THE OBEDIENCE OF A CHRISTIAN MAN

The idiosyncratic religious policies of Henry VIII's regime created a series of conundrums for English evangelicals. In the 1540s, they had to deal with a political situation which was decidedly more complex than that faced by most of their European co-religionists. As well as having to engage with the Roman Church and those whose instincts remained close to it, they had to handle their king. This was a far more difficult proposition, since he was alternately their supporter and their opponent, and he emphatically could not be ignored. And just as the royal supremacy was at the heart of Henry's religious policy, so the different reformers' responses were centred in their views of the supremacy and in their ethics of obedience.

The strong, Henrician doctrine of the royal supremacy was neither Protestant nor Catholic. But it was certainly easier for reformers to swallow than it was for conservatives. Behind all the doctrinal issues raised by the European Reformation, after all, lay the fundamental issue of authority. Against the traditional view that biblical authority was supplemented or authenticated by the authority of the Church, evangelicals asserted the authority of bare Scripture. Yet in practice the reformers looked to the state and to temporal rulers to enforce that authority. The prince and the magistrate were the reformer's natural allies against the power of Rome.