the long course of fertilizing rivers, through ample pastures, and under the bridges of great capitals, measuring the distances of marts and barns, and portioning out all those wealthy regions from Dan to Beersheba."*

Henceforth we have to plunge into the actual shock of the battle between light and darkness, in search of the votaries of truth. The history of religion is not a tale of peace, but of terrible war. Evil in its most hateful form is manifested in strenuous opposition to the good. We are shocked and distressed at the dreadful character of the scenes, in some of which the Tempter has apparently triumphed. The "agony and bloody sweat" of the Man of Sorrows was symbolical of the baptism wherewith His Church was prepared for final, but long-delayed, triumph.

No sooner do we open the annals of persecution, than we are struck with the fortitude and patience of the sufferers. A cheerful tone pervades their confessions. They learnt to direct upwards to heaven the energy of affection which might not expand on earth. We find in their sayings, no morbid reflections on their sad destiny, no bitter accusations against their enemies, but, on the contrary, exulting joy in God their Saviour, and firm hope in the future. They "endured as seeing Him who is invisible," and comforted one another with thoughts kindled at the same source as Luther's Hymn:

For traces of the higher life in man we must often search amidst the lower forms of man's social condition, and there find them under terrible outward disadvantage.

The fearful statute "De Heretico Comburendo," 2 Hen. IV., c. 15, (1401,) tells us by what means the truth, which it arrogantly aimed to burn out of the land, was being promulgated. It states, that "divers false and perverse people of a new sect usurping the office of preaching, do perversely and maliciously, in divers places within the said realm, under the colour of dissembled holiness, preach and teach these days openly and privily divers new doctrines and wicked heretical and erroneous opinions, contrary to the same faith and blessed determinations of the Holy Church; and of such sect and wicked doctrine and opinions they make unlawful conventicles and confederacies, they hold and exercise schools, and make and write books; they do wickedly instruct and inform people."

This terrible engine of cruelty was not allowed to become rusty. The second sufferer under its enactments was an artisan of Worcester, John Badby.

Early in the morning of the 15th of March, 1409, the city of London was in an unusual ferment. An august tribunal was assembled in conclave at St. Paul's. The Duke of York, the Earl of Westmoreland, the Chancellor Beaufort, the archbishops, and numerous other dignitaries of church and state, were there. The occasion of the gathering was merely that Badby had expressed himself to be of opinion contrary to the dominant creed on the subject of the real presence, and held the doctrines

of Wycliffe. He was the first of the working class in England prosecuted for heresy, the predecessor and type of a great number of the same class who afterwards dared to suffer and die in testimony of their personal religious convictions of evangelical truth. After his condemnation in the early morning, a brief respite was allowed him until noon; the king's writ obtained, the terrible preparations in Smithfield made, and then at mid-day, in the presence of Prince Hal (who vainly attempted to snatch him from the actual fire by promises of worldly advantage if he would reeant), in the face of a crowd of the best and wisest people of the realm, this devoted man was "done to death," calling upon the Lord.

Henceforth there was no cessation of activity for the Gospel on the one hand, and against it on the other. The laws indicate that the truth was being promulgated under fearful difficulties by the time-honoured methods common among faithful men from the first.

The most illustrious in rank of the Lollards, and one of the bravest of English martyrs, was Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. This nobleman was a mirror of knighthood. Born in the palmy days of chivalry, trained in courts and camps, living whilst the tournament was a fashion of the times, he became obnoxious to the frightful charge of heresy, and after trial, imprisonment, escape, and betrayal, was ultimately cruelly put to death at St. Giles's Cross. His whole demeanour was worthy of the heroic age. On learning that he had been accused, he manfully wrote, signed, and sealed a declaration of his

belief, and took the document straight to the King. Henry the Fifth, though free and brave in his youth, became the servile tool of bigoted Italian priests in his maturer age. He refused to receive the paper from his brave old companion in arms. Then the good knight demanded to be tried by his peers, after the old custom :—

"Than desired he in the Kinges presens, that an hundred knightes and esquiers might be suffered to come in upon hys purgacyon, which he knewe wolde clere him of all heresyes. Moreouer, he offered hymself, after the lawe of armes, to fight for life or death with any man lyuing, Christen or Heythen, in the quarrel of his faith, the King and the lordes of his councill excepted. Fynally, with all gentlenesse he protested before all that were present, that he wold refuse no manner of correction that shuld after the lawes of God be ministered unto him; but that he wold at all times with all mekeness obey it."* The subsequent examination of the brave knight shows that he was skilled in the Scriptures, quite sound in the faith, and that he experienced the personal enjoyment of peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom he had affectionate and reverential faith. He had openly embraced evangelical views, and had employed itinerant preachers to promulgate them, after the example of Wycliffe.

When brought from the Tower to the Hall of the Dominicans, within Ludgate, before the archbishop, bishops, doctors, officials, and priests, he says, in answer to the urgent entreaties for his recantation and con"State Trials," vol. i., p. 39.

fession,-"Nay, forsooth will I not, for I never yet trespassed against you, and therefore will not do it.' And with that he kneeled down on the pavement, holding up his hands towards heaven, and said, 'I shrive me here unto Thee, my eternal living God, that in my frail youth I offended Thee, O Lord, most grievously! Many men have I hurt in my anger, and done many other horrible sins; good Lord, I ask Thee mercy.' And therewith weepingly he stood up again, and said with a mighty voice, Lo, good people! lo; for the breaking of God's law and His great commandments they never yet cursed me, but for their own laws and traditions most cruelly do they handle both me and other men; and therefore both they and their laws, by the promise of God, shall be utterly destroyed.' With a stout heart, at the end of his trial he spoke to his judges before the multitude with cheerful countenance. " Though ye judge my body, which is but a wretched thing, yet I am certain and sure that ye can do no harm to my soul, no more than could Satan to the soul of Job. He that created that, will of His infinite mercy and promise save it. I have therein no manner of doubt. And as concerning these articles before rehearsed, I will stand to them even to the very death, by the grace of my eternal God.'"* Sentiments and language echoed one hundred years afterwards, by the great German reformer at the Diet of Worms.

The Constitutions of Archbishop Arundel in 1408, the statute 2 Henry V., c. 7 (1415), and the Injunctions of * Foxe, vol. iii., p. 337.