03.02. Chapter 02 - "Rome": Medieval and Modern
Chapter 02 "Rome": Medieval and Modern
Carry your mind back for just over six hundred years. It is the year 1324, and at that time was born a man who in the good providence of God did much to deliver England from the thraldom into which she had fallen, both socially and religiously. That man was John Wycliffe. And the England of the fourteenth century was a very different country from what it is to-day. The population numbered only about three millions, and fully one-third of these were slaves or serfs (villeins), who cultivated the ground for the lords of the manor, and were bought and sold with the land whenever it changed owners.
Edward II. was reigning, but his feeble career was drawing to a close. During his reign the nation had lost much of the power and prestige it had acquired under his warlike father. He had applied to the Pope for at the Pope’s "shop" you could purchase anything — for "a box of ointment to make him brave" before he set out to conquer Scotland. But in spite of, or because of his "box of ointment," his Scottish wars ended disastrously. He lost both his battles and his courage, and perhaps his "box" as well, and fled back to England to save his life. Then his struggles with the barons further added to his unpopularity. We read of misery and sickness caused by poor harvests. "The dead bodies of the peasants were found by the roadsides. The dead in cities were buried in trenches; the gaols were full of thieves; people were driven to eat the flesh of dogs and horses and even of children."
Amidst all this misery we get a glimpse of some wise men who could make good laws. It was enacted that "less grain be made into beer and more into bread." Our land would be all the better were this ancient policy in force to-day. But as usual, while the common people suffered so sorely the upper classes were living in luxury, and most of all the monks and friars who were "at no period so splendid in their equipages and households." Again, we read of a "dole" of bread being given out at a rich man’s funeral in London, and so great was the need of the starving poor that over fifty people, old and young, were crushed to death in their efforts to secure a portion.
London had already become the headquarters of all the colours of the begging friars. Whatever the good intentions of their founders may have been, corruption and decay soon set in among their followers. They rapidly fell into the besetting sin of everything connected with Rome, and began to "add house to house and field to field." The Dominicans reached England about 1220 and settled in Holborn. Though vowed to poverty, they soon were able to put up a convent, the most splendid in London. The Franciscans followed a few years later and settled at Cornhill. Within twenty years their brotherhood numbered eighty friars, and a church and convent was built by them far surpassing in splendour those of their rivals.
Following hard upon the Franciscans came the Carmelites in 1240, and still another of the begging orders — the Austin friars — arrived in 1253. Like a cloud of locusts they covered the land, licking up every green thing, so that it was reckoned that in the time of Wycliffe nearly one-third of the nation’s wealth belonged to the Church of Rome. These men were directly responsible to the Pope, and were known as the regular clergy in distinction to the parish priests, who were the secular clergy and were under the rule of the bishops.
It is interesting to hear Wycliffe’s opinion of these "holy beggars" in his own times, when they had further increased both their wealth and their begging effrontery. From the initials of their names he formed a word which we should call an acrostic — "CAIM." The Carmelites supplied the first letter, the Austins, the Jacobins (or Dominicans), and the Minorites (or Franciscans) completed the fanciful idea. This word he connected with Cain who slew his brother, and he found many analogies wherewith to make vigorous and trenchant exposures of their hypocrisy, greed, and evil deeds. Their so-called poverty, he says, is nothing but a lie, for it is based on the lust for wealth and robbery, and is really an inspiration of the devil.
He shows us also how their practice of entering the parishes of the secular clergy and persuading the people to "confess" to them, led to a fearful increase of licentiousness and sin. "For thus did they whisper to one another, ’Let us follow our pleasures: some friar whom we never saw before and may never see again may come this way. When we have had our will we can confess to him without trouble.’" Is the system of Rome any better to-day? The poor deluded votary goes to "Confession" and thinks he can procure forgiveness from a "priest," then being "absolved" he is free to go on again in his course of evil.
We can thus see how this unscriptural system sears the conscience, belittles sin, and blinds the mind to the holiness of God who has appointed a day in which HE WILL JUDGE the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead.
Thank God, the Lord Jesus Christ to-day is a SAVIOUR, and this is the Day of Salvation. The day is fast approaching when He will take the place of a Judge and then the Day of Salvation will be over.