mself showed his strength rather in unsettling
ancient institutions than in establishing new ones. By the abolition of
the monasteries, he broke up that spiritual militia which was a most
efficacious instrument for maintaining the authority of Rome; and he
completed the work of independence by seating himself boldly in the
chair of St. Peter, and assuming the authority of head of the Church.
Thus, while the supremacy of the pope was rejected, the Roman Catholic
religion was maintained in its essential principles unimpaired. In other
words, the nation remained Catholics, but not Papists.

[Sidenote: CONDITION OF ENGLAND.]

The impulse thus given under Henry was followed up to more important
consequences under his son, Edward the Sixth. The opinions of the German
Reformers, considerably modified, especially in regard to the exterior
forms and discipline of worship, met with a cordial welcome from the
ministers of the young monarch. Protestantism became the religion of the
land; and the Church of England received, to a great extent, the
peculiar organization which it has preserved to the present day. But
Edward's reign was too brief to allow the new opinions to take deep root
in the hearts of the people. The greater part of the aristocracy soon
showed that, whatever religious zeal they had affected, they were not
prepared to make any sacrifice of their temporal interests. On the
accession of a Catholic queen to the throne, a reaction soon became
visible. Some embarrassment to a return to the former faith was found in
the restitution which it might naturally involve of the confiscated
property of the monastic orders. But the politic concessions of Rome
dispensed with this severe trial of the sincerity of its new proselytes;
and England, after repudiating her heresies, was received into the fold
of the Roman Catholic Church, and placed once more under the
jurisdiction of its pontiff.

After the specimens given of the ready ductility with which the English
of that day accommodated their religious creeds to the creed of their
sovereign, we shall hardly wonder at the caustic criticism of the
Venetian ambassador, resident at the court of London, in Queen Mary's
time. "The example and authority of the sovereign," he says, "are
everything with the people of this country in matters of faith. As he
believes, they believe; Judaism or Mahometanism,--it is all one to them.
They conform themselves easily to his will, at least so far a