Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/119



MIDST the wreck of ancient institutions, the misery of the people, and the moral and social anarchy by which the nation was disintegrated, thoughtful persons in England could not fail by this time to be asking themselves what they had gained by the Reformation.

A national reformation, if the name is more than a mockery, implies the transfer of power, power spiritual, power political, from the ignoble to the noble, from the incapable to the capable, from the ignorant to the wise. It implies a recovered perception in all classes, from highest to lowest, of the infinite excellence of right, the infinite hatefulness of wrong.

The movement commenced by Henry VIII., judged by its present results, had brought the country at last into the hands of mere adventurers. The people had exchanged a superstition which, in its grossest abuses, prescribed some shadow of respect for obedience, for a superstition which merged obedience in speculative belief; and under that baneful influence, not only the