against the persistent efforts of religious organisations to enforce common morality at the expense of individual liberty. Let it be borne in mind, also, that the Church in western Europe has perpetually represented a dualism that was of the highest value for freedom of thought. Sir Thomas More died on the scaffold, not because he disputed the right of Parliament to make Anne Boleyn Queen, or to settle the crown upon her children, but because he denied that the ultimate power to determine religious controversy could be vested in the head of the State.[1] It is probable that he misinterpreted the intentions of his contemporaries; but it is certain that after the lapse of three centuries and a half, when the secular power is far stronger than it was, it claims nothing in any civilised State that Sir Thomas More would have denied it. Except for the protest of men like Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII. might have' made the State supreme in England, as it actually is in Russia. Take again modern times. That marriage should be treated by the State as a civil contract, and that primary education should be given on secular lines, are principles now very generally accepted. They seem to many men worth fighting for, worth dying for. Nevertheless, although their acceptance has been delayed by the opposition of the Churches, it may surely be contended
- ↑ More declared openly that he believed Parliament could make a private person king, and told his friends in confidence that he had freely remonstrated with the King about relaxing the Statute of Præmunire.—Roper's Life of More, pp. 66, 80, 81. The Act of Uniformity, as Mr. Child has pointed out, drew up "all manner of spiritual authority " into the Crown, and practically gave the King the power of denning doctrine.—Child's Church and State under the Tudors, pp. 66, 67. Still, it is probably to be assumed that Henry never contemplated using these extreme powers to their logical extent. He and his successors always acted with the advice of the bishops, who presented the same mixture of pliancy and independence in Church matters that the Parliaments displayed in matters temporal.
