The thirteenth century was one of rapid and terrible incidents,
tumultuous politics, and in religious matters of low and degrading
superstition. Transubstantiation had just been formally adopted as a
dogma of the Church, accompanied as it always is by sacramental
confession, and quickly followed by the elevation of the host and the
invention of the pix. Various Orders of monks were flocking into
England. The Pope was doing his best, aided by the Roman clergy, and to
their shame be it said, by some of the English, to fix his iron yoke on
the neck of the Church of England. The doctrine of human merit was at
its highest pitch; the doctrine of justification by faith was absolutely
_unknown_.
Amid this thick darkness, a very small number of true-hearted,
Heaven-taught men bore aloft the torch of truth--that is, of so much
truth as they knew. One of such men as these I have sketched in Father
Bruno. And if, possibly, the portrait is slightly over-charged for the
date,--if he be represented as a shade more enlightened than at that
time he could well be--I trust that the anachronism will be pardoned for
the sake of those eternal verities which would otherwise have been left
wanting.
There is one fact in ecclesiastical history which should never be
forgotten, and this is, that in all ages, within the visible corporate
body which men call the Church, God has had a Church of His own, true,
living, and faithful. He has ever reserved to Himself that typical
seven thousand in Israel, of whom all the knees have not bowed unto
Baal, and every mouth hath not kissed him.
Such men as these have been termed "Protestants before the Reformation."
The only reason why they were not Protestants, was because there was as
yet no Protestantism. The heavenly call to "come out of her" had not
yet been heard. These men were to be found in all stations and
callings; on the throne--as in Alfred the Great, Saint Louis, and Henry
the Sixth; in the hierarchy--as in Anselm, Bradwardine, and Grosteste;
in the cloister--as in Bernard de Morlaix; but perhaps most frequently
in that rank and file of whom the world never hears, and of some of
whom, however low their place in it, the world is not worthy.
These men often made terrible blunders--as Saint Louis did when he
persecuted the Jews, under the delusion that he was thus doing honour to
the Lord whom they had rejected: and Bernard de Morlaix, when he led a
crusade against the Albigenses, of whom he had heard only slanderous
reports. Do we make no blunders, that we should be in haste to judge
them? How much more has been given to us than to them! How much more,
then, will be required?