was in the thirteenth century the great centre of the Friars'
movement in England. Others will remember that in the next century it
produced, in John Wycliffe, the great opponent of the Friars, the man
who, as the first of the Reformers, is to many the most interesting
figure in mediaeval English religious history. In the sixteenth
century, Oxford plays no great part in the actual revolution in the
English Church; yet it will be a place attractive to many who cherish
the memory of the "Oxford Reformers," the members of Erasmus' circle
--John Colet, Thomas More, William Grocyn, and other scholars--who
hoped by sound learning to amend the Church without violent change.
Some, on the other hand, will see in the sixteenth-century Oxford,
the school which trained men for the Counter-Reformation, such as the
heroic Jesuit, Campion, or Cardinal Alien, the founder of the English
College at Douai. The Anglican "Via Media" found its special
representatives in Oxford in Jewel and Hooker, and in Laud, the
practical genius who carried out its principles in the Church
administration of his day. It was fitting that the movement for the
revival of Church teaching in England in the nineteenth century
should be an Oxford movement, and Newman's pulpit at St. Mary's and
the chapel of Oriel College are sacred in the eyes of Anglicans all
over the world. In the interval between Laud and Newman, Church
principles had found a different development in another Oxford man;
John Wesley's character and spiritual life were built up in Oxford,
till he went forth to do the work of an Evangelist during more than
half of the eighteenth century. Wycliffe, More, Hooker, Laud, Wesley,
Newman, these are not the names of men who have affected the
religious history of the world as did Luther, Calvin or Ignatius
Loyola; but they have affected profoundly the religious life of the
English-speaking race, and Oxford must ever be a sacred place for
their sakes.