. Each was hard pressed between the same great powers;
Rome had to hold its own between the masters of southern and the masters
of northern Italy, as England had to hold her own between the rulers of
France and of the Netherlands. From the outset of his reign to the actual
break with Clement the Seventh the policy of Henry is always at one with
that of the Papacy. Nor were the king's religious tendencies hostile to
it. He was a trained theologian and proud of his theological knowledge,
but to the end his convictions remained firmly on the side of the
doctrines which Luther denied. In 1521 therefore he entered the lists
against Luther with an "Assertion of the Seven Sacraments" for which he
was rewarded by Leo with the title of "Defender of the Faith." The
insolent abuse of the Reformer's answer called More and Fisher into the
field. The influence of the New Learning was now strong at the English
Court. Colet and Grocyn were among its foremost preachers; Linacre was
Henry's physician; More was a privy councillor; Pace was one of the
Secretaries of State; Tunstall was Master of the Rolls. And as yet the New
Learning, though scared by Luther's intemperate language, had steadily
backed him in his struggle. Erasmus pleaded for him with the Emperor.
Ulrich von Hutten attacked the friars in satires and invectives as violent
as his own. But the temper of the Renascence was even more antagonistic to
the temper of Luther than that of Rome itself. From the golden dream of a
new age wrought peaceably and purely by the slow progress of intelligence,
the growth of letters, the developement of human virtue, the Reformer of
Wittemberg turned away with horror. He had little or no sympathy with the
new culture. He despised reason as heartily as any Papal dogmatist could
despise it. He hated the very thought of toleration or comprehension. He
had been driven by a moral and intellectual compulsion to declare the
Roman system a false one, but it was only to replace it by another system
of doctrine just as elaborate, and claiming precisely the same
infallibility. To degrade human nature was to attack the very base of the
New Learning; and his attack on it called the foremost of its teachers to
the field. But Erasmus no sooner advanced to its defence than Luther
declared man to be utterly enslaved by original sin and incapable through
any efforts of his own of discovering truth or of arriving at goodness.
Such a doctrine not only annihilated the