Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/42

 set aside by an humane law, and the authority they derived from heaven transfer'd upon the state. The care of souls was made to devolve upon the civil power, and the being of Christianity to depend upon the will of the magistrate.'

Much the same reply to this passage of Calvin's was made by Bp. Andrews. 'Calvin's invective (says he) against those who called Hen. VIII. head of the church was occasioned by a mistake of the matter of fact. For he thought they had not removed the Pope, but only changed him, the King being transubstantiated into a pope. But, says he to Bellarmine, we do not attribute that to the King which you do to the Pope; nor would the King accept of it, should we ascribe it to him.'

But to return to Sir Thomas More. As strongly prejudiced as he was against the King's primacy or supremacy, it appears by the following account of his life, that he was not so extravagant in his notions of the Papal power as some others were. I've before observed that he tells Tyndall that he never put the Pope for part of the definition of the church, defining it to be the common known congregation of all christian nations under one head the Pope. Nay, he affirms that a general council is above the Pope, and that 'there are orders in Christ's church by which a pope may be both admonished and amended, and hath been for incorrigible mind and lack of amendment finally deposed and changed.' Which is the very same conclusion that Dr. Wiclif maintained, and which was condemned by the Council of Con-