EARLY REFORMERS.--WALDENSES.--WICKLIFFE.--LOLLARDS.
Meanwhile a little leaven was at work, which served still to keep a
better faith alive; a little salt of the earth which prevented the
great carcase of human nature from offending the nostrils of its
Creator. The Almighty has been ever wont to make such provision for the
continuance of sound doctrine. Whilst all flesh was corrupting its way,
still a household or two were left to keep his name from perishing,
and to rally the true religion again--an Enos, an Enoch, or a Noah.
When idolatry had once more spread itself over the world, almost to the
extinction of the knowledge of the Most High, a few chosen vessels were
left to the preservation of it still--an Abraham, a Lot, a Melchizedec,
a Job. Generations rolled on, and God thought fit to act on a greater
scale, but still on the same principle; and the Israelites were
separated from mankind as a peculiar people, as the depositaries of the
creed of man; and their fortunes were so shaped as to occasion their
dispersion amongst the Gentiles, with the Bible in their hearts, and
hands; and thus were they made the channels through which the will and
works of God were communicated to those who would otherwise have sat
in darkness; and to this origin, perhaps, rather than to be unassisted
efforts of natural reason, is to be referred the more sublime part of
the philosophy of the heathens.[149]
So it was, in a degree, during the times of papal ignorance; for
though to the question, which the Romanists taught every priest that
could scarce read his breviary to ask, “Where was the religion of
protestants before Luther?” it was sufficient to say, as it was said,
“In the Bible;” still even in the darkest times, it had many faithful
witnesses to produce besides, and both in individuals and in whole
congregations might even then be read the eloquent chapters of the good
man’s life. Thus, whilst the pope was grasping at universal power,
and the monks were busy in seconding his efforts, and councils were
giving authority to abuses both doctrinal and practical, on which his
usurpation was grafting itself, and wars were waged between the several
ecclesiastical orders, to the ruin of that which is the keystone of
the gospel, _charity_, and ignorance was becoming more dense, and
manners more profligate, there was abiding amongst the recesses of
the Alps a race of hardy mountaineers, who held (as they still hold
after ages of poverty and oppression) the essential articles of the
reformed faith, and to whom it had been apparently derived from the
apostles themselves:--Vaudois, Valenses, or Waldenses, was the name
of this primitive people, dwelling as they did in the _valleys_
of the Cottian Alps--a name which, though at first like that of
Albigenses and Romanists, having a reference to the local habitation
of the persons who bore it, eventually embraced a large and widely
scattered sect which professed certain religious opinions, and on more
occasions than one sealed them with their blood. For that they took
their title or origin from Peter Waldo, the heretic of Lyons, as the
catholics pretend, is not to be admitted. He was excommunicated by the
archbishop of that place, in 1172, and is not mentioned before the year
1160, whereas there is evidence that the Vaudois existed as a distinct
society at least half a century earlier; and it is probable that the
_Subalpini_, and _Paterines_, a more ancient name still, men
who worshipped the God of their fathers after a manner which the church
of Rome called heresy, were but the same Waldenses, under a prior
designation. Certain it is, that no shadow of proof exists of Peter
Waldo having ever set foot in Piedmont, and a substantial difference
may be descried between his followers and the church of the Alps, that
whilst the former assumed the functions of the clerical office without
hesitation, the latter constantly and scrupulously insisted upon a
regular call to the priesthood, and imposition of hands.[150] Indeed,
the episcopal form of church government was faithfully preserved
among them, till poverty, aggravated by a dreadful pestilence in the
early part of the seventeenth century, threw them for resources upon
Switzerland, which very naturally sent them, together with clerical
recruits, (for only two out of the thirteen barbes or pastors had
been left alive,) her liturgy, her presbyterian constitution, and
her cold and unattractive ritual.[151] Among many of their tenets to
which their enemies bear witness, we find that they gave no credit
to modern miracles, rejected extreme unction, held offering for the
dead as nothing worth except to the priest, neglected the festivals,
denied the doctrines of transubstantiation, purgatory, and invocation
of saints, and held the church of Rome (not an uncommon opinion in
the thirteenth century[152]) to be the woman in scarlet of the
Revelations. From La Nobla Leçon, a certain poem of their own, of
unsuspected authority and very ancient date, for it was written about
the year 1100, we may further gather in addition to the particulars
already given, that the commandments were taught by them; not excepting
that against idols, and the worship of the Trinity, though without a
word in favour of the Virgin. Slanderous tongues would indeed “have
