Fourteenth century — During the fourteenth century the density and blackness of the clouds overhanging the most of Catholic Europe increase; but the dark masses break partially away in England and Bohemia, and John Wycliffe, "the Morning Star of the Reformation," appears, disseminating the light of scriptural truth; and the Waldenses in Northern Italy are still blessed with the starry beams of heavenly light.

The characteristics of the fourteenth century are the downfall of the papal Pseudo-theocracy (in the miserable overthrow and death of Boniface VIII.); the Abject subjection of the papacy to France; the so-called papal "Babylonish Captivity of Seventy Years;" the beginning of the papal Schism of forty years; the culmination of papal avarice and simony and extortion (in John XXII and Boniface IX); the papal abridgement of the Decalogue into two words, "Give Gold;" the unspeakable debauchery of the papal court and city, Avignon; the revival of the old Roman and Greek Pagan literature and Infidelity and immorality in Italy (Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio being the chief writers); the brief apparent restoration of the old Roman Republic by Rienzi, "The last Of The Tribunes" the improvement of the mariners compass, and the first use of cannon in war; the establishment of fifteen universities in Europe; the first authorization, by a Roman Catholic council (that of Ravenna in 1311), of the substitution of sprinkling or pouring for baptism; the decline of Pelagian Scholasticism and the rise of Pelagian and pantheistic Mysticism; the papal persecution and abolition of the wealthy Order of the Knight Templars at the dictation of the avaricious French king, Louis the Fair; the height of the Catholic persecution of the Jews; the papal persecution of the Fratricelli, the Dolcinites, and the Waldenses in France, Italy and Germany, and of the lepers in France; the discovery of the Canary Islands by Genoese and Spanish seamen, and the papal claim to those islands; the conquest of Asia Minor by the Ottoman Turks and their establishment in Europe; the unparalleled ravages of the plague called black death in Asia, Europe and Africa, destroying from one-half to two thirds of the population; the excessive increase of penance by flagellation; the celebration of the three papal Jubilees in Rome (in 1350, 1390 and 1400); the peasant insurrections in England and France produced by governmental oppression; the increase of the power and the constitutional liberty of England; the conversion of Lithuania and Poland to Catholicism; the partial nominal success of Catholic Franciscan Missions in Northwest Persia, and temporary success in Tartary and China; the career and productions of Geoffrey Chaucer, "the father of English poetry," and John Wycliffe, "the father of English prose"--Wycliffe, the greatest and foremost man of the fourteenth century, the centre of the social, literary and religious of his country and age, the able, bold and enlightened Catholic "priest" and "doctor," who, though living and dying in the Catholic communion, devoted his wonderful God-given talents, energies and illumination to the study, translation and circulation of the scriptures ( which he maintained to be the only authoritative standard of faith and practice) and to the severe and fearless exposure of the anti-scriptural traditions, superstitions and corruptions of the Catholic Mendicants and Papacy and Episcopacy—the uncompromising predestinarian, who did not flinch from declaring that the salvation of the soul depends, not upon outward ordinances or any of the imperfect works of human righteousness, but upon the sovereign and efficacious grace of God. This century was also marked by the rise and spread of the Lollards in Bohemia and England (the followers of Wycliffe in England being called Lollards), and the reformatary labors of Conrad, Milicz and Matthias in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, and the early life of the martyr-reformers, John Hus and his companion Jerome, in the same city. The most important single event of the fourteenth century was the appearance of Wycliffe’s ENGLISH BIBLE, the first translation of the entire scriptures into a modern language.

Of the wretched end of Pope Boniface VIII. An account has already been given in connection with the thirteenth century. "The quarrel between Boniface VIII. And Philip the Fair," says Milman, "is one of the great epochs in the papal history, the turning point after which, for a time at least, the papacy sank with a swift and precipitate descent, and from which it never rose again to the same commanding height, It led rapidly to that debasing period which has been called the Babylonian captivity of the popes in Avignon, during which they became not much more than the slaves of the kings of France." "From this ill-omened transfer of the papacy from Rome to Avignon," says Trench, "springs the Great Schism of the West; from the Schism, and with a view to the healing of this, the Three Councils (of Pisa, Constance and Basel, in the fifteenth century); while all these events effectually work together for the bringing about of the Reformation."

