commercial, and religious life is the sphere of the story, and the general plan of the book is to show that the three phases of the temptation of Christ-the appeal to hunger, to pride, and to ambition-are in the life of all men, some yielding to the temptation and some overcoming it. It will catch and hold a large variety of readers. It is good for young people and old folks. The publishers have issued it in beautiful form.

Social Life in the British Army. By "A BRITISH OFFICER." 12mo, pp. 95. New York and London: Harper & Brothers. Price, cloth, $1.

Mostly about the relaxations and pleasures of officers and men in her majesty's service, but in a fuller way a picture of military life in the great Anglo-Saxon nation, with familiar details of sports, pastimes, and pursuits intended to foster a hardy manliness and efficiency in British soldiers. Also the fact appears that in exploration and adventure British officers have contributed to the advance of modern science and geography. The British army is peculiar in European countries in that it is the only large standing army maintained without compulsory service. This book is fully and effectively illustrated from life by R. Caton Woodville.

Crooked Trails. By FREDERIC REMINGTON. 8vo, pp. 151. New York and London: Harper & Brothers. Price, cloth, $2.

One of the unique features of Mr. Remington's books is that he is artist as well as writer, and does his own illustrating. His pictures are lifelike and powerful, vigor and action quiver and rush in them all. And his letterpress description and narrative go with the picture, the two together making a living unity. This book, like Pony Tracks, deals with wild life on the plains and mountains, experiences among the cowboys, "greasers," and Indians; and also goes back to the life of the Texas Rangers in the days when they fought the Mexicans in front, with the Comanches behind and on both flanks.

Dumb Foxglove, and Other Stories. By ANNIE TRUMBULL SLOSSON. 12mo, pp. 218. New York: Harper & Brothers. Price, cloth, $1.25.

The author of Fishin' Jimmie needs only her name to commend any new book she may write. Tales of Connecticut village life fill her latest offering. A certain sweet, pathetic vein runs through them, and none of them go entirely out of sight of religion. For a gift or for the home table they are wholesome and engaging.

Old Chester Tales. By MARGARET DELAND. 12mo, pp. 360. New York: Harper & Brothers. Price, cloth, $1.50.

There is much artistic power and dramatic feeling in these eight stories. Most, if not all of them, have proved attractive to the readers of Harper's Monthly Magazine. "The Promises of Dorothea," "Good for the Soul," "Miss Maria," "The Child's Mother," "Justice and the Judge," "Where the Laborers are Few," "Sally," "The Unexpectedness of Mr. Horace Shields"-all have a quality which sets them above the ordinary collections of stories.

METHODIST REVIEW.

MARCH, 1899.

ART. I.-WYCLIF THE PROPHET OF PROTESTANTISM AND OF THE METHODIST ITINERANCY.

It was formerly thought that Wyclif reached his full position at once. But the truth is that there was a gradualness in his theological history which makes him less a portent, but more a remarkable teacher.* Take, for instance, his attitude toward the pope. Down to 1378 he recognized the papacy as useful and, within certain limits, as a divine institution. He allowed it a spiritual supremacy in the Church, but only when it was true to its spiritual ideals. It had no civil jurisdiction, nor any right to levy taxes on the State. The greatness of the pope stands in humility, poverty, and readiness to serve; when he becomes degenerate and secularized he becomes an arch heretic and must be put down. But even in its spiritual province the papacy is not necessary to salvation, nor has it unconditioned plenary power; and, moreover, one has the right to investigate its claims to plenary power. †

Even in this early stage Wyclif had reached the point allowed by Melanchthon, that the pope might be recognized as the head of the Church by human right, but not by divine right. The infallibility of the pope and of the Church he stoutly denied. Before 1378 Wyclif's position was exactly like that of the Gallicans and the present ultra High Churchmen of England. It is a singular instance of historic evolution that the only representatives of the moderate Romanism of the

See Lechler, John Wicklif and his English Precursors, vol. i, translated with additions by Lorimer, chap. viii, sec. 11.

+ See the two earliest and two of the most important of Wyclif's Latin treatises, De Civili Dominio and De Veritate Scripturæ Sacra, the latter written in 1378. 12-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XV.

pre-Vatican times are now to be found within the bounds of the Church of England.

The next stage of Wyclif's antipapal progress was brought about by the schism of 1378, when Urban VI and Clement VII were cursing each other and using every other weapon of hostility. He now declared that the Church would be much better off without either, and professed himself independent of both popes. But this neutral position could not be long maintained. Wyclif must either retreat or advance. Lechler expresses this admirably:

*

It was inevitable, from the nature of the case, that an ever-sharpening antagonism and a warfare against papacy, growing continually more uncompromising, should develop itself. And to this the controversy concerning the Lord's Supper, in which Wyclif began to engage in the year 1382, essentially contributed. The more violently he was calumniated and attacked by the friends of the papacy, on account of his criticism of the doctrine of transubstantiation, all the more did the papacy itself appear to him to be a limb of Antichrist. To this period of his life-1382-84-belong all the strong assaults upon the Church which have been heretofore known to the world from his Trialogues and several popular writings in English. But these attacks become better understood, both psychologically and pragmatically, only when we think of them as a climax gradually realized. All the usurpations of the papacy hitherto censured and opposed by Wyclif were now seen by him for the first time in the light of a corruption of Christianity of the widest extent and immeasurably deep, for which he could find no more appropriate name than "Antichristianism." The systematic spoliation of the national churches, the haughty pride, the worldly character of the papal government, the claim to hierarchical domination over the whole world-all these features of the degenerate papacy were attacked by Wyclif after this date, as well as before, but were now for the first time seen by him in their connection with what was the worst feature of all-with an assumption of divine attributes and rights which seemed to him to stamp the pope as Antichrist.†

