27. AN ESTIMATE OF WICLIF'S WORK.

In estimating this great doctor's work, let us first observe what he did not do. He raised no sect; he set up no school; he obeyed his bishop's citations; he turned his court influence into no private source of profit; he lived and died the faithful parish priest. Nay, he departed not from the law as it then stood in England, and, while he denied the corporal presence,-I might say because he had so modified its significance, — carried out conformity to the letter of the law in the ceremony of uplifting the Eucharistic Body and Blood. In all this, his testimony to restoration, not reconstruction, as his principle, is invaluable. He was no hot-headed iconoclast; he was doing God's work, as God gave him light, and he waited God's guidance as to what next. So by slow degrees, patiently, and as by one who cleanses a golden vase that has been defiled and bruised and daubed with vulgar colours, the Anglican Restoration went on from strength to strength.

28. MISTAKES.

Next, as to his mistakes and errors. I grant he made many, as who does not? How could it have been otherwise, emerging from such darkness, stunned by many voices, confused by the quarrels and divisions of Schoolmen, without any help such as our day affords, and in the very nature of his task forced to review his impressions, revise his work, and to change, from time to time, his original

conclusions? Let us reflect on the divisions of theologians at Constance and Basle, and, above all, at Trent, when books had been already multiplied by the press. Nay, go back to Augustine himself, to Jerome, to Tertullian, to Origen. Who shall cast the first stone? Who is perfect? Was not St. Peter himself withstood by St. Paul, "because he was to be blamed "? How could so immensely voluminous a writer, whose works came forth during a long life and in a period of transition of unexampled agitations, how could he fail to have written many things which he himself, at the end of life, could not approve? Two things let us note: (1) some of his worst mistakes came from St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and from Aquinas himself; and (2) among his contemporaries who was so free as Wiclif from all that runs counter to the rule of Vincent and the Holy Scriptures? He no doubt regarded the Episcopate as an ecclesiastical rather than an apostolic institution. So taught the Schoolmen, to depress the bishops and exalt the Popes. Calvin himself learned Presbyterianism from Aquinas; for, stern logician that he was, he inferred that, if bishops were only the Pope's vicars, and not Christ's, they must go with the Pope. When he taught that presbyters are the highest order of divine appointment, that is just what Rome taught him. Afterwards she made this into a dogma at the Council of Trent, and in her Catechism she teaches Presbyterianism at this day.1

1 Part. II. cap. vii. qu. 22.

29. THE GOOD THINGS.

But the great question remains, What is the positive good which we trace to him? I go back to the negatives first cited, and claim them all as an example of moderation, and humility, and godly patience, which furnish an example to all reformers, and which convict those of the Continent, whose course was widely different, of great responsibilities for the failure that ensued. He was a man of genius, as really so as Calvin or Luther; but he raised no sect, he made no Wiclifites. We owe it largely to him that the Anglican Church follows no human lawgiver, is tied to no Schoolman, and has no "Code of Belief."1 Enough that, with long and patient hopes of a reformed Papacy, he at last was led to the just conclusions which the Church of England reached more slowly, as to its unscriptural and uncatholic character. When to all this, without dwelling on his share in creating our language, one adds his thorough awakening of English consciences, and the stimulus he gave to intellect at such a period, it is enough to demand our homage. But far more is his due. His grand work was the translating of the Bible. Before the art of printing had multiplied books and made such work easy, he gave the Scriptures to every English Christian as his birthright. But hardly second to this was his resting the work of restoration, not on any scholastic system, but on the Holy Scriptures. He stood on the rule of Vincent, in point of fact,

1 See Note Z".

and he made it, as I shall yet show, the radical and glorious criterion of the Anglican Restoration, when compared with the Reformation on the Continent.

30. A PERIOD OF DELAYS.

Behold the wisdom of Providence in arresting the work just there, till the revival of learning and the deeper convictions of pious men were better prepared for its completion. Now came the Wars of the Roses, so terrible, but so necessary to what was for the common weal. Under the house of Lancaster-usurpers who strove to propitiate the pontiffs-came the infamous statute for burning heretics.

It was overruled to make the Paparchy more detestable than ever. Then the clash

of arms:

"Long years of havoc urge their destined course,

And through the kindred squadrons mow their way.”

Yet these were the years when men had time to reflect as well as to fight, and to ask what they were contending for. Dean Hook observes sagaciously of Richard III., that "he had not observed the signs of the times, nor perceived how the spirit of the age was changed. Christianity even in its corruption had been silently doing its work. War was no longer regarded as the only honourable employment, and the hearts of men were softened." Womanhood, too, as he observes, was assuming a new place in society. In short, the Holy Scriptures had begun to be read and loved.

31. OUR GREAT BENEFACTORS.

According to the ennobling principles I am now illustrating, we should be just as truly in sympathy with the Anglican Church of those days as of our own times. We take our stand, it is true, with the progressive churchmen of those days, with their patient reforms, as well as with their bolder conflicts with evil. With Wykeham, that far-seeing spirit of Edward the Third's day, we may rejoice to claim kindred. This great architect, as founder of schools and colleges, was undermining the monasteries, which had become an anachronism. To him succeed Waynflete and Fox, - the latter in a notable instance illustrating my point under the first Tudor. When he thought of founding a monastery one of his brother bishops remonstrated: 'Why build and provide for housing monks, whose end and fall we may live to see? Provide for the increase of learning, and for such (men) as shall do good to the Church and the commonwealth." Fox became the founder of schools accordingly, and especially of that college in Oxford which produced the very model of such men as had been described, the judicious Hooker. Of this sort were not a few when Erasmus came to Oxford to study Greek. Let me name with special reverence Dean Colet, who founded St. Paul's school in London. Surely, the better day was already begun. With the reign of Henry VII. we cannot now concern ourselves; but in him the old Britons come again to power. Gray's genius seizes on their Welsh name, and

welcomes the