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time had no pictures, understand him, they were not artists in that mystery, like the Greeks and Romans, they had not pieces of proportion, being rather daubers than drawers, stainers than painters, though called Picti from their self-discolouration.

Three paramount idols they worshipped above all the rest, and ascribed divine honour unto them: Apollo, by them styled Belinus the Great; Andraste, or Andate, the goddess of victory; Diana, goddess of the game. This last was most especially reverenced, Britain being then all a forest, where hunting was not the recreation but the calling, and venison not the dainties but the diet of common people.

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Two sorts of people were most honoured amongst the Britons: Druids, who were their philosophers, divines, lawyers; Bards, who were their prophets, poets, historians. The former were so called from dous, signifying generally a tree, and properly an oak, under which they used to perform their rites and ceremonies. An idolatry whereof the Jews themselves had been guilty, for which the prophet threateneth them; they shall be ashamed of the oaks which they have desired." But the signal oak which the Druids made choice of, was such a one on which misletoe did grow; by which privy token they conceived God marked it out as of sovereign virtue for his service. Under this tree, on the sixth day of the moon, whereon they began their year, they invocated their idols, and offered two white bulls, filleted in the horns, with many other ceremonies. These Pagan priests never wrote any thing, so to procure the greater veneration to their mysteries; men being bound to believe that it was some great treasure, which was locked up in such great secresy.

The bards were next the Druids in regard, and played excellently to their songs on the harps; whereby they had great operation on the vulgar, surprising them into civility unawares, they greedily swallowing whatsoever was sweetened with music. These also, to preserve their ancestors from corruption, embalmed their

memories in rhyming verses, which looked both backward, in their relations, and forward, in their predictions; so that, their confidence meeting with the credulity of others, advanced their wild conjectures to the reputation of prophecies. The immortality of the soul they did not flatly deny, but falsely believe, disguised under the opinion of transanimation, conceiving that dying mens souls afterward passed into other bodies, either preferred to better, or condemned to worse, according to their former good or ill behaviour. This made them contemn death, and always maintain erected resolutions, counting a valiant death the best of bargains, wherein they did not lose, but lay out their lives to advantage. Generally they were great magicians; insomuch that Pliny saith, that the very Persians, in some sort, might seem to have learnt their magic from the Britons.

BOOK II. CENT. IX.

In this sad condition God sent England a deliverer, namely, King Alfred or Alured, born in England, bred in Rome, where, by a prolepsis, he was anointed King by Pope Leo, though then but a private prince, and his three elder brothers alive, in auspicium futuri regni, in hope that hereafter he should come to the crown. Nor did this unction make Alfred ante-date his kingdom, who quietly waited till his foresaid brothers successively reigned, and died before him, and then took his turn in the kingdom of the West Saxons. The worst was, his condition was like a bridegroom, who, though lawfully wedded, yet might not bed his bride, till first he had conquered his rival; and must redeem England, before he could reign over it. The Danes had London, many of the in-land, most of the maritime towns, and Alfred only three effectual shires, Somerset, Dorset, and Wilts; yet by God's blessing on his valour, he got to be monarch of all England. Yea, consider him as a king in his court, as a general in his camp, as a christian in his closet, as a patron in the church, as a founder in his college, as a father in his

family; his actions will every way appear no less excellent in themselves, than exemplary to others.

His most daring design was, when lying hid about Athelney, in Somersetshire, and disguised under the habit of a fiddler, being an excellent musician, he adventured into the Danish camp. Had not his spirit been undaunted, the sight of his armed foes had been enough to have put his instrument out of tune. Here, going unsuspected through their army, he discovered their condition, and some of their intentions. Some would say, that the Danes deserved to be beaten indeed, if they would communicate their counsels to a fiddler. But let such know, Alfred made this general discovery of them, that they were remiss in their discipline, lay idle and careless; and security disarms the best appointed army. Themistocles said of himself, "that he could not fiddle, but he knew how to make a little city great." But our Alfred could fiddle, and make a little city great too; yea, enlarge a petty and contracted kingdom into a vast and absolute monarchy.