Benedict XI., the successor of Boniface, not being sufficiently subservient to the selfish purposes of Philip The Fair, King of France, died in less than a year after his accession to the papacy, having been poisoned, as was believed. A Frenchman, who assumed the name of Clement V., was, in 1305, elected pope through the influence of King Philip, who had previously exacted from him several hard conditions, among which were the full absolution of the king and all whom he had employed in strife with Boniface, the tenths for five years from the clergy of the realm, the condemnation of the memory of Boniface, and a secret promise in blank, to be afterwards stated by the king—believed to have been the abolition of the Order of Knight Templars. At the request of Philip, Clement in 1309 removed the papal court from Rome to Avignon, a city situated on the Rhone, three hundred and sixty-five miles southeast of Paris, but not then belonging to France. Here seven popes reigned until Gregory XI., in 1376, re-established the papal chair in Rome. Avignon, during the papal residence came to have a hundred thousand inhabitants; and Petrarch, thought he had two natural children, repeatedly speaks with loathing abhorrence of the moral corruption of the city, declaring it to be " the sink of Christendom." Several of the popes themselves set the example of profligacy. The unscrupulous, relentless and rapacious monster, John XXII., who cruelly tortured and put to death multitudes of the anti-papal Fratricelli, Dolcinites, Waldenses and Jews, and even poor lepers and others accused of witchcraft, left, at his death, twenty-five million gold florins in specie, plate and jewels—equal to fifty million dollars, and probably worth as much as two hundred million dollars at present. In extreme opposition to the unrivalled papal and Catholic avarice, the Fratricelli, or Spiritual Franciscans, of whom two thousand were burned at the stake, declared that absolute poverty was the sole perfection of Christianity; that even granaries and cellars were a wicked mistrust of God’s providence; that the birds of the air and the beasts of the field ought to be the examples of the people of God. John XXII. Was perhaps the greatest politician among the popes. Plunging more deeply than all his predecessors or successors into the political affairs of his time.

The wealthy Order of Knight Templars, founded early in the twelfth century for war against the Saracens, was, in the early part of the fourteenth century, sacrificed by Pope Clement V. to King Philip’s avarice, to avert, if possible, the condemnation of the memory of Pope Boniface. Their number throughout "Christendom" was at this time fifteen thousand. They were charged with infidelity, idolatry and sensuality; large numbers in France were horribly tortured by the inquisition, the confessions thus extorted from them being afterwards recanted; and a hundred and fifteen, including the Grand Master, James Du Moley, were burned alive in Paris alone. The order was dissolved by the council of Vienne in 1311. King Philip obtained their vast wealth in France. But he and pope Clement died in 1314, the next year after Du Moley burned.

In 1378, at Rome, Urban VI. was chosen Pope—the French "Cardinals" afterwards declared that they were forced to this choice by the violent threats of the Roman populace demanding, under penalty of their lives, a Roman Pope; and Urban was so insolent and cruel after his accession to the papacy that these "Cardinals" retired to Anagni, declared that Urban was an apostate, an accursed Antichrist, and they elected Clement VII. Pope, who removed his seat to Avignon. The different nations of Europe acknowledged that one of these two rivals to be pope whose circumstances best suited their individual temporal interests. Thus, says Wycliffe, was the head of Antichrist cloven in twain, and each part fought against the other; and the friends of truth lifted up their heads and rejoiced. Each pope excommunicated, cursed and warred upon the other; and this "Great Western Schism" lasted from 1378 to 1417. There being two costly papal courts, and the field of revenue being divided, the papal exactions upon the Catholic world became intolerable; and many, not knowing which so-called "Head of the church" to look to, looked away from both to Christ, who is the only Head and King of His spiritual people. Among the innumerable and abominable devices to fill the papal exchequer were the sales of income-yielding "church" offices, even before they were vacated by death, to all who applied for them, the pope selling the same office to as many as a hundred persons if he could, and some paying for it two or three times, and then seeking to compass the death of the incumbent so that they might take his place, and after obtaining the office, never visiting the place, but sending their agents to collect the revenues; also, the multiplication of Jubilees in Rome, reducing the period from a hundred to fifty, and thirty-three, and twenty-five years, in order for the popes to reap more frequently the golden harvests of the sales of indulgences to sin; and the establishment of pardon-marts in numerous cities in Europe, spreading tables with rich cloths, like bankers, near the altars in the "church" buildings, setting a price upon each sin, and trading pardons for gold. At this time "the whole (Catholic) organization," says Trench, "seemed little better than a vast and elaborate machinery for the wringing, under every conceivable plea, of the greatest possible amount of money from the faithful." Numerous Protestant organizations seem little else in this nineteenth century of ours; as the Swedish princess, "Saint" Bridget, in the fourteenth century, said of Rome, so to a great degree with them—"All the commandments seem to be abridged into one precept, Give Gold."

