young man goes home with the conviction that God must have given men something better than this, and that find out what that may be, he must. He remembers that when he was six years old he heard of the burning of one of the last of the Lollards at Amersham in Buckinghamshire," and how his only daughter was punished for her sympathy with her father's opinions, by being compelled to kindle the fire which consumed him. It strikes him forcibly that any person who could be willing to be burned for his faith, must live nearer to, and know more about God and Jesus, than any of the sensual and scandalous priests, or monks, whom he has ever seen, and there springs up within him an intense desire, if it may be, to search out that daughter, if she be now alive, and prove whether she may not aid his quest. Secretly-for her sake not less than for his own - he seeks to find her, but in vain. Yet with what one who used to know her, and to whom she sometimes read out of the old manuscript fragment of Wyclif's New Testament, which was the only legacy her father left her, suggests to him, he begins to see a little more clearly, and to feel a clew in his hand which may some day guide his feet into the way of peace.

Thenceforth, while long outwardly conformed to the faith of his father, and obedient to the ceremonies which his mother loves and trusts, it is with an inward repugnance which grows with every service, and an eye daily sharper to detect that desolation and emptiness which are come in to reign where the glory of the Lord should appear in the midst of his temple. A spirit of unbelief in the church, and the priest, and in all that is done by the latter in the name of the former, keeps even pace in his soul with all increase of that direct faith in God, and in Christ, which he begins to venture increasingly to cherish.

And as he watches the ceremonies day after day, they seem to him ever more strange as being ordained of God, and yet ever crowding God out of sight, and thrusting whole wildernesses of rubbish between Him and the soul. He sees the priest first exorcise salt by making three signs of the cross and invok

65 William Tylsworth (A. D. 1506). His daughter's (married) name was Joan Clerk.

See John Fox, Actes and Monuments, etc. (Townsend's edition), iv: 123.

ing the living God, and the true God, and the holy God; and then exorcise water by making three more crosses in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; and then put the salt into the water in the form of a cross with three more crosses in the name of the Trinity; and then call it Holy Water, and teach that it can drive away unclean spirits and poisonous serpents, and in general protect the living and hallow the dead."

When the Pax, worn and greasy with the handlings and mouthings of many generations, comes down fresh day after day, and goes the rounds of the faithful as the symbol of peace and charity; he thinks how much easier it is to kiss that, uninviting as it may be, than to feel any real love for the priest who starts it on its way, or for many whom it passes before it comes down to him.67

Church-ales and glutton-masses" especially perplex him, because both end in converting the house of God into the scene of unseemly and sometimes revolting revels. That, when some slight repairs were necded for the building, their cost should be raised by contributions of ale brewed throughout the parish, the inhabitants then all assembling and paying some fixed sum for the privilege of drinking together as much as they could, was bad enough; but that village should vie with village in turning

66"Ut ubicunque fuerit aspersa, per invocationem sancti nominis tui, omnis infestatio immundi spiritus abjiciatur: terrorque venenosi serpentis procul pellatur: et presentia Sancti Spiritus nobis misericordiam tuam poscentibus ubique adesse dignetur." Benedictio aquæ, Manuale ad usum Sarum.

67 The Pax, sometimes called the Osculatorium, was a small tablet of wood, ivory or some precious metal, with a handle behind, often ornamented with an Agnus Dei, or some little bas-relief of some sacred scene, which was kissed by the priest, and then passed round to be kissed by the faithful during mass. [Lee's Glossary, etc., 255, 278.] As to its theory and philosophy, see Durandus, Lib. iv, liii, 1; Durantus, ii: 54. The denial of the pax to an offender was one of the minor punishments of the church. Johnson, ii: 132. See also Chambers, 382.

It is a curious illustration how nothing is new under the sun, that our fathers some

times raised money for the repair of a church by the profits arising from ale brewed in the parish and contributed for the purpose, which all the inhabitants used to meet and drink, paying so much a head for the privilege-quite after the philosophy of modern church fairs, or festivals. Staveley (add. MS. 99), gives citations from parish records like this: "1453, sexto die Maii, from a Church Ale, 135. 4d."

69 Glutton-masses were quite akin to church ales. They were sometimes held "in honor of the Virgin" five times a year. The people repaired to church laden with provisions and liquors, and after mass had been hurried through, the church was suddenly converted into a house of feasting; and when village strove with village which should contribute most to such an occasion, it is not strange that drunkenness often, and riot sometimes, ended the scene. Pictorial Hist. Eng., ii: 253, which cites Wilkins, Concilia, etc.

their sanctuaries into pot-houses, and a general carousal follow mass five times in the year "in honor of the Virgin Mary," was a riddle which he had neither skill nor heart to solve.

