there were 20,000 gods in every corn-field in England--next suffered in like manner at the stake, in presence of the Prince of Wales. Lord Cobham, the head of the Lollards, who had denounced the pope as Anti-Christ, the Son of Perdition, was imprisoned; but escaping, became involved in political movements, and suffered at length the double penalty for heresy and treason, being hung on a gallows with a fire blazing at his feet. It is interesting to remark the social rank of these three early martyrs. Heresy was pervading all classes, from the lowest to the highest. [Sidenote: The Council of Constance deposes the pope,] The Council of Constance met A.D. 1415. It had a threefold object: 1. The union of the Church under one pope; 2. The reformation of the clergy; 3. The suppression of heresy. Its policy from the first was determined. It proclaimed itself supreme. It demanded the abdication of the pope John XXIII.; exhibited articles of accusation against him, some of them of such enormity as almost to surpass belief, and justifying the epithet that he was "a devil incarnate." The suffrage of the council was changed. The plan of voting by nations, which reduced the Italians to a single vote, was introduced. These incidental facts may indicate to us that there were present men who understood thoroughly how to manage the machinery of such an assembly, and that the remark of Æneas Sylvius, afterward Pope Pius II., respecting the Council of Basle was equally true as to that of Constance, that it was not so much directed by the Holy Ghost as by the passions of men. The influence that lawyers were now exercising in social affairs--their habits of arrangement, of business, and intrigue, is strikingly manifested in the management of these assemblages; their arts had passed to the clergy, and even in part to the people. But how vast was the change that had occurred in the papacy from the voluntary abdication of Celestine to the compulsory abdication of John!