While the papal court was at Avignon, the brilliant but weak Rienzi, a Catholic professing to be specially inspired with the Holy Ghost, restored at Rome the semblance of the old Republic for seven months in 1347 and two months in 1354; but, becoming a drunken tyrant, he was assassinated by the people. Relieved from the incubus of the immediate presence of the papacy, which had pressed upon them for nearly a thousand years, the Italian Catholics eagerly returned to the more ostensible paganism of former times, reviving the natural literature, cruelty and profligacy of ancient heathen Rome.

The most general and fatal epidemic that ever desolated the world was the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Originating in China, preceded by dreadful droughts, famines, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and swarms of locusts, characterized by black carbuncles and buboes all over the body, terminating fatally in two or three days, sometimes announced by dense and awful clouds coming from the east, poisoning the water and the air, maddening some and demoralizing others, the horrible pestilence ravaged the entire Eastern Hemisphere, scattering death everywhere on land and sea. It is believed to be a moderate estimate that fifty millions of human beings perished. The plague prevailed in Europe from 1348 to 1351. Flagellation was revived by armies of tens of thousands of people marching from city to city, chanting mournful ditties, and at stated times, lacerating their bodies with triple scourges armed with points of iron—thus blindly seeking to expiate their sins and avert the pestilence. The Jews, so often treated by professed Christians as scape-goats, were tortured and murdered by thousands on the charge of poisoning the wells. The Jews were also repeatedly persecuted, during this century, in France and Spain, for their wealth and their religion; hundreds of thousands are said to have submitted to compulsory "baptism;" those who refused thus to submit were either banished or massacred, and their property confiscated.

In 1386 Jagello, the Grand Duke of Poland, in order to win the young princess Hedwig, and with her the crown of Poland, was baptized into the Roman Catholic communion; and he compelled his heathen subjects to submit to the same ceremony, as the Laplanders had yielded to Catholic "conversion" fifty years before.

Let it never be forgotten by the friend of truth that it was early in the fourteenth century when even the Roman Catholic "Church" first (in the Council of Ravenna, in 1311) "legalized baptism by sprinkling, by leaving it to the choice of the officiating minister—this practice having been before permitted even by Romanists only in the case of sick persons, but having gradually spread in spite of the opposition of councils and hostile decrees" (See the Encyclopedia Britannica, ninth edition, vol. iii., page 351; Schaff’s History of the Apostolic Church, pp. 568-570; and Stanley’s Christian Institutions, pp. 7, 8, 17, 18). The Greek Catholic "Church" has never ceased to oppose this innovation of Roman Catholicism.

About the year 1300 there was formed in Antwerp, Belgium, a semimonastic society devoted to the care of the sick and the burial of the dead. They were called Alexians, from the "patron-saint;" Cellites, from their dwelling in cells; and Lollards, from their practice of singing dirges at funerals, and of humming psalms—the Low-German word lollen or lullen signifying to sing softly or slowly. "They soon spread through the Netherlands and Germany, and in the frequent pestilences of that period were useful, and everywhere welcome. The clergy and the begging-friars, however, who neglected their duty of attending the sick, disliked and persecuted the Lollards, and called them heretics; and the name of Lollards was afterward very commonly given as a term of reproach to different classes of religionists, sometimes to the truly pious, sometimes to the worst pretenders; and in England it became a designation of the followers of Wycliffe."

