fifty years ago, in the verification of principles--produce a better
taste. Architects have sought to revive the purest forms of both Gothic
and Grecian. If they could not create a new style, they would imitate
the old: as in philosophy, they would go round in the old circles. As
science revives the atoms of Democritus, so art would reproduce the
ideas of Phidias and Vitruvius, and even the poetry and sanctity of the
Middle Ages. Within fifty years Christendom has been covered with Gothic
churches, some of which are as beautiful as those built by Freemasons.
The cathedrals have been copied rigidly, even for village churches. The
Parthenon reappears in the Madeleine. We no longer see, as in the
eighteenth century, Gothic spires on Roman basilicas, or Grecian
porticos ornamenting Norman towers. The various styles of two thousand
years are not mixed up in the same building. We copy either the
horizontal lines of Paganism or the vertical lines of the ages of Faith.
No more harmonious Gothic edifice was ever erected than the new Catholic
cathedral of New York.
The only absurdity is seen when radical Protestantism adopts the church
of pomps and liturgies. When the Reformation was completed, men sought
to build churches where they could hear the voice of the preacher; for
the mission of Protestantism is to teach, not to sing. Protestantism
glories in its sermons as much as Catholicism in its chants. If the
people wish to return again to ritualism, let them have the Gothic
church. If they wish to be electrified by eloquence, let them have a
basilica, for the voice of the preacher is lost in high and vaulted
roofs. If they wish to join in the prayers and the ceremonies of the
altar, let them have the clustering pillars and the purple windows.
Everything turns upon what is meant by a church. What is it for? Is it
for liturgical services, or is it for pulpit eloquence? Solve that
question, and you solve the Reformation. "My house," saith the Divine
Voice, "shall be called the house of prayer." It is "by the foolishness
of preaching," said Paul, that men are saved.
If you will have the prayers of the Middle Ages and the sermons of the
Reformation both together, then let the architects invent a new style,
which shall allow the blending of prayer and pulpit eloquence. You
cannot have them both in a Grecian temple, or in a Gothic church. You
must combine the Parthenon with Salisbury, which is virtually a new
miracle of architecture. Will that miracle be wrought? I do not know.
But a modern Protestant church, with all the wonders of our modern
civilization, must be something new,--some new combination which shall
be worthy of the necessity of our times. This is what the architect must
now aspire to accomplish; he must produce a house in which one can both
hear the sermon, and be stimulated by inspiring melodies,--for the
Church must have both. The psalms of David and the chants of Gregory
must be blended with the fervid words of a Chrysostom and a Chalmers.
This, at least, should be borne in mind: the church edifice _must_ be
adapted to the end designed. The Gothic architects adapted their vaults
and pillars to the ceremonies of the Catholic ritual. If it is this you
want, then copy Gothic cathedrals. But if it is preaching you want, then
restore the Grecian temple,--or, better still, the Roman theatre,--where
the voice of the preacher is not lost either in Byzantine domes or
Gothic vaults, whose height is greater than their width. The preacher
must draw by the distinctness of his tones; for every preacher has not
the musical voice of Chrysostom, or the electricity of St. Bernard. He
can neither draw nor inspire if he cannot be heard; he speaks to stones,
not to living men or women. He loses his power, and is driven to chants
and music to keep his audience from deserting him. He must make his
choir an orchestra; he must hide himself in priestly vestments; he must
import opera singers to amuse and not instruct. He cannot instruct when
he cannot be heard, and heard easily. Unless the people catch every tone
of his voice his electricity will be wasted, and he will preach in vain,
and be tired out by attempting to prevent echoes. The voice of Saint
Paul would be lost in some of our modern fashionable churches. Think of
the absurdity of Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians affecting to
restore Gothic monuments, when the great end of sacred eloquence is lost
in those devices which appeal to sense. Think of the folly of erecting a
church for eight hundred people as high as Westminster Abbey. It is not
the size of a church which prevents the speaker from being heard,--it is
the disproportion of height with breadth and length, and the echoes
produced by arcades. Spurgeon is heard easily by seven thousand people,
and Talmage by six thousand, and Dr. Hall by four thousand, because the
buildings in which they preach are adapted to public speaking. Those who
erect theatres take care that a great crowd shall be able to catch even
the whispers of actors. What would you think of the good sense and
judgment of an architect who should construct a reservoir that would
leak, in order to make it ornamental; or a schoolhouse without
ventilation; or a theatre where actors could only be seen; or a hotel
without light and convenient rooms; or a railroad bridge which would not
support a heavy weight?
