cerity, after so false a step made in the beginning. From this, he goes on to his main design; and runs out into an invective against king Henry the VIIIth, for his incontinences, and other violences.

If I had undertaken to write a panegyric, or to make a saint of king Henry, he might have triumphed over me as much as he pleased. But I, who have neither concealed nor excused any of his faults, am no way concerned in all this. There are only two things that I advance, with relation to that prince.

The first is, that whatsoever his secret motives might have been, in the suit of the divorce, he had the constant tradition of the church on his side, and that in all the ages and parts of it; which was carefully searched into, and fully proved so that no author, elder than cardinal Cajetan, could be found to be set against such a current of tradition. And in the disputes of that age, with those they called heretics, all that wrote of the popish side made their appeal always to tradition, as the only infallible expounder of scripture and it was looked on as the character of an heretic, to expound the scripture by any other key or method. So that king Henry had this clearly with him.

The other particular that I make remarks on is, that the reformation is not at all to be charged with king Henry's faults for that unsteady favour and protection, which they sometimes found from him, can signify no more to blemish them, than the vices of those princes that were the great promoters of Christianity signify to cast a blemish on the Christian religion. Let the crimes of king Clovis, as they are related by Gregory of Tours, be compared with the worst things that can be said of king Henry; and then let any man see if he finds so much falsehood, mixed with so much cruelty, in so many repeated acts, and in such a number of years, in king Henry the VIIIth, as he will find in king Clovis. Nor do we see any hints of Clovis's repentance, or of any restitution made by him, of those dominions that he had seized on in so criminal a manner, to the right heirs; without which, according to our maxims, his repent

ance could not be accepted of God. And this was the first Christian king of the Franks.

I do not comprehend what his design could be, in justifying pope Gregory the VIIth's proceedings against the emperor, Henry the IVth, with so much heat. One that reads what he writes on this subject can hardly keep himself from thinking, that he had something in his eye that he durst not speak out more plainly; but that he would not be sorry if Innocent the XIth should treat the great monarch as Gregory the VIIth did the emperor, and as Paul the IIId did king Henry the VIIIth. But whatsoever his own thoughts may be, I desire he would not be so familiar with my thoughts, as to infer this from any concession of mine; for I allow no authority to the bishops of Rome out of their own diocese. The additional dignity that they came to have flowed from the constitution of the Roman empire; and since Rome is no more the seat of empire, it has lost all that primacy which was yielded to it merely by reason of the dignity of the city. So that as Byzance, from being a small bishopric, became a patriarchal seat upon the exaltation of that city; by the same rule, upon the depression of Rome, the bishops of that see ought to have lost all that dignity, that was merely accidental. But suppose I should yield, according to the notion commonly received in the Gallican. church, that the pope is the conservator of the canons; that will signify nothing, to justify their deposing of princes; except he can shew what those canons were, upon the violation of which, princes may be deposed. If he flies to the canons of the fourth council in the Lateran, those, being made about one hundred and fifty years after pope Gregory's proceedings against the emperor, will not justify what was done so long before these were made. When he thinks fit to speak out more plainly upon this head, it will be more easy to answer him.

As for the supremacy that king Henry the VIIIth assumed in ecclesiastical matters, he should not have condemned that so rashly as he does, as a novelty, till he had first examined the reasons upon which it was founded; not VOL. III. P. 3.

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only those drawn from the scriptures, but those that were brought from the laws and practices, both of the Roman emperors and of the kings of England. His thoughts or his pen run too quick, when he condemned the following those precedents, as a novelty, without giving himself the trouble of inquiring into the practices of former ages.

He charges me with flying to the rasure of the registers in queen Mary's time, and to the burning of others in the fire of London, for proving several things, for which I could bring no better vouchers; and for relying so often on a passionate writer. I suppose Fox is the person hereby pointed at.

