Lives of the British Reformers from Wickliff to Foxe

Front matter

Dorothea Press

REFORMATION CLASSICS

Lives of the British Reformers from Wickliff to Foxe

Preface

Lives of British Reformers John Wickliff

The Disciples of Wickliff Thomas Bilney

William Tyndale

John Fryth

Thomas Cranmer PART I. Cranmer during the reign of Henry VIII PART II. Cranmer in the reign of King Edward VI PART III. Cranmer in the reign of Queen Mary

Hugh Latimer

Queen Catherine Parr King Edward VI Thomas Becon

Miles Coverdale Lady Jane Grey George Wishart

John Knox

John Bale

Dr. Rowland Taylor Dr. John Hooper

Dr. Nicholas Ridley Rev. John Bradford John Jewell

John Foxe Bibliography

About Dorothea Press

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Preface

WITHIN the last few years the characters of the British Reformers have been assailed with unprecedented violence. They have been denounced as hypocrites and time-servers, and been charged with base subserviency to the will of a licentious despot, to gratify whose evil passions they sacrificed the welfare of England, the unity of the church, and the cause of truth. That such accusations Should have been brought against them by avowed Romanists is not surprising. But it is a strange and startling circumstance that in our days the charges should have been echoed and exaggerated by members and ministers of the church of which they were the chief founders, and for which they laid down their lives.

Whilst the enemies of the Reformation have thus assailed the memories of its promoters with virulent invective, its friends have allowed their names to pass into unmerited neglect. They are often spoken of, even by Protestants, in the language of faint praise and timid apology.

That the leaders of the Reformation in England were faultless is not pretended. They were men of like passions with ourselves. And they were subject also to the infirmities and imperfections of our common nature—liable to “the fears of the brave and follies of the wise.” But while this is admitted, it is yet maintained that they deserve to be held in honour for their adherence to the truth as they understood it, and to be remembered with gratitude for the signal services they rendered to the cause of true religion in our native land. The present new and revised edition of the Lives of the British Reformers is issued in the hope of doing something to reinstate them in the position which they deserve to hold, and that the lessons to be learned from a study of their history may not be lost to the present generation.

It will be observed that the following memoirs are to a great extent composed of extracts from the writings of the Reformers themselves, or from those of contemporary historians. The reader is thus placed in a position to judge for himself of the characters of the men whose lives are brought before him. If the narratives, in consequence, lack something of the vivacity and attractiveness which might be gained by a different mode of treatment, the loss is certainly more than compensated for by _ the trustworthiness of the portraiture given.

LIVES OF BritisH REFORMERS

John Wickliff

His birth

Joun WicxtiFF+ was born about the year 1324, at a village of the same name, a few miles from the town of Richmond in Yorkshire, where his ancestors had resided from the time of the Conquest. The family were respectable, and possessed considerable property. But as they continued the advocates of those superstitions which he_ earnestly laboured to remove, it is probable that he became estranged from them. Under the feelings thus excited he would be led to use the language of one of his tracts, in which, speaking of the errors into which worldly-minded parents often fall, he says, With much travail and cost they get great riches, and estates, and benefices for their children, and often to their greater damnation; but they incline not to get for their children the goods of grace and virtuous life. Nor will they suffer them to retain these goods, as they are freely proffered to them of God, but hinder it as much as they may; saying, If a child yield himself to meekness and poverty, and flee covetousness and pride, from a dread of sin, and to please God, that he shall never become a man, never cost them a penny, and they curse him because he liveth well, and will teach other men the will of God to save their souls! For by so doing, the child getteth many enemies to his elders, and they say that he slandereth all their noble kindred who were ever held to be true men and worshipful.

