think, every virtuous word they speak, every fruitful work they accomplish, is a step numbered of God toward him into heaven.

"But," continued the confessor, "the most part of men and women that now go on pilgrimages have not these conditions, nor love to have them. For, as I well know, since I have full often tried, examine whoever will twenty of these pilgrims, and he shall not find three men or women that know surely a commandment of God, nor can say their Paternosters and Ave Maria, nor their creed, readily, in any manner of language. Their pilgrimage is more to have here worldly and fleshy friendship, than to have friendship of God and of his saints in heaven. Also, sir, I know that when several men and women go thus after their own wills, and fixing on the same pilgrimage, they will arrange beforehand to have with them both men and women that can sing wanton songs, and other pilgrims will have with them bagpipes; so that every town that they come through, what with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the tangling of their Canterbury bells, and with the barking of dogs after them, they make more noise than if the king came there with all his clarions and minstrels."

Arundel: "What! janglest thou against men's devotion? Whatever thou or such other say, I say that the pilgrimage that now is used is to them that do it a praiseworthy and a good means to come to grace."

After this there ensued another long contention between Thorpe and the primate, on the subject of confession. The archbishop was not making much way in the argument, when one of the clerks interposed and put an end to it.

"Sir," said he, addressing the primate, "it is late in the day, and ye have far to ride to-night; therefore make an end with him, for he will make none; but the more, sir, that ye busy you to draw him toward you, the more contumacious he is made."

"William, kneel down," said another, "and pray my Lord's Grace, and leave all thy fancies, and become a child of holy Church." The archbishop, striking the table fiercely with his hand, also demanded his instant submission. Others taunted him with his eagerness to be promoted to a stake which men more learned than he had prudently avoided by recanting their errors.

"Sir," said he, replying to the archbishop, "asI have said to you several times to-day, I will willingly and humbly obey and submit to God, and to his law, and to every member of holy Church, as far as I can perceive that these members accord

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with their Head, Christ, and will teach me, rule me, or chastise me by authority, especially of God's law."

This was a submission; but the additions with · which it was qualified robbed it of all grace in the eyes of the archbishop. Once more, and for the last time, the primate put it plainly thus: "Wilt thou not submit thee to the ordinance of holy Church?"

"I will full gladly submit me," replied Thorpe, "as I showed you before."

Hereupon Thorpe was delivered to the constable of the castle. He was led out and thrown into a worse prison than that in which he had before been confined. At his prison-door we lose all trace of him. He never again appears, and what his fate was has never been ascertained. 2

This examination, or rather conference between the primate and Thorpe, enables us to form a tolerable idea of English Protestantism, or Lollardism, in the twilight time that intervened between its dawn, in the days of Wicliffe, and its brighter rising in the times of the sixteenth century. It consisted, we may say, of but three facts or truths. The first was Scripture, as the supreme and infallible authority; the second was the Cross, as the sole fountain of forgiveness and salvation; and the third was Faith, as the one instrumentality by which men come into possession of the blessings of that salvation. We may add a fourth, which was not so much a primary truth as a consequence from the three doctrines which formed the osteology, or frame-work, of the Protestantism of those daysHoliness. The faith of these Christians was not a dead faith it was a faith that kept the commandments of God, a faith that purified the heart, and enriched the life.

If, in one sense, Lollard Protestantism was a narrow and limited system, consisting but of a very few facts, in another sense it was perfect, inasmuch as it contained the germ and promise of all theology. Given but one fundamental truth, all must follow in due time.

In the authority of Scripture as the inspired Word of God, and the death of Christ as a complete and perfect atonement for human guilt, they had found more than one fundamental truth.

They

1 Instit., par. 3, cap. 5, fol. 39. Collier, Eccles. Hist., vol. i., pp. 614, 615.

2 Fox, bk. i., p. 675. This statute is known as 2 Henry IV., cap. 15. Cotton remarks "that the printed statute differs greatly from the record, not only in form, but much more in matter, in order to maintain ecclesiastical tyranny." His publisher, Prynne, has this note upon it: "This was the first statute and butcherly knife that the impeaching prelates procured or had against the poor preachers of Christ's Gospel." (Cobbett, Parliament. Hist., vol. i., p. 287; Lond., 1806.) The "Statute of Heresy was passed in the previous reign-Richard II.,

The law was not permitted to remain a dead letter. William Sawtre, formerly Rector of St. Margaret's in Lynn, and now of St. Osyth in London-"a good man and faithful priest," says Fox-was apprehended, and an indictment preferred against him. Among the charges contained in it we find the following:-" That he will not worship

the cross on which Christ suffered, but only Christ who suf fered upon the cross." "That after pronouncing the Sacramental words of the body of Christ, the bread remaineth of the same nature that it was before, neither doth it cease to be bread." He was condemned as a heretic by the archbishop's court, and delivered to the secular power to be burned.3

As Sawtre was the first Protestant to be put to death in England, the ceremony of his degradation was gone about with great formality. First the paten and chalice were taken out of his hands; next the chasuble was pulled off his back, to signify that now he had been completely stripped of all his functions and dignities as a priest. Next the New Testament and the stole were taken away, to intimate his deposition from the order of deacon, and the withdrawal of his power to teach. His deposition as subdeacon was effected by stripping him of the alb. The candlestick and taper were next taken from him to "put

