Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/469

1536.] of them have been), are the first who has ventured so enormous an impiety. Your flatterers have filled your heart with folly; you have made yourself abhorred among the rulers of Christendom. Do you suppose that in all these centuries the Church has failed to learn how best she should be governed? What insolence to the bride of Christ! What insolence to Christ himself! You pretend to follow Scripture! So say all heretics, and with equal justice. No word in Scripture makes for you, except it be the single sentence, "Honour the King." How frail a foundation for so huge a superstructure!

Having thus opened the indictment, he proceeded to dissect a book which had been written on the Supremacy by Dr Sampson. Here he for some time expatiated, and having disposed of his theological antagonist, opened his parallels upon the King by a discussion of the principles of a commonwealth.

'What is a king?' he asked. 'A king exists for the sake of his people; he is an outcome from Nature in labour; an institution for the defence of material and temporal interests. But inasmuch as there are interests beyond the temporal, so there is a jurisdiction beyond the king's. The glory of a king is the welfare of his people; and if he knew himself, and knew his office, he would lay his crown and kingdom at the feet of the priesthood, as in a haven and quiet resting-place. To priests it was said, "Ye are gods, and ye are the