the title of the Cause of God, for the author has the consciousness of appearing like an advocate in defence of God's honour, in standing forward to oppose Pelagianism, and to exalt the agency of God's free and unmerited grace in the conversion and salvation of man. He by no means conceals from himself that in so doing he is swimming against the current of prevailing opinion, for it is his own remark that "the doctrine is held by many either that the free will of man is of itself sufficient for the obtaining of salvation; or if they confess the need of grace, that still grace may be merited by the power of the free will, so that grace no longer appears to be something undeserved by men, but something meritoriously acquired. Almost the whole world," he says, "has run after Pelagius and fallen into error." But Bradwardine does not allow himself to be disheartened by this state of things. He knows for certain that one man, if the Lord is with him, will be able to chase a thousand foes, yea to put twelve thousand to fight. (1 Sam. xviii. 7).

This joyful courage in conflict, this devout confidence of victory in pleading the cause of God's grace as the alone source of salvation, cannot fail to remind us of the Reformers, who were essentially heralds of the same grace, and opposers of the delusion that salvation can be earned by human merit. The method, it is true, which the scholastic divine followed was different from theirs, owing to the peculiar character of mediæval culture. The Reformers went to work theologically, Bradwardine philosophically. He gives as his his reason for adopting this method, that the later Pelagians had asserted that Pelagius had been overcome purely by

church authority and by theological proofs, but in a philosophical and rational way it had never been possible to confute him. Bradwardine's design, therefore, is to make use mainly of philosophical arguments and authorities. In regard to authorities he adheres, in fact, so closely to his declared design, that he gives more space to the sayings of philosophers, old and new, and attaches more stress to them, than he does to his own independent reasonings. However, he also elucidates the question theologically, namely by arguments of Scripture and appeals to the Fathers and Scholastics, with the view, as he says himself, of showing the right sense of many passages of Holy Scripture and the Fathers, which had often been misunderstood and perverted by the Pelagians of ancient and later times.

Waiving, for want of space, any analysis of the doctrinal contents and reasonings of a work so bulky and profound, it may be observed, in general terms, that the scientific success of the performance is less satisfactory than the religious and moral spirit with which it is imbued. For the absolute determinism which Bradwardine sets forth, labours under an inappropriate mixing up of metaphysical and physical ideas with an ethical question, and thus rests the doctrine that salvation is grounded exclusively upon grace upon an insecure foundation.

But the spirit which animates him is worthy of all recognition. He is filled with a moral pathos-a lofty earnestness of Christian piety, which cannot fail to make the deepest impression.113 His drift is to exhibit grace as a free and unmerited gift of God, and to strike down every imagination of human merit in the work of conversion. It is for this reason that he controverts in

particular the favourite dogma of the Scholastics that man can qualify himself to receive grace, in other words, that he can deserve grace, if not to the strict extent of full worthiness (de condigno), still in the sense of meetness and suitableness (de congruo). To acquire merit before God, Bradwardine holds to be impossible for man in any sense whatsoever. He who affirms the contrary turns God, in effect, into a poor trafficker; for he who' receives grace on the footing of any kind of merit, has purchased the grace and not received it as a free gift. Bradwardine sets out, in fact, as pointed out above, from his own experience-from actual life—and he keeps actual experience ever in his eye. And in regard to the authorities for the doctrine of unmerited grace to whom he cares most to appeal, he is thoroughly alive to the fact that it was by their own living experience that they too were brought to the knowledge of that grace. The apostle Paul, for example, was "a chosen vessel of grace," inasmuch as, at a time when he was not thinking of good works at all, nor was even standing aloof from deeds of wickedness; at a time when he was thirsting for Christian blood, and was even persecuting the Lord himself, suddenly a light from heaven shone round about him, and the grace of Jesus Christ at the same instant preveniently laid hold upon him. He speaks of the Apostle as emphatically a child of grace, who, in gratitude for the same, makes devout and honourable mention of this grace-his mother-in almost all his epistles, vindicating her claims, particularly in his Epistle to the Romans, where he makes grace the subject of a large and acute investigation 115 which fills the epistle almost from beginning to end. And quite in a

similar spirit he remarks upon Augustine that, "like the Apostle, he was at first an unbeliever, a blasphemer, and an enemy of the grace of Jesus Christ, but after the same grace had converted him with like suddenness, he bécame, after the apostle's example, an extoller, a magni-, ficent and mighty champion of grace."116 And like the Apostle Paul, like Augustine the great church-father of the west, Thomas Bradwardine too became, by the light from heaven which shone upon him in his youth, an extoller and champion of the grace of God, in opposition to the Pelagian and self-righteous spirit which prevailed in his time.

It was by no means his intention, indeed, in so doing, to place himself in antagonism to the Church of Rome. On the contrary, he declares expressly his steadfast belief in the doctrinal authority of the Church. He submits his writings to her judgment; it is for her to determine what is orthodox in the questions which he has investigated; he wishes with all his heart to have her support where he does battle with the enemies of God; where he errs, to have her correction; where he is in the right, to have her confirmation.117 But still, in the last resort, he consoles himself with the help of God, who forsakes no one who is a defender of His cause.118

SECTION VI.-The Vision of Piers Plowman.

WHILE the learned Doctor was defending God's cause with the weapons of science, and seeking to bring back his age from the paths of Pelagian error into the one only way of salvation, the same cry for grace was also heard from the

conscience of the common people, in their feeling of the urgent need of a better state of things.

About twelve years after Bradwardine's death, this feeling of society found expression in a great popular poem, which yet remains to be noticed by us as a speaking sign of the times. We refer to The Vision of Piers Plowman, which reveals to us, not so much by the social position of its author, as by the circle of readers for whom he wrote and the spirit of which the work is full, the deep ferment which at that time was spreading through the lowest and broadest stratum of the English people. The author himself undoubtedly belonged to the educated class, or rather to the learned class, which was then almost identical with it. He is familiar with the whole learning of his time; he knows the Classics and the Fathers, the Scholastics and the Chroniclers, and also the Canon Law; he quotes the Bible according to the Vulgate and the "Glossa;" quotes likewise Latin Church hymns in the original; in short, he was a scholar, and probably a monk. In the sixteenth century the tradition existed that his name was Robert Longland or Langland, born at Cleobury Mortimer, in Shropshire, educated in Oxford, and then admitted a monk in the Benedictine Priory of Great Malvern, Worcestershire.

Several allusions to localities, such as the Malvern Hills and the like, point to the fact that he must have lived in the west of England, on the borders of Wales. Perhaps he sprang from the agricultural population; at all events, he shared their feelings, and wrote for them and from their point of view; and this he did to such good purpose, that his poetry went straight to the people's hearts, and continued to be loved by them and committed to memory, and

VOL. I.

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