Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR TO WYCLIFFB. "Christ is the Head of the Church."—Eph. v. 23. |N the preceding lectures we have traced a pure evangelical Scriptural Christianity in Scotland and Ireland, and in parts of England, down to the middle of the twelfth century, outside of and opposed to Rome. And even after that date we saw that the heroes of Bannockburn, in the year 1314, led to glory and to victory by Robert the Bruce, were true descendants of the Free Christian Church so long upheld in Scotland by their forefathers. It is a mistake, therefore, to suppose that the true light of Christianity was ever quenched in Great Britain in these early centuries, or that Rome ever held undisputed sway in this country. Much less is Great Britain indebted to Rome for the light of the Gospel. Noble men of God all adown the centuries held forth the Word of Life in spite of the efforts of Rome to stamp out the pure religion of Christ. While the ancient Church of Ireland and Scotland was still strong in the hearts of the people, William the Conqueror, having conquered the Saxons in chapter{Section 4England in 1066, threw off the yoke of Rome. No sooner had the foot of the Conqueror touched the soil of Great Britain than he seemed to be inspired with the idea of religious liberty, for which the British Church had contended for centuries. He determined to allow no prince or prelate to possess in his dominions any power or jurisdiction independent of his own. The papacy unwittingly furnished him with weapons to accomplish his purpose. The Roman legate pressed the king to dismiss the English bishops in a body. The bishops, finding that they must choose between the king and the pope, at once sided with William. The Archbishop of Canterbury refused to go to Rome at the comm...