A Protestant church is designed, no matter what the sect may be to which
it belongs, not for poetical or aesthetic purposes, not for the
admiration of architectural expenditures, not even for music, but for
earnest people to hear from the preacher the words of life and death,
that they may be aroused by his enthusiasm, or instructed by his wisdom;
where the poor are not driven to a few back seats in the gallery; where
the meeting is cheerful and refreshing, where all are stimulated to
duties. It must not be dark, damp, and gloomy, where it is necessary to
light the gas on a foggy day, and where one must be within ten feet of
the preacher to see the play of his features. Take away facilities for
hearing and even for seeing the preacher, and the vitality of a
Protestant service is destroyed, and the end for which the people
assemble is utterly defeated. Moreover, you destroy the sacred purposes
of a church if you make it so expensive that the poor cannot get
sittings. Nothing is so dull, depressing, funereal, as a church occupied
only by prosperous pew-holders, who come together to show their faces
and prove their respectability, rather than to join in the paeans of
redemption, or to learn humiliating lessons of worldly power before the
altar of Omnipotence. To the poor the gospel is preached; and it is ever
the common people who hear most gladly gospel truth. Ah, who are the
common people? I fancy we are all common people when we are sick, or in
bereavement, or in adversity, or when we come to die. But if advancing
society, based on material wealth and epicurean pleasure, demands
churches for the rich and churches for the poor,--if the lines of
society must be drawn somewhere,--let those architects be employed who
understand, at least, the first principles of their art. I do not mean
those who learn to draw pictures in the back room of a studio, but
conscientious men, if you cannot find sensible men. And let the pulpit
itself be situated where the people can hear the speaker easily, without
straining their eyes and ears. Then only will the speaker's voice ring
and kindle and inspire those who come together to hear God Almighty's
message; then only will he be truly eloquent and successful, since then
only does his own electricity permeate the whole mass; then only can he
be effective, and escape the humiliation of being only a part of a vain
show, where his words are disregarded and his strength is wasted in the
echoes of vaults and recesses copied from the gloomy though beautiful
monuments of ages which can never, never again return, any more than can
"the granite image worship of the Egyptians, the oracles of Dodona, or
the bulls of the Mediaeval popes."
AUTHORITIES.
Fergusson's History of Architecture; Durand's Parallels; Eastlake's
Gothic and Revival; Ruskin, Daly, and Penrose; Britton's Cathedrals and
Architectural Antiquities; Pugin's Specimens and Examples of Gothic
Architecture; Rickman's Styles of Gothic Architecture; Street's Gothic
Architecture in Spain; Encyclopaedia Britannica (article Architecture).
JOHN WYCLIF.
* * * * *
A.D. 1324-1384.
DAWN OF THE REFORMATION.
