n a
form suited for the use of preachers and christian teachers. Two
centuries later the second university is founded at Cambridge, England.

About 1170 =Peter Waldo= of Lyons, France, committing to memory such
portions of the Scriptures as he could obtain, and taking for his
favorite saying, the command of our Lord to the rich youth, "If thou
wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and
thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me," commences to
preach the gospel, as the Apostles had done, in the homes of the people
and in their market places. As he attracts followers, who also commit
portions of the Scriptures, he sends them out like the seventy, two and
two, to preach the Word of God. They are called Waldenses, after the
name of their leader, and oppose corrupt doctrines and practices with
the plain truths of the Word of God. They oppose the crusades, as
fanatical expeditions on the part of those who were not Jews, and
therefore were unjust and unlawful. They insist the church consists not
merely of the clergy or priests, but includes the whole family of
believers.

The advocacy of these principles and by laymen, causes them to be
excommunicated, then anathematized and finally to be condemned by a
council at Rome in 1179. Peter Waldo, their leader, flees from land to
land, preaching as he goes and dies in Bohemia in 1197.

In 1215, King John of England, yielding to the insistent demand of the
barons, issued the Magna Charta, (Great Charter) the first grant of
English constitutional liberty, pledging the right of trial by jury and
protection of life, liberty and property from unlawful deprivation. It
is immediately denounced by the pope, Innocent III, who absolves the
king from all obligation to keep the pledges therein expressed and
solemnized by the royal oath.

In 1366 =John Wiclif=, a graduate of Oxford and member of the English
Parliament, presents to that body indisputable reasons, why, without the
approval of the Parliament, not even the king of England could make
their lands subject to a tax claimed by a foreign sovereign,
representing the papacy. As a religious leader, he instructs his
followers, called "poor priests," to pass from village to village and
city to city, and to preach, admonish and instruct the people in "God's
Law." He accomplishes the translation of the Latin Vulgate into the
English of his day, that his countrymen might have the Scriptures in
their ow