done them to death;”--things which they knew not were wantonly and
wickedly laid to their charge; many, of the same kind, urged in the
same spirit, and with the same regard to consistency, as the charges
objected to the first Christians by the heathens of old time. They were
dissolute libertines, and they were ascetic precisians; they used the
Lord’s Prayer only, and yet they prayed at greater or less length seven
times a day; they permitted laymen to consecrate the elements, and yet
they had priests, and, as some said, three orders of priests; they
allowed the former also to receive confessions, yet they rejected the
confessional; they would have ecclesiastics supported by alms, and they
denounced the mendicant orders as Satan’s own invention;--_non hæc
satis inter se conveniunt_. Archbishop Usher has been at the pains
to collect and compare the manifold accusations cast in their teeth
and makes it manifest that “the testimony agreeth not together.”[153]
Here, however, were many of the principal tenets of the reformed faith,
long before the time of Luther:--in the fastnesses of these mountains
(to use the language of bishop Jewel) were they found, even as it was
in such places, that the older prophets prophesied from the Spirit
of God. The Vaudois extended themselves. They sent forth a colony to
Calabria which was basely and barbarously put to the sword, when the
signs of the times foreboded a reformation in Italy; and struck the
pope with “fear of change.” A settlement so distant could not affect
England, or if so, very indirectly. But another division of the same
people migrated to Bohemia; and the intercourse between England and
that country in the time of Wickliffe was considerable. Natives of
Bohemia were then students at Oxford;[154] and Richard II. chose a
Bohemian princess for his queen. The partiality which she herself (as
indeed her nation in general) manifested for the writings of our early
reformer is an indication of some sympathy between the parties. The
good seed must have fallen on ground prepared to receive it, or it
would not have shot up so vigorously; and it is probable that the early
heresy of Bohemia might help to raise up a Wickliffe for England, as he
paid the debt back by giving to Bohemia a Huss and a Jerome. Certain
it is, that catholic writers of the greatest authority, in treating
of the doctrines of Wickliffe, have considered him as adopting those
of the Waldenses, by whatever means he had become acquainted with
them; and the Vaudois to this day claim a fraternal feeling as due
to themselves from England, on the same ground.[155] Mr. Wordsworth,
whose “Ecclesiastical Sketches” are in general scarcely more remarkable
for their poetry than for their historical accuracy, points at this
connection in his Sonnet on the Waldenses:--
These who gave the earliest notice, as the lark
Springs from the ground the morn to gratulate:
Who rather rose the day to antedate,
By striking out a solitary spark,
When all the world with midnight gloom was dark.
These harbingers of good, whom bitter hate
In vain endeavoured to exterminate,
Fell obloquy pursues with hideous bark;
But they desist not; and the sacred fire,
Rekindled thus, from dens and savage woods
Moves, handed on with never-ceasing care,
Through courts, through camps, o’er limitary floods;
Nor lacks this sea-girt isle a timely share
Of the new flame, not suffered to expire.”
Some, again, of the same persecuted race repaired to Provence and
Languedoc, where they were known by the name of Albigenses, or heretics
of Albi (perhaps the parent stock of the present protestants in the
south of France); and on being driven thence, as they were driven
thither by the inquisition and the sword, sought shelter in the
neighbouring district of Guienne, then in possession of the English,
and thus possibly found a way for themselves or their tenets, or both,
into Britain by another channel. But, in truth, such opinions as those
entertained by the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Bohemians, and the
Lollards (for by this latter name the disciples of Wickliffe were
distinguished--a name probably given to them as being _tares_,
_lolium_, amongst the wheat,) had quietly diffused themselves over
a great part of Christendom, in spite of the unrighteous pains taken by
the church of Rome to put down all overt expression of them. Springing
up in various and distant spots of Europe, they gradually became (so to
speak) confluent. Nor is it impossible to trace the means by which this
might be effected. The intercourse of mankind was considerable in those
days; greater, perhaps, than we are apt to imagine, in this age of
stage-coaches, canals, railroads, and steam-boats. Pilgrimages promoted
travelling to an extent now almost incredible;--every country took care
to be provided with some bait or other for the holy palmer, and the
more distant the journey the more meritorious the service. Vessels were
regularly freighted with pilgrims. Licenses were granted by King Henry
VI. in one year for the exportation of 2433 pilgrims to St. James of
Compostella.[156] The wife of Bath
“Thries had been at Jerusaleme,
She hadde passed many a strange streme,
At Rome she hadde ben, and at Boloine,
At Galice, at Saint James, and at Coloine.”
