iosephvs bibliothecarivs’s Reviews > The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation > Status Update

'The protection of the Commonwealth was a secular issue, which made protecting the nation from God's wrath similar to protecting it from a Spanish invasion. It became increasingly important that magistrates protect God's honor lest He rain pestilence, famine, war, and recession on England.'

'To see the Crown and lay people greedily snatching up church property, even if justified by higher ideals, must have bred an opportunistic state of mind and a flexible conscience. To acquire a dissolved chantry and close the village school was not an act of piety. Some people tried to expiate their greed with new schools and other gifts, but the example remained negative.'

In practice the communities of England looked less like the New Jerusalem than like confessionally confused commonwealths in which people of various opinions about ecclesiology and soteriology mixed indiscriminately and used religion when it was convenient.

'"No man is an island, entire of itself" wrote John Donne in middle age, making a point historians must remember. All histories are congregations of biographies, and all biographers track their subjects through public spaces.'

I agree, and this is why I have always intershelved the histories and biographies in our home library.

'[Bishop of Gloucester John Hooper] was burnt to death for heresy in 1555. A man who would not compromise, he undoubtedly approved of the punishment even if he knew that the wrong people were being burned.'