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* See note I, at the end of the volume.

But besides this political jealousy, there was another reason which inspired this imperious monarch with an aversion to the reformers. He had early declared his sentiments against Luther; and having entered the lists in those scholastic quarrels, he had received from his courtiers and theologians infinite applause for his performance. Elated by this imaginary success, and blinded by a natural arrogance and obstinacy of temper, he had entertained the most lofty opinion of his own erudition; and he received with impatience, mixed with contempt, any contradiction to his sentiments. Luther also had been so imprudent as to treat in a very indecent manner his royal antagonist; and though he afterwards made the most humble submissions to Henry, and apologized for the vehemence of his former expressions, he never could efface the hatred which the king had conceived against him and his doctrines. The idea of heresy still appeared detestable as well as formidable to that prince; and whilst his resentment against the see of Rome had corrected one considerable part of his early prejudices, he had made it a point of honor never to relinquish the remainder. Separate as he stood from the Catholic church, and from the Roman pontiff, the head of it, he still valued himself on maintaining the Catholic doctrine, and or guarding, by fire and sword, the imagined purity of his speculative principles.

Henry’s ministers and courtiers were of as motley a character as his conduct; and seemed to waver, during this whole reign, between the ancient and the new religion. The queen, engaged by interest as well as inclination, favored the cause of the reformers: Cromwell, who was created secretary of state, and who was daily advancing in the king’s confidence, had embraced the same views; and as he was a man of prudence and abilities, he was able, very effectually, though in a covert manner, to promote the late innovations: Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, had secretly adopted the Protestant tenets; and he had gained Henry’s friendship by his candor and sincerity; virtues which he possessed in as eminent a degree as those times, equally distracted with faction and oppressed by tyranny, could easily permit. On the other hand, the duke of Norfolk adhered to the ancient faith, and by his high rank, as well as by his talents, both for peace and war, he had great authority in the king’s council: Gardiner, lately created bishop of Winchester, had enlisted himself in the same party; and the suppleness of his character, and dexterity of his conduct, had rendered him extremely useful to it.

All these ministers, while they stood in the most irreconcilable opposition of principles to each other, were obliged to disguise their particular opinions, and to pretend an entire agreement with the sentiments of their master. Cromwell and Cranmer still carried the appearance of a conformity to the ancient speculative tenets; but they artfully made use of Henry’s resentment to widen the breach with the see of Rome. Norfolk and Gardiner feigned an assent to the king’s supremacy, and to his renunciation of the sovereign pontiff; but they encouraged his passion for the Catholic faith, and instigated him to punish those daring heretics who had presumed to reject his theological principles. Both sides hoped, by their unlimited compliance, to bring him over to their party: the king, meanwhile, who held the balance between the factions, was enabled, by the courtship paid him both by Protestants and Catholics, to assume an unbounded authority: and though in all his measures he was really driven by his ungoverned humor, he casually steered a course which led more certainly to arbitrary power, than any which the most profound politics could have traced out to him. Artifice, refinement, and hypocrisy, in his situation, would have put both parties on their guard against him, and would have taught them reserve in complying with a monarch whom they could never hope thoroughly to have gained;* but while the frankness, sincerity, and openness of Henry’s temper were generally known, as well as the dominion of his furious passions, each side dreaded to lose him by the smallest opposition, and flattered themselves that a blind compliance with his will would throw him cordially and fully into their interests.

The ambiguity of the king’s conduct, though it kept the courtiers in awe, served, in the main, to encourage the Protestant doctrine among his subjects, and promoted that spirit of innovation with which the age was generally seized, and which nothing but an entire uniformity, as will as a steady severity in the administration, could be able to repress. There were some Englishmen, Tindal, Joye, Constantine, and others, who, dreading the exertion of the king’s authority had fled to Antwerp;[*] where the great privileges possessed by the Low Country provinces served, during some time, to give them protection. These men employed themselves in writing English books against the corruptions of the church of Rome; against images, relics, pilgrimages; and they excited the curiosity of men with regard to that question, the most important in theology, the terms of acceptance with the Supreme Being, In conformity to the Lutherans and other Protestants, they asserted that salvation was obtained by faith alone; and that the most infallible road to perdition[**] was a reliance on “good works;” by which terms they understood as well the moral duties as the ceremonial and monastic observances.

* Burnet, vol. i. p. 159.

** Sacrilegium est et impietas velle placere Deo per opera
et non per solam fidem. Luther adversus regem. Ita vides
quam dives sit homo Christianus sive baptizatus, qui etiam
volens non protest perdere salutem suam quantiscunque
peccatis. Nulla enim peccata possunt eum damnare nisi
incredulitas. Id. de Captivitate Bbyloniea.

The defenders of the ancient religion, on the other hand, maintained the efficacy of good works; but though they did not exclude from this appellation the social virtues, it was still the superstitions gainful to the church which they chiefly extolled and recommended. The books composed by these fugitives, having stolen over to England, began to make converts every where; but it was a translation of the Scriptures by Tindal that was esteemed the most dangerous to the established faith. The first edition of this work, composed with little accuracy, was found liable to considerable objections; and Tindal, who was poor, and could not afford to lose a great part of the impression, was longing for an opportunity of correcting his errors, of which he had been made sensible. Tonstal, then bishop of London, soon after of Durham, a man of great moderation, being desirous to discourage, in the gentlest manner, these innovations, gave private orders for buying up all the copies that could be found at Antwerp; and he burned them publicly in Cheapside. By this measure he supplied Tindal with money, enabled him to print a new and correct edition of his work, and gave great scandal to the people, in thus committing to the flames the word of God.[*]

The disciples of the reformation met with little severity during the ministry of Wolsey, who, though himself a clergyman, bore too small a regard to the ecclesiastical order to serve as an instrument of their tyranny: it was even an article of impeachment against him,[**] that by his connivance he had encouraged the growth of heresy, and that he had protected and acquitted some notorious offenders. Sir Thomas More, who succeeded Wolsey as chancellor, is at once an object deserving our compassion, and an instance of the usual progress of men’s sentiments during that age. This man, whose elegant genius and familiar acquaintance with the noble spirit of antiquity had given him very enlarged sentiments, and who had in his early years advanced principles which even at present would be deemed somewhat too free, had, in the course of events, been so irritated by polemics, and thrown into such a superstitious attachment to the ancient faith, that few inquisitors have been guilty of greater violence in their prosecution of heresy. Though adorned with the gentlest manners, as well as the purest integrity, he carried to the utmost height his aversion to heterodoxy; and James Bainham, in particular, a gentleman of the Temple, experienced from him the greatest severity. Bainham, accused of favoring the new opinions, was carried to More’s house; and having refused to discover his accomplices, the chancellor ordered him to be whipped in his presence, and afterwards sent him to the Tower, where he himself saw him put to the torture. The unhappy gentleman, overcome by all these severities, abjured his opinions; but feeling afterwards the deepest compunction for his apostasy, he openly returned to his former tenets, and even courted the crown of martyrdom. He was condemned as an obstinate and relapsed heretic, and was burned in Smithfeld.[***]