DANIEL WEBSTER: See Works of Daniel Webster (6 vols., New York); March's Daniel Webster and his Contemporaries; Webster's Great Speeches, edited by E. P. Whipple; Atlantic Monthly (February, 1882).

CHARLES JAMES FOX: See The Early History of Charles James Fox, by Trevelyan; Holland House, by Princess Marie Liechtenstein; Recollec tions of Samuel Rogers.

WILLIAM PITT: See Macaulay's Essays; Goodrich's British Eloquence; Earl Stanhope's Life of William Pitt.

Life and Times of Lord Brougham, written by himself.

Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry.

Willison's American Eloquence.

Everett's Orations and Speeches (4 vols., Boston).

DEMOSTHENES AND CICERO: See translations, with notes, in Bohn's Classical Library. Refer, also, to volumes of Ancient Classics for English Readers, and read Trollope's Life of Cicero.

CHAPTER XIII.

THEOLOGY AND RELIGION.

John Wiclif-His Translation of the Bible-Bishop Pecock-The Repressor-William Tyndale-Miles Coverdale-Sir Thomas More against Tyndale-The Book of Common Prayer-Bishop LatimerRichard Hooker-Ecclesiastical Polity--John Hales-Jeremy Taylor -Holy Living and Holy Dying-Thomas Fuller-William Chillingworth-Richard Baxter-Milton's Controversial Works-George Fox -Barclay-William Penn-Thomas Ellwood-John Bunyan-Isaac Barrow-Tillotson-Stillingfleet-Bishop Burnet-Bishop ButlerWilliam Paley-John Wesley-George Whitefield-Robert Hall— Adam Clarke-Thomas Chalmers-John Henry Newman-Dean Stanley-Cotton Mather-Jonathan Edwards-William E. Channing.

RELIGION has always been a theme of the greatest interest to mankind; hence books of a devotional or theological character form no inconsiderable portion of the literature of every people. The first prose book written in the English vernacular-Bede's translation of St. John's Gospelwas designed for purposes of religious instruction. During the time of the Anglo-Saxons, and during the Transition Period, learning being confined almost exclusively to the church, the chief subjects of thought and of literature were intimately connected with religion. The greater part of the literature produced in the first thousand years of English history belongs properly to this division of our subject, and has been referred to in our chapters on Anglo-Saxon and Transition prose. With the beginning of modern English, learning ceased to be the exclusive privilege of ecclesiastics, and began to be secularized. The people for the first time began to recognize their right to think for themselves; and the darkness of ignorance, which had enveloped them for a thousand years, began, little by little, to be dispelled.

John Wiclif, at one time priest of Fylingham, and afterwards Master of Balliol College, Oxford, was the first public champion of this new principle of free thought and the secularization of knowledge. Langland, in his allegory of Piers Plowman, had attacked the pretensions of the ecclesiastics, and shown the falsity of their claims to exclusive authority in matters touching religion.

"Christ is our hede that sitteth on hie,

Heddis ne ought we have no mo."

Wiclif, taking up the same plea, emphasized it by urging the necessity of a general knowledge of the Bible. He accordingly translated into English the whole of the New Testament, and, with the assistance of a priest named Hereford, the Old Testament and Apocrypha from Genesis to Baruch. In the preface to this Bible he says:

Cristen men and wymmen, olde and yonge, shulden studie faste in the Newe Testament, for it is ful of autorite, and opyn to undirstonding of simple men, as to the poyntis that be moost nedeful to salvacioun. Moreover, ech place of holy writ, both opyn. and derk, techith mekenes and charite; and therefore he that kepith mekenes and charite hath the trewe undirstondyng and perfectioun of al holi writ. . Therefore no simple man of wit be aferd unmeasurabli to studie in the text of holy writ and no clerk be proude of the verrey undirstondyng of holy writ, for whi undirstonding of hooly writ with outen charite that kepith Goddis heestis, makith a man depper dampned . . . and pride and covetise of clerkis is cause of her blindees and eresie, and priveth them fro verrey undirstondyng of holy writ.

Wiclif's Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate about the year 1380, and, so far as the church would permit, was copied and circulated among the people, but it was not printed complete until something more than four and a half centuries later. The New Testament was published by the Rev. John Lewis in 1731, but the Old Testament remained in inanuscript until 1850, when it was

issued in a splendid form at Oxford under the editorship of Rev. J. Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden. To illustrate the style of language in common use in the time of Wiclif, we quote the following extract from his translation of the eighth chapter of Matthew:

1. For sothe when Jhesus hadde comen doun fro the hil, many cumpanyes folewiden hym.

2. And loo! a leprouse man cummynge worshipide hym, sayinge: Lord, gif wolt, thou maist make me clene.

3. And Jhesus holdynge forthe the hond, touchide hym sayinge, I wole; be thou maad clene. And anoon the lepre of hym was clensid.

4. And Jhesus saith to hym; See, say thou to no man; but go, shewe thee to the prestis, and offre that gifte that Moyses comaundide, into witnessing to hem.

5. Sothely when he hadde entride in to Capharnaum, centurio neigide to hym,

6. And said, Lord, my child lyeth in the hous sike on the palsie, and is yuel tourmentid.

7. And Jhesus saith to hym, I shal cume, and shal hele hym. 8. And centurio answerynge saith to hym, Lord, I am not worthi, that thou enter vndir my roof; but oonly say bi word, and my child shall be helid.

9. For whi and I am a man ordeynd vnder power, hauynge vndir me knightis; and I say to this, Go, and he goth; and to an other Come thou, and he cometh; and to my seruaunt, Do thou this thing, and he doth.

10. Sothely Jhesus, heerynge these thingis, wondride, and saide to men suynge hym: Trewly I saye to you I fond nat so grete feith in Yrael.

Says George P. Marsh: "The uniformity of diction and grammar in Wiclif's New Testament gave that work a weight, as a model of devotional composition and scriptural phraseology, which secured its general adoption; and not only the special forms I have mentioned, but many other archaisms, both in vocabulary and syntax, have remained almost without change for five hundred years. In fact, so much of the Wiclifite sacred dialect is

retained in our standard version, that though a modern may occasionally be embarrassed by an obsolete word, idiom, or spelling, which occurs in Wiclif's translation, yet if the great reformer himself were now to be restored to life, he would probably be able to read our common Bible from beginning to end, without having to ask the explanation of a single passage."

Wiclif was the author of several theological treatises and dissertations, the chief among which were Wiclif's Wycket, "whyche he made in Kynge Rycards Days the Second in the Yere of our Lorde God MCCCLXV," and An Apology for the Lollards. The first was a treatise on the sacrament, while the second was a bold and unsparing exposé of the corruptions and abuses at that time prevalent among the clergy. Under the leadership of Wiclif, people began to think for themselves and to assert their independence of the priesthood. "One hundred and thirty years before Luther they said that the pope was not established by Christ, that pilgrimage and image-worship was akin to idolatry, that external rites are of no importance, that priests ought not to possess temporal wealth, that the doctrine of transubstantiation made a people idolatrous, that priests have not the power of absolving from sin. It seems as though, with liberty of action, liberty of mind begins to appear; that these common folk will think and speak; that under the conventional literature, imitated from France, a new literature is dawning; and that England, genuine England, half-mute since the Conquest, will at last find a voice." It was not until two centuries later, however, that she began to exercise that voice, and not until three centuries was it developed in its full force and vigor.

The followers of Wiclif found an active opponent in a certain Welsh priest, one Reginald Pecock, Bishop of St. Asaph. In a book entitled The Repressor* he defended

*The Repressor of over-much Blaming the Clergy, completed about the year 1456.