and and Ireland alike at his feet Cromwell could venture on a
last and crowning change. He could claim for the monarchy the right of
dictating at its pleasure the form of faith and doctrine to be taught
throughout the land. Henry had remained true to the standpoint of the New
Learning; and the sympathies of Cromwell were mainly with those of his
master. They had no wish for any violent break with the ecclesiastical
forms of the past. They desired religious reform rather than religious
revolution, a simplification of doctrine rather than any radical change in
it, the purification of worship rather than the introduction of any wholly
new ritual. Their theology remained, as they believed, a Catholic
theology, but a theology cleared of the superstitious growths which
obscured the true Catholicism of the early Church. In a word their dream
was the dream of Erasmus and Colet. The spirit of Erasmus was seen in the
Articles of religion which were laid before Convocation in 1536, in the
acknowledgement of Justification by Faith, a doctrine for which the
founders of the New Learning, such as Contarini and Pole, were struggling
at Rome itself, in the condemnation of purgatory, of pardons, and of
masses for the dead, as it was seen in the admission of prayers for the
dead and in the retention of the ceremonies of the church without material
change. A series of royal injunctions which followed carried out the same
policy of reform. Pilgrimages were suppressed; the excessive number of
holy days was curtailed; the worship of images and relics was discouraged
in words which seem almost copied from the protest of Erasmus. His appeal
for a translation of the Bible which weavers might repeat at their shuttle
and ploughmen sing at their plough received at last a reply. At the outset
of the ministry of Norfolk and More the king had promised an English
version of the scriptures, while prohibiting the circulation of Tyndale's
Lutheran translation. The work however lagged in the hands of the bishops;
and as a preliminary measure the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten
Commandments were now rendered into English, and ordered to be taught by
every schoolmaster and father of a family to his children and pupils. But
the bishops' version still hung on hand; till in despair of its appearance
a friend of Archbishop Cranmer, Miles Coverdale, was employed to correct
and revise the translation of Tyndale; and the Bible which he edited was
published in 15