So damped her fire by icy breath, Even she, man's heav'n-pledged hope through weary days, Virgin and saint! shall we not heed Thy blessing from above, And that rich grace, to thee alone decreed, Linked † at the first with Him, the Holy One, Blest in his thought at last when his great work was done!) And, high-wrought Saint, may we not laud That § faith-proved spirit meek?-- The voiceless agony thy soul that awed 'Twas || thine to ponder o'er that untold smart That hung, like hovering sword, to pierce thy tender heart! Yet Thee, below the holy train, Virgin and saint, we rate; Forgotten they, to purpose mean and vain Thy¶ hour we desecrate ! Where sleep the souls in faith and virtue bold, True both to God and man, and pure as once of old? 11:2 HYMNUS IN FESTO S. JOSEPHI, Quos pompa secli, quos opes Josephus en Christi pater, Quin ipse, quin homo Deus, Adæ nocentis innocens Tu rector et custos domus, gort s.f TRANSLATED IN IMITATION OF GEORGESİ HERBERT. YE whom the world hath taught to see His father-one of David's line He wiped a labourer's brow. Himself One born of God on high, The guilty Adam's guiltless Son, Where guilt may flee from wrath. Joseph, in thy lorn poverty Sit summa Patri gloria, To God the Father praise be given, DISCIPLINA ARCANA. On the rough seas He seemed passing by, On doubting hearts his healing Deity. DISCIPLINA EXTERNA. Oн, for the Rod of ancient Discipline! Spirit of noble Ambrose, wake again! Where Aaron's rod, silencing mouths profane, Yea, the whole land is sick, the troubled state [Erratum in the last Number,-p. 257, for "cleanse the wild thistle," read “cleave."] Lyra Apostolica. Γνοῖεν δ', ὡς δὴ δηρὸν ἐγὼ πολέμοιο πέπαυμαι. NO. XXIII. 1. THE JEWS. O PITEOUS race! Fearful to look upon, Once standing in high place, Heaven's eldest son. WHEN first God stirred me, and the church's word O'er rule she taught, and rite, and doctrine poured; 3. THE HEATHEN. 'MID Balak's magic fires The Spirit spake, clear as in Israel; Who summoned dreams, his earlier word to bring If such o'erflowing grace From Aaron's vest e'en on the Sibyl ran, Why should we fear, the Son now lacks his place As though, when faith is keen, He cannot make CORRESPONDENCE. The Editor begs to remind his readers that he is not responsible for the opinions SIR, The object of my last communication was principally to draw the attention of your readers to the duty which the church of England owes to one of her most illustrious sons-the duty, I mean, of collecting and publishing the numerous remaining writings of John Wycliffe. Until his works be placed within our reach in a collected form, I conceive it to be impossible to arrive at a correct view of his real character and opinions. Mr. Vaughan, indeed, professes to give us "the history of Wycliffe's mind;"-he professes to demonstrate that the mind of Wycliffe, "as reflected in his works, exhibits a constant progression;"-that "the Wycliffe of 1375 was a less enlightened man than the Wycliffe of 1377, and that the Wycliffe of 1384 was a character in which protestant principle had become still more ascendant;" and Mr. Vaughan professes, further, to have come at this "secret," (for so he terms it,†) by examining the contents, and ascertaining the dates of the Wycliffe MSS., a labour, he adds, "to which no man, since the days of Wycliffe, had pretended to apply himself." + Now, I do not mean to deny that Mr. Vaughan did, (nay, his work exhibits evident proof that he did,) to a certain extent, make himself acquainted with the original authorities, from which alone the informa tion he was in search of could be derived; but I confess I am sceptical about the accuracy of any knowledge of Wycliffe's real senti • Pref. to 2nd edit. p. xv. "Before the publication of these volumes, the dates of the reformer's writings were, with a few trivial exceptions, unknown. The history of the mind of Wycliffe in consequence, a secret." Pref. 2nd edit. pp. xiv. xv. was, Ibid. p. xvi. ments, which can be acquired in the present scattered and imperfect state of his numerous writings. To say nothing of the acquaintance with black letter and Anglo-Saxon necessary to every one who would even read them, the difficulty of bringing them into juxtaposition, and the great variations which are to be found in the different extant MSS., even of the same work, create obstacles sufficient, I think, to deter any one from dogmatising about the "secret history" of Wycliffe's mind. But, besides this, Mr. Vaughan laboured under other disadvantages-he wrote with a theory ready formed; "a constant progression" in the mind of Wycliffe he was resolved to make out, and the platform of modern nonconformity was, with him, the "ascendancy of protestant principle," at which he was determined that Wycliffe should ultimately arrive; it is not, therefore, very surprising that Wycliffe's declamations against papal usurpation should be interpreted as the "novel sentiments" of an ecclesiastical revolutionist, and that his censure of the mendicant orders, (the voluntary systems, be it remembered, of that day,) should be regarded as analogous to modern attacks upon the temporalities of the church, and the characters of the clergy. Before I proceed to a more minute examination of the accounts given by Mr. Vaughan and other writers of particular opinions said to have been maintained by Wycliffe, I shall give a few examples of a kind of negligence (to use no harsher word), which, prior to any more close investigation, must create, in every mind, some doubts as to Mr. Vaughan's peculiar claims upon our attention, when he pro fesses to exhibit to his reader the different periods of the life of Wycliffe, "not only under an increased light, but generally under a true light, in place of a false one."* The tenth chapter of our author's second volume is devoted to an account of the writings of Wycliffe; it is divided into five sections, the first of which contains a list of his printed works, and the second, on which I wish to make a few remarks, is headed thus:- # to bom SECTION II. Including the Wycliffe manuscripts extant in England and Ireland. This From what I had previously known of the MSS. alluded to, I confess I was not quite prepared for this statement; I knew that in marin Mr. Lewis's time the learned Dr. Timothy Godwin, then Bishop of Kilmore, and afterwards Archbishop of Cashel, and also Dr. Robert Howard, then a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin,+ had examined the library of that university for Mr. Lewis, and had transmitted to him a notice of its contents; I thought it strange that so many as forty important MSS. (a number very nearly equal to the whole number of Wycliffe MSS. which that library contains) should have escaped the search of such men, especially as a catalogue of the whole Pref. 2nd edit., p. xvi. + Afterwards Bishop of Elphin, in Ireland. VOL. VII.-April, 1835. 3 G Si taw |