was a Grossetête but as the Normans have gone home, we will now talk English, and call him by his honest Saxon name of Greathead century before his time when he exposed the enormous abuse of Papal "Provisions." By this artifice, the Pope provided for his favourites, Italians or Frenchmen, and named them for bishoprics and the like before they fell vacant. As soon as the incumbent died, in marched the intruder and claimed the place for its revenues, neglecting souls and corrupting the clergy by bad example. Greathead protested, and strove to reassert Anglican principles of autonomy. He thus maintained the principle, and what could not be done then was practicable now. To the blow against Mortmain came next the staunch Anglo-Saxon thrust at the foreign usurper, called the "Statute of Provisors." Three years later came the Præmunire, forbidding appeals to Rome under heavy penalties. In temporalities, the Reformation was begun already. From an eminent English jurist1 I quote as follows: "The nation entertained violent antipathies against the papal power. The Parliament pretended that the usurpations of the Pope were the causes of all the plagues, injuries, famine, and poverty of the realm, were more destructive to it than all the wars, and were the reason why it contained not a third of the inhabitants and commodities which it formerly possessed; that the taxes levied by him exceeded five times those which were paid to the King; that everything was venal in that sinful city of Rome. ... The King was even petitioned by Parliament to 1 Stevens, editor of De Lolme. employ no churchman (i. e. no ecclesiastic) in any of fice of state, and they threatened to repel by force the papal authority, which they could not, nor would, any longer endure." The clergy had been largely involved in the papal invasions, and under kings who favoured them often sided with the pontiffs. So it had been under the former Edwards. Just now the commons were incensed against the Pope, and the King courted his favour to balance himself against the rising spirit of popular independence. We must note all these things if we would understand how thoroughly the progress of Reformation in England was original with England; how it began and was making headway nearly two centuries before Martin Luther was heard of. In temporals, as I said, the work was begun already. Now let us observe its spiritual history. 14. SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. I have called Alcuin the last of the Fathers, and Anselm the forerunner of the Schoolmen. I have traced Scholasticism to Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, and another side of it to Peter Lombard. I know too little about him to speak of Erigena, whom Alfred invited into England so long before their day; and I am equally unable to express an opinion of Albertus Magnus, to whom some assign the chief glory after them. This premised, I must add, that, for its good and for its evil, England must bear the palm and share the blame. "In England and by Englishmen," says an old The Latin writer, "the scholastic theology had its ori- 1 Alex. Minutianus. See Fuller, ii. 250. 3 A. D. 1327. coming formidable to Rome already. But, last of all, let me name the holy Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury, in whom Alcuin seems to revive, and Bede the Venerable as well. If Pelagius was of British origin, now in this great man ample amends were made by the later Church of Britain; for he not only maintained the doctrines of grace against the Semi-Pelagianism that Rome has more recently made into dogma, but his life was an illustration of divine grace from first to last. He was the medieval glory of the Anglican primacy, and was called the Doctor Profundus, from his great learning and deep thinking. Chaucer, forty years later, ranks him with Boethius and with St. Augustine. 15. OXFORD MEN. All these were Oxford men, and all of that old Merton College which every visitor beholds with reverence as he walks in Christ-Church meadows. But it is important to note how boldly and freely they disputed on points which Rome itself had not yet presumed to crystallize into her enormous "Code of Belief," the product of her Trent Council. Thus Scotus founded the Realist, and Occam the Nominalist school; both were Franciscans. But after the great Dominican, Aquinas, who was a liberal Realist, we ordinarily find the Dominicans of that persuasion. I only note, in passing, how the position which Alcuin gave to the Anglican Church was maintained by great Anglicans even in these ages. Note also how strongly the influence of English Schoolmen was exerted for a better future. Occam seems to have foreseen it; he says of his works, "By means of our preludes men of future times, zealous for truth, righteousness, and the common weal, may have their attention drawn to many truths upon these matters, which, at the present day, remain hidden from rulers, councillors, and teachers, to the common loss." 16. GREATHEAD. Observe the continuity of spiritual and truly Anglican life in the Church of England. In such an age as that of Henry III. and Innocent IV., see Greathead contending alike against prince and pontiff, not as a proud ecclesiastic like Becket, but as a spiritually-minded lover of souls, and of Christ, their Saviour. He might even better have been named Greatheart. Poet, man of letters, intrepid pastor, and defender of the faith,—conceding a Gallican primacy, but resisting pontifical supremacy, he is the very ideal of a Catholic, as far as in his day it was possible to be. Books were rare; learning was fettered; the canon law was based on fables which none could confute. But there he stood, a figure monumental. Bulls from Rome fell harmless at his feet. The University of Oxford bore witness concerning him, after he began to be called St. Robert: "Never for the fear of any man had he forborne to do any good action which pertained to his office and duty. If the sword had been unsheathed against him, he stood prepared to die the death of a martyr." To such a man, standing up for truth and right while pon |