"OHIO Ri: 



177 



HISTORIC SKI "IV | IKS. vi. 



\Vll.UAM BAUTKK, HEUK 



NEARLY five h.m.lr .1 yean have elapsed since the snbjoct of 

 tlio following sketch presented itself, but thu intoroMt 



|.riiiciplos which it brought into notice, can 

 never die. Wo are all interested very deeply in the matter of 

 freedom of conscience, freedom to worship God in the way 

 suggested by the light lie has given us ; and we can never afford 

 to lose eight of the principle then vindicated, oven to the death, 

 that it is not competent to a ruler to vimt with the punishment 

 of a crime, a man whoso sole offence consists in differing from 

 jus brethren on points of spiritual belief. The first occasion on 



were made to silence him, but bo npoko on and spoke out, 

 and, strong in the protection of John of (Jaunt, the Duk* of 

 Lancaster, brother to the Black Prince, and unclo to King 

 Richard II., managed to weather the several storms which hi* 

 opinion^ lirought upon him. He was arraigned more than one* 

 before spiritual tribunals, and many of hU opinion* were de- 

 clared to be erroneous, and many more were condemned an 

 heretical, by an assembly of Church magnate*. Ecclesiastical 

 censures, however, were the only weapons with which the 

 spiritual courts could enforce their decrees, and Wyclifle WM 

 offered to die a natural death at his rectory of Luttenrorth, 

 in LciooNternhire, whither he retired after a life of 

 toil and labour in aid of what he deemed to be the troth. 



JOHN WTCLIFFE, OR WICKLIPPE, THE FIRST ENGLISH REFORMER. BORN ABOUT 1324, DIED 138-i. 



thia principle -was vindicated in England was in 1401, 

 and the man who was the first martyr to the cause of free con- 

 science in England was William Sautre, a harmless, inoffensive 

 man, the rector or curate of St. Osith's Church, London. 



William Sautre" was one of a numerous body who had been 

 Btirred to the very bottom of their hearts by the teaching 

 of John Wycliffe, or Wickliffe, and his followers. Wycliffe had 

 taught with as much boldness as ability his enemies said with 

 more that certain doctrines inculcated by the clergy of the 

 day were erroneous, and contrary to the teachings of our Lord 

 and his apostles ; he taught that the Bible was the only 

 standard by which men might measure the truth or falsity of 

 their creeds; and ho denounced in emphatic and somewhat 

 rough language, the vices and corruptions which had infected 

 the clergy, especially the clergy in monasteries. Upon these 

 topics Wycliffo preached with considerable effect at Oxford, 

 where he was a professor, and in many other places. Attempts 

 VOL. I. 



After the death of Wyoliffe. the spirit which had animated 

 him passed into the breasts of his disciples, "the poor 

 preachers," who went about with the English Bible (a new and 

 forbidden article) in their hands, and preached so convincingly 

 and cheeringly that, as was seen in the ministry of our Lord, 

 " the common people heard them gladly." The attention of the 

 Church authorities was soon drawn to them, and letters called 

 bulls (on account of tho bullse, or lead seals, which were attached 

 to them) were sent from the Court of Rome, addressed to the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury and the English bishops, to the 

 University of Oxford, and to the king, commanding them eaok 

 and all to help in suppressing the heretics, and in uprooting 

 the tares (tho Latin word for tare is folium, from which the 

 nickname " Lollard " was afterwards derived and affixed to the 

 reformers), which, while men slept, the enemy had sown in the 

 garden of the Lord. 



Edward III., who died in 1377, was not the king to br?y 



12 



