[1] The best summary of the benefits which the Christian religion has
historically wrought for mankind is, I think, to be found in that
eloquent book “Gesta Christi,” by the great American philanthropist,
Mr. Charles Brace.
The author has made no attempt to delineate the shadowy side of the
glowing picture, the evils of superstition and persecution wherewith
men have marred those benefits.
[2] He says: “The leading doctrines of theology are noble and
glorious;” and he acknowledges that people who were able to accept them
are “ennobled by their creed.” They are “carried above and beyond the
petty side of life; and if the virtue of propositions depended, not
upon the evidence by which they may be supported, but their intrinsic
beauty and utility, they might vindicate their creed against all
others” (p. 917). To some of us the notion of “noble and glorious”
_fictions_ is difficult to accept. The highest thought of our poor
minds, whatever it be, has surely _as such_ some presumption in favor
of its truth.
[3] “Agnostic Morality,” CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, June, 1883.
[4] British tonnage increased from 4,272,962 in 1850 to 5,710,968 in
1860; American tonnage from 3,485,266 in 1850 to 5,297,177 in 1860.
On the 30th of June, 1883, twenty years after the civil war, American
tonnage stood at 4,235,487!
[5] “The poet doubtless here refers to his Priory of St.
Cosme-en-l’Isle; of which, Duperron, in his funeral oration on Ronsard,
has said: ‘This Priory is placed in a very agreeable situation on the
banks of the river Loire, surrounded by thickets, streams, and all
the natural beauties which embellish Touraine, of which it is, as it
were, the eye and the charm.’ Ronsard, in fact, returned thither to
die.”—Sainte-Beuve, ‘Poésie Française au XVI^e. Siècle’ (Paris, 1869),
p. 307.
[6] I give a brief sketch of this in my book, “La Prusse et l’Autriche
depuis Sadowa,” vol. i., p. 265.
[7] “It is absolutely necessary for Dalmatia to become connected
with Bosnia. As a Montenegrin guide one day remarked to Miss Muir
Mackenzie, ‘Dalmatia without Bosnia, is like a face without a head,
and Bosnia without Dalmatia is a head without a face.’ There being no
communication between the Dalmatian ports and the inland villages,
the former with their fine names are but unimportant little towns
stripped of all their former splendor. For instance, Ragusa, formerly
an independent Republic, has a population of 6,000 inhabitants; Zara
9,000; Zebeniko 6,000; and Cattaro, situated in the most lovely bay in
Europe, and with a natural basin sufficiently spacious to accommodate
the navy of all Europe, has but 2,078 inhabitants. In several of
these impoverished cities, beggars have taken up their abode in the
ancient palaces of the princes of commerce, and the lion of St. Mark
overlooks these buildings falling into ruins. This coast, which has
the misfortune to adjoin a Turkish province, will never regain its
former position until good roads and railways have been constructed
between its splendid ports and the fertile inland territory, whose
productiveness is at present essentially hampered by the vilest
imaginable administration.”—_La Prusse et l’Autriche depuis Sadowa_,
ii. p. 151. 1868.
[8] Lives of the Archbishops, iii, 76.
[9] Camden’s Britannia.
[10] Church History, Book IV. I.
[11] Ibid., Book III. century xiii.
[12] Causa Dei—the title of Bradwardine’s great work.
[13] A Catalogue of the Bishops of England, by Francis Godwin, now
Bishop of Landaff: 1615.
[14] Cotton’s Abridgment of Records, p. 102, quoted by Lewis, in his
Life of Wycliffe, p. 19.
[15] See Milman’s Latin Christianity, Book XIII. chap. vi, and the
document itself as given in the Appendix (No. 30) to the Life of
Wycliffe, by Lewis.
[16] See Lewis’s Life of Wycliffe, p. 55, and Foxe’s Acts and
Monuments, vol. i. p. 584.
[17] The date of this meeting has not been determined with certainty.
[18] Fuller‘s Church History, Book IV. cent. xiv.
[19] Milton‘s Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.
[20] Milman‘s Latin Christianity, Book XIII. chap. iv.
[21] See the Document itself in Lewis‘s Life of Wycliffe, pp. 59-67.
[22] Shirley‘s Introduction to Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 49.
[23] Wycliffe‘s Place in History, by Professor Burrows, p. 101.
[24] Trialogus, iv. cap. ii., Oxford, p. 248.
[25] See these as given by Lewis—Conclusiones J. Wiclefi de Sacramento
Altaris, Appendix No. 19, p. 318, ed. 1820.
[26] Confessio Magistri Johannes Wycclyff. See Appendix No. 21 in
Lewis. Of this confession the concluding words are—“Credo, quod
finaliter veritas vincet eos.”
[27] Lechler‘s John Wycliffe and his Precursors, vol. ii. p. 193.
[28] Latin Christianity, Book XIII. chap. vi.
[29] “How Servants and Lords shall keep their degrees.” See Lewis, pp.
224, 225.
[30] Godwin’s Catalogue of the Bishops of England, 1615.
[31] Cromp became some time after this a zealous preacher of the
doctrines maintained by Wycliffe.
[32] See Milman. See also the Petition itself in Select English Works
of John Wycliffe, vol. iii. edited by Thomas Arnold.
