CHAPTER V.

EARLY REFORMERS.—WALDENSES.—WICKLIFFE.—LOLLARDS.

Meanwhile a little leaven was at work, which served still to keep a better faith alive; a little salt of the earth which prevented the great carcase of human nature from offending the nostrils of its Creator. The Almighty has been ever wont to make such provision for the continuance of sound doctrine. Whilst all flesh was corrupting its way, still a household or two were left to keep his name from perishing, and to rally the true religion again—an Enos, an Enoch, or a Noah. When idolatry had once more spread itself over the world, almost to the extinction of the knowledge of the Most High, a few chosen vessels were left to the preservation of it still—an Abraham, a Lot, a Melchizedec, a Job. Generations rolled on, and God thought fit to act on a greater scale, but still on the same principle; and the Israelites were separated from mankind as a peculiar people, as the depositaries of the creed of man; and their fortunes were so shaped as to occasion their dispersion amongst the Gentiles, with the Bible in their hearts, and hands; and thus were they made the channels through which the will and works of God were communicated to those who would otherwise have sat in darkness; and to this origin, perhaps, rather than to be unassisted efforts of natural reason, is to be referred the more sublime part of the philosophy of the heathens.[149]

So it was, in a degree, during the times of papal ignorance; for though to the question, which the Romanists taught every priest that could scarce read his breviary to ask, “Where was the religion of protestants before Luther?” it was sufficient to say, as it was said, “In the Bible;” still even in the darkest times, it had many faithful witnesses to produce besides, and both in individuals and in whole congregations might even then be read the eloquent chapters of the good man’s life. Thus, whilst the pope was grasping at universal power, and the monks were busy in seconding his efforts, and councils were giving authority to abuses both doctrinal and practical, on which his usurpation was grafting itself, and wars were waged between the several ecclesiastical orders, to the ruin of that which is the keystone of the gospel,charity, and ignorance was becoming more dense, and manners more profligate, there was abiding amongst the recesses of the Alps a race of hardy mountaineers, who held (as they still hold after ages of poverty and oppression) the essential articles of the reformed faith, and to whom it had been apparently derived from the apostles themselves:—Vaudois, Valenses, or Waldenses, was the name of this primitive people, dwelling as they did in thevalleysof the Cottian Alps—a name which, though at first like that of Albigenses and Romanists, having a reference to the local habitation of the persons who bore it, eventually embraced a large and widely scattered sect which professed certain religious opinions, and on more occasions than one sealed them with their blood. For that they took their title or origin from Peter Waldo, the heretic of Lyons, as the catholics pretend, is not to be admitted. He was excommunicated by the archbishop of that place, in 1172, and is not mentioned before the year 1160, whereas there is evidence that the Vaudois existed as a distinct society at least half a century earlier; and it is probable thattheSubalpini, andPaterines, a more ancient name still, men who worshipped the God of their fathers after a manner which the church of Rome called heresy, were but the same Waldenses, under a prior designation. Certain it is, that no shadow of proof exists of Peter Waldo having ever set foot in Piedmont, and a substantial difference may be descried between his followers and the church of the Alps, that whilst the former assumed the functions of the clerical office without hesitation, the latter constantly and scrupulously insisted upon a regular call to the priesthood, and imposition of hands.[150]Indeed, the episcopal form of church government was faithfully preserved among them, till poverty, aggravated by a dreadful pestilence in the early part of the seventeenth century, threw them for resources upon Switzerland, which very naturally sent them, together with clerical recruits, (for only two out of the thirteen barbes or pastors had been left alive,) her liturgy, her presbyterian constitution, and her cold and unattractive ritual.[151]Among many of their tenets to which their enemies bear witness, we find that they gave no credit to modern miracles, rejected extreme unction, held offering for the dead as nothing worth except to the priest, neglected the festivals, denied the doctrines of transubstantiation, purgatory, and invocation of saints, and held the church of Rome (not an uncommon opinion in the thirteenth century[152]) to be the woman inscarlet of the Revelations. From La Nobla Leçon, a certain poem of their own, of unsuspected authority and very ancient date, for it was written about the year 1100, we may further gather in addition to the particulars already given, that the commandments were taught by them; not excepting that against idols, and the worship of the Trinity, though without a word in favour of the Virgin. Slanderous tongues would indeed “have done them to death;”—things which they knew not were wantonly and wickedly laid to their charge; many, of the same kind, urged in the same spirit, and with the same regard to consistency, as the charges objected to the first Christians by the heathens of old time. They were dissolute libertines, and they were ascetic precisians; they used the Lord’s Prayer only, and yet they prayed at greater or less length seven times a day; they permitted laymen to consecrate the elements, and yet they had priests, and, as some said, three orders of priests; they allowed the former also to receive confessions, yet they rejected the confessional; they would have ecclesiastics supported by alms, and they denounced the mendicant orders as Satan’s own invention;—non hæc satis inter se conveniunt. Archbishop Usher has been at the pains to collect and compare the manifold accusations cast in their teeth and makes it manifest that “the testimony agreeth not together.”[153]Here, however, were many of the principal tenets of the reformed faith, long before the time of Luther:—in the fastnesses of these mountains (to use the language of bishop Jewel) were they found, even as it was in such places, that the older prophets prophesied from the Spirit of God. The Vaudois extended themselves. They sent forth a colony to Calabria which was basely and barbarously put to the sword, when the signs of the timesforeboded a reformation in Italy; and struck the pope with “fear of change.” A settlement so distant could not affect England, or if so, very indirectly. But another division of the same people migrated to Bohemia; and the intercourse between England and that country in the time of Wickliffe was considerable. Natives of Bohemia were then students at Oxford;[154]and Richard II. chose a Bohemian princess for his queen. The partiality which she herself (as indeed her nation in general) manifested for the writings of our early reformer is an indication of some sympathy between the parties. The good seed must have fallen on ground prepared to receive it, or it would not have shot up so vigorously; and it is probable that the early heresy of Bohemia might help to raise up a Wickliffe for England, as he paid the debt back by giving to Bohemia a Huss and a Jerome. Certain it is, that catholic writers of the greatest authority, in treating of the doctrines of Wickliffe, have considered him as adopting those of the Waldenses, by whatever means he had become acquainted with them; and the Vaudois to this day claim a fraternal feeling as due to themselves from England, on the same ground.[155]Mr. Wordsworth, whose “Ecclesiastical Sketches” are in general scarcely more remarkable for their poetry than for their historical accuracy, points at this connection in his Sonnet on the Waldenses:—