The name of Wyclif suggests the dawn of the Protestant Reformation; and
the Reformation suggests the existence of evils which made it a
necessity. I do not look upon the Reformation, in its earlier stages, as
a theological movement. In fact, the Catholic and Protestant theology,
as expounded and systematized by great authorities, does not materially
differ from that of the Fathers of the Church. The doctrines of
Augustine were accepted equally by Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. What
is called systematic divinity, as taught in our theological seminaries,
is a series of deductions from the writings of Paul and other apostles,
elaborately and logically drawn by Athanasius, Jerome, Augustine, and
other lights of the early Church, which were defended in the Middle Ages
with amazing skill and dialectical acuteness by the Scholastic doctors,
with the aid of the method which Aristotle, the greatest logician of
antiquity, bequeathed to philosophy. Neither Luther nor Calvin departed
essentially from these great deductions on such vital subjects as the
existence and attributes of God, the Trinity, sin and its penalty,
redemption, grace, and predestination. The creeds of modern Protestant
churches are in harmony with the writings of both the Fathers and the
Scholastic doctors on the fundamental principles of Christianity. There
are, indeed, some ideas in reference to worship, and the sacraments, and
the government of the Church, and aids to a religious life, defended by
the Scholastic doctors, which Protestants do not accept, and for which
there is not much authority in the writings of the Fathers. But the main
difference between Protestants and Catholics is in reference to the
institutions of the Church,--institutions which gradually arose with the
triumph of Christianity in its contest with Paganism, and which received
their full development in the Middle Ages. It was the enormous and
scandalous corruptions which crept into these _institutions_ which led
to the cry for reform. It was the voice of Wyclif, denouncing these
abuses, which made him famous and placed him in the van of reformers.
These abuses were generally admitted and occasionally attacked by
churchmen and laymen alike,--even by the poets. They were too flagrant
to be denied.
Now what were the prominent evils in the institutions of the Church
which called for reform, and in reference to which Wyclif raised up his
voice?--for in his day there was only _one_ Church. An enumeration of
these is necessary before we can appreciate the labors and teachings of
the Reformer. I can only state them; I cannot enlarge upon them. I state
only what is indisputable, not in reference to theological dogmas so
much as to morals and ecclesiastical abuses.
The centre and life and support of all was the Papacy,--an institution,
a great government, not a religion.
I have spoken of this great power as built up by Leo I., Gregory VII.,
and Innocent III., and by others whom I have not mentioned. So much may
be said of the necessity of a central spiritual power in the dark ages
of European society that I shall not combat this power, or stigmatize it
with offensive epithets. The necessities of the times probably called it
into existence, like other governments, although I cannot see any
argument drawn from the Scriptures, or from the history of the early
Apostolic Church, to warrant its existence. Nor would I defend the long
series of papal usurpations by which the Roman pontiffs got possession
of the government of both Church and State. I speak not of their
quarrels with princes about investitures, in which their genius and
their heroism were displayed rather than by efforts in behalf of
civilization.
But the popes exercised certain powers and prerogatives in England,
about the time of Wyclif, which were exceedingly offensive to the
secular rulers of the land. They claimed the island as a sort of
property which reason and the laws did not justify,--a claim which led
to heavy exactions and forced contributions on the English people that
crippled the government and impoverished the nation. Boys and favorites
were appointed by the popes to important posts and livings. Church
preferments were almost exclusively in the hands of the Pope; and these
were often bought. A yearly tribute had been forced on the nation in the
time of John. Peter's pence were collected from the people. Enormous
sums, under various pretences, flowed to Rome. And the clergy were taxed
as well as the laity. The contributions which were derived from the sale
of benefices, from investitures, from the transfer of sees, from the
bestowal of rings and crosiers (badges of episcopal authority), from the
confirmation of elections, and other taxes, irritated sovereigns, and
called out the severest denunciation of statesmen.
