How can we characterize this form of religion, already forged in Cromwell’s career in the 1520s? It is deceitful, certainly, hypocritical perhaps: very different from the stentorian public proclamation which marked out the magisterial Reformations of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin. At the time, Cromwell was often called a Lutheran, particularly by those who hated the Reformation. But the reality of his religion is anything but Lutheran.
