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History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, Volume 5

by J. H. Merle d'Aubigné · English · Gutenberg #41484 · 1,177,931 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, Volume 5

Author: J. H. Merle d'Aubigné

Translator: H. White


        
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Collins's Select Library.

HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

The Reformation in England.

by

J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, D.D.,
President of the Theological School of Geneva, and Vice-President of the
Societe Evangelique.

Translated by H. White,
B.A. Trinity College Cambridge, M.A. and Ph. Dr. Heidelberg.

The Translation Carefully Revised by Dr. Merle d'Aubigne.

Printed by Arrangement with Messrs. Oliver and Boyd, from the
Author's Own English Edition.

VOL. V.







Glasgow:
William Collins, Publisher & Queen's Printer.
1862.




PREFACE TO VOLUME FIFTH.


In the four previous volumes the author has described the origin and
essential development of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century on
the Continent; he has now to relate the history of the Reformation in
England.

The notes will direct the reader to the principal sources whence the
author has derived his information. Most of them are well known;
others, however, had not been previously explored, among which are the
later volumes of the State Papers published by order of Government, by
a Commission of which the illustrious Sir Robert Peel was the first
president. Three successive Home Secretaries, Sir James Graham, Sir
George Grey, and the Honourable Mr. S. H. Walpole, have presented the
author with copies of the several volumes of this great and important
collection: in some instances they were communicated to him as soon as
printed, which was the case in particular with the seventh volume, of
which he has made much use. He takes this opportunity of expressing
his sincere gratitude to these noble friends of literature.

The History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century was received
with cordiality on the Continent; but it has had a far greater number
of readers in the British dominions and in the United States. The
author looks upon the relations which this work has established
between him and many distant Christians, as a precious reward for his
labours. Will the present volume be received in those countries as
favourably as the others? A foreigner relating to the Anglo-Saxon race
the history of their Reformation is at a certain disadvantage; and
although the author would rather have referred his readers to works,
whether of old or recent date, by native writers, all of them more
competent for the task than himself, he did not think it becoming him
to shrink from the undertaking.

At no period is it possible to omit the history of the Reformation in
England from a general history of the Reformation of the Sixteenth
Century; at the present crisis it is less possible than ever.

In the first place, the English Reformation has been, and still is,
calumniated by writers of different parties, who look upon it as
nothing more than an external political transformation, and who thus
ignore its spiritual nature. History has taught the author that it was
essentially a religious transformation, and that we must seek for it
in men of faith, and not, as is usually done, solely in the caprices
of the prince, the ambition of the nobility, and the servility of the
prelates. A faithful recital of this great renovation will perhaps
show us that beyond and without the measures of Henry VIII there was
something--everything, so to speak--for therein was the essence of the
Reformation, that which makes it a divine and imperishable work.

A second motive forced the author to acknowledge the necessity of a
true History of the English Reformation. An active party in the
Episcopalian Church is reviving with zeal, perseverance, and talent,
the principles of Roman-catholicism, and striving to impose them on
the Reformed Church of England, and incessantly attacking the
foundations of evangelical Christianity. A number of young men in the
universities, seduced by that deceitful _mirage_ which some of their
teachers have placed before their eyes, are launching out into
clerical and superstitious theories, and running the risk of falling,
sooner or later, as so many have done already, into the ever-yawning
gulf of Popery. We must therefore call to mind the reforming
principles which were proclaimed from the very commencement of this
great transformation.

The new position which the Romish court is taking in England, and its
insolent aggressions, are a third consideration which seems to
demonstrate to us the present importance of this history. It is good
to call to mind that the primitive Christianity of Great Britain
perseveringly repelled the invasion of the popedom, and that after the
definitive victory of this foreign power, the noblest voices among
kings, lords, priests, and people, boldly protested against it. It is
good to show that, while the word of God recovered its inalienable
rights in Britain in the sixteenth century, the popedom, agitated by
wholly political interests, broke of itself the chain with which it
had so long bound England.--We shall see in this volume the English
government fortifying itself, for instance under Edward III, against
the invasions of Rome. It has been pretended in our days, and by
others besides ultra-montanists, that the papacy is a purely spiritual
power, and ought to be opposed by spiritual arms only. If the first
part of this argument were true, no one would be readier than
ourselves to adopt the conclusion. God forbid that any protestant
state should ever refuse the completest liberty to the Roman-catholic
doctrines. We certainly wish for reciprocity; we desire that
ultra-montanism should no longer throw into prison the humble
believers who seek consolation for themselves, and for their friends,
in Holy Scripture. But though a deplorable fanaticism should still
continue to imitate in the nineteenth century the mournful tragedies
of the Middle Ages, we should persist in demanding the fullest
liberty, not only of conscience, but of worship, for Roman-catholics
in protestant states. We should ask it in the name of justice, whose
immutable laws the injustice of our adversaries can never make us
forget; we should ask it on behalf of the final triumph of truth; for
if our demands proved unavailing, perhaps with God's help it might be
otherwise with our example. When two worlds meet face to face, in one
of which light abounds, and in the other darkness, it is the darkness
that should disappear before the light, and not the light fly from
before the darkness. We might go even farther than this: far from
constraining the English catholics in anything, we would rather desire
to help them to be freer than they are, and to aid them in recovering
the rights of which the Roman bishops robbed them in times posterior
to the establishment of the papacy; for instance, the election of
bishops and pastors, which belongs to the clergy and the people.
Indeed, Cyprian, writing to a bishop of Rome (Cornelius), demanded
three elements to secure the legitimacy of episcopal election: "The
call of God, the voice of the people, and the consent of the
co-bishops."[1] And the council of Rome, in 1080, said: "Let the
clergy and the _people_, with the consent of the apostolic see or of
their _metropolitan_, elect their bishop."[2] In our days,--days
distinguished by great liberty,--shall the church be less free than it
was in the Middle Ages?

  [1] Divinum judicium, populi suffragium, co-episcoporum consensus.
  Epist. 55.

  [2] Clerus et populus, apostolicæ sedis, vel metropolitani sui
  consensu, pastorem sibi eligat. Mansi, xx, p. 533.

But if we do not fear to claim for Roman-catholics the rights of the
church of the first ages, and a greater liberty than what they now
possess, even in the very seat of the popedom, are we therefore to
say that the state, whether under Edward III or in later times, should
oppose no barrier against Romish aggressions? If it is the very life
and soul of popery to pass beyond the boundaries of religion, and
enter into the domain of policy, why should it be thought strange for
the state to defend itself, when attacked upon its own ground? Can the
state have no need of precautions against a power which has pretended
to be paramount over England, which gave its crown to a French
monarch, which obtained an oath of vassalage from an English king, and
which lays down as its first dogma its infallibility and immutability?

And it was not only under Edward III and throughout the Middle Ages
that Rome encroached on royalty; it has happened in modern times also.
M. Mignet has recently brought to light some remarkable facts. On the
28th of June 1570, a letter from Saint Pius V was presented to the
catholic king Philip II by an agent just arrived from Rome. "Our dear
son, Robert Ridolfi," says the writer, "will explain (God willing) to
your majesty certain matters which concern not a little the honour of
Almighty God.... We conjure your majesty to take into your serious
consideration the matter which he will lay before you, and to furnish
him with all the means your majesty may judge most proper for its
execution." The pope's "dear son," accordingly, explained to the duke
of Feria, who was commissioned by Philip to receive his communication,
"that it was proposed to kill Queen Elizabeth; that the attempt would
not be made in London, because it was the seat of heresy, but during
one of her journeys; and that a certain James G---- would undertake
it." The same day the council met and deliberated on Elizabeth's
assassination. Philip declared his willingness to undertake the foul
deed recommended by his holiness; but as it would be an expensive
business, his minister hinted to the nuncio that the pope ought to
furnish the money. This horrible but instructive recital will be found
with all its details in the _Histoire de Marie Stuart_, by M. Mignet,
vol. ii, p. 159, etc. It is true that these things took place in the
sixteenth century; but the Romish church has canonized the priestly
murderer,--an honour conferred on a very small number of popes,--and
the canonization took place in the eighteenth century.[3] This is no
very distant date.

  [3] Acta canonisationis S. Pil. V. Romæ, 1720, folio.

And these theories, so calculated to trouble nations, are still to be
met with in the nineteenth century. At this very moment there are
writers asserting principles under cover of which the pope may
interfere in affairs of state. The kings of Europe, terrified by the
deplorable outbreaks of 1848, appear almost everywhere ready to
support the court of Rome by arms; and ultra-montanism is taking
advantage of this to proclaim once more, "that the popedom is above
the monarchy; that it is the duty of the inferior (the king) to obey
the superior; that it is the duty of the superior (the pope) to depose
the sovereigns who abuse their power, and to condemn the subjects who
resist it; and, finally, that this public law of Christian Europe,
abolished by the ambition of sovereigns or the insubordination of
peoples, should be revived." Such are the theories now professed not
only by priests but by influential laymen.[4] To this opinion belong,
at the present hour, all the zeal and enthusiasm of Romanism, and this
alone we are bound to acknowledge is consistent with the principles of
popery. And accordingly it is to be feared that this party will
triumph, unless we oppose it with the united forces of the human
understanding, of religious and political liberty, and above all of
the word of God. The most distinguished organ of public opinion in
France, alarmed by the progress of these ultramontane doctrines, said
not long ago of this party: "In its eyes there exists but one real
authority in the world, that of the pope. All questions, not only
religious but moral and political, are amenable to one tribunal,
supreme and infallible, the pope's. The pope has the right to absolve
subjects of their oath of fidelity; subjects have the right to take up
arms against their prince when he rebels against the decisions of the
holy see. This is the social and political theory of the Middle
Ages."[5]

  [4] See in particular _Le Catholicisme_, _le Liberalisme_, _et le
  Socialisme_, and other writings of Donoso Cortes, marquis of
  Valdegamas, one of the most distinguished members of the
  constitutional party in Spain.

  [5] Journal des Debats, 18th January 1853.

Since the popedom asserts claims both spiritual and temporal, the
church and the state ought to resist it, each in his own sphere, and
with its peculiar arms: the church (by which I mean the believers),
solely with Holy Scripture; the state with such institutions as are
calculated to secure its independence. What! the church is bound to
defend what belongs to the church, and the state is not to defend what
belongs to the state? If a band of robbers should endeavour to plunder
two houses, would it be just and charitable for one neighbour to say
to the other, "I must defend my house, but you must let yours be
stripped?" If the pope desires to have the immaculate conception of
the Virgin, or any other religious doctrine, preached, let the fullest
liberty be granted him, and let him build as many churches as he
pleases for that purpose: we claim this in the plainest language. But
if the pope, like Saint Pius, desires to kill the queen of England, or
at least (for no pope in our days, were he even Saint enough to be
canonized, would conceive such an idea), if the pope desires to
infringe in any way on the rights of the state, then let the state
resist him with tried wisdom and unshaken firmness. Let us beware of
an ultra-spiritualism which forgets the lessons of history, and
overlooks the rights of kings and peoples. When it is found among
theologians, it is an error; in statesmen, it is a danger.

Finally, and this consideration revives our hopes, there is a fourth
motive which gives at this time a particular importance to the history
we are about to relate. The Reformation is now entering upon a new
phasis. The movement of the sixteenth century had died away during the
seventeenth and eighteenth, and it was often to churches which had
lost every spark of life that the historian had then to recount the
narrative of this great revival. This is the case no longer. After
three centuries, a new and a greater movement is succeeding that which
we describe in these volumes. The principles of the religious
regeneration, which God accomplished three hundred years ago, are now
carried to the end of the world with the greatest energy. The task of
the sixteenth century lives again in the nineteenth, but more
emancipated from the temporal power, more spiritual, more general; and
it is the Anglo-Saxon race that God chiefly employs for the
accomplishment of this universal work. The English Reformation
acquires therefore, in our days, a special importance. If the
Reformation of Germany was the foundation of the building, that of
England was its crowning stone.

The work begun in the age of the apostles, and renewed in the times of
the reformers, should be resumed in our days with a holy enthusiasm;
and the work is very simple and very beautiful, for it consists in
establishing the throne of Jesus Christ in the church and on earth.

Evangelical faith does not place on the throne of the church either
human reason or religious conscientiousness, as some would have it;
but it sets thereon Jesus Christ, who is both the knowledge taught and
the doctor who teaches it; who explains his word by the word, and by
the light of his Holy Spirit; who by it bears witness to the truth,
that is to say, to his redemption, and teaches the essential laws
which should regulate the inner life of his disciples. Evangelical
faith appeals to the understanding, to the heart, and to the will of
every Christian, only to impose on them the duty to submit to the
divine authority of Christ, to listen, believe, love, comprehend, and
act, as God requires.

Evangelical faith does not place on the throne of the church the civil
power, or the secular magistrate; but it sets thereon Jesus Christ,
who has said, _I am King_; who imparts to his subjects the principle
of life; who establishes his kingdom here on earth, and preserves and
develops it; and who, directing all mortal events, is now making the
progressive conquest of the world, until he shall exercise in person
his divine authority in the kingdom of his glory.

Finally, evangelical faith does not place on the throne of the church
priests, councils, doctors, or their traditions,--or that vice-God
(_veri Dei vicem gerit in terris_, as the Romish gloss has it), that
_infallible_ pontiff, who, reviving the errors of the pagans, ascribes
salvation to the forms of worship and to the meritorious works of men.
It sets thereon Jesus Christ, the great high-priest of his people, the
God-man, who, by an act of his free love, bore in our stead, in his
atoning sacrifice, the penalty of sin;--who has taken away the curse
from our heads, and thus become the creator of a new race.

Such is the essential work of that Christianity which the apostolic
age transmitted to the reformers, and which it now transmits to the
Christians of the nineteenth century.

While the thoughts of great numbers are led astray in the midst of
ceremonies, priests, human lucubrations, pontifical fables, and
philosophic reveries, and are driven to and fro in the dust of this
world, evangelical faith rises even to heaven, and falls prostrate
before Him who sitteth on the throne.

The Reformation is Jesus Christ.

"Lord, to whom shall we go, if not unto thee?" Let others follow the
devices of their imaginations, or prostrate themselves before
traditional superstitions, or kiss the feet of a sinful man.... O,
King of glory, we desire but Thee alone!

  EAUX-VIVES, GENEVA, _March 1853_.




CONTENTS.


  BOOK XVII.

  ENGLAND BEFORE THE REFORMATION.


  CHAPTER I.

  Introduction--Work of the Sixteenth Century--Unity and Diversity--
  Necessity of considering the entire Religious History of England--
  Establishment of Christianity in Great Britain--Formation of
  Ecclesiastical Catholicism in the Roman Empire--Spiritual Christianity
  received by Britain--Slavery and Conversion of Succat--His mission to
  Ireland--Anglo-Saxons re-establish Paganism in England--Columba at
  Iona--Evangelical Teaching--Presbytery and Episcopacy in Great
  Britain--Continental Missions of the Britons--An Omission,       page 21


  CHAPTER II.

  Pope Gregory the Great--Desires to reduce Britain--Policy of Gregory
  and Augustine--Arrival of the Mission--Appreciation--Britain superior
  to Rome--Dionoth at Bangor--First and Second Romish Aggressions--Anguish
  of the Britons--Pride of Rome--Rome has recourse to the
  Sword--Massacre--Saint Peter scourges an Archbishop--Oswald--His
  Victory--Corman--Mission of Oswald and Aidan--Death of Oswald,   page 33


  CHAPTER III.

  Character of Oswy--Death of Aidan--Wilfrid at Rome--At Oswald's
  Court--Finan and Colman--Independence of the Church attacked--Oswy's
  Conquests and Troubles--_Synodus Pharensis_--Cedda--Degeneration--The
  Disputation--Peter, the Gatekeeper--Triumph of Rome--Grief of the
  Britons--Popedom organized in England--Papal Exultation--Archbishop
  Theodore--Cedda re-ordained--Discord in the Church--Disgrace and
  Treachery of Wilfrid--His end--Scotland attacked--Adamnan--Iona
  resists--A King converted by Architects--The Monk Egbert at
  Iona--His History--Monkish Visions--Fall of Iona,                page 43


  CHAPTER IV.

  Clement--Struggle between a Scotchman and an Englishman--Word
  of God only--Clement's Success--His condemnation--Virgil and the
  Antipodes--John Scotus and Philosophical Religion--Alfred and
  the Bible--Darkness and Popery--William the Conqueror--Wulston
  at Edward's Tomb--Struggle between William and Hildebrand--The
  Pope yields--Cæsaropapia,                                        page 58


  CHAPTER V.

  Anselm's Firmness--Becket's Austerity--The king scourged--John becomes
  the Pope's Vassal--Collision between Popery and Liberty--The
  Vassal King ravages his kingdom--Religion of the Senses and
  Superstition,                                                    page 66


  CHAPTER VI.

  Reaction--Grostete--Principles of Reform--Contest with the Pope--
  Sewal--Progress of the Nation--Opposition to the Papacy--Conversion
  of Bradwardine--Grace is Supreme--Edward III--Statutes of
  _Provisors_ and _Præmunire_,                                     page 72


  CHAPTER VII.

  The Mendicant Friars--Their Disorders and Popular Indignation--
  Wickliffe--His Success--Speeches of the Peers against the Papal
  Tribute--Agreement of Bruges--Courtenay and Lancaster--Wickliffe
  before the Convocation--Altercation between Lancaster and
  Courtenay--Riot--Three Briefs against Wickliffe--Wickliffe at
  Lambeth--Mission of the _Poor Priests_--Their Preachings and
  Persecutions--Wickliffe and the Four Regents,                    page 77


  CHAPTER VIII.

  The Bible--Wickliffe's Translation--Effects of its Publication--
  Opposition of the Clergy--Wickliffe's Fourth
  Phasis--Transubstantiation--Excommunication--Wickliffe's Firmness--
  Wat Tyler--The Synod--The condemned Propositions--Wickliffe's
  Petition--Wickliffe before the Primate at Oxford--Wickliffe summoned
  to Rome--His answer--The Trialogue--His Death--And Character--His
  Teaching--His Ecclesiastical Views--A Prophecy,                  page 86


  CHAPTER IX.

  The Wickliffites--Call for Reform--Richard II--The first Martyr--
  Lord Cobham--Appears before Henry V--Before the Archbishop--His
  Confession and Death--The Lollards,                              page 97


  CHAPTER X.

  Learning at Florence--The Tudors--Erasmus visits England--Sir
  Thomas More--Dean Colet--Erasmus and young Henry--Prince
  Arthur and Catherine--Marriage and Death--Catherine betrothed
  to Henry--Accession of Henry VIII--Enthusiasm of the Learned--
  Erasmus recalled to England--Cromwell before the Pope--Catherine
  proposed to Henry--Their Marriage and Court--Tournaments--Henry's
  Danger,                                                         page 106


  CHAPTER XI.

  The Pope excites to War--Colet's Sermon at St. Paul's--The Flemish
  Campaign--Marriage of Louis XII and Princess Mary--Letter from
  Anne Boleyn--Marriage of Brandon and Mary--Oxford--Sir Thomas
  More at Court--Attack upon the Monasteries--Colet's Household--He
  preaches Reform--The Greeks and Trojans,                        page 114


  CHAPTER XII.

  Wolsey--His first Commission--His complaisance and Dioceses--Cardinal,
  Chancellor, and Legate--Ostentation and Necromancy--His Spies and
  Enmity--Pretensions of the clergy,                              page 122


  CHAPTER XIII.

  The Wolves--Richard Hun--A Murder--Verdict of the Jury--Hun
  condemned, and his Character vindicated--The Gravesend Passage-boat--
  A festival disturbed--Brown tortured--Visit from his Wife--A
  Martyr--Character of Erasmus--1516 and 1517--Erasmus goes to
  Basle,                                                          page 126


  BOOK XVIII.

  THE REVIVAL OF THE CHURCH.


  CHAPTER I.

  Four reforming Powers--Which reformed England?--Papal Reform?--
  Episcopal Reform?--Royal Reform?--What is required in a legitimate
  Reform--The Share of the Kingly Power--Share of the Episcopal
  Authority--High and Low Church--Political Events--The Greek and
  Latin New Testament--Thoughts of Erasmus--Enthusiasm and anger--
  Desire of Erasmus--Clamours of the Priests--Their Attack at Court--
  Astonishment of Erasmus--His Labours for this Work--Edward
  Lee; his Character--Lee's _Tragedy_--Conspiracy,                page 134


  CHAPTER II.

  Effects of the New Testament in the Universities--Conversations--A
  Cambridge Fellow--Bilney buys the New Testament--The first Passage--
  His Conversion--Protestantism, the Fruit of the Gospel--The
  Vale of the Severn--William Tyndale--Evangelization at Oxford--
  Bilney teaches at Cambridge--Fryth--Is Conversion Possible?--True
  Consecration--The Reformation has begun,                        page 144


  CHAPTER III.

  Alarm of the Clergy--The Two Days--Thomas Man's Preaching--True
  real Presence--Persecutions at Coventry--Standish preaches at St.
  Paul's--His Petition to the King and Queen--His Arguments and
  Defeat--Wolsey's Ambition--First Overtures--Henry and Francis
  Candidates for the Empire--Conference between Francis I and Sir
  T. Boleyn--The Tiara promised to Wolsey--The cardinal's Intrigues
  with Charles and Francis,                                       page 151


  CHAPTER IV.

  Tyndale--Sodbury Hall--Sir John and Lady Walsh--Table-Talk--The
  Holy Scriptures--The Images--The Anchor of Faith--A Roman
  Camp--Preaching of Faith and Works--Tyndale accused by the
  Priests--They tear up what he has planted--Tyndale resolves to
  translate the Bible--His first triumph--The Priests in the
  taverns--Tyndale summoned before the Chancellor of Worcester--
  Consoled by an aged Doctor--Attacked by a schoolman--His Secret
  becomes known--He leaves Sodbury Hall,                          page 158


  CHAPTER V.

