I CHAP and that, as the inevitable consequence, practical holiness was growing more and more rare. Not that this was the case in England alone. The clergy and laity throughout Europe were conspicuously degenerated in the age before the Reformation. Unsaintliness of the "The fifteenth century is eminently barren in saints; men period pre- were occupied with the fresh surging of political thought, and ceding it, the sensual glories of heathendom; the classic authors for the scholar, and the pagan sculptures for the artist, really possessed men's souls. The real leaders of European thought were no longer the pupils of Aquinas or Buonaventura, but Politian, and Marsilius Ficinus, and the Medici. The higher intellects sneered at those ceremonies and beliefs which they as princes and prelates were paid to maintain. Among the baser sort 'the love of the many had waxed cold,' but they were in general sedulous in the external profession of religion. Dimmed as their spiritual perceptions were, the belief in the great objective truths of religion remained unimpaired. They continued to place great faith in the external ordinances of religion, while divorcing them from their end as means of grace. And so they went on through life in an infructuous round of barren observances, till they came to the close of a life of alternate sacrament and sin. And if the deep instincts of the regenerate soul, never entirely faithless to the grace of baptism, did from time to time acknowledge the hollowness of this condition of things, they were softened by an application of the coarsest form of the power of the keys, by the indulgences of Tetzel and his companions."1 Consequent outburts of fanatic zeal From convictions which good men felt that such a state of unspirituality was 1 Forbes, Bp. of Brechin, on XXXIX. Articles, i. 170. Cardinal Bellarmine spoke in equally strong language in the sixteenth century: "Some years before the rise of the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresy, according to the testimony of those who were then living, there was growing in the Church, almost an entire abandonment of equity in the ecclesiastical judgments, in morals no discipline, in sacred literature no erudition, in divine things no reverence: religion was almost extinct." [Concio xxviii. Opp. vi. 296: ed. 1617.] I there sprung those loud cries for reformation which CHAP were raised in so many quarters at home and abroad. Even the wild follies of Wickcliffe, Huss, Jerome of Prague, and many others of their class were but the exaggerated outcome of these convictions, and much of these men's wildness and folly was provoked by the stolid opposition with which their better aspirations were met by those in authority. But there are still more trustworthy witnesses than these to the necessity of a reformation of the Church, men equally zealous, but against whom no such follies can be charged; and it may be well to give at the outset some specimens of their testimony. So far back as the Council of Pisa, held in the year 1409, orthodox Englishmen had spoken out boldly respecting this necessity: and they continued to do so whenever opportunity was offered. But opportunities for speaking out boldly were not frequent; nor were they of any great value as regarded the wide diffusion of opinion before the days of the printing press. tions sug Oxford cil of Pisa, In these early days Oxford took a prominent lead Reformain the demand for a reformation of the Church of gested by England. The Council of Pisa was summoned to divines at meet in 1409 for the purpose of putting an end to the Coun the miseries caused by the rival Popes, Benedict A.D. 1409 XIII. and Gregory XII. Among the English deputies to that Council were the two bishops of Salisbury and St. David's, the former, Robert Hallam, being the spokesman and head of the deputation, as he was of a similar embassy sent a few years afterwards to the Council of Constance. When appointed to this duty, Hallam (who had himself been Chancellor of Oxford) at once took advice in the University I 6 ANGLICAN MEMORIAL 10 THE COUNCIL OF PISA CHAP as to the course he should pursue, and the document which resulted, sent in the form of a memorial from Dr. Richard Ullerston, then or recently Chancellor, is still in existence. This memorial appears to have been used by the Bishop of Salisbury as a kind of brief from which to state before the Council of Pisa the necessities and the wishes of the Church of England. Among other abuses to which it refers we may particularly notice that the prelates are accused of heaping together many benefices and of being often so entirely aliens to the Church of England as not to know the vulgar tongue of the people among whom they ought to have ministered. The exemption of monastic bodies from episcopal control, the dispensations given for non-residence and pluralities, are strongly dwelt upon; and it is shown that appeals to Rome are a source of many evils from the facilities which they offer for bribery and evasion of justice. From a constitutional point of view, this important document is strongly adverse to Roman supremacy in England; and the grave wisdom with which it is written ranks it far above any of the Lollard or Wickliffite passionate appeals for reformation. Dr. Aben don at the Of an equally grave character is a sermon which Council of was preached at the Council of Constance, by Constance, another Oxford doctor, Hottric Abendon, on Sunday, October 27, 1415.3 This sermon was one long cry for a reformation of the Church of England; A. D. 1415 2 Several MSS. of it remain in the library of Trinity College, and elsewhere at Cambridge. Copies were made by order of Henry IV., and no doubt it had a wide circulation. Van der Hardt prints it from a Cambridge MS. in his history of the Council of Constance, i. 1126. 3 This name is not to be traced in the ordinary sources of information respecting Oxford men ; but the name is so strange for an Englishman, that it looks like a mistake; and perhaps Henry Abendon, Warden of Merton in 1421, was the preacher. AN ENGLISH DIVINE AT COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE 7 I and the preacher says that the Bishop of Lincoln CHAP had preached before the Pope in the same strain. He protests especially against exemptions, quoting St. Bernard and Peter of Blois in support of his argument, and declaring that the pastoral work of the Anglican Church was greatly hindered by them. On the bishops Abendon is very severe, alleging that many busied themselves in litigious and lucrative pursuits to the neglect of their proper studies. Harping upon his text, "Be ye filled with the fruits of righteousness," he accuses the bishops of being very profound and subtle as to the best ways of seeking the fruits of prebends, but, on the other hand, of knowing little or nothing about the science of morals or that of theology. With a quaint, grave humour, Abendon applies to the non-resident clergy of all grades the words A.D. 1415 of Prov. vii. 19: "The good man is not at home, he is gone a long journey. He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the full moon." [Vulg.] When the harvest moon comes, says the preacher, and the barns are full, then these beneficed men will be at home. At other times they live far enough off from their parishes, going even to the gate of the Pope himself, and not forgetting to carry their bags of money, which they spend in luxurious living and bribery, or, still worse, in usury. "O bishops of Christ!" he goes on to say, with no little eloquence, "O princes of the Church, O shepherds of shepherds, arise, for the love of Jesus, and bring them back to their pastures, each one to his own ecclesiastical fold. According to the secular laws fugitive servants may be brought back to obedience even with stripes. I CHAP Stretch forth therefore the rod of discipline, if it be necessary; . compel all who have care of souls to return to their flocks, to visit their sheep, to live among them, to feed and to teach the people of God." Then he tells the bishops plainly that this matter rests in their hands to be done or to be left undone; that the honour of God, the health of the Church, and the good of all Christian people, depends on their action or inaction, and that he trusts the reform he desires may be one of many benefits arising by the grace of God from the gathering of the Council of Constance.* The hopes of this wise and religious class of reformers were set upon the authoritative action of a general council of the Church, in which they rightly looked for the highest gift of Divine guidOficial de ance. And that they were not merely a few ascetic mands for a Reforma- or crotchety clergy who had such opinions about the necessity for a reformation is shown by an tion, A. D. 1425 official document sent from the Kings of France and England to the Pope in the year 1425, before the meeting of the Council of Basle, and by the instructions given to the English deputies who attended there by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and other leading men of the King's Council. Both these documents urge the great need that existed for the consideration of the Reformation question by the Council about to assemble. When it did actually meet, however, as it did in 1431, it became engrossed by another question, the dispute between itself and the Pope as to which had 4 Walchius: Monumenta medii ævi, ii. 183. 5 Brown's Fasciculus, vol. I. vi., X. Convocation sent delegates men |