The Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws

Summary

First begun by the authority of King Henry VIII, then continued and extended by King Edward VI, and now published for their further reformation.

A preface to the learned and candid reader (J. F.)

As there is nothing more relevant to the common nature of all men, or to the particular salvation of any one individual, than that the correct teaching about religion should be maintained in every community within the state, the discipline of the best laws must be accepted in order for the best religion to be established. For the latter instructs us in godliness and the former regulates the outward life and behaviour of people towards one another. When these two things are joined together, they help each other to promote the best government in any state, but if they are separated it is as if you were to cut a ship in two - I cannot see how this part can function without that one, or how either can operate without the other, especially at the present time. For just as no city or kingdom, however well-behaved it may be, can be governed well if the rule of religion is absent or defective, so also religion, however widely it is practised, cannot deliver the perfection of happiness where there is no attention paid to behaviour and the strict rule of law is not maintained. For this reason it was wisely said by Augustine in writing his City of God, when he denied that it was possible for a state to be happy when ‘its walls are standing but its morals are being destroyed’. Likewise, I think that it was correctly foreseen by the wisest of our ancestors, who thought it advisable to provide for every part of the state by balancing rewards equally with punishments and by linking the institutions of law together with religion, so that good people would not be without something by which they might be encouraged to virtue and the true worship of God, and wicked people would not go without fear of punishment, by which they might be pulled back from their error, and at the same time disputes over wrongdoing (if any should arise) might be removed and brought to an end by the same means.