Rome indeed, the heart as it were of Christendom, was perpetually
receiving and expelling a current of idle or devout dwellers in
every region under heaven, and was thus circulating, intelligence of
all kinds through all lands. The _home_ circuit was still more
trodden; 100,000 pilgrims, we are told, visited St. Thomas à Becket
in a single year.[157] Commerce was then comparatively little, but
it was carried on in a manner to secure much personal communication.
Fairs, which continued a fortnight or three weeks, and whilst they
continued, transformed a desolate heath perhaps, into a temporary city,
with streets and shops, and houses, and “all appliances to boot,”
destined to disappear once more when the mart was over, like a vision
of fairy land, drew together from all quarters merchants, both native
and foreign. Universities were not places of resort for the youth
of the mother-country only, but were filled with students of divers
nations; for, Latin being the conventional language of them all, no
man, from whatever country, was excluded by the want of the vernacular
tongue.[158] The same circumstance afforded to professors a facility
of migrating from one university to another, as occasions might present
themselves, without the tax of learning a new vocabulary. Minstrels
were ever upon the stroll from abbey to abbey,--the welcome carriers
of news to the secluded but inquisitive monks; and freemasons, a kind
of nomad race, pitched their tents wherever they found occupation,
and having reared the cathedral or the church with admirable art,
journeyed on in search of other employers. Finally, the Italians
and other aliens, who by favour of the pope were put in possession
of church livings in every country to which his authority extended,
furnished another channel of international communication. In the reign
of Henry III., the annual value of the benefices so disposed of in
England was 70,000 marks, a sum more than triple the whole revenue
of the crown.[159] These were some of the many ways in which the
intercourse of mankind was maintained in those primitive times, and
the circulation of any popular doctrine effectually secured, whatever
obstacles might be opposed to it. Thus it was that the principles of
the Reformation were slowly and silently making their way through
Europe, when perhaps their progress was little suspected; and one of
those under currents was setting in which are not in the end less
powerful because they happen for a season to be unobserved. It is
singular, that when Dante conducts his hero to that quarter of the
infernal regions where the heretics are paying the penalty of their
sin, being condemned to stand upon their heads in jars of fire, he
adds a remark indicative of the temper of the times, and much to our
present purpose, that these fiery sepulchres were filled with victims
to a number far beyond all expectation.[160] Wickliffe, we know, found
himself very quickly at the head of a numerous and powerful body in
England, simply because he furnished a mouth-piece to those who had
not as yet mustered courage to speak out for themselves, so mistaken is
the conclusion of the Roman catholic, that the unity of his church is
to be inferred from its silence. A third part of the clergy, Wickliffe
himself tells us, thought with him on the sacrament of the Lord’s
supper, and “would defend that doctrine on payne of theyr lyfe;” and
Knighton, a contemporary writer, affirms, that you could not meet two
people in the way but one of them was a disciple of Wickliffe.[161]
Moreover, when he was cited before the bishops at Lambeth, it was not
merely the influence of the Duke of Lancaster that protected him, as
a useful partisan, but the multitude clamoured for his release, as a
teacher of the truth; or “his person was saved out of the hands of his
enemies,” (so says Fuller in his own inimitable manner) “as was once
the doctrine of his godly namesake; they feared the people; ‘for all
men counted _John_ that he was a prophet indeed.’”[162] The moment
was peculiarly propitious to the extension of Wickliffe’s opinions.
