They desired religious reform rather than religious revolution, a simplification of doctrine rather than any radical change in it, the purification of worship rather than the introduction of any wholly new ritual.

Their theology remained, as they believed, a Catholic theology, but a theology cleared of the superstitious growths which obscured the true Catholicism of the early Church.

In a word their dream was the dream of Erasmus and Colet.

The spirit of Erasmus was seen in the Articles of religion which were laid before Convocation in 1536, in the acknowledgement of Justification by Faith, a doctrine for which the founders of the New Learning, such as Contarini and Pole, were struggling at Rome itself, in the condemnation of purgatory, of pardons, and of masses for the dead, as it was seen in the admission of prayers for the dead and in the retention of the ceremonies of the church without material change.

A series of royal injunctions which followed carried out the same policy of reform.