Volume III Part 2 (1/2)
”What is a king?” he asked. ”A king exists for the sake of his people; he is an outcome from Nature in labour;[49] an inst.i.tution for the defence of material and temporal interests. But inasmuch 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 G.o.ds, and ye are the children of the Most High.' Who, then, can doubt that priests are higher in dignity than kings. In human society are three grades--the people--the priesthood, the head and husband of the people--the king, who is the child, the creature, and minister of the other two.”[50]
From these premises it followed that Henry was a traitor, a rebel against his true superior; and the first section closed with a fine rhetorical peroration.
[Sidenote: The king is the man of sin and the prince of pride.]
”Oh, Henry!” he exclaimed, ”more wicked than Ozias, who was smitten with leprosy when he despised the warnings of Azariah--more wicked than Saul, who slew the priests of the Lord--more wicked than Dathan and Abiram, who rose in rebellion against Aaron--what hast thou done? What! but that which is written in the Scripture of the prince of pride--'I will climb up into heaven; I will set my throne above the stars; I will sit me down on the mount of the covenant; I will make myself even with the Most High.' ... He shall send his vengeance upon thee--vengeance sudden, swift, and terrible. It shall come; nor can I pray that it may longer tarry. Rather may it come and come quickly, to the glory of his name. I will say, like Elijah, 'Oh, Lord! they have slain thy prophets with the edge of the sword; they have thrown down thine altars; and I only am left, and they seek my life to take it away. Up, Lord, and avenge the blood of thy holy ones.'”
[Sidenote: The English bishops are the robber Cacus; the Pope is the sleeping Hercules.]
He now paused for a moment in his denunciation of Henry, and took up his parable against the English bishops, who had betrayed the flock of Christ, and driven them into the den of the villain king. ”You thought,”
he said to these learned prelates, ”that the Roman pontiff slept--that you might spoil him with impunity, as the robber Cacus spoiled the sleeping Hercules. Ah! but the Lord of the sheep sees you. He sees you from his throne in heaven. Not we only who are left yet alive tell, with our bleating voices, whither you have driven us; but, in louder tones than ours, the blood of those whom ye have slain, because they would not hear your hireling voices, cries out of the dust to Christ. Oh, horrible!--most horrible! No penalty which human justice could devise can reach your crimes. Men look to see when some unwonted vengeance shall light upon you, like that which fell on Korah and his company, in whose footsteps ye now are following. If the earth open her mouth and swallow you up quick, every Christian man will applaud the righteous judgment of the Almighty.”
[Sidenote: Responsibility of sovereigns to their subjects.]
Again he pa.s.sed back to the king, a.s.sailing him in pages of alternate argument and reprobation. In most modern language he a.s.serted the responsibility of sovereigns, calling English history to witness for him in the just rebellions provoked by tyranny; and Henry, he said, had broken his coronation oath and forfeited his crown. This and similar matter occupied the second part. It had been tolerably immoderate even so far, but the main torrent had yet to flow.
The third and most important section divides itself into an address, first to the king and then to England; finally to the foreign powers--the Emperor particularly, and the Spanish army.
[Sidenote: He will be the king's physician, and unfold his wicked heart to him.]
[Sidenote: The king a thief and a robber.]
”I have spoken,” he commenced, ”but, after all, I have spoken in vain.
Wine turns to vinegar in a foul vessel; and to little purpose have I poured my truth into a mind defiled with falsehood and impurity. How shall I purify you? How, indeed! when you imagine that yourself, and not I, are in possession of the truth; when you undertake to be a teacher of others; when, forsooth, you are head of a church. But, come, listen to me. I will be your physician. I will thrust a probe into those envenomed wounds. If I cause you pain, believe that it is for your good. You do not know that you have a wound to probe. You pretend that you have only sought to do the will of G.o.d. You will say so. I know it. But, I beseech you, listen to me. Was it indeed your conscience which moved you? Not so. You l.u.s.ted after a woman who was not your wife. You would make the Word of G.o.d bear false witness for you; and G.o.d's providence has permitted you to overwhelm yourself in infamy. I say, you desired to fulfil your l.u.s.ts. And how, you ask, do I know this? How can I see your heart? Who but G.o.d can read those secrets? Yes, oh prince; he also knows--to whom G.o.d will reveal the heart. And I tell you that I am he to whom G.o.d has revealed yours. You will cry out against my arrogance. How should G.o.d open your heart to me? But contain yourself a little. I do not say that G.o.d has shewn more to me than he has shewn to any man who will use his understanding.[51] You think that the offspring of your harlot will be allowed to sit on the throne, that the pure blood of England will endure to be her subjects. No, truly. If you dream thus, you have little of your father's wisdom. There is not a peer in all the land who will not hold his t.i.tle better than the t.i.tle of a harlot's b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Like Cadmus, you have flung a spear among your people, and armed them for mutual slaughter. And you--you, the vilest of plunderers--a thief--a robber--you call yourself supreme head of the Church! I acquit the nation of the infamy of their consent. They have not consented. The few suffrages which you can claim have been extorted by terrour. Again, how do I know this? I, who was absent from my country? Yes, I was absent. Nor have I heard one word of it from any creature. And yet so it is. I have a more sure testimony than the testimony of eyes and ears, which forbids me to be mistaken.”
The witness was the death of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the Charterhouse monks; and the story of their martyrdom was told with some power and pa.s.sion.
[Sidenote: He calls on England to rise in rebellion.]
The remedy for all its evils rested with England. England must rebel. He called on it, with solemn earnestness, to consider its position: its church infected with heresy, its saints slaughtered, its laws uprooted, its succession shattered; sedition within, and foreign war imminent from without; and the single cause of these acc.u.mulated miseries a licentious tyrant. ”And oh! my country,” he exclaimed, ”if any memory remains to you of your antient liberties, remember--remember the time when kings who ruled over you unjustly were called to account by the authority of your laws. They tell you that all is the king's. I tell you that all is the commonwealth's. You, oh! my country, are all. The king is but your servant and minister. Wipe away your tears, and turn to the Lord your G.o.d.”
[Sidenote: He will invite the King of France to depose Henry.]
Of his own conduct he would give Henry fair warning. ”I myself,” he said, once more addressing him, ”I myself shall approach the throne of your last ally, the King of France. I shall demand that he a.s.sist you no longer; that, remembering the honour of his father, with his own past fidelity to the Church of Christ, he will turn against you and strike you down. And think you that he will refuse my pet.i.tion? How long dream you that G.o.d will bear with you? Your company shall be broken up. The scourge shall come down upon you like a wave. The pirates who waste the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean are less the servants of Satan than you. The pirates murder but the bodies of men. You murder their souls. Satan alone, of all created beings, may fitly be compared with you.”
So far I have endeavoured to condense the voluminous language into a paraphrase, which but languidly approaches the blaze and fury of the original. Vituperation, notwithstanding, would have been of trifling consequence; and the safe exhortations of refugees, inciting domestic rebellions the dangers of which they have no intention of sharing, are a form of treason which may usually be despised. But it is otherwise when the refugee becomes a foreign agent of his faction, and not only threatens to invite invasion, but converts his menace into act. When the pages which follow were printed, they seemed of such grave moment that they were extracted and circulated as a pamphlet in the German States.
The translation, therefore, will now adhere closely to the text.
[Sidenote: The invocation of the Emperor.]
[Sidenote: Who are the true enemies of Christendom?]
[Sidenote: Not Turks, but heretics.]
[Sidenote: Heresy in Germany.]
[Sidenote: Deeper heresy in England,]
[Sidenote: Which will grow inveterate if it be not nipped in the bud.]