The schism in the papacy occurred a few years before his death; and
the spectacle of two infallible heads of the church anathematising
one another, could not fail to open the eyes of Christendom to the
unwarranted pretensions of both. To this circumstance, probably,
Wickliffe was indebted for permission to end his turbulent life in
peace, in his own parish, and in his own bed; since the disposition
of Rome towards this arch-heretic was sufficiently testified, when,
forty-one years afterwards, the council of Constance, in impotent rage,
condemned his bones to be exhumed, burned, and cast into the brook. But
the Swift (such is its name) bore them to the Avon, that to the Severn,
the Severn to the sea, to be dispersed unto all lands; which things are
an allegory.
Of this great reformer himself, who so raised the waters not of this
country only, but of Europe at large, that Luther came in with the next
wave, it is difficult to speak. A most effectual weapon he undoubtedly
was for the pulling down of strong holds; but we may admire the wisdom
of God in adjusting his instruments to the work which he has for them
to do, when he raised up first a Wickliffe, and afterwards a Cranmer.
Had they changed places, Cranmer’s meek and gentle spirit would have
been overborne by the almost irresistible torrent of corruption of
the times of Edward; and, on the other hand, Wickliffe’s daring and
impetuous temper, and his hasty views of ecclesiastical polity, would
have urged him to go all lengths with Henry--and whilst he would have
demolished a church of Rome, he would have left few or no materials
for erecting a church of England. Cranmer and his colleagues have
been pronounced by our great puritan poet, “time serving and halting
prelates;” happily, in one sense, they were so. Wickliffe would have
been a man more after Milton’s heart; but “the wisdom which is from
above,” we read, “is gentle:” and if there be one thing more than
another that fixes the attention of sober-minded and considerate men
when contemplating the progress of the Reformation, it is the calmness,
the temper, the prudence, the presence of mind, with which Cranmer
endeavoured to direct (like a good and guardian angel) the tempest
on which he rode; and whilst he felt how much the fierce element was
imperatively commissioned to destroy, he never for a moment forgot the
still nobler part, how much it was permitted to spare: he steered the
ark of his church with wonderful dexterity through a sea of troubles,
avoiding the scattered Cyclades, when it is probable that, had his
great predecessor been the pilot, he would have run it aground, and
left it a wreck. Wickliffe, as a sincere believer, was naturally
vexed at the scandals by which he saw Christ’s religion brought into
contempt; as a secular churchman and a champion of the seculars, he
hated the friars with a cordial hatred, and took pleasure in exposing
their covetousness and frauds; as an academician, he could not tolerate
their encroachments on the rights and privileges of the universities,
and their surreptitious abduction of four fifths of the students;[163]
as a man of learning, the first of his day, he would give no quarter
to monastic ignorance; as a subject of the King of England, he would
not allow of a divided allegiance in a church of England: but whilst
he stood up the advocate of these principles, the impetuosity of his
temper drove him on to extravagant lengths, and now exhibits him
not so much in the light of a religious reformer as of a religious
revolutionist. Perhaps he blinded himself to the necessary consequences
of many of his own opinions, and, like Wesley, was carried further,
both in himself and in his followers, than he at first meant to go:
but assuredly in him, and still more in his school, may be traced the
elements of a character destined afterwards to attain to an unequivocal
eminence in our history, that of the puritan, and the various sects
which, though not fully fledged till the civil wars, were tumbled
forth like bats out of their hiding places at the first shock of the
Reformation, owed their origin perhaps to this vigorous, sincere, but
incautious antagonist of the church of Rome. When we see him opposing
the doctrine of transubstantiation, that fruitful mother of mischief,
howbeit wavering as it should seem, in his own mind between what was
afterwards the “real presence” of Luther and the “spiritual presence”
of Zuingle; denying the superiority of the church of Rome over other
churches, and the power of the keys as pertaining to the pope rather
than to any other priest, when we see him maintaining that the Gospel
is alone, and of itself, a sufficient rule of faith and practice, and
that all have a right to read it for themselves; that pilgrimages
and indulgences are vain and unprofitable, the worship of saints
unauthorised, and forced vows of celibacy unlawful; above all, when we
find him proclaiming (though here he does not speak with the emphasis
of Luther, who made this article the test of a standing or falling
church,) that justification comes by faith in Christ alone;[164] we
praise the man, for we find him labouring strictly in his vocation,
