Perhaps Lord Macaulay puts
the case as bluntly as any one, and we may as well quote him because
he, too, was no Catholic, and held no brief for the Church of Rome.
This brilliant writer, who was, perhaps, an historian before all
things, tells us that the work of the Reformation was the work, not of
three saints, nor even of three ordinary decent men, but of three
notorious murderers! These are not our words, but Macaulay's, and it
is not our fault if this is his reading of history. We merely summon
him as a Protestant witness. He calmly and deliberately states that
the Reformation was "begun by Henry VIII., the murderer of his wives;
was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother; and was
completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest". Not a very
auspicious beginning, it must be confessed, and scarcely suggestive of
the Divine afflatus. Those who planted the Catholic Church used no
violence, and did not inflict death. No! on the contrary, they endured
death, and their blood became the seed of the Church. And that is
quite another story. In former days every one admitted the present
Anglican Church to be the child of the Reformation.
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