But this I

When he applies the general censure to any particular in my work, I will then shew that it amounts to nothing. I often stop, and shew that I can go no further, for want of proof: and when I give presumptions from other grounds, to shew what was done, I may well appeal to the rasure or loss of records, for the want of further proof. never do upon conjectures, or slight grounds. And as for Fox, I make a great difference between relying upon what he writes barely upon report, (which I never do,) and relying upon some registers, of which he made abstracts. For having observed an exact fidelity in all that he took out of such registers as do yet remain, I have reason to depend on such abstracts as he gives of registers that are now destroyed. He might be too credulous in writing such things as were brought him by report; and in these I do not depend on him but he was known to be a man of probity; so I may well believe what he delivers from a record, though that happens now to be lost.

The censure is next applied to Cranmer's character. He observes great defects in my sincerity and (to let me see how civilly he intends to use me, he says he will not add) my want of judgment. I am sure he has shewed a very ill judgment in charging me so severely in so tender a point as sincerity, and using a reserve in another point, that does not touch me so much. I am accountable both to God and man for my sincerity; but I am bound to have no more

judgment than God has given me; and so long as I maintain my sincerity entire, I have little to answer for, though I may be defective in the other: but I leave it to you to judge whether the defect was in his sincerity or his judgment, when he does not bring any one particular against Cranmer, but what he takes from me. So if I have confessed all his faults, and yet give a character of him that is inconsistent with these, I may be justly charged for want of judgment; but my sincerity is still untainted. When he reckons up his charges against Cranmer, he begins with this, that he was put out of his college for his incontinence. He was then a layman, under no vows, only he held a place, of which he was incapable after he was married; now what sort of crime can he reckon this marriage, I leave it to himself to make it out. His next charge is, that though I say he was a Lutheran, yet he signed the six articles, which, he says, proves that he valued his benefice more than his

conscience.

He wrote this with too much precipitation, otherwise he would have seen that Cranmer never signed those articles. He disputed much against them before they passed into a law: nor could he be prevailed on, though the king pressed him to it, to abstain from coming to the parliament while that act passed. He came and opposed it to the last; and, even after the law was made, he wrote a book for the king's use against these articles. There was no clause in the act that required that they should be signed. Men were only bound to silence and submission. If he was at all faulty, with relation to that act, it was only in this, that he did not think himself bound to declare openly against it when it was published. From this, he goes next to charge him for consenting to the dissolution of king Henry's marriage with Anne of Cleve, upon grounds plainly contrary to those upon which his first marriage with Catherine of Spain was dissolved since one pretence in the divorce of Anne of Cleve was, that it was not consummated, though in the other it was declared that a marriage was complete, though not consummated. Whatever is to be said of this matter

the whole convocation was engaged in it. Gardiner promoted it the most of any. So the bishops, who were so zealous for popery in queen Mary's time, were as guilty as Cranmer. I do not deny that he shewed too much weakness in this compliance. He had not courage enough to swim against the stream: and he might think that the dissolving a marriage, the parties being contented, was not to be much withstood. But my censurer is afraid to touch on the chief ground on which that marriage was dissolved; which was, that the king gave not a pure, inward consent to it; for this touches a tender point of the intention of the minister in the sacrament; on which I did not reflect when I wrote my History. By the doctrine of the church of Rome, the parties are the ministers; so, if the intention was wanting, there was no sacrament in this marriage. This having been the common doctrine of the church of Rome, some remnant of that might have too great an effect on Cranmer. But if the consenting to an unjust sentence, in a time of much heat, and of a general consternation, is so criminal a thing, what will he make of Liberius, Filix, Ossius, and many more, whose names are in the Roman calendar. The carrying this too far will go a great way to the justifying the Luciferians. Whatever may be in this, I had opened the matter of Anne of Cleve so impartially, that I deserve no censure on that account.

After he had attacked the matter of my History in these particulars, he falls next upon my way of writing. In this, I confess, I am not so much concerned; for if the things are truly related by me, I can very easily bear all the reflections that he can lay on my way of writing. But, that he may censure me with a better grace, he bestows some good words on me. "He is not displeased with my preface, and "the beginning of my work: but all these hopes were soon "blasted; I fall into a detail of little stories, with which he "was quite disgusted." Yet if he had considered this better, he would have been milder in his censure. My design was to shew what seeds and dispositions were still in the minds of many in this nation, that prepared them for a