Three zealous reformers labored, within the Catholic communion, during the fourteenth century, at Prague, in Bohemia: Milicz of Kremsier, Conrad of Waldhausen, and Matthias of Janow; John Hus and Jerome of Prague were also born in this century (the former in 1369, and the latter in 1365), but their labors for reform took place in the fifteenth century. A full account of the labors and sufferings of these five men is given in the last volume of Neander’s Church History. Milicz and Conrad were more practical, and Matthias more doctrinal, in their reformatory labors. Milicz preached especially to the poor and the sinful, sometimes five times in a day and several hours at a time; he gave them nearly everything that he had, and he exercised great influence among them, and brought about a wonderful moral reformation in Prague. Conrad was especially successful in preaching to Jews; in denouncing the hypocrisy of the wealthy and luxurious begging-friars he offered to give sixty groats ($2.40) to any one who could cite a single passage from the New Testament showing that Christ had ever begged. As Milicz was the precursor of Hus, so Matthias was the precursor of Luther. Matthias exposed and denounced the superstitions and corruptions of the hierarchy, and maintained the indispensability and the sufficiency of an internal, vital, spiritual faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in order to eternal salvation. All these five Bohemian reformers were Augustinian predestinarians.

England, like the remainder of the world, was at this time overrun with Pelagianism in theory and life. Almost the only man in the Established "Church," in the early part of this century, of whom we have any account as opposing conditionalism, was Thomas Bradwardine (1290-1349), who for six weeks before his death was "Archbishop of Canterbury." He was a most stringent supralapsarian predestinarian, not only denying all merit to man, but referring all things, both good and evil, including all the acts of rational beings, directly to the Divine will as the efficient cause, ignoring a distinction between the Divine will and the Divine permission in reference to evil, but still insisting that creatures are morally responsible, "since evil subjectively contradicts the will of God."

John Wycliffe (born 1324, died 1384) was almost as stringent a predestinarian as Thomas Bradwardine. "He went far beyond Augustine himself in his polemical hostility to everything that seemed verging on Pelagianism, to all worth or ability on the part of the creature; his doctrine amounting, in fact, to the denial of free-will and of contingency. He affirmed that the original eternal ground of all things, including sin and the punishment of sin, was the Divine predestination; but still he would not throw back the causality of evil upon God, no more than ascribe the cause of darkness to the sun. While sin was necessary, its guilt and punishment was equally necessary." "In a severe Augustinian Predestinarianism," says Milman, "the more austere churchmen and all the first Reformers (or they would hardly have dared to be Reformers) met as to its theory, if not its application." "Wycliffe’s predestinarian Augustinianism," says J. R. Green, "formed the groundwork of his later theological revolt."

