Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/38

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xxxiv
LEWIS'S PREFACE.

spiritual, but a civil head or pastor as K. Saul is stiled head of the tribes of Israel[O 1], and his successor King David is said to feed Jacob and Israel.

The late Jeremy Collier (whom I never think of but with concern for his prostituting such excellent parts and line learning to serve a party, even to the descending to assert the most shameful falshoods and to indulge the grossest partialities, as he has done in his Ecclesiastical History) has been pleased to translate into English a long passage from Calvin's Comment on the Prophet Amos, on purpose to expose the regal supremacy. But this he could not but know Bellarmine and others of the same stamp had done before him, and for the very same end. To them our learned prelates Andrews and Bilson returned proper answers long before Mr. Collier was born. Which answers, I believe, every sincere lover of truth will think ought to have been remembred in his history, so long as it was thought proper to place the objection there.

The Jesuits having published a pamphlet entituled, An Apologie and true Declaration of the Institution and Indeavours of the two English Colleges, viz. of Doway and Rheims, in which they most of all spurn'd at the Royal supremacy; among other things which they alledged against it was the authority of Calvin the learned French reformer at Geneva, who in his comment on the seventh chapter of the prophecy of Amos says, 6 They were blasphemers who called K. Henry VIII. supreme head of the church under Christ.' To this Bp. Bilson replyed, that [O 2]'These

  1. Psalm 78.
  2. The true difference betwene Christian Subjection and unchristian rebellion. Part III. p. 294, 295.