"There is no more between a bishop and a priest but that the bishop is appointed to ordain and to bishop children, and to hallow churches and to take care of God's rights." The writer knows nothing of any threefold order of the ministry, and is at least theoretically presbyterian.

IN MEDIEVALISM.

Although during the Middle Ages, and after the great changes effected by the Norman Conquest in England, the Prelatic and Papal Church system reigned supreme, yet even down to the Council of Trent (1546-1564) there were not wanting eminent authorities in the Church of Rome who acknowledged the original identity of Bishops and Presbyters; and one of the most distinguished theologians in the Council itself vigorously protested and maintained that not only did. Scripture favour this view, but many of the Fathers, like Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, were distinctly of this mind. No doubt that Council of Trent, in the Decrees that summed up the views of Medieval and Romish theology, dogmatically asserted that from the earliest ages "there were ŞEVEN ORDERS in the Christian ministry," and that "Bishops were superior to Priests." Still they agreed that the priesthood is the highest order of ministry in the Church, and the Episcopate is only a higher ecclesiastical degree or grade (gradus) within the Presbyterate. The records and usages even of Mediævalism contain many lingering traces and testimonies of the original and theoretic oneness of Bishops and Presbyters. What stronger evidences can there be of this than those furnished by GRATIAN, the very founder of the science of Canon Law in the Church of Rome, or his contemporary, PETER LOMBARD, her renowned theological oracle, who both flourished in the twelfth century, and who

The famous passage of Jerome, at the end of the fourth century, in his Commentary on the Epistle to Titus, is perhaps the best known and the most decisive. "A Presbyter is the same as a Bishop. And before dissensions in religion were produced by the instigation of the Devil, and one said, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Cephas, the Churches were governed by a common Council of Presbyters.”

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both expressly assert the original oneness of Bishop and Presbyter? Those who study the rise and constitution of the monastic orders, will find adequate proofs and illustrations there of the existence and survival of such Presbyterial traditions. The growth and retention of what were called "exempt jurisdictions," and the continuance of the usage, that required Presbyters to join in laying on of hands in ordinations; the removal of monasteries from episcopal jurisdiction and control, and the long struggle of the "abbots" in England against the Bishops, that issued not only in the entire immunity of many heads of abbeys from episcopal control, but their actual admission to Episcopal rights over their own clergy. The contentions between the rival sects of the monks and of the preaching friars, and the hatred of both of them to the Bishops; the vehement opposition to the Church's system and government on the part of the Fratricelli, Beghards, and other ejected "Brotherhoods," not to mention the Albigensians,* Waldensians and similar offshoots-all of these supply proof, that though the practice of the Church was systematically Prelatic, the Presbyterial theory was not wholly lost sight of or disowned. This is emphatically seen :

1 Gratian, in his Decretum vel Concordium Discordentium Canonum, which was the text-book of the English Ecclesiastical Courts; and Lombard, in his Sententiæ. Hence it was declared by Linwood and other English canonists, "Episcopatus non est Ordo." For further references, see Cunningham's Historical Theology, vol. i. pp. 422-432. A man like ANSELM himself, Archbishop of Canterbury (A.D. 1093), says (Com. in Epist. Philipp. ch. i.) on the word Episcopis, “id est Presbyteris : Dignitatem et excellentiam Presbyterorum declarat, dum eosdem qui Presbyteri sunt, Episcopos esse manifestat. Quod autem postea unus electus est, qui cæteris præponeretur. Constat ergo APOSTOLICA INSTITUTIONE omnes Presbyteros esse Episcopos, licet nunc illi majores hoc nomen obtineant." And in fact he says, Bishop and Presbyter differ only in respect of place and degree, not of order.

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2 First granted by the Pope in the Lateran Council of A.D. 601, but introduced into England by the Cistercians, who were exempt from the very first, and this gave the whole of these monastic institutions an aspect of dissent and protest against the prelacy of the Church.

The first Episcopal or mitred Abbot in England was the Abbot of St. Albans, about 1163. St. Albans was also the first notable abbey which had secured complete immunity from episcopal control. The great mitred abbots were among the highest spiritual peers and magnates of the realm, and ultimately their numbers and influence quite overtopped the Bishops in the House of Lords.

