Second Commentary on the Doctrine of Abstinence

In ENGLAND he surmises that religion migrated there by the force of love, g) because the inconstant King of England, HENRY VIII, cast off the yoke of the Capitoline bishop from the necks of himself and his own people, when the Roman Pontiff, Clement VII, refused to approve with his assent the divorce from Catherine of Aragon and the marriage with Anne Boleyn. In FRANCE, he traces the growth of the Calvinist discipline to the pleasantness of a ditty sung from street to street, each stanza of which, to speak with the grammarians, finished thus:

O Monks, o Monks, you must get married. h)

Finally, he brands the Princes of GERMANY with the shameful mark of the cursed hunger for gold, believing that they stood by the restored doctrine on account of the pillage of sacred goods. So that his mind may be revealed more clearly, let him speak in one of his many passages, which I shall quote here verbatim for the sake of the plan of this treatise: i) 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