CONTINUITY.

A Question About
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

By The Bellarmine Society.

CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY of IRELAND No. Apol113a (1963).

CONTINUITY.

THE PROBLEM: -

The claim is frequently made that there is religious continuity between the Anglican Church as by law established and the Church that existed in this country previous to the sixteenth century, i.e., that the two Churches are one and the same institution, that there was no break.
{The Oxford writers are referring to the British Anglican Church, as is only natural for scholars from that country. In America, this denomination is generally known as the Episcopalian Church. In Ireland, for a time, English rulers attempted to impose this mindset on the native inhabitants, an effort which was a fundamental failure, even though their imposed beliefs were labeled ‘the Church of Ireland’ and they took possession of many of Ireland’s ancient cathedrals.}

The force and value of this claim will be at once apparent if we state
(i) what does not,
(ii) what does,
constitute "religious continuity."

I. — WHAT "RELIGIOUS CONTINUITY" IS NOT.

As an illustration let us suppose Mr. A. goes to Mr. B's house, batters Mr. B. on the head, throws him and his family into the street and establishes himself and his friends on Mr. B's premises. No one would call Mr. A. either the same person as, or a lineal descendant of, Mr. B., merely because he continues to occupy Mr. B's house, not even if Mr. A. were to go so far as to call himself Mr. B. or Mr. A.-B. and to wear Mr. B's top hat and watch chain.

In exactly the same way, you cannot call the Anglican Church today the same as, or the direct descendant of, the Church in pre-Elizabethan England merely because the Anglican Church occupies the old ecclesiastical buildings, adopts many of the emblems of the Old Church and retains many of its ecclesiastical titles and a semblance at least of its rites.

II. — WHAT CONSTITUTES REAL RELIGIOUS CONTINUITY.

The Anglican Church is one and the same as the Church in pre-Elizabethan England only if three essential conditions are fulfilled.

(1). Both Churches Must Have the Same Worship.

The differences between the worship of the pre-reformation Church and that of the Anglican Church are many. To prove that there is no religious continuity on this essential point, it will be sufficient to give one, which forms the Fundamental Difference in worship. Previous to the "reformation" the central point of worship of the Church in England was, as it always has been in the Catholic Church elsewhere, the Sacrifice of the Mass. The "Reformers" declared the Mass to be idolatry, abolished it from their ritual and made the saying or hearing of Mass a capital offence. Ever since Elizabeth's reign, all Anglican clergymen have solemnly subscribed to an Article which declares "The Sacrifices of Masses" to be "blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits." The Anglican claim to continuity fails, therefore, in the most essential point of worship.

(2). Both Churches Must Profess the Same Faith in its Entirety.

In pre-reformation times the Church in England accepted and clearly professed its belief in the principle of external religious authority, in the Real Objective Presence (of Christ in the Eucharist), in the Mass as a Sacrifice, in the doctrine of Transubstantiation, in Purgatory, in Seven Sacraments, in the cultus of Our Lady and the Intercession of Saints — to mention only a few points of doctrine — all of which were and still are accepted by the whole Catholic Church. These doctrines were rejected and are still officially rejected by the Anglican Church. Therefore, in the essential point of Faith, there is no continuity between the two Churches.

(3) Both Churches Must Acknowledge and Obey the Same Authority.

In any organized and disciplined Society, e.g., the State, what is it that makes it one and the same during a given period, say, of 200 years? It is not the population, for this is constantly changing and generation succeeds generation. Not is it the land, the geographical features — since the territory may be added to or diminished while the State remains the same. A State can be said to remain one and the same only as long as the people continue to live under the same lawfully constituted authority. The United States were once part of the British Empire. In 1776, they revolted, repudiated British rule, and set up a new and independent government. No one would contend that the U.S.A. after the revolution was the same State as it was before. A new and quite distinct State had been brought into existence.

Now the Church is an organized and disciplined society. From the first introduction of Christianity into England down to 1534 (when Henry's Acts, establishing Royal instead of Papal Supremacy, were passed), English Christians acknowledged and obeyed the Pope as Supreme Head of the Church, as Christ's Vicar on earth, and, through the Pope, were in organic unity with the whole of Catholic Christendom. This is an historical fact, frankly admitted by the greatest non-Catholic writers on the later Middle Ages. Does the Anglican Church now acknowledge and obey this authority? No. In the sixteenth century a religious revolution — not ‘reformation’ — took place. The authority of the Pope was rejected. In his place, the reigning sovereign was declared to be Supreme Head or Governor of the Church — and thus a new, independent Church (‘The Anglican Church’) came into existence, differing from the old in essential points of faith, worship, and discipline.

CONSEQUENCES.

The Anglican Church is a creation of the sixteenth century and a distinct institution from the pre-Elizabethan Church in England.

The Anglican Church, a new creation, cannot be the Church of Christ — otherwise where was the Church of Christ during the first 16 centuries? Jesus Christ was God. Therefore, what He promised He fulfilled. He promised that His Church would exist, one and free from error, till the end of time:
"Behold, I am with you all days" (Matthew 28:20) and
“the spirit of truth . . . . will teach you all truth" (John 16:13).

Are the essential conditions of religious continuity fulfilled anywhere in England today? Yes — but only in the various Catholic churches. They alone have exactly the same worship, the same Faith and obey the same Papal authority as in pre-reformation times.

The Catholic Church is the Church of Christ, and History vindicates her claim.

* * *

This Apologetic leaflet was first issued by the Bellarmine Society of Oxford University. We are proud to reproduce it here in the hope that many more souls will benefit by its wisdom, here in this country, in England, and wherever the Anglican Church has had its influence.

“THE SCHISM AND HERESY
OF ENGLAND.”

From the writings of
Saint Alphonsus Liguori.

From “THE HISTORY OF HERESIES, AND THEIR REFUTATION”;
OR, “THE TRIUMPH OF THE CHURCH."
The Heresies of the Sixteenth Century.

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF Saint ALPHONSUS LIGUORI,
BY THE REV. JOHN T. MULLOCK, OF THE ORDER OF Saint FRANCIS, in 1847.

THE SCHISM OF ENGLAND.

I. THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII.

1. - Religion of England previous to the Reformation.

1. The history of England cannot be read without tears, when we see that nation, formerly the most zealous in Europe for Catholicity, now become its persecuting enemy. Who will not be touched with sorrow to see a kingdom, so attached to the Faith, that it was called the Land of Saints, now buried in heresy? Fifteen English Kings, and eleven Queens, renounced the world and became religious in different Convents. Twelve Kings were Martyrs, and ten have been placed in the catalogue of the Saints. It is said that previous to the schism there was not a village in England which had not a Patron Saint born on the spot. How dreadful it is to behold this land the abode of schism and heresy. England, it is said, received the Faith of Christ in the time of Tiberius Caesar. Joseph of Arimethea, Sanders says, with twelve of his disciples, were the first to introduce Christianity into the country which, in the time of Pope Saint Eleutherius (around 180) had spread so much, that at the request of King Lucius he sent them Fugacius and Damian, who baptized the King and many of his subjects, and, having cast down the idols, consecrated many churches, and established several Bishoprics. England remained firm in the Faith in the time of Diocletian, and there were many martyrs there during his reign. Christianity increased very much during the reign of Constantine, and though many fell away into the errors of Arius and Pelagius, they were converted again to the true Faith by the preaching of Saint Germain (Saint Germanus of Auxerre) and Saint Lupus, who came from France for that purpose.

About the year 596, Religion was almost lost by the Saxon conquest, but Saint Gregory sent over Saint Austin (Augustine of Canterbury) and forty Benedictine Monks, who converted the whole Anglo-Saxon nation, and they were remarkable, for nearly a thousand years after, for their zeal for the Faith and their veneration for the Holy See. During all this long period, there were no Sovereigns in Christendom more obedient to the See of Rome than those of England. In the year 1212, King John and the Barons of the kingdom made England feudatory to the Holy See, holding the kingdoms of England and Ireland as fiefs from the Pope, and paying a thousand marks every year on the feast of Saint Michael, and Peter’s Pence, according to the number of hearths in these kingdoms, which was first promised by King Ine, in the year 740, augmented by King Aethelwulf, in 855, and paid up to the twenty-fifth year of Henry’s reign, when he separated himself from the obedience of the Holy See.

Many Provincial Councils were held in England during these centuries likewise, for the establishment of Ecclesiastical discipline, which was always observed till Henry’s reign, when, to satisfy a debasing passion for a wicked woman, he plunged himself into a whirlpool of crimes, and involved the nation in his ruin, and thus this unfortunate country, the glory of the Church, became a sink of wickedness and impiety.

2. - Henry VIII marries Catherine of Aragon,
but becomes enamoured of Anne Boleyn.

