This was quite contrary to the ways of
the early Church, which, however bad a heretic might have been, never
attempted to harm his person, but only separated him from her Communion.
As the Holy Spirit within the Church is ever cleansing and sanctifying
it, witnesses against these errors began to be raised up. The way to
print books, instead of writing them out, had been discovered in the
fifteenth century; and as this art made them much more cheap and common,
many more people began to read and to think. In the year 1517, a German
monk, named Martin Luther, began to declare how far the selling of
indulgences was from the doctrine of the Apostles; and he spoke such
plain truth, that he convinced a great number of Germans, and there was
a great longing for the cleansing of the Church, especially after Luther
had translated the Bible into his own tongue, and everyone could see how
unlike the teaching there was to what had been so long believed.
In England, King Henry VIII. separated from the Roman Church because the
Pope would not please him by breaking a marriage, which certainly never
ought to have been sanctioned; but which having been permitted by the
Pope, and having continued twenty years, it was very wrong to dissolve.
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