Closely connected with papal exactions was the enormous increase of the
Mendicant friars, especially the Dominicans and Franciscans, who had
been instituted by Innocent III. to uphold the papal domination. These
itinerating beggars in their black-and-gray gowns infested every town
and village in England. For a century after their institution, they were
the ablest and perhaps the best soldiers of the Pope, and did what the
Jesuits afterwards performed, and perhaps the Methodists a hundred
years ago,--gained the hearts of the people and stimulated religious
life; but in the fourteenth century they were a nuisance. They sold
indulgences, they invented pious frauds, they were covetous under
pretence of poverty, they had become luxurious in their lives, they
slandered the regular clergy, they usurped the prerogatives of parish
priests, they enriched their convents, they accommodated themselves to
the wishes of the great, and were marked by those peculiarities of which
the Jesuits were accused in the time of Pascal. As they had not in
England, as in Spain and Italy, tribunals of inquisition, they were
ridiculed, despised, and hated, rather than feared. One gets the truest
impression of the popular estimate of these friars from the sarcasms of
Chaucer. The Friar Tuck whom Sir Walter Scott has painted was a very
different man from the Dominicans or the Franciscans of the thirteenth
century, when they reigned in the universities, and were the confessors
of monarchs and the most popular preachers of their time. In the
fourteenth century they were consumed with jealousies and rivalries and
animosities against each other; and all the various orders,--Dominican,
Franciscan, Carmelite,--in spite of their professions of poverty, were
the possessors of magnificent monasteries, and fattened on the credulity
of the world. Besides these Mendicant friars, England was dotted with
convents and religious houses belonging to the different orders of
Benedictines, which, though enormously rich, devoured the substance of
the poor. There were more than twenty thousand monks in a population of
three or four millions; and most of them led idle and dissolute lives,
and were subjects of perpetual reproach. Reforms of the various
religious houses had been attempted, but all reforms had failed. Nor
were the lives of the secular clergy much more respectable than those of
the great body of monks. They are accused by all historians of avarice,
venality, dissoluteness, and ignorance; and it was their incapacity,
their disregard of duties, and indifference to the spiritual interests
of their flocks that led to the immense popularity of the Mendicant
friars, until they, in their turn, became perhaps a greater scandal than
the parish priests whose functions they had usurped. Both priests and
monks in the time of Bishop Grostête of Lincoln frequented taverns and
gambling-houses. So enormous and scandalous was the wealth of the
clergy, that as early as 1279, under Edward I., Parliament passed a
statute of mortmain, forbidding religious bodies to receive bequests
without the King's license.
With the increase of scandalous vices among the clergy was a corruption
in the doctrines of the Church; not those which are strictly
theological, but those which pertained to the sacraments, and the
conditions on which absolution was given and communion administered. In
the thirteenth century, as the Scholastic philosophy was reaching its
fullest development, we notice the establishment of the doctrine of
transubstantiation, the withholding the cup from the laity, and the
necessity of confession as the condition of receiving the
communion,--which corruptions increased amazingly the power of the
clergy over the minds of superstitious people, and led to still more
flagrant evils, like the sale of indulgences and the perversion of the
doctrine of penance, originally enforced in order to aid the soul to
overcome the tyranny of the body, but finally accepted as the expiation
for sin; so that the door of heaven itself was opened by venal priests
only to those whom they could control or rob.
Such was the state of the Church when Wyclif was born,--in 1324, near
Richmond in Yorkshire, about a century after the establishment of
universities, the creation of the Mendicant orders, and the memorable
usurpation of Innocent III.
In the year 1340, during the reign of Edward III., we find him at the
age of sixteen a student in Merton College at Oxford,--the college then
most distinguished for Scholastic doctors; the college of Islip, of
Bradwardine, of Occam, and perhaps of Duns Scotus. It would seem that
Wyclif devoted himself with great assiduity to the study which gave the
greatest intellectual position and influence in the Middle Ages, and
which required a training of nineteen years in dialectics before the
high degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred by the University. We
know nothing of his studious life at Oxford until he received his
degree, with the title of Evangelical or Gospel Doctor,--from which we
infer that he was a student of the Bible, and was more remarkable for
his knowledge of the Scriptures than for his dialectical skill. But even
for his knowledge of the Scholastic philosophy he was the most eminent
man in the University, and he was as familiar with the writings of Saint
Augustine and Jerome as with those of Aristotle. It was not then the
fashion to study the text of the Scriptures so much as the commentaries
upon it; and he who was skilled in the "Book of Sentences" and the
"Summa Theologica" stood a better chance of preferment than he who had
mastered Saint Paul.
