This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1905. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... also exemplified a noble care for the religious needs of the common people, and displayed a popular power at least not less striking than that of the better known reformers. Altogether those critical years of reform in Europe were strenuous in conflict and in toil, and through their preachers the Word of God came to the people with power. CHAPTER XIV Preachers Of The Reformat1on 1n England And Scotland Both.the causes and character of the Reformation in Great Britain differed in many important respects from those of the movement on the Continent, and yet there was necessarily very close connection and sympathy between these movements. In both cases the relation between the Reformation and preaching was close and vital. Except Wiclif, there was in England no great preacher before the Reformation; since that time there have been no preachers in all the world who, in the essentials of true pulpit eloquence, have surpassed the English Protestant divines. And, whatever may be the explanation of the singular fact, it is true that no English Catholic preacher has ever occupied corresponding rank with his great Protestant contemporaries in his own land or with his more noted Romanist brethren in others. Cardinal Newman is no exception, because his best pulpit work belongs, not to his Catholic, but to his Anglican days. In Scotland the case is exactly parallel; no great preacher before the Reformation, since then, in the Protestant bodies, a multitude. It is idle to conjecture what might have been the influence on preaching if a purified Romanism had been the modern type of British Christianity, but the fact is that the Reformation produced the modern British pulpit. 1. The Engl1sh Reformat1on And 1ts Preach1ng No doubt the character of Henry VIII. and his suit ...