'This, (says the Bp.) was the sense which Calvin affirmed to be sacrilegious and blasphemous for princes to professe themselves supreme judges of doctrine and discipline, and indeed it is the blasphemie which all godlie hearts reject and abomine in the Bishop of Rome. Neither did King Henry take any such thing on him for ought that we can learn; but this was Gardiner's stratagem to convey the reproach and shame of the sixe articles from himselfe and his felowes that were the authors of them, and to cast it on the King's supreme power. Had Calvin been told that supreme was first received to declare the prince to be superior to the [O 1]prelates, who exempted themselves from the King's authoritie by their church liberties and immunities, as well as to the lay-men of this realme, and not to be subject to the Pope, who claimed a jurisdiction over all princes and countries, the word would never have offended him: but as this wily foxe framed his answere when the Germans communed with him about the matter, we blame not Calvin for mistaking, but the Bishop of Winchester, for perverting the King's stile, and wresting it to that sense which all good men abhor.'
The Bp. further observes, that 'Our princes by their stile of supreme heads of the church, do not challenge power to debate, decide, or determine any point of faith or matter of religion, much lesse to be
- ↑ We thought that the clergie of our realme had bene our subjects wholly, but now we have well perceived that they bee but halfe our subjects, yea and scarce our subjectes: for all the prelates at their consecration make an oath to the Pope clene contrary to the othe that they make to us. So that they seem to be his subjects and not ours.—K. Henry VIII. Speech to the Commons, 1533.