  Luther's Works in England--Consultation of the Bishops--The Bull of
  Leo X published in England--Luther's books burnt--Letter of
  Henry VIII--He undertakes to write against Luther--Cry of Alarm--
  Tradition and Sacramentalism--Prudence of Sir T. More--The
  Book presented to the Pope--_Defender of the Faith_--Exultation of
  the king,                                                       page 166


  CHAPTER VI.

  Wolsey's Machinations to obtain the Tiara--He gains Charles V--Alliance
  between Henry and Charles--Wolsey offers to command the Troops--Treaty
  of Bruges--Henry believes himself King of France--Victories
  of Francis I--Death of Leo X,                                   page 173


  CHAPTER VII.

  The Just Men of Lincolnshire--Their Assemblies and Teaching--Agnes
  and Morden--Itinerant Libraries--Polemical Conversations--Sarcasm--
  Royal Decree and Terror--Depositions and Condemnations--Four
  Martyrs--A Conclave--Charles consoles Wolsey,                   page 177


  CHAPTER VIII.

  Character of Tyndale--He arrives in London--He preaches--The Cloth
  and the Ell--The bishop of London gives Audience to Tyndale--He
  is dismissed--A Christian Merchant of London--Spirit of Love in
  the Reformation--Tyndale in Monmouth's House--Fryth helps him
  to translate the New Testament--Importunities of the Bishop of
  Lincoln--Persecution in London--Tyndale's Resolution--He
  departs--His Indignation against the Prelates--His Hopes,       page 182


  CHAPTER IX.

  Bilney at Cambridge--Conversions--The University Cross-Bearer--A
  Leicestershire Farmer--A Party of Students--Superstitious
  Practices--An obstinate Papist--The Sophists--Latimer attacks
  Stafford--Bilney's Resolution--Latimer hears Bilney's Confession--
  Confessor converted--New Life in Latimer--Bilney preaches
  Grace--Nature of the Ministry--Latimer's Character and Teaching--
  Works of Charity--Three Classes of Adversaries--Clark and
  Dalaber,                                                        page 190


  CHAPTER X.

  Wolsey seeks the Tiara--Clement VII is elected--Wolsey's dissimulation--
  Charles offers France to Henry--Pace's Mission on this Subject--Wolsey
  reforms the Convents--His secret Alliances--Treaty between France
  and England--Taxation and Insurrection--False Charges against the
  Reformers--Latimer's Defence--Tenterden Steeple,                page 201


  CHAPTER XI.

  Tyndale at Hamburg--First two Gospels--Embarrassment--Tyndale
  at Wittemberg--At Cologne--The New Testament at Press--Sudden
  Interruption--Cochlæus at Cologne--Rupert's Manuscripts--Discovery
  of Cochlæus--His Inquiries--His alarm--Rincke and the
  Senate's Prohibition--Consternation and Decision of Tyndale--Cochlæus
  writes to England--Tyndale ascends the Rhine--Prints
  two Editions at Worms--Tyndale's Prayer,                        page 207


  CHAPTER XII.

  Worms and Cambridge--St. Paul resuscitated--Latimer's Preaching--
  Never Man spake like this Man--Joy and Vexation at Cambridge--
  Sermon by Prior Buckingham--Irony--Latimer's Reply to Buckingham--
  The Students threatened--Latimer preaches before the Bishop--He
  is forbidden to preach--The most zealous of Bishops--Barnes
  the Restorer of Letters--Bilney undertakes to convert him--Barnes
  offers his pulpit to Latimer--Fryth's Thirst for God--Christmas
  Eve, 1525--Storm against Barnes--Ferment in the Colleges--Germany
  at Cambridge--Meetings at Oxford--General Expectation,          page 215


  BOOK XIX.

  THE ENGLISH NEW TESTAMENT AND THE COURT OF ROME.


  CHAPTER I.

  Church and State essentially distinct--Their fundamental Principles--
  What restores Life to the Church--Separation from Rome necessary--
  Reform and Liberty--The New Testament crosses the sea--Is
  hidden in London--Garret's Preaching and Zeal--Dissemination of
  Scripture--What the People find in it--The Effects it produces--
  Tyndale's Explanations--Roper, More's son-in-law--Garret carries
  Tyndale's Testament to Oxford--Henry and his Valet--The
  Supplication of the Beggars--Two Sorts of Beggars--Evils caused
  by Priests--More's Supplications of the Souls in Purgatory,     page 228


  CHAPTER II.

  The two Authorities--Commencement of the Search--Garret at Oxford--
  His Flight--His return and Imprisonment--Escapes and takes Refuge
  with Dalaber--Garret and Dalaber at Prayer--The _Magnificat_--
  Surprise among the Doctors--Clark's Advice--Fraternal Love at
  Oxford--Alarm of Dalaber--His Arrest and Examination--He is
  tortured--Garret and twenty Fellows imprisoned--The Cellar--
  Condemnation and Humiliation,                                   page 238


  CHAPTER III.

  Persecution at Cambridge--Barnes arrested--A grand Search--Barnes
  at Wolsey's Palace--Interrogated by the Cardinal--Conversation
  between Wolsey and Barnes--Barnes threatened with the Stake--His
  Fall and public Penance--Richard Bayfield--His Faith and
  Imprisonment--Visits Cambridge--Joins Tyndale--The Confessors
  in the Cellar at Oxford--Four of them die--The rest liberated,  page 246


  CHAPTER IV.

  Luther's Letter to the King--Henry's Anger--His Reply--Luther's
  Resolution--Persecutions--Barnes escapes--Proclamations against
  the New Testament--W. Roy to Caiaphas--Third Edition of the New
  Testament--The Triumph of Law and Liberty--Hacket attacks the
  Printer--Hacket's Complaints--A seizure--The Year 1526 in
  England,                                                        page 255


  CHAPTER V.

  Wolsey desires to be revenged--The Divorce suggested--Henry's
  Sentiments towards the Queen--Wolsey's first Steps--Longland's
  Proceedings--Refusal of Margaret of Valois--Objection of the
  Bishop of Tarbes--Henry's uneasiness--Catherine's Alarm--Mission
  to Spain,                                                       page 261


  CHAPTER VI.

  Anne Boleyn appointed Maid of Honour to Catherine--Lord Percy
  becomes attached to her--Wolsey separates them--Anne Enters
  Margaret's Household--Siege of Rome; Cromwell--Wolsey's
  Intercession for the Popedom--He demands the Hand of Renée of
  France for Henry--Failure--Anne re-appears at Court--Repels the
  king's Advances--Henry's Letter--He resolves to accelerate the
  Divorce--Two Motives which induce Anne to refuse the Crown--
  Wolsey's Opposition,                                            page 267


  CHAPTER VII.

  Bilney's Preaching--His arrest--Arthur's Preaching and Imprisonment--
  Bilney's Examination--Contest between the Judge and the Prisoner--
  Bilney's weakness and Fall--His Terrors--Two Wants--Arrival
  of the Fourth Edition of the New Testament--Joy among the
  Believers,                                                      page 275


  CHAPTER VIII.

  The Papacy intercepts the Gospel--The King consults Sir Thomas
  More--Ecclesiastical Conferences about the divorce--The Universities--
  Clark--The Nun of Kent--Wolsey decides to do the king's
  Will--Mission to the Pope--Four Documents--Embarrassment of
  Charles V--Francis Philip at Madrid--Distress and Resolution of
  Charles--He turns away from the Reformation--Conference at the
  Castle of St. Angelo--Knight arrives in Italy--His Flight--Treaty
  between the Pope and the Emperor--Escape of the Pope--Confusion
  of Henry VIII--Wolsey's orders--His Entreaties,                 page 281

  CHAPTER IX.

  The English Envoys at Orvieto--Their oration to the Pope--Clement
  gains Time--The Envoys and Cardinal Sanctorum Quatuor--Stratagem
  of the Pope--Knight discovers it and returns--The Transformations
  of Antichrist--The English obtain a new Document--Fresh
  Stratagem--Demand of a second Cardinal-legate--The Pope's
  new Expedient--End of the Campaign,                             page 289

  CHAPTER X.

  Disappointment in England--War declared against Charles V--Wolsey
  desires to get him deposed by the Pope--A new Scheme--Embassy
  of Fox and Gardiner--Their Arrival at Orvieto--Their
  first interview with Clement--The Pope reads a treatise by Henry--
  Gardiner's Threats and Clement's Promise--The Modern Fabius--Fresh
  Interview and Menaces--The pope has not _the key_--Gardiner's
  Proposition--Difficulties and delays of the Cardinals--Gardiner's
  last Blows--Reverses of Charles V in Italy--The Pope's
  Terror and Concession--The _Commission_ granted--Wolsey demands
  the _Engagement_--A Loophole--The Pope's Distress,              page 297

  CHAPTER XI.

  Fox's Report to Henry and Anne--Wolsey's Impression--He demands
  the Decretal--One of the Cardinal's petty Manœuvres--He sets
  his Conscience at Rest--Gardiner fails at Rome--Wolsey's new
  perfidy--The King's Anger against the Pope--Sir T. More predicts
  Religious Liberty--Immorality of Ultramontane Socialism--Erasmus
  invited--Wolsey's last Flight--Energetic Efforts at Rome--Clement
  grants all--Wolsey triumphs--Union of Rome and
  England,                                                        page 307


  BOOK XX.

  THE TWO DIVORCES.


  CHAPTER I.

  Progress of the Reformation--The two Divorces--Entreaties to Anne
  Boleyn--The Letters in the Vatican--Henry to Anne--Henry's
  Second Letter--Third--Fourth--Wolsey's Alarm--His fruitless
  Proceedings--He turns--The Sweating Sickness--Henry's Fears--New
  Letters to Anne--Anne falls sick; her Peace--Henry writes to her--
  Wolsey's Terror--Campeggio does not arrive--All dissemble at
  Court,                                                          page 316


  CHAPTER II.

  Coverdale and Inspiration--He undertakes to translate the Scriptures--
  His Joy and Spiritual Songs--Tyball and the Laymen--Coverdale
  preaches at Bumpstead--Revival at Colchester--Incomplete
  Societies and the New Testament--Persecution--Monmouth arrested
  and released,                                                   page 327


  CHAPTER III.

  Political Changes--Fresh Instructions from the Pope to Campeggio--
  His Delays--He unbosoms himself to Francis--A Prediction--Arrival
  of Campeggio--Wolsey's Uneasiness--Henry's Satisfaction--The
  Cardinal's Project--Campeggio's Reception--First Interview with
  the Queen and with the King--Useless Efforts to make Campeggio part
  with the Decretal--The Nuncio's Conscience--Public Opinion--Measures
  taken by the King--His Speech to the Lords and Aldermen--
  Festivities--Wolsey seeks French Support--Contrariety,          page 334


  CHAPTER IV.

  True Catholicity--Wolsey--Harman's Matter--West sent to Cologne--Labours
  of Tyndale and Fryth--Rincke at Frankfort--He makes a Discovery--
  Tyndale at Marburg--West returns to England--His Tortures in the
  Monastery,                                                      page 347


  CHAPTER V.

  Necessity of the Reformation--Wolsey's Earnestness with Da Casale--An
  Audience with Clement VII--Cruel Position of the Pope--A
  Judas' Kiss--A new Brief--Bryan and Vannes sent to Rome--Henry
  and Du Bellay--Wolsey's Reasons against the Brief--Excitement in
  London--Metamorphosis--Wolsey's Decline--His Anguish,           page 353


  CHAPTER VI.

  The Pope's Illness--Wolsey's Desire--Conference about the Members
  of the Conclave--Wolsey's Instructions--The Pope recovers--Speech
  of the English Envoys to the Pope--Clement willing to abandon
  England--The English demand the Pope's Denial of the Brief--Wolsey's--
  Alarm--Intrigues--Bryan's Clearsightedness--Henry's
  Threats--Wolsey's new Efforts--He calls for an Appeal to Rome,
  and retracts--Wolsey and Du Bellay at Richmond--The Ship of the
  State,                                                          page 359


  CHAPTER VII.

  Discussion Between the Evangelicals and the Catholics--Union of
  Learning and Life--The Laity--Tewkesbury--His Appearance before
  the Bishop's Court--He is tortured--Two Classes of Opponents--A
  Theological Duel--Scripture and the Church--Emancipation of the
  Mind--Mission to the Low Countries--Tyndale's Embarrassment--Tonstall
  wishes to buy the Books--Packington's Stratagem--Tyndale
  departs for Antwerp--His Shipwreck--Arrival at Hamburg--Meets
  Coverdale,                                                      page 366


  CHAPTER VIII.

  The Royal Session--Sitting of the 18th June; the Queen's Protest--Sitting
  of the 21st June--Summons to the King and Queen--Catherine's
  Speech--She retires--Impression on the Audience--The King's
  Declaration--Wolsey's Protest--Quarrel between the Bishops--New
  Sitting--Apparition to the Maid of Kent--Wolsey chafed by
  Henry--The Earl of Wiltshire at Wolsey's--Private Conference between
  Catherine and the two Legates,                                  page 375


  CHAPTER IX.

  The Trial resumed--Catherine summoned--Twelve Articles--The
  Witnesses' Evidence--Arthur and Catherine really married--Campeggio
  opposes the Argument of Divine Right--Other Arguments--The
  Legates required to deliver Judgment--Their Tergiversations--Change
  in Men's Minds--Final Session--General Expectation--Adjournment
  during Harvest--Campeggio excuses this Impertinence--The
  King's Indignation--Suffolk's Violence--Wolsey's Reply--He
  is ruined--General Accusations--The Cardinal turns to an
  Episcopal Life,                                                 page 384


  CHAPTER X.

  Anne Boleyn at Hever--She Reads the Obedience of a Christian Man--Is
  recalled to Court--Miss Gainsford and George Zouch--Tyndale's
  Book converts Zouch--Zouch in the Chapel-Royal--The Book seized--Anne
  applies to Henry--The King reads the Book--Pretended Influence of the
  Book on Henry--The Court at Woodstock--The Park and its Goblins--
  Henry's Esteem for Anne,                                        page 390


  CHAPTER XI.

  Embarrassment of the pope--The Triumphs of Charles decide him--He
  traverses the Cause to Rome--Wolsey's Dejection--Henry's
  Wrath--His Fears--Wolsey obtains Comfort--Arrival of the two
  Legates at Grafton--Wolsey's reception by Henry--Wolsey and
  Norfolk at Dinner--Henry with Anne--Conference between the
  King and the Cardinal--Wolsey's Joy and Grief--The Supper at
  Euston--Campeggio's Farewell Audience--Wolsey's Disgrace--Campeggio
  at Dover--He is accused by the courtiers--Leaves
  England--Wolsey foresees his own Fall and that of the
  Papacy,                                                         page 397


  CHAPTER XII.

  A Meeting at Waltham--Youth of Thomas Cranmer--His early Education--
  Studies Scripture for Three Years--His functions as Examiner--The
  Supper at Waltham--New View of the Divorce--Fox communicates it to
  Henry--Cranmer's Vexation--Conference with the King--Cranmer at the
  Boleyns,                                                        page 407

  CHAPTER XIII.

  Wolsey in the Court of Chancery--Accused by the Dukes--Refuses to
  give up the Great Seal--His Despair--He gives up the Seal--Order
  to depart--His Inventory--Alarm--The Scene of Departure--Favourable
  Message from the King--Wolsey's Joy--His Fool--Arrival
  at Esher,                                                       page 412

  CHAPTER XIV.

  Thomas More elected Chancellor--A lay Government one of the great
  Facts of the Reformation--Wolsey accused of subordinating England
  to the Pope--He implores the King's Clemency--His Condemnation--Cromwell
  at Esher--His Character--He sets out for London--Sir Christopher
  Hales recommends him to the King--Cromwell's Interview with Henry
  in the Park--A new Theory--Cromwell elected Member of Parliament--
  Opened by Sir Thomas More--Attack on ecclesiastical Abuses--Reforms
  pronounced by the Convocation--Three Bills--Rochester attacks
  them--Resistance of the House of Commons--Struggles--Henry
  sanctions the three Bills--Alarm of the Clergy and Disturbances,
                                                                  page 418

  CHAPTER XV.

  The last hour--More's Fanaticism--Debates in Convocation--Royal
  Proclamation--The Bishop of Norwich--Sentences condemned--Latimer's
  Opposition--The New Testament burnt--The Persecution begins--Hitton--
  Bayfield--Tonstall and Packington--Bayfield arrested--The
  Rector Patmore--Lollards' Tower--Tyndale and Patmore--a
  Musician--Freese the Painter--Placards and Martyrdom
  of Bennet--Thomas More and John Petit--Bilney,                  page 426

  CHAPTER XVI.

  Wolsey's Terror--Impeachment by the Peers--Cromwell saves him--The
  Cardinal's Illness--Ambition returns to him--His Practices in
  Yorkshire--He is arrested by Northumberland--His departure--Arrival
  of the Constable of the Tower--Wolsey at Leicester Abbey--Persecuting
  Language--He dies--Three Movements: Supremacy,
  Scripture, and Faith,                                           page 438




HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.




BOOK XVII.

ENGLAND BEFORE THE REFORMATION.




CHAPTER I.

     Introduction--Work of the Sixteenth Century--Unity and
     Diversity--Necessity of considering the entire Religious
     History of England--Establishment of Christianity in Great
     Britain--Formation of Ecclesiastical Catholicism in the
     Roman Empire--Spiritual Christianity received by
     Britain--Slavery and Conversion of Succat--His Mission to
     Ireland--Anglo-Saxons re-establish Paganism in
     England--Columba at Iona--Evangelical Teaching--Presbytery
     and Episcopacy in Great Britain--Continental Missions of the
     Britons--An Omission.


Those heavenly powers which had lain dormant in the Church since the
first ages of Christianity, awoke from their slumber in the sixteenth
century, and this awakening called the modern times into existence.
The Church was created anew, and from that regeneration have flowed
the great developments of literature and science, of morality,
liberty, and industry, which at present characterize the nations of
Christendom. None of these things would have existed without the
Reformation. Whenever society enters upon a new era, it requires the
baptism of faith. In the sixteenth century God gave to man this
consecration from on high by leading him back from mere outward
profession and the mechanism of works to an inward and lively faith.

[Sidenote: UNITY AND DIVERSITY.]

This transformation was not effected without struggles--struggles
which presented at first a remarkable unity. On the day of battle one
and the same feeling animated every bosom: after the victory they
became divided. Unity of faith indeed remained, but the difference of
nationalities brought into the Church a diversity of forms. Of this we
are about to witness a striking example. The Reformation, which had
begun its triumphal march in Germany, Switzerland, France, and several
other parts of the continent, was destined to receive new strength by
the conversion of a celebrated country, long known as the _Isle of
Saints_. This island was to add its banner to the trophy of
Protestantism, but that banner preserved its distinctive colours. When
England became reformed, a puissant individualism joined its might to
the great unity.

If we search for the characteristics of the British Reformation, we
shall find that, beyond any other, they were social, national, and
truly human. There is no people among whom the Reformation has
produced to the same degree that morality and order, that liberty,
public spirit, and activity, which are the very essence of a nation's
greatness. Just as the papacy has degraded the Spanish peninsula, has
the Gospel exalted the British islands. Hence the study upon which we
are entering possesses an interest peculiar to itself.

In order that this study may be useful, it should have a character of
universality. To confine the history of a people within the space of a
few years, or even of a century, would deprive that history of both
truth and life. We might indeed have traditions, chronicles, and
legends, but there would be no history. History is a wonderful
organization, no part of which can be retrenched. To understand the
present, we must know the past. Society, like man himself, has its
infancy, youth, maturity, and old age. Ancient or Pagan society, which
had spent its infancy in the East in the midst of the antihellenic
races, had its youth in the animated epoch of the Greeks, its manhood
in the stern period of Roman greatness, and its old age under the
decline of the empire. Modern society has passed through analogous
stages: at the time of the Reformation it attained that of the
full-grown man. We shall now proceed to trace the destinies of the
Church in England, from the earliest times of Christianity. These long
and distant preparations are one of the distinctive characteristics of
its reformation.

Before the sixteenth century this Church had passed through two great
phases.

The first was that of its formation--the second that of its
corruption.

In its formation it was oriento-apostolical.

In its corruption it was successively national-papistical and
royal-papistical.

After these two degrees of decline came the last and great phasis of
the Reformation.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: GOSPEL CARRIED TO BRITAIN.]

In the second century of the Christian era vessels were frequently
sailing to the savage shores of Britain from the ports of Asia Minor,
Greece, Alexandria, or the Greek colonies in Gaul. Among the merchants
busied in calculating the profits they could make upon the produce of
the East with which their ships were laden, would occasionally be
found a few pious men from the banks of the Meander or the Hermus,
conversing peacefully with one another about the birth, life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and rejoicing at the prospect
of saving by these glad tidings the pagans towards whom they were
steering. It would appear that some British prisoners of war, having
learnt to know Christ during their captivity, bore also to their
fellow-countrymen the knowledge of this Saviour. It may be, too, that
some Christian soldiers, the Corneliuses of those imperial armies
whose advanced posts reached the southern parts of Scotland, desirous
of more lasting conquests, may have read to the people whom they had
subdued, the writings of Matthew, John, and Paul. It is of little
consequence to know whether one of these first converts was, according
to tradition, a prince named Lucius. It is certain that the tidings of
the Son of man, crucified and raised again, under Tiberius, spread
through these islands more rapidly than the dominion of the emperors,
and that before the end of the second century many churches worshipped
Christ beyond the walls of Adrian; in those mountains, forests, and
western isles, which for centuries past the Druids had filled with
their mysteries and their sacrifices, and on which even the Roman
eagles had never stooped.[6] These churches were formed after the
eastern type: the Britons would have refused to receive the type of
that Rome whose yoke they detested.

  [6] Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca Christo vero subdita.
  (Tertullian contra Judæos, lib. vii) Parts of Britain inaccessible to
  the Romans were, however, subjected to Christ. This work, from its
  bearing no traces of Montanism, seems to belong to the first part of
  Tertullian's life. See also Origen in Lucam, cap. i. homil. 6.

[Sidenote: CULDEES.]