His early studies

His parents designed him for the church, and his mind was early directed to the requisite studies. He was entered at Queen’s College, Oxford, an institution then recently founded, from whence he soon removed to Merton College, the most distinguished in the university at that period, when the number of scholars had recently been estimated to amount to thirty thousand. Wickliff’s attention appears rather to have been directed to the studies suitable for his profession, than to general literature. As Fuller observes, “The fruitful soil of his natural abilities he industriously improved by acquired learning. He was not only skilled in the fashionable arts of that age, and in that abstruse, crabbed divinity, all whose fruit is thorns, but he was also well versed in the Scriptures, a rare accomplishment in those days.” Dr. James enumerates various writers, by whom he considers Wickliff to have been grounded in the truth. He doubtless learned much from the fathers, and was considerably indebted to Grosseteste and Bradwardine; but his writings show that his religious principles were mainly derived from the Bible.

His perusal of the Scriptures and the fathers, rendered him dissatisfied with the scholastic divinity of that age, while the knowledge of canon and civil law then requisite for a divine, enabled him to discern many of the errors of popery. His writings also show him to have been well acquainted with the laws of his own country. The four fathers of the Latin church, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory, are continually quoted by him, so as to show his intimate acquaintance with their writings. Augustine, in particular, he seems to have valued next to the Scriptures. It will not be forgotten that Luther derived much instruction from the writings of that father. The acknowledged ability of Wickliff as a scholar, led his adversaries to accuse him of evil designs rather than of ignorance, while his friends gave him the title of the Evangelic Doctor. Even Knighton, a bigoted Romanist, states that he was second to none in philosophy.

During Wickliff’s youth Europe was shaken by a succession of earthquakes; shortly after it was ravaged by a pestilence, the effects of which were more rapid and extensive than at this day we can easily conceive. More than half the people of this and other lands were swept away: the alarmed survivors reckoned the mortality far higher.2 That Wickliff was deeply impressed by these events, appears by his frequent references to them, when he is sounding an alarm to a careless and profane generation. Under a strong feeling that the end of the world approached, he wrote his first publication, a small treatise entitled, The Last Age of the Church, in which he describes the corruptions which then pervaded the whole ecclesiastical state, as the main cause of that chastisement which Europe had so lately felt. Early and deep impressions of this nature evidently tended much to strengthen and to prepare the reformer for the arduous course he was shortly called to pursue. That his mind had been led to look to the only true ground of support, is evident from a passage in this tract, wherein he speaks of Christ Jesus as having entered into holy things, that is into holy church, by holy living and holy teaching; and with His blood He delivered man’s nature; as Zechariah writeth in his ninth chapter. Thou verily, with the blood of witness, or of Thy testament, hast led out from the pit them that were bound. So, when we were sinful, and the children of wrath, God’s Son came out of heaven, and praying His Father for His enemies, He died for us. Then, much rather shall we be saved, now we are made righteous through His blood.

We find Wickliff in his thirty-second year respected for his scholastic acquirements, deeply impressed with the importance of Divine truth, awakened to a sense of the Divine judgments, enabled already to break through the bands of superstition, and in possession of that hope which alone can afford refuge for a guilty sinner. We shall now see how these preparations fitted him for the contest, and led him to the encounter in which he was called to engage.

His controversy with the mendicant friars

The first circumstance which summoned Wickliff to this conflict was a controversy with the mendicant friars. Some of them had settled at Oxford in 1221, where they attracted much notice by their professed freedom from the avarice of the monastic fraternities in general, and by their activity as preachers. They introduced many of the _ opinions afterwards adopted by the reformers, for a time saying much in opposition to the papal authority, and in support of the authority of the Bible. But their errors and encroaching Spirit soon appeared, so that Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who for some years had favoured the friars, at length deeply censured their conduct. Their zeal to proselyte youths at the universities to their orders, called forth vigorous opposition from Fitzraf, Archbishop of Armagh, who, in a petition to the Pope in 1357, affirmed that the students of Oxford were reduced on this account to six thousand, not more than a fifth of their former number.2 In 1566, a parliamentary enactment ordered that none of the orders should receive any youth under the age of eighteen; also that no bull should be procured by the friars against the universities. Similar disputes then prevailed in the University of Paris, The objections alleged against the mendicants, as stated by Wickliff, may be thus summed up: they represented a life inertly contemplative, as preferable to one spent in active attention to Christian duties; they were defective in morals when discharging their office of confessors; while itinerating in the offices they assumed, they persecuted all such as they detected really “travailing to sow God’s word among the people”: to these may be added a full proportion of every error and vice which has been charged on the corrupt clergy of Rome. Nor did Wickliff merely expose and seek to correct these fruits of error; he showed that they proceeded from the unscriptural nature of the institutions, which evidently were opposed to those precepts of the Bible which they professed to regard.

