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In England from Wicliffe to Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

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Chapter 11<br />

<strong>In</strong>fluence of the Wars of<br />

the Fifteenth Century on<br />

the Progress of Protestantism<br />

THE Day that was hastening <strong>to</strong>wards the world<br />

sent terrible tempests before it as the heralds of its<br />

approach. Than the middle of the fifteenth century<br />

there is, perhaps, no point in modern his<strong>to</strong>ry that<br />

presents a scene of more universal turmoil and<br />

calamity, if we except the period that witnessed the<br />

fall of the Western Empire. Nowhere is there<br />

stability or rest. All around, as far as the eye can<br />

reach, appears a sea whose waters, swollen in<strong>to</strong><br />

huge billows by the force of the mighty winds, are<br />

assailng the very foundations of the earth. The<br />

Christian of that day, when he cast his eyes around<br />

on a world rocked and <strong>to</strong>ssed by these great<br />

tempests, must have despaired, had he not<br />

remembered that there is One who "sits King upon<br />

the floods."<br />

163

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