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BEFORE THE REFORMATION
99
The mediæval Church soon found itself compelled to tolerate much that violated its exalted doctrine. A vast system of ecclesiastical dispensations was elaborated, by means of which a working harmony was effected between an unyielding theory and a lax practice. Bishop Creighton did not speak excessively when he described the mediæval system as "a mass of fictions or dispensations and subterfuges." Perhaps there was an element of fitness in the fact that the English Reformation had its first occasion in a matrimonial conflict, for in no part of the ecclesiastical system was the discrepancy between the official doctrine and the official practice more sharply exhibited.
