singularly without guidance is evidenced, as we shall see, in Luther's own discussion of the matter. At the same time the rapid spread of the sexual scourge we have noticed shows how loose was the morality of Europe long before the Reformation or even the demoralization of the Thirty Years' War.

It was upon this world that saw gun-powder enter the actual field of war, that learned of a new continent beyond the seas, that found new freedom in the printing-press and new fields for the individual in the self-government of the Free City that the Reformation broke. Its beginnings lie far back. Wyclif's preachers were suggested, in part at least, by the early Franciscan friars, and as England had longest maintained the forms of the early Bishop's church, so it was chronologically first in England that the elements of the Reformation are apparent.

THE ETHICS OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

Introductory Note

One of the great forces at work in the transformation of the Middle Ages was, as we have seen, the rise of the national feeling. As early as the ninth century the division between the language of cultivation (Romance) and the vulgar (Deutsch) speech had begun to be on national rather than class lines. In England the nation rose out of a mingling of many peoples, and the island character of the country contributed to the rapid blending of varied elements. At the same time the amalgamation has never been complete,' although the elements making for unity have been on the whole greater than those telling for division. England has developed along lines strongly individual on the one hand, and on the other hand has conserved many useful primitive virtues and opinions. That this relative isolation involved loss as well as gain need hardly be disputed.

One of the marked influences of this separation from continental interests was a strong feeling of nationality, particularly

1 For amusing evidence of England's conciousness of being a mixed race, see De Foe's "True-born Englishman, a Satire" (eighteenth century), London, 1701, and other editions.

among the plainer people. The aristocratic Norman element still thought of itself as linked with Europe, and England's possessions in France made her aristocracy cosmopolitan, imperial, and Roman Catholic. For the common man, however, the French wars were often an insufferable burden, and though profoundly Catholic in his faith he felt that there was a British church and an independent tradition.

When, then, an English ethics begins to emerge as a separate line of thought from mediæval scholasticism, the dominant note is political and the leading inquiry is as to the foundation of authority and the origin of dominion. Practical religious and political wants mark the progress of England's ethical development from Wyclif to Wesley. This immediate practical aim as over against the theoretical and scholastic temper may be a result of the national character, though this the writer doubts, but certainly it is bound up with immediate pressing questions which sought insistently for an answer.

The ethics of English Protestantism has nevertheless its roots deep in scholasticism. The influence of medieval culture has nowhere left more permanent memorials than in the centres of English intellectual life, London, Oxford, and Cambridge. Moreover, Scottish Protestantism, in spite of its intense reaction along some lines against mediæval scholasticism, has through the influence of Calvin remained bound hand and foot at important periods of her development to a scholastic, authoritative, and aristocratic view of life.

Here again some would maintain that the Celtic blood had something akin to Roman Catholicism, but the political and economic factors seem the more influential ones. The habit of practical compromise has been painfully and bloodily forced home upon the English mind. Freedom of opinion has been bought with a bitter price, and thus it happens that in her ethics England exhibits, on the one hand a remarkable independence, and on the other a curious refusal to press home the accepted axioms as a French thinker would be likely to do.

Then again English thought has had such direct and imme

diate relation to political action that a certain conservatism was bred of the responsibility this involves. Up to Fichte, the German intellectual life was almost entirely apart from political activity. It had its own rules and canons, and often seems to have purchased freedom in the things of the spirit by surrender of the more material liberties. It is almost with impatience that the English mind views the elaborate speculative systems that France and Germany have given to the world. Intellectual empiricism has been the legitimate offspring of England's system of political compromises, by which alone the heterogeneous elements which constitute her life have been held together for national purpose.

The ethics of English Protestantism cannot be sharply separated into those of organized Christianity and purely philosophical systems. We must deal with men like Hobbes and Hume, although to characterize their morality as Christian is to extremely strain this long-suffering predicate. Happily the systems of many of the more distinctly philosophical writers, like those of Hume, Adam Smith, James Mill, etc., are so well expounded in other pages, and so familiar in English literary history, that we can afford to deal with them only as they affect our more immediate interest, namely, the history of ethics within organized Christianity.

In point of fact, systems of ethics within the church and professedly built upon the teachings of Jesus are often further away from his ideals than noble systems, like that of John Stuart Mill, for example, which are drawn up in conscious antagonism to all revealed religion as that term was generally understood among Englishmen. The philosophical utilitarianism of Mill really comes much nearer to the Gospel ideal than the coarse eudæmonistic appeals that have so often marred even high types of Christian thought.