The first thing which the British Christians received from the capital
of the empire was persecution. But Diocletian, by striking the
disciples of Jesus Christ in Britain only increased their number.[7]
Many Christians from the southern part of the island took refuge in
Scotland, where they raised their humble roofs, and under the name of
_Culdees_ prayed for the salvation of their protectors. When the
surrounding pagans saw the holiness of these men of God, they
abandoned in great numbers their sacred oaks, their mysterious
caverns, and their blood-stained altars, and obeyed the gentle voice
of the Gospel. After the death of these pious refugees, their cells
were transformed into houses of prayer.[8] In 305, Constantius Chlorus
succeeded to the throne of the Cæsars, and put an end to the
persecution.

  [7] Lactantius, de mortibus persecutorum, cap. xii.

  [8] Multi ex Brittonibus Christiani sævitiam Diocletiani timentes ad
  eos coufugerant........ut vita functorum cellæ in templa
  commutarentur. (Buchanan, iv. c. xxxv.) Many Christians from Britain,
  fearing the cruelty of Diocletian, took refuge among the
  Scots......and the cells in which their holy lives were spent, were
  changed into churches.

The Christianity which was brought to these people by merchants,
soldiers, or missionaries, although not the ecclesiastical catholicism
already creeping into life in the Roman empire, was not the primitive
evangelism of the apostles. The East and the South could only give to
the North of what they possessed. The mere human period had succeeded
to the creative and miraculous period of the church. After the
extraordinary manifestations of the Holy Ghost, which had produced the
apostolic age, the church had been left to the inward power of the
word and of the Comforter. But Christians did not generally comprehend
the spiritual life to which they were called. God had been pleased to
give them a divine religion; and this they gradually assimilated more
and more to the religions of human origin. Instead of saying, in the
spirit of the gospel, the word of God first, and through it the
doctrine and the life--the doctrine and the life, and through them the
forms; they said, forms first, and salvation by these forms. They
ascribed to bishops a power which belongs only to Holy Scripture.
Instead of ministers of the word, they desired to have priests;
instead of an inward sacrifice, a sacrifice offered on the altar; and
costly temples instead of a living church. They began to seek in men,
in ceremonies, and in holy places, what they could find only in the
Word and in the lively faith of the children of God. In this manner
evangelical religion gave place to catholicism, and by gradual
degeneration in after-years catholicism gave birth to popery.

This grievous transformation took place more particularly in the East,
in Africa, and in Italy. Britain was at first comparatively exempt. At
the very time that the savage Picts and Scots, rushing from their
heathen homes, were devastating the country, spreading terror on all
sides, and reducing the people to slavery, we discover here and there
some humble Christian receiving salvation not by a clerical
sacramentalism, but by the work of the Holy Ghost in the heart. At the
end of the fourth century we meet with an illustrious example of such
conversions.

[Sidenote: SUCCAT.]

On the picturesque banks of the Clyde, not far from Glasgow, in the
Christian village of Bonavern, now Kilpatrick, a little boy, of tender
heart, lively temperament, and indefatigable activity, passed the
earlier days of his life. He was born about the year 372 A.D., of a
British family, and was named Succat.[9] His father, Calpurnius,
deacon of the church of Bonavern, a simple-hearted pious man, and his
mother, Conchessa, sister to the celebrated Martin, archbishop of
Tours,[10] and a woman superior to the majority of her sex, had
endeavoured to instil into his heart the doctrines of Christianity;
but Succat did not understand them. He was fond of pleasure, and
delighted to be the leader of his youthful companions. In the midst of
his frivolities, he committed a serious fault.

  [9] In baptismo haud Patricium sed Succat a parentibus fuisse dictum.
  (Usser. Brit. Eccl. Antiq. p. 428.) At his baptism he was named by his
  parents not Patrick but Succat.

  [10] Martini Turonum archiepiscopi consanguineam. Ibid.

[Sidenote: EVANGELICAL FAITH.]

His parents having then quitted Scotland and settled in Armorica
(Bretagne,) a terrible calamity befell them. One day as Succat was
playing near the seashore with two of his sisters, some Irish pirates,
commanded by O'Neal, carried them all three off to their boats, and
sold them in Ireland to the petty chieftain of some pagan clan. Succat
was sent into the fields to keep swine.[11] It was while alone in
these solitary pastures, without priest and without temple, that the
young slave called to mind the Divine lessons which his pious mother
had so often read to him. The fault which he had committed pressed
heavily night and day upon his soul: he groaned in heart, and wept. He
turned repenting towards that meek Saviour of whom Conchessa had so
often spoken; he fell at His knees in that heathen land; and imagined
he felt the arms of a father uplifting the prodigal son. Succat was
then born from on high, but by an agent so spiritual, so internal,
that he knew not "Whence it cometh or whither it goeth." The Gospel
was written with the finger of God on the tablets of his heart. "I was
sixteen years old," said he, "and knew not the true God; but in that
strange land the Lord opened my unbelieving eyes, and, although late,
I called my sins to mind, and was converted with my whole heart to the
Lord my God, who regarded my low estate, had pity on my youth and
ignorance, and consoled me as a father consoles his children."[12]

  [11] Cujus porcorum, pastor erat. Usser. Brit. Eccl. Antiq. p. 431.

  [12] Et ibi Dominus aperuit sensum incredulitatis meæ, ut vel sero
  remorarem delicta mea, et ut converterer torto corde ad Dominum Deum
  meum. Patr. Confess. Usser. 431.

Such words as these from the lips of a swineherd in the green pastures
of Ireland set clearly before us the Christianity which in the fourth
and fifth centuries converted many souls in the British isles. In
after-years, Rome established the dominion of the priest and salvation
by forms, independently of the dispositions of the heart; but the
primitive religion of these celebrated islands was that living
Christianity whose substance is the grace of Jesus Christ, and whose
power is the grace of the Holy Ghost. The herdsman from the banks of
the Clyde was then undergoing those experiences which so many
evangelical Christians in those countries have subsequently undergone.
"The love of God increased more and more in me," said he, "with faith
and the fear of His name. The Spirit urged me to such a degree that I
poured forth as many as a hundred prayers in one day. And even during
the night, in the forests and on the mountains where I kept my flock,
the rain, and snow, and frost, and sufferings which I endured, excited
me to seek after God. At that time, I felt not the indifference which
now I feel: the Spirit fermented in my heart."[13] Evangelical faith
even then existed in the British islands in the person of this slave,
and of some few Christians born again, like him, from on high.

  [13] Ut etiam in sylvis et monte manebam, et ante lucem excitabar ad
  orationem per nivem, per gelu, per pluviam...... quia tunc Spiritus in
  me fervebat. Patr. Confess. Usser, 432.

Twice a captive, and twice rescued, Succat, after returning to his
family, felt an irresistible appeal in his heart. It was his duty to
carry the Gospel to those Irish pagans among whom he had found Jesus
Christ. His parents and his friends endeavoured in vain to detain him;
the same ardent desire pursued him in his dreams. During the silent
watches of the night he fancied he heard voices calling to him from
the dark forests of Erin: "Come, holy child, and walk once more among
us." He awoke in tears, his breast filled with the keenest
emotion.[14] He tore himself from the arms of his parents, and rushed
forth--not as heretofore with his playfellows, when he would climb the
summit of some lofty hill--but with a heart full of charity in Christ.
He departed: "It was not done of my own strength," said he; "it was
God who overcame all."

  [14] Valde compunctus sum corde et sic expergefactus. (Patr. Confess.
  Usser. 433.) I was vehemently pricked in my heart, and so awoke.

[Sidenote: PATRICK'S MISSION.]

Succat, afterwards known as Saint Patrick, and to which name, as to
that of St. Peter and other servants of God, many superstitions have
been attached, returned to Ireland, but without visiting Rome, as an
historian of the twelfth century has asserted.[15] Ever active,
prompt, and ingenious, he collected the pagan tribes in the fields by
beat of drum, and then narrated to them in their own tongue the
history of the Son of God. Erelong his simple recitals exercised a
divine power over their rude hearts, and many souls were converted,
not by external sacraments or by the worship of images, but by the
preaching of the word of God. The son of a chieftain, whom Patrick
calls Benignus, learnt from him to proclaim the Gospel, and was
destined to succeed him. The court bard, Dubrach Mac Valubair, no
longer sang druidical hymns, but canticles addressed to Jesus Christ.
Patrick was not entirely free from the errors of the time; perhaps he
believed in pious miracles; but generally speaking we meet with
nothing but the Gospel in the earlier days of the British Church. The
time no doubt will come when Ireland will again feel the power of the
Holy Ghost, which had once converted it by the ministrations of a
Scotchman.

  [15] Jocelinus, Vita in Acta Sanctorum.

Shortly before the evangelization of Patrick in Ireland, a Briton
named Pelagius, having visited Italy, Africa, and Palestine, began to
teach a strange doctrine. Desirous of making head against the moral
indifference into which most of the Christians in those countries had
fallen, and which would appear to have been in strong contrast with
the British austerity, he denied the doctrine of original sin,
extolled free-will, and maintained that, if man made use of all the
powers of his nature, he would attain perfection. We do not find that
he taught these opinions in his own country; but from the continent,
where he disseminated them, they soon reached Britain. The British
churches refused to receive this "perverse doctrine," their historian
tells us, "and to blaspheme the grace of Jesus Christ."[16] They do
not appear to have held the strict doctrine of Saint Augustine: they
believed indeed that man has need of an inward change, and that this
the divine power alone can effect; but like the churches of Asia, from
which they had sprung, they seem to have conceded something to our
natural strength in the work of conversion; and Pelagius, with a good
intention it would appear, went still further. However that may be,
these churches, strangers to the controversy, were unacquainted with
all its subtleties. Two Gaulish bishops, Germanus and Lupus, came to
their aid, and those who had been perverted returned into the way of
truth.[17]

  [16] Verum Britanni cum neque suscipere dogma perversum, gratiam
  Christi blasphemando nullatenus vellent. Beda. Hist. Angl. lib. i,
  cap. xvii, et xxi.

  [17] Depravati viam correctionis agnoscerent. Beda, Hist. Angl. lib.
  i. cap. xvii. et xxi.

[Sidenote: SAXON INVASION.]

Shortly after this, events of great importance took place in Great
Britain, and the light of faith disappeared in profound night. In 449,
Hengist and Horsa, with their Saxon followers, being invited by the
wretched inhabitants to aid them against the cruel ravages of the
Picts and Scots, soon turned their swords against the people they had
come to assist. Christianity was driven back with the Britons into the
mountains of Wales and the wild moors of Northumberland and Cornwall.
Many British families remained in the midst of the conquerors, but
without exercising any religious influence over them. While the
conquering races, settled at Paris, Ravenna, or Toledo, gradually laid
aside their paganism and savage manners, the barbarous customs of the
Saxons prevailed unmoderated throughout the kingdoms of the Heptarchy,
and in every quarter temples to Thor rose above the churches in which
Jesus Christ had been worshipped. Gaul and the south of Europe, which
still exhibited to the eyes of the barbarians the last vestiges of
Roman grandeur, alone had the power of inspiring some degree of
respect in the formidable Germans, and of transforming their faith.
From this period, the Greeks and Latins, and even the converted Goths,
looked at this island with unutterable dread. The soil, said they, is
covered with serpents; the air is thick with deadly exhalations; the
souls of the departed are transported thither at midnight from the
shores of Gaul. Ferrymen, sons of Erebus and Night, admit these
invisible shades into their boats, and listen, with a shudder, to
their mysterious whisperings. England, whence light was one day to be
shed over the habitable globe, was then the trysting-place of the
dead. And yet the Christianity of the British isles was not to be
annihilated by these barbarian invasions; it possessed a strength
which rendered it capable of energetic resistance.

[Sidenote: COLUMBA.]

In one of the churches formed by Succat's preaching, there arose about
two centuries after him a pious man named Columba, son of Feidlimyd,
the son of Fergus. Valuing the cross of Christ more highly than the
royal blood that flowed in his veins, he resolved to devote himself to
the King of heaven. Shall he not repay to the country of Succat what
Succat had imparted to his? "I will go," said he; "and preach
the word of God in Scotland;"[18] for the word of God and not an
ecclesiastical hierarchism was then the converting agency. The
grandson of Fergus communicated the zeal which animated him to the
hearts of several fellow-christians. They repaired to the seashore,
and cutting down the pliant branches of the osier, constructed a frail
bark, which they covered with the skins of beasts. In this rude boat
they embarked in the year 565, and after being driven to and fro on
the ocean, the little missionary band reached the waters of the
Hebrides. Columba landed near the barren rocks of Mull, to the south
of the basaltic caverns of Staffa, and fixed his abode in a small
island, afterwards known as Iona or Icolmkill, "the island of
Columba's cell." Some Christian Culdees, driven out by the dissensions
of the Picts and Scots, had already found a refuge in the same retired
spot. Here the missionaries erected a chapel, whose walls, it is said,
still exist among the stately ruins of a later age.[19] Some authors
have placed Columba in the first rank after the apostles.[20] True, we
do not find in him the faith of a Paul or a John; but he lived as in
the sight of God; he mortified the flesh, and slept on the ground with
a stone for his pillow. Amid this solemn scenery, and among customs so
rude, the form of the missionary, illumined by a light from heaven,
shone with love, and manifested the joy and serenity of his heart.[21]
Although subject to the same passions as ourselves, he wrestled
against his weakness, and would not have one moment lost for the glory
of God. He prayed and read, he wrote and taught, he preached and
redeemed the time. With indefatigable activity he went from house to
house, and from kingdom to kingdom. The king of the Picts was
converted, as were also many of his people; precious manuscripts were
conveyed to Iona; a school of theology was founded there, in which the
word was studied; and many received through faith the salvation which
is in Christ Jesus. Erelong a missionary spirit breathed over this
ocean rock, so justly named "the light of the western world."

  [18] Prædicaturus verbum Dei. Usser. Antiq p. 359.

  [19] I visited Iona in 1845 with Dr. Patrick M'Farlan, and saw these
  ruins. One portion of the building seems to be of primitive
  architecture.

  [20] Nulli post apostolos secundus. (Notker.) Second to none after the
  apostles.

  [21]

      Qui de prosapia regali claruit,
      Sed morum gratia magis emicuit.
                 Usser. Antiq. p. 360.

  He was distinguished by his royal descent, but his character rendered
  him still more illustrious.

[Sidenote: HIS TEACHING.]

The Judaical sacerdotalism which was beginning to extend in the
Christian Church found no support in Iona. They had forms, but not to
them did they look for life. It was the Holy Ghost, Columba
maintained, that made a servant of God. When the youth of Caledonia
assembled around the elders on these savage shores, or in their humble
chapel, these ministers of the Lord would say to them: "The Holy
Scriptures are the only rule of faith.[22] Throw aside all merit of
works, and look for salvation to the grace of God alone.[23] Beware of
a religion which consists of outward observances: it is better to keep
your heart pure before God than to abstain from meats.[24] One alone
is your head, Jesus Christ. Bishops and presbyters are equal;[25] they
should be the husbands of one wife, and have their children in
subjection."[26]

  [22] Prolatis Sanctæ Scripturæ testimoniis. (Adomn. 1. i. c. 22.) The
  testimony of the Holy Scriptures being exhibited.

  [23] Bishop Munter, Altbritische Kirche. Stud. und Krit. vi. 745.

  [24] Meliores sunt ergo qui non magno opere jejunant, cor intrinsecus
  nitidum coram Deo sollicite servantes. (Gildas in ejusd. Synod.
  Append.) Those are better who, though not fasting very particularly,
  keep diligently before God a heart pure within.

  [25] In Hibernia episcopi et presbyteri unum sunt. (Ekkehardi liber.
  Arx. Geschichte von S. Gall. i. 267.) In Ireland bishops and
  presbyters are equal.

  [26] Patrem habui Calpornium diaconum filium quondam Potiti
  Presbyteri. Patricii Confessio. Even as late as the twelfth century we
  meet with married Irish bishops. (Bernard, Vita Malachiæ, cap. x.) My
  father was Calpurnius son of Potitus once a presbyter.

The sages of Iona knew nothing of transubstantiation or of the
withdrawal of the cup in the Lord's Supper, or of auricular
confession, or of prayers to the dead, or tapers, or incense; they
celebrated Easter on a different day from Rome;[27] synodal assemblies
regulated the affairs of the church, and the papal supremacy was
unknown.[28] The sun of the Gospel shone upon these wild and distant
shores. In after-years, it was the privilege of Great Britain to
recover with a purer lustre the same sun and the same Gospel.

  [27] In die quidem dominica alia tamen quam dicebat hebdomade
  celebrabant. Beda, lib. iii. cap. iv.

  [28] Augustinus novam religionem docet.....dum ad unius episcopi
  romani dominatum omnia revocat. (Buchan. lib. v. cap. xxxvi.)
  Augustine teaches a _new_ religion ... when he reduces all under the
  dominion of the bishop of Rome alone.

Iona, governed by a simple elder,[29] had become a missionary college.
It has been sometimes called a monastery, but the dwelling of the
grandson of Fergus in nowise resembled the popish convents. When its
youthful inmates desired to spread the knowledge of Jesus Christ, they
thought not of going elsewhere in quest of episcopal ordination.
Kneeling in the chapel of Icolmkill, they were set apart by the laying
on of the hands of the elders: they were called _bishops_, but
remained obedient to the _elder_ or presbyter of Iona. They even
consecrated other bishops: thus Finan laid hands upon Diuma, bishop of
Middlesex. These British Christians attached great importance to the
ministry; but not to one form in preference to another. Presbytery and
episcopacy were with them, as with the primitive church, almost
identical.[30] Somewhat later we find that neither the venerable Bede,
nor Lanfranc, nor Anselm--the two last were archbishops of
Canterbury--made any objection to the ordination of British bishops by
plain presbyters.[31] The religious and moral element that belongs to
Christianity still predominated; the sacerdotal element, which
characterizes human religions, whether among the Brahmins or
elsewhere, was beginning to show itself, but in great Britain at least
it held a very subordinate station. Christianity was still a religion
and not a caste. They did not require of the servant of God, as a
warrant of his capacity, a long list of names succeeding one another
like the beads of a rosary; they entertained serious, noble, and holy
ideas of the ministry; its authority proceeded wholly from Jesus
Christ its head.

  [29] Habere autem solet ipsa insula rectorem semper abbatem
  _presbyterum_ cujus juri et omnis provincia et _ipsi etiam episcopi_,
  ordine inusitato, debeant esse subjecti, juxta exemplum primi doctoris
  illius qui non episcopus sed _presbyter_ exstitit et monachus. (Beda,
  Hist. Eccl. iii. cap. iv.) Moreover it was always the custom to have
  as governor in that island an abbot who is a presbyter, to whose
  direction the entire province and also the bishops contrary to the
  usual method are subject, according to the example of their first
  teacher, who was not a bishop, but a presbyter and monk.

  [30] Idem est ergo presbyter qui episcopus, et antequam diaboli
  instinctu studia in religione fierent. ... communi presbyterorum
  concilio Ecclesiæ gubernabantur. Indifferenter de episcopo quasi de
  presbytero est loquntus (Paulus) .... sciant episcopi se, magis
  consuetudine quam dispositionis dominicæ veritate, presbyteris esse
  majores. (Hieronymus ad Titum, i. 5.) A presbyter accordingly is the
  same as a bishop, and before that by a suggestion of the devil, party
  strife entered into religion..... the churches were governed by a
  common council of presbyters. Paul spake without any distinction
  between bishops and presbyters..... the bishops know that it is to
  custom rather than to any actual direction of the Lord that they owe
  their superiority to presbyters.

  [31] Bishop Munter makes this remark in his dissertation _On the
  Ancient British Church_, about the primitive identity of bishops and
  priests, and episcopal consecration. _Stud. und Krit._ an. 1833.

[Sidenote: CONTINENTAL MISSIONS.]

The missionary fire, which the grandson of Fergus had kindled in a
solitary island, soon spread over Great Britain. Not in Iona alone,
but at Bangor and other places, the spirit of evangelization burst
out. A fondness for travelling had already become a second nature in
this people.[32] Men of God, burning with zeal, resolved to carry the
evangelical torch to the continent--to the vast wildernesses sprinkled
here and there with barbarous and heathen tribes. They did not set
forth as antagonists of Rome, for at that epoch there was no place for
such antagonism; but Iona and Bangor, less illustrious than Rome in
the history of nations, possessed a more lively faith than the city of
the Cæsars; and that faith,--unerring sign of the presence of Jesus
Christ,--gave those whom it inspired a right to evangelize the world,
which Rome could not gainsay.

  [32] Natio Scotorum quibus consuetudo peregrinandi jam pæne in naturam
  conversa est. (Vita S. Galli, Sec. 47.) The nation of the Scots in
  whom the habit of travelling abroad had already almost become a second
  nature.

The missionary bishops[33] of Britain accordingly set forth and
traversed the Low Countries, Gaul, Switzerland, Germany, and even
Italy.[34] The free church of the Scots and Britons did more for the
conversion of central Europe than the half-enslaved church of the
Romans. These missionaries were not haughty and insolent like the
priests of Italy; but supported themselves by the work of their hands.
Columbanus (whom we must not confound with Columba),[35] "feeling in
his heart the burning of the fire which the Lord had kindled upon
earth,"[36] quitted Bangor in 590 with twelve other missionaries, and
carried the Gospel to the Burgundians, Franks, and Swiss. He continued
to preach it amidst frequent persecutions, left his disciple Gall in
Helvetia, and retired to Robbio, where he died, honouring Christian
Rome, but placing the church of Jerusalem above it,[37]--exhorting it
to beware of corruption, and declaring that the power would remain
with it so long only as it retained the true doctrine (_recta ratio_).
Thus was Britain faithful in planting the standard of Christ in the
heart of Europe. We might almost imagine this unknown people to be a
new Israel, and Icolmkill and Bangor to have inherited the virtues of
Zion.

  [33] They were called _episcopi regionarii_ because they had no
  settled diocese.

