might

commit against the civil authority, they should be tried only by ecclesiastical courts; and that the king had no right, in any way, to meddle with the property of the church-that he could not confiscate such property for any cause without sin. In explanation of the latter proposition, it may be said, that the temporalities of the church comprised a very large proportion of the property of the country; and that in the impoverished state of the finances, both king and lords had looked to these temporalities as a source of revenue for defraying the expenses of the government-if not indeed, in some instances, for less honorable ends.

The result of the controversy was, that Wickliffe was led by his principles of argumentation to deny both of these propositions-to assert that the clergy had no more right than any other class to exemption from secular jurisdiction; that the laws of the realm should be enforced alike upon all classes of subjects; and also to assert that the temporalities might, under certain circumstances, be taken from the church! It does not appear whether any statesman of the time had boldly said as much; it is certain that no ecclesiastic had, up to this time, gone so far. Probably without anticipating such an issue, Wickliffe-planting himself on principles and not on precedents-had entered upon a controversy which in the end led him to attack openly and boldly two pretensions which were deemed vital by the church. This was in the year 1366; Wickliffe having reached the age of forty-four years.

The year 1374 may be regarded as the date of another epoch in the protestant movement. In the former part of this article we had occasion to state, that there were various contrivances by which the pontiffs extorted money from the people of England. One of these was called the "first fruits;" and it consisted in a claim on the first years' income of every newly appointed church dignitary. This reservation of the benefices was felt to be an unjust extortion, and King Edward and his parliament complained of it as a grievance. A commission was appointed, of which Wickliffe was a member, to confer with the legates of the pope on this and kindred subjects. The parties met at Bruges; and after a wearisome conference of about two years, the English ambassadors pre

vailed upon the pope to relinquish the claim. But a more important result was the effect of the protracted controversy and incidental experiences, in the mind of the English reformer. The gross corruptions which met his eye during this visit on the continent, filled him with disgust; and he returned to England boldly denouncing the pope as "anti-Christ," and "the most cursed of clippers and purse-kervers."

From this time the cupidity of the pope and his hirelings kept alive the feeling of indignation in the soul of the reformer, and inspired his pen to words which must have had a strange sound in that superstitious age. "And, certes," to quote both his words and his orthography, "tho our reevme had an huge hill of gold, and never other man took thereof but only this proud worldly priest's collector; by process of time this hill must be spended; for he taketh ever money out of our lond, and sendeth nought agen but God's curse for his symony, and accursed anti-Christ's clerk to rob more the lond for wrongful privilege or else leave to do God's will, that men shulden do without his leave, and buying and selling."3

It almost uniformly happens that a bad cause is injured not less by the indiscretions of its friends than by the open attacks of its enemies. We have already seen that the policy of Urban V. in the matter of the tribute, led to the open defiance of his power on the part of the parliament; and that the rash zeal of the friars led Wickliffe to assail certain ecclesiastical encroachments on the civil authority. But as yet, this reformer had made no attack on either the dogmas or ritual of the church. He had simply stood up for the civil rights of his country against church cupidity and ecclesiastical interference. But in no particular had he assailed the church in matters of faith and ceremony. Whether he would have been led by the mere force of the principles he had adopted, to attempt a reform in these last named particulars, is only a matter of conjecture. As the matter stands upon the record of history, it was a fresh indiscretion of the church that brought Wickliffe out in the character of a complete protestant-in which character indeed he advanced prin

3 Neander's Church History. Vol. V. p.137.

ciples and measures of reform more radical and consistent than two centuries later found expression in the reformed English church.

As we have said, the writings of Wickliffe, intense and explicit as they were in the matter of ecclesiastical ag gression, as yet contained nothing essentially heretical. But the church dignitaries very naturally took alarm at the boldness of his attacks, and the favor which he received at the hands of the government and the people; for we must add, he was not alone in his work of reform-he was the leader of a large, enthusiastic, and rapidly grow ing party, comprising individuals from all ranks and orders in the community. He could be silenced, however, only on the score of heresy, and so the church-officials, easily finding what they had determined must be found, for warded to the pope nineteen allegations of heresy, based upon extracts from the writings of the reformer. Of course, an order was returned for his arrest and examina. tion before the bishops. We shall not here specify the causes which interrupted, deferred, and in the end greatly mitigated the proceedings of the ecclesiastical court. It answers our present purpose to say, that the protection of the government, and the favor of the London populace, together with his own shrewdness in evading the questions proposed to him, though without recanting his po sitions, (it must be said that Wickliffe did not care to obtain the honor of martyrdom)-that all these influences com. bined to shield him from severe censure.

The attempt to make a heretic of Wickliffe on false grounds, was however the spur which, quickening his hostility to the church, proved the occasion of his becoming one in reality. And from the date of the proceedings just named-which was about the year 1378-the reformer commenced a vigorous assault on the doctrinal tenets, the ceremonial practices, and the spiritual supremacy of the pope, in which the very life of the Romish church consisted.

It is impossible to state the exact chronological order of the reforms in doctrine attempted by Wickliffe. Perhaps, indeed, the movements of his mind on these points had no such order. The fact was, his confidence was shaken in the whole church establishment; in view of

which fact, the probable inference is, this his mind was relieved of most of its dogmas simultaneously. At any rate, we can attempt here nothing more than a statement of some of the prominent points of faith and practice, in which Wickliffe appears in his true character as the pioneer protestant.

In his day it was an immense step to take the position, that the common people should have direct access to the Scriptures as the source of truth and rule of faith. The Romish doctrine was and is, that the Scriptures were committed to the clergy to be doled out to the people according to their prescribed wants-very much the same as a patient receives nostrums at the hands of the phy. sician or apothecary. And for many centuries the whole community had been educated into the notion, that to give the people an unrestrained, unprescribed use of the Bible would be as full of danger to the soul, as the giving of them unprescribed medicines would be to the body. Accordingly, no small degree of alarm was created, and at the same time the character of Wickliffe as a genuine reformer indicated, when, having completed an English translation of the Old and New Testaments, he boldly pro. claimed the right and the duty of private judgment, insisting that men should go directly to the Bible and not merely approach it through the medium of the priests; and further, that they should bring all matters of truth and practice to this test, by no means excepting the claims, pretensions, dogmas, and practices of the church itself!

Another bold step of the reformer was his earnest protest against the multiplicity of ceremonies, particularly the worship of saints. He taught that according to the Scriptures there is properly but one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, whereas the church recognised many mediators in departed saints. Accordingly Wickliffe insisted that all saint's festivals should be abolished, excepting such as had special reference to Christ himself. He also denied the necessity of infant baptism as a saving ordinance, argued that the spiritual, which is the true baptism, can be secured to them without the instrumentality of water.

But perhaps the culminating heresy of Wickliffe was his denial of the real presence, or the doctrine of transub