the old pilgrimages from the influence of habit, superstition, or antagonism to all changes that threatened to curtail their pleasures. And whilst the shrine-worshippers paid no heed to Archbishop Sudbury's counsel, they warmly resented the fervour with which Lollardy inveighed against their favourite practice, as prejudicial to morals and the social well-being of the multitude, and scandalously conducive amongst the most ignorant folk to the sin of idolatry. Since this life was a pilgrimage, and all human beings were nothing but pilgrims passing onwards to the realm of eternal bliss or the abode of everlasting pain,* the stout Lollards maintained that the travellers in so solemn a pilgrimage, instead of amusing themselves with jocund trips to the graves of pious men of olden time, had better give all their time and care to the conduct of the one great journey from the grave to the gates of eternity.

Conspicuous for their munificence to the sick and to persons poorer than themselves, the poor Lollards offended prevailing opinion by their manner of doing alms and their choice of objects for Christian benevolence. Whilst the wealthier people of Wycliffe's England, in compliance with the ostentatious spirit of feudal manners, gave liberally to mendicants who thronged their outer doors, or cheered them with servile acclamations as they rode in splendour to the hunting-ground or the tournament, they were criminally negligent of the claims of such human misery as lay remote from their daily paths. Whilst stout beggars scrambled for the largesses insolently

Moreover,' said Lord Cobham, 'in this I am fully persuaded, that every man dwelling on this earth is a pilgrim, either towards bliss or pain. And that he which knoweth not, nor will know, nor yet keep the holy commandments of God in his living here, albeit that he goeth on pilgrimage into all quarters of the world, if he departeth so, he shall surely be damned. Again, he that knoweth the holy commandments of God, and so performeth them to the end of his life to his power, shall without fail be saved in Christ, though he never in his life go on pilgrimage, as men use nowadays to Canterbury, Walsingham, Compostella, and Rome, or to other places.

+ But alms-doers in the fiend's church feed many wretches, as stiff beggars, and strikers over the land, and groaners without cause, that need not their goods. Yea, to minstrels, to jugglers, and other vain japers, they deal largely their goods and call it alms. But these men say goods are thus dispended all amiss. And if they do anything as need is, presently they seek vain-glory, and lose all their reward.'

thrown to them by the lords of the soil, the miserable sufferers from extreme sickness and utter indigence too often died in hovels or ditches, without human sympathy. The deaths of these wretched creatures were stigmatised by Lollardy as 'murders'-done, perhaps, more through want of thought than want of heart, but still murders,* for which the rich would be held accountable at the final judgment: and to mitigate the pains of the forlorn outcasts, the new devotees denied themselves the comforts and necessaries of life, to the disgust of their opponents, who saw in such eccentric charity only another insidious attempt to promote discontent in the lowest classes of the populace.

*Also,' says Wycliffe in 'The Poor Caitiff,'' there is manslaughter in other manner, in which man is said to slay his fellow-Christian; as he or she hath the goods of the world, and seeth man or woman in great default or mischief, and will not help them. I speak not of pardoners, nor of bold beggars, but of them that are poor, feeble, crooked, blind, and lame, or in some other mischief by the sufferance of God; and others who have pain and default, who are ashamed to ask and would rather suffer much mischief than beg; of whom it is said in Holy Writ, Thou hast seen a man dying for hunger, if thou hast not fed him thou hast slain him.'

IT

CHAPTER XII.

LOLLARDY: TENETS AND POLITICS.

6

would be a great mistake to suppose that the difference between the Lollards and the conservative Churchmen of the fourteenth century, on matters of religious opinion, was so great as it has been represented by the many historians, who wrote under the very erroneous impression that the theology of the earlier Reformers was nearly identical with the theology of Edward the Sixth's prelates, and who would have us believe that the Marian martyrs died in support of views universally accepted by Wycliffe's poor priests.' At its outset, a protest against the corruptions of a clergy, rather than a revolt against the doctrines of a church, the Lollardy of Wycliffe's England, during the first stages of its career, directed its force against vicious practices much more than against erroneous dogmas; and it had made great advances to the fullness of its perilous power, and a perfect development of its dangerous political principles, before the leaders of the movement converted an agitation for social reform into a battle for new faith.

