Protestant movement, which, after flowing during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries within narrow channels, began in the sixteenth to expand and to fill a wider area, had two sources. The first, which was in heaven, was the Holy Spirit; the second, which was on the earth, was the Bible.
For ages the action of both agencies on humam society had been suspended. The Holy Spirit was withheld and the Bible was hidden. Hence the monstrous errors that deformed the Church, and hence all the frightful evils that afflicted the world.
At length a new era had opened. That sovereign, beneficent, and eternal Spirit, who acts when and where and how He will, began again to make His presence felt in the world which He had made; He descended to erect a Temple in which He might dwell with men upon the earth. The Omnipotent and Blessed One put forth His creative power through the instrumentality which He Himself had prepared, even the Scriptures of Truth, which He inspired holy men to write. The recovery of the Holy Scriptures and their diffusion over Christendom was the one instrumentality, as the Spirit who dwells in and operates through the Scriptures was the one Author, of that great movement which was now renewing the world. On this supposition only – that this great movement was not originated by human forces, but created by a Divine agent – can we account for the fact that in all the countries of Christendom it appeared at the same moment, took the same form, and was followed by the same blessed fruits – virtue in private life and order in public.
We left Luther in the Wartburg. At a moment of great peril, Providence opened for him an asylum; not there to live idly, but to do a work essential to the future progress of Protestantism. While Luther is toiling out of sight, let us look around and note the progress of Protestantism in the other countries of Christendom. We return to England, the parent land of the movement, briefly to chronicle events during the century and a half which divides the era of Wicliffe from that of Luther.
Wicliffe was dead (1384), and now it was seen what a hold he had taken of England, and how widely his doctrine had spread. His disciples, styled sometimes Wicliffites, sometimes Lollards, travelled the kingdom preaching the Gospel. In the Act of Richard II. (1382), which the clergy, practising upon the youth of the king, got passed without the knowledge of the Commons, mention is made of a great number of persons "going about from country to country, and from town to town, in frieze gowns, without the licence of the ordinaries, and preaching, not only in churches and churchyards, but in market-places and at fairs, divers sermons containing heresies and notorious errors, to the blemishing of the Christian faith, the estate of holy Church, and the great peril of souls." Wicliffe was yet alive, and these men "in frieze gowns," which the Act empowered the bishops to seize and confine in their houses and prisons, were the missionaries of the great Reformer. These preachers were not troubled with doubts touching their right to assume the sacred office. They reasoned that the same charter which gave to the Church her right to exist, gave to her members the right to discharge those functions that are needful to her welfare. They went not to Rome, therefore, but to the Bible for their warrant to minister.
Their countrymen flocked to their sermons. The soldiers mingled with the civilians, sword in hand, ready to defend the preacher should violence be offered to him. Several of the nobility joined their party, and were not ashamed to confess themselves the disciples of the Gospel. There followed, wherever their doctrine was received, a reformation of manners, and in some places a purging of the public worship by the removal of idolatrous symbols.
These signs promised much; in the eyes of the Wicliffites they promised everything. They believed that England was ready to throw off the yoke of Rome, and in this belief they resolved on striking a vigorous blow at the reigning superstition. Within ten years of the death of Wicliffe (1395) they petitioned Parliament for a reformation in religion, accompanying their petition with twelve "conclusions," or grounds, for such a reformation; of which the second, which we give as a sample of the style and spirit of the whole, was as follows: – "That our usual priesthood, which took its original at Rome, and is feigned to be a power higher than angels, is not that priesthood which Christ ordained unto His disciples. This conclusion is thus proved: forasmuch as this priesthood is done with signs, and Pontifical rites, and ceremonies, and benedictions of no force and effect, neither having any ground in Scripture, forasmuch as the bishops ordinal and the New Testament do nothing at all agree: neither do we see that the Holy Ghost doth give any good gift through any such signs or ceremonies, because that He, together with noble and good gifts, cannot consist and be in any person with deadly sin. The corollary or effect of this conchsion is that it is a lamentable and dolorous mockery unto wise men to see the bishops mock and play with the Holy Ghost in the giving of their orders, because they give (shaven) crowns for their characters, and marks instead of white hearts, and this character is the mark of Antichrist, brought into the holy Church, to cloke and cover their idleness." These conclusions they also posted up on the walls of Westminster, and suspended on the gates of St. Paul's.
England was not yet prepared for such "plainness of speech." The great mass of the nation, without instruction, awed by tradition, and ruled over by the hierarchy, was inert and hostile. The Wicliffites forgot, too, when they went to Parliament, that Reformations are not made, they must grow. They cannot be evoked by royal proclamations, or by Parliamentary edicts; they must be planted by the patient labor of evangelists, and watered not unfrequently by the blood of martyrs. Of all harvests that of truth is the slowest to ripen, although the most plentiful and precious when it has come to full maturity. These were lessons which these early disciples had yet to learn.
The bold step of the Wicliffites threw back the movement, or we ought rather to say, made it strike its roots downward in the nation's heart. The priests took the alarm. Arundel, Archbishop of York, posted with all speed to Ireland, where Richard II. then was, and implored him to return and arrest the movement, which was growing to a head. His pious wife, Anne of Luxemburg, a disciple of Wicliffe, was dead (1394), and the king readily complied with Arundel's request. He forbade the Parliament to proceed in the matter of the Lollard petition, and summoning the chief authors of the "conclusions" before him, he threatened them with death should they continue to defend their opinions. But Richard II. did not long retain a scepter which he had begun to wield against the Lollards. Insurrection broke out in his kingdom; he was deposed, and thrown into the Castle of Pontefract. There are but few steps between the prisons and the graves of princes. Richard perished miserably by starvation, and was succeeded by Henry IV., son of that Duke of Lancaster who had been the friend of Wicliffe.
The cause which the father had defended in the person of its great apostle, found no favor in the eyes of the son. Henry had mounted the throne by Arundel's help, and he must needs repay the service by devotion to the Church of which Arundel was one of the main pillars. To consolidate his power, the son of John of Gaunt sacrificed the Wicliffites. In his reign was passed a law adjudging men to death for religion – the first of the sort to stain the Statute-book. It enacted that all incorrigible heretics should be burned alive.
The preamble of the Act sets forth that "divers false and perverse people of a certain new sect of the faith of the Sacraments, damnably thinking, and against the law of God and the Church, usurping the office of preaching," were going from diocese to diocese, holding conventicles, opening schools, writing books, and wickedly teaching the people.
To remedy this, the diocesan was empowered to arrest all persons suspected of heresy, confine them in his strong prison, bring them to trial, and if on conviction they refused to abjure, they were to be delivered to the sheriff of the county or the mayor of the town, who were "before the people, in a high place, them to do to be burnt." Such was the statute DeHoeretico Comburendo, of which Sir Edward Coke remarks that it appears that the bishops are the proper judges of heresy, and that the business of the sheriff was only ministerial to the sentence of the spiritual court. "King Henry IV.," say's Fox, "was the first of all English Kings that began the unmerciful burning of Christ's saints for standing against the Pope."
The law was not permilted to remain a dead letter. William Sawtrey, 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 suffered upon the cross."