Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/86

 between the Popes of Rome and the upholders of the common law of England.

We have seen what the primary causes of the Reformation were. Now I must speak of its more immediate cause. That cause was a private quarrel which King Henry had with the Pope over his second marriage.

It is due to this fact that you have sometimes heard the taunt which Dissenters hurl at us that the Reformation came into existence through the licentiousness of the king. This, however, as we have seen, is most certainly not true. It was the question of Henry's divorce from his first wife which led him to throw off the authority of the Pope of Rome. Henry by his first wife had no children, and as he had married her within the prohibited degrees he considered, so he said, that her childlessness was God's judgment on his sin. For the sake of having lawful children he sought a divorce from her. He appealed to the Pope to sanction it. But the Pope was not eager to grant his request, for he feared the result of his acquiescence in Henry's wish upon the other Courts of Europe. The king was enraged at the Pope's delay, and so—it is a long story and the result had better be briefly stated—Henry took the law into his own hands. He said that the Pope should no longer have authority in his kingdom. He succeeded in having a special Act of Parliament, in the year 1533, sanctioning his divorce from Catherine, and in that year he married the object of his affection, viz., Anne Boleyn. It is not my object to speak of the king's inner character respecting this event, since more important subjects await our consideration. But it was this act of divorce which finally brought all the woes of England