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religion is a genuine power, having a real existence, daring to be singular, and willing to do or die.

"Blest prisoners they, whose spirits are at large !"

Besides the line of strict evangelical witnesses which from the first may be traced running down through society in England, there have never been wanting men of intelligence and force, who have assailed religious error from the stand-point of human reason, though they themselves have fallen short of the acknowledgment of the full truth. The cause of the Gospel has thus had allies in the ranks of the world; men who deemed themselves standardbearers of reason, have aided the partisans of revelation, fighting earnestly the battle of the church militant. It is not for us now to criticise the various phases of belief which scholars have held, but we may take delight in the retrospect of all those who, whatever their speculative opinions on other subjects, looked to the atonement made by our Lord Jesus Christ as the only ground of acceptance with God. In 1457, Bishop Pecock, who had been for twenty years, writing and acting against Lollardism, was himself charged with the taint, compelled to recant and burn his books publicly.

The diffusion of short doctrinal tracts on the work of Christ, the way of access to God, and the requirements of true religion, has ever been characteristic of evangelical movement among the people. To the pithy MS. tractates of Wycliffe, succeeded the Confession of Thorpe, the Testament of Tracy, and similar productions, eagerly

* Wordsworth.

copied, and firmly though secretly held. Then followed. the prohibited brief printed treatises of the early reformers; afterwards, importations from German theology; next Becon's admirable little books, succeeded by a host of others, issued by the newly-found mighty agency of the printing-press. The narratives of personal history in the pages of Foxe, show how eagerly all these means were used, and how they fed the lamps of individual piety that were burning in a thousand obscure places.

The possession of the Scriptures, during all the future vicissitudes of the kingdom, gave to the followers of Christ the inestimable advantage of a perfect model for their conduct. The path of contumely, trial, and suffering had been well worn by the Saviour; His footsteps were visible in all its windings, and His example is vivified by the constant sense of His ever-living presence. The warriors felt themselves to be not only sustained and blest, but honoured too, by being made spectacles to angels and to men. They acted as though they saw beyond the stars, and lived in the radiant light which flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Faith is not, as some

pretend, the lowest form of reason, but the highest; the humanity thus manifested is of the noblest style.

"Into God's word, as in a palace fair,

Thou leadest on and on, while still beyond

Each chamber, touched by holy Wisdom's wand,
Another opens, more beautiful and rare ;

And thou, in each, art kneeling down in prayer;
From link to link of that mysterious bond,
Seeking for Christ."

CHAPTER VIII.

Reigns of Henry VII, and Henry VI.

GEOLOGISTS tell us that convulsions which have riven the rocks, and molten floods which have burst through the earth's crust, have been the means of bringing up to the light of day the mineral treasures hidden beneath : so the heavings of social religious revolution, the fiery outbursts of persecution, have brought to light the golden ore of sanctified character. We know more of the inner religious life of the actors in the Reformation than of any persons before or since. Under the sad compulsion of ecclesiastical inquisition, they were obliged to narrate the rise and progress of religion in their souls. These records we have; to the latest time they will form profitable subjects for study. In the life to come, we shall have myriads of similar biographies; composing the staple of the subjective history of redemption.

The truth which Bradwardine vindicated in his study, which Wycliffe had scattered alongside the highways and byways of the kingdom, now became the dear heritage of many persons who in all parts of England, after an

The

earnest fashion, sought for rest unto their souls. persecutions under Henry VII., and during the first years of his successor, were nominally founded on the denial of the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the eucharist; but the opinions thus ascertained to be heretical were invariably accompanied by faith in the atonement as the ground of acceptance with God. The persecutors rejoiced in the supposed extinction of opposition when they triumphed over the extinguished lives of the deniers of transubstantiation, but the main truth lay safe and untouched. It is quite evident that the early sufferers were animated, not by opposition to Romanist teaching, but by the higher power of the Holy Ghost, and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.

"He being dead yet speaketh," became true in a singular method of one of the landed gentry of England at this time, of whom we should have known nothing but for the preservation of his will. William Tracy was the worthy representative of a worshipful ancient family, seated at Toddington, in Gloucestershire. Though a resident country gentleman, yet he was a scholar, learned in the writings of Augustine, that fountain of mediæval evangelism. During the reign of Henry VII. he had maintained his place in society with a reputation worthy of his lineage. Full of years, he made his will in October, 1530, and died. The document in question is far more than a formal stereotyped statement of the testator's trust in the Supreme: it is a brief, comprehensive avowal of the truth as it is in Jesus :—

"First and before all thing, I commit me unto God,

and to his mercy, trusting without any doubt or mistrust, that by his grace and the merits of Jesus Christ, and by the virtue of his suffering and of his resurrection, I have, and shall have, remission of my sins and resurrection of my body and soul, according as it is written Job xiv., 'I believe that my Redeemer liveth, and that in the last day I shall rise out of the earth, and in my flesh shall see my Saviour.' This my hope is laid up my bosom." "My ground and belief is that there is but one God and one Mediator between God and man, which is Jesus Christ; so that I do accept none in heaven, nor in earth, to be my Mediator between me and God, but only Jesus Christ."*

in

Well said, brave old knight requiring some stoutness of purpose to say it, even in a posthumous manner. He was the type we trust of hundreds more who, in the last day, shall rise from ancestral tombs to join the glorious assemblage around the throne. Little did it boot, that two years after his death, the ignorant priests burnt in the fire the mouldering remains of his body, but much did it signify, in the progress of spiritual life in this land, that the testament of the worthy knight was made a household word by all such as looked for the advent of a purer faith. It spread quickly among the commonalty. They could readily understand both the precept and the example. Tyndale and Frith successively published comments on this unique but characteristic production of the reform before the Reformation.

It is remarkable that Lord Bacon, with his sagacious Testament of W. Tracy.

* Tyndale's Works.

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