2. You shall now hear the cause of England’s ruin. In the year 1501, Henry VII married his eldest son, Arthur, to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of his Catholic Majesty Ferdinand of Spain, but the Prince died before the consummation of the matrimony; she was then married to his second son, who was to become Henry VIII., by a dispensation of Pope Julius II, with the intention of preserving the peace with Spain, and had five children by him, only one of whom, Mary, survived beyond infancy. Before we proceed, however, it will be right to learn that Henry was so much attached to the Catholic Religion that when it was attacked by Luther he persecuted his followers to death, and caused all his books to be burned one day in his presence by the public executioner, and had a sermon preached on the occasion by [Saint] John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. He then published a work defending the doctrines of Faith in the seven Sacraments, in opposition to Luther, though some say the book was composed by Fisher of Rochester, and dedicated it to Pope Leo X, who honoured him on the occasion with the title of Defender of the Faith. Blind to everything, however, but his love for Anne Boleyn, he began to hold his wife, Queen Catherine, in the greatest aversion, though she was twenty-five years married to him.

Catherine was five or six years older than Henry, but Anne Boleyn was considered the most beautiful woman in England, and when she saw the impression she made on the King’s heart, she refused to see him any more unless he married her. Henry was of that disposition that the more he was thwarted in any wish the more obstinate he became in gratifying it, though having once obtained his object despised it; and seeing that he never could enjoy Anne Boleyn’s favour unless by marrying her, he resolved on the step, let it cost what it may. It was this determination that involved England in ruin.

3. - The wicked Wolsey suggests the invalidity of the marriage.
Incontinence of Anne Boleyn; suspicion that she was the daughter of Henry.

3. It was England’s misfortune at that period to be almost governed by Thomas Wolsey, a man of low birth, but whose intriguing disposition made him such a favourite with Henry that he was elevated not only to the Archbishopric of York, but was made Lord Chancellor of the kingdom, and Cardinal. This unprincipled flatterer, seeing the King disgusted with Catherine, his Queen, advised him to apply for a ‘divorce’ or annulment, and encouraged his scruples (if he had any), telling him his marriage never could be legalised, as Catherine was his brother’s wife.

This objection, however, never could stand, for Henry had the Pope’s dispensation to marry Catherine; the case was maturely examined at Rome, and the impediment that existed was not imposed by the Divine Law, but was merely a Canonical one. That is proved by the Scripture, for we learn from Genesis, chapter 38, that the Patriarch Judah made his second son, Onan, marry Tamar, the wife of his elder brother, who died without children; and in the Mosaic Law there was a precept obliging the younger brother to take his elder brother’s widow to wife if he had died without leaving children: "When brethren dwell together, and one of them died without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another, but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother" (Deut 25:5). What, therefore, was not only permitted but commanded by the Old Law, never could be contrary to the Law of nature. Neither is the prohibition of Leviticus, 18:16, to be taken into account, for that applies only to the case that the deceased brother has left children, and not, as in the former case, where he died childless, for then the brother is commanded to marry the widow, that his dead brother’s name should not be lost in Israel. There is, then, not the least doubt but the dispensation of the Pope and the marriage of Henry were both valid. Bossuet, in his History of the Variations, tells us that Henry having asked the opinion of the Sorbonne as to the validity of his marriage, forty-five doctors gave their opinion that it was valid, and fifty-three were of the contrary opinion, but Molineaux says that all these votes were purchased on the occasion. Henry even wrote to the Lutheran Doctors in Germany, but Melancthon, having consulted others, answered him that the law prohibiting a man to marry his brother’s wife could be dispensed with, and that his marriage with Catherine was, therefore, valid.

This answer was far from being agreeable to Henry, so he held on to Wolsey’s opinion, and determined to marry Anne Boleyn. It has been said, [an opinion not supported today but maintained by some 18th century historians,] that this lady was even Henry’s own daughter, and it is said that her father, who was ambassador in France at the time, came post haste to England when he heard of the affair, and told Henry that his wife confessed to him that Anne was Henry’s daughter, but Henry made him, it is said, a rude answer, told him to go back to his place, and hold his tongue, and that he was determined to marry her. [What is known for certain is that Henry had had Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister, as his mistress for several years, but had long since discarded her. Had Henry been genuinely free to marry, this earlier relationship with Mary would have imposed the same canonical impediment to the marriage as he was now alleging was the impediment to marrying Arthur’s widow, Catherine.]

It is also said, that, from the age of fifteen, Anne was of bad character, and that, during her residence in France her conduct was so depraved that she was called usually by an improper name.

4. - Catherine refuses to have her cause tried by English Judges;
Wolsey is made prisoner, and dies at Leicester.

4. Henry was fully determined to marry this unfortunate woman, so he sent to Rome to demand of the Pope to appoint Cardinal Campeggio and Cardinal Wolsey to try the case of the divorce. The Pope consented, but the Queen appealed against these Prelates as judges, one of them being the King’s subject, and the other under obligations to him. Not withstanding the appeal, the cause was tried in England, and Henry was in the greatest hurry to have it decided, being certain of a favourable issue for himself, as one of the judges was Wolsey, the prime mover of the case. Wolsey, however, was now afraid of the tempest he raised, which portended the ruin of religion, so he and Campeggio tried every means to avoid coming to a decision, seeing the dreadful scandal it would cause if they gave a decision in the King’s favour, and dreading his displeasure if they decided against him. The Pope admitted the justice of the Queen’s appeal, and prohibited the Cardinal Legates from proceeding with the cause, which he transferred to his own tribunal. Henry then sent Cranmer to Rome to look after his interests.

This man was a Priest, but of immoral life, and had privately embraced the Lutheran doctrines, and he was indebted to Anne Boleyn for the King’s favour. Henry likewise endeavoured to draw to his party Reginald Pole and [Saint] Thomas More; but these were men of too much religion to yield to him. To frighten the Pope into compliance with his wishes, he prohibited, under the severest penalties, any of his subjects from applying for any favour or grace to Rome, without first obtaining his consent. God made use of Henry as an instrument to punish Wolsey now for his crimes. The King was furious with him, because he did not expedite the sentence in his favour so he deprived him of the Bishopric of Winchester (though this is doubtful), and the Chancellorship, and banished him to his See of York. He lived some time at Cawood, in Yorkshire, and made himself very popular in the neighbourhood by his splendid hospitality.

Henry gave an order for his arrest, and commanded that he should be brought to London, but he suffered so much on the journey, both in mind and body, that, before he could arrive, he died at Leicester, in the month of December, 1530. A report was sent abroad that he poisoned himself, but the fact is, that, when he found he was accused of high treason, his heart broke. "Had I served God,” said he, "as faithfully as I served the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs".

5. - Henry seizes on the property of the Church, and marries Anne Boleyn.

5. In the meantime, Cranmer wrote from Rome that he found it impossible to get the Pope to consent to the ‘divorce’, so he was recalled by Henry, and went to Germany, where he [secretly] married Osiander’s sister or niece; and on the death of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, was appointed to that See, but with the express condition of doing what the Pope refused, pronouncing a sentence of divorce between Henry and Catherine. When Henry found that the Ecclesiastics of the kingdom took up Catherine’s side, he determined to punish some of them, and prosecuted them on a præmunire, for preferring the Legatine to the Royal authority. The Clergy, terrified at this proceeding, and having now no one to recur to, offered the king 400,000 crowns to compromise the matter, and admitted his sovereign power in the realm, both over the Clergy and laity.

Thomas More, seeing the ruin of England at hand, resigned the Chancellorship to the King, who accepted his resignation, and appointed Thomas Audley, a man of little means, in his place. Pope Clement VII, seeing what imminent danger the kingdom ran, from the blind admiration the King professed for Anne Boleyn, endeavoured to save it, by prohibiting him, under pain of excommunication, from contracting a new marriage till the question of divorce was settled. This prohibition only exasperated Henry the more, so, despising both the admonitions and censures of the Pope, he was privately married to Anne Boleyn, before the break of day, in the month of December, 1532, having previously created her Countess of Pembroke. Roland Lee was the officiating Priest, and it is believed by some that Henry deceived him, telling him he had the Pope’s leave for marrying again.

6. - Henry obliges the Clergy to swear obedience to him,
and Cranmer declares the marriage of Catherine invalid.

6. Thomas Cromwell, under favour of Queen Anne, was now advanced to the highest honours. He was a man of the greatest cunning, and the most unbounded ambition, and a follower of the Lutheran doctrine. Henry made him Knight of the Garter, Grand Chamberlain of the Kingdom, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and made him also his Vicar- General for Ecclesiastical affairs, which he entirely managed as he pleased, in conjunction with Archbishop Cranmer and the Chancellor Audley. He obliged Ecclesiastics to take an oath of obedience in spirituals to the King, paying him the same obedience as they previously did the Pope. Every means was used to induce John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, to take this oath, which he at first refused to do, but at last consented, adding, as a condition, “inasmuch as it was not opposed to the Divine Word." When this pillar of the Church fell, it was not difficult to induce the rest of the Clergy to take the oath. Cranmer was now ready to fulfil his part of the agreement made with Henry; he accordingly pronounced his marriage with Catherine opposed to the Divine law, and declared him at liberty to marry any other woman, and, on the strength of this declaration, Henry was solemnly married to Anne on the 13th of April, 1533.

7. - The Pope declares Anne Boleyn’s marriage invalid,
and excommunicates Henry, who declares himself Head of the Church.

7. Pope Clement VII now saw that there was no longer any use in mild measures, and was determined to act with extreme severity. He, accordingly, declared the marriage with Anne invalid; the issue, either present or future, illegitimate; and restored Queen Catherine to her conjugal and royal rights. He likewise declared Henry excommunicated for his disobedience to the Holy See, but this sentence was not to be enforced for a month, to give him time for repentance. So far from showing any signs of change, Henry prohibited, under the severest penalties, any one from giving the title of Queen to Catherine, or styling Mary heiress to the kingdom, though she had been already proclaimed as such by the estates of the Realm. He declared her illegitimate, and sent her to live with her mother Catherine, appointing a certain fixed place for their residence, and employing about them a set of spies, or guards, rather than servants.

In the meantime, Anne Boleyn had a daughter, Elizabeth, born on the 7th of September, five months after her solemn marriage, and Henry continued his persecution of the Catholics, by sending to prison Bishop Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and two hundred Observantine Friars of the Order of Saint Francis along with many Carthusians, Benedictines and Brigettine monks; and in the parliament convoked on the 3rd of November, 1534, a bill was passed in both houses, declaring Mary, the daughter of Catherine, excluded from the succession, and recognizing Elizabeth, Anne’s daughter, as heiress to the throne. The power of the Pope in England and Ireland was rejected at the same time, and whoever professed to believe in the primacy of the Holy See was declared a rebel. He assumed an authority over the Bishops of the kingdom greater than the Pope ever possessed, for he granted them their powers as if they were secular magistrates, only till he wished to revoke them, and it was only by his authority they were allowed to ordain Priests or publish censures. Finally, it was decreed that the King was the supreme head of the Church of England; that to him alone it belonged to extirpate heresies and correct abuses, and that to him, by right, belonged all tithes and first-fruits.

The name of the Pope was expunged from the Liturgy, and among the petitions of the Litany, the following was sacrilegiously inserted: "From the tyranny and detestable enormities of the Bishop of Rome deliver us, O Lord".

8. - Henry persecutes Pole, and puts More and Fisher to death.

8. Henry knew that his assumption of the primacy was condemned, not alone by Catholics, but even by Luther and Calvin, so he gave orders that it should be defended by theologians in their writings, and many complied with this command, some willingly, and others were forced to it. He was desirous that his relative, Reginald Pole, should publish something in favour of it, but he not alone most firmly refused to prostitute his pen to such a purpose, but wrote four books, "De Unione Ecclesiastica," (Defence of Church Unity) in opposition to the pretended right, which so provoked the tyrant, that he declared him guilty of high treason, and a traitor to his country, and tried to get him into his power, to put him to death, and when he could not accomplish his wish, he had his mother, his brother, and his uncle executed, and this noble family was almost destroyed and brought to ruin. [Pole’s mother Margaret was beatified in 1886.] He, for the same reason, commenced a most dreadful persecution of the Friars, especially the Franciscans, Carthusians, and Brigittines, many of whom he put to death, besides Bishop Fisher and Thomas More, whom he sent to execution in the year 1534.

While Bishop Fisher was in prison, he was appointed Cardinal by Pope Paul III., which, when Henry heard, he at once had him condemned to death. It is related of this holy Bishop, that when he was about to be brought to the place of execution, he dressed himself in the best clothes he could procure, as that was, he said, the day of his marriage, and as, on account of his age and his sufferings in prison, he was so weak, that he was obliged to lean on a staff, when he came in sight of the scaffold he cast it away, and cried out: "Now, my feet, do your duty, you have now but a little way to carry me." When he mounted the scaffold he intoned the Te Deum, (You God, we Praise,) and thanked the Almighty for permitting him to die for the Faith; he then laid his head on the block.

His head was exposed on London Bridge, and it is said appeared quite florid, and more like the head of a living than a dead person, so that it was ordered to be taken down again. Sir Thomas More also died a glorious death. When he heard that the Bishop of Rochester was condemned to death, he exclaimed: "Lord, I am unworthy of such glory, but I hope you will render me worthy." His wife came to the prison to induce him to yield to the King’s wishes, but he refused, and after fourteen months confinement he was brought to trial, but never swerved, and was condemned to lose his head. When about to mount the scaffold, he called to a man near him to assist him to climb the steps; "But when I am to come down, my friend," said he, "I will want no one to assist me." On the scaffold, he protested before the people that he died for the Catholic Faith. He then most devotedly recited the Miserere, (Have Mercy on me, O God,) and laid his head on the block.

His execution spread general grief all over England.

9. - The Pope declares Henry unworthy of the kingdom;
the King puts Anne Boleyn to death, and marries Jane Seymour.

9. When Pope Paul III, the successor of Clement, was informed of the turn affairs had taken, he summoned Henry and all his accomplices to his tribunal, and in case of contumacy, fulminated the sentence of excommunication against him, but this was not published at the time, as there appeared still some hope that he would change his conduct; but all was in vain, he only every day involved himself more and more in crime. He now, as head of the Church, issued a commission to Cromwell, a layman, to visit the Convents, both male and female, in his dominions, to dismiss all Religious who were not twenty-four years of age, and to leave the others at liberty to go or stay, as they wished; this, it is said, though I believe not on sufficient foundation, threw ten thousand Religious back again into the world. About this time Queen Catherine died; she always bore her affliction with the greatest patience, and just before her death, wrote to the King, in terms which would melt the hardest heart. The vengeance of the Almighty was now impending over Anne Boleyn, the first cause of so much misery and woe. Henry’s affection was now very much cooled towards her, especially as he became enamoured of one of her maids of honour, Jane Seymour. Anne still had some hopes of regaining his affection, by presenting him with a male heir, but in this, she was disappointed, the child was still-born; then her misfortunes commenced; she was accused of incest with her brother, George Boleyn, and of criminal conversation with four other gentlemen of the Court.

Henry refused at first to believe the charge, but his jealousy was raised, and his love for Jane Seymour contributing, likewise, to her ruin, she was committed to the Tower at once. Bossuet informs, us that Henry called on Cranmer to declare now, that his marriage with Anne was invalid from the beginning, and Elizabeth, his daughter, illegitimate, since Anne was married to him during the lifetime of Lord Percy, then Earl of Northumberland, between whom and Anne, it was asserted there was a contract of marriage. But this charge was unfounded; there was not even a promise between them; the only foundation for the assertion was, that Percy was at one time anxious to marry her; for all, she was condemned to death for adultery, and the sentence was, that she should be burned or beheaded, at the King’s pleasure. She begged to be allowed to speak to the King, but was refused; all the favour she could obtain was, that she should be beheaded; this sentence was carried into execution, and her brother, likewise, and the four gentlemen accused of being her paramours, underwent the same fate. On the day of her execution, the lieutenant of the Tower remarked to her, by way of consolation, that she would not suffer much, as the executioner was very expert; she smilingly answered: "My neck is very slender." The day after, Henry married Jane Seymour.

10. - The Parliament decides on six Articles of Faith;
the bones of Saint Thomas of Canterbury are burned;
Jane Seymour dies in giving birth to Edward VI.

10. Henry again convoked Parliament on the 7th of June, 1536, and had the law passed in favour of Elizabeth, to the exclusion of Mary, daughter of Queen Catherine, repealed, and the six Articles were passed for the regulation of religious affairs in the kingdom. The First was, that the Transubstantiation of the bread into the body of Christ in the Eucharist, was an article of Faith. Second: That communion should be given under one kind. Third: That the Celibacy of the Clergy should be observed. Fourth: That the vow of chastity was binding. Fifth: That the celebration of the Mass was in conformity with the Divine Law, and that private Masses were not only useful, but necessary. Sixth: That auricular confession should be strictly practised.

All these articles were confirmed by the King, and both houses, and the penalties imposed on heretics applied to all who would either believe or teach doctrines in opposition to them. The primacy of the King, however, was left intact, so Henry, using his new power, appointed Cromwell, though a mere layman, his Vicar-General in Spirituals for the entire kingdom, and ordained that he should preside at all the Synods of the Bishops. When Paul III was informed of all these sacrilegious attempts on the integrity of Faith, and especially of the affair of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, (who died in 1170,) who was tried and condemned as a traitor to his country, and his sacred body disinterred, burned, and the ashes thrown into the Thames, he published a brief on the 1st of January, 1538, ordering that the sentence before passed against Henry should be published. It was, however, delayed on account of the melancholy death of Queen Jane, who died in childbirth, leaving Henry an heir, afterwards Edward VI, under whom the ruin of England was completed, as in his time, heresy was firmly rooted in the country. It is said (but the report does not rest, I believe, on a good foundation), that when Henry found that there was danger of the child being lost, he ordered an operation to be performed on the mother, saying he could get wives enough, but not heirs.

11. - The Pope endeavours to bring Henry to a sense of his duty,
but does not succeed.

11. On the death of Jane Seymour, Henry immediately began to look about for his fourth wife, and Paul III, hoping to bring him to a sense of his duty, wrote him a letter in which he told him of the sentence of excommunication hanging over him, which he did not promulgate, having still hopes that he would be reconciled with the Church; at the same time, he created Reginald Pole a Cardinal, and sent him to France as his Legate, that he might endeavour to arrange a marriage between Henry and Margaret, the daughter of Francis I of France. Cardinal Pole accordingly went to France, and arranged the matter with Francis, but Henry would not agree to it, and he wrote to Francis, telling him that Pole was a rebel, and requiring Francis to deliver him up to him.

This Francis refused to do, but he told the Cardinal the danger he was in, and by his advice, he quitted France. Henry, disappointed in his vengeance, laid a price of fifty thousand crowns on his head.

12. - Henry marries Anne of Cleves;
Cromwell is put to death.

12. Cromwell (not Oliver the later Protector or President) now thought it a good opportunity to induce the King to take a wife on his recommendation, and bring him over to his own Religion, which was Lutheran. He then proposed as a wife to him Anne, daughter of the Duke of Cleves, head of one of the noblest families in Germany, sister of the Electress of Saxony. Anne had a great many good qualities which would fit her for a crown, but she was, unfortunately, a Lutheran, and her relations were the chiefs of the League of Schmalkald. Of this League Henry was anxious to be admitted a member, but the Lutherans had not confidence in him, and he then imagined that by marrying a Lutheran Princess he would remove any difficulties which previously existed to his admission. The marriage was celebrated, to Henry’s great joy, on the 3rd of January, 1540, and Cromwell was made High Chancellor on the occasion, and Earl of Essex.

Henry was only seven months married when, as usual, he publicly declared himself discontented with his Queen, especially as she was a heretic, as if he could be called a Catholic. He now became enamoured of Catherine Howard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England, and one of the maids of honour to Queen Anne, and seeing no hopes of obtaining her favour unless he married her, he called on Cromwell to assist him now again to get divorced from Anne of Cleves. Cromwell had embarked his fortunes in the same boat with the Queen; he dreaded that her divorce would be the cause of his fall, and he refused most determinedly to have any hand in it. Henry, displeased with his obstinacy, eagerly sought an occasion to ruin him, and was not long in finding it. The chiefs of the Protestant League sent their agents to London to conclude with Henry the alliance he was before so desirous of, but as he was now determined to repudiate Anne, he had no longer any wish to league himself with the Lutherans, so he refused to treat with the agents; but Cromwell, confiding in his favour, took on himself to sign the treaty.

Some say that Henry was privy to this act, but this is denied by others; however it was, the upshot of the affair was the disgrace of Cromwell, for when the Emperor loudly complained of the alliance, Henry swore that he had no cognizance of it. He sent for Cromwell one day, and in presence of many of the nobility, charged him publicly with signing a treaty for which, he had no authority, and ordered him immediately to be conducted to the Tower. Cromwell begged hard for a public trial, to give him an opportunity of justifying his conduct in the affair, but as, independently of that charge, he was convicted of other crimes heresy, peculation, and illegal impositions he, who was the cause of so many Catholics being condemned without a hearing, was, by the just judgment of the Almighty, condemned himself, and was decapitated, quartered, and his property confiscated.

Henry now had the Queen informed that unless she consented to a divorce he would have the laws against heretics put in force against her, she being a Lutheran. Dreading the fate that awaited her, from his known cruelty, and wishing to avoid also the shame of a public repudiation, she confessed, it is said, that previous to her marriage with the King she was promised to another; so Thomas Cranmer, who gave the sentence of divorce in the cases of Catherine and of Anne Boleyn, now for the third time pronounced a similar sentence. The decision was based on the greatest injustice, for the contract of marriage between Anne and the Duke of Lorraine, on which it was founded, took place while they were both children, and was never ratified. How, then, could Henry’s solemn marriage be affected by this? But Cranmer, whom Gilbert Burnet, the Anglican historian and Bishop of Salisbury, [died 1715] compares to Saint Athanasius and Saint Cyril, decided that it was null and void, merely to please Henry, who immediately married another. Queen Anne accepted a pension of 3,000 a year, but never returned to Germany again.

13. - Henry marries Catherine Howard, whom he afterwards put to death,
and then marries Catherine Parr.

13. Within a week Henry was married to Catherine Howard, who soon met the same fate as Anne Boleyn.

She was charged before Parliament with dissolute conduct with two individuals, before her marriage, and with adultery since, and was condemned to be beheaded. Henry then got a law passed, the like of which was never before heard of, enacting it high treason for any lady to marry the King, if previously she had ever offended against chastity. He then married Catherine Parr, sister to the Earl of Essex; she survived him, but having married the brother of the Regent Somerset, Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral of England, who suffered death by the sentence of his own brother, she died of a broken heart.

14. – Henry’s remorse in his last sickness.

14. Death, at last, was about to put an end to Henry’s crimes; he was now fifty-seven years of age, and had grown to such an enormous size that he could not almost pass through the doorway of his palace, and was obliged to be carried by servants up and down stairs. A deep-rooted sadness and remorse now seized him; all his crimes, sacrileges, and scandals stared him in the face. To establish the sacrilegious doctrine of his primacy over the English Church he had put to death, according to Hollingshed, two Cardinals (Wolsey and Fisher), eighteen Archdeacons, five hundred priests, sixty Superiors of religious houses, fifty Canons, twenty-nine peers, three hundred and sixty-six knights, and an immense number both of the gentry and people. [Modern historians would question these numbers. They do acknowledge that there are 50 formal Catholic Martyrs. Their number includes More and Fisher, Carthusian Monks, Brigettine monks, Franciscans (especially the companions of Blessed John Forest), Benedictines, Augustinians, secular priests, Knights of Saint John, and other laymen. Then there were all the Catholics executed for following the deluded ‘Holy Maid of Kent’, those who died during the Pilgrimage of Grace, and Bigold’s Rebellion, those executed under the attainder of Cardinal Pole’s relations, the Fitzgeralds and Kildares and their supporters from Ireland, and those who died in the Irish and Scottish wars.]

Ulcers in one of his legs, together with fever, now plainly told him that his end was nigh, and some writers assert that he then spoke to some of the Bishops of his intention of being again reconciled to the Church, but not one among them had the courage to tell him plainly the course he should take. All dreaded his anger; and none were willing to brave the danger of death, by plainly telling him that his only chance of salvation was to repent of his evil deeds to repair the scandal he had given and humbly return to the Church he had abandoned. No one was courageous enough to tell him this; one alone suggested to him that he ought to convoke parliament, as he had done when about to make the changes, to set things again to rights. He ordered, it is said, the Secretaries of State to convoke it, but they feared they should be obliged to disgorge the plunder of the Church, and put off the convocation, and thus he left the Church in the greatest confusion; and soon, as we shall see, irreparable ruin overtook it.

15. - Henry makes his will, and dies.

15. Just before Henry’s death he opened a church belonging to the Franciscans, and had Mass again said in it (now Christ Church Hospital), but this was but little reparation for so much mischief. He then made his will, leaving his only son, Edward, heir to the throne, then only nine years of age, appointing sixteen guardians to him, ordering that he should be brought up in the Catholic Faith, but never resign the primacy of the English Church, so that he was unchanged even in death. In case that Edward died without issue, he left the crown to Mary, daughter of Queen Catherine, and should she likewise die without issue, to Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn. He caused Mass to be celebrated several times in his chamber, and wished that the Viaticum should be administered to him in the one kind alone. When the Viaticum was brought in, he received it kneeling, and when it was told him, that, considering the state he was in, that was unnecessary, he said: "If I could bury myself under the earth, I could not show sufficient respect to the God I am about to receive". How could he, however, expect to please the Almighty by such acts of reverence, after trampling on his Church, and dying out of her communion? He endeavoured, by these external acts, to quiet that remorse of conscience he felt, but, withal, he could not recover the Divine grace, nor the peace he sought. He called for some Religious to attend him at his last moments, after banishing them out of the kingdom; he next called for something to drink, and having tasted it, he said to those around him, in a loud tone, "So this is the end of it, and all is lost for me," and immediately expired. He died on the 1st of February, 1547, at the age of fifty-six, according to Noel Alexander, or in his fifty-seventh year, according to others, and in the thirty-eighth year of his reign.

II. - REIGN OF EDWARD VI.

16. - The Duke of Somerset, as Guardian of Edward VI, governs the kingdom.

16. Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, was one of the guardians appointed by Henry to his son; he was maternal uncle to the young King, being brother to Jane Seymour, his mother. Although he passed all along as a Catholic, he was a Zwinglian, and as the majority of Edward’s guardians were Catholics, he intrigued with some of the principal nobility of the kingdom, and pointed out how dangerous it would be to their interests that the young King should be left in the hands of those gentlemen; that the consequence would be that they should have, sooner or later, to surrender again the Ecclesiastic property given them by Henry; that the suppressed and ruined churches should be again repaired and rebuilt, to the great impoverishing of the Royal treasury; and that the only way to avoid such evils was that he should be made Governor of the kingdom. He craftily suppressed Henry’s will, and substituted another, in which Edward was declared head of the Church of England, and he was appointed Regent; he then got himself created Duke of Somerset, and took the title of Protector of the Kingdom.

17. - Somerset declares himself a heretic,
and gives leave to the heretics to preach;
invites Bucer, Vermigli, and Ochino to England,
and abolishes the Roman Catholic Religion.

17. No sooner had he got the supreme power into his hands, as Protector, than he at once took off the mask, proclaimed himself a Protestant, and appointed preachers to disseminate the heresy. He prohibited the Bishops from preaching, or ordaining, without the King’s permission, and he then refused permission to any one to preach, unless to the Zwinglian Ministers.