Why the altar-cloths should be so sacred that only priests or deacons could wash them;" and why- for his friend the old sexton could tell him of many of these things of which otherwise he might not have heard-if any one entitled to be buried with religious rites had been buried without them, the body must be dug up and reinterred by a priest wearing an alb and a stole and a maniple, and with holy water, and a cross, and a thurible and incense;" and why the priest and his helpers always provided the parish were able to afford the expense ought to wear white on Christmas day and the feast of the circumcision, and red on all martyrs' days, and yellow on all feasts of confessors, and violet on the Sunday before Advent, and on all vigils of saints, and green on the feast of the Holy Trinity, and black on the feast of All Souls, and the passover;" and why the altar coverings must usually, but not always, be of the same color with the priest's robes;" and why the clerks should bow toward the altar so many times in the service, and particularly why there should be an indulgence of one hundred days to all who bowed devoutly every time that the name of Jesus occurred;" and why the priest should select the very wheat from which the wafer-bread for the Lord's Supper was to be made, and why it must be ground separately from all other wheat, and be bolted by a church officer in a white dress, and baked by a deacon wearing gloves, an alb and amice; and why all engaged in the process should repeat Psalms, or say the Litany, before and during the progress of the making, in other respects keeping entire silence, all in the presence of at least one priest, and, if possible, in the sacristy of the church;" and why the Lord should be entreated with three signs of the cross,

70 Johnson, ii: 338.

71 J. Thorpe, ii: 256; J. D. Chambers, Divine Worship in England in the 13th and 14th Centuries, etc., 27.

72 See Chambers On the Colours of the Vestments of the Clergy, etc. Appendix, i; also Durandus, Lib. iii, xviii. See also, De Coloribus Vestimentorum in Eccl. Exon. Pub. Surtees Soc., lxi: 388-390.

73 Chambers, Appendix, xiv.

74" Urban IV. and John XXII. granted indulgences of one hundred days to all who bowed devoutly as often as the name of Jesus Christ was recited in the church. This is also mentioned in the Exeter Consuetudinary and later Sarum books." Chambers, 92.

75 Chambers, 230. See Lanfranc, Ab. Ware, and Martene. [De Antiq. Mon. Rit.,ii: 8.]

80

to "sanctify, purify and consecrate" the linen cloth with which the bread was to be covered; and why it was forbidden to partake of the Eucharist, except from vessels of silver or gold, the consecration being interdicted upon dishes of baser metal;" and why if the bread should accidentally fall to the ground the place which it touched must be scraped and the scrapings burned with fire, and if any drops of the wine thus fell, the priest must lick it up, and then the spot be scraped and the scrapings burned;78 and why if there be danger of a fatal result in child-birth, the foot of the child might be baptized (if the head could not be) by the midwife, but the baptismal water must be thrown into the fire, and the vessel containing it burned or given to the church;" and should the child live it must be conditionally rebaptized, thus: "If thou hast been baptized I do not rebaptize thee, but, if thou art not baptized, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" and why the chrism, or holy oil and balm, used for anointing in baptism and confirmation and extreme unction, should be consecrated annually with great formality on Maundy Thursday, and why if any were left over from the last year it must be burned; and why the laity were instructed that it was unnecessary for them to take the sacrament of the cup, inasmuch as "both the body and blood of our Lord is given to them at once under the form of bread;" and why Archbishop Peckham's statute should direct them "not overmuch to grind the sacrament with their teeth, but to swallow it entirely after they have a little chewed it, lest it should happen that some small particles stick between the teeth or somewhere else;" and why, while most persons wanted to be buried with their heads toward the west and their feet towards the east, in order that they may rise with their faces toward the Lord, it was considered an indication of extraordinary humility and self-abasement to be buried north and south; 83 and why the common people should so much

Ibid, 271.

77" Præcipimus, ne consecratur Eucharistia nisi in calice de auro vel argento; et ne stanneum calicem aliquis episcopus amodò benedicat, interdicimus." Lyndwood, Lib. iii, tit. 23

Chambers, 301.

79 Lyndwood, Lib. iii, tit. 24.

prefer to be buried on the south side of the church, that it was difficult to prevent other portions of the churchyard from becoming actually disused; - all these were questions not only which he could not answer, but to which it increasingly seemed to him no man could give reasonable answer.

And when, at last, he is grown capable of mature and original thinking, and, in one way and another, has imbibed enough of that spirit of dissent which somehow always manages to infect the air even under the rigidest ecclesiastical rule, to guide his scattered notions toward some clear conclusions, he finds four great thoughts every day weighing more heavily upon his spirit; thoughts giving birth not merely to distrust and dislike, but steadily growing toward absolute loathing and detestation.

86

1. In the first place, he is annoyed by the perpetual interference of the church with all the ordinary goings-on of life. On more than one quarter of the secular days of the year it forbade all persons over twelve years of age to taste food until three o'clock in the afternoon, besides prohibiting all to eat on the eves of most festival days.85 On the other hand it set aside nearly one half of the year, on various pretexts, as festival time. And when it is remembered that on all these "holy days" the people were compelled to attend church, under severe penalties, it will be seen how great was the tax put thus upon the industry of the land; and when one thinks how a large portion of so many feast-days would be likely to be spent, one is quite ready to appreciate the strong language with which, in 1536, Henry VIII. spoke out upon it: "Forasmoch as the nombre of holy-days is so excessively grown, and yet dayly more and more by mens devocyon, yea rather supersticyon, was like

84 This preference arose from the idea that, seeing their graves every day as they passed by them into church—the principal entrance being on the south side - their friends would be reminded to pray for the repose of their souls. At Hawstead, in Suffolk, Sir John Cullum undertook to break down this custom, and provided by will that at his own death he should be buried under the step of the disused north door of the Hawstead church. Staveley (add. MS.) 5.

85 Hook, Church Dict., sub voce "Fasts." 86 The Missale secundum usum Sarum, if I have rightly counted, has special festival services provided, as follows: For days in January, 14; in February, 10; in March, 8; in April, 7; in May, 11; in June, 19; in July, 21; in August, 20; in September, 15; in October, 15; in November, 18; and in December, 10; in all, 163. See also Soames, AngloSaxon Church, 257.

87 Wilkins, ii: 145.