The character of the national church has also been forced upon it by political exigency. The existence of non-conformity has compelled the established church on the one hand to emphasize her exclusive claim to be "the" church, and on the other

to make membership within it as easy as possible. We cannot therefore, set aside systems of ethical thought within this all-embracing Protestantism simply because they do not carry an ecclesiastical stamp, nor can we make the description "Christian" depend upon the attitude assumed to some purely theological formula.

The main lines in the history of our subject are fairly well marked. We shall deal first with the early reformers within the church, although their followers were often driven out, and we have happily in the writings of Wyclif, Tyndale, and Hooper typical examples of the thinking along these early lines. After the political reformation by Henry VIII, which had been only made possible by Wyclif and Lollardism,' three great separate movements appear in English ethical thinking. Puritanism arose with its peculiar and perhaps unfortunate reflection of Geneva and political Calvinism. On the other hand AngloCatholicism rises to the defence of many things Puritanism spurned. With a separate history, and often with another economic background, separatism or Independency begins slowly to come to self-consciousness. It will be only possible to take leading and characteristic examples along these three lines, and we may do this the more cheerfully because the ethics were so often and so unfortunately swamped in theological, ecclesiastical, and political disputations. And lastly there sprang up in ethics the great school of English rationalism, which may be subdivided into those consciously indifferent or hostile to the forms of organized Christianity and those who professed either to defend or to reinterpret Christianity. Here the lines of demarcation are difficult, and there are some whose attitude leaves us seriously in doubt as to where they may be classed. On the other hand there are not wanting brilliant formulators of distinct types of ethics that may claim the name English, and which possess a peculiar practical character, although the representatives are found both within and without organized Christianity.

1 Contra Gairdner.

I. THE ETHICS OF THE FORERUNNERS OF THE REFORMATION -WYCLIF, THE LOLLARDS, TYNDALE, HOOPER

The ethics of Wyclif1 are in some respects even more distinctly social and political than those of Luther. Just indignation at the way in which the Romish Curia was exploiting the national church aroused Wyclif as it did the later German reformer. Neither leader ever lost wholly the scholastic turn of mind natural to all highly trained intellects in those days. But Wyclif had the advantage of coming out of a more critical and sceptical type of scholasticism (Duns Scotus. Ockham) than that of Luther's order. Hence his ethics are more homogeneous and more critical than those of Luther, though they lack on the other hand the warmth and religious fire of the great German. Following the arguments of Archbishop Richard Fitz-Ralph

1

' LITERATURE.-The English works of Wyclif are made accessible by various editors: Arnold, Thomas: "Select English Works of John Wyclif, Edited from Original MSS."; Oxford, 1869–1871; 3 vols.-Matthew, F. D.: "The English Works of Wyclif, Hitherto Unprinted" (Early English Text Society); London, 1880.-Todd, James T.: "Three Treatises by John Wyclif, with Notes and a Glossary"; Dublin, 1851.-The Religious Tract Society: "Writings of John Wyclif" (Selections); being the first volume of their Reformer Series, and containing other Lollard writings; London, 1831; first American reprint, Philadelphia, 1842.-Wyclif Society (Miss Dorothy G. Matthew, Hon. Sec., 70 Belsize Park Garden, London, N. W.): Latin works of John Wyclif, edited by various scholars and published by the society.-Lechler, Gotthard: "Joannis Wiclif Trialogus cum supplemento trialogi"; Oxford, 1869.-Buddensieg, Rudolf: "Lateinische Streitschriften"; Leipsic, 1883; 2 vols.; English edition under the title: "John Wiclif's Polemical Works in Latin"; London (Wyclif Society); 2 vols.; 1883.-Shirley (Walter Waddington) has published “A Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wyclif" (Oxford, 1865) that has superseded that of Bale and others, but itself must be corrected from the more recent research of Loserth, Buddensieg, Matthew, and others.-Lechler, Gotthard Victor: "Johann von Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der Reformation"; Leipsic, 1873; 2 vols. (translated partly in "John Wiclif and his English Precursors, Additional Notes by Peter Lorimer"; London, 1878; 2 vols.) is still most valuable.—Buddensieg, Rudolf: "John Wiclif, Patriot and Reformer, Life and Writings"; London, 1884.-Buddensieg, Rudolf: "Johann Wiclif und seine Zeit, zum 500 jährigen Jubiläum"; Halle, 1885; ("Verein für Reformationsgeschichte, Schriften ").-Vaughan, Robert: "John de Wycliffe, D.D., a Monograph"; London, 1853.-Trevelyan, George Macaulay: "England in the Age