These who gave the earliest notice, as the larkSprings from the ground the morn to gratulate:Who rather rose the day to antedate,By striking out a solitary spark,When all the world with midnight gloom was dark.These harbingers of good, whom bitter hateIn vain endeavoured to exterminate,Fell obloquy pursues with hideous bark;But they desist not; and the sacred fire,Rekindled thus, from dens and savage woodsMoves, handed on with never-ceasing care,Through courts, through camps, o’er limitary floods;Nor lacks this sea-girt isle a timely shareOf the new flame, not suffered to expire.”

These who gave the earliest notice, as the lark

Springs from the ground the morn to gratulate:

Who rather rose the day to antedate,

By striking out a solitary spark,

When all the world with midnight gloom was dark.

These harbingers of good, whom bitter hate

In vain endeavoured to exterminate,

Fell obloquy pursues with hideous bark;

But they desist not; and the sacred fire,

Rekindled thus, from dens and savage woods

Moves, handed on with never-ceasing care,

Through courts, through camps, o’er limitary floods;

Nor lacks this sea-girt isle a timely share

Of the new flame, not suffered to expire.”

Some, again, of the same persecuted race repaired to Provence and Languedoc, where they were known by the name of Albigenses, or heretics of Albi (perhaps the parent stock of the present protestants in the south of France); and on being driven thence, as they were driven thither by the inquisition and the sword, sought shelter in the neighbouring district of Guienne, then in possession of the English, and thus possibly found a way for themselves or their tenets, or both, into Britain by another channel. But, in truth, such opinions as those entertained by the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Bohemians, and the Lollards (for by this latter name the disciples of Wickliffe were distinguished—a name probably given to them as beingtares,lolium, amongst the wheat,) had quietly diffused themselves over a great part of Christendom, in spite of the unrighteous pains taken by the church of Rome to put down all overt expression of them. Springing up in various and distant spots of Europe, they gradually became (so to speak) confluent. Nor is it impossible to trace the means by which this might be effected. The intercourse of mankind was considerable in those days; greater, perhaps, than we are apt to imagine, in this age of stage-coaches, canals, railroads, and steam-boats. Pilgrimages promoted travelling to an extent now almost incredible;—every country took care to be provided with some bait or other for the holy palmer, and the more distant the journey the more meritorious the service. Vessels were regularly freighted with pilgrims. Licenses were granted by KingHenry VI. in one year for the exportation of 2433 pilgrims to St. James of Compostella.[156]The wife of Bath

“Thries had been at Jerusaleme,She hadde passed many a strange streme,At Rome she hadde ben, and at Boloine,At Galice, at Saint James, and at Coloine.”

“Thries had been at Jerusaleme,

She hadde passed many a strange streme,

At Rome she hadde ben, and at Boloine,

At Galice, at Saint James, and at Coloine.”

Rome indeed, the heart as it were of Christendom, was perpetually receiving and expelling a current of idle or devout dwellers in every region under heaven, and was thus circulating, intelligence of all kinds through all lands. Thehomecircuit was still more trodden; 100,000 pilgrims, we are told, visited St. Thomas à Becket in a single year.[157]Commerce was then comparatively little, but it was carried on in a manner to secure much personal communication. Fairs, which continued a fortnight or three weeks, and whilst they continued, transformed a desolate heath perhaps, into a temporary city, with streets and shops, and houses, and “all appliances to boot,” destined to disappear once more when the mart was over, like a vision of fairy land, drew together from all quarters merchants, both native and foreign. Universities were not places of resort for the youth of the mother-country only, but were filled with students of divers nations; for, Latin being the conventional language of them all, no man, from whatever country, was excluded by the want of the vernacular tongue.