  [34] Antiquo tempore, doctissimi solebant magistri de Hibernia
  Britanniam, Galliam, Italiam venire, et multos per ecclesias Christi
  fecisse profectus. (Alcuin, Epp. ccxxi.) In ancient times the most
  learned teachers were accustomed to come from Ireland to Britain,
  Gaul, and Italy, and to make numerous journeys among the churches of
  Christ.

  [35] Thierry, in his _Hist. de la Conquete de l'Angleterre_, makes
  Columba and Columbanus one personage. Columba preached the Gospel in
  Scotland about 560, and died in 597; Columbanus preached among the
  Burgundians in 600, and died in 615.

  [36] Ignitum igne Domini desiderium. Mabillon, Acta, p. 9.

  [37] Salva loci dominicæ resurrectionis _singulari prœrogativa_.
  (Columb. Vita, section 10.) Excepting by its peculiar prerogative the
  place of the Lord's resurrection.

Yet they should have done more: they should have preached--not only to
the continental heathens, to those in the north of Scotland and the
distant Ireland, but also to the still pagan Saxons of England. It is
true that they made several attempts; but while the Britons considered
their conquerors as the enemies of God and man, and shuddered while
they pronounced their name,[38] the Saxons refused to be converted by
the voice of their slaves. By neglecting this field, the Britons left
room for other workmen, and thus it was that England yielded to a
foreign power, beneath whose heavy yoke it long groaned in vain.

  [38] Nefandi nominis Saxoni Deo hominibusque invisi. (Gildas, De
  excidio Britanniæ.) The execrable name of Saxon, hateful to God and
  men.




CHAPTER II.

     Pope Gregory the Great--Desires to reduce Britain--Policy of
     Gregory and Augustine--Arrival of the
     Mission--Appreciation--Britain superior to Rome--Dionoth at
     Bangor--First and Second Romish Aggressions--Anguish of the
     Britons--Pride of Rome--Rome has recourse to the
     Sword--Massacre--Saint Peter scourges an
     Archbishop--Oswald--His Victory--Corman--Mission of Oswald
     and Aidan--Death of Oswald.


[Sidenote: GREGORY THE GREAT.]

It is matter of fact that the spiritual life had waned in Italian
catholicism; and in proportion as the heavenly spirit had become weak,
the lust of dominion had grown strong. The Roman metropolitans and
their delegates soon became impatient to mould all Christendom to
their peculiar forms.

About the end of the sixth century an eminent man filled the see of
Rome. Gregory was born of senatorial family, and already on the high
road to honour, when he suddenly renounced the world, and transformed
the palace of his fathers into a convent. But his ambition had only
changed its object. In his views, the whole church should submit to
the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Rome. True, he rejected the title
of universal bishop assumed by the patriarch of Constantinople; but if
he desired not the name, he was not the less eager for the
substance.[39] On the borders of the West, in the island of Great
Britain, was a Christian church independent of Rome: this must be
conquered, and a favourable opportunity soon occurred.

  [39] He says (Epp. lib. ix, ep. xii.): De Constantinopolitana ecclesia
  quis eam dubitet apostolicæ sedi esse subjectam? Concerning the church
  of Constantinople, who doubts that it is subject to the apostolical
  see.

[Sidenote: POLICY OF GREGORY AND AUGUSTINE.]

Before his elevation to the primacy, and while he was as yet only the
monk Gregory, he chanced one day to cross a market in Rome where
certain foreign dealers were exposing their wares for sale. Among them
he perceived some fair-haired youthful slaves, whose noble bearing
attracted his attention. On drawing near them, he learned that the
Anglo-Saxon nation to which they belonged had refused to receive the
Gospel from the Britons. When he afterwards became bishop of Rome,
this crafty and energetic pontiff, "the last of the good and the first
of the bad," as he has been called, determined to convert these proud
conquerors, and make use of them in subduing the British church to
the papacy, as he had already made use of the Frank monarchs to reduce
the Gauls. Rome has often shown herself more eager to bring Christians
rather than idolaters to the pope.[40] Was it thus with Gregory? We
must leave the question unanswered.

  [40] We know the history of Tahiti and of other modern missions of the
  Romish church.

Ethelbert, king of Kent, having married a Christian princess of Frank
descent, the Roman bishop thought the conjuncture favourable for his
design, and despatched a mission under the direction of one of his
friends named Augustine, A.D. 596. At first the missionaries recoiled
from the task appointed them; but Gregory was firm. Desirous of
gaining the assistance of the Frank kings, Theodoric and Theodebert,
he affected to consider them as the lords paramount of England, and
commended to them the conversion of _their subjects_.[41] Nor was this
all. He claimed also the support of the powerful Brunchilda,
grandmother of these two kings, and equally notorious for her
treachery, her irregularities, and her crimes; and did not scruple to
extol the _good works_ and _godly fear_ of this modern Jezebel.[42]
Under such auspices the Romish mission arrived in England. The pope
had made a skilful choice of his delegate. Augustine possessed even to
a greater extent than Gregory himself a mixture of ambition and
devotedness, of superstition and piety, of cunning and zeal. He
thought that faith and holiness were less essential to the church than
authority and power; and that its prerogative was not so much to save
souls as to collect all the human race under the sceptre of Rome.[43]
Gregory himself was distressed at Augustine's spiritual pride, and
often exhorted him to humility.

  [41] Subjectos vestros. (Opp. Gregorii, tom. iv. p 334.) Your
  subjects.

  [42] Prona in bonis operibus . . . in omnipotentis Dei timore. (Ibid.
  tom. ii. p. 835.) Disposed to good works . . . in the fear of God
  omnipotent.

  [43] We find the same idea in Wiseman, Lect. ix, On the principal
  doctrines and practices of the Catholic church. London, 1836.

Success of that kind which popery desires soon crowned the labours of
its servants. The forty-one missionaries having landed in the isle of
Thanet, in the year 597, the king of Kent consented to receive them,
but in the open air, for fear of magic. They drew up in such a manner
as to produce an effect on the rude islanders. The procession was
opened by a monk bearing a huge cross on which the figure of Christ
was represented: his colleagues followed chanting their Latin hymns,
and thus they approached the oak appointed for the place of
conference. They inspired sufficient confidence in Ethelbert to gain
permission to celebrate their worship in an old ruinous chapel at
Durovern (Canterbury), where British Christians had in former times
adored the Saviour Christ. The king and thousands of his subjects
received not long after, with certain forms, and certain Christian
doctrines, the errors of the Roman pontiffs--as purgatory, for
instance, which Gregory was advocating with the aid of the most absurd
fables.[44] Augustine baptized ten thousand pagans in one day. As yet
Rome had only set her foot in Great Britain, she did not fail erelong
to establish her kingdom there.

  [44] Hoepfner, De origine dogmatis de purgatorio. Halle, 1792.

We should be unwilling to undervalue the religious element now placed
before the Anglo-Saxons, and we can readily believe that many of the
missionaries sent from Italy desired to work a Christian work. We
think, too, that the Middle Ages ought to be appreciated with more
equitable sentiments than have always been found in the persons who
have written on that period. Man's conscience lived, spoke, and
groaned during the long dominion of popery; and like a plant growing
among thorns, it often succeeded in forcing a passage through the
obstacles of traditionalism and hierarchy, to blossom in the
quickening sun of God's grace. The Christian element is even strongly
marked in some of the most eminent men of theocracy--in Anselm for
instance.

[Sidenote: BRITAIN SUPERIOR TO ROME.]

Yet as it is our task to relate the history of the struggles which
took place between primitive Christianity and Roman-catholicism, we
cannot forbear pointing out the superiority of the former in a
religious light, while we acknowledge the superiority of the latter in
a political point of view. We believe (and we shall presently have a
proof of it)[45] that a visit to Iona would have taught the
Anglo-Saxons much more than their frequent pilgrimages to the banks of
the Tiber. Doubtless, as has been remarked, these pilgrims
contemplated at Rome "the noble monuments of antiquity," but there
existed at that time in the British islands--and it has been too often
overlooked--a Christianity which, if not perfectly pure, was at least
better than that of popery. The British church, which at the beginning
of the seventh century carried faith and civilization into Burgundy,
the Vosges mountains, and Switzerland, might well have spread them
both over Britain. The influence of the arts, whose civilizing
influence we are far from depreciating, would have come later.

  [45] In the history of Oswald, king of Northumberland.

But so far was the Christianity of the Britons from converting the
Saxon heptarchy, that it was, alas! the Romanism of the heptarchy
which was destined to conquer Britain. These struggles between the
Roman and British churches, which fill all the seventh century, are of
the highest importance to the English church, for they establish
clearly its primitive liberty. They possess also great interest for
the other churches of the West, as showing in the most striking
characters the usurping acts by which the papacy eventually reduced
them beneath its yoke.

[Sidenote: DIONOTH AT BANGOR.]

Augustine, appointed archbishop not only of the Saxons, but of the
free Britons, was settled by papal ordinance, first at London and
afterwards at Canterbury. Being at the head of a hierarchy composed of
twelve bishops, he soon attempted to bring all the Christians of
Britain under the Roman jurisdiction. At that time there existed at
Bangor,[46] in North Wales, a large Christian society, amounting to
nearly three thousand individuals, collected together to work with
their own hands,[47] to study, and to pray, and from whose bosom
numerous missionaries (Columbanus was among the number) had from time
to time gone forth. The president of this church was Dionoth, a
faithful teacher, ready to serve all men in charity, yet firmly
convinced that no one should have supremacy in the Lord's vineyard.
Although one of the most influential men in the British church, he was
somewhat timid and hesitating; he would yield to a certain point for
the love of peace; but would never flinch from his duty. He was
another apostle John, full of mildness, and yet condemning the
Diotrephes, _who love to have pre-eminence among the brethren_.
Augustine thus addressed him: "Acknowledge the authority of the Bishop
of Rome." These are the first words of the papacy to the ancient
Christians of Britain. "We desire to love all men," meekly replied the
venerable Briton; "and what we do for you, we will do for him also
whom you call the pope. But he is not entitled to call himself the
_father of fathers_, and the only submission we can render him is that
which we owe to every Christian."[48] This was not what Augustine
asked.

  [46] Bann-cor, the choir on the steep hill. Carlisle. Top. Dict.
  Wales.

  [47] Ars unicuique dabatur, ut ex opero manuum quotidiano se posset in
  victu necessario continere. (Preuves de l'hist de Bretagne, ii, 25.)
  An art was given to each, that by the daily labour of their hands,
  each might be able to supply himself with the necessities of life.

  [48] Istam obedientiam nos multius parati dare et solvere ei et cuique
  Christiano continuo Wilkins, Conc, M. Brit. i. 26.

[Sidenote: SECOND ROMISH AGGRESSION.]

He was not discouraged by this first check. Proud of the pallium
which Rome had sent him, and relying on the swords of the
Anglo-Saxons, he convoked in 601 a general assembly of British and
Saxon bishops. The meeting took place in the open air, beneath a
venerable oak near Wigornia (Worcester or Hereford), and here occurred
the second Romish aggression. Dionoth resisted with firmness the
extravagant pretensions of Augustine, who again summoned him to
recognize the authority of Rome.[49] Another Briton protested against
the presumption of the Romans, who ascribed to their consecration a
virtue which they refused to that of Iona or of the Asiatic
churches.[50] "The Britons," exclaimed a third, "cannot submit either
to the haughtiness of the Romans or the tyranny of the Saxons."[51] To
no purpose did the archbishop lavish his arguments, prayers, censures,
and miracles even; the Britons were firm. Some of them who had eaten
with the Saxons while they were as yet heathens, refused to do so now
that they had submitted to the pope.[52] The Scotch were particularly
inflexible; for one of their number, by name Dagam, would not only
take no food at the same table with the Romans, but not even under the
same roof.[53] Thus did Augustine fail a second time, and the
independence of Britain appeared secure.

  [49] Dionothus de non approbanda apud eos Romanorum auctoritate
  disputabat. Wilkins, Conc. M. Brit. 24.

  [50] Ordinationesque more asiatico eisdem contulisse. Ibid. 24.

  [51] In communionem admittere vel Romanorum fastum vel Saxonum
  tyrannidem. Ibid. i, 26.

  [52] According to the apostolic precept, 1 Cor. 5, 9. 1.

  [53] Dagamus ad nos veniens, non solum cibum nobiscum, sed nec in
  eodem hospitio quo vescebamur, sumere, noluit. (Beda, lib. ii, cap.
  iv.) Dagam coming to us, not only refused to eat with us, but even to
  take his food in the same house where we were entertained.

[Sidenote: PRIDE OF ROME.]

And yet the formidable power of the popes, aided by the sword of the
conquerors, alarmed the Britons. They imagined they saw a mysterious
decree once more yoking the nations of the earth to the triumphal car
of Rome, and many left Wigornia uneasy and sad at heart. How is it
possible to save a cause, when even its defenders begin to despair? It
was not long before they were summoned to a new council. "What is to
be done?" they exclaimed with sorrowful forebodings. Popery was not
yet thoroughly known: it was hardly formed. The half-enlightened
consciences of these believers were a prey to the most violent
agitation. They asked themselves whether, in rejecting this new power,
they might not be rejecting God himself. A pious Christian, who led a
solitary life, had acquired a great reputation in the surrounding
district. Some of the Britons visited him, and inquired whether they
should resist Augustine or follow him.[54] "If he is a man of God,
follow him," replied the hermit.--"And how shall we know that?"--"If
he is meek and humble of heart, he bears Christ's yoke; but if he is
violent and proud, he is not of God."--"What sign shall we have of his
humility?"--"If he rises from his seat when you enter the room." Thus
spoke the oracle of Britain: it would have been better to have
consulted the Holy Scriptures.

  [54] Ad quendam virum sanctum et prudentam qui apud eos anachoreticam
  ducere vitam solebat, consulentes an ad prædicationem Augustini suas
  deserere traditiones deberent. (Beda, Hist. Eccl. lib. ii. cap. ii.)
  They took counsel of a certain holy and wise man who led among them
  the life of a hermit, whether at the preaching of Augustine they ought
  to abandon their own traditions.

But humility is not a virtue that flourishes among Romish pontiffs and
legates: they love to remain seated while others court and worship
them. The British bishops entered the council-hall, and the
archbishop, desirous of indicating his superiority, proudly kept his
seat.[55] Astonished at this sight, the Britons would hear no more of
the authority of Rome. For the third time they said No--they knew _no
other master but Christ_. Augustine, who expected to see these bishops
prostrate their churches at his feet, was surprised and indignant. He
had reckoned on the immediate submission of Britain, and the pope had
now to learn that his missionary had deceived him.... Animated by that
insolent spirit which is found too often in the ministers of the
Romish church, Augustine exclaimed: "If you will not receive brethren
who bring you peace, you shall receive enemies who will bring you war.
If you will not unite with us in showing the Saxons the way of life,
you shall receive from them the stroke of death."[56] Having thus
spoken, the haughty archbishop withdrew, and occupied his last days in
preparing the accomplishment of his ill-omened prophecy.[57] Argument
had failed: now for the sword!

  [55] Factumque est ut venientibus illis sederet Augustinus in sella.
  Ibid.

  [56] Si pacem cum fructibus accipere nollent, bellum ab hostibus
  forent accepturi ... Ibid.

  [57] Ipsum Augustinum hujus belli non modo conscium sed et
  _impulsorem_ exstitisse. Wilkins adds, that the expression found in
  Bede, concerning the death of Augustine, is a parenthesis foisted in
  by Romanist writers, and not found in the Saxon manuscripts. (Conc.
  Brit. p. 26.) Augustine himself was not only accessory to that war,
  but he was even its instigator.

[Sidenote: MASSACRE.]

Shortly after the death of Augustine, Edelfrid, one of the Anglo-Saxon
kings, and who was still a heathen, collected a numerous army, and
advanced towards Bangor, the centre of British Christianity. Alarm
spread through those feeble churches. They wept and prayed. The sword
of Edelfrid drew nearer. To whom can they apply, or where shall they
find help? The magnitude of the danger seemed to recall the Britons to
their pristine piety: not to men, but to the Lord himself will they
turn their thoughts. Twelve hundred and fifty servants of the living
God, calling to mind what are the arms of Christian warfare, after
preparing themselves by fasting, met together in a retired spot to
send up their prayers to God.[58] A British chief, named Brocmail,
moved by tender compassion, stationed himself near them with a few
soldiers; but the cruel Edelfrid, observing from a distance this band
of kneeling Christians, demanded: "Who are these people, and what are
they doing?" On being informed, he added: "They are fighting then
against us, although unarmed;" and immediately he ordered his soldiers
to fall upon the prostrate crowd. Twelve hundred of them were
slain.[59] They prayed and they died. The Saxons forthwith proceeded
to Bangor, the chief seat of Christian learning, and razed it to the
ground. Romanism was triumphant in England. The news of these
massacres filled the country _with weeping and great mourning_; but
the priests of Romish consecration (and the venerable Bede shared
their sentiments) beheld in this cruel slaughter the accomplishment of
the prophecy of the _holy pontiff_ Augustine;[60] and a national
tradition among the Welsh for many ages pointed to him as the
instigator of this cowardly butchery. Thus did Rome loose the savage
Pagan against the primitive church of Britain, and fastened it all
dripping with blood to her triumphal car. A great mystery of iniquity
was accomplishing.

  [58] Ad memoratam aciem, peracto jejunio triduano, cum aliis orandi
  causa convenerant. (Beda, ii, cap. ii.) At the aforesaid engagement,
  after three days had been spent in fasting, they met together with
  others for prayer.

  [59] Extinctos in ea pugna ferunt de his qui ad orandum venerunt viros
  circiter mille ducentos. Beda, lib. ii, cap. ii.

  [60] Sic completum est presagium sancti pontificis Augustini. Ibid.

But while the Saxon sword appeared to have swept every thing from
before the papacy, the ground trembled under its feet, and seemed
about to swallow it up. The hierarchical rather than Christian
conversions effected by the priests of Rome were so unreal that a vast
number of neophytes suddenly returned to the worship of their idols.
Eadbald, king of Kent, was himself among the number of apostates. Such
reversions to paganism are not unfrequent in the history of the Romish
missions. The bishops fled into Gaul: Mellitus and Justus had already
reached the continent in safety, and Lawrence, Augustine's successor,
was about to follow them. While lying in the church where he had
desired to pass the night before leaving England, he groaned in spirit
as he saw the work founded by Augustine perishing in his hands. He
saved it by a miracle. The next morning he presented himself before
the king with his clothes all disordered and his body covered with
wounds. "Saint Peter," he said, "appeared to me during the night and
scourged me severely because I was about to forsake his flock."[61]
The _scourge_ was a means of moral persuasion which Peter had
forgotten in his epistles. Did Lawrence cause these blows to be
inflicted by others--or did he inflict them himself--or is the whole
account an idle dream? We should prefer adopting the latter
hypothesis. The superstitious prince, excited at the news of this
supernatural intervention, eagerly acknowledged the authority of the
pope, the vicar of an apostle who so mercilessly scourged those who
had the misfortune to displease him. If the dominion of Rome had then
disappeared from England, it is probable that the Britons, regaining
their courage, and favoured in other respects by the wants which would
have been felt by the Saxons, would have recovered from their defeat,
and would have imparted their free Christianity to their conquerors.
But now the Roman bishop seemed to remain master of England, and the
faith of the Britons to be crushed for ever. But it was not so. A
young man, sprung from the energetic race of the conquerors, was about
to become the champion of truth and liberty, and almost the whole
island to be freed from the Roman yoke.

  [61] Apparuit ei beatissimus apostolorum princeps, et multo illum
  tempore secretæ noctis flagellis acrioribus afficiens. Beda, ii. cap.
  vi.

[Sidenote: OSWALD.]

[Sidenote: OSWALD'S VICTORY--CORMAN.]

Oswald, an Anglo-Saxon prince, son of the heathen and cruel Edelfrid,
had been compelled by family reverses to take refuge in Scotland, when
very young, accompanied by his brother Oswy and several other youthful
chiefs. He had acquired the language of the country, been instructed
in the truths of Holy Writ, converted by the grace of God, and
baptized into the Scottish church.[62] He loved to sit at the feet of
the elders of Iona and listen to their words. They showed him Jesus
Christ going from place to place doing good, and he desired to do so
likewise; they told him that Christ was the only head of the church,
and he promised never to acknowledge any other. Being a single-hearted
generous man, he was especially animated with tender compassion
towards the poor, and would take off his own cloak to cover the
nakedness of one of his brethren. Often, while mingling in the quiet
assemblies of the Scottish Christians, he had desired to go as a
missionary to the Anglo-Saxons. It was not long before he conceived
the bold design of leading the people of Northumberland to the
Saviour; but being a prince as well as a Christian, he determined to
begin by reconquering the throne of his fathers. There was in this
young Englishman the love of a disciple and the courage of a hero. At
the head of an army, small indeed, but strong by faith in Christ,[63]
he entered Northumberland, knelt with his troops in prayer on the
field of battle, and gained a signal victory over a powerful enemy,
634 A. D. To recover the kingdom of his ancestors was only a part of
his task. Oswald desired to give his people the benefits of the true
faith.[64] The Christianity taught in 625 to King Edwin and the
Northumbrians by Pendin of York had disappeared amidst the ravages of
the pagan armies. Oswald requested a missionary from the Scots who had
given him an asylum, and they accordingly sent one of the brethren
named Corman, a pious but uncultivated and austere man. He soon
returned dispirited to Iona: "The people to whom you sent me," he told
the elders of that island, "are so obstinate that we must renounce all
idea of changing their manners." As Aidan, one of their number,
listened to this report, he said to himself: "If thy love had been
offered to this people, oh, my Saviour, many hearts would have been
touched!... I will go and make Thee known--Thee who breaketh not the
bruised reed!" Then, turning to the missionary with a look of mild
reproach, he added: "Brother, you have been too severe towards hearers
so dull of heart. You should have given them spiritual milk to drink
until they were able to receive more solid food." All eyes were fixed
on the man who spoke so wisely. "Aidan is worthy of the episcopate,"
exclaimed the brethren of Iona: and, like Timothy, he was consecrated
by the laying on of the hands of the company of elders.[65]

  [62] Cum magna nobilium juventute apud Scotos sive Pictos exulabant,
  ibique ad doctrinam Scottorum cathechisati et baptismatis gratia sunt
  recreati. (Beda, iii. cap. i.) They were exiled among the Scots or
  Picts with many youths of noble rank, and there they were instructed
  in the doctrine of the Scots and were converted by the grace of
  baptism.

