204 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
tradiction to this order to be punished as an abettor of heresy and 
error. The persecutions which followed this decree of the convoca- 
tion held at St. Paul’s in 1408, are strikingly attested by the various 
episcopal registers. But such was the gross spiritual ignorance of the 
British population in those days that the pontificate, however it might 
be shorn of its pristine strength, still wielded the sword of dominion 
with such force and severity, that it was beyond the reach of a man 
gifted with powers short of omnipotence to diffuse any thing like a 
spirit of general disaffection to its edicts. 
As to what Collier adds respecting the tenets of Wiclif and the 
Lollards being similar, there is historical proof that this is not the 
fact. It may be conceded that the said Archbishop Arundel, in re- 
ference to the spread of his doctrines, affirms that “‘ Oxford was as a 
vine that brought forth wild and sour grapes, which, being eaten by 
the fathers, the teeth of the children were set on edge; so that the 
whole province of Canterbury was tainted with novel and damnable 
Lollardism, to the intolerable and notorious scandal of the university.” 
It may also be stated that the most inveterate of his adversaries, 
Henry Knighton, fathers upon Wiclif this maxim: that civil magis- 
trates forfeited the right to govern by the commission of any mortal 
sin. But calumny and invective, at all times, are wretched substi- 
tutes for historical truth ; and truth it is, that a sentiment so absurd, 
and so injurious to the good order of society, never formed a part of 
that learned and enlightened man’s* political or religious creed, what- 
ever may have been the opinions of his poor priests or travelling 
preachers. Rash and unguarded as may have been some of the 
expressions of the precursors of the Reformation, yet it is a thing 
not credible that the university seal should have been affixed to a do- 
cument declaratory of “the great learning and good life of John 
* That many opinions which he lays down and defends would receive the 
welcome support of the most orthodox protestant, there can be no question. 
But candour obliges us, at the same time, to observe, that some of the noti- 
ons of this illustrious man, if taken in their full import and bearing, tend to 
an undue disparagement of the church and of the civil power. For example, 
that tythes were mere alms—that oaths were unlawful—that church endow- 
ments in perpetuity may be resumed by the patron, or sovereign—that do- 
minion, or the right to property, was founded in grace, or the persons being 
in the acceptance of God. These dangerous novelties, this excess of ardour 
for sweeping innovations, which would break down all the fences of subordi- 
nation, evidently betray more of the puritan spirit, than of the sober refor- 
mer, whose plan of action is accommodated to the real state of man. The se- 
veral opinions of Wiclif, collected from his works, are to be found in Baber’s 
life of him, p. 32. 
