Page:New history of all religions.pdf/7



About the year 1530, Henry VIIIth. King of England threw off the Pope's authority, protested against the Church of Rome. And put the church of England on a new footing, having no higher Churchmen than Bishops. They deny all the forementioned articles held by the Romish Church; and hold the doctrines of Luther, Calvin, and other Protestant Reformers in Germany.

The people in Scotland being weary of all tyranny, oppression, and licentious lives of the Roman clergy, and having received considerable light from the preaching of a Mr George Wishart, an eminent Divine who had been instructed in the principles of the Protestant religion, when on his travels to Germany, that they might bring about reformation, entered into a National Covenant in the year 1580. It was renewed by people of all ranks in the year 1581. It was again renewed by royal and church authority in 1590, and afterwards by nobles, barons,