But, as the poets feign of Antæus, the son of the Earth, who, fighting with Hercules, and often worsted by him, recovered his strength again every time he touched the earth, revived with an addition of new spirits: so the Danes, who may seem the sons of Neptune, though often beaten by the English in landbattles, no sooner recovered their ships at sea, but presently recruiting themselves, they returned from Denmark, more numerous and formidable than before. But at last, to follow the poetical fancy, as Hercules, to prevent Antæus farther reviving, hoisted him aloft, and held him strangled in his arms, till he was stark dead, and utterly expired: so, to secure the Danes from returning to the sea, who out of the Thames had with their fleet sailed up the river Ley, betwixt Hertfordshire and Essex, Alfred, with pioneers, divided the grand stream of Ley into several rivulets; so that their ships lay water-bound, leaving their mariners to shift for themselves over land, most of which fell into the hands of their English enemies; so this proved a mortal defeat to the Danish insolence.

Alfred having thus reduced England to some tolerable terms of quiet, made most of the Danes his subjects by conquest, and the rest his friends by composition, encountered a fiercer foe, namely, ignorance and barbarism, which had generally invaded the whole nation. Insomuch that he writeth, that south of Thames he found not any that could read English. Indeed, in these days all men turned students; but what did they study? Only to live secretly and safely from the fury of the Danes. And now, that the next age might be wiser than this, Alfred intended the founding of an university at Oxford.

Book IV. CENT. XIV.

And here we will acquaint the reader, that being to write the history of Wicliffe, I intend neither to deny, dissemble, defend, or excuse any of his faults. "We have this treasure," saith the apostle, "in earthen vessels ;" and he that shall endeavour to prove a pitcher of clay to be a pot of gold, will take great pains to small purpose. Yea, should I be over officious to retain myself to plead for Wicliffe's faults, that glorious saint would sooner chide than thank me, unwilling that, in favour of him, truth should suffer prejudice. He was a man, and so subject to error; living in a dark age, more obnoxious to stumble, vexed with opposition, which makes men reel into violence; and therefore it is unreasonable, that the constitution and temper of his positive opinions should be guessed by his polemical heat, when he was chafed in disputation. But besides all these, envy hath falsely fathered many foul aspersions upon him.

We can give no account of Wicliffe's parentage, birth, place, or infancy, only we find an ancient family of the Wicliffes in the Bishoprick of Durham, since by match united to the Brackenburies, persons of prime quality in those parts. As for this our Wicliffe, history at the very first meets with him a man, and full grown, yea, graduate of Merton College, in Oxford. The fruitful

soil of his natural parts, he had industriously improved by acquired learning, not only skilled in the fashionable arts of that age, and in that abstruse, crabbed divinity, all whose fruit is thorns, but also well versed in the scriptures; a rare accomplishment in those days. His public acts in the schools he kept with great approbation, though the echo of his popular applause sounded the alarum to awaken the envy of his adversaries against him.

He is charged by the Papists, as if discontent first put him upon his opinions. For having usurped the Headship of Canterbury College, founded by Simon Iselep, since, like a tributary brook, swallowed up in the vastness of Christ Church, after a long suit, he was ejected by sentence from the Pope, because, by the statutes, only a monk was capable of the place. Others add, that the loss of the Bishoprick of Worcester, which he desired, incensed him to revenge himself by innovations; and can true doctrine be the fruit, where ambition and discontent hath been the root thereof? Yet such may know, that God often sanctifies man's weakness to his own glory; and that wise architect makes, of the crookedness of mens conditions, straight beams in his own building, to raise his own honour upon them. Besides, these things are barely said, without other evidence; and if his foes affirming be a proof, why should not his friends denial thereof be a sufficient refutation?

Seven years Wicliffe lived in Oxford, in some tolerable quiet, having a professor's place, and a cure of souls. On the week days in the schools proving to the learned what he meant to preach; and on the Lord's day preaching in the pulpit, to the vulgar, what he had proved before. Not unlike those builders in the second Temple, holding a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other his disputing making his preaching to be strong, and his preaching making his disputations to be plain. His speculative positions against the real presence in the Eucharist, did offend and distaste, but his practical tenets against purgatory, and pilgrimages, did enrage and bemad his adversaries; so woundable is the dragon, under the left wing, when pinched in point

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