Against these mendicants, Wickliff wrote several tracts, entitled, Of the Property of Christ, Against able Beggary, and of Idleness in Beggary.* The vices of the friars led him to consider more fully the vices of the Romish priesthood.

The approval which the conduct of Wickliff, in opposing the mendicants, received from the university, appears from his being chosen warden of Balliol College, in 1361. In the same year he was presented by his college to the living of Fillingham, in Lincolnshire, which he afterwards exchanged for Ludgershall, in Wiltshire. In 1365 he was appointed warden of Canterbury Hall, by Simon de Islip, the founder, who was then primate of England.

In the instrument appointing Wickliff to this office, Islip states him to be a person on whose fidelity, circumspection, and industry he confided; one on whom he had fixed for that place for the honesty of his life, his laudable conversation, and knowledge of letters. Islip dying shortly after, Wickliff was displaced by Langham, his successor, who had been a monk, from whose decision he appealed to the Pope.

The integrity and courage of Wickliff are manifest from the boldness with which he continued to oppose the mendicants, both personally and by his writings, during the time his appeal was under consideration.

His resistance to the papal claims

Another circumstance assisted to call Wickliff into public notice. This was the decision of the English parliament in

1365, to resist the claim of Pope Urban v, who attempted the revival of an annual payment of a thousand marks,®2 as a tribute, or feudal acknowledgment that the kingdoms of England and Ireland were held at the pleasure of the popes. His claim was founded upon the surrender of the crown by King John to Pope Innocent III. The payment had been discontinued for thirty-three years, and the recent victories of Cressy and Poictiers, with their results, had so far strengthened the power of England, that the demand by the pontiff of the arrears, with the continuance of the tribute, upon pain of the papal censure, were unanimously rejected by the king and parliament. The reader must recollect that this was not a question bearing only upon the immediate point in dispute; the grand subject of papal supremacy was involved therein, and the refusal to listen to the mandate of the Pope necessarily tended to abridge the general influence of the clergy. Such claims were not lightly relinquished by the papacy, and shortly after this decision of the parliament, a monk wrote in defence of the papal usurpations, asserting that the sovereignty of England was forfeited by withholding the tribute, and that the clergy, whether as individuals or as a general body, were exempted from all jurisdiction of the civil power,—a claim which had already excited considerable discussion in the preceding reigns. Wickliff was personally challenged by this writer to prove, if he were able, the fallacy of these opinions; nor should it be forgotten that this work did not proceed from any of the mendicant orders, but from one of those monks who were directly opposed to them.

In Wickliff’s reply, wherein he has preserved the arguments of the monk, he styles himself one of the royal chaplains. He combats the assumptions of the church of Rome, confirming his sentiments by giving the substance of several speeches delivered by certain of the nobility in the recent debate relative to the claims of the pontiff. We need not enter into the contents of this tract further than to quote the following declaration attributed to one of the speakers, that “Christ is the supreme Lord, while the Pope is a man, and liable to mortal sin, and who while in mortal sin, according to divines, is unfitted for dominion.” The extent to which such a principle might be applied, is evident from the well-known wicked lives of the pontiffs, which had led to the monstrous assertion of Romish divines, that the Pope, though guilty of the most heinous sins, still was to be obeyed and respected in his mandates, even those which concerned religion! ©

