Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/85

 someone said of him at that time he seemed "Like one inspired, raised in voice, eye, his whole countenance, and mien, out of himself."

Erasmus was another of these reformers. The greater part of his labours he devoted to the publication of various editions of the Greek New Testament. He wrote a paraphrase of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. This great movement infected the growing generation with desires to interest itself in this work, and helped to make the people dissatisfied with the tone of life, moral and religious, before Henry's time, and led them ardently to desire a change.

You must not think that the Reformation was brought about by a single stroke. That is how people sometimes speak of it. A struggle to bring it on had been made for centuries, and all the events alluded to now had a share in completing it. King Henry was not the inventor of the Reformation. It was rather forced upon him. As we have already seen, during the whole of the mediæval period the kings of England had striven to effect a reformation. The struggle now brought to a head continually went on, and as Dr. Beard in his Hibbert Lecture says: "On both sides claims were always renewed," that is on the side of England and the Pope. "Popes of arbitrary temper and high spirit knew how to avail themselves of the political necessities of kings. &hellip; The formal assumption of supremacy by Henry VIII. was but the last stage of a process which had been going on for almost 500 years."

Clearly understand, then, that the Reformation was not the work of a moment, but of a long period of strong struggles