But Wyclif, it would seem, was distinguished for his attainments in
everything which commanded the admiration of his age. In 1356, when he
was thirty-two, he wrote a tract on the last ages of the Church, in view
of the wretchedness produced by the great plague eight years before. In
1360, at the age of thirty-six, he attacked the Mendicant orders, and
his career as a reformer began,--an unsuccessful reformer, indeed, like
John Huss, since the evils which he combated were not removed. He merely
protested against the corruptions which good men lamented; and that is
nearly all that great men can do when they are beyond their age. They
are simply witnesses of truth, and fortunate are they if they do not die
as martyrs; for in the early Church "witnesses" and "martyrs" were
synonymous ([Greek: _martyres_]). The year following, 1361, Wyclif was
presented to the rich rectory of Fillingham by Baliol College, and was
promoted the same year to the wardenship of that ancient college. The
learned doctor is now one of the "dons" of the university,--at that
time, even more than now, a great dignitary. It would be difficult for
an unlearned politician of the nineteenth century to conceive of the
exalted position which a dignitary of the Church, crowned with
scholastic honors, held five hundred years ago. It gave him access to
the table of his sovereign, and to the halls of Parliament. It made him
an oracle in all matters of the law. It created for him a hearing on all
the great political as well as ecclesiastical issues of the day. What
great authorities in the thirteenth century were Albertus Magnus, Thomas
Aquinas, and Bonaventura! Scarcely less than they, in the next century,
were Duns Scotus and John Wyclif,--far greater in influence than any of
the proud feudal lords who rendered service to Edward III., broad as
were their acres, and grand as were their castles. Strange as it may
seem, the glory that radiated from the brow of a scholar or a saint was
greatest in ages of superstition and darkness; perhaps because both
scholars and saints were rare. The modern lights of learning may be
better paid than in former days, but they do not stand out to the eye of
admiring communities in such prominence as they did among our ancestors.
Who stops and turns back to gaze reverentially on a poet or a scholar
whom he passes by unconsciously, as both men and women strained their
eyes to see an Abélard or a Dante? Even a Webster now would not command
the homage he received fifty years ago.
It is not uninteresting to contemplate the powers that have ruled in
successive ages, outside the realms of conquerors and kings. In the
ninth and tenth centuries they were baronial lords in mail-clad armor;
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries these powers, like those of
ancient Egypt, were priests; in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
they were the learned doctors, as in the schools of Athens when
political supremacy was lost; in the sixteenth century--the era of
reforms--they were controversial theologians, like those of the age of
Theodosius; in the seventeenth century they were fighting nobles; in the
eighteenth they were titled and hereditary courtiers and great landed
proprietors; in the nineteenth they are bankers, merchants, and railway
presidents,--men who control the material interests of the country. It
is only at elections, though managed by politicians, that the people are
a power. Socially, the magnates are the rich. It is money which in these
times all classes combine to worship. If this be questioned, see the
adulation which even colleges and schools of learning pay to their
wealthy patrons or those from whom they seek benefits. The patrons of
the schools in the Middle Ages were princes and nobles; but these
princes and nobles bowed down in reverence to learned bishops and great
theological doctors.
Wyclif was the representative of the schools when he attacked the abuses
of the Church. It is not a little singular that the great religious
movements in England have generally come from Oxford, while Cambridge
has been distinguished for great movements in science. In 1365 he was
appointed to the headship of Canterbury Hall, founded by Archbishop
Islip, afterwards merged into Christ Church,--the most magnificent and
wealthy of all the Oxford Colleges. When Islip died, in 1366, and
Langham, originally a monk of Canterbury, was made archbishop, the
appointment of Wyclif was pronounced void by Langham, and the revenues
of the Hall of which he was warden, or president, were sequestered.
Wyclif on this appealed to the Pope, who, however, ratified Langham's
decree,--as it would be expected, for the Pope sustained the friars whom
Wyclif had denounced. The spirit of such a progressive man was, of
course, offensive to the head of the Church. In this case the Crown
confirmed the decision of the Pope, 1372, since the royal license was
obtained by a costly bribe. The whole transaction was so iniquitous that
Wyclif could not restrain his indignation.