cause for suppressing heresy. Neither Norfolk nor
his master indeed desired any rigorous measure of reaction, for Henry
remained proud of the work he had done. His bitterness against the
Papacy only grew as the years went by; and at the very moment that
heretics were suffering for a denial of the mass, others were suffering
by their side for a denial of the supremacy. But strange and anomalous
as its system seemed, the drift of Henry's religious government had as
yet been in one direction, that of a return to and reconciliation with
the body of the Catholic Church. With the decision of the Council and
the new attitude of the Emperor this drift was suddenly arrested. It was
not that Henry realized the revolution that was opening before him or
the vast importance of the steps which his policy now led him to take.
His tendency, like that of his people, was religious rather than
theological, practical rather than speculative. Of the immense problems
which were opening in the world neither he nor England saw anything. The
religious strife which was to break Europe asunder was to the king as to
the bulk of Englishmen a quarrel of words and hot temper; the truth
which Christendom was to rend itself to pieces in striving to discover
was a thing that could easily be found with the aid of God. There is
something humorous as there is something pathetic in the warnings which
Henry addressed to the Parliament at the close of 1545. The shadow of
death as it fell over him gave the king's words a new gentleness and
tenderness. "The special foundation of our religion being charity
between man and man, it is so refrigerate as there never was more
dissension and lack of love between man and man, the occasions whereof
are opinions only and names devised for the continuance of the same.
Some are called Papists, some Lutherans, and some Anabaptists; names
devised of the devil, and yet not fully without ground, for the severing
of one man's heart by conceit of opinion from the other." But the remedy
was a simple one. Every man was "to travail first for his own
amendment." Then the bishops and clergy were to agree in their teaching,
"which, seeing there is but one truth and verity, they may easily do,
calling therein for the grace of God." Then the nobles and laity were to
be pious and humble, to read their new Bibles "reverently and humbly ...
and in any doubt to resort to the learned or at best the higher powers."
"I am very sorry to know and