Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ... time of darkness. It was the age of persecution of the Lollards. There was no religious liberty; the nation was not fit for it. There was no open Bible. The nation was still, and we can see that it was expedient she should be still, under that stern schoolmaster, the law of the Church, that was to bring them to Christ; that law that had tamed or was taming the fierce nations of the west who had overthrown the Roman Empire. Which of us will say that God should have dealt otherwise with our country? Look on fifty years. We see Lollardism growing; Wycliffe's Bible creeping about from house to house, preparing materials for the Reformation. But we see an Act passed which imposed forfeiture of goods or land or life on any one who read his Bible in English. The age of liberty was not yet possible. Liberty would have meant licence and confusion. Let us shift the slide once more, and look at England four hundred years ago. It brings us to 1480. It brings us to one of the darkest periods in English religious history, judging by the surface only; a period of ignorance, superstition, and brutality; yet there were noble souls in those days, and there was an under-current, which has never been wanting to our English race, of a longing for spiritual life. It was, at least, the age that built some of our noblest churches, and it was the age that made the fathers and mothers, or the grandfathers and grandmothers, of our Reformers. Somewhere below the surface there has been movement and growth. Fifty years more and we see the Reformation well begun. It is exactly three hundred and fifty years since Coverdale's Bible was printed and ordered to be N set up in all parish churches. Think what an advance this means. Still, religious liberty was not understood...
