This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1738 edition. Excerpt: ... be of another mind, and write against it in some of those two hundred books of his that were burntj of which, as Mr. Fuller1 iaith, not a tittle is left. Several of the Romijlo errors are asserted in that book; as purgatory, adoration of angels, the authority of the church, &c. which k is plain he afterwards denied. Very few who set themselves to reform religion, fee all the abuses in it at first; but most commonly add new opinions, consequent to those they at first maintained; and so an honest historian m supr poses Wickllff to have done. The heretical opinions charged upon Wickliff in the latter part of his life, and after his death, are much more numerous than those he was accused of at the beginning of his prosecution. Pope Gregory charged him with 18 errors; Thomas Arundel archbishop of Canterbury with 24; the Council of Constance with 45; Thomas Waldenfis computeth 80; John Luke, D. D. in Oxford, brings up the account to 266; and last of all, John Cocleus raises the number- to 303. But whether he denied infant-baptism, Many of or not, it .is certain he was the first re- w DEGREESiffr DEGREES former of any note, that spread those te- Zvrt Bapnets among the Engli/h which tend to tills, overthrow the practice of baptizing in 1 Church-History, p. 135, fuller, p. 131. ! fants. fants. And if he did not pursue the consequence of his own doctrines so far, yet many of his followers did, and were made Baptists by it. He taught, that no rule or ceremony ought to be received in the church, which is not plainly confirmed by the word of God: and therefore said, ' That wise men leave that as impertinent, which is not 'plainly expressed in scripture n.' Now, the following of this rule in reformation, must needs tend to the casting