For the rise in Bosnia, "the religious Switzerland of medieval Europe," of the great and widespread revolt, afterwards called Albigensi, see "Historical Sketch," in A. J. Evans's Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot. Lond., 1876.

IN WYCLIFFITE AND PRE-REFORMATION TIMES.

By far the noblest figure emerging out of the dreary expanse of Scholasticism is that of John Wycliffe, "the Morning Star of the Reformation," in his peerless loneliness heralding and assuring the dawn of a brighter day for Western Christendom. He is a true spiritual Prometheus, bringing fire from heaven to illumine and purify both Church and State. For whether as Reformer or Patriot, it is impossible to over-estimate his farreaching influence. His writings, now being at last carefully edited and brought to light, increasingly confirm the conviction, that if, in matters of Scripture teaching, Wycliffe anticipated future Protestantism, in matters of Church discipline and polity he anticipated Puritanism-a Church reformer as he was, of the purest evangelical type and spirit. The greatness of Wycliffe lay in the depth and moral earnestness of his character, as well as in the marvellous variety of his gifts and labours. He was great alike as a thinker, writer, preacher, and worker: above all, a religious reformer upon Scriptural grounds and principles. And thus he stands forth head and shoulders above all such precursors in England as Henry Bracton or William of Occam, Richard Fitzralph or Robert Grosteste of Lincoln; the theo

One of the illustrations in a magnificently illuminated Bohemian Cantionale of 1572, in the University Library of Prague, represents Wycliffe striking the spark from flint; John Huss, in a second medallion, is applying the fire to the fuel; and in a third compartment, Luther is bearing aloft the blazing cresset.

The great authority here is LECHLER'S learned yet popular work on John Wycliffe and his English Precursors, translated and annotated by Principal Lorimer, D.D. (Religious Tract Society's edition, 1884.) See also the Life, by John Lewis, or by Dr. Robert Vaughan; the critical researches of Professor Shirley, D.D., into the valuable mass of Wycliffe's genuine productions, the MSS. of his English works, carefully edited by Thomas Arnold, M.A., or F. D. Matthew, for The English Text Society; the MSS. of the Latin work, issued by Dr. Rudolph Buddensieg and others for The Wycliffe Society, and also the four precious volumes of the Wycliffe BIBLE, by Forshall and Madden.

"If the Reformation of our Church had been conducted by Wycliffe, his work, in all probability, would nearly have anticipated the labours of Calvin, and the Protestantism of England might have pretty closely resembled the Protestantism of Geneva. There is a marvellous resemblance between the Reformer with his poor itinerant priests, and at least the better part of the Puritans.'-Le Bas, Life of Wycliffe, pp. 365–66. About a hundred and fifty years before Luther, nearly the same doctrine as he taught had been maintained by Wycliffe, whose disciples, usually called Lollards, existed as a numerous, though obscure and proscribed sect till, aided by the confluence of foreign streams, they swelled into the Protestant Church of England."-Hallam's Constitutional Hist. i. p. 57.

logical Bradwardine, or the satirical William Langland in his wonderful allegory, "The Vision of Piers Plowman."

The movement under Wycliffe and his Lollards was a revolt, not only against mediæval doctrine, morals, and worship, but against false and corrupt theories of the Church and its constitution. By long study, especially of Scripture, his views developed and underwent considerable growth and modification from first to last. But he rested finally in the conviction that Papacy in the Church was a form of Antichrist; and that a non-preaching priesthood was an invention of the devil, and a mere mockery of the Christian ministry. He proclaims that Presbyter and Bishop were identical in Scripture, and continued not only to be so acknowledged, but acted on long afterwards in the best parts of the Church. He maintained that "in the time of the Apostle Paul, Two orders of clergy were sufficient for the Church: nor were there in the days of the Apostles any such distinctions as Pope, Patriarch, or Prelate." The subsequent graduated hierarchy within the presbyterate sprang out of the growing but illegitimate smuggling of secular arrangements into the Church. These views led him to denounce the whole hierarchical and prelatical system, as well as the positive blasphemy of the Papal claims. Nor did his work cease with denunciation; for he began to give practical effect

1 Lechler distinguishes three stages in Wycliffe's Church-government viewsthe first stage reaching to the outbreak of the Papal schism in 1378, the second from 1378 to 1381, and the last from 1381 to his death in 1384.-Wycliffe's Life, ch. viii. sec. 11th, pp. 312-318.

