Founders Of Religions

"The hinges on which the controversy turns are these: first, in their contending that the form of the Church is always visible and apparent; and, secondly, in their placing this form in the see of the Church of Rome and its hierarchy. We, on the contrary, maintain, both that the Church may exist without any apparent form, and, moreover, that the form is not ascertained by that external splendour which they foolishly admire, but by a very different mark, namely, by the pure preaching of the word of God, and the due administration of the sacraments."

"Since God has revealed himself as a Father, we would be guilty of the basest ingratitude if we did not behave as his children."

"The belief that the body of the Virgin was not interred on earth, but was taken to heaven, has deprived them of all pretext for manufacturing any relics of her remains, which otherwise might have been sufficiently abundant to fill a whole churchyard; yet in order to have at least something belonging to her, they sought to indemnify themselves for the absence of other relics with the possession of her hair and her milk. The hair is shown in several churches in Rome, and at Salvatierra in Spain, at Macon, St Flour, Cluny, Nevers, and in many other towns. With regard to the milk, there is not perhaps a town, a convent, or nunnery, where it is now shown in large or small quantites. Indeed, had the Virgin been a wet-nurse her whole life, or a dairy, she could not have produced more than is shown as hers in various parts."

"“The practice of employing images as ornaments and memorials to decorate the temple of the Lord is in a most especial manner approved by the Word of God himself. Moses was commanded to place two cherubim upon the ark, and to set up a brazen figure of the fiery serpent, that those of the murmuring Israelites who had been bitten might recover from the poison of their wounds by looking on the image. In the description of Solomon's temple, we read of that prince, not only that he made in the oracle two cherubim of olive tree, of ten 83 Vide supra, p. 17. 101 cubits in height, but that ‘all the walls of the temple round about he carved with divers figures and carvings.’ “In the first book of Paralipomenon (Chronicles) we observe that when David imposed his injunction upon Solomon to realise his intention of building a house to the Lord, he delivered to him a description of the porch and temple, and concluded by thus assuring him: ‘All these things came to me written by the hand of the Lord, that I may understand the works of the pattern.’ “The isolated fact that images were not only directed by the Almighty God to be placed in the Mosaic tabernacle, and in the more sumptuous temple of Jerusalem, but that [132] he himself exhibited the pattern of them, will be alone sufficient to authorise the practice of the Catholic Church in regard to a similar observance.”—(Hierurgia, p. 371.) All this may be briefly answered. There was no representation of the Jewish patriarchs or saints either in the tabernacle or in the temple of Solomon, as is the case with the Christian saints in the Roman Catholic and Græco-Russian Churches; and the brazen serpent, to which the author alludes, was broken into pieces by order of King Hezekiah as soon as the Israelites began to worship it."

"The ceremony of lifting up our hands in prayer is designed to remind us that we are far removed from God, unless our thoughts rise upward."

"Let the first rule of right prayer then be, to have our heart and mind framed as becomes those who are entering into converse with God. This we shall accomplish in regard to the mind, if, laying aside carnal thoughts and cares which might interfere with the direct and pure contemplation of God, it not only be wholly intent on prayer, but also, as far as possible, be borne and raised above itself. ... When I say it must be raised above itself, I mean that it must not bring into the presence of God any of those things which our blind and stupid reason is wont to devise, nor keep itself confined within the little measure of its own vanity, but rise to a purity worthy of God."

"It is certain that no man can embrace the grace of the Gospel without retaking himself from the errors of his former life into the right path, and making it his whole study to practice repentance."

"Becoming more callous and hardened when God thunders verbally from heaven, they obstinately persist in their rebellion. It is only when actually smitten by his hand that they are forced, whether they will or not, to fear. This fear the sacred writers term servile, and oppose to the free and voluntary fear which becomes sons."

"God promised by the mouth of Isaiah that queens should be the nursing mothers of the church."

"All things being at God’s disposal, and the decision of salvation or death belonging to him, he orders all things by his counsel and decree in such a manner, that some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that his name may be glorified in their destruction."

"A dog barks and stands at bay if he sees any one assault his master. I should be indeed remiss, if, seeing the truth of God thus attacked, I should remain dumb, without giving one note of warning."

"Now among the other things proper to recreate man and give him pleasure, music is either the first or one of the principal;and we must think that it is a gift of God deputed for that purpose'."

"I cannot think such language either right, or becoming, or suitable. ... To call the Virgin Mary the mother of God can only serve to confirm the ignorant in their superstitions."

"Nor, in truth, is it of little importance to prevent the suspicion of any difference having arisen between us from being handed down in any way to our posterity; for it is worse than absurd that parties should be found disagreeing on the very principles, after we have been compelled to make our departure from the world."

"I do not doubt that there has been some ignorance in their having reproved this mode of speech, — that the Virgin Mary is the Mother of God … I cannot dissemble that it is found to be a bad practice ordinarily to adopt this title in speaking of this Virgin: and, for my part, I cannot consider such language as good , proper, or suitable… for to say, the Mother of God for the Virgin Mary, can only serve to harden the ignorant in their superstitions."

"Now let us consider how many relics of the true cross there are in the world. An account of those merely with which I am acquainted would fill a whole volume, for there is not a church, from a cathedral to the most miserable abbey or parish church, that does not contain a piece. Large splinters of it are preserved in various places, as for instance in the Holy Chapel at Paris, whilst at Rome they show a crucifix of considerable size made entirely, they say, from this wood. In short, if we were to collect all these pieces of the true cross exhibited in various parts, they would form a whole ship's cargo. The Gospel testifies that the cross could be borne by one single individual;.."

"But, as sculpture and painting are gifts of God, what I insist on is, that both shall be used purely and lawfully, that gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon us, for His glory and our good, shall not be preposterously abused, nay, shall not be perverted to our destruction."

"For just as soon as a visible form has been fashioned for God, his power is also bound to it. Men are so stupid that they fasten God wherever they fashion him; and hence they cannot but adore. And there is no difference whether they simply worship an idol, or God in the idol. It is always idolatry when divine honors are bestowed on an idol, under whatever pretext this is done. And because it does not please God to be worshiped superstitiously, whatever is conferred upon the idol is snatched from him."

"We may also fitly remember that Satan has his miracles, which, though they are deceitful tricks rather than true powers, are such a sort as to mislead the simple-minded and untutored [2 Thes, 2:9-10] ... Idolatry has been nourished by wonderful miracles, yet these are not sufficient to sanction the superstition either of magicians or of idolators."

"The papists abuse this text, not only to the end they may commend feigned miracles, which they say are done at the graves of martyrs, but also that they may try and sell us their relics. Why, say thy, shall not the grave, or garment, or the touching of the bones of Peter have as much power to heal, as his shadow had?"

"It is no small honour that God for our sake has so magnificently adorned the world, in order that we may not only be spectators of this beauteous theatre, but also enjoy the multiplied abundance and variety of good things which are presented to us in it."

"Que donc les nonnains demeurent en leurs convents et en leurs cloistres, et en leurs bourdeaux de Satan: ie di mesmes encores qu’elles ne fussent point putains comme elles sont, comme il y a encores pis de ces abominations de Sodome, faisans des choses si enormes et si abominables que c’est une horreur: encores, di-ie, que toutes ces vilenies-là n'y fussent point, si est-ce que toute la chasteté qu'elles pretendent, n'est rien envers Dieu, au prix de ce qu'il a ordonné, c'est asçavoir que combien que ce soyent choses contemptibles, et qui semblent estre de nulle valeur, qu'une femme ait peine d'adresser son mesnage, de nettoyer les ordures de ses enfans, de tuer les poux et autres choses semblables, que tout cela sera mesprisé, qu’on ne le daignera pas mesmes regarder, ce sont toutesfois sacrifices que Dieu reçoit et qu'il accepte, comme si c'estoyent choses precieuses et honorables."

"It cannot be denied that God in choosing and destining Mary to be the Mother of his Son, granted her the highest honor."

"Helvidius has shown himself too ignorant, in saying that Mary had several sons, because mention is made in some passages of the brothers of Christ."

"It is indeed a fact of the first importance that Henry VIII, the most wilful but not the least wise of our Kings, did more for Parliament than any other person in our history. His father, Henry VII, and his own first great Minister Wolsey had seldom summoned Parliament; until the breach with Rome the two Houses seemed, like other European Parliaments, to be declining, perhaps towards ultimate extinction. But Henry VIII, in the middle of his reign, decided to use Parliament as his instrument and accomplice in the destruction of the Papal power, the spoliation of the monasteries, and the subordination of the medieval liberties of the Church to the laity and above all to the Crown. He had no standing Army, and without the general acquiescence of his subjects and the support of their more influential classes Henry could not have carried through this immense revolution. He found in Parliament, particularly in the Commons, the expression of that popular support he required. To be despot himself he raised up in Parliament a force that was destined to prevent his successors from being despots."

"The Royal Navy was Henry's creation, and it saved both himself and his daughter after him when they adopted an island policy and defied the Catholic powers of Europe. Wolsey had no notion of the importance of sea power to England. He was a great medieval churchman, a civil servant of the old school, and a diplomatist of the Renaissance type. But of the future development of England at home and on the sea Wolsey had no vision at all. His master, with that curious instinct of oneness with the English people which was the secret of Tudor greatness, saw deeper. He could use Wolsey's consummate administrative powers during the years of his own apprenticeship in statecraft, and then pass over him along a path of his own which no Cardinal could be expected to tread."

"Having learnt of the date [of his coronation], from all directions a vast multitude of persons at once hurried to London to see their monarch in the full bloom of his youth and high birth. For everybody loved him; and their affections were not half-hearted, because the king on his father's side descended from Henry VI and on his mother's from Edward IV. For just as Edward was the most warmly thought of by the English people among all the English kings, so this successor of his, Henry, was very like him in general appearance, in greatness of mind and generosity and for that reason was the more acclaimed and approved of by all. Henry was also recommended by his handsome bearing, his comely and manly features (in which one could discern as much authority as good will), his outstanding physical strength, remarkable memory, aptness at all the arts of both war and peace, skill at arms and on horseback, scholarship of no mean order, thorough knowledge of music, and his humanity, benevolence and self-control."

"He had survived pretenders, excommunication, rebellion and threats of invasion, died in his bed and passed his throne peacefully to his heir. He had won a title, Defender of the Faith, which English monarchs still boast... He had made war on England's ancient enemies and himself led two assaults on France. For nearly four decades he had cut an imposing figure in Europe...bestriding its high diplomacy as few of his predecessors, if any, had done. He had defied pope and emperor, brought into being in England and Ireland a national Church subject to his authority, wiped about a thousand religious houses off the face of his native land...and bestowed on English kingship a profound new dignity. He...had brought the Scriptures in the vernacular to his people, hesitantly and perhaps partly unwittingly, but none the less decisively, allowed his country to be directed towards the continental Reformation...and given to his people a new sense of unity – the unity of ‘entire Englishmen’ rather than that of 'Englishmen papisticate' or of those who were 'scarce our subjects'. The England which he had led back into European affairs...had disowned allegiance to any external authority, indisputably emerged from his reign with a new political 'wholeness'... Thanks above all to Thomas Cromwell, his reign had given England much 'good governance'."

"At the appointed hour on June 7, 1520, the Feast of Corpus Christi, the two monarchs with their retinues in full battle array appeared on the opposite sides of the valley. There was a moment of tense silence—each side feared an ambush by the other. Then the two kings spurred their horses forward to the appointed place marked by a spear in the ground and embraced. The ice was broken. They dismounted and went into the pavilion arm in arm to talk. Then began nearly two weeks of jousting, feasting and dancing that culminated in a High Mass in the open air. Choirs from England and France accompanied the mass and there was a sermon on the virtues of peace. n both choreography and cost, the Field of the Cloth of Gold resembles contemporary summits. In a further similarity, style was more important than substance: by 1521 the two countries were at war again. In many ways they were natural rivals, whereas Henry was bound—by marriage and interest—to France’s enemy Charles V, king of Spain. Both before and after the Cloth of Gold Henry met Charles for discussions of much greater diplomatic magnitude. And although Wolsey hoped the meeting of the British and French elites might build bridges, this soon proved an illusion. As the Cloth of Gold demonstrated, egos were everything in these summits, with each side alert to any hint of advantage gained summits by the other. Commines was implacably opposed to such meetings for this very reason. It was, he said, impossible “to hinder the train and equipage of the one from being finer and more magnificent than the other, which produces mockery, and nothing touches any person more sensibly than to be laughed at.”"

"Henry's reign in many ways left a deeper mark on the mind, heart and face of England than did any event in English history between the coming of the Normans and the coming of the factory."

"A lying, greedy and idiotic king, a beetle and a pile of dung, the spawn of a snake, a chicken, a lying toad mixed all together by Satan's spawn."

"Commonwealth schoolchildren are often taught one of the key events in British history with the help of a mnemonic: "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded." Beheaded! In 1536 Henry had his wife Anne Boleyn decapitated on trumped-up charges of adultery and treason because she gave him a son that did not survive, and he had become attracted to one of her ladies-in-waiting. Two wives later he suspected Catherine Howard of adultery and sent her to the ax as well. (Tourists visiting the Tower of London can see the chopping block for themselves.) Henry was clearly the jealous type: he also had an old boyfriend of Catherine’s drawn and quartered, which is to say hanged by the neck, taken down while still alive, disemboweled, castrated, decapitated, and cut into four. The throne passed to Henry’s son Edward, then to Henry’s daughter Mary, and then to another daughter, Elizabeth. “Bloody Mary” did not get her nickname by putting tomato juice in her vodka but by having three hundred religious dissenters burned at the stake. And both sisters kept up the family tradition for how to resolve domestic squabbles: Mary imprisoned Elizabeth and presided over the execution of their cousin, Lady Jane Grey, and Elizabeth executed another cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth also had 123 priests drawn and quartered, and had other enemies tortured with bone-crushing manacles, another attraction on display in the Tower. Today the British royal family is excoriated for shortcomings ranging from rudeness to infidelity. You’d think people would give them credit for not having had a single relative decapitated, nor a single rival drawn and quartered."

"Summitry was now reaching its premodern heyday, for reasons relevant to our larger story.Although by about 1500 several strong national states had emerged in Europe, they remained greatly dependent on their monarchs. This kind of personalized power is at the heart of summitry. One of the most famous encounters took place on the so-called Field of the Cloth of Gold in June 1520, toward the summit bringing together Henry VIII of England and François I of France. The young English monarch, whose titles still included “King of France,” had resumed the old struggle in 1512. But his advisor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey secured a truce and then arranged a summit to consummate an enduring peace. It took place on the edge of Calais, the last English enclave in France, in a shallow dip known as the Val d’Or. Both sides of the valley were carefully reshaped to ensure that neither party enjoyed a height advantage. A special pavilion was constructed for the meeting and festivities, surrounded by thousands of tents and a three-hundred-foot-square timber castle for the rest of those attending. Henry’s entourage alone numbered more than five thousand, while the French crown needed ten years to pay off its share of the cost."

"He became more and more odious as he grew older, but he never lost his interest in theology, and it was the interest of a man with brains. The continuity of the Church was preserved with its creeds, orders, sacraments and discipline, because a wicked king knew something about the faith and was proud of his knowledge. The Reformation was to come and pass, but the Church was to remain—not a sect devoted to any man's opinions, but a body wide enough to include those who sympathised with Colet or with More or with Erasmus, a body suffering violence, but not destroyed; and this was so because Henry VIII was in all things a traditionalist, and because he had no wish to impair the prestige of the Church, believing himself to be its head and its defender."

"Pig, dolt and liar."

"It's no surprise that so much fiction constellates around the subject of Henry and his wives. Often, if you want to write about women in history, you have to distort history to do it, or substitute fantasy for facts; you have to pretend that individual women were more important than they were or that we know more about them than we do. But with the reign of King Bluebeard, you don't have to pretend. Women, their bodies, their reproductive capacities, their animal nature, are central to the story. The history of the reign is so graphically gynaecological that in the past it enabled lady novelists to write about sex when they were only supposed to write about love; and readers could take an avid interest in what went on in royal bedrooms by dignifying it as history, therefore instructive, edifying."

"Henry VIII was a golden and gifted boy who grew up to become a forceful, energetic and ambitious ruler — he was a majestic and ruthless monarch who created an ‘imperial’ monarchy by asserting English independence, defying Rome, breaking up the monasteries, promoting his realm’s military and naval power and his own autocracy, all ultimately enabling the triumph of Protestantism. Yet he became a bloated, thin-skinned tyrant who ordered the killing — on faked evidence — of many, including two of his wives, because of his own wounded pride. Both hero and monster, he was, in his paranoid cruelty, the English Stalin."

"Henry's outwardly formidable and impressive personality helped from the first, despite his youth. This was a King that men could look up to—indeed, had to look up to because none could match his physical size. The feelings he inspired always mingled some fear with the awe, and it would be hard to say that any of his subjects—even his close companions at court, even his wives—came to love him; but for a man so manifestly King to every eye, so quick at judging men and situations, and so capable of exercising both easy charm and unchallenged authority, awe and devotion and apprehension did more than affection could have done. Henry established this palpable hold over his people's imagination and obedience as soon as he ascended the throne, and he retained it largely unimpaired to the day of his death."

"A pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon, a mad fool with a frothy mouth."

"And even where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, even there shall the dogs lick thy blood also, O king! And I am that Micheas whom thou wilt hate, because I must tell thee truly that thy marriage is unlawful; and I know I shall eat the bread of affliction, and drink the water of sorrow, yet because our Lord hath put it into my mouth I must speak it. There are many other preachers, yea, too many, who preach and persuade thee otherwise, feeding thy folly and frail affections upon the hope of their own worldly promotion; and by that means they destroy thy soul, thy honor and posterity, to obtain fat benefices, to become rich abbots and get episcopal jurisdiction and other ecclesiastical dignities. There, I say, are the four hundred prophets who, in the spirit of lying, seek to deceive thee; but take good heed lest you, being seduced, find Achab's punishment, which was to have his blood 'licked up by the dogs,' saying it was the greatest miscarriage of princes to be daily abused by flatterers."

"Henry VIII not only countenanced the practice of military pastimes by permitting them to be exercised without restraint but also endeavoured to make them fashionable by his own example. Hall assures us, that, even after his accession to the throne, he continued daily to amuse himself in archery, casting of the bar, wrestling, or dancing, and frequently in tilting, tourneying, fighting at the barriers with swords, and battle-axes, and such like martial recreations, in most of which there were few that could excel him. His leisure time he spent in playing at the recorders, flute, and virginals, in a setting of songs, singing and making of ballads. He was also exceedingly fond of hunting, hawking, and other sports of the field; and indeed his example so far prevailed, that hunting, hawking, riding the great horse, charging dexterously with the lance at the tilt, leaping, and running, were necessary accomplishments for a man of fashion."

