God in early medieval times: they had no Christian literature to feed upon, save some crumbs of the bread of life; no friends to aid them; no public to sympathize with them; obloquy and misrepresentation, pains and penalties awaited them; darkness all around, and in the horizon no streaks of the dawn. Yet how many there were, who, under these adverse circumstances, lived to God and for God; breathing the atmosphere of a Divine life; quietly waiting, in the confidence that when their allotted race should have been run, God would realize, in the Church and in the world, the majestic purposes and high hopes of their hearts! Truly this was "the patience of the saints." We would fain know something more than we do, of that "good Queen Anne" who lies buried beneath a canopied tomb in Westminster Abbey. She was not only a lover of the Scriptures, and a promoter of evangelical truth, but her sojourn in England, from the festival of Christmas 1381 to her death in that of Whitsuntide 1394, was conducive to the communication of Wycliffe's views to her fatherland of Bohemia, and thus became an important link in the succession of spiritual life in Western Europe. It is interesting to conceive of personal religion flourishing in her youthful nature, amidst the exciting revelries and disorders of her young husband's court. She had to preside at tournaments, and to share in the costly spectacles in which Richard the Second, the spoilt son of the Black Prince, took chief delight. The tumults of his reign must have rendered her queenly happiness precarious from the first. The love of the English people for the gentle accomplished young foreigner who delighted to study the four Gospels in the new translation of Wycliffe, whose character and conduct cheered the last years of the great reformer, and whose memory became a household word after her brief career of life, was based upon her outspoken sympathy with the free message of God's grace to mankind. Wycliffe's translation was finished the year before Queen Anne came to England. Its homely sentences are still intelligible to us; no wonder that we regard them as possessing peculiar interest. As copyists plied their vocation to supply a demand unknown before, they were unconsciously ministering to the power of an endless life. Notwithstanding the comparative abundance of copies of Wycliffe's translation yet extant, they are held in high esteem. In July, 1863, a beautiful MS. of the precious volume was sold by auction in London by Sotheby and Wilkinson for £350. CHAPTER VI. The Lollards. THE quick spreading of the Wycliffite teaching, and the nature of the methods by which it was carried on, are well shown in the preamble of an Act of Parliament passed three years before the death of the venerable reformer, in the fifth year of the reign of Richard the Second (1382), which is as follows: “Item, forasmuch as it is openly known that there be divers evil persons within this realm, going from county to county, and from town to town, in certain habits under dissimulation of great holiness, and without the licence of the ordinaries of the place, or other sufficient authority, preaching daily not only in church and churchyards, but also in markets, fairs, and other open places, where a great congregation of people is, divers sermons, containing heresies and notorious errors, to the great emblemishing of the Christian faith, and destruction of the law, and of the estate of Holy Church" The act provides a penalty, and is in conformity with a prior proclamation to the same effect issued the same year. It is satisfactory to reflect. on the vigorous efforts in favour of the truth, indicated F by this violent opposition on the part of the ecclesiastical powers which then virtually ruled the State. One of the tenets of Lollardism condemned at Leicester in 1389 is, that "every layman may preach and teach the Gospel everywhere;" affording a most decisive proof of the genuine earnest character of the revival movement. In time of urgent need all ordinary barriers are overleaped by religious zeal. The poor Lollard was impelled and sustained by faith in God's word alone. He knew not of the great cloud of witnesses who had trodden the same path before him, nor dreamt of those who should follow him still more numerously, in succeeding ages. He was ignorant of history, and traditions were all against him. He stood alone, save that God was with him, and that he knew right well. If it is true concerning human affections, that "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," so is it with the divine: one touch of grace unites the whole brotherhood in heaven and on earth. But this blessed association was unknown to the obscure heroes of the early Reformation. They wrought simply and severely for God, and unto Him. "Faith makes man's heart, That dark, low, ruin'd thing, By its rare art, A palace for a king, Higher than proud Babel's tower by many a storey: F. TATE. It has been stated by no mean authority, that Lollardism died entirely out, Wycliffe's labour perished, and the whole pre-Reformation movement became extinct.* This is true only of its political action against Rome, and is not true of its evangelical effects, for the fire was burning unobserved; and, afterwards, when public events necessitated or encouraged a manifestation of personal religious conviction, the foundations laid in Lollardism formed the solid base of the whole structure of English Protestantism. Wycliffe's teaching became, indeed, immediately fruitful; but the pages of history contain but few distinct memorials of its progress. In 1391, William Swinderby, a priest of the diocese of Lincoln, encountered trouble, condemnation, and disgrace for the profession of evangelical doctrines. He submitted. to the demands of his ecclesiastical superiors, and, in a qualified way, recanted certain of his opinions; but he still held to those which prove the genuineness of his faith in the Atonement. His appeal to the Parliament is an eloquent, stirring address, full of Scriptural arguments. It opens with the noble prayer: "Jesu, that art both God and man, help Thy people that love Thy law, and make known, through Thy grace, Thy teaching to all Christian men!" He quaintly says, "This land is full of ghostly cowards, in ghostly battle few dare stand." Doubtless, there were many who hid their convictions, and were disciples, though in secret. At the same time, Walter Brute, an educated yeoman of the diocese of Hereford, was finding his way to the enjoyment of spiritual peace through Him who has said * Froude, vol. ii. |