of that officer to watch the Lollards; and the clause to this effect continued in force till the time of Charles I., when Sir Edward Coke, on being made sheriff of the county of Buckingham, objected to it, and it was in consequence withdrawn.[178] Mr. Hume, who is less sceptical in weighing the value of evidence when it tends to cast imputations on religious professors than on some other occasions, boldly pronounces Lord Cobham to have been guilty of high treason, (in spite of Fox’s express testimony to the contrary,) and the sect in general to have had treasonable designs;[179] but St. Paul himself was called a “mover of sedition,” though he actually preached that to “resist the power” was to “resist the ordinance of God.” The executions of the Lollards, which took place between Wickliffe’s death and the Reformation, appear to have been in reality on the charge of heresy, not of disaffection; though it is true that the latter accusation was put forward in one or two instances, as being the more popular charge, just as our Lord was accused of making himself a king, when a Roman tribunal could otherwise have seen no fault in him. Besides, the manner in which sentence was carried into effect--which was in all cases, we believe, by fire, the appropriate punishment of heresy--confirms this opinion. Still some of the principles of the Lollard were, doubtless, of a dangerous political character; in his hands they appear to have lain dormant; but when he lapsed into the puritan, the politician was combined in him, and then they became active and mischievous. If he ran into extremes, he had some cause and excuse for so doing; he, at least was not straining at gnats, but at camels. An unmitigated creed drove him into an unmeasured abomination of it; the personal corruption of the Roman catholic priest of those times, tempted him to question his official authority; his abuse of what was lawfully his own, to dispute his abstract right of it: but though in all this he might be mistaken, he was not mercenary; and whatever his opinions were, however untenable, he was true to them in life and in death, forfeiting for the sake of them his property, his liberty, and his peace, and often in the end sealing them with his blood. But, after all, the great glory of the Lollard was this, that he gave to the people the pure word of God. The work whereby Wickliffe hastened the Reformation, was his translation of the Scriptures into his own mother-tongue. Apart from this, his labours, as valuable as they were, might not be thought of unmixed value. Herein he had the sure promise of God pledged to his success. “For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be, saith the Lord, that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall