to, have advanced at
once into an understanding of the principle of toleration--toleration of
the new opinions, and a more severe repression of the old. The Puritans
and Evangelicals forgot that he had given them the English Testament. They
forgot that by setting his foot upon the bishops he had opened the pulpits
to themselves, and they classed him among the persecutors, or else joined
in the shallow laughs of the ultramontane Catholics at what they pleased
to call his inconsistency.

Thus from all sides a catena of invective has been wrapped about Henry's
character. The sensible part of the country held its tongue. The speakers
and writers were the passionate and fanatical of both persuasions, and by
them the materials were supplied for the Henry VIII. who has been brought
down to us by history, while the candid and philosophic thinkers of the
last and present centuries have accepted the traditional figure. In their
desire to be impartial they have held the balance equal between Catholics
and Protestants, inclining slightly to the Catholic side, from a wish to
conciliate a respectable body who had been unjustly maligned and
oppressed; while they have lavished invectives upon the early Reformers
violent enough to have satisfied even Pole himself, whose rhetoric has
formed the base of their declamation.

Liberal philosophy would have had a bad time of it in England, perhaps in
all Europe, if there had been no Henry VIII. to take the Pope by the
throat. But one service writers like Macaulay have undoubtedly
accomplished. They have shown that it is entirely impossible to separate
the King from his ministers--to condemn Henry and to spare Cranmer.
Protestant writers, from Burnet to Southey, have tried to save the
reforming bishops and statesmen at Henry's expense. Cranmer, and Latimer,
and Ridley have been described as saints, though their master was a
villain. But the cold impartiality of Macaulay has pointed out
unanswerably that in all Henry's most questionable acts his own ministers
and his prelates were active participants--that his Privy Council, his
parliaments, his judges on the bench, the juries empanelled to try the
victims of his tyranny, were equally his accomplices; some actively
assisting; the rest, if these acts were really criminal, permitting
themselves to be bribed or terrified into acquiescence. The leading men of
all descriptions, the nation itself, through the guilt of its
representatives, were all st