These are very singular passages for his Lordship to set down in order to show the dismal consequences of the French Concordate, by the slavery of the Gallican Church, compared with the freedom of ours. I shall not enter into a long dispute, whether it were better for religion that bishops should be chosen by the clergy, or people, or both together: I believe our author would give his vote for the second (which however would not have been of much advantage to himself, and some others that I could name). But I ask, Whether bishops are any more elected in England than in France? And the want of synods are in his own opinion rather a blessing than a grievance, unless he will affirm that more good can be expected from a popish synod than an English Convocation. Did the French clergy ever receive a greater blow to their liberties, than the submission made to Henry VIII., or so great a one as the seizure of their lands? The Reformation owed nothing to the good intentions of K. Henry: He was only an instrument of it, (as the logicians speak) by accident; nor doth he appear through his whole reign to have had any other views than those of gratifying his insatiable love of power, cruelty, oppression, and other irregular appetites. But this kingdom as well as many other parts of Europe, was, at that time, generally weary of the corruptions and impositions of the Roman court and church, and disposed to receive those doctrines which Luther and his followers had universally spread. Cranmer the archbishop, Cromwell, and others of the court, did secretly embrace the Reformation; and the King's abrogating the Pope's supremacy, made the people in general run into the new doctrines with greater freedom, because they hoped to be supported in it by the authority and example of their prince, who disappointed them so far that he made no other step than rejecting the Pope's supremacy as a clog upon his own power and passions, but retained every corruption beside, and became a cruel persecutor, as well of those who denied his own supremacy, as of all others who professed any Protestant doctrine. Neither hath any thing disgusted me more in reading the histories of those times, than to see one of the worst princes of any age or country, celebrated as an instrument in that glorious work of the Reformation.