Among the rest, the impious Cranmer, pseudo Archbishop of Canterbury, now began publicly to preach against the Catholic Church, and published a Catechism filled with the most wicked doctrines against the Faith, and was not ashamed to marry publicly, with the approbation of the Regent, the woman who lived with him as concubine before he was made Bishop whom he had secretly married back in 1532. Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Winchester but deposed from his See for preaching, in London, against the Real Presence was now appointed, by Somerset, principal preacher of the Zwinglian errors. He invited, at the same time, from Strasbourg, three famous ministers of Satan, apostate Religious, well known through all Europe: Martin Bucer, now seventy years of age, and three times married; Peter Martyr, and Bernard Ochino and appointed them to Professors Chairs in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to poison the minds of the poor youths studying there, and he banished every Catholic Professor out of these Colleges. To complete the work of iniquity, he appointed, as tutors to the young King, Richard Crock, a priest, who violated his vows, by marrying, and John Check, a layman of debauched life, fit instructors for a young Prince in vice and heresy. He tried, by sending Bucer, Peter Martyr, and Ochino, to Mary, to induce her to forsake the Church, like wise; but she showed such determined opposition, that he never tried it again.

His next step was to abolish the six Articles of Henry VIII., and on the 5th of November, 1547, he obtained the sanction of Parliament, for abolishing the Roman Catholic Religion, the Mass, the veneration of Sacred Images, and for the confiscation of the sacred vessels and ornaments of the altar; and thus, under him, the whole plan of Religion established by Henry and the Parliament (see Number 10, above), six Articles, and all, were done away with.

Here we naturally wonder how so many Bishops and Theologians could establish, in Henry’s reign, a form of worship of such little value, as to be abolished almost immediately on his death. Gilbert Burnet says, that these Theologians were ignorant of the truth. Behold, then, the reformed Faith, called by him "The Work of Light." They sanctioned articles of Faith without having a knowledge of the truth.

The Reformation may, indeed, be called a work of darkness, since it upset Faith, Religion, and all Divine and human laws, in England. Somerset next ordained, that Communion should be administered under both kinds, that the Scriptures should be generally read in the vulgar tongue and that all Bishops, or other Ecclesiastics, refusing obedience to this order, should be sent to prison, and deprived of their benefices, and Reformers installed in their places. In this, he followed the advice of Calvin, who wrote him a long letter from Geneva on the subject, advising him to abolish the Catholic Religion by persecution; and the prisons of London were, accordingly, filled with suspected Catholics. At this period, three-fourths of the clergy had shaken off the law of celibacy.

18. - Somerset beheads his brother, the Lord High Admiral.

18. Such were the crimes of the Duke of Somerset against the Church; but the Divine vengeance soon overtook him, in a most unexpected manner (9). He had raised his brother, Thomas Seymour, to the dignity of Lord High Admiral of the Kingdom, and this nobleman had gained the affection of Henry’s last Queen, Catherine Parr, and had his consent to the marriage. This was highly displeasing, however, to the Duchess of Somerset, as, in case of his marriage with Catherine, she should resign to her the precedence which she enjoyed, as wife of the Protector, and, though she yielded to the Queen Dowager, she was unwilling to take rank beneath her sister-in-law; and thus a quarrel was commenced between the ladies, in which their husbands were soon engaged. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was an enemy to both parties, and bent on their destruction; and, to accomplish it with greater certainly, he pretended to be a mediator, while he dexterously encouraged the strife between them, and succeeded so well, that Somerset engaged Sharington to accuse his brother of high treason. He appeared to be highly displeased when the accusation was first made; but then he alleged that the King’s life and honour were more dear to him than his brother’s life, and he gave orders to proceed with his trial.

The Admiral was condemned, and executed on the 20th of March, 1549. His lady, Queen Catherine, according to some, died of a broken heart; but we believe that she had previously died in childbirth. [She had.]

19. - Somerset is beheaded himself.

19. On the death of the Admiral, Earl Warwick was entire master of Somerset’s mind; he wound him round as he pleased, and had sufficient interest to appoint friends of his own to several important places, by which he laid the foundation of the Duke’s ruin. He strengthened his party, besides, by the adhesion of the Catholic lords very numerous still who were persuaded by him, that there was no hope of reestablishing the Catholic Religion while Somerset was in power. About the same time, the English lost Boulogne, in the ancient province of Picardy, and the Regent was severely censured, for not having sent reinforcements in time, to save it from the French. Several of the barons and nobility, likewise, had enclosed commonages, in different parts of the kingdom, to the great grievance of the people, who looked to the Regent for redress, and not obtaining it, broke out into rebellion, and Warwick got the Parliament convoked. He had a very strong party in both houses, so the Regent was attainted, and sent to the Tower, and was executed on the 22nd of January, 1552, and both Catholics and Protestants rejoiced at his death.

20. - Death of King Edward;
the Earl of Warwick (Northumberland) makes an attempt
to get possession of the kingdom,
and is beheaded, but is converted, and dies an edifying death.

20. The Earl of Warwick having now disposed of all his rivals, took the administration of affairs even during Edward’s lifetime into his own hands, and got another step in the Peerage, being created Duke of Northumberland; and not satisfied with all this, prevailed on the King to leave his crown, by will, to his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, excluding Mary, daughter of Queen Catherine, as she was declared illegitimate in the reign of Henry VIII, and Elizabeth, as daughter of the adulteress, Anne Boleyn.

Edward died soon after, in the sixteenth year of his age, on the 7th of July, 1553, and Northumberland, it is said, immediately gave orders that Mary should be secured; but his secretary, a Catholic, thought it too bad that the heiress of the crown should be thus deprived of her right, and he escaped from his master, and arrived in Mary’s presence two hours sooner than the person the Duke sent to arrest her. Mary immediately fled to Norfolk, where the people showed their attachment to her cause, by taking up arms in her defence. She collected an army of fifteen thousand men, and though Northumberland marched against her with thirty thousand, he was deserted by most of them (some say he never had more than six thousand in the beginning), and returned to London; but the citizens would not now admit him, and the fleet, likewise, declared for Mary. When Queen Mary was settled in the government, Northumberland was indicted for high treason, and, as there was no doubt of his guilt, he was condemned and executed.

His sons suffered, likewise, and his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, Henry’s niece, who wore the crown for ten days against her will, paid the penalty of her treason on the scaffold. Elizabeth was, likewise, kept in custody on suspicion. Northumberland had embraced Protestantism merely from political motives, but now he returned again to the Faith, confessed to a Priest, and declared on the scaffold, that it was merely the ambition of obtaining the crown for his family that caused him to dissemble his Faith, and that he looked on his punishment now a grace of God to procure his salvation. His sons and others, executed for the same crime, made a similar declaration. It is melancholy to see in this history so many persons condemned to death for trying to elevate themselves above their sphere, and England become immediately on her loss of the Faith a field of slaughter for her children.

III. - MARY’S REIGN.

21. - Mary refuses the title of Head of the Church;
repeals her Father’s and Brother’s Laws;
Cranmer is condemned to be burned, and dies a heretic;
Mary sends off all heretics from her Court.

21. The good Queen Mary, on her accession to the throne, refused to take the impious title of Head of the Church, and immediately sent ambassadors to Rome, to pay obedience to the Pope. She repealed all the decrees of her father and brother, and re-established the public exercise of the Catholic Religion. She imprisoned Elizabeth, who twice conspired against her, and, it is said, Elizabeth owed her life to the intercession of King Philip. She opened the prisons, and gave liberty to the Bishops and other Catholics who were confined; and on the 5th of October, 1553, the Parliament rescinded the iniquitous sentence of Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, by which he declared the marriage of Catherine and Henry null and void, and he was condemned to be burned as a heretic. When the unfortunate man found that he was condemned to death, he twice retracted his errors; but when all this would not save him from being burned, he cancelled his retractation, and died a Calvinist. By the Queen’s orders, the remains of Bucer and Fagius, who died heretics, were caused to be exhumed and burned; and thirty thousand heretics were banished the kingdom, comprising Lutherans, Calvinists, Zwinglians, Anabaptists, Socinians, ‘Seekers’, and such like. The Seekers are those who are seeking the true religion, but have not yet found it, nor ever will out of the Catholic Church alone; because in every other religion, if they trace it up to the author, they will find some impostor, whose imagination furnished a mass of sophisms and errors.

22. - Cardinal Pole reconciles England with the Church;
Mary’s marriage with Philip II, and death.

22. Mary, likewise, proclaimed the innocence of Cardinal Pole, and requested Pope Julius III to send him to England as his Legate, with full powers. He arrived soon after, and, at the request of the Queen, reconciled the kingdom again to the Church, and absolved it from schism, on the Vigil of Saint Andrew, 1554. He next restored Ecclesiastical discipline, reformed the Universities, and re-established the practices of Religion.

