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

on to their

(Armagh) in his tract "De pauperie Salvatoris," 1 logical conclusion that the civil government, namely, had supreme control under God of all the temporal possessions of the church, Wyclif even more thoroughly than Luther in his letters to the Protestant princes makes the church dependent upon the civil

power.

The church should, according to Wyclif, have no temporal possessions of her own at all. She should be poor and live on the free-will offerings of each parish. These free-will offerings or tithes could then be withheld by official action of the parish from a bad priest. Then following up the suggestions of Marsiglio of Padua, Wyclif defended the essentially divine character of the State and the social order. He took seriously the doctrine of the two swords, but the State was not to yield the sword up to the church, rather was the church to submit herself loyally even to bad princes. For though only a righteous man can lawfully hold possession of anything, yet God does

of Wycliffe"; 3d ed.; London and New York, Longmans, 1900.-See also the article: "Wiclif und der Wiclifismus," by G. Loserth, in Herzog-Hauck's "Realencyklopädie"; vol. XXI (1908), pp. 225-244, which is the latest and most critical review of Wyclif's life. There is a very large literature dealing with Wyclif's work and life, but it is generally uncritical, and often without proper access to his writings. The chronology of Wyclif's tracts and sermons is still much unsettled, and even the separation by critical process of the genuine from the later writings attributed to him leaves much to be desired. The dependence of Huss upon Wyclif is now firmly established by the researches of Loserth, Dziewicki, and others. The date of Wyclif's birth and the exact place he was born are alike unknown. He was born in Yorkshire and died in 1384. He himself escaped a martyr's death, though his bones were dug up, burnt, and cast into the water forty years after his death.

1

1 Published in part in the series of Wyclif's Latin works (1890), by the Wyclif Society, in the volume containing "De Dominio Divino," edited by R. L. Poole, pp. 257-476, with a useful analysis in the Index, pp. xxxiv-xlvii.

'In many passages of his sermons; see, for instance, Sermon LXXX, vol. I, p. 268 (Arnold's "Select English Works"), "And goods put in priest's possession is root of all his sin," etc.

'Arnold's edition "Select English Works," vol. III, p. 176.

'Marsilius de Padua "Defensor Pacis seu dictiones vel libri tres adversus usurpatam Romani pontificis jurisdictionem" (1324 to 1326, about). Many editions. An old English translation by Wyllyam Marshall, 1553, London (not seen).

permit unrighteousness to have possessions1 and passive sufferance or resistance are all the weapons a really Christian man may use.2

At first this attitude left Wyclif still loyal to the Pope and "the holy mother church," but he could not long maintain this position, and when the Pope condemned his teachings, like Luther after him, he appealed from Pope and council and tradition to his sole authority, the "Word of God in the Bible."3

Up to a certain point that "reverence for the keys," which kept Dante from speaking his whole mind to Pope Nicholas III, concerning that Pope's avarice and the unfortunate so-called "gift of Constantine" kept Wyclif also from fully expressing himself. But this attitude of reserve gave way steadily under the attacks made upon him after his outspoken opposition to Roman supremacy from the time of the so-called "good parliament" (1376-77) and the attempted trial for heresy. This period seems to mark an era in Wyclif's thinking, and he steadily becomes more radical and more vigorously Protestant.

As in Luther, so in Wyclif there is a growing freedom from scholasticism as the mother tongue takes the place of Latin. The Latin sermons, and even the Latin controversial tracts, are not only more elaborate, as befitting a more learned circle of readers, but they are in thought and method much more bound in the older modes of thought and feeling. They lack the freedom of the English sermons. They reveal an interest in questions never raised in the English works. Did all the Trinity come to the world, for instance; or whether it was necessary to have angels to keep the world moving. So also the ethics of

1 "De Civili Dominio," London, Wyclif Society, 1885-1904, liber I, cap. 6, Pp. 42-44. (R. L. Poole, editor, vol. I.)

* For an extreme statement of this position, among many, see Sermon CXLVI, Arnold's edition of "English Works," vol. II, pp. 40-44.

'C). "De veritate sacræ scripturæ," edited by Rudolf Buddensieg, in 3 vols., Leipsic, 1904, with much valuable material by the editor.

Cf. "Inferno," canto XIX, lines 100-110.

"Nontamen video quod oportet angelos movere orbes celestes (ut fingunt philosophi), etc., etc. "Latin Sermons," Loserth's edition, vol. I, p. 14.