error overspread their country, and anxiously but resignedly expecting the dawn of a holier and brighter day. It is, however, impossible to read the documents of the time without being convinced, not only that the temporal establishment of the Church was threatened, but that the civil government had good grounds for watching with a jealous eye, and repressing with a strong hand, the violent though ill-digested schemes of change then prevailing in England. Undoubtedly the hierarchy set all the engines in motion for the extirpation of Lollardism, as the principles of the rising sect were called. They felt that their dominion over the minds of men must cease as soon as the right of private judgment was generally acknowledged; and they resolved, at whatever cost of charity and of blood, to maintain the hold over the consciences, the minds, and the property of their fellow-creatures, which the Church had devoted so many years of steady, unwearied, undeviating policy to secure. The real question, the point on (p. 354) which every other question between the Protestant communions and the Church of Rome must depend, is this: "Have individual Christians a right to test the doctrines of the Church by the written word of God; or must they receive with implicit credence whatever the church in communion with the See of Rome, the only authorized and infallible guardian and propagator of Gospel truth, decrees and propounds?" All the other differences, however important in themselves, and practically essential, must follow the fate of this question. The Romanists are still aware of this, and are as much alive to it as ever were the most uncompromising vindicators of their church in the days of Lollardism. They took their resolution, and it was this: "Come what will come, this heresy must be put down; the very existence of the Church is incompatible with this rivalry: either Lollardism must be extinguished, or it will shake the very foundations of Rome." And, having taken this resolution, they lost no favourable opportunity of carrying it into full effect. [Footnote 270: The states of Europe were much convulsed about this time by an apprehension of political revolutions.]