are not to be counted sacraments; that the marriage of the clergy ought not to be prohibited; that the worship of saints and their relics, as also of images and pictures, is illegitimate; that Purgatory is a fiction; that many of the rites and observances of the Church are unprofitable and idle; that a Christian should not take an oath.1

It may be doubted whether the Waldenses generally went so far in their deviation from the Romish system as some of these specifications would indicate, until a comparatively late date. Various of their opponents are found to have credited them with a belief in the seven sacraments, and with holding the major part of the Catholic faith.2 Among the earliest of their doctrinal innovations were the limitations which they placed upon the sovereignty of the hierarchy; also their denial of purgatory, together with the associated tenets respecting masses, prayers, and alms for the dead.

Even after their doctrinal divergence had become quite pronounced, the Waldenses did not, at least universally, renounce all connection with the Romish Church. We read that in various places they attended the services of the Romish priests, and allowed their children to be baptized by them. Those in Lombardy advanced soonest to an independent position.

The Waldenses seem to have spread with considerable rapidity in the earlier part of their history. Before

1 The pseudo Reinerus gives the Waldenses a relatively good character. "While all other sects," he says, “induce horror in the listener by their monstrous blasphemies against God, this of the Leonists has a great appearance of piety, in that they live justly before men, entertain a worthy belief respecting God, and hold all the articles contained in the symbol." (Cap. iv.)

2 Dollinger, Sektengeschichte, ii. 93.

the end of the twelfth century they were found in Spain and Northern Italy. In the first half of the next century they had touched various points in Germany. By the opening of the fourteenth century so many had settled in the Cottian Alps, as a refuge from persecution, that the advisability of sending out colonies was discussed, and parties were despatched to Calabria and other districts of Italy. In the fifteenth century some of the persecuted accepted the invitation of the Bohemian Brethren, and settled in their country. This led to interchange of communications between the Brethren and the Vaudois, or the Waldenses in Piedmont; in consequence of which the latter were confirmed and encouraged in their views, or carried forward to a more distinctly anti-Romish position.1

Comparative immunity was enjoyed by the Waldenses, for a considerable interval, in the mountain retreat which served as the head-quarters of their communion. But in the latter part of the fifteenth century they began to share in the fiery trial which was appointed to those who raised a protest against Rome. In answer to a summons sent forth in 1487 by Innocent VIII., a powerful army crossed their borders both on the Italian and the French side. In the first encounters the ill prepared inhabitants suffered defeat, and their lands were subjected to grievous devastation. But the comparative ignorance of the invaders respecting the rugged country finally told greatly in favor of the invaded. Few of those who came to slaughter the Vaudois ever retraced their steps.

1 See the valuable article of Herzog in his Encyclopædia.

CHAPTER V.

JOHN

JOHN WYCLIFFE AND HIS FOLLOWERS.

OHN WYCLIFFE was undoubtedly the boldest and the ablest of the Reformers before the Reformation. The ecclesiastical history of England from its beginning to its end presents scarcely another exponent of religious faith and enterprise who stands upon the same plane with him as respects either originality or breadth of achievement. At least as regards the former title to eminence, English history may be challenged to name his superior. Wycliffe was emphatically a pioneer, pointing out in the fourteenth century the course which only daring souls were ready to enter in the sixteenth. In a double sense he was an innovator. Both in doctrines and methods of religious work he ran against the current of his age.

It might be expected that the biography of such a man would be filled with stirring recitals. As he broke more radically with the ecclesiastical system of his time than did a Huss or a Savonarola, it might be expected that he would appear as the centre of a greater commotion, and that his life would be pre-eminently rich in that dramatic interest which forms so large an element in theirs. But the case is quite otherwise. The form of Wycliffe retreats behind his work. He

is made known to us as the thinker and organizer. His record bespeaks a man in whom intellect and will were more conspicuous factors than sensibility and passionate . enthusiasm. He saw his way with keenness of logical insight, and pursued it with unshaken resolution. But at the same time he pursued it without ostentation; he held himself in poise, and made no bids for a showy tournament in the sight of the public. Moreover, the balance of factors in Church and State tended to modify the sharpness of assaults against his person. So it results that we have a great man and a great work, but no exciting drama, no list of scenes in which the hero rivets our attention by the romantic interest of his experiences.

Guided by Providence, or by his own discretion, Wycliffe took plenty of time to lay the foundation. He did not attempt his great task until he had been well schooled in knowledge of men and things, and, most important of all, in knowledge of himself. Two thirds of his life had passed before he assumed to deal with questions of public concern; and it was only in the last six years of his life that he entered, in the more positive and comprehensive sense, upon the rôle of the reformer. If we suppose that he was born about 1320 and entered Oxford at the age of fifteen (no unusual age to begin university life in that era), his world for the next thirty years was the university.

At Oxford, which, as one of the great seats of learning, had its thousands of students, Wycliffe passed,

The halls for students in the thirteenth century are said to have numbered three hundred, each of which could accommodate one hundred boarders.

no doubt, through the ordinary medieval curriculum. Having studied the seven arts composing the trivium and quadrivium, namely, grammar, rhetoric, and logic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, he was prepared to take up theology and canon law. Rising erelong to the dignity of a teacher, he was allowed, according to the custom of the time, to exercise his immature powers in lecturing on the Bible, and finally was advanced to the high honor of lecturing on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, in other words, upon the approved list of topics in systematic theology. Meanwhile, he became a candidate for official distinctions. He appears as Fellow of Merton College in 1356, as Master of Balliol in 1360, and as Warden of Canterbury Hall in 1365. Some time within the decade following this last date he was made Doctor of Theology. Four years previous to the same date he received (at Fillingham) the first of his pastoral charges, which, however, are not supposed to have occasioned any lengthy absence from Oxford. Lutterworth, the last of his parishes, and the asylum of his closing years, was appointed to him in 1374.

Wycliffe, then, up to an advanced point in his life was a man of the university. As he stood at Oxford in 1365, he was simply the scholastic philosopher. He had not attempted as yet to figure in any other character. He was known as the learned teacher, the trained disputant, a man who carried keen weapons and had a sure thrust, a formidable antagonist upon the field of debate. Such qualities were a sure passport to distinction. For the medieval valuation, we may say overvaluation, of logic was still rife. Skill in disputation