[33] Godwin’s Catalogue of the Bishops of England.
[34] Fuller’s Church History, Book IV. cent. xiv.
[35] Wycliffe’s Latin Works, edited for the Wycliffe Society by Dr.
Buddensieg, vol. ii. pp. 555, 556.
[36] Introduction to Fasc. Zizan., p. 44.
[37] In so far as the printing of this work is concerned, the reproach
of England was wiped off by the Clarendon Press in 1869; but it was a
German, Dr. Lechler, who edited this great work, the “Trialogus.”
[38] Shirley, Introduction to Fasc. Zizan., p. 47.
[39] Shirley’s Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wycliffe.
Preface, p. 6, Oxford: 1865.
[40] Milman’s Latin Christianity, Book XIII. chap. vi.
[41] Illustrium Majoris Britanniæ Scriptorum Summarium in Quasdam
Centurias Divisum.
[42] Select English Works of John Wycliffe. Introduction, vol. iii.
[43] This is the first of “the most rare and refined works” that
collectively make ‘The Phœnix Nest,’ published in 1593. Reprinted in
vol. ii. of ‘Heliconia,’ edited by T. Park, 1815. The preface bears a
marked resemblance to the famous epilogue to 2 Henry IV.
[44] Shirley: Preface to a Catalogue of the Original Works of John
Wycliffe. The “Trialogus” must have been written, some have it, between
1382 and 1384. This is shown by Vaughan and Lechler.
[45] Knighton, quoted by Dr. Buddensieg.
[46] The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, with the
Apocryphal Books, in the earliest English versions, made from the Latin
Vulgate, by John Wycliffe and his followers. Edited by the Rev. Josiah
Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden. In four volumes. Oxford—at the
University Press: 1850.
[47] Bar. iii. 20. The last words are “in place of them. The young...”
rendered in the Geneva version—“Other men are come up in their steads.
When they were young they saw the light.”
[48] Forshall and Madden’s edition of Wycliffe’s Bible. Preface,
pp. 17, 18.
[49] Godwin’s Catalogue of the Bishops of England.
[50] Fuller, Book IV. cent. xv.
[51] Wycliffe and Hus. From the German of Dr. Johann Loserth, Professor
of History at the University of Czernowitz. 1884.
[52] Luther’s Preface to the Letters of Hus.
[53] See Epilogue to Henry IV. Part II.
[54] Hallam’s Constitutional History of England, chap. ii. 57, 58,
6th ed.
[55] Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, being volume first
of his Works, collected and edited by David Laing. Edinburgh, 1846.
[56] Shirley’s Introduction to Fasc. Zizan., pp. 45, 46.
[57] Speed’s Chronicle, p. 672—ed. 1632.
[58] Preface to A Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wycliffe:
1865.
[59] M’Crie’s Life of John Knox, Period I.
[60] Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VI.
[61] _A True Account of the Rye House Plot_, by Thomas Sprat, Bishop of
Rochester, 1685.
[62] _State papers, Charles II._, June 1683—“A Particular Account of
the Situation of the Rye House.”
[63] _Rye House Papers._ Examination of Robert West of the Middle
Temple. A special collection among the State Papers. It may be
remembered that when this collection was examined an original treatise
of Milton was discovered among the documents—a find which led to
Macaulay’s essay on Milton.
[64] _Rye House Papers._ Examination of Josiah Keeling and Robert West.
[65] Ibid.
[66] _Rye House Papers._ Examination of Josiah Keeling and Robert West.
[67] Ibid.
[68] _Rye House Papers._ Examination of Josiah Keeling and Robert West.
[69] Ibid. Examination of Thomas Shepherd.
[70] Rye House Papers. Examination of Robert West and Josiah Keeling.
[71] _Rye House Papers._ Examination of Robert West and Zachary Bourn.
[72] _Rye House Papers._ Examination of Lord Howard, Alexander Gordon,
and Robert West.
[73] _Rye House Papers._ Examination of Col. Romsey and Robert West.
[74] He was in fact a “recluse” in the ancient and proper sense of
the term. For in the Bishop’s time it still remained customary, after
an imposing ceremony, literally to seal and shut up by the hands of
a bishop those—men or women—who elected to be recluses, in a small
chamber built for the purpose close to the wall of some church with
an opening inwards that the immured tenant might hear the service and
receive necessary subsistence. We are told, for example, by St. Foix
that Agnes de Rochier, the beautiful daughter of a rich tradesman,
commenced such a life at the church of St. Opportune, in Paris, on the
5th of October, 1403, and though then of only eighteen years, lived in
this hermetic state till the ripe enough age of eighty.
[75] It was observed by Scott of Amwell, a critic of the verbal school,
but not without his soundness, and junior to Collins by nine years,
that the Oriental Eclogues, which appeared in 1742, were “always
possessed of considerable reputation,” till Johnson “having hinted
that Collins, once in conversation with a friend, happened to term
them his _Irish_ Eclogues, those who form opinions not from their own
reason or their own feelings, but from the hints of others,” caught the
hint and circulated it. “That Collins,” he adds, “ever supposed his
eclogues destitute of merit there is no reason to believe; but it is
very probable, when his judgment was improved by experience, he might
discover and be hurt by their faults, among which may possibly be found
some few instances of inconsistence or absurdity.”