Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/96

 perfect ruin. This place, in which God had been worshipped for ages, was given over to the French and Walloon refugees, that they might use it as a woollen manufactory.

Such robbery of the Church's wealth and places of worship urged the nation to take sides on the question of religion. From this time Protestant and Catholic became parties in the State, and the English Catholic preferred to side with the Roman Catholic rather than with the Protestant. The Protestant party in England grew up and increased from the party men who came to England from the Continent. Hooper came across the channel, bringing with him all the love he could for Calvinism. He and many others spread the precepts of Calvin and Luther in the Church, and were successful in influencing the State in their favour. Through this reforming party the Book of Homilies was published for the clergy to read in Church. These men brought to England the mania for destroying images in Churches, as being superstitious objects of worship. It was during Edward's reign that Erasmus' paraphrase upon the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles was ordered to be read in Churches. The six Articles which Henry had enforced were repealed, as well as several other persecuting Acts which disgraced the Statute Book, as De Hæretico Comburendo—the Act for burning heretics.

One of the chief events of Edward's reign was the compilation of our liturgy. Up to his time there was not one uniform service used in England, as there is now. There were several what were called Uses in existence. There was the Use of Sarum, York, Hereford, Bangor, and Lincoln. These were all used in different parts of England. But in 1548,