To state the precise time at which this change was effected in the operations and designs of the Reformers would be impossible, even if history had preserved the minutest particulars of a struggle, the greater part of which is involved in impenetrable obscurity; for it is not in the nature of things that the large number of persons concerned in the movement of attack can have acted with uniform harmony and exact concurrence of sentiment. Long after it had altered the nature of the conflict, and had distinctly repudiated some of the principal tenets of orthodox theology, the Wycliffian party was unanimous in nothing but a resolve to withstand Papal encroachments, a strong desire to render the clergy amenable to some sort of

public opinion, and a general purpose to employ the enormous wealth of the ecclesiastical institutions for the relief of the poor and the promotion of true religion. Just as the Liberal party in the House of Commons, during Lord Palmerston's ascendancy, comprised politicians of several kinds-from cold patrician Whigs to ardent Radicals-the Lollards of the fourteenth century, together with a large proportion of persons far advanced in theological heresy, numbered many hundreds of supporters, whose faith was not at direct variance with any of the doctrines authorised two centuries later by the Council of Trent. On purgatory, penance, transubstantiation, baptism, the efficacy of priestly absolution, and all other principal topics of polemical warfare, Wycliffe and his more learned associates underwent successive changes of opinion during the various stages of the protracted contest, that brought them in the course of years to conclusions, from which they would have turned with abhorrence at the outset of their inquiries into the foundations and sources of religious opinion. And whilst the chiefs of the new party were continually modifying and reforming their articles of faith, so that it was impossible for the intelligent and impartial observer to state precisely what they continued to believe, and what they had rejected of old tenets, and how far they had marched beyond the outer boundaries of religious orthodoxy, the multitude of their comparatively unenlightened followers presented every conceivable shade of thought and diversity of sentiment between the darkness of Papal error and the light of evangelical truth.

The biographers who maintain that Wycliffe's theology agrees in every important particular with the doctrines of Latimer and Cranmer, either overlook, or make childish attempts to explain away, the numerous passages which demonstrate how largely the Father of the Reformation concurred to the last in opinions which the Protestants of the sixteenth century repudiated unanimously as superstitious and hurtful. On the doctrine of purgatorial punishment* the Rector of Lutterworth

In that quaint chapter of The Poor Caitiff' entitled 'The Armour of Heaven,' Wycliffe says, 'Two spurs it is needful that thou have to thy horse, and that they be sharp to prick thy horse if needful, that he loiter not in the way: for many horses are slow if they are not spurred. These two spurs are love and

held views that no clergyman of Elizabeth's church could have taught without incurring censure and deprivation. His 'Poor Caitiff' contains a grateful recognition of the salutary uses of purgatorial terrors; and though a passage of the De Veritate Scripturæ' countenances faintly the opinion that the author in a more merciful mood excluded the punishment of fiery torture from his conception of an abode, where he describes the saints as passing their time in unconscious repose, there is no lack of evidence that his more enlightened disciples long continued to pray for the liberation of souls from the confinement and sharp discipline of purgatory. Of the mass of testimony affecting this point, one of the most characteristic items is the brief record of the expenditure of a certain deceased John Gamalin's estate on the purchase of a copy of The Poor Caitiff,' the successive holders of which manual of seasonable counsel were required, in consideration of the benefit derived from its pages, to pray for the soul of the poor Lollard with whose earthly substance it had been purchased. 'This book,' runs the record of this singular bequest, was made of the books of John Gamalin, for a common profit, that the person, that has this book committed to him of the person that hath power to commit it, have the use thereof for the time of his life, praying for the soul of the same John. And that he that hath this aforesaid use of commission, when he occupieth it not, leave he it for a time to some other person. Also that the person to whom it was committed for the term of life, under the aforesaid conditions, deliver it to another the term of his life. And so be it delivered and committed from person to person, man or

dread; which of all things must stir men to the way of heaven. The right spur is the love that God's dear children have for the lasting weal that shall never end. The left spur is dread of the pains of purgatory and of hell, which are without number, and never may be told out.' Other places where Wycliffe appeals to his disciples' dread of purgatorial torment are familiar to all readers of the Reformer's works. In the De Veritate Scripture' he speaks of the saints sleeping or resting in purgatory;' which gentle and tranquillising picture of purgatorial existence caused Dr. James, one of the Reformer's unhistorical biographers, to exclaim triumphantly, 'Surely by this division Popish purgatory is thrust clean out of doors. For there is little rest and less sleeping there, if we believe them that have (feigned to) come from thence, and have told us so. And by this reason, if this fire of purgatory be clean put out, the smoke of it, that is prayers for the dead, must needs in a very short time vanish away.'