  [63] Superveniente cum parvo exercitu, sed fide Christi munito. Beda,
  lib. iii, cap. i.

  [64] Desiderans totam cui præesse cœpit gentem fidei Christianæ gratia
  imbui. (Ibid. cap. iii.) Desiring that the whole nation over which he
  ruled might be imbued with the grace of the Christian faith.

  [65] Aydanus accepto gradu episcopatus, quo tempore eodem monasterio
  Segenius abbas et _presbyter_ præfuit. (Beda, lib. iii, cap. v.) Aidan
  having received the dignity of a bishop at the time when Segenius,
  abbot and presbyter, presided over that monastery. When Bede tells us
  that a plain priest was president, he excludes the idea that there
  were bishops in the assembly. See 1 Timothy, iv, 14.

[Sidenote: DEATH OF OSWALD.]

Oswald received Aidan as an angel from heaven, and as the missionary
was ignorant of the Saxon language, the king accompanied him every
where, standing by his side, and interpreting his gentle
discourses.[66] The people crowded joyfully around Oswald, Aidan, and
other missionaries from Scotland and Ireland, listening eagerly to
the _Word of God_.[67] The king preached by his works still more than
by his words. One day during Easter, as he was about to take his seat
at table, he was informed that a crowd of his subjects, driven by
hunger, had collected before his palace gates. Instantly he ordered
the food prepared for himself to be carried out and distributed among
them; and taking the silver vessels which stood before him, he broke
them in pieces and commanded his servants to divide them among the
poor. He also introduced the knowledge of the Saviour to the people of
Wessex, whither he had gone to marry the king's daughter; and after a
reign of nine years, he died at the head of his army while repelling
an invasion of the idolatrous Mercians, headed by the cruel Penda (5th
August, 642 A. D.) As he fell he exclaimed: "Lord, have mercy on the
souls of my people!" This youthful prince has left a name dear to the
churches of Great Britain.

  [66] Evangelisante antistite, ipse Rex suis ducibus ac ministris
  interpres verbi existeret cœlestis. (Beda, lib. iii, cap. iii.) When
  the bishop was preaching, the king himself interpreted the heavenly
  message to his officers and servants.

  [67] Confluebant _ad audiendum verbum Dei_ populi gaudentes. (Beda,
  lib. iii, cap. iii.) The people eagerly flocked together to hear the
  word of God.

His death did not interrupt the labours of the missionaries. Their
meekness and the recollection of Oswald endeared them to all. As soon
as the villagers caught sight of one on the high-road, they would
throng round him, begging him to teach them the _Word of life_.[68]
The faith which the terrible Edelfrid thought he had washed away in
the blood of the worshippers of God, was re-appearing in every
direction; and Rome, which once already in the days of Honorius had
been forced to leave Britain, might be perhaps a second time compelled
to flee to its ships from before the face of a people who asserted
their liberty.

  [68] Mox congregati in unum vicani, _verbum vitæ_ ab illo expetere
  curabant. (Beda, lib. iii, cap. xxvi.) Presently the villagers flocked
  together earnestly desiring to hear from him the word of life.




CHAPTER III.

     Character of Oswy--Death of Aidan--Wilfrid at Rome--At
     Oswald's Court--Finan and Colman--Independence of the Church
     attacked--Oswy's Conquests and Troubles--_Synodus
     Pharensis_--Cedda--Degeneration--The Disputation--Peter, the
     Gatekeeper--Triumph of Rome--Grief of the Britons--Popedom
     organized in England--Papal Exultation--Archbishop
     Theodore--Cedda re-ordained--Discord in the Church--Disgrace
     and Treachery of Wilfrid--His end--Scotland
     attacked--Adamnan--Iona resists--A King converted by
     Architects--The Monk Egbert at Iona--His History--Monkish
     Visions--Fall of Iona.


[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF OSWY.]

Then up rose the papacy. If victory remained with the Britons, their
church, becoming entirely free, might even in these early times head a
strong opposition against the papal monarchy. If, on the contrary, the
last champions of liberty are defeated, centuries of slavery awaited
the Christian church. We shall have to witness the struggle that took
place erelong in the very palace of the Northumbrian kings.

Oswald was succeeded by his brother Oswy, a prince instructed in the
free doctrine of the Britons, but whose religion was all external. His
heart overflowed with ambition, and he shrank from no crime that might
increase his power. The throne of Deira was filled by his relative
Oswin, an amiable king, much beloved by his people. Oswy, conceiving a
deadly jealousy towards him, marched against him at the head of an
army, and Oswin, desirous of avoiding bloodshed, took shelter with a
chief whom he had loaded with favours. But the latter offered to lead
Oswy's soldiers to his hiding-place; and at dead of night the fugitive
king was basely assassinated, one only of his servants fighting in his
defence. The gentle Aidan died of sorrow at his cruel fate.[69] Such
was the first exploit of that monarch who surrendered England to the
papacy. Various circumstances tended to draw Oswy nearer Rome. He
looked upon the Christian religion as a means of combining the
Christian princes against the heathen Penda, and such a religion, in
which expediency predominated, was not very unlike popery. And
further, Oswy's wife, the proud Eanfeld, was of the Romish communion.
The private chaplain of this bigoted princess was a priest named
Romanus, a man worthy of the name. He zealously maintained the rites
of the Latin church, and accordingly the festival of Easter was
celebrated at court twice in the year; for while the king, following
the eastern rule, was joyfully commemorating the resurrection of our
Lord, the queen, who adopted the Roman ritual, was keeping Palm Sunday
with fasting and humiliation.[70] Eanfeld and Romanus would often
converse together on the means of winning over Northumberland to the
papacy. But the first step was to increase the number of its
partizans, and the opportunity soon occurred.

  [69] Aydanus duodecimo post occisionem regis quem amabat die, de
  seculo ablatus. (Beda, lib. iii, cap. xiv.) Aidan on his twelfth day
  after the death of the king whom he loved, was taken out of the world.

  [70] Cum rex pascha dominicum solutis jejuniis faceret, tunc regina
  cum suis persistens adhuc in jejunio diem l'almarum celebraret. (Beda,
  lib. iii, cap. xxv.) When the king having ended the time of fasting,
  was keeping Easter, the queen with her attendants still fasting, was
  celebrating Palm Sunday.

[Sidenote: WILFRID AT ROME.]

A young Northumbrian, named Wilfrid, was one day admitted to an
audience of the queen. He was a comely man, of extensive knowledge,
keen wit, and enterprising character, of indefatigible activity, and
insatiable ambition.[71] In this interview he remarked to Eanfeld:
"The way which the Scotch teach us is not perfect; I will go to Rome
and learn in the very temples of the apostles." She approved of his
project, and with her assistance and directions he set out for Italy.
Alas! he was destined at no very distant day to chain the whole
British church to the Roman see. After a short stay at Lyons, where
the bishop, delighted at his talents, would have desired to keep him,
he arrived at Rome, and immediately became on the most friendly
footing with archdeacon Boniface, the pope's favourite councillor. He
soon discovered that the priests of France and Italy possessed more
power both in ecclesiastical and secular matters than the humble
missionaries of Iona; and his thirst for honours was inflamed at the
court of the pontiffs. If he should succeed in making England submit
to the papacy, there was no dignity to which he might not aspire.
Henceforward this was his only thought, and he had hardly returned to
Northumberland before Eanfeld eagerly summoned him to court. A
fanatical queen, from whom he might hope every thing--a king with no
religious convictions, and enslaved by political interests--a pious
and zealous prince, Alfred, the king's son, who was desirous of
imitating his noble uncle Oswald, and converting the pagans, but who
had neither the discernment nor the piety of the illustrious disciple
of Iona: such were the materials Wilfrid had to work upon. He saw
clearly that if Rome had gained her first victory by the sword of
Edelfrid, she could only expect to gain a second by craft and
management. He came to an understanding on the subject with the queen
and Romanus, and having been placed about the person of the young
prince, by adroit flattery he soon gained over Alfred's mind. Then
finding himself secure of two members of the royal family, he turned
all his attention to Oswy.

  [71] Acris erat ingenii.....gratia venusti vultus, alacritate
  actionis. Beda, lib. v, p. 135.

[Sidenote: AND AT OSWY'S COURT.]

The elders of Iona could not shut their eyes to the dangers which
threatened Northumberland. They had sent Finan to supply Aidan's
place, and this bishop, consecrated by the presbyters of Iona, had
witnessed the progress of popery at the court; at first humble and
inoffensive, and then increasing year by year in ambition and
audacity. He had openly opposed the pontiff's agents, and his frequent
contests had confirmed him in the truth.[72] He was dead, and the
presbyters of the Western Isles, seeing more clearly than ever the
wants of Northumbria, had sent thither bishop Colman, a simple-minded,
but stout-hearted man,--one determined to oppose a front of adamant to
the wiles of the seducers.

  [72] Apertum veritatis adversarium reddidit, says the Romanist Bede,
  lib. v. p. 135. Had rendered him an open enemy of the truth.

Yet Eanfeld, Wilfrid, and Romanus were skilfully digging the mine that
was to destroy the apostolic church of Britain. At first Wilfrid
prepared his attack by adroit insinuations; and next declared himself
openly in the king's presence. If Oswy withdrew into his domestic
circle, he there found the bigoted Eanfeld, who zealously continued
the work of the Roman missionary. No opportunities were neglected: in
the midst of the diversions of the court, at table, and even during
the chase, discussions were perpetually raised on the controverted
doctrines. Men's minds became excited: the Romanists already assumed
the air of conquerors; and the Britons often withdrew full of anxiety
and fear. The king, placed between his wife and his faith, and wearied
by these disputes, inclined first to one side, and then to the other,
as if he would soon fall altogether.

[Sidenote: SYNODUS PHARENSIS.]

The papacy had more powerful motives than ever for coveting
Northumberland. Oswy had not only usurped the throne of Deira, but
after the death of the cruel Penda, who fell in battle in 654, he had
conquered his states with the exception of a portion governed by his
son-in-law Peada, the son of Penda. But Peada himself having fallen in
a conspiracy said to have been got up by his wife, the daughter of
Oswy, the latter completed the conquest of Mercia, and thus united the
greatest part of England under his sceptre. Kent alone at that time
acknowledged the jurisdiction of Rome: in every other province, free
ministers, protected by the kings of Northumberland, preached the
Gospel. This wonderfully simplified the question. If Rome gained over
Oswy, she would gain England: if she failed, she must sooner or later
leave that island altogether.

This was not all. The blood of Oswyn, the premature death of Aidan,
and other things besides, troubled the king's breast. He desired to
appease the Deity he had offended, and not knowing that _Christ is the
door_, as holy Scripture tells us, he sought among men for a
_doorkeeper_ who would open to him the kingdom of heaven. He was far
from being the last of those kings whom the necessity of expiating
their crimes impelled towards Romish practices. The crafty Wilfrid,
keeping alive both the hopes and fears of the prince, often spoke to
him of Rome, and of the grace to be found there. He thought that the
fruit was ripe, and that now he had only to shake the tree. "We must
have a public disputation, in which the question may be settled once
for all," said the queen and her advisers; "but Rome must take her
part in it with as much pomp as her adversaries. Let us oppose bishop
to bishop." A Saxon bishop named Agilbert, a friend of Wilfrid's, who
had won the affection of the young prince Alfred, was invited by
Eanfeld to the conference, and he arrived in Northumberland attended
by a priest named Agathon. Alas! poor British church, the earthen
vessel is about to be dashed against the vase of iron. Britain must
yield before the invading march of Rome.

On the coast of Yorkshire, at the farther extremity of a quiet bay,
was situated the monastery of Strenæshalh, or Whitby, of which Hilda,
the pious daughter of king Edwin, was abbess. She, too, was desirous
of seeing a termination of the violent disputes which had agitated the
church since Wilfrid's return. On the shores of the North Sea[73] the
struggle was to be decided between Britain and Rome, between the East
and the West, or, as they said then, between Saint John and Saint
Peter. It was not a mere question about Easter, or certain rules of
discipline, but of the great doctrine of the freedom of the church
under Jesus Christ, or its enslavement under the papacy. Rome, ever
domineering, desired for the second time to hold England in its
grasp, not by means of the sword, but by her dogmas. With her usual
cunning she concealed her enormous pretensions under secondary
questions, and many superficial thinkers were deceived by this
manœuvre.

  [73] This conference is generally known as the _Synodus Pharensis_
  (from _Strenæshalh_, sinus Phari). "Hodie Whitbie dicitur (White bay),
  et est villa in Eboracensi littore satis nota" Wilkius, Concii. p. 37,
  note.

[Sidenote: CEDDA.]

The meeting took place in the convent of Whitby. The king and his son
entered first; then, on the one side, Colman, with the bishops and
elders of the Britons; and on the other bishop Agilbert, Agathon,
Wilfrid, Romanus, a deacon named James, and several other priests of
the Latin confession. Last of all came Hilda with her attendants,
among whom was an English bishop named Cedda, one of the most active
missionaries of the age.[74] He had at first preached the Gospel in
the midland districts, whence he turned his footsteps towards the
Anglo-Saxons of the East, and after converting a great number of these
pagans, he had returned to Finan, and, although an Englishman, had
received Episcopal consecration from a bishop, who had been himself
ordained by the elders of Iona. Then proceeding westwards, the
indefatigable evangelist founded churches, and appointed elders and
deacons wherever he went.[75] By birth an Englishman, by ordination a
Scotchman, everywhere treated with respect and consideration, he
appeared to be set apart as mediator in this solemn conference. His
intervention could not however, retard the victory of Rome. Alas! the
primitive evangelism had gradually given way to an ecclesiasticism,
coarse and rude in one place, subtle and insinuating in another.
Whenever the priests were called upon to justify certain doctrines or
ceremonies, instead of referring solely to the word of God, that
fountain of all light, they maintained that thus St. James did at
Jerusalem, St. Mark at Alexandria, St. John at Ephesus, or St. Peter
at Rome. They gave the name of _apostolical canons_, to rules which
the apostles had never known. They even went further than this: at
Rome and in the East, ecclesiasticism represented itself to be a law
of God, and from a state of weakness, it thus became a state of sin.
Some marks of this error were already beginning to appear in the
Christianity of the Britons.

  [74] Presbyteri Cedda et Adda et Berti Duina, quorum ultimus natione
  Scotus, cæteri fuere Angli. (Beda, lib. iii, cap. xxi) These
  presbyters were Cedda and Adda and Berti and Dinna, of whom the last
  was by nation a Scot, the rest were English.

  [75] Qui accepto gradu episcopatus et majore auctoritate cœptum opus
  explens, fecit per loca ecclesias, presbyteros et diaconos ordinavit.
  (Beda, lib. iii, cap. xxii.) Who having received the episcopal dignity
  and pursuing the work he had begun with more ample authority, built
  churches in various places, and ordained presbyters and deacons.

[Sidenote: THE DISPUTATION.]

King Oswy was the first to speak: "As servants of one and the same
God, we hope all to enjoy the same inheritance in heaven; why then
should we not have the same rule of life here below? Let us inquire
which is the true one, and follow it."... "Those who sent me hither as
bishop," said Colman, "and who gave me the rule which I observe, are
the beloved of God. Let us beware how we despise their teaching, for
it is the teaching of Columba, of the blessed evangelist John,[76] and
of the churches over which that apostle presided."

  [76] Ipsum est quod beatus evangelista Johannes, discipulus
  specialiter Domino dilectus. Beda, lib. iii. cap. xxv.

"As for us," boldly rejoined Wilfrid, for to him as to the most
skilful had bishop Agilbert intrusted the defence of their cause, "our
custom is that of Rome, where the holy apostles Peter and Paul taught;
we found it in Italy and Gaul, nay, it is spread over every nation.
Shall the Picts and Britons, cast on these two islands, on the very
confines of the ocean, dare to contend against the whole world?[77]
However holy your Columba may have been, will you prefer him to the
prince of the apostles, to whom Christ said, _Thou art Peter, and I
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven_?"

  [77] Pictos dico ac Brittones, cum quibus de duabus ultimis oceani
  insulis, contra totum orbem stulto labore pugnant. Ibid.

[Sidenote: SORROW OF THE BRITONS.]

Wilfrid spoke with animation, and his words being skilfully adapted to
his audience, began to make them waver. He had artfully substituted
Columba for the apostle John, from whom the British church claimed
descent, and opposed to Saint Peter a plain elder of Iona. Oswy, whose
idol was power, could not hesitate between paltry bishops and that
pope of Rome who commanded the whole world. Already imagining he saw
Peter at the gates of paradise, with the keys in his hand, he
exclaimed with emotion: "Is it true, Colman, that these words were
addressed by our Lord to Saint Peter?" "It is true." "Can you prove
that similar powers were given to your Columba?" The bishop replied
"We cannot;" but he might have told the king: "John, whose doctrine we
follow, and indeed every disciple, has received in the same sense as
St. Peter the power to remit sins, to bind and to loose on earth and
in heaven."[78] But the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures was fading
away in Iona, and the unsuspecting Colman had not observed Wilfrid's
stratagem in substituting Columba for Saint John. Upon this Oswy,
delighted to yield to the continual solicitations of the queen, and
above all, to find some one who would admit him into the kingdom of
heaven, exclaimed: "Peter is the doorkeeper, I will obey him, lest
when I appear at the gate there should be no one to open it to
me."[79] The spectators, carried away by this royal confession,
hastened to give in their submission to the vicar of St. Peter.

  [78] John xx 23; Matth. xviii. 18.

  [79] Ne forte me adveniente ad fores regni cœlorum, non sit qui
  reserat. Beda. lib. ii. cap. xxv.

Thus did Rome Triumph at the Whitby conference. Oswy forgot that the
Lord had said: _I am he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and
shutteth, and no man openeth_.[80] It was by ascribing to Peter the
servant, what belongs to Jesus Christ the master, that the papacy
reduced Britain. Oswy stretched out his hands, Rome riveted the
chains, and the liberty which Oswald had given his church seemed at
the last gasp.

  [80] John x, 9; Rev. iii, 7.

Colman saw with grief and consternation Oswy and his subjects bending
their knees before the foreign priests. He did not, however, despair
of the ultimate triumph of the truth. The apostolic faith could still
find shelter in the old sanctuaries of the British church in Scotland
and Ireland. Immovable in the doctrine he had received, and resolute
to uphold Christian liberty, Colman withdrew with those who would not
bend beneath the yoke of Rome, and returned to Scotland. Thirty
Anglo-Saxons, and a great number of Britons, shook off the dust of
their feet against the tents of the Romish priests. The hatred of
popery became more intense day by day among the remainder of the
Britons. Determined to repel its erroneous dogmas and its illegitimate
dominion, they maintained their communion with the Eastern Church,
which was more ancient than that of Rome. They shuddered as they saw
the red dragon of the Celts gradually retiring towards the western sea
from before the white dragon of the Saxons. They ascribed their
misfortunes to a horrible conspiracy planned by the iniquitous
ambition of the foreign monks, and the bards in their chants cursed
the negligent ministers who defended not the flock of the Lord against
the wolves of Rome.[81] But vain were the lamentations!

  [81] Horæ Britannicæ, b. ii, p. 277.

[Sidenote: PAPACY ORGANIZED IN BRITAIN.]

The Romish priests, aided by the queen, lost no time. Wilfrid, whom
Oswy desired to reward for his triumph, was named bishop of
Northumberland, and he immediately visited Paris to receive episcopal
consecration in due form. He soon returned, and proceeded with
singular activity to establish the Romish doctrine in all the
churches.[82] Bishop of a diocese extending from Edinburgh to
Northampton, enriched with the goods which had belonged to divers
monasteries, surrounded by a numerous train, served upon gold and
silver plate, Wilfrid congratulated himself on having espoused the
cause of the papacy; he offended every one who approached him by his
insolence, and taught England how wide was the difference between the
humble ministers of Iona and a Romish priest. At the same time Oswy,
coming to an understanding with the king of Kent, sent another priest
named Wighard to Rome to learn the pope's intentions respecting the
church in England, and to receive consecration as archbishop of
Canterbury. There was no episcopal ordination in England worthy of a
priest! In the meanwhile Oswy, with all the zeal of a new convert,
ceased not to repeat that "the Roman Church was the Catholic and
apostolic church," and thought night and day on the means of
converting his subjects, hoping thus (says a pope) to redeem his own
soul.[83]

  [82] Ipse perplura catholicæ observationis moderamina ecclesiis
  Anglorum sua doctrina contulit. (Beda, lib. iii, cap. xxvlii) He by
  his doctrine brought into the churches of England many rules of
  catholic observance.

  [83] Omnes subjectos suos meditatur die ac nocte ad fidem catholicam
  atque apostolicam pro suæ animæ redemptione converti. (Beda, lib. iii,
  cap. xxix.) He studies day and night that all his subjects may be
  converted to the catholic and apostolic faith, for the salvation of
  his own soul.

The arrival of this news at Rome created a great sensation. Vitalian,
who then filled the episcopal chair, and was as insolent to his
bishops as he was fawning and servile to the emperor, exclaimed with
transport: "Who would not be overjoyed![84] a king converted to the
true apostolic faith, a people that believes at last in Christ the
Almighty God!" For many long years this people had believed in Christ,
but they were now beginning to believe in the pope, and the pope will
soon make them forget Jesus the Saviour. Vitalian wrote to Oswy, and
sent him--not copies of the Holy Scriptures (which were already
becoming scarce at Rome), but--relics of the Saints Peter, John,
Lawrence, Gregory, and Pancratius; and being in an especial manner
desirous of rewarding Queen Eanfeld, to whom with Wilfrid belonged the
glory of this work, he offered her a cross, made, as he assured her,
out of the chains of St. Peter and St. Paul.[85] "Delay not," said the
pope in conclusion, "to reduce all your island under Jesus Christ," or
in other words, under the bishop of Rome.

