to proceed against him. Bulls came thick and fast from Gregory XI., complaining that the Anglican bishops were lukewarm. The Pope complained of Wiclif and the evils of his teaching, and added: "So far as we know, not a single effort has been made to extirpate them. . . . You English prelates, who ought to be defenders of the faith, have winked at them." He was equally polite in his complaint to the University, and he invoked the King to bestir himself. The Mendicants had drawn up nineteen propositions from his voluminous writings, which they made "exceeding sinful," by their way of putting it. Long afterward the Jesuits made out one hundred and one heretical propositions from the harmless pages of the pious Jansenists; and just so any malignant spirit could extract from Massillon himself nineteen propositions to prove that he was the author of the French Revolution. Here let me say, once for all, that Wiclif was as little responsible for the Lollards as Massillon is for the Jacobins. Their founder, Peter Lolhard, suffered death at Cologne two years before Wiclif was born. It would be nearly as just to attribute the Chartists of 1848 to the influence of Canon Kingsley.

24. LAMBETH.

The University resisted the bulls, and complained of their violation of the constitution. When Sudbury mildly replied, that he refused to lay violent hands on their doctor, and merely proposed to institute an inquiry, they acquiesced, and consented

1 See Note Y".

to co-operate. The offender, though not as a prisoner, was cited before the primate at Lambeth. He obeyed, and one can see him as he stands in that venerable chapel, where our first American bishops knelt to be consecrated four hundred years later. Well do I know the spot, for I was lodged within a few feet of it at the last Lambeth conference, and daily went in and out to worship there. This solemn history (and oh how much beside!) often rose before me in the dead of night, as I lay awake in what is called "the Lollard's Tower." All London was on his side, and anon the crowd clamoured about the doors, when, to the unspeakable relief of Sudbury, came a rescript from the Queen Mother, the widow of the idolized Black Prince, for a stay of proceedings. The primate, with a gentle admonition advising him not to do so again, allowed the doctor to go back to Lutterworth. He is said to have helped this result by modifying some of his expressions. This may have been a mere modifying of what the friars had charged. If he did more, it only proves what I have often insisted upon in behalf of the other party, and what may be urged in behalf of the good Sudbury himself, and of all earnest writers, in times of great movements, viz.: They hardly know where they stand themselves, between practical duty and theoretical views of truth.

25. THE FRIARS.

When the great endowed orders became grossly corrupted, the Friars originated, with the good

purpose of imitating the poverty of Christ and reviving religion among the people. Great was the good they seemed to do, when first they came into England. The Popes, who had no taste for poverty, or for primitive preaching, became their enemies, and the pious Bradwardine had to defend them. He bears his unanswerable testimony to their zeal and fidelity to the souls of the masses. The parochial clergy had neglected their duty, and every Franciscan was a sort of Wesley, doing what others had failed to do. But this soon passed away. The friars came into England exempted from all control of its bishops, and able to defy the parish priests. The new system of confessions threw immense gain into their hands. Even great men were glad to confess to strolling mendicants, who passed by and could not daily stare them in the face. Hence the intense hatred between the friars and the rectors, whose canonical functions they usurped. In the end, the Popes used the friars for their own purposes, and the rectors became more decidedly anti-papal. Chaucer takes their part you remember. His portrait of the "Pardoner" is one of the most remarkable word-pictures in all poesy. His hair, yellow and hanging smooth like "a strike of flax," overspreading his shoulders; his voice small as any goat's; no beard; his wallet brim-full of pardons, "from Rome all hot." He had a bit of Our Lady's veil, and a rag of the sail of St. Peter's boat,

"And in a glass he had a pigges bones.

And with these reliques, when that he fand
A poor person dwelling upon land,

He gat him more money in a day

Than that the parson got in months twaie.
Well could he read a lesson or a story,
But all the best he sang an offertory,

To win silver, as right well he could."

When you visit England, look at the gurgoyles and crockets on the walls and towers of the old churches. If it is a parish church, you will see, perhaps, a friar caricatured in stone as a "wolf in sheep's clothing"; if it is an old chapel of the Minorites, you will find the compliment returned by a grotesque carving of a rector, with ears of an ass, pretending to preach, while he can only bray.

26. WICLIF'S DEATH AND CHARACTER.

A

Wiclif has been charged with beginning his reforms by attacking the friars. The reverse is the case, and we can only account for it because, as identified with the parochial clergy, or meaning to be so, he was wise enough not to take up a quarrel which had become so degraded. Nevertheless, as time went on, he was forced to expose the Mendicants, and they were his envenomed assailants. third time Wiclif was cited before his superiors to answer for himself, and on this occasion at the Chapel of the Black Friars, which has been gratuitously imagined a special token that his judges took their part. Again, however, our hero was preserved from harm; again he took his staff and trudged back to Lutterworth, to go on with his translation of the Scriptures. This great work appeared in 1382. In 1384, as he was devoutly worshipping in his parish church, on Innocents'

day, and just as the consecrated host was elevated, he fell in a paralysis. On the last day of that year his spirit returned to God who gave it.

Let the great poet, who knew him well, bear his testimony to so great a benefactor of mankind, in his inimitable portrait of a good priest, in the days of Edward III. and Richard, the last Plantagenet. I must slightly modernize it to make it intelligible. "A good man was ther of religioun, And was a poor Parson of a town,

But riche he was of holy thought and werk;
He also was a learned man, a clerk

That Christ his gospel gladly would he preach;

His parishens devoutly would he teach.

Benign he was and wondrous diligent,

And in adversity full patient.

He could in little thing have suffisance."

In short, he gave of that little to the poor, he visited his people through sleet and storm; in sickness hasted to the farthest habitation; early and late upon his feet, staff in hand, he showed by his conduct how sheep should live, and it was his saying, "If gold rust, what will iron do? If the shepherd be foul, how shall the sheep be clean?" "A better priest there is none anywhere."

"Thus Christ his lore, and his apostles twelve,

He taught, and first he followed it himself.”

Chaucer knew the man, and draws him to the life; but one loves to believe that thus, in the darkest period of our dear mother Church, there were not a few good shepherds of the flock of Christ. It is also a tribute to others of the parochial clergy of the time.