1382. It is entitled "An Act to commission sheriffs to apprehend preachers of heresy, and their abettors reciting the enormities ensuing the preaching of heretics." It was surreptitiously obtained by the clergy and enrolled without the consent of the Commons. On the complaint of that body this Act was repealed, but by a second artifice of the priests the Act of repeal was suppressed, and prosecutions carried on in virtue of the "Act of Heresy." (See Cobbett, Parliament. Hist., vol. i., p. 177.) Sir Edward Coke (Instit., par. 3, cap. 5, fol. 39) gives the same account of the matter. He says that the 6th of Richard II., which repealed the statute of the previous year (5th Richard II.), was not proclaimed, thus leaving the latter in force. Collier (Eccles. Hist., vol. i., p. 606) argues against this view of the case. The manner of proclaiming laws, printing being then unknown, was to send a copy on parchment, in Latin or French, to each sheriff, who proclaimed them in his county; and had the 6th of Richard II., which repealed the previous Act, been omitted in the proclamation, it would, Collier thinks, have been known to the Commons.

3 Fox, bk. i., p. 675. Collier, Eccles. Hist., vol. i., p. 618.

from thee all order of an acolyte." He was next deprived of the holy water book, and with it he was bereft of all power as an exorcist.1 By these and sundry other ceremonies, too tedious to recite, William Sawtre was made as truly a layman as before the oil and scissors of the Church had touched him.

Unrobed, disqualified for the mystic ministry, and debarred the sacrificial shrines of Rome, he was now to ascend the steps of an altar, whereon he was to lay costlier sacrifice than any to be seen in the Roman temples. That altar was the stake, that sacrifice was himself. He died in the flames, February 12, 1401. As England had the high honour of sending forth the first Reformer, England had likewise the honour, in William Sawtre, of giving the first martyr to Protestantism."

His martyrdom was significant of much, for to Protestantism it was a sure pledge of victory, and to Rome a terrible prognostic of defeat! Protestantism had now made the soil of England its own by burying its martyred dead in it. Henceforward it will feel that, like the hero of classic story, it stands on its native earth, and is altogether invincible. It may struggle and bleed and endure many a seeming defeat; the conflict may be prolonged through many a dark year and century, but it must and shall eventually triumph. It has taken a pledge of the soil, and it cannot possibly perish from off it. Its opponent, on the other hand, has written the prophecy of its own defeat in the blood it has shed, and struggle as it may it shall not prevail over its rival, but shall surely fall before it.3

The names of many of these early sufferers, to whom England owes, under Providence, its liberties and its Scriptural religion, have fallen into oblivion. Among those whom the diligence of our ancient chroniclers has rescued from this fate is that of John Badby. He was a layman of the diocese of Worcester. Arraigned on the doctrine of the Sacrament, he frankly confessed his opinions. In vain, he held, were the "Sacramental words " spoken over the bread on the altar: despite the conjuration it still remained "material bread." it was Christ whom the priest produced on the altar, let him be shown Him in his true form, and

1 Fox, bk. i., p. 674.

If

* Collier, Eccles. Hist., i. 618. Burnet, Hist. Ref., i. 24. 3 There is some ground to think that Sawtre was not the first to be put to death for religion in England. “A chronicle of London," says the writer of the Preface to Bale's Brefe Chronycle, "mentions one of the Albigenses burned A.D. 1210." And Camden, it is thought, alludes to this when he says: "In the reign of John, Christians began to be put to death in the flames by Christians amongst us." (Bale, Preface ii.)

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he would believe. There could be but one fate in reserve for the man who, instead of bowing implicitly to his "mother the Church," challenged her to attest her prodigy by some proof or sign of its truth. He was convicted before the Bishop of Worcester of "the crime of heresy," but reserved for final judgment before Arundel, now become the Archbishop of Canterbury.1

On the 1st of March, 1409, the haughty Arundel, assembling his suffragans, with quite a crowd of temporal and spiritual lords, sat down on the judgment-seat in St. Paul's, and commanded the humble confessor to be brought before him. He hoped, perhaps, that Badby would be awed by this display of authority. In this, however, he was mistaken. The opinions he had avowed before the Bishop of Worcester, he maintained with equal courage in presence of the more august tribunal of the primate, and the more imposing assemblage now convened in St. Paul's. The prisoner was remanded till the 15th of the same month, being consigned meanwhile to the convent of the Preaching Friars, the archbishop himself keeping the key of his cell.5

6

When the day for the final sentence, the 15th of March, came, Arundel again ascended his episcopal throne, attended by a yet more brilliant escort of lords spiritual and temporal, including a prince of the blood. John Badby had but the same answer to give, the same confession to make, on his second as on his first appearance. Bread consecrated by the priest was still bread, and the Sacrament of the altar was of less estimation than the humblest man there present. This rational reply was too rational for the men and the times. To them it appeared simple blasphemy. The archbishop, seeing "his countenance stout and his heart confirmed," pronounced John Badby an open and public heretic," and the court "delivered him to the secular power, and desired the temporal lords then and there present, that they would not put him to death for that his offence," as if they had been innocent of all knowledge that that same secular power to which they now delivered him had, at their instigation, passed a law adjudging all heretics to the fire, and that the magistrate was bound under excommunication to carry out the statute De Hæretico Comburendo.