CONTENTS.

VOL. I.

I. INTRODUCTION. The British Church and the Anglican

PAGE

Inett. 1

King Henry II.; and Archbishop Becket. Inett. 29

National Churches.-Papal Usurpations on the

Rights of the Civil Government

II.

III.

IV.

V.

Inett. 59

King John, the Barons, and Pope Innocent the

Papal Usurpations in Church and State: Origin

and Progress of.-General Recapitulation

Inett. 77

Inett. 132

X. SUPPLEMENTARY EXTRACTS.-Invention of Printing.-Chaucer

and Gower.-Progress of Reformation and of Persecution.—

Martin Luther

XI. DEAN COLET (from the Phoenix)

Fox. 403

Erasmus. 433

XII. CARDINAL WOLSEY, by Cavendish, his Gentleman Usher: a
New and complete edition, from Manuscripts in the Lambeth
and other Libraries

II. SIR THOMAS MORE; now first published, from a Manuscript in

INTRODUCTION

FROM

DR. JOHN INETT AND DR. RICHARD BENTLEY.

K

VOL. I.

66

Equidem fontes unde hauriretis, atque etiam itinera ipsa putavi demonstranda."

CICERO.

esse

INTRODUCTION.

THE BRITISH CHURCH; AND THE ANGLICAN1.

THOUGH truth is a blessing which God has laid open and in common to mankind, and they who consider the nature of man, and the great purposes for which he is sent into the world cannot but own, that every one has the same right, and is under the same obligation, to embrace truth and reject error, as to make a right use of his natural faculties, or to believe and obey God, and to take care of his own salvation; and though this is so evident that if they who plead for an implicit faith, did not at the same time offer us marks of the true church and the infallible guide, and in so doing make every private Christian a judge in the greatest and most perplexed controversy in religion, and appeal to the reason which they call us to resign, and by contradicting themselves become the jest, they would fall under a different character, and be treated as the common enemies of mankind;-yet it must be owned, that it is a strange deference and veneration which some men pay to the understanding and usages of their ancestors. They will not see, if their fathers happened to live in the dark; refuse truth, if it had not been offered to them; and venture their salvation upon the credit of their wisdom, who wanted opportunities to be sufficiently informed; and even they choose error if it has but the colour of antiquity to recommend it. And which is stranger still, as if there was some particular charm

1 The Anglican.] From "Origines Anglicanæ, or, a History of the English Church, by John Inett, D.D. Chanter and Canon Residentiary of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln. Fol. 2 vols. 1710. Oxford." Being the Preface to Vol. ii.