  [84] Quis enim audiens hæc suavia non lætetur? Ibid.

  [85] Conjugi, nostræ spirituali filiæ, crucem...... (Beda, lib. iii.
  cap. xxix.) To your consort, our spiritual daughter, a cross.....

The essential thing, however, was to send an archbishop from Rome to
Britain; but Wighard was dead, and no one seemed willing to undertake
so long a journey.[86]

  [86] Minime voluimus nunc reperire pro longinquitate itineris. (Ibid.)
  On account of the length of the journey, we have not been able to
  find...

[Sidenote: ARCHBISHOP THEODORE]

There was not much zeal in the city, of the pontiffs: and the pope was
compelled to look out for a stranger. There happened at that time to
be in Rome a man of great reputation for learning, who had come from
the east, and adopted the rites and doctrines of the Latins in
exchange for the knowledge he had brought them. He was pointed out to
Vitalian as well qualified to be the metropolitan of England.
Theodore, for such was his name, belonging by birth to the churches of
Asia Minor, would be listened to by the Britons in preference to any
other, when he solicited them to abandon their oriental customs. The
Roman pontiff, however, fearful perhaps that he might yet entertain
some leaven of his former Greek doctrines, gave him as companion, or
rather as overseer, a zealous African monk named Adrian.[87]

  [87] Ut diligenter attenderet, ne quid ille contrarium veritati,
  fidei. Græcorum more, in ecclesiam cui præesset introduceret. (Beda,
  lib. iv. cap. i.) That he should constantly attend him, lest after the
  manner of the Greeks, he should introduce any thing contrary to the
  true faith into the church over which he presided.

Theodore began the great crusade against British Christianity, and
endeavouring to show the sincerity of his conversion by his zeal, he
traversed all England in company with Adrian,[88] every where imposing
on the people that ecclesiastical supremacy to which Rome is indebted
for her political supremacy. The superiority of character which
distinguished Saint Peter, Theodore transformed into a superiority of
office. For the jurisdiction of Christ and his word, he substituted
that of the bishop of Rome and of his decrees. He insisted on the
necessity of ordination by bishops who, in an unbroken chain, could
trace back their authority to the apostles themselves. The British
still maintained the validity of their consecration; but the number
was small of those who understood that pretended successors of the
apostles, who sometimes carry Satan in their hearts, are not true
ministers of Christ; that the one thing needful for the church is,
that the apostles themselves (and not their successors only) should
dwell in its bosom by their word, by their teaching, and by the Divine
Comforter who shall be with it for ever and ever.

  [88] Peragrata insula tota, rectum vivendi ordinem disseminabat.
  (Ibid. cap. ii.) He visited the whole island, and taught the right
  rule of life.

[Sidenote: DISCORD IN THE CHURCH.]

The grand defection now began: the best were sometimes the first to
yield. When Theodore met Cedda, who had been consecrated by a bishop
who had himself received ordination from the elders of Iona, he said
to him: "You have not been regularly ordained." Cedda, instead of
standing up boldly for the truth, gave way to a carnal modesty, and
replied: "I never thought myself worthy of the episcopate, and am
ready to lay it down."--"No," said Theodore, "you shall remain a
bishop, but I will consecrate you anew according to the catholic
ritual."[89] The British minister submitted. Rome triumphant felt
herself strong enough to deny the imposition of hands of the elders of
Iona, which she had hitherto recognised. The most stedfast believers
took refuge in Scotland.

  [89] Cum Ceadda Episcopum argueret non fuisse rite consecratum, ipse
  (Theodorus) ordinationem, ejus denuo catholica ratione consummavit.
  (Beda, lib. iv. cap. ii.) When he charged Cedda with not being a
  regularly ordained bishop, he (Theodore) himself completed his
  ordination after the catholic manner.

In this manner a church in some respects deficient, but still a church
in which the religious element held the foremost place, was succeeded
by another in which the clerical element predominated. This was soon
apparent: questions of authority and precedence, hitherto unknown
among the British Christians, were now of daily occurrence. Wilfrid,
who had fixed his residence at York, thought that no one deserved
better than he to be primate of all England; and Theodore on his part
was irritated at the haughty tone assumed by this bishop. During the
life of Oswy, peace was maintained, for Wilfrid was his favourite; but
ere long that prince fell ill; and, terrified by the near approach of
death, he vowed that if he recovered he would make a pilgrimage to
Rome and there end his days.[90] "If you will be my guide to the city
of the apostles," he said to Wilfrid, "I will give you a large sum of
money." But his vow was of no avail: Oswy died in the spring of the
year 670 A.D.

  [90] Ut si ab infirmitate salvaretur, etiam Romam venire, ibique ad
  loca sancta vitam finire. Beda, lib. iv. cap. ii.

[Sidenote: WILFRED'S DISGRACE AND END.]

The _Witan_ set aside Prince Alfred, and raised his youngest brother
Egfrid to the throne. The new monarch, who had often been offended by
Wilfrid's insolence, denounced this haughty prelate to the archbishop.
Nothing could be more agreeable to Theodore. He assembled a council at
Hertford, before which the chief of his converts were first summoned,
and presenting to them, not the holy scripture but the _canons of the
Romish church_,[91] he received their solemn oaths: such was the
religion then taught in England. But this was not all. "The diocese of
our brother Wilfrid is so extensive," said the primate, "that there is
room in it for four bishops." They were appointed accordingly. Wilfrid
indignantly appealed from the primate and the king to the pope. "Who
converted England, who, if not I? ... and it is thus I am
rewarded!"... Not allowing himself to be checked by the difficulties
of the journey, he set out for Rome, attended by a few monks, and Pope
Agathon assembling a council (679), the Englishman presented his
complaint, and the pontiff declared the destitution to be illegal.
Wilfrid immediately returned to England, and haughtily presented the
pope's decree to the king. But Egfrid, who was not of a disposition to
tolerate these transalpine manners, far from restoring the see, cast
the prelate into prison, and did not release him until the end of the
year, and then only on condition that he would immediately quit
Northumbria.

  [91] Quibus statim protuli eundem librum canonum. (Ibid. cap. v.) To
  whom I straightway presented the same book of canons.

Wilfrid--for we must follow even to the end of his life that
remarkable man, who exercised so great an influence over the destinies
of the English church--Wilfrid was determined to be a bishop at any
cost. The kingdom of Sussex was still pagan; and the deposed prelate,
whose indefatigable activity we cannot but acknowledge, formed the
resolution of winning a bishopric, as other men plan the conquest of a
kingdom. He arrived in Sussex during a period of famine, and having
brought with him a number of nets, he taught the people the art of
fishing, and thus gained their affections. Their king Edilwalch had
been baptized, his subjects now followed his example, and Wilfrid was
placed at the head of the church. But he soon manifested the
disposition by which he was animated: he furnished supplies of men and
money to Ceadwalla, king of Wessex, and this cruel chieftain made a
fierce inroad into Sussex, laying it waste, and putting to death
Edilwalch, the prelate's benefactor. The career of the turbulent
bishop was not ended. King Egfrid died, and was succeeded by his
brother Alfred, whom Wilfrid had brought up, a prince fond of learning
and religion, and emulous of the glory of his uncle Oswald. The
ambitious Wilfrid hastened to claim his see of York, by acquiescing in
the partition; it was restored to him, and he forthwith began to
plunder others to enrich himself. A council begged him to submit to
the decrees of the church of England; he refused, and having lost the
esteem of the king, his former pupil, he undertook, notwithstanding
his advanced years, a third journey to Rome. Knowing how popes are
won, he threw himself at the pontiff's feet, exclaiming that "the
suppliant bishop Wilfrid, the humble slave of the servant of God,
implored the favour of our most blessed lord, the pope universal." The
bishop could not restore his creature to his see, and the short
remainder of Wilfrid's life was spent in the midst of the riches his
cupidity had so unworthily accumulated.

Yet he had accomplished the task of his life: all England was
subservient to the papacy. The names of _Oswy_ and of _Wilfrid_ should
be inscribed in letters of mourning in the annals of Great Britain.
Posterity has erred in permitting them to sink into oblivion; for they
were two of the most influential and energetic men that ever
flourished in England. Still this very forgetfulness is not wanting in
generosity. The grave in which the liberty of the church lay buried
for nine centuries is the only monument--a mournful one indeed--that
should perpetuate their memory.

[Sidenote: ADAMNAN.]

But Scotland was still free, and to secure the definitive triumph of
Rome, it was necessary to invade that virgin soil, over which the
standard of the faith had floated for so many years.

Adamnan was then at the head of the church of Iona, the first elder of
that religious house. He was virtuous and learned, but weak and
somewhat vain, and his religion had little spirituality. To gain him
was in the eyes of Rome to gain Scotland. A singular circumstance
favoured the plans of those who desired to draw him into the papal
communion. One day during a violent tempest, a ship coming from the
Holy Land, and on board of which was a Gaulish bishop named Arculf,
was wrecked in the neighbourhood of Iona.[92] Arculf eagerly sought an
asylum among the pious inhabitants of that island. Adamnan never grew
tired of hearing the stranger's descriptions of Bethlehem, Jerusalem,
and Golgotha, of the sun-burnt plains over which our Lord had
wandered, and the cleft stone which still lay before the door of the
sepulchre.[93] The elder of Iona, who prided himself on his learning,
noted down Arculf's conversation, and from it composed a description
of the Holy Land. As soon as his book was completed, the desire of
making these wondrous things more widely known, combined with a little
vanity, and perhaps other motives, urged him to visit the court of
Northumberland, where he presented his work to the pious King
Alfred,[94] who, being fond of learning and of the Christian
traditions, caused a number of copies of it to be made.

  [92] Vi tempestatis in occidentalia Britanniæ littora delatus est.
  Beda, lib. v, cap. xvi.

  [93] Lapis qui ad ostium monumenti positus erat, fissus est. (Ibid.
  cap. xvii.) The stone which was laid at the door of the sepulchre is
  now cleft in two.

  [94] Porrexit autem librum tunc Adamnanus Alfrido regi. Ibid. cap.
  xvi.

[Sidenote: RESISTANCE OF IONA.]

Nor was this all: the Romish clergy perceived the advantage they might
derive from this imprudent journey. They crowded round the elder; they
showed him all the pomp of their worship, and said to him: "Will you
and your friends, who live at the very extremity of the world, set
yourselves in opposition to the observances of the universal
church?"[95] The nobles of the court flattered the author's self-love,
and invited him to their festivities, while the king loaded him with
presents. The free presbyter of Britain became a priest of Rome, and
Adamnan returned to Iona to betray his church to his new masters. But
it was all to no purpose: Iona would not give way.[96] He then went to
hide his shame in Ireland, where having brought a few individuals to
the Romish uniformity, he took courage and revisited Scotland. But
that country, still inflexible, repelled him with indignation.[97]

  [95] Ne contra universalem ecclesiæ morem, cum suis paucissimis et in
  extremo mundi angulo positis, vivere præsumeret. Beda, lib. v, cap.
  xvi.

  [96] Curavit suos ad eum veritatis calcem producere, nec voluit. Beda,
  lib. v. cap. xvi.

  [97] Nec tamen perficere quod conabatur posset. Ibid. The conversions
  of which abbot Ceolfrid speaks in chap. xxii. are probably those
  effected in Ireland, the word Scotia being at this period frequently
  applied to that country.

When Rome found herself unable to conquer by the priest, she had
recourse to the prince, and her eyes were turned to Naitam, king of
the Picts. "How much more glorious it would be for you," urged the
Latin priests, "to belong to the powerful church of the universal
pontiff of Rome, than to a congregation superintended by miserable
elders! The Romish church is a monarchy, and ought to be the church of
every monarch. The Roman ceremonial accords with the pomp of royalty,
and its temples are palaces." The prince was convinced by the last
argument. He despatched messengers to Ceolfrid, the abbot of an
English convent, begging him to send him _architects_ capable of
building a church _after the Roman pattern_[98]--of stone and not of
wood. Architects, majestic porches, lofty columns, vaulted roofs,
gilded altars, have often proved the most influential of Rome's
missionaries. The builder's art, though in its earliest and simplest
days, was more powerful than the Bible. Naitam, who, by submitting to
the pope thought himself the equal of Clovis and Clotaire, assembled
the nobles of his court and the pastors of his church, and thus
addressed them: "I recommend all the clergy of my kingdom to receive
the tonsure of Saint Peter."[99] Then without delay (as Bede informs
us) this important revolution was accomplished by royal
authority.[100] He sent agents and letters into every province, and
caused all the ministers and monks to receive the circular tonsure
according to the Roman fashion.[101] It was the mark that popery
stamped, not on the forehead, but on the crown. A royal proclamation
and a few clips of the scissors placed the Scotch, like a flock of
sheep, beneath the crook of the shepherd of the Tiber.

  [98] Architectos sibi mitti petiit qui juxta morem Romanorum ecclesiam
  facerent. Beda, lib. v. cap. xxii.

  [99] Et hanc accipere tonsuram, omnes qui in meo regno sunt clericos
  decerno. Ibid.

  [100] Nec mora, quæ? dixerat regia auctoritate perfecit. Ibid.

  [101] Per universas Pictorum provincias....tondebantur omnes in
  coronam ministri altaris ac monachi. (Ibid.) Throughout all the
  provinces of the Picts ... all the ministers of the altar and monks
  had the crown shorn.

[Sidenote: EGBERT THE MONK AT IONA.]

Iona still held out. The orders of the Pictish king, the example of
his subjects, the sight of that Italian power which was devouring the
earth, had shaken some few minds; but the Church still resisted the
innovation. Iona was the last citadel of liberty in the western
world, and popery was filled with anger at that miserable band which
in its remote corner refused to bend before it. Human means appeared
insufficient to conquer this rock: something more was needed, visions
and miracles for example; and these Rome always finds when she wants
them. One day towards the end of the seventh century, an English monk,
named Egbert, arriving from Ireland, appeared before the elders of
Iona, who received him with their accustomed hospitality. He was a man
in whom enthusiastic devotion was combined with great gentleness of
heart, and he soon won upon the minds of these simple believers. He
spoke to them of an external unity, urging that a universality
manifested under different forms was unsuited to the church of Christ.
He advocated the special form of Rome, and for the truly catholic
element which the Christians of Iona had thus far possessed,
substituted a sectarian element. He attacked the traditions of the
British church,[102] and lavishly distributing the rich presents
confided to him by the lords of Ireland and of England,[103] he soon
had reason to acknowledge the truth of the saying of the wise man: _A
gift is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that hath it:
whithersoever it turneth it prospereth_.

  [102] Sedulis exhortationibus inveteratam illam traditionem parentum
  eorum. (Beda, lib. v. cap. xxiii.) By his frequent exhortations, he
  converted them from that inveterate tradition of their ancestors.

  [103] Pietate largiendi de his quæ a divitibus acceperat, multum
  profuit. (Ibid. cap. xxvii.) He did much good by the pious
  distribution of those gifts which he had received from the rich.

[Sidenote: MONKISH VISIONS.]

Some pious souls, however, still held out in Iona. The enthusiast
Egbert--for such he appears to have been rather than an impostor--had
recourse to other means. He represented himself to be a messenger from
heaven: the saints themselves, said he, have commissioned me to
convert Iona; and then he told the following history to the elders who
stood round him. "About thirty years ago I entered the monastery of
Rathmelfig in Ireland, when a terrible pestilence fell upon it, and of
all the brethren the monk Edelhun and myself were left alone. Attacked
by the plague, and fearing my last hour was come, I rose from my bed
and crept into the chapel.[104] There my whole body trembled at the
recollection of my sins, and my face was bathed with tears. 'O God,' I
exclaimed, 'suffer me not to die until I have redeemed my debt to thee
by an abundance of good works.[105] I returned staggering to the
infirmary, got into bed, and fell asleep. When I awoke, I saw Edelhun
with his eyes fixed on mine. 'Brother Egbert,' said he, 'it has been
revealed to me in a vision that thou shalt receive what thou hast
asked.' On the following night Edelhun died and I recovered.

  [104] Cum se existimaret esse moriturum, egressus est tempore matutino
  de cubiculo, et residens solus..... Beda, lib. iii. cap. xxvii.

  [105] Precabatur ne adhuc mori deberet priusquam vel præteritas
  negligentias perfectim ex tempore castigaret, vel in bonis es operibus
  abundantius exerceret. Ibid.

"Many years passed away: my repentance and my vigils did not satisfy
me, and wishing to pay my debt, I resolved to go with a company of
monks and preach the blessings of the gospel to the heathens of
Germany. But during the night a blessed saint from heaven appeared to
one of the brethren and said: 'Tell Egbert that he must go to the
monasteries of Columba, for their ploughs do not plough straight, and
he must put them into the right furrow.'[106] I forbade this brother
to speak of his vision, and went on board a ship bound for Germany. We
were waiting for a favourable wind, when, of a sudden, in the middle
of the night, a frightful tempest burst upon the vessel, and drove us
on the shoals. 'For my sake this tempest is upon us,' I exclaimed in
terror; 'God speaks to me as He did to Jonah;' and I ran to take
refuge in my cell. At last I determined to obey the command which the
holy man had brought me. I left Ireland, and came among you, in order
to pay my debt by converting you. And now," continued Egbert, "make
answer to the voice of heaven, and submit to Rome."

  [106] Quia aratra eorum non recte incedunt; oportet autem eum ad
  rectum hæc tramitem revocare. Beda, lib. iii. cap. xxvii.

A ship thrown on shore by a storm was a frequent occurrence on those
coasts, and the dream of a monk, absorbed in the plans of his brother,
was nothing very unnatural. But in those times of darkness, everything
appeared miraculous; phantoms and apparitions had more weight than the
word of God. Instead of detecting the emptiness of these visions by
the falseness of the religion they were brought to support, the elders
of Iona listened seriously to Egbert's narrative. The primitive faith
planted on the rock of Icolmkill was now like a pine-tree tossed by
the winds: but one gust, and it would be uprooted and blown into the
sea. Egbert, perceiving the elders to be shaken, redoubled his
prayers, and even had recourse to threats. "All the west," said he,
"bends the knee to Rome: alone against all, what can you do?" The
Scotch still resisted: obscure and unknown, the last British
Christians contended in behalf of expiring liberty. At length
bewildered--they stumbled and fell. The scissors were brought; they
received the Latin tonsure[107]--they were the pope's.

  [107] Ad ritum tonsuræ canonicum sub figura coronæ perpetuæ. (Beda,
  lib. v. cap. xxiii.) To the canonical rite of the tonsure under the
  form of a perpetual crown.

[Sidenote: FALL OF IONA.]

Thus fell Scotland. Yet there still remained some sparks of grace, and
the mountains of Caledonia long concealed the hidden fire which after
many ages burst forth with such power and might. Here and there a few
independent spirits were to be found who testified against the tyranny
of Rome. In the time of Bede they might be seen "halting in their
paths," (to use the words of the Romish historian,) refusing to join
in the holidays of the pontifical adherents, and pushing away the
hands that were eager to shave their crowns.[108] But the leaders of
the state and of the church had laid down their arms. The contest was
over, after lasting more than a century. British Christianity had in
some degree prepared its own fall, by substituting too often the form
for the faith. The foreign superstition took advantage of this
weakness, and triumphed in these islands by means of royal decrees,
church ornaments, monkish phantoms, and conventual apparitions. At the
beginning of the eighth century the British Church became the serf of
Rome; but an internal struggle was commencing, which did not cease
until the period of the Reformation.

  [108] Sicut a contra Brittones, inveterati et claudicantes a semitis
  suis, et capita ferre sine corona prætendunt. (Beda, lib. v, cap.
  xxiii.) Even as, on the contrary, the Britons, inveterate and halting
  in their paths, expose their heads without a crown.




CHAPTER IV.

     Clement--Struggle between a Scotchman and an
     Englishman--Word of God only--Clement's Success--His
     condemnation--Virgil and the Antipodes--John Scotus and
     Philosophical Religion--Alfred and the Bible--Darkness and
     Popery--William the Conqueror--Wulston at Edward's
     Tomb--Struggle between William and Hildebrand--The Pope
     yields--Cæsaropapia.


The independent Christians of Scotland, who subordinated the authority
of man to that of God, were filled with sorrow as they beheld these
back-slidings: and it was this no doubt which induced many to leave
their homes and fight in the very heart of Europe in behalf of that
Christian liberty which had just expired among themselves.

[Sidenote: CLEMENT AND BONIFACE.]

At the commencement of the eighth century a great idea took possession
of a pious doctor of the Scottish church named Clement.[109] The
_work of God_ is the very essence of Christianity, thought he, and
this work must be defended against all the encroachments of man. To
human traditionalism he opposed the sole authority of the word of God;
to clerical materialism, a church which is the assembly of the saints;
and to Pelagianism, the sovereignty of grace. He was a man of decided
character and firm faith, but without fanaticism; his heart was open
to the holiest emotions of our nature; he was a husband and a father.
He quitted Scotland and travelled among the Franks, every where
scattering the seeds of the faith. It happened unfortunately that a
man of kindred energy, Winifrid or Boniface of Wessex, was planting
the pontifical Christianity in the same regions. This great
missionary, who possessed in an essential degree the faculty of
organization, aimed at external unity above all things, and when he
had taken the oath of fidelity to Gregory II., he had received from
that pope a collection of the Roman laws. Boniface, henceforth a
docile disciple or rather a fanatical champion of Rome, supported on
the one hand by the pontiff, and on the other by Charles Martel, had
preached to the people of Germany, among some undoubted Christian
truths,--the doctrine of tithes and of papal supremacy. The Englishman
and the Scotchman, representatives of two great systems, were about to
engage in deadly combat in the heart of Europe--in a combat whose
consequences might be incalculable.

  [109] Alter qui dicitur Clemens, genere _Scotus_ est. Bonifacii
  epistola ad Papam, Labbei concilia ad ann. 745.