The treatise concludes with a view of the future, taken by Wickliff, which has long since been fulfilled: “If I mistake not, the day will come in which all exactions shall cease, before the Pope will prove such a condition to be reasonable and honest.” Who now in England ventures to assert that the temporal authority of the Pope is supreme? or that his ecclesiastics are exempted from the laws of God and their country? Yet such doctrines were openly maintained in former ages, and still are asserted in some parts of Europe! The parliament in 1366 also directed regulations to be observed, by which the power and influence of the mendicants were limited. In the part taken by the University of Oxford, during these proceedings, Wickliff doubtless was concerned, and the attention given to his arguments on the subjects which then so deeply agitated the public mind, must have brought his opinions concerning the Scriptures, and other points more immediately connected with Divine truths, into general notice. Thus attention was called to those doctrines which he now began publicly to advocate. One circumstance which promoted this opposition to the papal claims, was the national animosity then existing between England and France. Many of the popes being natives of France, evinced their partiality for their own country, in which they then resided. All these concurring circumstances led Edward 1 to pursue a line of conduct which certainly characterises him as a promoter of the Reformation, at least as to its outward concerns.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, claims notice as conspicuous among the court and family of the British monarch, for the countenance and support he afforded to Wickliff. Under his influence an attempt appears to have been made in 1371, by authority of parliament, to exclude ecclesiastics from all offices of state.2 Wickliff, in his writings, has fully shown his agreement with his noble patron on this point, and his deep sense of the necessity for the clergy being exclusively devoted to the duties of their spiritual functions. The views of Wickliff as to the proper method of discharging the office of minister to the church, will appear by the following extract from one of his early pieces, entitled, A short rule of life. He says:

If thou art a priest, and by name a curate, live thou a holy life. Pass other men in holy prayer, holy desire, and holy speaking; in counselling and teaching the truth. Ever keep the commandments of God, and let His gospel and His praises be ever in thy mouth. Ever despise sin, that men may be drawn therefrom, and that thy deeds may be so far rightful, that no man shall blame them with reason. Let thy open life be thus a true book, in which the soldier and the layman may learn how to serve God, and keep His commandments. For the example of a good life, if it be open and continued, striketh rude men much more than open preaching with the word alone. And waste not thy goods in great feasts for rich men, but live a frugal life on poor men’s alms and goods. Have both meat, and drink, and clothing, but the remnant give truly to the poor; to those who have freely wrought, but who now may not labour from feebleness and sickness; and thus shalt thou be a true priest both to God and to man.

These sentiments remind us of the early ages of the church, and Wickliff was not one who set forth precepts for others which he did not practise himself. Similar passages are found in many parts of his writings. Nor was he less earnest on the other hand to enforce due respect for the ministers of religion, as will appear from the following extract:

Thy second father is thy spiritual father, who has special care of thy soul, and thus shalt thou worship (reverence) him. Thou shalt love him especially before other men, and obey his teaching as far as he teaches God’s will. And help, according to thy power, that he have a reasonable sustenance when he doth well his office. And if he fail in his office, by giving evil example, and in ceasing from teaching God’s law, thou art bound to have great sorrow on that account, and to tell meekly and charitably his default to him, between thee and him alone. ®

In 1379, the papal court decided against the continuance of Wickliff in the wardenship of Canterbury Hall. the Pope decreed that the inmates should all be monks, notwithstanding the express declarations of the founder, and the terms of the royal license to the contrary! The royal sanction to this sentence was obtained two years afterwards. Among the means employed by his opponents, bribery appears to have been the principal. Wickliff was neither surprised nor troubled by this decision; he does not even refer to it in any of his writings.

His lectures as Professor of Divinity

In 1373, Wickliff was admitted to the degree of doctor in divinity. As this rank was at that time unfrequent, and conferred a considerable degree of influence, it must have facilitated the diffusion of the doctrines he advocated throughout the kingdom. Many of his scholastic pieces doubtless were lectures delivered by him as a professor of divinity, to which office he was appointed in 1372. His early English writings also show both the doctrinal views and the religious feelings with which he proceeded in his new office. He was skilful in the use of the artificial logic then in vogue, and by accustoming his hearers to enter into logical and metaphysical distinctions, he taught them to exercise their minds upon such inquiries, which he gradually directed to more important subjects than those usually introduced into such lectures. This particularly appears in his work entitled Trialogus.

