Rome, and you think the consequences ought to be considered. My Lord, as touching schism, we are informed by virtuous and learned men that, considering what the Church of Rome is, it is no schism to separate from her, and adhere to the Word of God. The lives of Christ and the Pope are very opposite, and therefore to follow the Pope is to forsake Christ. It is to be trusted the Papacy will shortly vanish away, if it be not reformed; but, God willing, we shall never separate from the Universal body of Christian men."[1]
Archbishop Warham also had failed to realise the meaning of his consent to the Royal Supremacy. He had consecrated the Bishop of St. Asaph on the receipt of a nomination from Rome before the Bulls had been presented to the King. He learnt that he was again under a Præmunire. The aged Primate, fallen on evil times, drew the heads of a defence which he intended to make, but never did make, in the House of Lords. Archbishops, he said, were not bound to enquire whether Bishops had exhibited their Bulls or not. It had not been the custom. If the Archbishop could not give the spiritualities to one who was pronounced a bishop at Rome till the King had granted him his temporalities, the spiritual powers of the Archbishops would depend on the temporal power of the Prince, and would be of little or no effect, which was against God's law. In consecrating the Bishop of St. Asaph he had acted as the Pope's Commissary. The act itself was the Pope's act. The point for which the King contended was one of the Articles which Henry II. sought to extort at Clarendon, and which he was afterwards compelled to abandon. The
- ↑ Henry VIII. to the Bishop of Durham, Feb. 24, 1532. Compressed.—Calendar, Foreign and Domestic, vol. v. p. 387.
