Thomas More elected Chancellor--A lay Government one of the great Facts of the Reformation--Wolsey accused of subordinating England to the Pope--He implores the King's Clemency--His Condemnation--Cromwell at Esher--His Character--He sets out for London--Sir Christopher Hales recommends him to the King--Cromwell's Interview with Henry in the Park--A new Theory--Cromwell elected Member of Parliament-- Opened by Sir Thomas More--Attack on ecclesiastical Abuses--Reforms pronounced by the Convocation--Three Bills--Rochester attacks them--Resistance of the House of Commons--Struggles--Henry sanctions the three Bills--Alarm of the Clergy and Disturbances, page 418
The last hour--More's Fanaticism--Debates in Convocation--Royal Proclamation--The Bishop of Norwich--Sentences condemned--Latimer's Opposition--The New Testament burnt--The Persecution begins--Hitton-- Bayfield--Tonstall and Packington--Bayfield arrested--The Rector Patmore--Lollards' Tower--Tyndale and Patmore--a Musician--Freese the Painter--Placards and Martyrdom of Bennet--Thomas More and John Petit--Bilney, page 426
Wolsey's Terror--Impeachment by the Peers--Cromwell saves him--The Cardinal's Illness--Ambition returns to him--His Practices in Yorkshire--He is arrested by Northumberland--His departure--Arrival of the Constable of the Tower--Wolsey at Leicester Abbey--Persecuting Language--He dies--Three Movements: Supremacy, Scripture, and Faith, page 438
Introduction--Work of the Sixteenth Century--Unity and Diversity--Necessity of considering the entire Religious History of England--Establishment of Christianity in Great Britain--Formation of Ecclesiastical Catholicism in the Roman Empire--Spiritual Christianity received by Britain--Slavery and Conversion of Succat--His Mission to Ireland--Anglo-Saxons re-establish Paganism in England--Columba at Iona--Evangelical Teaching--Presbytery and Episcopacy in Great Britain--Continental Missions of the Britons--An Omission.
Those heavenly powers which had lain dormant in the Church since the first ages of Christianity, awoke from their slumber in the sixteenth century, and this awakening called the modern times into existence. The Church was created anew, and from that regeneration have flowed the great developments of literature and science, of morality, liberty, and industry, which at present characterize the nations of Christendom. None of these things would have existed without the Reformation. Whenever society enters upon a new era, it requires the baptism of faith. In the sixteenth century God gave to man this consecration from on high by leading him back from mere outward profession and the mechanism of works to an inward and lively faith.