e set himself to teach, after a
brief blaze of success, sank into darkness; and no trace remained of
Lollardry except the black memory of contempt and hatred with which the
heretics of the fourteenth century were remembered by the English
people, long after the actual Reformation had become the law of the
land.[28]

[Sidenote: Causes of Wycliffe's failure,]

[Sidenote: Which is not to be regretted, for the times were not ripe.]

So poor a close to a movement of so fair promise was due partly to the
agitated temper of the times; partly, perhaps, to a want of judgment in
Wycliffe; but chiefly and essentially because it was an untimely birth.
Wycliffe saw the evil; he did not see the remedy; and neither in his
mind nor in the mind of the world about him had the problem ripened
itself for solution. England would have gained little by the premature
overthrow of the church, when the house out of which the evil spirit was
cast out could have been but swept and garnished for the occupation of
the seven devils of anarchy.

[Sidenote: The reaction.]

[Sidenote: New birth of Protestantism.]

The fire of heresy continued to smoulder, exploding occasionally in
insurrection,[29] occasionally blazing up in nobler form, when some poor
seeker for the truth, groping for a vision of God in the darkness of the
years which followed, found his way into that high 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.

[Sidenote: Association of Christian Brethren enrolled in London.]

[Sidenote: Spirit of the country.]

Leaping over a century, I pa