About this time a stroke was dealt him by an invisible hand, which may have quickened his steps towards England. An unknown controversialist, usurping the name of Athanasius, published a series of excerpts from his celebrated work on the Unity of the Church, with bitter annotations, to show, as he said, that the dissembling enemy of his own country was the enemy of Germany. "Cardinal Pole," exclaimed Athanasius, “in his Oration on Unity, calls all the adherents of the Gospel Turks: that a sect of Turks is sprung up against the Church from the rejection of the Roman primacy. Whatever he says against the King of England he says against the princes of Germany: for they like him have withdrawn themselves from the obedience of the Popes. Now, Cardinal, who ravest like a mad man against thy king, and so against us, thinkest thou that in putting off thy corruptions and idolatries we have cast away the Catholic faith? Then go and tell the Apostles and the primitive Church that they had not the faith. Thou professest Charity, and biddest the Cæsar make a crusade against us, as if we were Turks. I tell you in return that it was your primacy that first caused Mahomet to begin to flourish and besides that, the Pope is a worse enemy to God than Mahomet. You talk of Germany being peaceful and prosperous under the papal obedience, but now miserably harassed with troubles. Who but you make the troubles, you popes, and cardinals, and bishops? You, the Cardinal, say that no Turk but your own Turk has denied the Roman primacy. You mistake: there are two other Turks, the king of Denmark and the king of Sweden: the sect of the Turks increases daily. Besides, it is Turkish to kill men for religion. What a trumpet is that of yours, 'Stay, Cæsar, turn thy sails; there is a nearer Turk for thee to slay speed to Britain; ravage that island, kill the king,

and shed the blood of his people '!* I thought that Christ bade Peter put up his sword, when he drew it. In your present legation to Cæsar it is very likely that you will give the same atrocious counsels under the mask of peace as you gave then, when you bade him draw the sword. Woe be to thee, Cardinal Pole, woe be to thee! Thou art a Caiaphas. You papists worship Baal so long as you adore your Antichrists and your statues and your images and your dead bones and your unleavened bread. This pacific Cardinal, if Cæsar would have let him address the Spanish soldiers, as he asked to do, would have told them to invade, ravage, devastate with fire and sword his native country, slaughter his cousin the King, and all the heretics who with him had abandoned the papacy! He is a Pharisee, calling the light of the Gospel a sect. than a Pharisee, because he knows better. Woe be to thee, Cardinal Pole, thus again I intercalate my song, woe be to thee! You bid Cæsar first reduce all England: then attack all others that remain. Pray, Cardinal Pole, whom mean you by all others? You mean, yes, you meant in your book and you mean again in your legation, to instil into Cæsar's mind this and nothing else that he should take his opportunity, and transmit England to his posterity: then invade Germany; then the Venetian republic and the Italian principalities, the Pope only except. You want to compass the papacy, such is your greed and ambition. But woe be to thee, Cardinal Pole, woe be to thee! There is something in store for thee, Cardinal Pole, there is something in store for thee. Thou hast sought to hide thy book, to

No, he is worse

*For an analysis of Pole's Liber De Unitate Ecclesiæ, see Vol. I. p. 435 of this work.

+ Itaque utor adhuc meo veluti versu intercalari, veh tibi, Cardinalis Pole, veh tibi !

keep it lurking in the shades of darkness.

I will drag

it to the light: I will publish it in full, not giving extracts only as now. And when I give the poison, I will give the antidotes also." * The threat was not vain. In the following year the mask of Athanasius fell from the face of Peter Paul Vergerius the Younger, than whom no fiercer spirit contended in the tempests of that age; who failed not to put forth from a place unnamed a complete edition of a forgotten masterpiece, with a long Preface of such vituperation as scholarship forbad not in those days: and added to the volume, that contained Pole on the Unity of the Church, the antidotes of Luther on the Papacy, Flacius on the Primacy, Melancthon on the Rock, and Brentius on the Keys. At the same time, that the matter might not escape the notice of the countrymen of the returning exile, the original attack, the pamphlet of Athanasius, was turned into English by a pen, who took the name of Fabyan Withers, and who may be conjectured to have been not unconnected with the ingenious John Bale.t

* "At dabis pœnas, Cardinalis Pole, veh tibi, veh tibi!" So ends the pamphlet. That about publishing Pole in full, with antidotes, I have added, to complete the story, from the dedication at the beginning. "Totum eum librum, quem magnis laboribus potui extrahere ex quibusdam cavernis et tenebris, in quibus reptabat venenum effundens, jam dedi imprimendum, non sine antidotis."

† Observe,-1. This attack in the name of Athanasius has escaped the notice of historians, and of Pole's biographers. It is a finely printed quarto tract without place, entitled, Oratio Reginaldi Poli Card. Angli nunc per Germaniam Rom. Pontificis Legati, quæ Casaris animum accendere conatur et inflammare ut adversum eos qui nomen Evangelii dederunt, arma sumat: excerpta ex ejus Libris quibus titulum fecit pro Unitatis Ecclesiastica Defensione: cum Scholiis Athanasii. Anno MDLIIII. Pole was greatly disturbed by the attack, which he thought to have been made by some German. See his letter to Teuchesio the Cardinal of Augsburg, June, 1554. Epist. iv. 154. He complains somewhere, not without justice, that his assailant accused him of inciting the Emperor to attack England, whereas it was only an imaginary address to VOL. IV.

