Among these excellent men, Dr. Richard Ullerston, of Oxford, seems to have taken a most primitive view of the duties of a Christian bishop. He wrote a treatise in 1408, by way of memorial for Bishop Hallam, his friend, who urged him to the work, when that uncompromising reformer went to the Council of Pisa. At the close of a long and powerful exhortation to provide for the due execution by the Popes of their own ministerial duties, and for the restoration of discipline in the church, he thus expresses himself: "Things being thus restored to their right order, and all abuses being cut away, the Pope will employ himself, agreeably to the duties of his charge, in procuring peace for Christians, not only by praying, but by preaching the Gospel (p. 053) himself, and sending everywhere good preachers, who by their doctrine and example might urge on princes and people throughout the world their several duties, and who might make a holy war upon the passions of mankind, rooting up those sensual desires which, according to St. James, are the source of wars and divisions in the church and in the state." This treatise was published in Germany about the year 1700, from a manuscript in Trinity College, Cambridge; and may be found at the end of Van der Hardt's work on the Council of Constance. It consists chiefly of petitions for the remedy of abuses, and is full from beginning to end of the true spirit of genuine evangelical religion. Dr. Ullerston remained in uninterrupted and perfect communion with the church of Rome; and yet no Protestant, who ever suffered at the stake for his opposition to her, could have more faithfully exposed the practical grievances under which Christendom then mourned in consequence of her dereliction of duty, whilst she assumed to herself all supreme authority, and paralyzed the efforts of national churches to remedy the crying evils of the time. The heads of Ullerston's petitions abound with salutary suggestions; by many of the items we are apprised of the grievances then chiefly complained of, or the departments in which those grievances were found. 1. On the election of a Pope. 2. On the suppression of simony. 3. On the exaltation of the law of Christ above all human (p. 054) authority. 4. Against appropriations, _i.e._ assigning the proceeds of parochial cures to monasteries. 5. On appointing only fit persons to ecclesiastical stations. 6. Against exemptions of monasteries and individuals from episcopal jurisdiction. 7. Against dispensations,--those, among others, by which benefices and bishoprics were given to children. 8. Against pluralities. 9. Against appeals to Rome. 10. Against the abuse of privileges. 11. Against the clergy devoting themselves to secular affairs. 12. Against the prerogatives of chanters[46] and other officers in the houses of the great.