Among these early productions, the Exposition of the Decalogue, now in the Cotton library, should be included. A brief extract or two may be here given. Urging that love to God be shown by keeping His commands, Wickliff says:

Have a remembrance of the goodness of God, how He made thee in His own likeness, and how Jesus Christ, both God and man, died so painful a death upon the cross, to buy man’s soul out of hell, even with His own heart’s blood, and to bring it to the bliss of heaven.

He admonishes that the Sabbath not only commemorates the work of creation, but also the resurrection of Christ, and the gift of the Spirit, adding, “Bethink thee heartily of the wonderful kindness of God, who was so high and so worshipful in heaven, that He should come down so low and be born of the maiden, and become our brother, to buy us again by His hard passion from our thraldom to Satan.” After describing the sufferings of Christ, he adds,

All this He did and suffered of His own kindness, without any sin of Himself, that He might deliver us from sin and pain, and bring us to everlasting bliss. Thou shouldest also think constantly, how, when He had made thee of nought, thou hadst forsaken Him, and all His kindness, through sin, and hadst taken thee to Satan and his service, world without end, had not Christ, God and man, suffered this hard death to save us. And thus, see the great kindness, and all other goodness, which God hath shown for thee, and thereby learn thy own great unkindness; and thus thou shalt see that man is the most fallen of creatures, and the unkindest of all creatures that ever God made! It should be full, sweet, and delightful to us to think thus on this great kindness, and this great love of Jesus Christ!

Vaughan observes of this exposition of the commandments: We find Wycliffe zealously inculcating the lessons of inspiration, on the fall of man and the consequent depravity of human nature; on the excellence and perpetual obligation of the moral law; on the exclusive dependence of every child of Adam on the atonement of Christ for the remission of his sins; and for victory over temptation, and the possession of holiness, on the aids of Divine grace. It appears also that these momentous tenets were very far from being regarded by Wycliffe with the coldness of mere speculation.

The aid which the labours of Wickliff received from the disputes then existing between the popes and the English government, has been already noticed; these differences were again renewed in 1373, on the subject of “provisors.” The papal see had been accustomed to grant anticipated vacancies in the English church among its foreign dependants, by which ministers were appointed who were neither able nor willing to discharge the duties of their office. Various legal enactments had been previously made to meet these encroachments, and a law was passed whereby the election of bishops was rendered entirely independent of the papal sanction.

In the year 1360, during the pestilence, seven English bishoprics had become vacant. All of these were filled by aliens, by papal grants previously bestowed. An inquiry made in 1376, showed that a very large number of the English benefices were in the hands of foreigners. An embassy was despatched to the continent in 1374, to remonstrate with the papal see on the subject; Wickliff was one of the delegates. Bruges was the place appointed for meeting the papal commissioners. The proceedings, as usual in all matters of a similar nature, were protracted by every species of evasion. After continuing nearly two years, the concessions obtained were few and _ unsatisfactory. Wickliff saw enough during his visit to the continent to satisfy him fully of the antichristian character of the papacy. He returned from this treaty, like Cranmer and Luther from Rome, more than ever convinced of the necessity of a thorough reformation in ecclesiastical affairs. He now styled the Pope, “antichrist, the proud, worldly priest of Rome, the most cursed of clippers and purse yw kervers.” We find strong expressions in his subsequent writings, but when we refer to the corruptions of the church of Rome, and to the treatment Wickliff received from the Romish ecclesiastics, it may truly be said, “Was there not a cause?”

The public attention was now awakened to the intolerable exactions of the popedom. A parliamentary remonstrance in 1376 states that the taxes paid to the Pope yearly out of England were five times the amount paid to the king; also that the richest prince in Christendom had not the fourth part of the income received by the Pope out of England. These calculations might well call forth the emphatic expression contained in the same document, “that God had committed His sheep to the Pope to be pastured, and not to be shorn or shaven.”

In November, 1375, Wickliff was presented by the king to a prebend in the collegiate church of Westbury, and shortly after to the rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, at that time in the royal gift, by the minority of Lord de Ferrars, the patron. He was speedily called to take a still more prominent part in public affairs.

