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and the Kings of England, in times past, had never any superior but God only. Therefore, know you well that we will maintain the right of our Crown, and of our temporal jurisdiction, as well in this as in other points, in as ample a manner as any of our progenitors have done before our time; and, as for your decrees, we are well assured that you of the spirituality go expressly against the words of divers of them, as hath been showed you by some of our council, and you interpret your decrees at your pleasure; and we will not agree to them more than our progenitors have done in former times" (136).

This was spoken when Wolsey endeavoured to screen Dr. Horsey, Chancellor of the Bishop of London, against whom the coroner's inquest had brought in a verdict of the wilful murder of Richard Hun, a citizen of London, confined in the Lollard's tower. It seems that Hun had refused to pay the demand of a priest, because he considered it exorbitant. The priest sued him in a spiritual court; and Hun having taken legal advice, "at the instance of his counsel, sued the priest in a præmunire for having brought a subject of the King before a foreign court, and that court sitting under the authority of the Pope's legate.........To perplex the case and baffle the civil court, they charged Hun with heresy, and shut him up in the Lollard's tower, where none of his friends were allowed to visit him." They were unable to prove the charge of heresy, and Horsey resolved to murder him in prison and say that he had died by his own hand. On pretence of lenity, he sent him a good dinner and as much ale as he chose, to make him sleep soundly; and then, with two accomplices, entered the prison at midnight, and holding him down thrust a sharp wire up the nostrils into the brain, and when life was extinct hung him up to a beam by his own silken girdle. The two accomplices confessed these things before the coroner's jury, who accordingly found "that the said William Horsey, clerk, Charles Joseph, and John Spalding, of their set malice, then and there feloniously killed and murdered the said Richard Hun, in manner and form aforesaid, against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity.-THOMAS BARNWELL, Coroner of the city of London." The priests, to screen Horsey, called the jury heretics; and, searching the house of Hun, found one of Wickliffe's Testaments, and taking this as a proof of heresy had his body taken up and burnt in Smithfield. But the citizens were indignant, and petitioned the Commons, who passed a bill for the restoration of Hun's property to his children; and, had not Horsey

and his accomplices been under the protection of the clergy, they would certainly have been hanged. But the Convocation contended for the immunity of the clergy; and FitzJames, the Bishop of London, in the House of Lords, "besought the members to look upon the matter for the love of God, and to protect him and his brethren from the heretics, who so abounded that, if their lordships did not, he should soon not be able to keep his house for them." The King, fearing a collision between the Convocation and Parliament, left it to the clergy to deal with the murderers; but required the property of the murdered man to be given to his family.

This happened nearly twenty years before Henry broke off his connexion with Rome; and it not only shows the grounds there are for asserting that the rupture was but the expression through the King of the mind of the nation, but it also makes us wonder the rather how the nation could continue quiet under such a state of things. We rather wonder the nation did not force the King to deliver them sooner from the Papal yoke, which subjected one class of men to horrible tortures and a cruel death for no other cause than having in their possession a copy of Wickliffe's Testament; while another class of men might commit every species of crime, even murder with impunity, because they belonged to the priest

hood!

John Wickliffe, born in the year 1323, is unquestionably the man to whom, under God, the Reformation is to be primarily attributed, not only in England, but in Germany also. For Huss and Jerome of Prague both had learned their doctrines from Wickliffe; and the council of Constance gave testimony to the effect which his writings had produced in the foolish decree that his remains should be disinterred, burnt, and thrown into a neighbouring brook, more than forty years after his peaceful departure from this earthly scene. And thus, as Fuller quaintly expresses it, "The brook did convey his ashes into Avon-Avon into Severn-Severn into the narrow seas-they into the main ocean; and thus, the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over."

While at Oxford, Wickliffe was "second to none in philosophy, and in scholastic discipline incomparable;" and his chosen course of study earned for him the title of the "Evangelic" or "Gospel Doctor." But it was not till 1360 that he began to attack the Papal system, principally impelled thereto by the horrible evils growing out of monkery and the mendicant orders. Not long after, Pope Urban V. called

upon our Edward III. for feudal homage and arrears of tribute. Edward referred these claims to his Parliament, who disdainfully rejected them and promised to stand by their King in resisting the Papal arrogance. Wickliffe was then the King's chaplain, and was commanded to answer some anonymous writer in favour of the Pope's claim. This Wickliffe did in so powerful a manner as to render it probable that the Papal outcry against him was not very unlike that of Demetrius the silversmith against St. Paul, who saidSirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth; moreover, ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods which are made with hands."

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The great schism in the Papacy commenced shortly after 1378, when one Pope held his court at Rome, while another held his court at Avignon; and there were sometimes three and even four popes reciprocally excommunicating each other. It is difficult to conceive how any intelligent Romanist can contend for unity or succession, as being the sole and exclusive characteristic of his Church, with such things as these staring him in the face; for, as they make the unity to reside in the person of the Pope, it was then more utterly subverted and denied than in any Church on the face of the earth; and the exultation of Wickliffe may well be understood when he says:"Trust we in the help of Christ; for he hath begun to help us graciously, in that he hath cloven the head of Antichrist, and made the two parts fight against each other." And then, speaking of the simony, and indulgences, and corruptions, and idolatries of the Church of Rome, he calls on the princes of Christendom to undertake the work of ecclesiastical reformation, in mercy to the Church, as the apostate Church would not reform itself.

