e of which they were paid, under
penalty of L10 a month; and it was made a high penal offence to obtain
dispensations from any of the provisions of this Act from Rome.

[Sidenote: The Church is compelled to submit.] Nothing could be more
significant of the position of the parties than the high-toned, the
conservative moderation of these Acts. The bishops did not yield,
however, without a struggle. In all directions from the pulpits arose a
cry of "atheism," "lack of faith," "heresy." But the House resolutely
stood to its ground. Still more, it sent its speaker to the king with a
complaint against the Bishop of Rochester, who had dared to stigmatize
it as "infidel." The bishop was compelled to equivocate and apologize.

[Sidenote: The king is sustained by his people.] The English nation and
their king were thus together in the suppression of the monasteries;
they were together in the enforcing of ecclesiastical reforms. It was
nothing but this harmony which so quickly brought the clergy to reason,
and induced them, in 1532, to anticipate both Parliament and the people
in actually offering to separate themselves from Rome. In the next year
the king had destroyed the vast power which in so many centuries had
gathered round ecclesiastical institutions, and had forced the clergy
into a fitting subordination. Henceforth there was no prospect that they
would monopolize all the influential and lucrative places in the realm;
henceforth, year by year, with many vicissitudes and changes, their
power continued to decline. Their special pursuit, theology, was
separated more and more perfectly from politics. In the House of Lords,
of which they had once constituted one-half, they became a mere shadow.

[Sidenote: Religious feeling of the nation changed.] Henry VIII. cannot,
therefore, be properly considered as the author of the downfall of
ecclesiasticism in England, though he was the instrument by which it was
ostensibly accomplished. The derisive insinuation that the Gospel light
had flashed upon him from Anna Boleyn's eyes was far from expressing all
the truth. The nullity of papal disciplines, excommunications,
interdicts, penances, proved that the old tone of thought was utterly
decayed. This oblivion of old emotions, this obsoleteness of old things,
was by no means confined to England. On the Continent the attacks of
Erasmus on the monks were everywhere received with applause. In 1527 one
printer issued an edition of 24,000 co