On the Restraint of the First Electors of Saxony in Adopting and Establishing Luther's Doctrine, Volume 2

He believes that these things opened the way for the restoration of sacred matters and disseminated them far and wide. He imagines that religion immigrated into ENGLAND by the force of love, because the fickle King of England, HENRY VIII, cast off the yoke of the Capitoline Bishop from his own neck and those of his subjects when the Roman Pontiff, Clement VII, would not approve with his assent his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his marriage with Anne Boleyn. In FRANCE, he traces the growth of the Calvinist discipline to the pleasantness of a little song echoing through the streets, any stanza of which, to speak with the grammarians, concluded thus: "O monks, O monks, you must get married." Finally, he brands the Princes of GERMANY with the shameful mark of the cursed hunger for gold, thinking that they stood by the restored doctrine on account of the plunder of sacred goods. He himself, so that his mind may be made clearer, shall speak in more than one place, which, for the sake of the design of this work, I must quote here word for word: "If therefore one wishes to reduce the causes of the progress of the Reformation to simple principles, one will see THAT IN GERMANY IT WAS THE WORK OF INTEREST, in England that of love, and in France that of novelty, or perhaps of a song. One must not believe that John Huss, Luther, or Calvin were superior geniuses. It is the same with leaders of sects as with ambassadors: often mediocre minds succeed best there, provided that the conditions they offer are advantageous."