pocrisy of the friars ;*-a sufficient refutation of the charge, that personal resentment for his ejectment from Canterbury Hall, was the main-spring of his opposition to the pope and his ecclesiastics.

In the meantime Wickliffe was publicly challenged to defend his prince, Edward III, and the parliament, in their refusal to pay the pope, the odious tribute stipulated by king John. This challenge he readily accepted, and stood forth the advocate for British independence, against the usurpations and tyranny of Rome ;-an undertaking as odious in Rome, as it was popular in England. It probably secured for him the favor of the court, and the protection which he afterwards experienced from the machinations of his enemies. These labors for the university, the king, and his country, in addition to his high merit as a scholar and divine, obtained for the Reformer the degree of Doctor of Divinity, which he received in 1372, and the theological I chair of Oxford. These honors gave him yet more extensive influence; and enabled him to labor with greater success in the cause of truth. His love of the Scriptures, and his desire to enlighten his countrymen induced him, soon after his elevation to the theological professorship, to prepare a plain and familiar exposition of the Ten Commandments, for general circulation. The necessity for such a work may be estimated by what he tells us in his preface, -that it was no uncommon thing for men "to call God, Master, forty, three-score, or four-score years; and yet remain ignorant of his Ten Commandments." This publication was followed by several small tracts, entitled "The Poor Catiff," or instruction for the "written in English, as the author declares, for the purpose of teaching simple men and women the way to heaven." "+

* Milner, Cent. XIV. Chap. 3.

poor;

These tracts, with some other selections from Wickliffe's prac

These humble labors of the learned professor, furnish a beautiful commentary on his religious character, and are in perfect keeping with the enviable title which he long enjoyed of The Evangelical Doctor.

In the year 1374, Wickliffe was called from the university, into public life. He was sent by parliament on an embassy to the pope, to obtain the redress of certain ecclesiastical grievances under which the kingdom was then suffering.

In the chapter preceding this, a brief sketch was given of some of the prominent abuses to which the English nation were for a long time subjected; by which the wealth of the kingdom was absorbed by the clergy-mendicant and regular or drained off by the pope. These abuses had continued, despite of complaints, and protests, and temporary resistance. There had long been gathering in the breasts of the people, a spirit of opposition to the tyranny of Rome. This with difficulty had been kept under, by the united power of the throne, and the clergy. England had now (in 1374) been ruled for more than forty years by one of her most accomplished and popular monarchs. Edward III, though guilty of many arbitrary acts of government, had the wisdom, or the policy, to consult the opinions and wishes of his subjects more than any one of his predecessors. He was a hero and a conqueror; and, as such, had acquired great applause and influence in that semi-barbarous age. His numerous warlike expeditions compelled him to call frequently for supplies from his parliament; and his good sense, or his necessities, induced him to yield more to their pleasure in granting privileges, and immunities, and protections to the people, than had been common

tical writings, have been published by the London Religious Tract Society,

previous to his time. The authority of the Great Charter was so often confirmed during this reign, that it became immovably fixed, as a limitation of the royal power. The king was made to feel that there was a power under the throne, if not above it, whose heavings were not to be despised, nor disregarded with impunity. The people, for whose benefit all government-civil and ecclesiasticalshould be administered, but who had hitherto been least regarded in its administration; who had been trampled upon by their princes and nobles, and worst of all, by their clergy-began now to rear their heads, and raise their indignant voices. With such teachers as John Wickliffe and his" poor priests," the English nation were likely to understand something of their ecclesiastical rights, and to assert them with more courage and success than ever before. The people moved parliament, and the parliament moved the king-himself no wise unfavorably disposed-to inquire into the ecclesiastical abuses, by which the pope and his creatures were eating out the vitals of the kingdom. The result of this inquiry was the discovery, that more than one half of the landed property of the kingdom was in the hands of a corrupt and indolent clergy;—that many of the most lucrative benefices were in the possession of foreigners, and some of them but boys, who knew not the language of the country, nor had even so much as set foot on English soil;-that the pope's collector and receiver of Peter's pence, who kept "an house in London, with clerks and officers thereunto belonging-transported yearly to the pope twenty thousand marks, and most commonly more ;”that other foreign dignitaries, holding ecclesiastical benefi ces in the kingdom though residing at Rome, received yearly an equal, or greater sum (20,000 marks) for their sinecures ;—and finally, " that the tax paid to the pope of

Rome for ecclesiastical dignities, doth amount to five-fold as much as the tax of all the profits, as appertain to the king, by the year, of this whole realm.”*

Such were some of the results of the inquiry, set on foot by the parliament, into the ecclesiastical abuses of that age. Wickliffe was one of the commissioners chosen by parliament to lay these complaints before the court of Rome.

The conference with the pope was appointed at Bruges, a large city of Austria. Thither the English commissioners repaired. They soon found, however, that they had brought their wares to a glutted market. Ecclesiastical abuses were things little regarded by the Roman traders. It was like carrying coals to New Castle, to carry their budget of complaints to Bruges. The mission was, nevertheless, attended with one advantage-it forced wide open the eyes of the Reformer; he no longer saw men as trees walking; but he beheld, as with open vision, the full grown Man of Sin, the antichrist of the latter days. On his return to England, Wickliffe openly denounced His Holiness, as "the most cursed of clippers, and purse kervers,"-purse cutters; and made the kingdom ring with his descriptions of papal impostures, and papal corruptions.

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These bold and violent attacks upon the sovereign pontiff and his dissolute clergy, were neither unnoticed nor unheeded at Rome. The storm of hierarchal wrath had long been gathering; and its thunders at length began to mutter over the Reformer's head. King Edward was now aged and infirm, and nigh unto death; and Richard II, his grandson and successor, was a minor. The hierarchy, probably, deemed this a favorable time to attack the obnoxious heretic. Accordingly, in 1377, Wickliffe was cited to appear

The reader will find an abstract of the complaints of the parliament, founded on this investigation, in Le Bas, pp. 153, 154.

before the convocation of the clergy, to answer to the charge of heresy. It was a moment of peril to the Reformer; there was in his judges the willing mind to do their worst upon him; and, if no arm more mighty than theirs should be revealed for his protection, the days of the good man's usefulness, and perhaps of his life, were numbered. At this critical juncture, God raised up for his servant a powerful friend and protector in the person of the duke of Lancaster, commonly known as John of Gaunt, so called from the place of his birth. He was the third son of Edward III, and uncle to Richard II, and principal regent of the kingdom during the minority. Henry Percy, earl marshal of England, also befriended Wickliffe. These noblemen bade him be of good cheer; and, for his encouragement and protection, attended him in person to the house of convocation. Immediately on the entrance of the party, a quarrel commenced between the high-blooded Percy and the bishop of London; which, from words, had well nigh come to blows. This personal quarrel, between my lord clerical and my lord secular, so disturbed the proceedings of the convocation, that it soon broke up in confusion, and its victim escaped untouched.

During the same year (1377), parliament called on Wickliffe to give his judgment on the question :-" Whether the kingdom of England, on an eminent necessity of its own defence, might lawfully detain the treasure of the kingdom, that it might not be carried out of the land; although the lord pope required it, on pain of censures, and by virtue of the obedience due to him."

This question, so illustrative of the exorbitance of the pope, and of the rising spirit of the nation, Wickliffe answered boldly in the affirmative.

These repeated good offices for his country, though they