purifying the Word of God from traditions and additions which had made
it of none effect, and disabusing the people of dangerous and deadly
errors. Nay, more, he might have gone further if he pleased; and
however inexpedient it might be to enlarge upon the doctrine of Divine
decrees--and of its inexpediency, we have an opinion--still there
would have been no indication in this of his weapons being carnal,
of his treasure (and great that treasure was) being contained in an
_earthen_ vessel; but rather an argument that he felt strongly
the error of the church of Rome in attributing so much to man’s own
powers, and that, impelled by such a feeling, he rushed into the
opposite extreme, and refused to him such powers as were his due. But
when he argues that the wickedness of the priest vitiates the acts
of his ministry,[165] in contradiction, to the inference which may
be fairly drawn from the text, where the people are declared to have
“transgressed” because they despised the offering of the Lord, though
the wickedness of Eli’s sons was the excuse,[166] and in contradiction
to the express command of our Lord, that whatsoever the Scribes and
Pharisees who sat in Moses’ seat bid men observe, they were to observe
and do, though they were not to do after their works;[167] when he
maintains tithes to be mere alms, and affirms that parishioners have
a right to withhold them in case the minister provokes them so to
do, of which they are to be themselves the judges;[168] and when he
teaches, in the same spirit, that church endowments in perpetuity
may be resumed under similar circumstances by the patron or the
king,[169] thereby subverting the very principles upon which not
only ecclesiastical property rests, but all property whatever, and
annihilating an establishment at a blow; when his immediate disciples,
such as William Thorpe and Lord Cobham, are found erecting themselves
into inquisitors of the morals of the superior clergy, and denying
them to be priests of God, whether archbishops or bishops, if their
character, conversation, and conduct did not answer to a test of their
own;[170] these dogmas when we read, it is difficult to separate the
conscientious reformer from the exasperated antagonist, or to refrain
exclaiming with St. Paul, “Are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” It may
not be fair to impute to Wickliffe himself all the extravagances of his
followers, yet they are very natural consequences of the principles
he adopted and taught; in many cases they must have seen the light
in Wickliffe’s own time; some of them undoubtedly attach to himself;
and they are all, at any rate, remarkable as the first fruits of
those opinions and practices which, when coupled with politics, some
two centuries and a half later, overturned both altar and throne. We
find the Lollard taking upon himself to pronounce on the call of his
ecclesiastical ruler, and yielding or refusing him canonical obedience
after a verdict of his own:[171] we find him traversing the country
from town to town, preaching in churches and churchyards, in fairs and
markets, by a self-constituted authority, without license had from the
bishop, or regard paid to his inhibition or summons:[172] we find him
stumbling at pontifical habits, and for himself going about in his blue
or russet gown, and barefoot;[173] we find him strongly prejudiced
against the use of church music and organs (which was evidently the
feeling of Wickliffe himself),[174] and quoting Scripture in support
of his prejudice in the very spirit of the days of Cromwell, as though
Christ would not raise the damsel to life until he had first put forth
the _minstrels_:[175] we find him holding up to the clergy the
duty of copying St. Paul to the letter, and of labouring like him
with their own hands for their own maintenance;[176] and we find him
(a circumstance which is here mentioned not as a matter of charge,
but as a matter of fact, illustrating his resemblance to the puritan)
dealing in a phraseology of his own, expressive of the sect to which
he belonged, and less loose and secular than was usual.[177] It was
natural that a party now becoming numerous, having religion for their
common bond (the strongest of all), and holding some tenets not
altogether favourable to a monarchical government and an episcopal
church, should be regarded with some suspicion. The sheriff’s oath,
as it was framed by statutes of Richard II. and Henry IV., required
of that officer to watch the Lollards; and the clause to this effect
continued in force till the time of Charles I., when Sir Edward Coke,
on being made sheriff of the county of Buckingham, objected to it, and
it was in consequence withdrawn.[178] Mr. Hume, who is less sceptical
in weighing the value of evidence when it tends to cast imputations on
religious professors than on some other occasions, boldly pronounces
Lord Cobham to have been guilty of high treason, (in spite of Fox’s
express testimony to the contrary,) and the sect in general to have
had treasonable designs;[179] but St. Paul himself was called a “mover
of sedition,” though he actually preached that to “resist the power”
was to “resist the ordinance of God.” The executions of the Lollards,
