the work was further extended amongst the Poles and Prussians. The
work was begun in Norway in 960, and in Muscovy in 989, the Swedes
propagated Christianity in Finland, in 1168, Lithuania became
Christian in 1386, and Samogitia in 1439. The Spaniards forced popery
upon the inhabitants of South-America, and the Portuguese in Asia.
The Jesuits were sent into China in 1552. Xavier, whom they call the
apostle of the Indians, laboured in the East-Indies and Japan, from
1541 to 1552, and several millions of Capauchins were sent to Africa
in the seventeenth century. But blind zeal, gross superstition, and
infamous cruelties, so marked the appearances of religion all this
time, that the professors of Christianity needed conversion, as much
as the heathen world.

A few pious people had fled from the general corruption, and lived
obscurely in the vallies of Piedmont and Savoy, who were like the seed
of the church. Some of them were now and then necessitated to travel
into other parts, where they faithfully testified against the
corruptions of the times. About 1369 Wickliffe began to preach the
faith in England, and his preaching and writings were the means of the
conversion of great numbers, many of whom became excellent preachers;
and a work was begun which afterwards spread in England, Hungary,
Bohemia, Germany, Switzerland, and many other places. John Huss and
Jerom of Prague, preached boldly and successfully in Bohemia, and the
adjacent parts. In the following century Luther, Calvin, Melancton,
Bucer, Martyr, and many others, stood up against all the rest of the
world; they preached, and prayed, and wrote; and nations agreed one
after another to cast off the yoke of popery, and to embrace the
doctrine of the gospel.

In England, episcopal tyranny succeeded to popish cruelty, which, in