The clergy have been commonly so fortunate as to make a concern for their temporal interests go hand in hand with a jealousy for orthodoxy; and both these passions be regarded by the people, ignorant and superstitious, as proofs of zeal for religion: but the violent and headstrong character of Henry now disjoined these objects. His rapacity was gratified by plundering the church, his bigotry and arrogance by persecuting heretics. Though he engaged the parliament to mitigate the penalties of the six articles, so far as regards the marriage of priests, which was now only subjected to a forfeiture of goods, chattels, and lands during life, he was still equally bent on maintaining a rigid purity in speculative principles. He had appointed a commission, consisting of the two archbishops and several bishops of both provinces, together with a considerable number of doctors of divinity; and by virtue of his ecclesiastical supremacy, he had given them in charge to choose a religion for his people. Before the commissioners had made any progress in this arduous undertaking, the parliament, in 1541, had passed a law by which they ratified all the tenets which these divines should thereafter establish with the king’s consent: and they were not ashamed of thus expressly declaring that they took their religion upon trust, and had no other rule, in spiritual as well as temporal concerns, than the arbitrary will of their master. There is only one clause of the statute which may seem at first sight to savor somewhat of the spirit of liberty: it was enacted, that the ecclesiastical commissioners should establish nothing repugnant to the laws and statutes of the realm. But in reality this proviso was inserted by the king to serve his own purposes. By introducing a confusion and contradiction into the laws, he became more master of every one’s life and property. And as the ancient independence of the church still gave him jealousy, he was well pleased, undercover of such a clause, to introduce appeals from the spiritual to the civil courts. It was for a like reason that he would never promulgate a body of canon law; and he encouraged the judges on all occasions to interpose in ecclesiastical causes, wherever they thought the law of royal prerogative concerned; a happy innovation, though at first invented for arbitrary purposes.