DEFENCE OF THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS
Most Christians identify King Henry VIII as a co-founder of the Protestant Reformation, along with Martin Luther. However, prior to his severing ties with Rome, Henry was an accomplished theologian and staunch defender of the Catholic Faith.
He was even granted the title 'Defender of the Faith' by Pope Leo X.
In Defence of the Seven Sacraments, King Henry launches a scathing rebuke of Martin Luther’s rejection of the Church’s 1,500-year sacramental heritage. In a no-holds-barred approach, Henry refutes Luther’s novel interpretation of the ordinary means of grace given to the Church by Jesus Christ.
After Henry’s death and especially during the reign of Elizabeth I, his treatise on the Sacraments was buried with him. What followed was the systematic dismantling and destruction of the Catholic Church in England, which not only separated Englishmen from most of the sacramental life of Christ’s Church, but also set in motion a Cultural Revolution that has, centuries later, helped bringing about a profound moral relativism and decadence in European society.
The book has been printed only three times in the last 480 years. The last edition was made in 1907, in the United States, and was beautifully prefaced by Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore.
In order to emphasise Henry VIII’s orthodoxy, the New Millennium edition has over 100 quotations from the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
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