[158]The same circumstance affordedto professors a facility of migrating from one university to another, as occasions might present themselves, without the tax of learning a new vocabulary. Minstrels were ever upon the stroll from abbey to abbey,—the welcome carriers of news to the secluded but inquisitive monks; and freemasons, a kind of nomad race, pitched their tents wherever they found occupation, and having reared the cathedral or the church with admirable art, journeyed on in search of other employers. Finally, the Italians and other aliens, who by favour of the pope were put in possession of church livings in every country to which his authority extended, furnished another channel of international communication. In the reign of Henry III., the annual value of the benefices so disposed of in England was 70,000 marks, a sum more than triple the whole revenue of the crown.[159]These were some of the many ways in which the intercourse of mankind was maintained in those primitive times, and the circulation of any popular doctrine effectually secured, whatever obstacles might be opposed to it. Thus it was that the principles of the Reformation were slowly and silently making their way through Europe, when perhaps their progress was little suspected; and one of those under currents was setting in which are not in the end less powerful because they happen for a season to be unobserved. It is singular, that when Dante conducts his hero to that quarter of the infernal regions where the heretics are paying the penalty of their sin, being condemned to stand upon their heads in jars of fire, he adds a remark indicative of the temper of the times, and much to our present purpose, that these fiery sepulchres were filled with victims to a number far beyond all expectation.[160]Wickliffe, we know, found himself very quickly at the head of a numerous and powerful body in England, simply becausehe furnished a mouth-piece to those who had not as yet mustered courage to speak out for themselves, so mistaken is the conclusion of the Roman catholic, that the unity of his church is to be inferred from its silence. A third part of the clergy, Wickliffe himself tells us, thought with him on the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, and “would defend that doctrine on payne of theyr lyfe;” and Knighton, a contemporary writer, affirms, that you could not meet two people in the way but one of them was a disciple of Wickliffe.[161]Moreover, when he was cited before the bishops at Lambeth, it was not merely the influence of the Duke of Lancaster that protected him, as a useful partisan, but the multitude clamoured for his release, as a teacher of the truth; or “his person was saved out of the hands of his enemies,” (so says Fuller in his own inimitable manner) “as was once the doctrine of his godly namesake; they feared the people; ‘for all men countedJohnthat he was a prophet indeed.’”[162]The moment was peculiarly propitious to the extension of Wickliffe’s opinions. The schism in the papacy occurred a few years before his death; and the spectacle of two infallible heads of the church anathematising one another, could not fail to open the eyes of Christendom to the unwarranted pretensions of both. To this circumstance, probably, Wickliffe was indebted for permission to end his turbulent life in peace, in his own parish, and in his own bed; since the disposition of Rome towards this arch-heretic was sufficiently testified, when, forty-one years afterwards, the council of Constance, in impotent rage, condemned his bones to be exhumed, burned, and cast into the brook. But the Swift (such is its name) bore them to the Avon, that to the Severn, the Severn to the sea, to be dispersed unto all lands; which things are an allegory.

