Men were beginning to stifle under these manœuvres and tergiversations of the papacy; they called for air, and some went so far as to say that if air was not given them, they must snap their fetters and break open the doors.

CHAPTER VII.
LATIMER AT COURT.
(January To September 1530.)

Proclamation Against Papal Bulls.

Henry, seeing that he could not obtain what he asked from the pope, drew nearer the evangelical party in his kingdom. In the ranks of the Reformation he found intelligent, pious, bold, and eloquent men, who possessed the confidence of a portion of the people. Why should not the prince try to conciliate them? They protest against the authority of the pope: good! he will relieve them from it; but on one condition, however,—that if they reject the papal jurisdiction they recognize his own. If Henry’s plan had succeeded, the Church of England would have been a Cæsareo-papistical Church (as we see elsewhere) planted on British soil; but it was the Word of God that was destined to replace the pope in England, and not the king.

The first of the evangelical doctors whom Henry tried to gain was Latimer. He had placed him, as we have seen, on the list of his chaplains. ‘Beware of contradicting the king,’ said a courtier to him, one day, mistrusting his frankness. ‘Speak as he speaks, and instead of presuming to lead him, strive to follow him.’ ‘Marry, out upon thy counsel!’ replied Latimer; ‘shall I say as he says? Say what your conscience bids you.... Still, I know that prudence is necessary.

Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed sæpe cadendo.

The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling. Likewise a prince must be won by a little and a little.’

This conversation was not useless to the chaplain, who set to work seriously amid all the tumult of the court. He studied the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, and frankly proclaimed the truth from the pulpit. But he had no private conversation with the king, who filled him with a certain fear. The thought that he did not speak to Henry about the state of his soul troubled him. One day, in the month of November, the chaplain was in his closet, and in the volume of St. Augustine which lay before him he read these words: ‘He who for fear of any power hides the truth, provokes the wrath of God to come to him, for he fears men more than God.’ Another day, while studying St. Chrysostom, these words struck him: ‘he is not only a traitor to the truth who openly for truth teaches a lie; but he also who does not freely pronounce and show the truth that he knoweth.’ These two sentences sank deeply into his heart.[[75]] ‘They made me sore afraid,’ he continued, ‘troubled and vexed me grievously in my conscience.’ He resolved to declare what God had taught him in Scripture. His frankness might cost him his life (lives were lost easily in Henry’s time); it mattered not. ