Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/317

1535.] them rather to have expelled him from them by wrong, than to suffer him so to oppress them with injuries.' If in Germany they 'opened the great gate' to let him in again he would rebuild 'the fortresses that were thrown down, and by little and little bring all to the former estate again.' Finally, with respect to the council—if a council there was to be—they must take care that it was held in a place indifferent, where truth might be heard or spoken; 'considering that else in a council, were not the remedy that all good men sought, but the mischief that all good men did abhor.'

These advances, consented to by Henry, were the act of Cromwell, and were designed as the commencement of a Fœdus Evangelicum—a league of the great Reforming nations of Europe. It was a grand scheme, and history can never cease to regret that it was grasped at with too faint a hand. The Bishop succeeded in neutralizing partially the scheming of the French, partially in attracting the sympathies of the German powers towards England; but the two great streams of the Teutonic race, though separated by but a narrow ridge of difference, were unable to reach a common channel. Their genius drove them into courses which were to run side by side for centuries, yet ever to remain divided. And if the lines in which their minds have flowed seem to be converging at last, and if hereafter Germans and English are again to unite in a single faith, the remote meeting-point is still invisible, and the terms of possible agreement can be but faintly conjectured.