c and Revival; Ruskin, Daly, and Penrose; Britton's Cathedrals and
Architectural Antiquities; Pugin's Specimens and Examples of Gothic
Architecture; Rickman's Styles of Gothic Architecture; Street's Gothic
Architecture in Spain; Encyclopaedia Britannica (article Architecture).

JOHN WYCLIF.

* * * * *

A.D. 1324-1384.

DAWN OF THE REFORMATION.

The name of Wyclif suggests the dawn of the Protestant Reformation; and
the Reformation suggests the existence of evils which made it a
necessity. I do not look upon the Reformation, in its earlier stages, as
a theological movement. In fact, the Catholic and Protestant theology,
as expounded and systematized by great authorities, does not materially
differ from that of the Fathers of the Church. The doctrines of
Augustine were accepted equally by Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. What
is called systematic divinity, as taught in our theological seminaries,
is a series of deductions from the writings of Paul and other apostles,
elaborately and logically drawn by Athanasius, Jerome, Augustine, and
other lights of the early Church, which were defended in the Middle Ages
with amazing skill and dialectical acuteness by the Scholastic doctors,
with the aid of the method which Aristotle, the greatest logician of
antiquity, bequeathed to philosophy. Neither Luther nor Calvin departed
essentially from these great deductions on such vital subjects as the
existence and attributes of God, the Trinity, sin and its penalty,
redemption, grace, and predestination. The creeds of modern Protestant
churches are in harmony with the writings of both the Fathers and the
Scholastic doctors on the fundamental principles of Christianity. There
are, indeed, some ideas in reference to worship, and the sacraments, and
the government of the Church, and aids to a religious life, defended by
the Scholastic doctors, which Protestants do not accept, and for which
there is not much authority in the writings of the Fathers. But the main
difference between Protestants and Catholics is in reference to the
institutions of the Church,--institutions which gradually arose with the
triumph of Christianity in its contest with Paganism, and which received
their full development in the Middle Ages. It was the enormous and
scandalous corruptions which crept into these _institutions_ which led
to the cry for reform. It was the voice of Wyclif, denouncing these
abuses, which made him famous