Of this great reformer himself, who so raised the waters not of this country only, but of Europe at large, that Luther came in with the next wave, it is difficult to speak. A most effectual weapon he undoubtedly was for the pulling down of strong holds; but we may admire the wisdom of God in adjusting his instruments to the work which he has for them to do, when he raised up first a Wickliffe, and afterwards a Cranmer. Had they changed places, Cranmer’s meek and gentle spirit would have been overborne by the almost irresistible torrent of corruption of the times of Edward; and, on the other hand, Wickliffe’s daring and impetuous temper, and his hasty views of ecclesiastical polity, would have urged him to go all lengths with Henry—and whilst he would have demolished a church of Rome, he would have left few or no materials for erecting a church of England. Cranmer and his colleagues have been pronounced by our great puritan poet, “time serving and halting prelates;” happily, in one sense, they were so. Wickliffe would have been a man more after Milton’s heart; but “the wisdom which is from above,” we read, “is gentle:” and if there be one thing more than another that fixes the attention of sober-minded and considerate men when contemplating the progress of the Reformation, it is the calmness, the temper, the prudence, the presence of mind, with which Cranmer endeavoured to direct (like a good and guardian angel) the tempest on which he rode; and whilst he felt how much the fierce element was imperatively commissioned to destroy, he never for a moment forgot the still nobler part, how much it was permitted to spare: he steered the ark of his church with wonderful dexterity through a sea of troubles, avoiding the scattered Cyclades, when it is probable that, had his great predecessor been the pilot, he would have run it aground, and left it a wreck. Wickliffe, as a sincere believer, was naturally vexed at the scandals by which hesaw Christ’s religion brought into contempt; as a secular churchman and a champion of the seculars, he hated the friars with a cordial hatred, and took pleasure in exposing their covetousness and frauds; as an academician, he could not tolerate their encroachments on the rights and privileges of the universities, and their surreptitious abduction of four fifths of the students;[163]as a man of learning, the first of his day, he would give no quarter to monastic ignorance; as a subject of the King of England, he would not allow of a divided allegiance in a church of England: but whilst he stood up the advocate of these principles, the impetuosity of his temper drove him on to extravagant lengths, and now exhibits him not so much in the light of a religious reformer as of a religious revolutionist. Perhaps he blinded himself to the necessary consequences of many of his own opinions, and, like Wesley, was carried further, both in himself and in his followers, than he at first meant to go: but assuredly in him, and still more in his school, may be traced the elements of a character destined afterwards to attain to an unequivocal eminence in our history, that of the puritan, and the various sects which, though not fully fledged till the civil wars, were tumbled forth like bats out of their hiding places at the first shock of the Reformation, owed their origin perhaps to this vigorous, sincere, but incautious antagonist of the church of Rome. When we see him opposing the doctrine of transubstantiation, that fruitful mother of mischief, howbeit wavering as it should seem, in his own mind between what was afterwards the “real presence” of Luther and the “spiritual presence” of Zuingle; denying the superiority of the church of Rome over other churches, and the power of the keys as pertaining to the pope rather than to any other priest, when we see him maintaining thatthe Gospel is alone, and of itself, a sufficient rule of faith and practice, and that all have a right to read it for themselves; that pilgrimages and indulgences are vain and unprofitable, the worship of saints unauthorised, and forced vows of celibacy unlawful; above all, when we find him proclaiming (though here he does not speak with the emphasis of Luther, who made this article the test of a standing or falling church,) that justification comes by faith in Christ alone;[164]we praise the man, for we find him labouring strictly in his vocation, purifying the Word of God from traditions and additions which had made it of none effect, and disabusing the people of dangerous and deadly errors. Nay, more, he might have gone further if he pleased; and however inexpedient it might be to enlarge upon the doctrine of Divine decrees—and of its inexpediency, we have an opinion—still there would have been no indication in this of his weapons being carnal, of his treasure (and great that treasure was) being