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tiffs were making havoc of the Church," and while kings were surrendering England in vassalage to their remorseless grip, how much we owe under God. Truly, what the Lord said of old of "Jonadab the son of Rechab," he seems to have said for the Church of England: "She shall not want a man to stand before me forever."

17. WICLIF.

We come to Wiclif. He was the first mover for Restoration in England, who, as Occam had prophesied, saw something of the length and breadth of its meaning. To him we owe it, under God, that the Anglican Church took care of herself, as a continuous church, in continuous reforms, and made no sudden break even with Rome. To him, the Continent owes its "Reformation," so called; for it began with his pupils, and was only directed into the ditch of divisions and of failure by the perverted genius of its great but wrangling doctors. Of this by and by; but I wish you to observe that nothing can be more the reverse of truth than to begin the Reformation with Luther, and to import it into England, as if England borrowed her work from his, or modelled it after any man's ideas, or after any other standard than "Holy Scripture and ancient authors."

18. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Now (A. D. 1362) the Norman-French ceases in the law courts. Two of the greatest men of genius that England ever knew took up the Eng

lish in its elements just here, and made it into language. Chaucer created its poetry, and Wiclif its prose. Well has it been noted that in its very origin it was devoted to the Restoration, and identified with its spirit. Chaucer in the court, Wiclif in the university, and honest Piers Plowman from among the people, consecrated its earliest syllables to the revival of the Anglo-Saxon Church; and when Wiclif had given to our race the first English Bible, he had laid the corner-stone of all that has since given us the lead in Christendom. Blessed be God for this baptism of the English tongue. From its beginnings it is wedded to Truth; and it remains, of all the languages on earth, the hardest to yoke with the tug-team of Falsehood, the most incapable of being forged to falsehood or welded with a lasting lie.

19. THE POPES OF AVIGNON.

Go back to Boniface VIII., and his decree that "it is necessary to every human soul to be in communion with the Bishop of Rome." This discovery was not made dogmatic by Rome itself till he formulated it, and immediately the bolt fell. God reduced it to the absurd instantly, by making it for nearly a century impossible for anybody to know who or where the Bishop of Rome might be. He raised up Philip the Fair, king of France, to force the Popes out of Rome into his kingdom. Philip burned one of the bulls of Boniface, refused to recognize him as Pope, and influenced Benedict,

1 A. D. 1294.

his successor, to reverse many of his decisions. It is hard, therefore, to see how this can be reconciled with any belief in the infallibility of either pope. For nearly seventy years we have rival popes, one at Rome and another at Avignon, and nobody knows, to this day, which was the true pope and which the pretender. The captivity of Avignon ended in A. D. 1377. But things grew worse again instantly; for now intervenes what is called the "Great Schism" of the Papacy, extending from Urban VI., A. D. 1378, to Nicholas V., A. D. 1447. An assortment of popes and antipopes thus divide the allegiance of the Western churches for one hundred and fifty years well-nigh. When poor Joan of Arc was asked, as a test of her orthodoxy and her inspiration, to say which was the true pope, "What!" she answered, "is there more than one?" The innocent peasant heroine did not even know her peril. According to Boniface and Pius IX., the millions who knew not where to find the infallible judge of controversies, and made mistakes in all that period, are inevitably damned. But what is a "judge of controversies " worth, when, in a controversy so vital to human. souls, nobody knows where to find him? In view of this dilemma, John Wiclif made up his mind. that it was not the will of Christ that " every soul should be in communion with the Bishop of Rome."

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Reflect who and what this heroic spirit was. The successor of the Schoolmen in Merton Col

lege, and the glory of the University, he knew all the scholastics could teach him, and much more besides. He was a natural philosopher and a canonist. Few knew any Greek till the next century, but he was an expert in the Latin Fathers. In A.D. 1374 he is a doctor of theology, and about fifty years of age. He had been already honoured in the University in other ways. It seems probable he had been a member of Parliament, and sustained the remonstrances of the barons and others against the Papacy. As an ardent patriot, he resisted the papal nuncio in A. D. 1372, when he came to bleed the land and the Church of England for his master. In 1374 he is sent on a diplomatic embassy to Bruges, with Sudbury, Bishop of London, and with

"Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster."

Thus Wiclif became a personal friend of a prince of the blood, and found him a useful protector.

21. THE GOOD PARLIAMENT.

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In the King's jubilee year (A. D. 1376), met the Good Parliament." Just four hundred years later, Washington founded a nation; but we may be sure no such character as Washington could have sprung up, worthy of Alfred and carrying out his institutions in a new world, had there not been a John Wiclif to make the Parliament "Good" by his genius and by his personal presence. At this moment he was the pride of his countrymen and in the zenith of his influence. He soon made enemies, because he undertook the great work for

which God had raised him up. Less popular he became, no doubt; but vastly more mighty with his age, and useful to his country not only, but to the human race.

22. THE FIRST CITATION.

Wiclif was made rector of Lutterworth by gift of the King in A. D. 1374. When the Parliament of A. D. 1377 was opened, we find him summoned. before Courtenay, Bishop of London, at St. Paul's. Accordingly there he stands, like another prophet, tall and spare, in a black gown and girded about his loins. Portraits represent Alcuin in just such a costume. He wears a full beard, but his fine forehead and features are enlivened by his clear and searching eye. He is supposed to have borne a staff in his hand. The Duke of Lancaster appeared with him, and certain friars who were bachelors of divinity. He was politely offered a seat, but the Bishop of London insisted that he must stand. Old John of Gaunt fired up, and had so sharp a quarrel with Courtenay that the session was adjourned before Wiclif had uttered a word. The Lord stood by him and comforted him, no doubt; but he could only look on in mute astonishment, equally ashamed of his bishop and of his fiery protector, who had not done him any good.

23. THE SECOND CITATION.

Wiclif was sustained by his University, when Sudbury, his old colleague at Bruges, now Archbishop of Canterbury, was called upon by the Pope

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