Wyclif saw that such absolutism was the very kernel of the papacy, and inasmuch as the pope could not be content with the pastoral care of souls, in humility and sanctity, but must labor for worldly greatness and dignity, and rests his claim on the blasphemous assumption that he is vicegerent of Christ on earth, Wyclif boldly contended that the very office itself is of

See his De Ecclesia, written in the latter part of 1378, and his Cruciata, probably written soon after. ↑ Lechler, pp. 316, 317.

the wicked one, and did not hesitate to use the well-known words of Paul (2 Thess. ii, 3) as characterizing this great apostasy of the "man of sin." The veneration given to the pope is blasphemy all the more detestable since by it divine honor is given to a limb of Lucifer, who, because of his wickedness, is a more abominable idol than a painted block.*

As to the doctrine of the Church in general, Wyclif reached a stanchly Protestant position. He abolished the unscriptural distinction between the clergy and laity which is at the bottom of the Catholic claim, both Roman and Anglican. The noble word of Wyclif was worthy to be written in gold as the eternal charter of Protestantism, " Omnem Christianum opportet esse theologum." "Every Christian," he says, "ought to be a theologian, because it is necessary for every Christian to understand the faith of the Church, either by an inspired knowledge or a knowledge humanly acquired; for otherwise he could not be faithful, since faith is the highest theology."+ He holds that, while the clergy may go astray in both doctrine and life, the laity may remain faithful, and in case the former should err from the way the laity have a right to withhold from them their earthly goods, or, in other words, to repudiate them. Wyclif nowhere uses the words "priesthood of all believers," but he cordially accepted the idea, and thus parted completely from the Catholic conception. A Christian layman stands before God infinitely higher than a priest or bishop, if the latter is only Christian in name.

Nearly one hundred and fifty years before Luther, Wyclif restored the apostolic theory of the ministry. The hierarchical gradation, which the Anglican Church has retained from the Roman, he entirely repudiated. As early as 1377 Gregory XI mentions his belief in the parity of the ministry as one of his nineteen heretical tenets. Every priest, says Wyclif, has the power of ordaining and administering all the sacraments.‡

* See all this set forth at length in Wyclif's last writings-the Trialogus, the Supplementum Trialogi, the De Blasphemia, the De Apostasia, the Latin Sermons, the De Christo et suo Adversario Antichristo, and others.

De Veritate Scripturæ Sacra, xxiv.

↑ Hoc ergo catholice credi debet, quod quilibet sacerdos rite ordinatus habet potestatem sufficientem qualibet sacramenta conferendi absolvendi, nec aliter potest papa absolvere. Nam quantum ad postestatem ordinis omnes sacerdotes sunt pares.- De Civili Dominio, i, 38.

same.

He says again: "I assert boldly, first, that in the primitive Church, from the time of Paul, two orders of clergy sufficed, namely, the priest and the deacon. I say, second, that in the time of the apostle the presbyter and the bishop were the * See 1 Tim. iii, and Titus i." This ought not to have been considered very heretical, as the canon law contained the same idea and the quotation from Jerome in which he speaks of the original identity of bishops and presbyters.† It is, however, a singular illustration of the state of historical knowledge in the fourteenth century that Wyclif traces the development of the episcopate as a separate order, and all the hierarchical assumptions of the papacy-as well, of course, as the temporal possessions of the pope to the pretended Donation of Constantine to Silvester I. "Superbia Cæsarea," he says, "imperial pride has brought in these orders and grades." + Nowhere, perhaps, does the originality and penetration of Wyclif's genius shine out more than in his spiritual conception of the Church, and in his anticipation of the modern restoration of the ecclesiology of Christ.

High Church scholars-and nearly all Episcopal scholars are now High Church-depreciate greatly Wyclif's work on account of his Protestantism. One of these in an able article on

Wyclif says:

Wyclif anticipated most of the abuses by which the extreme fanaticism of the Puritans was subsequently characterized. [The effort of the Puritans to reform the Church on a scriptural basis is called fanaticism.] In the first place, he rightly insisted on the supremacy and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures. But he held them to be supreme, not only in matters of faith and revealed truth, but in political affairs and in rites and ceremonies. [This is misleading. He held that no rites and ceremonies were of divine obligation except such as were deduced from Scripture.] In the second place, he entirely mistook the nature of the Church. He regarded the institution as consisting only of holy persons who were predestined to salvation, and held that her sacraments were vitiated by the imperfections of her ministers. [This is incorrect. Wyclif held that ungodly men ought not to minister in the Church, but he never taught that

Trialogus iv, 15. He says also, in the Supplementum Trialogi, vi, “Ut olim omnes sacerdotes vocati fuerunt episcopi."

↑ See Decreti, Pars i, Distinct. 95, c. 5, and Jerome's Commentary on the Epistle to Titus, i, 5. See Lechler, p. 311.

↑ Trialogus iv, 15. He says again, “ Tertia introducta est secundum ordinationem Cæsaream præsidentia episcoporum.”—Sermons for Saints' Days, No. 46.