contained in anearthenvessel; but rather an argument that he felt strongly the error of the church of Rome in attributing so much to man’s own powers, and that, impelled by such a feeling, he rushed into the opposite extreme, and refused to him such powers as were his due. But when he argues that the wickedness of the priest vitiates the acts of his ministry,[165]in contradiction, to the inference which may be fairly drawn from the text, where the people are declared to have “transgressed” because they despised the offering of the Lord, though the wickedness of Eli’s sons was the excuse,[166]and in contradiction to the express command of our Lord, that whatsoeverthe Scribes and Pharisees who sat in Moses’ seat bid men observe, they were to observe and do, though they were not to do after their works;[167]when he maintains tithes to be mere alms, and affirms that parishioners have a right to withhold them in case the minister provokes them so to do, of which they are to be themselves the judges;[168]and when he teaches, in the same spirit, that church endowments in perpetuity may be resumed under similar circumstances by the patron or the king,[169]thereby subverting the very principles upon which not only ecclesiastical property rests, but all property whatever, and annihilating an establishment at a blow; when his immediate disciples, such as William Thorpe and Lord Cobham, are found erecting themselves into inquisitors of the morals of the superior clergy, and denying them to be priests of God, whether archbishops or bishops, if their character, conversation, and conduct did not answer to a test of their own;[170]these dogmas when we read, it is difficult to separate the conscientious reformer from the exasperated antagonist, or to refrain exclaiming with St. Paul, “Are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” It may not be fair to impute to Wickliffe himself all the extravagances of his followers, yet they are very natural consequences of the principles he adopted and taught; in many cases they must have seen the light in Wickliffe’s own time; some of them undoubtedly attach to himself; and they are all, at any rate, remarkable as the first fruits of those opinions and practices which, when coupled with politics, some two centuries and a half later, overturned both altar and throne. We find the Lollard taking upon himself to pronounce on the call of his ecclesiastical ruler, and yielding or refusing him canonical obedienceafter a verdict of his own:[171]we find him traversing the country from town to town, preaching in churches and churchyards, in fairs and markets, by a self-constituted authority, without license had from the bishop, or regard paid to his inhibition or summons:[172]we find him stumbling at pontifical habits, and for himself going about in his blue or russet gown, and barefoot;[173]we find him strongly prejudiced against the use of church music and organs (which was evidently the feeling of Wickliffe himself),[174]and quoting Scripture in support of his prejudice in the very spirit of the days of Cromwell, as though Christ would not raise the damsel to life until he had first put forth theminstrels:[175]we find him holding up to the clergy the duty of copying St. Paul to the letter, and of labouring like him with their own hands for their own maintenance;[176]and we find him (a circumstance which is here mentioned not as a matter of charge, but as a matter of fact, illustrating his resemblance to the puritan) dealing in a phraseology of his own, expressive of the sect to which he belonged, and less loose and secular than was usual.[177]It was natural that a party now becoming numerous, having religion for their common bond (the strongestof all), and holding some tenets not altogether favourable to a monarchical government and an episcopal church, should be regarded with some suspicion. The sheriff’s oath, as it was framed by statutes of Richard II. and Henry IV., required of that officer to watch the Lollards; and the clause to this effect continued in force till the time of Charles I., when Sir Edward Coke, on being made sheriff of the county of Buckingham, objected to it, and it was in consequence withdrawn.