At that period a severe political struggle existed between the Duke of Lancaster and some of the leading ecclesiastics, among whom Courtenay, Bishop of London, and Wykeham of Winchester were the most distinguished.

His appearance before the prelates

The clergy were highly displeased at proceedings against some of their number, and at this period, for the first time, we find them adverting to the doctrines of Wickliff, as calling for official interference. This doubtless was intended as an attack both upon the doctrines of the reformer and the power of his patron.

In the convocation v/hich met in February, 1377,2 Wickliff was cited to appear before his ecclesiastical superiors, to answer certain charges brought against him for holding and publishing erroneous and _ heretical doctrines. A day was appointed for hearing his defence. The scene which ensued is thus described by Foxe from the Chronicle of St. Albans.

When the day assigned to the said Wickliff to appear was come, which day was Thursday, the 19th of February, John Wickliff went, accompanied with the Duke of Lancaster, also four friars appointed by the duke, the better to ensure Wickliff’s safety, and Lord Henry Percy,

Lord Marshal of England; Lord Percy going before to make room and way where Wickliff should come.

Thus Wickliff, through the providence of God, being sufficiently guarded, was coming to the place where the bishops sat. By the way they animated and exhorted him not to fear nor shrink a whit at the company of the bishops there present, who were all unlearned, said they, in respect of him—for so proceed the words of my author, whom I follow in this narration; neither should he dread the concourse of the people, whom they would themselves assist and defend, in such sort that he should take no harm. With these words, and with the assistance of the nobles, Wickliff, encouraged in heart, approached the church of St. Paul, where a main press of people was gathered to hear what should be said and done. Such was the throng of the multitude, that the lords, for all the puissance of the high marshal, scarcely, with great difficulty, could get way through. Insomuch that Courtenay, Bishop of London, seeing the stir which the Lord Marshal kept in the church among the people, speaking to the Lord Percy, said. That if he had known before what masteries he would have kept in the church, he would have stopped him out from coming there. At which words of the bishop the duke disdaining not a little, answered the bishop again, That he would keep such mastery there, though he said, Nay.

At last, after much wrangling, they pierced through, and came to our lady’s chapel, where the dukes and barons were sitting, together with the archbishops and bishops, before whom John Wickliff stood, to know what should be laid unto him. To whom first spake the Lord Percy, bidding him to sit down, saying that he had many things to answer to, and therefore had need of some softer seat. But the Bishop of London, cast eftsoons into a fumish chafe with those words, said. He should not sit there. Neither was it, said he, according to law or reason, that he, who was cited there to appear to answer before his ordinary, should sit down during the time of his answer, but he should stand. Upon these words a fire began to heat and kindle between them. Insomuch that they began so to rate and revile one the other, that the whole multitude, therewith disquieted, began to set on a hurry.

Then the duke, taking the Lord Percy’s part, with hasty words began also to take up the bishop. To whom the bishop again, nothing inferior in reproachful checks and rebukes, did render and requite, not only to him as good as he brought, but also did so far excel him in this railing art of scolding, that, to use the words of mine author, the duke blushed and was ashamed, because he could not overpass the bishop in brawhng and railing. He therefore fell to plain threatening, menacing the bishop, that he would bring down the pride not only of him, but also of all the prelacy of England. Speaking moreover unto him: Thou, said he, bearest thyself so brag upon thy parents, which shall not be able to help thee; they shall have enough to do to help themselves. His parents were the Earl and Countess of Devonshire. To whom the bishop again answered, that to be bold to tell the truth, his confidence was not in his parents, nor in any man else, but only in God in whom he trusted. Then the duke whispering in the ear of him next by him, said that he would rather pluck the bishop by the hair of his head out of the church than he would take this at his hand. This was not spoken so secretly, but that the Londoners overheard him. Whereupon, being set in rage, they cried out, saying that they would not suffer their bishop so contemptuously to be abused, but rather they would lose their lives than that he should be so drawn out by the hair. Thus the council being broken with scolding and brawling for that day, was dissolved before nine of the clock.