the ministers of religion who approach them*. If, according to another elegant image of the same eloquent orator, on the same occasion, the rich and the great have "mental blotches and running sores" peculiar to themselves; you take a strange road to their cure by infecting with the same diseases, the men whom you intend for their doctors. As if a mad physician was the man fittest to be placed at the head of a lunatic hospital!

Burke had images and words adapted to all occasions; and words and images are all-powerful over the ordinary class of minds. There is no want of evidence to prove, that by words and images, pretty independent of ideas, he had learned the art of turning and winding his own mind. For a long time there has been a lamentable fashion of leaning on all occasions upon his authority. But here we have the authority of Wicliff and Gilpin, on the side of reason, against him.

Wicliff was protected by the Duke of Lancaster, the celebrated John of Gaunt, on whom, during the old age of his father Edward the Third, the weight of government rested. "This prince," says Mr. Gilpin, had free notions in religion: and whether his creed gave offence to the clergy, or whether he had made some efforts to curb the exorbitance of their power, it is certain they were vehemently incensed against him; and some of the leading churchmen, it is said, had used base arts to blacken his character. Notwithstanding, however, the protection of the duke, from whom Wicliff had received the valuable rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, a persecution was raised against him; with "Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury, and Courtney, bishop of London, at its head. The former was a man of uncommon moderation, for the times in which he lived; the latter was an inflamed bigot." The persecution lingered till the death of Edward, when the weakness of Richard the Second, a minor, and the diminished power of the Duke of Lancaster, "was a signal," says Mr. Gilpin, " to the bishops, to animate their persecution against Wicliff."

Wicliff is said not to have behaved with much courage, when interrogated before the bishops; to have endeavoured with much effort to torture his words into an orthodox meaning; and with servile compliments to soothe the resentments of the prelates. It is only from popish historians, however, that we receive these accounts, and they would not fail to make the story

"They are not repelled through a fastidious delicacy, at the stench of their arrogance and presumption, from a medicinal attention to their mutual blotches and running sores." Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution,

appear favourable to their own cause, and the contrary to that of their opponents. But whether the accusation be true or false, the only difference it makes is that of a little more, or a little less, in the personal courage of Wicliff; which is a matter of not much importance.

The next work in which he engaged was truly great, and memorable in its consequences. It was a translation of the Scriptures into the common language. Before it appeared, "he published," says Gilpin," a tract, in which, with great strength of argument, he showed the necessity of engaging in it. The Bible, he affirmed, contained the whole of God's word. Christ's law, he said, was sufficient to guide his church; and every Christian might there gather knowledge enough to make him acceptable to God. And as to comments, he said, a good life was the best guide to the knowledge of Scripture. Or, in his own language, He that keepeth righteousness hath the true understanding of Holy Writ."

The stress which Wicliff here, and throughout his works, lays upon good morals, in comparison of orthodox opinions, is truly remarkable. It is a mark, a sign, a criterion, by which the good man may almost always be distinguished from the good churchman. Opinions engross the zeal of the good churchman; morals that of the good man. The exertions of the one are expended in making other men's opinions conformable to his own; and morals he nearly leaves to take care of themselves. The pursuit of the other is to make his fellow-creatures to the utmost possible extent lead virtuous, and therefore happy lives ; and all opinions which are not the ground-work of actions, he places in a station of inferior importance.

Another opinion of Wicliff is, the sufficiency of the Scriptures, without gloss or comment, for all really religious purposes. How much at variance with this opinion is that of the churchmen, who oppose the establishment of schools on the principle of universal admission, because the Bible is read in them without the catechism of the Church, need not be explained.

If the propriety of translating the Scriptures be established and acknowledged, other consequences follow which are not in general observed. The translation of the Scriptures is only good, if schism and dissent are good, and not otherwise. If schism and dissent are evil, so also is the translation of the Scriptures. If the opinions of the Church are alone to be followed, and if the adoption of any other opinions is evil, the proper course undoubtedly is to confine the Bible to those who manufacture the opinions of the Church, and to give to the people only the opinions which

are made for them. The Church of Rome reasoned accurately and consistently, by refusing the use of the Bible to the laity, when it established their incompetency to form opinions for themselves. The Church of England manifests a woeful incapacity of reasoning, when it maintains that the Bible should be translated and read, and yet that there is any duty or propriety whatsoever in following the opinions of the parish priest more than the opinions of any other man. Surely the reading of the Bible is good, only if it is good to judge of it according to the dictates of the reader's understanding. It can answer no other purpose. If this is not good, it is merciful to keep the Bible out of his hands; it is merciful to keep him from the chance and from the temptation of error. Whoever talks of schism and dissent as any thing else than desirable and good, is in reality, therefore, not a protestant; he avows the very principle of popish tyranny, and the source of popish corruption; he lays down the servitude of the human mind as the foundation of his system; he actually and in truth condemns the translation and perusal of the Bible. So very nearly are popish high church and protestant high church related!