Of the first forty years of Wycliffe’s life little is known; but much is known of his last twenty years. He was a pupil, a graduate, a master, a doctor, and a professor in Oxford University, an institution second to none in Europe, except the University of Paris, and in Oxford Wycliffe stood without a rival. He was a man of slender frame, genial disposition, immense energy, immovable conviction, and of austere plainness and purity of life, "the unsparing assailant of abuses, the boldest and most indefatigable of controversialists, the first reformer who dared, when deserted and alone, to question and deny the creed of the Christendom around him, to break through the tradition of the past, and, with his last breath, to assert the freedom of religious thought against the dogmas of the papacy." In many ways did Divine Providence favor him, and prepare the way for his important life-work. The long and intolerable exactions of the papacy, the removal of the pope to Avignon and his subjection to France (the inveterate enemy of England), the death of Pope Gregory XI. when he was proceeding against Wycliffe, the ensuing Schism in the papacy itself, one pope cursing, warring against, and weakening the other, the favor and protection, at different times, of King Edward III., and of one of his sons, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and of Joanna, widow of the Black Prince, another son of Edward III., and of Queen Anne of Bohemia, the wife of King Richard II. of England, and of the citizens of London—all were clear providences favoring the success of the reformatory ideas and plans of Wycliffe. Another prominent and remarkable feature of the life of Wycliffe was the progressive development of his views of Scripture truth; in his daily study and spiritual understanding of the Scriptures he discovered more and more of the unscripturalness of Romanism, and "he was thus carried along from one step to another in his progress as a reformer." His progress was not only in the Protestant but in the Baptist direction; and I am persuaded that, if he had lived longer, and additional Divine light had been given him, he would have been a thorough-going BIBLE BAPTIST. No man perfectly understands the Scriptures; we all now see through a glass darkly; it is only at the time and to the extent that the Holy Spirit opens our understandings that we discern spiritual things. Wycliffe first denounced the corrupt practices and then the corrupt doctrines of Romanism leading to those practices. It is said that in 1360 he made a vigorous assault on the manifold impositions and corruptions of the Mendicant Friars, dwelling on their blasphemy in comparing their institutes to the gospel, their founder to the Savior; branding the wealthier Friars as hypocrites who, professing mendicancy, had all the pride and luxury of wealth; and the poorer as able-bodied beggars, who ought not to be permitted to infest the land. –The English Parliament, in 1376, declared that the taxes paid in England to the "Church" of Rome amounted to five times as much as those levied by the king; a great portion of these taxes was squandered on the luxuries and vices of the pope and his cardinals. In 1213 King John had basely surrendered his kingdom to the pope, and agreed to pay him an annual tribute of a thousand marks (about three thousand dollars). After 1332 the yearly payment was in arrear, because paying such a tribute was virtually subsidizing France, which country was at war with England. Pope Urban V. re-demanded this tax in 1365. Wycliffe wrote a powerful argument in resistance to this demand, and maintained that the pope had no temporal power. The English king and Parliament refused to continue the payment, and the pope has never revived his claim. —On an embassy, in 1374, to the papal legates at Bruges, Belgium, in reference to the extortions of Rome, Wycliffe discovered still more of papal corruptions, and on his return he declared that Christ was the only Head of the church, and that the pope was Antichrist. In 1375 he was made, for a short time, chaplain to the king; and, in 1376, "rector" of Lutterworth. In 1377 he was summoned to answer at "St. Paul’s" in London, before the "Archbishop of Canterbury" and the "Bishop of London," for erroneous opinions; but he was delivered even from trial by the favor of the powerful John of Gaunt who accompanied him. In 1378 he was delivered from trial in a similar case at Lambeth by the favor of some citizens of London who were present, and by the command of the Princess Joanna. In the same year his persecutor, Pope Gregory XI., died, and the papal Schism occurred.—Preaching had been almost entirely abandoned by the rich, worldly, corrupt and indolent Catholic clergy. Wycliffe, longing to bring home to the great body of the people the words of eternal life, encouraged many who believed and understood some important scriptural truths to go forth as "poor preachers." "Barefoot, and clad in long russet garments of coarsest material, and, being unmarried, content with food and lodging, they passed two and two through the land, denouncing everywhere the sins of all sorts and conditions of men, but with an especial emphasis the sins, the luxury, the sloth, the ignorance of the clergy. They declared, with simplicity and earnestness, the plain truths of the gospel in the vernacular tongue. Not one in five hundred of the people could read; and their ministers did not preach to them. The naked truths of the Scriptures shook, thrilled, enthralled the souls of men so that the adversaries of Wycliffe soon complained that half of England was infected with Lollardy." Wycliffe taught that preaching the gospel was the highest office in the world, and that the life of the preacher should give emphasis to his preaching; that, like Paul, he should not seek to obtain the gold, silver or apparel of his hearers, but work with his own hands and be content with the barest necessaries, and follow the pattern of Christ in poverty, self-denial and renunciation of the world; also that all the ministers of Christ were on an absolute footing of equality; that, as in the apostolic church, there should be no other offices than presbyters (or Elders) and Deacons; that there should be no popes or prelatical "Bishops" over these, because Christ is the only Head of the church. He said that Christians need not visit the heathen for the purpose of converting them and dying as martyrs; but they could do plenty of preaching in England soon to win the crown of martyrdom—a prediction sadly verified in the next two centuries. The tithes, he said, should be given to the poor, while preachers should be satisfied with the voluntary contributions of their flocks.—Wat Tyler’s insurrection in 1381 was caused, as the latest and best historians agree, not by religious, but by political grievances—the people demanded a better government and the abrogation of the poll tax. Wycliffe did not encourage and was not at all responsible for it. In the same year the English Parliament passed the first English statute against heresy, enjoining the arrest, trial and imprisonment of heretics. Weak and corrupt men wrested Wycliffe’s teachings from their spiritual connection, and made such applications and perversions as he never intended; just as there were political commotions at the same time with the Donatist movement in North Africa in the fourth century, and in connection with the Lutheran Reformation in the sixteenth century.—Having already denounced, as utterly unscriptural, papal pardons, indulgences, excommunications, absolutions, pilgrimages, image worship and saint worship, Wycliffe in 1381 boldly declared his disbelief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, the chief support of mediaeval Catholicism; he maintained that, in the elements of the Lord’s Supper, Christ was not bodily, but only spiritually and sacramentally present; the ordinance of baptism he also retained, but did not regard it as essential to salvation. Condemned by Oxford University, and deserted by John of Gaunt and numerous other followers, he fearlessly stood by what he believed the Scriptures taught him, declaring that the Scriptures are the only ultimate authority in all matters of faith and practice; that all the good in man is due to grace, and that our eternal salvation is the work of Christ alone. The greatest work of his life was the translation of the entire Scriptures into the English language from the Latin vulgate, completed in 1384, the year that he died—for this most important work God had prepared and preserved him. He did not feel sufficiently acquainted with the Hebrew and Greek languages to translate directly from the original Scriptures. His version, therefore, is not distinguished for critical accuracy: but it was by far the most valuable addition made to English literature before the sixteenth century. Only portions of the Psalms had before been rendered into English, and that for the clergy, not for the common people. Wycliffe’s enemies soon complained that "laymen and even women knew more of the Scriptures than the best educated of the clergy." God had prepared a people to receive the truth; and now He sent them the truth.