which took place between Wickliffe’s death and the Reformation, appear
to have been in reality on the charge of heresy, not of disaffection;
though it is true that the latter accusation was put forward in one or
two instances, as being the more popular charge, just as our Lord was
accused of making himself a king, when a Roman tribunal could otherwise
have seen no fault in him. Besides, the manner in which sentence was
carried into effect--which was in all cases, we believe, by fire, the
appropriate punishment of heresy--confirms this opinion. Still some of
the principles of the Lollard were, doubtless, of a dangerous political
character; in his hands they appear to have lain dormant; but when he
lapsed into the puritan, the politician was combined in him, and then
they became active and mischievous. If he ran into extremes, he had
some cause and excuse for so doing; he, at least was not straining at
gnats, but at camels. An unmitigated creed drove him into an unmeasured
abomination of it; the personal corruption of the Roman catholic priest
of those times, tempted him to question his official authority; his
abuse of what was lawfully his own, to dispute his abstract right of
it: but though in all this he might be mistaken, he was not mercenary;
and whatever his opinions were, however untenable, he was true to them
in life and in death, forfeiting for the sake of them his property,
his liberty, and his peace, and often in the end sealing them with his
blood. But, after all, the great glory of the Lollard was this, that
he gave to the people the pure word of God. The work whereby Wickliffe
hastened the Reformation, was his translation of the Scriptures into
his own mother-tongue. Apart from this, his labours, as valuable as
they were, might not be thought of unmixed value. Herein he had the
sure promise of God pledged to his success. “For as the rain cometh
down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth
the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed
to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be, saith the
Lord, that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto
me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall
prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”[180] Void it did not return.
Hitherto the Scriptures were little known. Cædmon, it is true, had
paraphrased in verse detached portions of them in the seventh century.
Bede, it has been before observed, had translated the Gospel of St.
John. Translations of all the Gospels into Anglo-Saxon had been made
between the reigns of Alfred and Harold. Elfric produced versions of
many books of the Old Testament, as well as of the New; but, meanwhile
the invasion of the Danes threw the kingdom into a frightful state
of anarchy, and long kept it so disturbed. Then the Norman conquest
succeeding again broke its spirit and changed its language; so that
the word of God had become precious in the days of Wickliffe. The
Anglo-Saxon which still continued to be the staple of the dialect of
England, was by this time saturated with Norman words (no great number
having been adopted into it since; and whilst Chaucer was labouring to
_fix_ the English tongue (its _winged_ words) on principles
of taste, amongst the courtiers and nobles, Wickliffe, perhaps even
a more perfect master of it still, was establishing it yet more
permanently, by knitting up in it the immortal hopes of the people at
large, and stamping it in a complete translation of the Bible, with
“holiness to the Lord.” At this day his version can scarcely be called
obsolete. I speak of the New Testament, for the Old has never yet been
printed; a reproach both upon the divines and the philologists of
England, which, we trust, will speedily be removed. At this day, it
might be read in our churches without the necessity of many even verbal
alterations; and on comparing it with the authorised version of King
James, it will be found that the latter was hammered on Wickliffe’s
anvil. By this great and good work the pleasure of the Most High
prospered in his hand. An eager appetite for Scriptural knowledge was
excited among the people, which they would make any sacrifice and risk
any danger to gratify. Entire copies of the Bible, when they could only
be multiplied by means of amanuenses, were too costly to be within the
reach of very many readers; but those who could not procure the “volume
of the Book,” would give a load of hay for a few favourite chapters,
and many such scraps were consumed upon the persons of the martyrs at
the stake.[181] They would hide the forbidden treasure under the floors
of their houses, and put their lives in peril, rather than forego the
book they desired; they would sit up all night, their doors being shut
for fear of surprise, reading or hearing others read the word of God;
they would bury themselves in the woods, and there converse with it in
solitude; they would tend their herds in the fields, and still steal
an hour for drinking in the good tidings of great joy:--thus was the
angel come down to trouble the water, and there was only wanted some
providential crisis to put the nation into it, that it might be made
whole.