He absolved all the laymen from the censures they incurred by laying hands on the property of the Church during the time of the schism; remitted the tithes and first fruits due to the Clergy; confirmed in their Sees the Catholic Bishops, though installed in the time of the schism, and recognized the new Sees established by Henry. All this was subsequently confirmed by Pope Paul IV.; but, unfortunately for England, Mary died on the 15th of November, 1558, in the forty-fourth year of her age, and fifth of her reign. She was married to Philip II., King of Spain, and at first mistook her sickness, which was dropsy, for pregnancy. The Faithful all over the world mourned for her death.

IV. - THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH.

23. - Elizabeth proclaimed Queen;
the Pope is dissatisfied, and she declares herself a Protestant.

23. Mary died on the 17th of November, 1558, and Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, was proclaimed Queen, according to the iniquitous will of Henry VIII. I call it iniquitous, for the crown, by right, appertained to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, for Elizabeth’s birth was spurious, as she was born during the lifetime of Henry’s first Queen and lawful wife, Catherine, and when Pope Clement VIII and Pope Paul III had already declared his marriage with Anne Boleyn null and void. Elizabeth was crowned on 25th of January 1559. Elizabeth was then twenty-five years of age, and highly accomplished, and learned both in science and languages. She spoke French, Italian, and Latin. She had, besides, all the natural qualities requisite for a great Queen, but obscured by the Lutheran heresy, of which she was a follower in private. During the lifetime of Mary, she pretended to be a Catholic, and, perhaps, would have continued to do so when she came to the throne, or have become a Catholic in reality, if the Pope would recognize her as Queen, for in the beginning she allowed freedom of religion to all, and even took the old Coronation Oath to defend the Catholic Faith, and preserve the liberties of the Church. [It was noted, however, that she always left Divine services before the Consecration. In other words, she regularly ‘missed Mass’, even on Christmas day.] She commanded Sir Edward Cairne, the Ambassador in Rome from her sister Mary, to notify her accession and coronation to Pope Paul IV, and present her duty, and ask his benediction.

The Pope, however, answered, that it was not lawful for her to have assumed the government of the kingdom, a fief of the Holy See, without the consent of Rome, that it would be necessary to examine the rights which Queen Mary of Scotland had to the throne also, and therefore that she should place herself altogether in his hands, and that she would experience from him paternal kindness. Elizabeth then saw that it would be difficult to keep herself on the throne, unless by separating from the Roman Church; she therefore tore off the mask, recalled her Ambassador, Cairne, from Rome, and publicly professed the heresy she had previously embraced in private.

24. - Elizabeth gains over the Parliament,
 through the influence of three of the Nobility,
and is proclaimed head of the Church.

24. All now she had to do was to get the Parliament to establish the Reformed Religion, and this was easily accomplished. The House of Commons being already gained over, the only difficulty was to get the Peers to agree to it. The Upper House was almost entirely led by Thomas Howard - the Duke of Norfolk - , Lord Dudley, and Henry FitzAlan - the Earl of Arundel. On each of these, Elizabeth exercised her influence, and through them gained over the majority of the Peers, especially as the lay Peers were more numerous than the Bishops, to declare her Head of the Church. All the regulations made in religious affairs during the reign of Edward VI were reestablished, and those of Mary repealed. Each of these noblemen expected that Elizabeth, who was a most consummate intriguer, would make him the partner of her crown. There were sixteen thousand Ecclesiastics in England. Three-fourths, as Gilbert Burnet writes, immediately joined the Reformers. The greater part of the Clergy were married at that period, and this was the reason, as Burnet himself allows, that they changed so easily.

25. - Elizabeth establishes the form of Church Government,
and, though her belief is Calvinistic, she retains Episcopacy, etc.

25. Elizabeth, now fortified with parliamentary authority, prohibited most rigorously any of her subjects from obeying the Pope, and commanded all to recognize her as Head of the Church, both in Spirituals and Temporalities. It was also ordained, at the same time, that to the Crown alone belonged the appointment of Bishops, the convocation of Synods, the power of taking cognizance of heresy and abuses, and the punishment of spiritual delinquencies. A system of Church government and discipline was also established, and though the doctrines of the Anglican Church are Calvinist, which rejects Bishops, together with all the sacred ceremonies of the Roman Church, as well as altars and images, still she wished that the Bishops should be continued, but without any other power than what they held from herself.

Then was seen in the Church what before was unheard of a woman arrogating to herself the supremacy of the Church.

How totally opposed this was to the Scriptures, Saint Paul tells us plainly, for he says (1 Corinth 14:34): "Let women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted to them to speak, but to be subject." She wished that the Priesthood, altars, and sacred ceremonies, should be in some wise retained, for the people, she said, required such things. Thus, it would appear that she looked on the ceremonies of the Church as mere theatrical representations, fit to amuse the vulgar. A new Hierarchy and new ceremonies were, accordingly, instituted, and, we may say, a new Martyrology, with Wickliffe, Huss, and Cranmer, as its Martyrs; and Luther, Peter Martyr, Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Erasmus, its Saints. (Of Erasmus we say: ‘We may conclude with Bernini, that he died with the character of an unsound Catholic, but not a heretic, as he submitted his writings to the judgment of the Church, and Varillas says he always remained firm in the Faith, notwithstanding all the endeavours of Luther and Zwingli to draw him to their side.’)

26. – Elizabeth appropriates Church Property, abolishes the Mass;
the Oath of Allegiance;
persecution of the Catholics.

26. The benefices and the Monastic property were now all seized on, and part applied to government purposes, and the rest granted to the nobility. Vicars-General in spirituals were also appointed. All sacred images were removed from the churches, but she kept a Crucifix in her own chamber, placed on an altar, with two candles, but these were never lighted. The Mass was prohibited, together with all the ancient ceremonies used in preaching and administering the Sacraments, and new ceremonies were instituted, and a form of prayers commanded to be read in English, savouring strongly of Calvinism, which she wished should be the leading doctrine of the Anglican Church, but the government and discipline after a plan of her own. She then got the sanction of Parliament for all these regulations, and it was ordered that all Bishops and Ecclesiastics should take the oath of supremacy, under pain of deprivation and imprisonment for the first refusal, and of death for the second.

The oath was this: "I, A. B., declare in my conscience that the Queen is the sole and supreme ruler in this kingdom of England, both in spirituals and temporals, and that no foreign Prelate or Prince has any authority Ecclesiastical in this kingdom, and I, therefore, in the plain sense of the words, reject all foreign authority." Elizabeth hoped that an order enforced under such severe penalties would be at once obeyed by all; but all the Bishops (with the exception of the Bishop of Llandaff), refused, and were degraded and banished, or imprisoned, and their glorious example was followed by the better part of the Clergy, by numbers of the Religious, of various Orders, and by many doctors, and several of the nobility, whose constancy in adhering to the Faith was punished by exile and imprisonment. Soon, however, these punishments were looked on as too mild. Many Priests, Friars, and Preachers were put to death for the Faith, and crowned with Martyrdom. Sanders gives a Diary of all the occurrences that took place during this period in England, beginning in 1580.

27. - Death of [Saint] Edmund Campion for the Faith.

27. I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without relating the death of Edmund Campion, one of the many martyrs put to death by Elizabeth for the Faith. While in Rome, he heard of the dreadful persecution the Catholics, and, above all, the Missionaries who came to their assistance, were suffering from Elizabeth. He was a young Englishman, a scholar, and a linguist, and, burning with zeal for the salvation of his countrymen, he determined to go to their assistance. This was a matter of great difficulty, for several spies were on the look-out for him, to take him on his landing, and not only was his person described, but even his likeness was taken; still, disguised as a servant, he escaped all the snares laid for him, and arrived safely in the kingdom. Night and day, he laboured, preaching, hearing confessions, and animating the Faithful to perseverance; he was continually moving about from one place to another, under different names, and in various disguises, and so escaped, for a long time, the emissaries who were in search of him. He was at last betrayed by an apostate Priest, while he was saying Mass, and preaching, in the house of a Catholic.

He had not time to escape, the house was surrounded, and the master shut him up in a hiding hole, which was so well contrived, that after a most rigorous search, he could not be discovered. The bailiffs were going away in despair, when, at the bottom of the staircase they accidentally broke through a wall, and discovered him on his knees, offering up his life to God. They put him in prison, and he was then so violently racked, that when brought to trial and told to raise up his arm to attest his confession, he had not the power of doing so, and it was raised up by an assistant. He was arraigned as a traitor, for thus they indicted the Catholic Priests in those days, to do away with the honour of martyrdom. They put them to death, they said, not for preaching their Faith, but for conspiring against the Queen. When Campion was charged with treason, he confounded his accusers by replying: "How can you charge us with treason, and condemn us for that alone, when all that is requisite to save ourselves is, that we go to your preachings (thus changing their Religion); it is, then, because we are Catholics that we are condemned, and not because we are, as you say, rebels." He was condemned to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, and hanged. He then declared that he never rebelled against the Queen, that it was for the Faith alone he was put to death. He was disembowelled, his heart torn out and cast into the fire, and his body quartered. Several other Priests underwent a like punishment for the Faith during this reign.

28. - The Pope’s Bull against Elizabeth.

28. When Saint Pius V learned the cruelties practised by Elizabeth on the Catholics, he published a Bull against her, on the 24th of February, 1570; but this was only adding fuel to the fire, and the persecution became more furious. It was then, in 1587 that she, under false pretences, beheaded Mary, Queen of Scots. Let us review this story.

