in fact, were not greater in principle; for, although the changes from the doctrines hitherto held by the whole Western Church were more thorough and more intimate under Edward than under his father; though the standard of the Forty-two Articles was very different from that of the Six or even of the Ten; yet the severance from Rome had been as complete under Henry as it ever became afterwards, and the severance from Rome was in itself a revolution in doctrine. But where doctrine appeals to one man, ritual affects a thousand; and though the masses may now and then take up a cry for or against a particular doctrine, they have mostly been awakened to its existence by a change in the outward ritual which expresses it. Thus, though Henry's changes had been, as regards doctrine, not inconsiderable, and, as regards polity and the general relation of the Church to the State, incomparably greater than those inaugurated under Edward, they had given far less offence, and stirred up infinitely less enmity, because they had in the main let alone those external observances by which only the mass of mankind are sensibly affected. Even had Henry's life been prolonged, it is difficult to conceive that his system could have been maintained for many years in the then existing condition of Europe. The civilised world was still in all the ferment into which the revival of learning and the invention of printing had plunged it. Protestantism had sprung up into a formidable power, and the air was full of it: it followed the new learning and the newly awakened spirit of inquiry into every country of Europe, and under such circumstances it was impossible to separate a single country from the old unity of the Western Church without giving Protestantism a vast advantage in it. If any existing consideration could
