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Theme Of Loyalty To God In Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons

841 Words4 Pages

John Wesley once said, “Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?”. This theme of loyalty to God can be shown in the novel, A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt. Thomas More believed so much in this very theme. When he was appointed a member of the Privy council by the King, he tried to keep his strong loyalty to God in the King’s life. In the novel, A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, the article, The Life of Sir Thomas More by Anniina …show more content…

Chapuys sees More as a religious and strong moral man and he takes in the comforting fact that More will help sway the king's decisions in a more religious standpoint. “The King's good servant, but God's first”(Jokinen) Thomas More once said. Although certain characters feel this way, Bolt stresses on the fact that More is more of an existential man than a religious man. He uses his own ideas for motivation rather than to rely on any external source to model his actions and what he says. More’s loyalty somewhat shifts from loyalty to God and loyalty to the law. The law held an important place in More’s conscience and then below that, the church and …show more content…

“God’s my god. . . . But I find him rather too . . . subtle.” (Bolt 2) More regards God's law, yet he additionally does not profess to comprehend it. Along these lines, he sees man's law as the best accessible guide for action, regardless of the fact that it sometimes negates God's law or lets a few criminals free. At times, More seems hypocritical. He is trying to proportion his respect for the law and society with his deep-rooted sense of self. “Henry VIII started the process of creating the Church of England after his split with the Pope in the 1530s... He wanted his marriage annulled in order to remarry. In 1534 after several attempts to persuade the Pope to grant an annulment, Henry passed the Act of Succession and then the Act of Supremacy. These recognised that the King was "the only supreme head of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia.”(Mclntosh). Loyalty to the church was very important. Now that Henry changed his ways just so he could have a male heir to rule England, everyone started to become more lenient with the

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