CALVINISTS WHO DISTURBED SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND.

29a. - Calvinist disorders in Scotland.

29a. Calvinism spread itself into Scotland from Europe, and totally infected that kingdom. Varillas gives the whole history of its introduction there; we will give a sketch of it. The perversion of this kingdom commenced with John Knox, an apostate Priest, of dissolute morals, who was at first a Lutheran, but after wards residing some time in Geneva, and being intimate with Calvin, became one of his followers, and so ardent was he in his new Religion, that he promised Calvin that he would risk everything to plant it in Scotland; soon after, he quitted Geneva, and came to Scotland, to put his design into execution. The opportunity was not long wanting. Henry VIII., King of England, strove to induce his nephew, James V., King of Scotland, to follow his example, and establish a schism, and separate himself from the Roman Church, and invited him to meet him in some place where they could hold a conference, and discuss the matter. King James excused himself under various pretexts, and the upshot of the matter was, that Henry went to war with him. James gave the command of his army to a favourite of his, Oliver Sinclair, whom the nobility obeyed with the greatest reluctance, as he was not of noble birth, and the consequence was, that the Scots were beaten in 1542, and James died of grief, leaving an infant only eight days old, to inherit his throne, Mary Stuart. Now this was exactly what Knox wanted; a long regency was just the thing to give him an opportunity to establish his opinions, and he unfortunately succeeded so well, that he substituted Calvinism for Catholicity.

The infant Mary, being now Queen of Scotland, Henry VIII asked her in marriage for his son Edward, afterwards the sixth of that name, and then only five years old. This demand raised two parties in the kingdom. James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, then all-powerful in Scotland, and Governor of the kingdom, favoured Henry’s wishes, gained over by Knox, who had already instilled heretical opinions into his mind; and one great reason he alleged was, that it would establish a perpetual peace between the two kingdoms. On the contrary, the Archbishop of Saint Andrews, David Beaton, afterwards Cardinal, and the Catholics, gave it all the opposition in their power, as tending to make Scotland a province of England; but the chief cause of their opposition to it, was the injury to Religion, for this marriage would draw Scotland into schism.

29b. - Mary Stuart is married to Francis II.

29b. Meanwhile, the Regent, who was a friend of the heretics, permitted the Calvinists to disseminate their doctrines, and gave liberty to every one in private or in public to pray as he liked, or, in other words, to choose whatever religion he pleased. The Archbishop opposed this concession, but the Calvinists rose in arms against him, and imprisoned him, and made him promise to favour the English alliance. In this, however, they did not succeed, for previous to her departure for England, the Cardinal, with consent of the Queen-Mother, Mary of Lorrain, sister to the Prince of Guise, proposed to Francis I., King of France, to marry Mary to the Dauphin, son of the future Henry II King of France. The King of France was very well pleased with the proposal, and sent a large body of troops into Scotland, which kept the Calvinists in check,, and enabled the Queen Regent to send her daughter to France, in 1548, and so Mary was sent, before she completed her seventh year, to be brought up in the family of Henry II., and in time to be married to his son, the future Francis II.

On the death of Francis I in 1547, Mary was married to the future Francis II, in April 1558. Henry II died in 1559, but soon Mary was left a widow in 1560, and the marriage was not blessed with children. Queen Mary then returned to Scotland, where she found religious affairs in the greatest confusion. The Calvinists had, in 1546, assassinated the Archbishop in his very chamber, and afterwards hanged his body out of the window.

29c. - Mary returns to Scotland, and marries Darnley;
next Bothwell;
is driven by violence to make a fatal renunciation of her Crown
in favour of her son.

29c. The rebels, likewise, in this sedition, destroyed the churches, and obliged the Queen-Mother to grant them the free exercise of Calvinism. Such was the miserable state of the kingdom when the Queen returned to it from France; and she immediately set about remedying these religious disorders. In the year 1565, she married Henry Darnley, who was afterwards assassinated in the King’s house by Earl Bothwell, leaving one son, afterwards James VI. Bothwell, blinded with love of the Queen, engaged a body of conspirators, seized her as she was returning from visiting her son at Stirling, brought her to a castle, and obliged her to marry him in 1567.

On hearing this the Calvinists immediately broke out into rebellion against her, and accused her of being privy to the murder of her former husband, since she married his murderer, but the principal cause of their hatred to her was her religion. Bothwell himself, however, who had to fly to Denmark from this outbreak, declared before his death that the Queen was perfectly innocent of Henry Darnley’s murder. The Calvinists, however, glad of a pretext to persecute the Queen, became so bold at last, that they took her prisoner and confined her in a castle, and the perfidious Knox advised that she should be put to death. The rebels did not go so far as that, but they told her that she should consent to be banished either into France or England, and should renounce the crown in favour of her son, and on her refusal they threatened to throw her into the lake, and one of them had the cowardice to hold a dagger to her breast. Under fear of death, she then took the pen and signed the deed making over the kingdom to her son, then thirteen months old.

29d. - Mary takes refuge in England, and is imprisoned by Elizabeth,
and afterwards condemned to death by her.

29d. The poor Queen was still detained in prison, notwithstanding her renunciation, so some of her friends planned and accomplished her liberation, but not knowing where to seek a place of security, she unfortunately sought it in England from Queen Elizabeth, who promised to aid and assist her as a sister Sovereign. Thus, she threw herself into the power of the very woman of all others most anxious to deprive her of life and kingdom, for Mary was her only rival, and the greatest difficulty the Pope had in recognizing Elizabeth was, that while Mary lived she was the lawful inheritor of the English throne.

When Mary arrived in England, Elizabeth pretended to receive her; but she imprisoned her, first, at Carlisle, and afterwards in Bolton under pretence that her enemies wished to make away with her. The national pride of the Scotch was raised when they learned their Queen was a prisoner, and they invaded England with six thousand men. Elizabeth, then unprepared for war, had recourse to craft to avert the blow, and she therefore promised Mary that if she used her authority to make the Scotch retire from England, she would assist her to recover her kingdom, but otherwise that there would be no chance of her liberation till the war was at an end. Mary yielded, and ordered the Scotch to disband themselves, under pain of high treason; the chiefs of the party were thus constrained to obey, but she was still kept in prison, and Elizabeth, to have another pretext for detaining her, induced James Murray, a natural brother of Mary, and the Countess of Lennox, mother of the murdered Darnley, to accuse her of procuring her husband’s murder. Elizabeth appointed a commission to try her, and though many persons of the greatest weight took up her defence, still after being imprisoned nineteen years, and having changed from prison to prison, sixteen times in England alone, she was condemned to be beheaded.

She received the news of her sentence with the greatest courage, and an entire resignation to the divine will. She asked for a pen, and wrote three requests to Elizabeth: First: That after her death her servants might be at liberty to go where they pleased. Second: To allow her to be buried in consecrated ground; and, Third: Not to prosecute any one who wished to follow the Catholic faith.

29e. - Edifying death of Mary Stuart.

29e. The execution of the sentence was deferred for two months, but on the day appointed, the 18th of February, 1587, at the dawn of day, the officers of justice came to conduct her to the place of execution.

The Queen asked for a confessor to prepare her for death, but was refused, and a minister was sent to her whom she refused to receive. It is said that she received the Holy Communion herself, having, by permission of the Pope, Saint Pius V, retained a consecrated particle for that purpose.

She then dressed herself with all the elegance of a bride, prayed for a short time in her oratory, and went to the scaffold which was prepared in the hall of Fotheringay Castle, the last prison she inhabited. Every thing was covered with black, the hall, the scaffold, and the pulpit from which the sentence was read.

Mary entered, covered with a long veil, which reached to her feet, a golden cross on her breast, a Rosary pendant at her girdle, and a crucifix in one hand, the Office of the Blessed Virgin in the other. She went forward with a majestic gait, and calling Melvin, her Major-domo, she saluted him with a serene countenance, and said: "My dear Melvin, when I am dead go to my son, and tell him that I die in the Catholic Religion, and tell him if he loves me or himself to follow no other; let him put his trust in God, and He will help him, and tell him to pardon Elizabeth for my death, which I voluntarily embrace for the Faith."

She then requested the Governor to allow the persons composing her suite to be present at her death, that they might certify that she died in the Catholic Faith. She knelt down on a cushion covered with black, and heard the sentence signed by Elizabeth’s own hand read, she then laid her head on the block, and the executioner cut it off at the second stroke. Her body was buried near Queen Catherine’s, the wife of Henry VIII, and it is said that an inscription was put on her tomb, but immediately after removed by order of Elizabeth.

Mary’s death filled all Europe with horror and compassion for her fate, and even Elizabeth, when she heard it, could not conceal the effect it had on her, and said it was too precipitate, but for all that, she continued to persecute the Catholics more and more, and added many martyrs to the Church.

29f. - Elizabeth promotes anti-Catholicism.

29f. Elizabeth was desirous, if possible, even to destroy Catholicity in all Christian kingdoms, and entered into a league with the Reformers of the Netherlands, and the Calvinists of France, and this league never was interrupted during her lifetime, and in the wars waged by these rebels against their Sovereigns, she sent them powerful assistance, and she left no stone unturned, either, to advance the Calvinistic Reformation in Scotland.