In his Trialogus (iv. sec. 15, p. 296), he says: "Unum audenter assero, quod in primitiva ecclesia ut tempore Pauli suffecerunt duo ordines clericorum, scilicet sacerdos atque diaconus. Secundo dico, quod in tempore apostoli fuit idem presbyter atque episcopus; patet 1 Timothy iii. et ad Titum 1." Comp. Supplementum Trialogi, c. 6, p. 438: ut olim omnes sacerdotes vocati fuerunt episcopi. De Officio Pastorali, I. 4, p. 11: Apostolus voluit episcopos, quos vocat quoseunque curatos. 3 Wycliffe, in his Litera missa Archiepiscopo Cantuariensi, strongly enunciates the principle that the clergy should possess no secular Lordships.

He lays great emphasis on the idea that Bishops of Bishops, or fixed presidency over the original Bishops, was introduced in connection with Constantine the Great, having not only endowed his own Bishop Sylvester at Rome with rich temporal possessions, but also with new power and dignity, whence graduated hierarchy was developed, culminating in the Papal Primacy.-Vide Lechler's Wycliffe, p. 311.

Wycliffe's great work, De Officio Pastorali, turns upon the thought, that it would be more wholesome for the parish clergy, and, at the same time, quite sufficient for their worldly comfort, to live upon the voluntary gifts of their congregations.

Here are some of Wycliffe's primary and fundamental positions. "Looking on the present state of the Church, we find it would be better and of greater use to

to his views by training and sending forth his “

poor priests," "Bible-men," to preach and evangelize. Out of this grew the Lollard persuasion, that presbyters have the right and power of ordaining. Wycliffe's whole position was remarkably kindred to that of Wesley, nearly four centuries later. His institution for equipping and commissioning qualified preachers, has as yet been only imperfectly understood: its history and results will become better known as his later manuscripts get printed and studied.

The great schism in the Papacy in 1378, which lasted nearly forty years, when the two rival Popes, Urban VI. and Clement VII., were cursing and excommunicating each other, afforded a grand and providential means of protection for Wycliffe. Vengeance could only be wreaked long afterwards on his bones. But by the fierce action of the Bishops and Clergy, the frightful enactment "De comburendo hæretico" was at length passed in Parliament, 1401. And then such havoc began to be wrought in the Lollard Church, that it was ultimately stamped out in blood and fire; William Sautre, William Thorpe, and finally, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham,3 being among the most prominent victims.

the Church if it were governed purely by the law of the Scripture than by human traditions, mixed up with evangelical truths."

Again: "As they ought to be, Papal Bulls will be superseded by the Holy Scriptures. By pursuing such a course, it is in our power to reduce the mandates of Prelates and Popes to their just place."

Or again :

For Christ, our Lawgiver, has given us a law which in itself is sufficient for the whole Church Militant."-Buddensieg's Wycliffe, pp. 89, 92, 93.

1 WILLIAM SAUTRE, ex-priest, and first Lollard martyr, was burned at Smithfield in March, 1401.

2 WILLIAM THORPE for twenty years was a notable itinerant preacher. Some very interesting memoranda of his trial and testimony before the Archbishop's Court were published a century afterwards by William Tyndale, and became a favourite manual with the early Reformationists. It was called "The Examination of William Thorpe," and though prohibited by royal decree in 1530, it was preserved, both in Latin and English, by John Foxe. See his Acts and Monuments, or Book of Martyrs (Pratt & Stoughton's edition, vol. iii. pp. 250-282).

The tragic story and cruel death of Sir John Oldcastle, the "Good Lord Cobham," in 1417, are told in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Book V., and vol. i. of Hepworth Dixon's Her Majesty's Tower. Through the misleading and malignant tales of the monkish chronicles, Shakespeare had figured his well-known character Falstaff by the name Sir John Oldcastle; but better information convincing him that Sir John was "A VALIANT MARTYR AND A VIRTUOUS PEER," he substituted Falstaff for Oldcastle; and in the Epilogue to Part II. of Henry IV. he makes an explanation and apology in these words: "For anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat; for OLDCASTLE died a MARTYR, and this is NOT the man."