[Sidenote: CLEMENT'S SUCCESS.]

Alarmed at the progress made by Clement's evangelical doctrines,
Boniface, archbishop of the German churches, undertook to oppose them.
At first he confronted the Scotchman with the laws of the Roman
church; but the latter denied the authority of these ecclesiastical
canons, and refuted their contents.[110] Boniface then put forward the
decisions of various councils; but Clement replied that if the
decisions of the councils are contrary to holy Scripture, they have no
authority over Christians.[111] The archbishop, astonished at such
audacity, next had recourse to the writings of the most illustrious
fathers of the Latin church, quoting Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory;
but the Scotchman told him, that instead of submitting to the word of
men, he would obey the word of God alone.[112] Boniface with
indignation now introduced the Catholic church which, by its priests
and bishops, all united to the pope, forms an invincible unity; but
to his great surprise his opponent maintained that there only, where
the Holy Spirit dwells, can be found the spouse of Jesus Christ.[113]
Vainly did the archbishop express his horror; Clement was not to be
turned aside from his great idea, either by the clamours of the
followers of Rome, or by the imprudent attacks made on the papacy by
other Christian ministers. Rome had, indeed, other adversaries. A
Gallic bishop named Adalbert, with whom Boniface affected to associate
Clement, one day saw the archbishop complacently exhibiting to the
people some relics of St. Peter which he had brought from Rome; and
being desirous of showing the ridiculous character of these Romish
practices, he distributed among the bystanders his own hair and nails,
praying them to pay these the same honours as Boniface claimed for the
relics of the papacy. Clement smiled, like many others, at Adalbert's
singular argument; but it was not with such arms that he was wont to
fight. Gifted with profound discernment, he had remarked that the
authority of man substituted for the authority of God was the source
of all the errors of Romanism. At the same time he maintained on
predestination what the archbishop called "horrible doctrines,
contrary to the Catholic faith."[114] Clement's character inclines us
to believe that he was favourable to the doctrine of predestination. A
century later the pious Gottschalk was persecuted by one of Boniface's
successors for holding this very doctrine of Augustine's. Thus then
did a Scotchman, the representative of the ancient faith of his
country, withstand almost unaided in the centre of Europe the invasion
of the Romans. But he was not long alone: the great especially, more
enlightened than the common people, thronged around him. If Clement
had succeeded, a Christian church would have been founded on the
continent independent of the papacy.

  [110] Canones ecclesiarum Christi abnegat et refutat. Ibid.

  [111] Synodalia jura spernens. Ibid.

  [112] Tractatus et sermones sanctorum patrum, Hieronymi, Augustini,
  Gregorii recusat. Ibid.

  [113] Clemens contra catholicam contendit ecclesiam. Bonifacii
  epistola ad Papam, Labbei concilia ad ann. 745.

  [114] Multa alia horribilia de prædestinatione Dei, contraria fidei
  catholicæ affirmat. Ibid.

Boniface was confounded. He wished to do in central Europe what his
fellow-countryman Wilfrid had done in England; and at the very moment
he fancied he was advancing from triumph to triumph, victory escaped
from his hands. He turned against this new enemy, and applying to
Charles Martel's sons, Pepin and Carloman, he obtained their consent
to the assembling of a council before which he summoned Clement to
appear.

[Sidenote: CLEMENT CONDEMNED.]

The bishops, counts, and other notabilities having met at Soissons on
the 2nd March 744, Boniface accused the Scotchman of despising the
laws of Rome, the councils, and the fathers; attacked his marriage,
which he called an adulterous union, and called in question some
secondary points of doctrine. Clement was accordingly excommunicated
by Boniface, at once his adversary, accuser, and judge, and thrown
into prison, with the approbation of the pope and the king of the
Franks.[115]

  [115] Sacerdotio privans, reduci facit in custodiam. Concilium
  Romanum. Bonifacii epistola ad Papam, Labbei concilia ad ann. 745.

The Scotchman's cause was every where taken up; accusations were
brought against the German primate, his persecuting spirit was
severely condemned, and his exertions for the triumph of the papacy
were resisted.[116] Carloman yielded to this unanimous movement. The
prison doors were opened, and Clement had hardly crossed the threshold
before he began to protest boldly against human authority in matters
of faith: the word of God is the only rule. Upon this Boniface applied
to Rome for the heretic's condemnation, and accompanied his request by
a silver cup and a garment of delicate texture.[117] The pope decided
in synod that if Clement did not retract his errors, he should be
delivered up to everlasting damnation, and then requested Boniface to
send him to Rome under a sure guard. We here lose all traces of the
Scotchman, but it is easy to conjecture what must have been his fate.

  [116] Propter ista enim, persecutiones et inimicitias et maledictiones
  multorum populorum patior. (Ibid.) For on account of these things, I
  suffer the persecution and hatred and maledictions of multitudes.

  [117] Poculum argenteum et sindonem unam. Gemuli Ep. Ibid.

Clement was not the only Briton who became distinguished in this
contest. Two fellow-countrymen, Sampson and Virgil, who preached in
central Europe, were in like manner persecuted by the Church of Rome.
Virgil, anticipating Galileo, dared maintain that there were other men
and another world beneath our feet.[118] He was denounced by Boniface
for this _heresy_, and condemned by the pope, as were other Britons
for the apostolical simplicity of their lives. In 813, certain
Scotchmen who called themselves bishops, says a canon, having appeared
before a council of the Roman church at Châlons, were rejected by the
French prelates, because, like St. Paul, _they worked with their own
hands_. Those enlightened and faithful men were superior to their
time: Boniface and his ecclesiastical materialism were better fitted
for an age in which clerical forms were regarded as the substance of
religion.

  [118] Perversa doctrina......quod alius mundus et alii homines sub
  terra sint. (Zachariæ papæ Ep. ad Bonif. Labbei concilia, vi. p. 152.)
  A heretical doctrine.....that there is another world and other men
  under the earth.

[Sidenote: DUNS SCOTUS.]

Even Great Britain, although its light was not so pure, was not
altogether plunged in darkness. The Anglo-Saxons imprinted on their
church certain characteristics which distinguished it from that of
Rome; several books of the Bible were translated into their tongue,
and daring spirits on the one hand, with some pious souls on the
other, laboured in a direction hostile to popery.

At first we see the dawning of that philosophic rationalism, which
gives out a certain degree of brightness, but which can neither
conquer error nor still less establish truth. In the ninth century
there was a learned scholar in Ireland, who afterwards settled at the
court of Charles the Bald. He was a strange mysterious man, of
profound thought, and as much raised above the doctors of his age by
the boldness of his ideas, as Charlemagne above the princes of his day
by the force of his will. John Scot Erigena--that is, a native of
Ireland and not of Ayr, as some have supposed--was a meteor in the
theological heavens. With a great philosophic genius he combined a
cheerful jesting disposition. One day, while seated at table opposite
to Charles the Bald, the latter archly inquired of him: "What is the
distance between a _Scot_ and a _Sot_?" "The width of the table," was
his ready answer, which drew a smile from the king. While the doctrine
of Bede, Boniface, and even Alcuin was traditional, servile, and, in
one word, Romanist, that of Scot was mystical, philosophic, free, and
daring. He sought for the truth not in the word or in the Church, but
in himself:--"The knowledge of ourselves is the true source of
religious wisdom. Every creature is a theophany--a manifestation of
God; since revelation presupposes the existence of truth, it is this
truth, which is above revelation, with which man must set himself in
immediate relation, leaving him at liberty to show afterwards its
harmony with scripture, and the other theophanies. We must first
employ reason, and then authority. Authority proceeds from reason, and
not reason from authority."[119] Yet this bold thinker, when on his
knees, could give way to aspirations full of piety: "O Lord Jesus,"
exclaimed he, "I ask no other happiness of Thee, but to understand,
unmixed with deceitful theories, the word that Thou hast inspired by
thy Holy Spirit! Show thyself to those who ask for Thee alone!" But
while Scot rejected on the one hand certain traditional errors, and in
particular the doctrine of transubstantiation which was creeping into
the church, he was near falling as regards God and the world into
other errors savouring of pantheism.[120] The philosophic rationalism
of the contemporary of Charles the Bald--the strange product of one of
the obscurest periods of history (850)--was destined after the lapse
of many centuries to be taught once more in Great Britain as a modern
invention of the most enlightened age.

  [119] Prius ratione utendum ac deinde auctoritate. Auctoritas ex vera
  ratione processit, ratio vero nequaquam ex auctoritate. De div.
  prædestin.

  [120] Deum in omnibus esse. (De divisione naturæ, b. 74.) That God is
  in all things.

[Sidenote: ALFRED AND THE BIBLE.]

While Scot was thus plumping the depths of philosophy, others were
examining their Bibles; and if thick darkness had not spread over
these first glimpses of the dawn, perhaps the Church of Great Britain
might even then have begun to labour for the regeneration of
Christendom. A youthful prince, thirsting for intellectual enjoyments,
for domestic happiness, and for the word of God, and who sought, by
frequent prayer, for deliverance from the bondage of sin, had ascended
the throne of Wessex, in the year 871. Alfred being convinced that
Christianity alone could rightly mould a nation, assembled round him
the most learned men from all parts of Europe, and was anxious that
the English, like the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, should possess the
holy scripture in their own language. He is the real patron of the
biblical work,--a title far more glorious than that of founder of the
university of Oxford. After having fought more than fifty battles by
land and sea, he died while translating the Psalms of David for his
subjects.[121]

  [121] A portion of the law of God translated by Alfred may be found in
  Wilkins, Concilia, i. p. 186 et seq.

After this gleam of light thick darkness once more settled upon Great
Britain. Nine Anglo-Saxon kings ended their days in monasteries; there
was a seminary in Rome from which every year fresh scholars bore to
England the new forms of popery; the celibacy of priests, that cement
of the Romish hierarchy, was established by a bull about the close of
the tenth century; convents were multiplied, considerable possessions
were bestowed on the Church, and the tax of _Peter's pence_, laid at
the pontiff's feet, proclaimed the triumph of the papal system. But a
reaction soon took place: England collected her forces for a war
against the papacy, a war at one time secular and at another
spiritual. William of Normandy, Edward III., Wickliffe, and the
Reformation, are the four ascending steps of protestantism in England.

[Sidenote: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.]

A proud, enterprising, and far-sighted prince, the illegitimate son of
a peasant girl of Falaise and Robert the Devil, duke of Normandy,
began a contest with the papacy which lasted until the Reformation.
William the Conqueror, having defeated the Saxons at Hastings in 1066
A. D., took possession of England, under the benediction of the Roman
pontiff. But the conquered country was destined to conquer its master.
William, who had invaded England in the pope's name, had no sooner
touched the soil of his new kingdom, than he learned to resist Rome,
as if the ancient liberty of the British Church had revived in him.
Being firmly resolved to allow no foreign prince or prelate to possess
in his dominions a jurisdiction independent of his own, he made
preparations for a conquest far more difficult than that of the
Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The papacy itself furnished him with weapons. The
Roman legates prevailed on the king to dispossess the English
episcopacy in a mass, and this was exactly what he wished. To resist
the papacy, William desired to be sure of the submission of the
priests of England. Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, was removed,
and Lanfranc of Pavia, who had been summoned from Bec in Normandy to
fill his place, was commissioned by the Conqueror to bend the clergy
to obedience. This prelate, who was regular in his life, abundant in
almsgiving, a learned disputant, a prudent politician, and a skilful
mediator, finding that he had to choose between his master King
William and his friend the pontiff Hildebrand, gave the prince the
preference. He refused to go to Rome, notwithstanding the threats of
the pope, and applied himself resolutely to the work the king had
intrusted to him. The Saxons sometimes resisted the Normans, as the
Britons had resisted the Saxons; but the second struggle was less
glorious than the first. A synod at which the king was present having
met in the abbey of Westminster, William commanded Wulston, bishop of
Worcester, to give up his crosier to him. The old man rose, animated
with holy fervour: "O king," he said, "from a better man than you I
received it, and to him only will I return it."[122] Unhappily this
"better man" was not Jesus Christ. Then approaching the tomb of Edward
the Confessor, he continued: "O my master, it was you who compelled me
to assume this office; but now behold a new king and a new primate who
promulgate new laws. Not unto them, O master, but unto you, do I
resign my crosier and the care of my flock." With these words Wulston
laid his pastoral staff on Edward's tomb. On the sepulchre of the
confessor perished the liberty of the Anglo-Saxon hierarchy. The
deprived Saxon bishops were consigned to fortresses or shut up in
convents.

  [122] Divino animi ardore repente inflammatus, regi inquit: Melior te
  his me ornavit cui et reddam. Wilkins, Concilia, i, 367.

[Sidenote: STRUGGLE BETWEEN WILLIAM AND HILDEBRAND.]

The Conqueror being thus assured of the obedience of the bishops, put
forward the supremacy of the sword in opposition to that of the pope.
He nominated directly to all vacant ecclesiastical offices, filled his
treasury with the riches of the churches, required that all priests
should make oath to him, forbade them to excommunicate his officers
without his consent, not even for incest, and declared that all
synodal decisions must be countersigned by him. "I claim," said he to
the archbishop one day, raising his arms towards heaven, "I claim to
hold in this hand all the pastoral staffs in my kingdom."[123]
Lanfranc was astonished at this daring speech, but prudently kept
silent,[124] for a time at least. Episcopacy connived at the royal
pretensions.

  [123] Respondit rex et dixit se velle omnes baculos pastorales Angliæ
  in manu sus tenere. Script. Anglic. Lond. 1652, fol. p. 1327.

  [124] Lanfranc ad hæc miratus est, sed propter majores ecclesiæ
  Christi utilitates, quas sine rege perficere non potuit, ad tempus
  _siluit_. Ibid.

Will Hildebrand, the most inflexible of popes, bend before William?
The king was earnest in his desire to enslave the Church to the State;
the pope to enslave the State to the Church: the collision of these
two mighty champions threatened to be terrible. But the haughtiest of
pontiffs was seen to yield as soon as he felt the mail-clad hand of
the Conqueror, and to shrink unresistingly before it. The pope filled
all Christendom with confusion, that he might deprive princes of the
right of investiture to ecclesiastical dignities: William would not
permit him to interfere with that question in England, and Hildebrand
submitted. The king went even farther: the pope, wishing to enslave
the clergy, deprived the priests of their lawful wives; William got a
decree passed by the counsel of Winchester in 1076 to the effect that
the married priests living in castles and towns should not be
compelled to put away their wives.[125] This was too much: Hildebrand
summoned Lanfranc to Rome, but William forbade him to go. "Never did
king, not even a pagan," exclaimed Gregory, "attempt against the holy
see what this man does not fear to carry out!"[126].... To console
himself, he demanded payment of the _Peter's pence_, and an oath of
fidelity. William sent the money, but refused the homage; and when
Hildebrand saw the tribute which the king had paid, he said bitterly:
"What value can I set on money which is contributed with so little
honour!"[127] William forbade his clergy to recognise the pope, or to
publish a bull without the royal approbation, which did not prevent
Hildebrand from styling him "the pearl of princes."[128] "It is
true," said he to his legate, "that the English king does not behave
in certain matters so religiously as we could desire.... Yet beware of
exasperating him.... We shall win him over to God and St. Peter more
surely by mildness and reason than by strictness or severity."[129] In
this manner the pope acted like the archbishop--_siluit_: he was
silent. It is for feeble governments that Rome reserves her energies.

  [125] Sacerdotes vero in castellis vel in vicis habitantes habentes
  uxores, non cogantur ut dimittant. Wilkins, Concilia, i. p. 367.

  [126] Nemo enim omnium regum, etiam paganorum.... Greg. lib vii. Ep.
  i. ad Hubert.

  [127] Pecunias sine honore tributas, quanti pretii habeam. Ibid.

  [128] Gemma principum esse meruisti. Greg. lib. vii. Epp. xxiii. ad
  Gulielm.

  [129] Facilius lenitatis dulcedine ac rationis ostensione, quam
  austeritate vel rigore justitiæ. Ibid. Ep. v. ad Hugonem.

[Sidenote: CÆSAROPAPIA.]

The Norman kings, desirous of strengthening their work, constructed
Gothic cathedrals in the room of wooden churches, in which they
installed their soldier-bishops, as if they were strong fortresses.
Instead of the moral power and the humble crook of the shepherd, they
gave them secular power and a staff. The religious episcopate was
succeeded by a political one. William Rufus went even to greater
lengths than his father. Taking advantage of the schism which divided
the papacy, he did without a pope for ten years, leaving abbeys,
bishoprics, and even Canterbury vacant, and scandalously squandering
their revenues. Cæsaropapia (which transforms a king into a pope)
having thus attained its greatest excess, a sacerdotal reaction could
not fail to take place.

The papacy is about to rise up again in England, and royalty to
decline--two movements which are always found combined in Great
Britain.




CHAPTER V.

     Anselm's Firmness--Becket's Austerity--The King
     scourged--John becomes the Pope's Vassal--Collision between
     Popery and Liberty--The Vassal King ravages his
     Kingdom--Religion of the Senses and Superstition.


We are now entering upon a new phase of history. Romanism is on the
point of triumphing by the exertions of learned men, energetic
prelates, and princes in whom extreme imprudence was joined with
extreme servility. This is the era of the dominion of popery, and we
shall see it unscrupulously employing the despotism by which it is
characterized.

[Sidenote: ANSELM.]

A malady having occasioned some degree of remorse in the king, he
consented to fill up the vacancy in the archiepiscopal see. And now
Anselm first appears in England. He was born in an Alpine valley, at
the town of Aosta in Piedmont. Imbibing the instructions of his pious
mother Ermenberga, and believing that God's throne was placed on the
summit of the gigantic mountains he saw rising around him, the child
Anselm climbed them in his dreams, and received the bread of heaven
from the hands of the Lord. Unhappily in after-years he recognised
another throne in the church of Christ, and bowed his head before the
chair of St. Peter. This was the man whom William II. summoned in 1093
to fill the primacy of Canterbury. Anselm, who was then sixty years
old, and engaged in teaching at Bec, refused at first: the character
of Rufus terrified him. "The church of England," said he, "is a plough
that ought to be drawn by two oxen of equal strength. How can you yoke
together an old and timid sheep like me and that wild bull?" At length
he accepted, and concealing a mind of great power under an appearance
of humility, he had hardly arrived in England before he recognised
Pope Urban II., demanded the estates of his see which the treasury had
seized upon, refused to pay the king the sums he demanded, contested
the right of investiture against Henry I., forbade all ecclesiastics
to take the feudal oath, and determined that the priests should
forthwith put away their wives. Scholasticism, of which Anselm was the
first representative, freed the church from the yoke of royalty, but
only to chain it to the papal chair. The fetters were about to be
riveted by a still more energetic hand; and what this great theologian
had begun, a great worldling was to carry on.

At the hunting parties of Henry II. a man attracted the attention of
his sovereign by his air of frankness, agreeable manners, witty
conversation, and exuberant vivacity. This was Thomas Becket, the son
of an Anglo-Saxon and a Syrian woman. Being both priest and soldier,
he was appointed at the same time by the king prebend of Hastings and
governor of the Tower. When nominated chancellor of England, he showed
himself no less expert than Wilfrid in misappropriating the wealth of
the minors in his charge, and of the abbeys and bishoprics, and
indulged in the most extravagant luxury. Henry, the first of the
Plantagenets, a man of undecided character, having noticed Becket's
zeal in upholding the prerogatives of the crown, appointed him
archbishop of Canterbury. "Now, sire," remarked the primate, with a
smile, "when I shall have to choose between God's favour and yours,
remember it is yours that I shall sacrifice."

[Sidenote: BECKET OPPOSES THE KING.]

Becket, who, as keeper of the seals, had been the most magnificent of
courtiers, affected as archbishop to be the most venerable of saints.
He sent back the seals to the king, assumed the robe of a monk, wore
sackcloth filled with vermin, lived on the plainest food, every day
knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, paced the cloisters of his
cathedral with tearful eyes, and spent hours in prayer before the
altar. As champion of the priests, even in their crimes, he took under
his protection one who to the crime of seduction had added the murder
of his victim's father.

The judges having represented to Henry that during the first eight
years of his reign a hundred murders had been committed by
ecclesiastics, the king in 1164 summoned a council at Clarendon, in
which certain regulations or _constitutions_ were drawn up, with the
object of preventing the encroachments of the hierarchy. Becket at
first refused to sign them, but at length consented, and then withdrew
into solitary retirement to mourn over his fault. Pope Alexander III
released him from his oath; and then began a fierce and long struggle
between the king and the primate. Four knights of the court, catching
up a hasty expression of their master's, barbarously murdered the
archbishop at the foot of the altar in his own cathedral church (A. D.
1170). The people looked upon Becket as a saint: immense crowds came
to pray at his tomb, at which many _miracles_ were worked.[130] "Even
from his grave," said Becket's partizans, "he renders his testimony in
behalf of the papacy."

  [130] In loco passionis et ubi sepultus est, paralytici curantur, cœci
  vident, surdi audiunt. (Johan. Salisb. Epp. 286.) In the place of his
  suffering and where he was buried, paralytics are cured, the blind
  see, and the deaf hear.

Henry now passed from one extreme to the other. He entered Canterbury
barefooted, and prostrated himself before the martyr's tomb: the
bishops, priests, and monks, to the number of eighty, passed before
him, each bearing a scourge, and struck three or five blows according
to their rank on the naked shoulders of the king. In former ages, so
the priestly fable ran, Saint Peter had scourged an archbishop of
Canterbury: now Rome in sober reality scourges the back of royalty,
and nothing can henceforward check her victorious career. A
Plantagenet surrendered England to the pope, and the pope gave him
authority to subdue Ireland.[131]

  [131] Significasti si quidem nobis, fili carissime, te Hiberniæ
  insulam ad subdendum illum populum velle intrare, nos itaque gratum et
  acceptum habemus ut pro dilatandis ecclesiæ terminis insulam
  ingrediaris. (Adrian IV., Bulla 1154 in Rymer, Acta Publica.) If
  indeed you have intimated, dear son, that you wish to invade Ireland
  to subdue that people, we are accordingly well pleased, that for the
  purpose of extending the bounds of the church, you should invade that
  island.

