PREFACE THIS book was suggested by a course of lectures delivered under the auspices of The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences during the Lenten season of 1913. It has since been revised with some care, and would have been issued earlier but for the pressure of pastoral and public duties. It deals with three great Englishmen, great Christians, great Churchmen, and loyal sons of Oxford, who, as it seems to me, are the foremost leaders in religious life and activity that University has yet given to the world. Many prophets, priests, and kings have been nourished within her borders, but none who in significance and contribution to the general welfare compare with Wycliffe, the real originator of European Protestantism; Wesley, the Anglican priest who became the founder of Methodism and one of the makers of modern England and of English-speaking nations; Newman, the spiritual genius of his century who re-interpreted Catholicism, both Anglican and Roman. Hence I have named the volume "The Three Religious Leaders of Oxford and their Movements," a title which appears to be vindicated by the facts so far as I have been able to ascertain them. It will probably be said that I omit some of these and misconstrue others. This is more than likely, and if it be so, I must be held wholly responsible. I can only plead in extenuation that I have tried to be as disinterested and as just as my standpoint and the information at my disposal would permit, and that throughout I have sincerely intended to give an impetus to that fraternal spirit which leads to a more complete apprehension of divine truth. I shall be amply rewarded if those who have any sympathy with the men and the movements I have attempted to portray, whether Roman Catholics or Protestants, are drawn more closely together in the bonds of a common faith and fellowship. My thanks are due and are here respectfully extended to the Reverend Doctor Herbert B. Workman, Principal of Westminster College, London, who used his unsurpassed knowledge of Wycliffe and of Wesley to correct the first eight chapters; to my colleague at Central Church, the Reverend David Loinaz, for his constant research in the subjects discussed; to my friends, the Reverend Doctor W. L. Watkinson, formerly Editor of The London Quarterly Review, the Reverend John L. Belford, rector of the Roman Catholic Church of the Nativity, Brooklyn, and the Reverend Doctor Joseph Dunn Burrell, pastor of the Classon Avenue Presbyterian Church, in the same borough, for the loan of valuable volumes and documents; to Professor Edgar A. Hall, of Adelphi College, and the Reverend Charles Waugh for their fruitful suggestions and verification of quotations; and to the Reverend Oscar L. Joseph for his scholarly assistance and preparation of the Index. The reader is asked to remember that the lectures were given before an audience composed of different religious denominations, and this circumstance rendered necessary explanations and details which otherwise might seem superfluous. CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, S. PARKES CADMAN. AMONG many other benefits for which History hath been honoured, in this one it triumpheth over all human knowledge, that it hath given us life in our understanding, since by it the world itself had life and beginning, even to this day: yea, it hath triumphed over Time, which besides it nothing but Eternity hath triumphed over. For it hath carried our knowledge over the vast and devouring space of so many thousands of years and given so fair and piercing eyes to our mind, that we plainly behold living now, as if we had lived then, that great world, magni Dei sapiens opus "The wise world,' saith Hermes, 'of a great God' as it was then, when but new to itself. By it, I say, it is that we live in the very time when it was created; we behold how it was governed; how it was covered with water and again re-peopled; how kings and kingdoms have flourished and fallen, and for what virtue and piety God made prosperous, and for what vice and deformity He made wretched, both the one and the other. And it is not the least debt which we owe unto History, that it hath made us acquainted with our dead ancestors, and out of the depth and darkness of the Earth delivered us their memory and fame. In a word, we may gather out of History a policy no less wise than eternal, by the comparison and application of other men's aforepassed miseries with our own like errors and ill-deservings. From the Preface: History; Its Rights and Dignity. SIR WALTER RALEIGH. PROLOGUE THE study of history cannot give mathematical certainty; yet, rightly pursued, it should instill the serious and reverent temper which lessens the danger of partisan blindness. A sense of the largeness and complexity of the experiences of the past is an aid to the recovery of their vital phases. The more deeply these experiences are pondered, the more completely they are stripped of the accidental and non-essential, the more clearly manifest becomes their fundamental relation to the process of human development. Such considerations are always of value, but never more so than in the period before us. For during the medieval epoch Church and State were intimately related, and those who would gain a just apprehension of the era must endeavor to attain the state of that practised observer whose even-balanced soul, From first youth tested up to extreme old age, Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole." Again, throughout the Middle Ages the limitation of man's power over his environment is everywhere strikingly apparent. Of means of expression for aspiration and ideal there was no lack, but any practical realization was obstructed by the difficulties and complications imposed by circumstances. How philosophical theories influenced statesmanship and politics, how their seeming triumphs so often ended in disaster, and what qualities either in them or in their advocates clothed them with influence and insured |