"An eager appetite for scriptural knowledge," says Mr. J. J. Blunt, "was excited among the people, which they would make any sacrifice and risk any danger to gratify. Entire copies of the Bible, when they could only be multiplied by means of amanuenses, were too costly to be within the reach of very many readers; but those who could not procure ‘the volume of the book’ would give a load of hay for a few favorite chapters, and many such scraps were consumed upon the persons of the martyrs at the stake. They would hide the forbidden treasure under the floors of their houses, and put their lives in peril rather than forego the book they desired; they would sit up at night, sometimes all night long, their doors being shut for fear of surprise, reading or hearing others read the word of God; they would bury themselves in the woods, and there converse with it in solitude; they would tend their herds in the fields, and still steal an hour for drinking in the good tidings of great joy." As in the time of Samuel’s childhood, "the word of the Lord was precious in those days."

I believe that Wycliffe was a child of God in Babylon. He came out of Babylon in one sense, but not in another—he denounced her abominations, but he did not leave her communion. She showed her deadly hostility to him by persecuting him all that she could during his life, and by burning his books at Prague in 1410, and burning his bones at Lutterworth in 1428. His ashes were cast into the river Swift, which, as Fuller and Wordsworth remark, conveyed them through the Avon and the Severn into the sea, and thus disseminated them, as his teachings were disseminated, over the world. How vain for man to fight against God! The truth is indestructible.

Episcopalian historians, of the High-Church order, give thanks that the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century did not occur in Wycliffe’s time and was not of his doing; as otherwise the Catholic substratum of their own communion might have altogether disappeared. This congratulation will give Bible Baptists a still higher opinion of the spirituality and scripturalness of Wycliffe’s teachings. Even Mr. Trench (in his Mediaeval Church History) admits that, notwithstanding the severe persecutions of the next two centuries, "the Lollards lived on; and when the Reformation came at last, these humble men, as we may well believe, did much to contribute to it that element of sincerity, truth and uprightness, without which it never could have succeeded." And Mr. Jennings (in his Ecclesia Anglicana) plainly shows the un-protestant and Romanist spirit of his objections to Wycliffe by repeatedly ridiculing the idea of "all religion being gotten from the Bible, each reader being his own commentator."

The English Lollards flourished most in the ten years after Wycliffe’s death. In 1394 they petitioned Parliament for a reformation of the "Established Church" on more scriptural principles, but without success. In 1399 Thomas Arundel, "Archbishop of Canterbury," aided Henry IV. in his usurpation of the English throne; and Henry agreed to pay him, and thus retain the support of the hierarchy, by persecuting the Lollards.

Fifteenth Century.—Of all the nineteen centuries of the Christian era, the fifteenth, according to the unanimous testimony of all accurate and reliable historians, was the most corrupt in doctrine and practice. The densest and blackest clouds overhung all Catholic Europe, lurid everywhere with the flames of persecution. Of the long night of the Middle Ages this was the darkest period just before the day; only a few stars of inferior magnitude shone here and there through the awful gloom.