[Sidenote: THE GREAT CHARTER.]

Rome, who had set her foot on the neck of a king, was destined under
one of the sons of Henry II to set it on the neck of England. John
being unwilling to acknowledge an archbishop of Canterbury illegally
nominated by Pope Innocent III, the latter, more daring than
Hildebrand, laid the kingdom under an interdict. Upon this John
ordered all the prelates and abbots to leave England, and sent a monk
to Spain as ambassador to Mahomet-el-Nasir, offering to turn Mahometan
and to become his vassal. But as Philip Augustus was preparing to
dethrone him, John made up his mind to become a vassal of Innocent,
and not of Mahomet--which was about the same thing to him. On the 15th
May 1213, he laid his crown at the legate's feet, declared that he
surrendered his kingdom of England to the pope, and made oath to him
as to his lord paramount.[132]

  [132] Resignavit coronam suam in manus domini papæ. Matth. Paris, 198
  et 207.

A national protest then boldly claimed the ancient liberties of the
people. Forty-five barons armed in complete mail, and mounted on their
noble war-horses, surrounded by their knights and servants and about
two thousand soldiers, met at Brackley during the festival of Easter
in 1215, and sent a deputation to Oxford, where the court then
resided. "Here," said they to the king, "is the charter which
consecrates the liberties confirmed by Henry II, and which you also
have solemnly sworn to observe."... "Why do they not demand my crown
also?" said the king in a furious passion, and then with an oath,[133]
he added: "I will not grant them liberties which will make me a
slave." This is the usual language of weak and absolute kings. Neither
would the nation submit to be enslaved. The barons occupied London,
and on the 15th June 1215, the king signed the famous _Magna Charta_
at Runnymede. The political protestantism of the thirteenth century
would have done but little, however, for the greatness of the nation,
without the religious protestantism of the sixteenth.

  [133] Cum juramento furibunds. Ibid. 213.

[Sidenote: POPERY AND LIBERTY IN COLLISION.]

This was the first time that the papacy came into collision with
modern liberty. It shuddered in alarm, and the shock was violent.
Innocent swore (as was his custom), and then declared the Great
Charter null and void, forbade the king under pain of anathema to
respect the liberties which he had confirmed,[134] ascribed the
conduct of the barons to the instigation of Satan, and ordered them to
make apology to the king, and to send a deputation to Rome to learn
from the mouth of the pope himself what should be the government of
England. This was the way in which the papacy welcomed the first
manifestations of liberty among the nations, and made known the model
system under which it claimed to govern the whole world.

  [134] Sub intimatione anathematis prohibentes ne dictus rex eam
  observare præsumat. Matth. Paris, 224.

The priests of England supported the anathemas pronounced by their
chief. They indulged in a thousand jeers and sarcasms against John
about the charter he had accepted:--"This is the twenty-fifth king of
England--not a king, not even a kingling--but the disgrace of kings--a
king without a kingdom--the fifth wheel of a waggon--the last of
kings, and the disgrace of his people!--I would not give a straw for
him.... _Fuisti rex, nunc fex_ (once a king, but now a clown)." John,
unable to support his disgrace, groaned and gnashed his teeth and
rolled his eyes, tore sticks from the hedges and gnawed them like a
maniac, or dashed them into fragments on the ground.[135]

  [135] Arreptos baculos et stipites more furiosi nunc corrodere, nunc
  corrosos confringere. Ibid. 222.

The barons, unmoved alike by the insolence of the pope and the despair
of the king, replied that they would maintain the charter. Innocent
excommunicated them. "Is it the pope's business to regulate temporal
matters?" asked they. "By what right do vile usurers and foul
simoniacs domineer over our country and excommunicate the whole
world?"

[Sidenote: RELIGION OF THE SENSES.]

The pope soon triumphed throughout England. His vassal John having
hired some bands of adventurers from the continent, traversed at their
head the whole country from the Channel to the Forth. These
mercenaries carried desolation in their track: they extorted money,
made prisoners, burnt the barons' castles, laid waste their parks, and
dishonoured their wives and daughters.[136] The king would sleep in a
house, and the next morning set fire to it. Blood-stained assassins
scoured the country during the night, the sword in one hand and the
torch in the other, marking their progress by murder and
conflagration.[137] Such was the enthronization of popery in England.
At this sight the barons, overcome by emotion, denounced both the king
and the pope: "Alas! poor country!" they exclaimed. "Wretched
England!... And thou, O pope, a curse light upon thee!"[138]

  [136] Uxores et filias suas ludibrio expositas. Ibid. 231.

  [137] Discurrebant sicarii cæde humana cruentati, noctivagi,
  incendiarii, strictis ensibus. Ibid.

  [138] Sic barones lacrymantes et lamentantes regem et papam
  maledixerunt. Matth. Paris, 234.

The curse was not long delayed. As the king was returning from some
more than usually successful foray, and as the royal waggons were
crossing the sands of the Wash, the tide rose and all sank in the
abyss.[139] This accident filled John with terror: it seemed to him
that the earth was about to open and swallow him up; he fled to a
convent, where he drank copiously of cider, and died of drunkenness
and fright.[140]

  [139] Aperta est in mediis fluctibus terra et voraginis abyssus, quæ
  absorbuerunt universa cum hominibus et equis. Ibid. 242.

  [140] Novi ciceris potatione nimis repletus. Ibid. ad ann. 1216.

Such was the end of the pope's vassal--of his armed missionary in
Great Britain. Never had so vile a prince been the involuntary
occasion to his people of such great benefits. From his reign England
may date her enthusiasm for liberty and her dread of popery.

During this time a great transformation had been accomplished.
Magnificent churches and the marvels of religious art, with ceremonies
and a multitude of prayers and chantings dazzled the eyes, charmed the
ears, and captivated the senses; but testified also to the absence of
every strong moral and Christian disposition, and the predominance of
worldliness in the church. At the same time the adoration of images
and relics, saints, angels, and Mary the mother of God, the worships
of _latria_, _doulia_, and _hyperdoulia_,[141] the real Mediator
transported from the throne of mercy to the seat of vengeance, at once
indicated and kept up among the people that ignorance of truth and
absence of grace which characterize popery. All these errors tended to
bring about a reaction: and in fact the march of the Reformation may
now be said to begin.

  [141] The Romish church distinguishes three kinds of worship:
  _latria_, that paid to God; _doulia_, to saints; and _hyperdoulia_, to
  the Virgin Mary.

England had been brought low by the papacy: it rose up again by
resisting Rome. Grostête, Bradwardine, and Edward III, prepared the
way for Wickliffe, and Wickliffe for the Reformation.




CHAPTER VI.

     Reaction--Grostete--Principles of Reform--Contest with the
     Pope--Sewal--Progress of the Nation--Opposition to the
     Papacy--Conversion of Bradwardine--Grace is Supreme--Edward
     III--Statutes of _Provisors_ and _Præmunire_.


[Sidenote: REACTION.]

In the reign of Henry III, son of John, while the king was conniving
at the usurpations of Rome, and the pope ridiculing the complaints of
the barons, a pious and energetic man, of comprehensive understanding,
was occupied in the study of the Holy Scriptures in their original
languages, and bowing to their sovereign authority. Robert Grostête
(Greathead or _Capito_) was born of poor parents in the county of
Lincolnshire, and being raised to the see of Lincoln in 1235, when he
was sixty years of age, he boldly undertook to reform his diocese, one
of the largest in England. Nor was this all. At the very time when the
Roman pontiff, who had hitherto been content to be called the vicar of
St. Peter, proclaimed himself the vicar of God,[142] and was ordering
the English bishops to find benefices for _three hundred Romans_,[143]
Grostête was declaring that "to follow a pope who rebels against the
will of Christ, is to separate from Christ and his body; and if ever
the time should come when all men follow an erring pontiff, then will
be the great apostasy. Then will true Christians refuse to obey, and
Rome will be the cause of an unprecedented schism."[144] Thus did he
predict the Reformation. Disgusted at the avarice of the monks and
priests, he visited Rome to demand a reform. "Brother," said Innocent
IV to him with some irritation, "_Is thine eye evil, because I am
good?_" The English bishop exclaimed with a sigh: "O money, money! how
great is thy power--especially in this court of Rome!"

  [142] Non puri hominis sed veri Dei vicem gerit in terris. (Innocent
  III. Epp. lib. vi. i. 335.) He wields on earth the power, not of a
  holy man but of the true God.

  [143] Ut trecentis Romanis in primis beneficiis vacantibus
  providerent. Matth. Paris, ann. 1240.

  [144] Absit et quod.....hæc sedes et in ea præsidentes causa sint
  schismatis apparentis. Ortinnus Gratius, ed. Brown, fol. 251.

[Sidenote: CONTEST WITH THE POPE.]

A year had scarcely elapsed before Innocent commanded the bishop to
give a canonry in Lincoln cathedral to his infant nephew. Grostête
replied: "After the sin of Lucifer there is none more opposed to the
Gospel than that which ruins souls by giving them a faithless
minister. Bad pastors are the cause of unbelief, heresy, and
disorder. Those who introduce them into the church are little better
than antichrists, and their culpability is in proportion to their
dignity. Although the chief of the angels should order me to commit
such a sin, I would refuse. My obedience forbids me to obey; and
therefore I rebel."[145]

  [145] Obedienter non obedio sed contradico et rebello. Matth. Paris,
  ad. ann. 1252.

Thus spoke a bishop to his pontiff: his obedience to the word of God
forbade him to obey the pope. This was the principle of the
Reformation. "Who is this old driveller that in his dotage dares to
judge of my conduct?" exclaimed Innocent, whose wrath was appeased by
the intervention of certain cardinals. Grostête on his dying bed
professed still more clearly the principles of the reformers; he
declared that a heresy was "an opinion conceived by carnal motives,
_contrary to Scripture_, openly taught and obstinately defended," thus
asserting the authority of Scripture instead of the authority of the
church. He died in peace, and the public voice proclaimed him "a
searcher of the Scriptures, an adversary of the pope, and despiser of
the Romans."[146] Innocent, desiring to take vengeance on his bones,
meditated the exhumation of his body, when one night (says Matthew of
Paris) the bishop appeared before him. Drawing near the pontiff's bed,
he struck him with his crosier, and thus addressed him with terrible
voice and threatening look:[147] "Wretch! the Lord doth not permit
thee to have any power over me. Woe be to thee!" The vision
disappeared, and the pope, uttering a cry as if he had been struck by
some sharp weapon, lay senseless on his couch. Never after did he pass
a quiet night, and pursued by the phantoms of his troubled
imagination, he expired while the palace re-echoed with his lamentable
groans.

  [146] Scripturarum sedulus perscrutator diversarum, Romanorum malleus
  et contemptor. (Matth. Paris, vol. ii, p. 876, fol. Lond. 1640.) A
  thorough searcher of the various Scriptures, a hammer to and a
  despiser of the Romans. Sixteen of his writings (Sermones et epistolæ)
  will be found in _Brown_, _app. ad Fasciculum_.

  [147] Nocte apparuit ei episcopos vultu severo, intuitu austero, ac
  voce terribili. Ibid. 883.

[Sidenote: OPPOSITION TO THE POPE.]

Grostête was not single in his opposition to the pope. Sewal,
archbishop of York, did the same, and "the more the pope cursed him,
the more the people blessed him."[148]--"Moderate your tyranny," said
the archbishop to the pontiff, "for the Lord said to Peter, _Feed_ my
sheep, and not _shear them_, _flay them_, or _devour them_."[149] The
pope smiled and let the bishop speak, because the king allowed the
pope to act. The power of England, which was constantly increasing,
was soon able to give more force to these protests.

  [148] Quanto magis a papa maledicebatur, tanto plus a populo
  benedicebatur. Ibid. ad ann. 1257.

  [149] _Pasce_ oves meas, non _tonde_, non _excoria_, non _eviscera_,
  vel devorando _consume_. Ibid. ad ann. 1258.

The nation was indeed growing in greatness. The madness of John, which
had caused the English people to lose their continental possessions,
had given them more unity and power. The Norman kings, being compelled
to renounce entirely the country which had been their cradle, had at
length made up their minds to look upon England as their home. The two
races, so long hostile, had melted one into the other. Free
institutions were formed; the laws were studied; and colleges were
founded. The language began to assume a regular form, and the ships of
England were already formidable at sea. For more than a century the
most brilliant victories attended the British armies. A king of France
was brought captive to London: an English king was crowned at Paris.
Even Spain and Italy felt the valour of these proud islanders. The
English people took their station in the foremost rank. Now the
character of a nation is never raised by halves. When the mighty ones
of the earth were seen to fall before her, England could no longer
crawl at the feet of an Italian priest.

At no period did her laws attack the papacy with so much energy. At
the beginning of the fourteenth century an Englishman having brought
to London one of the pope's bulls--a bull of an entirely spiritual
character, it was an excommunication--was prosecuted as a traitor to
the crown, and would have been hanged, had not the sentence, at the
chancellor's intercession, been changed to perpetual banishment.[150]
The _common law_ was the weapon the government then opposed to the
papal bulls. Shortly afterwards, in 1307, king Edward ordered the
sheriffs to resist the arrogant pretensions of the Romish agents. But
it is to two great men in the fourteenth century equally illustrious,
the one in the state, and the other in the church, that England is
indebted for the development of the protestant element in England.

  [150] Fuller's Church History, cent. xiv, p. 90, fol. Lond. 1655.

[Sidenote: BRADWARDINE'S CONVERSION.]

In 1346, an English army, 34,000 strong, met face to face at Crecy a
French army of 100,000 fighting men. Two individuals of very different
characters were in the English host. One of them was King Edward III,
a brave and ambitious prince, who, being resolved to recover for the
royal authority all its power, and for England all her glory, had
undertaken the conquest of France. The other was his chaplain
Bradwardine, a man of so humble a character that his meekness was
often taken for stupidity. And thus it was that on his receiving the
pallium at Avignon from the hands of the pope on his elevation to the
see of Canterbury, a jester mounted on an ass rode into the hall and
petitioned the pontiff to make him _primate_ instead of that imbecile
priest.

Bradwardine was one of the most pious men of the age, and to his
prayers his sovereign's victories were ascribed. He was also one of
the greatest geniuses of his time, and occupied the first rank among
astronomers, philosophers, and mathematicians.[151] The pride of
science had at first alienated him from the doctrine of the cross. But
one day while in the house of God and listening to the reading of the
Holy Scriptures, these words struck his ear: _It is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy_. His
ungrateful heart, he tells us, at first rejected this humiliating
doctrine with aversion. Yet the word of God had laid its powerful hold
upon him; he was converted to the truths he had despised, and
immediately began to set forth the doctrines of eternal grace at
Merton College, Oxford. He had drunk so deep at the fountain of
Scripture that the traditions of men concerned him but little, and he
was so absorbed in adoration in spirit and in truth, that he remarked
not outward superstitions. His lectures were eagerly listened to and
circulated through all Europe. The grace of God was their very
essence, as it was of the Reformation. With sorrow Bradwardine beheld
Pelagianism every where substituting a mere religion of externals for
inward Christianity, and on his knees he struggled for the salvation
of the church. "As in the times of old four hundred and fifty prophets
of Baal strove against a single prophet of God; so now, O Lord," he
exclaimed, "the number of those who strive with Pelagius against thy
free grace cannot be counted.[152] They pretend not to receive grace
freely, but to buy it.[153] The will of men (they say) should precede,
and thine should follow: theirs is the mistress, and thine the
servant.[154]... Alas! nearly the whole world is walking in error in
the steps of Pelagius.[155] Arise, O Lord, and judge thy cause." And
the Lord did arise, but not until after the death of this pious
archbishop, in the days of Wickliffe, who, when a youth, listened to
the lectures at Merton College, and especially in the days of Luther
and of Calvin. His contemporaries gave him the name of the _profound
doctor_.

  [151] His Arithmetic and Geometry have been published; but I am not
  aware if that is the case with his Astronomical Tables.

  [152] Quot, Domine, hodie cum Pelagio pro libero arbitrio contra
  gratuitam gratiam tuam pugnant? De causa Dei adversus Pelagium, libri
  tres, Lond. 1618.

  [153] Nequaquam gratuita sed vendita. Ibid.

  [154] Suam voluntatem præire ut dominam, tuam subsequi ut ancillam.
  Ibid.

  [155] Totus pæne mundus post Pelagium abiit in errorem. Ibid.

[Sidenote: STATUTES OF PROVISORS AND PRÆMUNIRE.]

If Bradwardine walked truthfully in the path of faith, his illustrious
patron Edward advanced triumphantly in the field of policy. Pope
Clement IV having decreed that the first two vacancies in the Anglican
church should be conferred on two of his cardinals: "France is
becoming _English_," said the courtiers to the king; "and by way of
compensation, England is becoming _Italian_." Edward, desirous of
guaranteeing the religious liberties of England, passed with the
consent of parliament in 1350 the statute of _provisors_, which made
void every ecclesiastical appointment contrary to the rights of the
king, the chapters, or the patrons. Thus the privileges of the
chapters and the liberty of the English Catholics, as well as the
independence of the crown, were protected against the invasion of
foreigners; and imprisonment or banishment for life was denounced upon
all offenders against the law.

This bold step alarmed the pontiff. Accordingly, three years after,
the king having nominated one of his secretaries to the see of
Durham--a man without any of the qualities becoming a bishop--the pope
readily confirmed the appointment. When some one expressed his
astonishment at this, the pope made answer: "If the king of England
had nominated _an ass_, I would have accepted him." This may remind us
of the _ass_ of Avignon; and it would seem that this humble animal at
that time played a significant part in the elections to the papacy.
But be that as it may, the pope withdrew his pretensions. "Empires
have their term," observes an historian at this place; "when once they
have reached it, they halt, they retrograde, they fall."[156]

  [156] Habent imperia suos terminos; huc cum venerint, sistunt,
  retrocedunt, ruunt. Fuller's Hist. cent. xiv, p. 116.

The term seemed to be drawing nearer every day. In the reign of Edward
III, between 1343 and 1353, again in 1364, and finally under Richard
II, in 1393, those stringent laws were passed which interdicted all
appeal to the court of Rome, all bulls from the Roman bishop, all
excommunications, etc., in a word, every act infringing on the rights
of the crown; and declared that whoever should bring such documents
into England, or receive, publish, or execute them, should be put out
of the king's protection, deprived of their property, attached in
their persons, and brought before the king in council to undergo their
trial according to the terms of the act. Such was the statute of
_Præmunire_.[157]

  [157] The most natural meaning of the word _præmunire_ (given more
  particularly to the act of 1393) seems to be that suggested by Fuller,
  cent. xiv, (p. 148): to fence and fortify the regal power from foreign
  assault. See the whole bill, _Ibid._ p. 145-147.

Great was the indignation of the Romans at the news of this law: "If
the statute of _mortmain_ put the pope into a sweat," says Fuller,
"this of _præmunire_ gave him a fit of fever." One pope called it an
"execrable statute,"--"a horrible crime."[158] Such are the terms
applied by the pontiffs to all that thwarts their ambition.

  [158] Execrabile statutum....fœdum et turpe facinus. Martin V to the
  Duke of Bedford, Fuller, cent. xiv. p. 148.

[Sidenote: THE TWO WARS.]

Of the two wars carried on by Edward--the one against the King of
France, and the other against popery--the latter was the most
righteous and important. The benefits which this prince had hoped to
derive from his brilliant victories at Crecy and Poitiers dwindled
away almost entirely before his death; while his struggles with the
papacy, founded as they were on truth, have exerted even to our own
days an indisputable influence on the destinies of Great Britain. Yet
the prayers and the conquests of Bradwardine, who proclaimed in that
fallen age the doctrine of grace, produced effects still greater, not
only for the salvation of many souls, but for the liberty, moral
force, and greatness of England.




CHAPTER VII.

     The Mendicant Friars--Their Disorders and Popular
     Indignation--Wickliffe--His success--Speeches of the Peers
     against the Papal Tribute--Agreement of Bruges--Courtenay
     and Lancaster--Wickliffe before the Convocation--Altercation
     between Lancaster and Courtenay--Riot--Three Briefs against
     Wickliffe--Wickliffe at Lambeth--Mission of the _Poor
     Priests_--Their Preachings and Persecutions--Wickliffe and
     the Four Regents.


Thus in the first half of the fourteenth century, nearly two hundred
years before the Reformation, England appeared weary of the yoke of
Rome. Bradwardine was no more; but a man who had been his disciple was
about to succeed him, and without attaining to the highest functions,
to exhibit in his person the past and future tendencies of the church
of Christ in Great Britain. The English Reformation did not begin with
Henry VIII: the revival of the sixteenth century is but a link in the
chain commencing with the apostles and reaching to us.

[Sidenote: THE BEGGING FRIARS.]

The resistance of Edward III to the papacy _without_ had not
suppressed the papacy _within_. The mendicant friars, and particularly
the Franciscans, those fanatical soldiers of the pope, were
endeavouring by pious frauds to monopolize the wealth of the country.
"Every year," said they, "Saint Francis descends from heaven to
purgatory, and delivers the souls of all those who were buried in the
dress of his order." These friars used to kidnap children from their
parents and shut them up in monasteries. They affected to be poor, and
with a wallet on their back, begged with a piteous air from both high
and low; but at the same time they dwelt in palaces, heaped up
treasures, dressed in costly garments, and wasted their time in
luxurious entertainments.[159] The least of them looked upon
themselves as _lords_, and those who wore the doctor's cap considered
themselves _kings_. While they diverted themselves, eating and
drinking at their well-spread tables, they used to send ignorant
uneducated persons in their place to preach fables and legends to
amuse and plunder the people.[160] If any rich man talked of giving
alms to the poor and not to the monks, they exclaimed loudly against
such impiety, and declared with threatening voices: "If you do so we
will leave the country, and return accompanied by a legion of
glittering helmets."[161] Public indignation was at its height. "The
monks and priests of Rome,

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