not, if you do not choose to point out the way to an erring man, the care of whom is by God committed to you, they will say, 'Oh race of men most ungrateful, and of your proper office most oblivious! You who should be simple as doves are full of all deceit, and craft, and dissembling. If the King's cause be good, we require that you pronounce it good. If it be bad, why will you not say that it is bad, so to hinder a prince to whom you are so much bounden from longer continuing with it? We ask nothing of you but justice, which the King so loves and values, that whatever sinister things others may say or think of him, he will follow that with all his heart; that, and nothing else, whether it be for the marriage or against the marriage.'
'But if the King's Majesty,' continued Gardiner, hitting the very point of the difficulty, 'if the King's Majesty and the nobility of England, being persuaded of your good will to answer if you can do so, shall be brought to doubt of your ability, they will be forced to a harder conclusion respecting this See—namely, that God has taken from it the key of knowledge; and they will begin to give better ear to that opinion of some persons to which they have as yet refused to listen, that those Papal laws which neither the Pope himself nor his council can interpret, deserve only to be committed to the flames.' 'I desired his Holiness,' he adds, 'to ponder well this matter.'[1]
Clement was no hero, but in his worst embarrass-
- ↑ Gardiner and Fox to Wolsey: Strype's Memorials, vol. i. Appendix, p. 92.