[178]Mr. Hume, who is less sceptical in weighing the value of evidence when it tends to cast imputations on religious professors than on some other occasions, boldly pronounces Lord Cobham to have been guilty of high treason, (in spite of Fox’s express testimony to the contrary,) and the sect in general to have had treasonable designs;[179]but St. Paul himself was called a “mover of sedition,” though he actually preached that to “resist the power” was to “resist the ordinance of God.” The executions of the Lollards, which took place between Wickliffe’s death and the Reformation, appear to have been in reality on the charge of heresy, not of disaffection; though it is true that the latter accusation was put forward in one or two instances, as being the more popular charge, just as our Lord was accused of making himself a king, when a Roman tribunal could otherwise have seen no fault in him. Besides, the manner in which sentence was carried into effect—which was in all cases, we believe, by fire, the appropriate punishment of heresy—confirms this opinion. Still some of the principles of the Lollard were, doubtless, of a dangerous political character; in his hands they appear to have lain dormant; but when he lapsed into the puritan, the politician was combined in him, and then they became active and mischievous. If he ran into extremes, he had some cause and excuse for so doing; he, at least wasnot straining at gnats, but at camels. An unmitigated creed drove him into an unmeasured abomination of it; the personal corruption of the Roman catholic priest of those times, tempted him to question his official authority; his abuse of what was lawfully his own, to dispute his abstract right of it: but though in all this he might be mistaken, he was not mercenary; and whatever his opinions were, however untenable, he was true to them in life and in death, forfeiting for the sake of them his property, his liberty, and his peace, and often in the end sealing them with his blood. But, after all, the great glory of the Lollard was this, that he gave to the people the pure word of God. The work whereby Wickliffe hastened the Reformation, was his translation of the Scriptures into his own mother-tongue. Apart from this, his labours, as valuable as they were, might not be thought of unmixed value. Herein he had the sure promise of God pledged to his success. “For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be, saith the Lord, that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”[180]Void it did not return. Hitherto the Scriptures were little known. Cædmon, it is true, had paraphrased in verse detached portions of them in the seventh century. Bede, it has been before observed, had translated the Gospel of St. John. Translations of all the Gospels into Anglo-Saxon had been made between the reigns of Alfred and Harold. Elfric produced versions of many books of the Old Testament, as well as of the New; but, meanwhile the invasion of the Danes threw the kingdom into a frightfulstate of anarchy, and long kept it so disturbed. Then the Norman conquest succeeding again broke its spirit and changed its language; so that the word of God had become precious in the days of Wickliffe. The Anglo-Saxon which still continued to be the staple of the dialect of England, was by this time saturated with Norman words (no great number having been adopted into it since; and whilst Chaucer was labouring tofixthe English tongue (itswingedwords) on principles of taste, amongst the courtiers and nobles, Wickliffe, perhaps even a more perfect master of it still, was establishing it yet more permanently, by knitting up in it the immortal hopes of the people at large, and stamping it in a complete translation of the Bible, with “holiness to the Lord.” At this day his version can scarcely be called obsolete. I speak of the New Testament, for the Old has never yet been printed; a reproach both upon the divines and the philologists of England, which, we trust, will speedily be removed. At this day, it might be read in our churches without the necessity of many even verbal alterations; and on comparing it with the authorised version of King James, it will be found that the latter was hammered on Wickliffe’s anvil. By this great and good work the pleasure of the Most High prospered in his hand. An eager appetite for Scriptural knowledge was excited among the people, which they would make any sacrifice and risk any danger to gratify. Entire copies of the Bible, when they could only be multiplied by means of amanuenses, were too costly to be within the reach of very many readers; but those who could not procure the “volume of the Book,” would give a load of hay for a few favourite chapters, and many such scraps were consumed upon the persons of the martyrs at the stake.[181]They would hide the forbidden treasure under the floors oftheir houses, and put their lives in peril, rather than forego the book they desired; they would sit up all night, their doors being shut for fear of surprise, reading or hearing others read the word of God; they would bury themselves in the woods, and there converse with it in solitude; they would tend their herds in the fields, and still steal an hour for drinking in the good tidings of great joy:—thus was the angel come down to trouble the water, and there was only wanted some providential crisis to put the nation into it, that it might be made whole.

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