heroes. His besetting sin was
egotism, a sin which princes can hardly, and Tudors could nowise,
avoid. Of egotism Henry had his full share from the beginning; at
first it moved in a limited, personal sphere, but gradually it
extended its scope till it comprised the whole realm of national
religion and policy. The obstacles which he encountered in (p. 428)
prosecuting his suit for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon were the
first check he experienced in the gratification of a personal whim,
and the effort to remove those impediments drew him on to the
world-wide stage of the conflict with Rome. He was ever proceeding
from the particular to the general, from an attack on a special
dispensation to an attack on the dispensing power of the Pope, and
thence to an assault on the whole edifice of papal claims. He started
with no desire to separate England from Rome, or to reform the
Anglican Church; those aims he adopted, little by little, as
subsidiary to the attainment of his one great personal purpose. He
arrived at his principles by a process of deduction from his own
particular case.

As Henry went on, his "quick and penetrable eyes," as More described
them, were more and more opened to the extent of what he could do; and
he realised, as he said, how small was the power of the Pope. Papal
authority had always depended on moral influence and not on material
resources. That moral influence had long been impaired; the sack of
Rome in 1527 afforded further demonstration of its impotence; and,
when Clement condoned that outrage, and formed a close alliance with
the chief offender, the Papacy suffered a blow from which it never
recovered. Temporal princes might continue to recognise the Pope's
authority, but it was only because they chose, and not because they
were compelled so to do; they supported him, not as the divinely
commissioned Vicar of Christ, but as a useful instrument in the
prosecution of their own and their people's desires. It is called a
theological age, but it was also irreligious, and its principal (p. 429)
feature was secularisation. National interests had already become the
dominant factor in European politics; they were no longer to be made
subservient to the behests of the universal Church. The change was
tacitly or explicitly recognised everywhere; and _cujus regio, ejus
religio_ was the principle upon which German ecclesiastical politics
were based at the Peace of Augsburg. It was assumed that