S

Pole now indeed began to direct himself towards England. The English ambassadors at the French and

the Emperor in an oration sent to Fenry the Eighth : that he said not to the Emperor, Go and attack England, but to Henry, If I could speak to the Emperor, I would say, Go and attack England. Athanasius gives a curious story of Pole: that when he was on his first Legation, in 1536, he went to the house of a Lutheran pastor at Augsburg, and talked Lutheranism: It was to this pastor that Athanasius addressed his pamphlet. Pole utterly denied the charge. Epist. iv. 154. 2. As to the authorship of Vergerius, there is no doubt: see Poli Epist. i. p. 324, 327.3. The edition of Pole's famous work, which Athanasius threatened to bring out, was published in 1555, no place being mentioned, with a long and bitter Preface by Vergerius, who is called the Younger, as scholars may be reminded, to distinguish him from a namesake of the previous century, who was one of the early humanists. It is a folio, and contains the antidotal writings of Luther and others, which I have enumerated in the text. Vergerius says that Pole, though his famous book had been long printed, would never allow it to come abroad, but kept the copies with himself, and carried them about like a sort of Pandora's box, which he opened now and then to give one to a king or a cardinal, whom he might wish to please. The literary history of Pole's book is known to be very obscure and this, which seems to have been overlooked, may be the explanation. The language of Vergerius toward Pole is extremely scurrilous. No place is given, but the edition was probably printed at Tubingen: where it seems certain that the tract also of Athanasius was printed, since that tract is of the same type and size as another on the image of Loretto, De Idolo Lauretano, which was printed there, and was the acknowledged work of Vergerius.-4. As to Fabyan Withers, that is, the English version of the pamphlet of Athanasius, it is a duodecimo of forty pages: there is a copy in Lambeth. It is entitled, "The seditious and blasphemous Oration of Card. Pole both against God and his Country, which he directed to the Emperor in his Book entitled the Defence of the Ecclesiastical Unity, moving the Emperor therein to seek the destruction of England and all those who had professed the Gospel: translated into English by Fabyan Withers. Read all, and then judge." The book consists of the following matters: Address to the Reader by Fabyan Withers; The Subtle Oration of Card. Pole, consisting rot of Pole's whole work, but of those parts only that Athanasius had given: The Gloss of Athanasius upon the Oration of Pole made unto the Emperor. The book is without date: and Strype, who mentions it (vol. v. 258), makes the confusing blunder of saying that it was printed in 1547 or 1548! It was printed not only after Athanasius, but after Vergerius' acknowledged edition of Pole's whole work; i. e. in 1555 at earliest. The title-page of Withers is much the same as that of Vergerius: his motto, "Read all and then judge" is a sort of translation of "Omnia probate, quod bonum est tenete," which is the motto of Vergerius. He gives the

imperial courts, the versatile Wotton, the intellectual Thirlby, and Mason that friend of poets, to whom he had sometime appeared an unnatural man, a traitor, a hater of his country, now sounded his praises and in their despatches declared that there was not a better English heart in the realm; that if things should be according to his wishes, the Queen would govern in a blessed estate; that if all knew him as they did, all would have that opinion of him that was held through Christendom. "If," said Mason, " he shall go back to Italy without saving his country, the realm shall lose the fruition of such an one as for wisdom, learning, virtue, and godliness, the world seeketh and adoreth. But he cannot effect a civil peace between the Empire and France: he is despairing of a spiritual peace in England,

same explanation as Vergerius of the scarcity of copies of Poe's book. He says that Pole had them "printed at Rome at his own proper charges; and, when they were thus printed, he, fearing lest they should be so carried abroad, and come into the hands of such unto whom he had before professed the contrary, that then it would come to his great ignominy and reproach, he took all the books into his own hands, and set none of them abroad, saving a few, which he gave unto the Pope and certain cardinals:" but, he adds, “at length one or two in Germany have got hold of then, and have now published them" which seems to show that Vergerius' edition had already appeared. Withers' professes to be "imprinted at London by wen Rogers dwelling between Little St. Bartholemew at (and) the Spread Eagle." This sounds like a fictitious location. As for the suggested connection of Bale with the evident pseudonym Fabyan Withers, I have no proof: but Bale knew about Athanasius. He printed in his Centuries (p. 740, edn. Basil, 1557) a letter from an Italian about Pole which contains the words, "Quum tuus ille amicus nuper sub nomine Athanasii edidisset Scholia in Orationem ipsius Poli, in qua Evangelium vocaret semen Turcicum," &c. (Reprinted in Strype's Cranm. App. 82.) This letter (as appears from itself) is of the year 1557: but Bale seems not to have wished even then to throw light on the affair. He neither gives the name of the writer, nor introduces it with any explanation or remark. His own account of Pole, in his Centuries, (moreover) chiefly consists of a reiteration of the charges of Athanasius, about the Turks and the exhortation to Cæsar to invade England.