29g. - Elizabeth dies out of Communion with the Church.

29g. The end of her reign and life was now at hand; a Protestant author has said that she died a happy death. It is worth while to see what sort of a death it was. I find that after the death of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, whom she beheaded though very much attached to him for the crime of insurrection, she never more enjoyed a day’s happiness. As old age came on her, also, she was tormented by fear and jealousy, and doubted the affectionate fidelity of her subjects. She went to Richmond, where the pleasing scenery had no effect in calming her mind; she conceived that all her friends abandoned her, that everything went against her, and complained that she had no sincere attached friend. The death-sickness at last came on her, and she refused all medical aid, and could not, her impatience was so great, bear even the sight of a physician. When she saw death approaching, she declared King James of Scotland her successor, and on the 24th of March, 1603, two hours before midnight, she breathed her last, in the seventieth year of her age, and forty-fourth of her reign. Thus, she closed her days in sorrow and anguish, not so much through pain of body, as of mind. She sunk into the grave without any sign of repentance, without Sacraments, without the assistance of a Priest; she was attended by some Protestant Ecclesiastics, but they only exhorted her to persevere in the heresy she embraced. Such was the ‘happy death’ of Queen Elizabeth.

It is said that she used to say: "If God gives me forty years to reign, I will give up even heaven itself." Unhappy woman! Not alone forty, but nearly forty-five years did she possess the throne. She became head of the Church; she separated the Church of England from the Roman See; she prohibited the exercise of the Catholic Religion; how many innocent persons did she doom to all the horrors of exile, of imprisonment, of cruel death! She is now in eternity, and I would like to know, is she satisfied with all the crimes and cruelties she committed during her life. O, happy would it be for her had she never sat upon a throne.

30a. – Elizabeth’s successors on the Throne of England.

30a. Elizabeth, before she died, nominated James VI., the son of Mary Stuart, her successor. When he became King of England, he neglected to comply with the wishes of his good mother, never to follow any other than the Catholic Religion; he leant, therefore, to Lutheranism; was anything but a friend to the Calvinists and was anxious that Scotland, which kingdom he retained, should follow the Lutheran doctrine also; but in this, he was disappointed.

30b. - James I, the son of Mary, succeeds Elizabeth;
he is succeeded by his son, Charles I., who was beheaded.

30b. James VI, King of Scotland, and the son of Queen Mary Stuart, took little heed of his mother’s advice or example, for, after Elizabeth’s death, being then King of Scotland, he succeeded her, and took the title of James I, King of Great Britain, and the year after his coronation, which took place in 1603, he ordered, under pain of death, that all Catholic Priests should quit the kingdom. In the year 1606, he brought out that famous declaration that the King of England was independent of the Roman Church, called the Oath of Supremacy. He died in 1625, the fifty-ninth year of his age, and the twenty-second of his English reign.

He was the first King who governed the three kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland, but he lived and died a heretic, while his mother lived forty-two years in almost continual sorrow and persecution, but died the death of the just. This unhappy Monarch was succeeded by his son, Charles I, born in the year 1600, and like his father, the Sovereign of three kingdoms; he followed his father’s errors in religion, and sent succours to the Calvinists in France, to enable them to retain Rochelle, then in their possession.

He was unfortunate; for both the Scotch and English Parliamentarians took up arms against him, and after several battles, he lost the kingdom. He took refuge with the Scotch, but they delivered him up to the English, and they, at Oliver Cromwell’s instigation, who was then aiming at sovereign power, condemned him to be beheaded, and he died on the scaffold on the 30th of July, 1648, the twenty- fifth of his reign and forty-eighth of his age.

30c. - Deplorable state of the English Church.

30c. James’ son and successor, Charles I, had endeavoured to carry out his father’s intentions of Lutherising the Scottish and English Churches, but he had lost his head on the scaffold. He was succeeded by his son, Charles II., who died without issue, and the crown then devolved on his brother, James II.

This good Prince declared himself a Catholic, and the consequence was, that he was obliged to fly to France, where he died a holy death in 1701, leaving one son, ‘James III’, who lived and died in Rome, in the Catholic Faith. In fine, unhappy England was, and is, separated from the Catholic Church, and groans under the weight of various heresies. Every Religion, with the exception of the Catholic, is tolerated, [Saint Alphonsus is writing in 1770) but the Faithful are exposed to all the frightful severities of the penal laws, and there are among the sectarians, almost as many Religions as individuals. In fact, we may say, that in that unhappy country there is no Religion at all, for, as Saint Augustine says: "The true Religion was always one, from the beginning, and will always be the same."

(Translator’s 1847 footnote:
‘This was written in the last century, but the reader will praise the Almighty that such a state of things exists no longer. The Holy Author can now look down from heaven on a flourishing Church in England, and behold his own children, the Redemptorists, labouring with the other faithful labourers of the Gospel, in extending the kingdom of Christ.’)

30d. – Charles I is succeeded by his son, Charles II,
who is succeeded by his brother, James II.,
a Catholic, who died in France.

30d. Charles I was succeeded by his son, Charles II., born in 1630; at his father’s death by execution he went to Scotland, and was proclaimed King of that country and of England and Ireland likewise. Oliver Cromwell, who then governed the kingdom, under title of Protector of England, took the field against him, and put his forces to flight, so that Charles had to make his escape in disguise, first to France and afterwards to Cologne and Holland.

He was recalled after Cromwell’s death, which took place in 1658, and was crowned King of England in 1661, and died in 1685, at the age of sixty-five. He was succeeded by his second brother, James II, born in 1633. James was proclaimed King on the day of his brother’s death, the 16th of February, 1685, and was soon after proclaimed King of Scotland, though he openly declared himself a Roman Catholic, and forsook the communion of the English Church. Ardently attached to the Faith, he promulgated, in 1687, an Edict of Toleration, granting to the Catholics the free exercise of Religion, but this lost him his crown, for the English called in William, Prince of Orange, who, though James’s son-in-law, took possession of the kingdom, and, in 1689, James had to fly to France. He soon after went over to Ireland, to keep possession of that kingdom at all events, but being again beaten he fled back again to France, and died in Saint Germain, in 1701, the sixty-eighth year of his age. As this sovereign did not hesitate to sacrifice his temporal kingdom for the Faith, we have every reason to believe that he received an eternal crown from the Almighty. James II left one son, ‘James III’, who died in the Catholic Faith in Rome.

31a. – The English Reformation refutes itself.

31a. I have placed at the end of the historical portion of the Work I am writing, the ‘Refutation of the principal Heresies’ which infected the Church, but it is impossible to take any particular hold of the English schism, for it is not a Religion in itself, so much as a mixture composed of every heresy, excluding Catholicity, the only true Religion. This is, then, according to Gilbert Burnet, "The Work of Light," which smoothes the way to heaven.

What blindness, or, rather, what impiety! The Reformation smoothes the way to heaven, by allowing every one to live as he pleases, without law or Sacraments, and with no restraint. A foreign Protestant author even ridicules Burnet’s boast: "The English, by the Reformation," he says, “have become so totally independent, that every one takes whatever road to heaven that pleases himself." Thus, the English Reformation refutes itself.

31b. - The Anglo-Calvinists.

31b. The Anglo-Calvinists are different from the Puritans, Independents, and Presbyterians, both in Church discipline and doctrine. Unlike all these sects, they have preserved the Episcopal Order, not alone as distinct from other offices, but as superior by Divine right; they retain a sort of form of consecration for Bishops; they ordain Priests, and confirm those who have received Baptism, and show some honour to the Sign of the Cross, which their cognate sects reject totally. Besides Bishops, there are Chancellors, Archdeacons, Deans, and Rectors of Parishes; they have preserved the Cathedrals, and have Canons and Prebends, who say morning and evening prayers, and the surplice is used as a vestment. They recognize both the orders of Priesthood and Deaconship. The King, according to the laws of Henry and Elizabeth, is head of the Church, and the fountain of all ecclesiastical authority. The Sovereign, they say, has the power of making new laws, and establishing new rites, with consent of the Metropolitan and Convocation; and his royal tribunal decides all judgments brought before it. He can, with his Council, decide on matters of Faith, publish ordinances and censures. Such are the powers granted to the Sovereign, in the work entitled, "The Policy of the Church of England," published in London, in the year 1683.

But Saint Augustine says: "The true Religion was always one, from the beginning, and will always be the same."

* * *

{We have omitted the abundant footnotes which Saint Alphonsus supplied when quoting the Historians of his day, especially Nicholas Sanders, Noel Alexander (or Alexandre), Jacques Bossuet, Antoine Varillas, Vincenzo Gotti, Domenico Bernini, Godefroy Hermant, Giovanni Berti, and others. Additionally the translator had reference to the works of Hume and Lingard of the next century. The omission of footnotes has allowed Alphonsus’ argument to flow smoothly. Those readers who would like to consult them, are urged to read the original work in an English translation, such as at:

http://www.freewebs.com/wallmell/LiguoriHistoryHeresies.pdf

This extract is from pages 179 to 192, 171-173, 178.}