Biographia Evangelica. JOHN WICK LIFFE, THE FIRST REFORMER. WHEN we look back upon the days of barbarism, and the gross ignorance of the true light of the gospel, which prevailed in the Christian world,, for so many ages together, before the Reformation; when we reflect upon the stupid ceremonies and abominable superstitions and cheats, practised by the monks and others; and then survey the hand of GOD, working, in a most extraordinary manner, through all this mass of corruption and folly, and bringing about, by degrees, the clear shining of the everlasting gospel: We must stand astonished at the whole, and from the wonderful contrast of the times, may say; This hath GOD wrought; it is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. GOD vouchsafed to honour England with the first dawning of the Reformation: And an Englishman was the first champion of that cause, which afterwards received. the name of PROTESTANTISM. This remarkable instrument of the divine blessing was JOHN WICKLIFfe, or JOHN DE WICKLIFFE, taking his sirname from a village once called Wickliffe, near Richmond, in Yorkshire, where he was born in the year 1324. It has been observed, that no such place exists at present under that name; but it is well known, that great numbers of our villages, and even towns and hundreds, have received different denominations from change of possessors in the course of ages. Wickliffe was sent early to Oxford, and was first admitted commoner of Queen's College, and afterwards of Merton, where he became fellow. Merton 5. Simon Merton College was then the best seminary for great and learned men in the whole university; and the following eminent persons belonged to it, about this time. 1. Walter Burley, called the Plain Doctor, who was preceptor to king Edward III. 2. William Occam, called the Singular Doctor. 3. Thomas Bradwardine, the Profound Doctor, who was called to court by archbishop Stratford, and succeeded him in the see of Canterbury. 4. Simon Mepham, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1330. Islip, who was also promoted to the same see, in 1349, was lord privy seal, and secretary to the king. 6. William Rede, an excellent mathematician, and bishop of Chichester in 1369. 7. Geoffry Chaucer, the Father of English Poetry. Wickliffe was afterwards called Doctor Evangelicus, or the Gospel Doctor; and he certainly deserved the title, as the study of the holy scriptures was his principal delight. He was indeed (to use the words of bishop Newton) deservedly famous, the honour of his own, and the admiration of all succeeding times.' Wickliffe was soon distinguished, among these illustrious contemporaries, for the closeness of his application to study, and the vivacity of his genius. He became celebrated in philosophy and divinity; being so remarkable for an elegancy of wit, and strength in disputations, that he was esteemed more than human by the common sort of divines. He adorned the learning of the schools by acquiring a deep knowledge of the civil and canon law, as also of the municipal laws of his own country, which have been always too much neglected till our own times, when we find the Vinerian professorship of the laws of England established in the university of Oxford. Wickliffe not only studied and commented upon the sacred writings; but he translated them into his native language, and wrote homilies on several parts of them. He also diligently studied the writings of St Austin, St Jerom, St Ambrose, and St Gregory, the four fathers of the Latin church: But he was thirty-six years of age before he had a proper opportunity of exerting his excellent talents, so as to attract the observation of the university, and even of the whole kingdom; for it was in the year 1360 when he became the advocate for the university against the encroachments made by the mendicant friars, who had been very troublesome from their first establishment in Oxford, in 1230, and occasioned great inquietude to the chancellor and scho lars, lars, by infringing their statutes and privileges, and setting up an exempt jurisdiction. Popery was established in England by Austin the monk, and continued to be the only religion till the Reformation. The church of Rome had infected all Christendom with its errors and corruptions; and the whole church was degenerated from its primitive purity by the artifices of the monks, who had polluted the clear stream of religion with the rank weeks of superstition. The clergy had engrossed the greatest part both of the riches and power of Christendom: But the corruptions of their worship and doctrine were easily detected; nor had they any varnish to colour them by, except the authority and traditions of the church. When some studious men began to read the ancient fathers, and councils, they found a vast difference between the first five ages of the Christian church, in which piety and learning prevailed, and the last ten ages, in which ignorance had buried all their former learning: Only a little misguided devotion was retained for six of those ages; and, in the last four, the restless ambition and usurpation of the popes were supported by the seeming holiness of the begging friars, and the false counterfeits of learning, consisting only of a vile metaphysical jargon, or vain school-divinity, which prevailed among the canonists, school-men, and casuists. It may be noted, that soon after and about the year 1300, flourished several able and pious men, who boldly withstood the errors of the church of Rome, and the insolence of its popes. Of these, perhaps, none was more remarkable than Marsilius of Padua, who wrote his Defensor Pacis for the emperor Lewis, of Bavaria, against pope John XXII, and who is execrated by name in the bull of pope Gregory against Wickliffe. He vehemently opposed the enormities of the court of Rome, and main-1 tained, that believers are freely justified by grace alone, and that works are not the efficient causes of our salvation, though justification and salvation are ever attended with them. He and others paved the way for our great countryman, who soon afterwards appeared and distinguished himself above them. Wickliffe was indeed the morning-star of the Reformátion; though he appeared like a meteor to the monks, when he opposed them in support of the university. The number of students there had been thirty thousand; but, in the 1357, they were so far decreased that the whole was not above six thousand. This was entirely owing to the bad |