would even now also gladly depart from him again, if the note of inconstancy and shame, and their own estimation among the people, were not a let unto them. In conclusion, we have departed from him unto whom we were not bound, and who had nothing to say for himself, but only I know not what virtue or power of the place where he dwelleth, and a continuance of succession.

Sect. 13. And as for us, we, of all others, have most justly left the Pope. For our kings, yea, even they which with greatest reverence did follow and obey the authority and faith of the bishops of Rome, have long

V

[JEWELL here alludes to the tergiversations of Gardiner and Bonner, who having complied with all the whims of Henry, had renounced the Papal supremacy, and in the reign of Edward were rather prevented from yielding than unwilling to yield to the current of opinion: they were known as at heart the foes of reformation, and treated rather in accordance with their sentiments than with their professions. HARDING himself, in the reign of Edward, had been a champion of Protestant opinions.

In reply to this charge of time-serving, HARDING pleads constraintthey were fain to dissimulate, in fear of death-and mingles his complaint with some very intelligible intimations of a hope that the time of retaliation would yet arrive. JEWELL answers in a noble strain :

"As for drawing of your blood, ye need not so greatly to complain. The Gospel of CHRIST is not bloody. It hath hitherto prevailed without one drop of all your blood. GOD give you grace to repent, lest your own blood be upon your own head, in the day of the LORD! Fire, and sword, and merciless cruelty, are the only instruments of your doctrine. And therefore ye seem now to say, in your blind hope, as cursed Esau sometime said of his brother Jacob, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob.' (Gen. xxvii. 41.) ATHANASIUS Saith: 'It is the part of Christians to suffer persecution: but to persecute the Christians, it is the very office of Pilate and Caiaphas.' (Ad Solitarios.) We will say unto you with AUGUSTINE: 'Illi in vos,' &c. 'Let them persecute you, and use cruelty over you, that know not what a labour it is to find the truth, and how hard it is to beware of error.' (Cont. Epist. Fund. c. 1.) Again he saith: 'Nemo de præteritis,' &c. 'No man upbraideth other with errors past, but he that hath not so experienced the divine mercy, as to be made free from errors. Let this be our only labour, that errors at last may have an end.'-We will say of you as St. Peter sometime said of Simon the Sorcerer, when the people for anger, seeing his falsehood, would have stoned him to death, 'Nay, nay, let him live, and let him see the kingdom of CHRIST to grow and prosper even against his will.' Thus may we say to you. As for your blood, we long not for it." Defence, p. 638.]

since found and felt the yoke and tyranny of their kingdom. For the bishops of Rome sometime took the crown from the head of our king Henry the Second," and compelled him to put aside all his princely state

W

W

[This was in the matter of Thomas a Becket, archbishop, the canonized martyr for clerical pretensions. That haughty prelate had set at defiance the authority of the king, in times when the kingly authority was but ill-defined. The opposition between the will of the monarch and the independence of the prelate had degenerated into actual hostility. On the one hand, unjust and illegal measures had been employed by the king to crush his contumacious subject. On the other, the most unjustifiable pretensions to immunity from control and legal subordination had been set up, and maintained with unconquerable pertinacity. A six years' banishment embittered the animosity, but did not quell the pride, of the archbishop. On his return, which the terror of spiritual censures, and political embarrassments, constrained Henry to sanction, even by the personal humiliation of holding the legate's stirrup, (for the Pope had invested his champion with the highest office in his gift,) Becket manifested more than ever his determination to set the temporal power below the ecclesiastical. His politic and energetic measures drove the monarch almost to despair, and in his trouble, he rashly expressed the wish to be freed from his tormentor so as to be understood to desire his murder. The rash wish was carried into effect by a more rash act, and before the altar, in all the fearlessness of conscious power, the primate was slain by four dependents of the court. This deed at once placed the king irrevocably in the wrong, in the judgment of all Christendom. The blood of a martyr for the cause of the Church cried aloud for vengeance, and nothing but the speediest and most entire submission could have saved the crown, and perhaps the life, of Henry. He took pains to testify, in the strongest manner, his abhorrence of the sacrilegious act, and instantly sent ambassadors to the Pope, to disavow all participation and connivance. The oath of his ambassadors, chosen from among the clergy, that he was free from the guilt of Becket's death, and the promise of entire submission to the papal mandates, obtained a temporary delay of sentence: and afterward a total exculpation was procured, on his personal appearance before the legates of the Pope, and oath that he had no knowledge of the designs of the murderers; yet on condition of the payment of large sums of money, and other equally degrading tokens of submission.

Henry claims little sympathy in his degradation: for although the pretensions of Becket were unwarrantable and insolent, yet the means resorted to by the king in the beginning of the quarrel put justice away from his side; and his oppression by the papal power was but a just visitation of his own unwise and mean concessions to that power. He first introduced, or permitted the burning of heretics in England. He allowed his subjects to be taxed for the ostensible purpose of delivering Palestine from the infidels, but really to the benefit of Rome. And he actually demanded, and obtained, a grant of Ireland, then an independent state, from the Pope; (Adrian III;) to be invaded by him, and subjugated to the Holy See!]

and majesty, and like a mere private man to come unto their Legate with great submission and humility, so as all his subjects might laugh him to scorn. More than this, they caused bishops and monks, and some part of the nobility, to be in the field against our king John, and set all the people at liberty from their oaths, whereby they owed allegiance to their king: and at last, wickedly, and most abominably they bereaved the same king, not only of his kingdom, but also of his life. Besides this, they excommunicated king Henry the Eighth, that