"His translation of the Scriptures," says Mr. Gilpin, "it may easily be imagined, had no tendency to reinstate Wicliff in the good opinion of the clergy. An universal clamour was immediately raised. Knighton, a canon of Leicester, and nearly a contemporary with Wicliff, hath left us upon record the language of the times. Christ intrusted his Gospel (says that ecclesiastic) to the clergy and doctors of the Church, to minister it to the laity and weaker sort according to their exigencies and several occasions. But this master John Wicliff, by translating it, has made it vulgar; and has laid it more open to the laity, and even to women who can read, than it used to be to the most learned of the clergy, and those of the best understanding. And thus the Gospel jewel, the evangelical pearl, is thrown about and trodden under foot of swine.""It is not surprising, when the object is the same, the shackling of mankind, that the same language should be used to vilify them. The occasion is fresh in the recollection of the British people, when, to render odious all attempts to improve the institutions of society, they were represented as ready to be torn down and "trampled under the hoofs of a swinish multitude."

"The bishops, in the mean time, and mitred abbots," according to our author, "not content with railing, took more effectual pains to stop this growing evil. After much consultation, they brought a Bill into Parliament to suppress Wicliff's Bible

The advocates for it set forth, in their usual manner, the alarming prospect of heresy [dissent], which this version of the Scriptures opened, and the ruin of all religion, which must inevitably ensue."-Their reasoning was good and conclusive. Admit their principle, as the Church of England does, that conformity is good, and non-conformity evil, and it is absurd to deny their inference. It is only on the admission that non-conformity is not an evil, but a good, that the translation of the Scriptures can be vindicated.

Wicliff proceeded to attack the doctrine of transubstantiation. "Dr. Barton," says Mr. Gilpin, 66 was at that time vice-chaneellor of Oxford. He was a person of great zeal against innovations in religion, which he considered as the symptoms of its ruin. He called together the heads of the university, and, finding he could influence a majority, obtained a decree by which Wicliff's doctrine was condemned." What is remarkable in all this course is, the coincidence between the prejudices and pretences, on which in those days, and those on which in the present day, improvement is opposed. Dr. Barton, the vice-chancellor of the university, was a person of great zeal against innovations.

An incident occurred which was admirably adapted to the views of the clergy, and of which they failed not to make a dexterous use. An insurrection happened in the counties of Kent and Sussex; that to which the name of Tyler has remained attached. Such an event as this, by alarming the persons in possesssion of power, was calculated to make them credulous and cruel; capable of being easily infected with suspicion, and easily induced to lull their fears by the ruin of those whom they suspected. "Great pains," says our author, were taken by the enemies of Wicliff, to fix the odium of this insurrection upon him ;" and although the accusation appears to have been totally without foundation, it was far from being totally without effect. The most zealous of the clergy, Courtney, bishop of London, was now raised to the see of Canterbury, and proceeded with all the weight of his authority against him.

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"The King," says our author, "immersed in pleasures, thought only of tenths and subsidies, and could refuse nothing to the clergy, who were so ready on all occasions to comply with him."

Wicliff was obliged to withdraw from Oxford, and lived in retirement at his church in Lutterworth; where he soon after received a shock of the palsy and died. The prosecution against him never attained the vigour which it would have otherwise assumed, by the alarming schism of the two popes, which

weakened the hands and relaxed the efforts of the clergy in every country in Europe.

Among his other opinions, "he had a great dislike to chaunting in divine worship. It was originally introduced, he says, to impose on the understanding, by substituting sound in the room of sense.' One observation of his on this subject is admirable. "It is grievous," says he, "to see what sums are yearly expended upon these singing priests, and how little upon the education of children." Mark how much of that grievance still remains how much money is spent upon priests who now sing to naked walls, how little still upon the education of children. "He was a great enemy," says his biographer, "to the superfluous wealth of the clergy. He allowed the labourer to live by his labour. But he asserted that he had a right to his hire from nothing else. Tythes, he said, were only a sort of alms, no where of gospel institution, which the people might either give or withdraw as they found their pastor deserved." It was his opinion, in short, that no pay was proper for a clergyman, but the voluntary contributions of his hearers. "If thou be a priest," says he, " contend with others, not in pomp, but in piety. Ill befits it a man, who lives on the labours of the poor, to squander away the dear-bought fruits of their industry upon his own extravagances. Church endowments, he thought, were the root of all the corruption among the clergy. He often lamented the luxury they occasioned; and used to wish the Church was again reduced to ita primitive poverty and innocence.”

The following opinion of his, considering the age in which he lived, is worthy of particular notice. "He seems to have thought it wrong, upon the principles of the gospel, to take away the life of man upon any occasion. The whole trade of war he thought utterly unlawful. Nor does he seem to think the execution of a criminal a more allowed practice."

But of all his opinions, none is more remarkable than the following. "Heresy, according to him, consisted in a bad life, as well as in false opinions. No good man, he thought, could be an heretic."

To this excellent mode of thinking, Mr. Gilpin has the liberality fully to subscribe; and adduces a passage, in which it is "No error, not only adopted, but justified by Jeremy Taylor.

nor its consequent," says that writer, whose liberality so far surpassed that of his age, "is to be charged as criminal, upon a pious person, since no simple error is sin, nor does condemn ys before the throne of God."

VOL. IV.