In the retrospect of the two centuries of controversy thus brought to a temporary conclusion, several results stand out prominently. Under the circumstances controversy must necessarily have centered about questions of theology. These theological questions embraced

much wider range of thought, however, than do similar questions in later generations. All change, whether in the political, the intellectual, or the social world, connected itself immediately with questions of theological doctrine. Even a mind as liberal and rational as that of Hooker could hardly have expressed itself except in terms of some kind of theocratic system. Hooker generalized as naturally in such terms as a thinker of to-day would in the terms of evolutionary science. The controversies with respect to theological doctrine meant much more, consequently, than hair-splitting argumentation on points of metaphysical belief or mere personal quarreling over differences of practice in church discipline. At bottom the real question was how men could live together and commune with each other in social concord without the sacrificing of too much of personal liberty on the part of the individual, or on the other hand, without the inconsiderate exploitation of individuality at the expense of social harmony. That this problem was ultimately solved by the controversies of the two centuries from Wiclif to Hooker it would be rash to maintain; it was fairly posed, however, and the history of succeeding generations shows that it did not then and, under human conditions, probably never will reach a final solution. The achievement of this first period of English controversy consists in the fact that it made the first great step in the direction of the solving of social complications by evolving the only effective means to that end, free and reasonable discussion of the questions concerned. Denying the authority of pope or church council

to govern and regulate the activities of his mind, the seeker after liberty of thought was logically compelled to deny also all other formal and absolute authority, for example the single authority of the Bible which the narrower Puritanism sought to establish. In the lack of any fixed and absolute authority, the only guide left was that common sense of mankind as to what was true and good and reasonable, which can be arrived at only by attaining some degree of common understanding. English controversy, therefore, did not seek to fight its battles on the limited field of special and technical scholarship. Since the questions under discussion were such as concerned the welfare of mankind in general, the validity and sanity of all arguments adduced must be tested by the degree of their consonance with the general sense of truth. Submission to an intellectual aristocracy, it was felt, would be but little better than submission to a formal or mechanical authority.

And since the appeal was to the common understanding, it followed necessarily that controversy must be carried on in a language commonly intelligible. This language must be the English of commonly accepted tradition, the language in which words have values immediately appreciable without definition, and in which not only intellectual concepts but also feeling and mood can be expressed. Moreover, although controversy must be personal and the right of individual judgment was to be respected, a further compromise was necessary. The liberty of judgment and the liberty of reproof must be tempered by a humane respect for an adversary's right to his own opinions. Intellectual property must receive the same degree of protection from abuse as that afforded to physical possessions in civilized communities. These, in brief, were some of the ends towards which English controversy in the period under discussion, sometimes unconsciously, but none the less cer

tainly, was tending. Its main result, so far as the development of English prose is concerned, was not the production of great masterpieces of art, but rather the invention of a form of English expression, dignified yet intimately idiomatic and many-colored, capable not only of the language of reason, but also of moving the hearts of men, in the profoundest as well as in the simplest of their daily experiences.

IV

THE PULPIT

MEDIEVAL PREACHING JOHN MIRC-BOY-BISHOPS-LOLLARD PREACHING COLET-BISHOP FISHER-SENSATIONAL PREACHING BRADFORD, LEVER, LATIMERPAUL'S CROSS-NON-CONFORMIST PREACHING-HENRY SMITH-BISHOP ANDREWES-JOHN DONNE-CONCLU

SIONS

THE medieval church in England produced no great preachers, nor did it develop a very animated art of preaching. It was Wiclif who first utilized the sermon, in any extensive way, for the popular discussion of matters of intimate concern to his audiences. The time was ripe for a change. By constant repetition both preacher and audience had become weary of the seven deadly sins, the seven works of mercy, the five joys of the Virgin, the fifteen signs of the doom, and the other numerical and summary topics of conventional preaching. The popular preachers had degraded the sermon by the extravagant use of certain entertaining devices which Wiclif sternly reprehended as opposed to the high purpose towards which preaching should aspire. They made use of meter or of highly alliterative prose in order to produce an impression of eloquence. They filled their sermons with stories and examples which were supposedly of an edifying character, but which frequently used the moral merely as a specious excuse for telling the tale. Among the more scholarly and by

'For a good summary of the lighter side of English preaching at this time, see Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith's essay on "English

the dignitaries of the church, sermons were preached only on rare and important occasions. They were then heavy and learned, filled with allegorical and tropological interpretations of the scriptures and with abundant scriptural and patristic quotations. But the methods by which interest in the sermon might most easily have been aroused, both popular and learned preachers cautiously avoided. They preached zealously against greed and luxury and sloth and false belief in general, but they were careful not to turn the pulpit into anything like a debating platform from which the popular side of specific social, political, and moral reforms could be discussed.

As illustrative of the character of popular parish preaching at the time of transition from medieval to modern England the Festial of John Mirc will serve. This work, a kind of model sermon-book, was probably written in the first decade of the fifteenth century, but its continuous popularity is evidenced by numerous manuscript copies, and at the end of the century, by printed editions. Mirc also wrote a Manuale Sacerdotum, and an English poem, Instructions for Parish Priests. But his most popular work was his Festial, containing seventy-four sermons written in simple and easy prose. These sermons were intended to constitute a complete cycle for the year. They contain brief expositions of the meaning of the feast-day for which they were respectively intended, with exhortations to observe the simple duties of confession, alms-giving, continence, pen

Popular Preaching in the Fourteenth Century," in English Historical Review, VII (1892), 25-36. See also Petit-Dutaillis, "Les Prédications Populaires, Les Lollards et le Soulèvement des Travailleurs en 1381," in Études d'Histoire dédiées à Gabriel Monod (1896), pp. 373-388.

According to Schofield, English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer, p. 395, no less than eighteen editions appeared between 1483 and 1532.