The time has come for posterity to render to her memory the compassion and the honor which are her due.
BOOK XV.
ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
THE THREE PARTIES WHICH DIVIDED ENGLAND.
(1536-1540.)
There were in 1536 three distinct parties in England, the papists, the evangelicals, and the Anglican Catholics, who were halting between the two extremes. It was a question which of the three would gain the upper hand.
The Reformation in England was born of the power of the Word of God, and did not encounter there such obstacles as were raised against it in France by a powerful clergy and by princes hostile to evangelical faith and morality. The English prelates, weakened by various circumstances, were unable to withstand an energetic attack; and the sovereign was 'the mad Harry,' as Luther had called him.[214] His whims opened the doors to religious freedom, of which the Reformation was to take advantage. Thus England, which had remained in a state of rudeness and ignorance much longer than France, was early enlightened by the Reformation; and the nation awakened by the Gospel gave birth in the sixteenth century to such master minds as France, though more highly civilised, failed to produce so early. Shakespeare was born in 1563, one year before the death of Calvin. The Reformation placed England a century ahead of the rest of Europe. The final triumph, however, of the Reformation was not reached without many conflicts; and the two adversaries more than once engaged hand to hand, before one overthrew the other.