[The history of John's weak and wicked reign would be required, to elucidate this statement: but it would far exceed the limits of a note. Suffice it to say, that when his perfidy and tyrannous oppression had alienated the hearts of his own subjects, and his weak sway rendered his kingdom an easy object for the grasp of ambitious neighbours, he suffered himself to be involved in a quarrel with Innocent III. the Pope, who, of all before or after, carried his claims, and arrogant exercise of spiritual power, to the highest pitch. The quarrel proceeded to the last extremity. The kingdom was laid under an interdict. The monarch was excommunicated. The sentence of deposition was fulminated. Philip of France assembled a fleet and army, prepared to further his own designs under the pretence of executing the sentence of Rome. The army of John was disunited, spiritless, and ready to desert its head in the least reverse. In this state of things the legate of the Pope made his last offers; and John, to extricate himself from the impending danger, consented to do solemn homage to the legate, as representative of the Pope, for his own kingdom, to acknowledge the inalienable property of the kingdom to lie in the Holy See, and to pay a yearly tribute, in token of his allegiance!-JEWELL seems to connect, or confound, the quarrels of John with the Pope, and with his barons. In the latter, that feeble king was, indeed, again in jeopardy of his throne; and it is true, that the ostensible object of his opponents was the 'cause of holy Church,' and that they were headed by Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet, throughout this contest, the Pope, alarmed as much for his own pretensions, as for the safety of his avowed vassal, was the fast friend of John, and fulminated his spiritual censures against the rebellious aspirants to freedom.]

y [In the Bull of Paul III., published December 17th, 1537. In this, after an enumeration of his grievances, the Pope required Henry "to appear within ninety days at Rome, either in person, or by proxy, and all his complices within sixty days; and if he and they did not appear, he declared him to have fallen from his crown, and them from their estates. He put the kingdom under an interdict; and absolved his subjects from their oaths of allegiance: he declared him and his complices infamous; and put their children under incapacities. He required all the clergy to go out of England within five days after the time prefixed should expire; leaving only so many as might serve for baptizing children, or giving the sacrament to such as died in penitence. He charged all his [Henry's] subjects to rise in arms against him, and that none should assist him. He absolved all other princes from their

most famous prince, and stirred up against him, sometime the emperor, sometime the French king: and, as much as in them was, put our realm in hazard, to have been a very prey and spoil unto the enemy. Yet were they but fools and madmen, to think that either so mighty a prince could be frayed with bugs and rattles; or else, that so noble and great a kingdom might so easily, even at one morsel, be devoured and swallowed up.

And yet, as though all this were too little, they would needs have made all the realm tributary to them, and exacted thence yearly most unjust and wrongful taxes.' So dear cost us the friendship of the city of Rome!

Sect. 14. Wherefore, if they have gotten these things of us by extortion, through their fraud and subtle sleights; we see no reason why we may not pluck away the same from them again, by lawful means, and just means. And if our kings, in that darkness and blindness of the former times, gave them these things of their own accord and liberality, for religion's sake, being moved with a certain opinion of their feigned holiness; now, when the ignorance and error is espied out, may the kings their successors take them away again, seeing they have the same authority the kings their ancestors had before.

confederacies with him, and obtested them to have no more commerce with him. He required all Christians to make war on him; and to seize on the persons and goods of all his subjects, and make slaves of them."¡ BURNET, Abridgm. of the Hist. of the Reform. I. 173.]

[In the Defence, JEWELL enumerates the several sums paid to the Pope from England, for the first fruits and tenths of the bishops and clergy, and the fees and taxes of other kinds; and quotes from history numerous instances of the extortions and unjust gains of the Popes. He also quotes many free expressions of disapprobation of the fleecing system of Rome, from writers in communion with that Church: among others the following extraordinary passage from an eminent Canonist: "Roma fundata fuit a prædonibus, et adhuc de primordiis retinet: dicta Roma, quasi Rodens Manus. Unde versus :

Roma manus rodet;

Quos rodere non valet odit."

Jo. ANDREE Gloss. in Sexto de Elect. et Elector. Potestat.-"The first foundation of Rome was laid by thieves; and hitherto she savoureth still of her beginning: she is called Rome, as if biting (Rodens) the hands (Manus): thereof cometh the common verse:

Rome biteth you by the hands;

And whom she cannot bite, she hateth."]

Recapitulation.

thou seest, good Christian reader, it , though at this day the religion of ained with despites and checks; being ed, and as it were coming up again h as the like hath chanced both to and to his apostles.

ess, for fear thou mayest suffer thyself nd to be seduced with these exclamations es; we have declared at large unto thee manner of our religion; what our faith ATHER, of his only Son JESUS CHRIST, OST, of the Church, of the Sacraments, of the Scriptures, of Ceremonies, and Christian belief."

that we abandon and detest, as plagues 1 those old heresies which either the es, or the ancient Councils, have utterly at we call home again, as much as in ght discipline of the Church, which our e quite brought into a poor and weak punish all licentiousness of life, and anners, by the old and long continued as much sharpness as is convenient, and verd that we maintain still the state of he same condition and state of honour und them, without any diminishing or erving to our princes their majesty and

iii.

roneously numbered vi.).