"Like all princes of the Plantagenet blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses, in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life, when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to contend. Education had done much for him, but his nature required more correction than his position had permitted, whilst unbroken prosperity and early independence of control had been his most serious misfortune. He had capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest of men. With all his faults about him, he was still perhaps the greatest of his contemporaries; and the man best able of all living Englishmen to govern England, had been set to do it by the conditions of his birth."

"And thus much touching the end of king Henry, who, if he had continued a few months longer (all those obits and masses, which appear in his will made before he went to Boulogne, notwithstanding), most certain it is, and to be signified to all posterity, that his full purpose was to have repurged the estate of the church, and to have gone through with the same, so that he would not have left one mass in all England."

"His policy was both wise and strong. While not encouraging transoceanic adventure in the face of predominant Spanish power, he made possible the future liberation of his country's energies by the only means—the foundation of a Royal Navy... It was Henry VIII who built an effective fleet of royal fighting ships, with royal dockyards at Woolwich and Deptford; he also founded the corporation of Trinity House. Henry's maritime policy had a double importance. Not only did he create ships specially manned and commissioned to fight, and to fight in the public service alone, but his architects designed many of these royal ships on an improved model. They were sailing vessels better adapted to the ocean than the rowed galleys of the Mediterranean powers, and better adapted to manoeuvring in battle than the more clumsy ‘round’ ships of the mediaeval type in which the English merchants sailed the sea, and in which the Spaniards crossed the Atlantic. The new type of English warship was three times the length of its beam or more, while the normal ‘round’ ship was only twice the length of its beam. Hitherto sea-battles had consisted of ramming, archery and boarding, very much like the battles of the old Greek and Roman navies. But a new age was at hand. From the port-holes of Henry VIII's fleet protruded the iron mouths of great cannon in a row, ready to give the shattering ‘broadside,’ the operation of war to which, more than to any other, British maritime and colonial power owe their existence. It was Henry VIII himself who had insisted that his naval architects should mount heavy cannon in the body of the ship; they had devised the expedient of piercing apertures in the very hold itself through which the great shot could be discharged."

"Evangelicals often had reason to view Henry VIII as another persecuting Pharaoh, but when the king turned against the pope and began wielding his sword against "persecutors" like Thomas More in the early 1530s, some clearly began to envision him as an agent of divine vengeance against their enemies."

"[W]hoever leads an auspicious life here and governs the commonwealth rightly, as my most noble father did, who promoted all piety and banished all ignorance, has a most certain way to heaven."

"Two beheadings out of six wives is too many."

"I am sure you were at Hampton Court when the French king's ambassador was entertained there at those solemn banqueting-houses, not long before the king's death; namely, when, after the banquet was done the first night, the king was leaning upon the ambassador and upon me: if I should tell what communication between the king's highness and the said ambassador was had, concerning the establishing of sincere religion then, a man would hardly have believed it: nor had I myself thought the king's highness had been so forward in those matters as then appeared. I may tell you, it passed the pulling down of roods, and suppressing the ringing of bells. I take it that few in England would have believed, that the king's majesty and the French king had been at this point, not only, within half a year after, to have changed the mass in both the realms into a communion (as we now use it), but also utterly to have extirped and banished the bishop of Rome, and his usurped power, out of both their realms and dominions."

"Henry VIII laid waste to much of England’s cultural and religious tradition. He looted the monasteries, consolidated the power of the state, introduced foreign customs, and viciously persecuted the country’s Catholic majority. Britain’s leaders today are arguably following in Henry VIII’s footsteps. They introduce and favor foreign cultural practices, extend the power of the state over the traditional rights and liberties of the people, and persecute the native British population for dissenting from the forced transformation of their country."

"Be not judges yourselves of your own fantastical opinions and vain expositions; and although you be permitted to read Holy Scriptures and to have the Word of God in your mother tongue, you must understand it is licensed so to do only to inform your conscience and inform your children and families, not to make Scripture a railing and taunting stock against priests and preachers. I am very sorry to know and hear how irreverently that precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rimed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same."