The system of corruption, however, which it had taken so many centuries to build up, could not be broken down all at once: the very weight of such a system gave it consolidation, and its ramifications had pervaded the whole mass of society, and was intertwined with almost all its institutions. Nearly two centuries elapsed, after the time of Wickliffe, before these ancient prejudices and these social obstacles could be removed, and before the Reformation could become firmly established in England; for Romanism is so fleshly in its principles and practices-in its tolerance of vice, its indulgence of sin, and its sensual ceremonial-that it is just the sort of religion to commend itself to our corrupt nature. The good

things, too, which the Church had at its disposal, gave an interest in its maintenance to a very large proportion of the influential classes as possessors or expectants; while the learned, almost to a man, were bound up with the existing institutions; and by educational prejudice, as well as personal interest, were rendered averse to any change, and for the most part ready to resist all innovation, and punish those who should be rash enough to attempt it.

It was among the middle classes and lower orders of society that the Reformation first made way, vindicating thus its truly Christian origin, since our Lord made it the special characteristic of his own mission that the poor had the Gospel preached unto them (Luke iv. 13; vii. 22); and another parallel is to be found in the devotedness of the women in both cases. It was the women out of Gallilee that ministered to our Lord when he began his mission, and they attended him to its close. The women stood around his cross when the disciples forsook him and fled; and the women were first at the sepulchre, and to the women he first appeared after he had risen from the dead. In like manner, when Wickliffe's writings appeared, the women received his doctrines gladly, and became in many lands the means of preparing the way for the Reformation. Our Richard the Second had married Anne of Bohemia, the sister of the emperor; and she, for her piety and virtue, was called by the people "the good Queen Anne." She was herself well acquainted with the Scriptures, and encouraged those who made the word of God their study. By her means, an intercourse was kept up between Bohemia and England; so that Bohemians came over to study at Oxford, and Englishmen found refuge in Bohemia when persecuted for truth's sake in their own country. Jerome of Prague had studied at Oxford, and on his return to Bohemia carried with him the writings of Wickliffe; and, when “the good Queen Anne" died, many of her retinue returned to Bohemia, carrying with them the principles of the Reformation which they had learned in the court of the English Queen, and which in due time brought forth fruit in Germany. Margaret of Valois, the sister of Francis the First, rendered to France a service similar to that which Anne had rendered to Bohemia. Women without number are found in the long line of English martyrs and confessors who fell under the relentless hand of the Papists; among the last of whom was Anne Askew, daughter of Sir W. Askew of Kelsey in Linconshire, who, after having endured severe torturing, which it is said was inflicted by Lord Wriothesly himself when the Lieutenant

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of the Tower had declined the unmanly office of racking a woman, was burnt at Smithfield, with three others who were not a little sustained by the triumphant faith of Anne Askew," in 1546. This was the last martyr-fire of the reign of Henry the Eighth.

Anne Boleyn and Catherine Parr, who both received the doctrines of the Reformation, were able to render essential services by representing the Reformers in their true character to the jealous Henry, and exposing the falsehood and artifice of their enemies; and finally, Elizabeth, the daughter of the former and brought up under the eye of the latter Queen, became at length the head and rallying point of the Reformation throughout Europe, and fixed it on a foundation in England which will never be shaken. What the poet applied to Elizabeth is applicable to the Church of England:

"She shall be lov'd and fear'd: her own shall bless her;
Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,

And hang their heads with sorrow."

And we apply it also to our present Queen, upon whom the insane attack of Pius IX. will have no greater effect than the excommunication of Pius V. produced upon Elizabeth in

1570.

We have said that one of the chief hindrances to the progress of the Reformation was the dread of unsettling existing institutions, of which Popery then formed so considerable an ingredient; but in England, at the present time, there exists a conservative principle of the same kind, hostile to Popery and in favour of the Reformation. We have enjoyed an open Bible for more than three hundred years: all our institutions have become imbued with the light of Scripture and the liberty of the Gospel, and the peace and joy of believing. Those who have tasted such freedom will not go back into bondage: those who have seen the light know the difference between it and darkness. We cannot become Papists if we would, and we would not if we could. Principle forbids itthe horrible crimes of the Papacy forbid it.

The deep conviction we have that Rome is unchanged, and is ready to act over again all the cruelties which stand recorded against her whensoever an opportunity occurs, justifies in our mind the republication of these former atrocities, that men may know what they have to expect from Rome if she should get the upper hand again. Why, no longer ago than 1826 they executed a schoolmaster in Valencia merely because he was a Quaker! He was accused at the "Tribunal of the

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