tor. Mr Fox's Acts and Monuments were ordered by Authority to be placed in every Church, that the people of the several parishes in the kingdom, might be led, to a thorough detestation of the poisonous principles and bloody practices of the Papists. It is to be regretted, that this order, like many others, is grown obsolete. Perhaps, in no case, is the disuse of wholesome Injunctions more to be lamented, than in the unbridled liberty, which is taken in the education of our youth. People, of the worst principles, may without examination, inculcate them freely upon the rising generation: And thus, insidiously, Popery, Infidelity, and Immorality, are scattered all over the land. However, it cannot be unseasonable for Parents, in particular, to lay a work of this kind before their children, when the tenets of Rome, dangerous to all civil and religious liberty, seem to be gaining ground among us. Those, indeed, are the most ignorant of the community, who are infected or most likely to be infected by that corrupt leaven; for, it may be truly said, no man was ever seduced into its erroneous principles, either by the conviction of his Reason or his Senses, and much less by the sanctions of Scripture. And we must do the Papists the justice to say, that they do not attempt this sort of conviction. Their Arguments and Inducements are laid in the fears of the Simple, who know neither the true doctrines of Christianity nor themselves, and in their own self-sufficient, or rather all-sufficient, Authority; which, if it was properly explained, would sooner excite the contempt and abhorrence, than the approbation of any reasonable being. As to the work itself, we have freely made use of the several Authors who penned the lives of these illustrious men; omitting what was either too prolix for our plan, or what, upon comparison with other accounts, accounts, did not appear sufficiently founded; and ad- We will only detain the Reader to assure him, that The Copper-plates are the performance of an inge- May the GOD of all Grace be pleased to bless our Biographia Evangelica. JOHN WICKLIFFE, THE FIRST REFORMER. WHEN WHEN we look back upon the days of barbarism, and the gross ignorance of the true light of the gospel, which prevailed in the Christian world, for so many ages together, before the Reformation; when we reflect upon the stupid ceremonies and abominable superstitions and cheats, practised by the monks and others; and then survey the hand of GOD, working, in a most extraordinary manner, through all this mass of corruption. and folly, and bringing about, by degrees, the clear shining of the everlasting gospel: We must stand astonished at the whole, and from the wonderful contrast of the times, may say; This hath GOD wrought; it is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. GOD vouchsafed to honour England with the first dawning of the Reformation: And an Englishman was the first champion of that cause, which afterwards received the name of PROTESTANTISM. This remarkable instrument of the divine blessing was JOHN WICKLIFFE, or JOHN DE WICKLIFFE, taking his sirname from a village once called Wickliffe, near Richmond, in Yorkshire, where he was born in the year 1324. It has been observed, that no such place exists at present under that name; but it is well known, that great numbers of our villages, and even towns and hundreds, have received different denominations from change of possessors in the course of ages. Wickliffe was sent early to Oxford, and was first admitted. commoner of Queen's College, and afterwards of Merton, where he became fellow. Merton |