Page:Divorce of Catherine of Aragon.djvu/470

ties, supposed to be special servants of God, had become special servants of the Devil. The eagerness with which the Pope solicited Henry's return, the assurance that he had always been his friend—had always maintained that Henry was right in the divorce case, when he had a Bull ready in his desk taking his crown from him—was in itself sufficient evidence of the fitness of such a ruler to be the Supreme Judge in Christendom. Just as little could the Emperor be trusted, whose affectations of friendship were qualified by secret reservations. The King had undertaken a great and beneficent work in his own realm and meant to go through with it. The Pope might do as he pleased. The Continental Princes might quarrel or make peace, hold their Councils, settle as they liked their own affairs, in their own way; England was sufficient for herself. He had called his people under arms; he had fortified the coasts; he had regenerated the navy. The nation, or the nobler part of it, he believed to be loyal to himself—to approve what he had done and to be ready to stand by him. He was not afraid of attack from abroad. If there was a rebellious spirit at home, if the clergy were mutinous because the bit was in their mouths, if the Peers of the old blood were alarmed at the growth of religious liberty and were discontented because they could no longer deal with it in the old way, the King was convinced that he was acting for the true interests of the country, that Parliament would uphold him, and that he could control both the ecclesiastics and the nobles. The world should see that the reforms which he had introduced into England were not the paltry accidents of a domestic scandal, but the first steps of a revolution deliberately resolved on and sternly carried out which was to free the island for ever from the usurped au-