igh presence through the
martyr's fire. But substantially, the nation relapsed into obedience--the
church was reprieved for a century. Its fall was delayed till the spirit in
which it was attacked was winnowed clean of all doubtful elements--until
Protestantism had recommenced its enterprise in a desire, not for a fairer
adjustment of the world's good things, but in a desire for some deeper,
truer, nobler, holier insight into the will of God. It recommenced not
under the auspices of a Wycliffe, not with the partial countenance of a
government which was crossing swords with the Father of Catholic
Christendom, and menacing the severance of England from the unity of the
faith, but under a strong dynasty of undoubted Catholic loyalty, with the
entire administrative power, secular as well as spiritual, in the hands of
the episcopate. It sprung up spontaneously, unguided, unexcited, by the
vital necessity of its nature, among the masses of the nation.

Leaping over a century, I pass to the year 1525, at which time, or about
which time, a society was enrolled in London calling itself "The
Association of Christian Brothers."[478] It was composed of poor men,
chiefly tradesmen, artisans, a few, a very few of the clergy; but it was
carefully organised, it was provided with moderate funds, which were
regularly audited; and its paid agents went up and down the country
carrying Testaments and tracts with them, and enrolling in the order all
persons who dared to risk their lives in such a cause. The harvest had been
long ripening. The records of the bishops' courts[479] are filled from the
beginning of the century with accounts of prosecutions for heresy--with
prosecutions, that is, of men and women to whom the masses, the
pilgrimages, the indulgences, the pardons, the effete paraphernalia of the
establishment, had become intolerable; who had risen up in blind
resistance, and had declared, with passionate anger, that whatever was the
truth, all this was falsehood. The bishops had not been idle; they had
plied their busy tasks with stake and prison, and victim after victim had
been executed with more than necessary cruelty. But it was all in vain:
punishment only multiplied offenders, and "the reek" of the martyrs, as was
said when Patrick Hamilton was burnt at St. Andrews, "infected all that it
did blow upon."[480]

There were no teachers, however, there were no books, no unity of
conviction, only a confused refusal to believe in lie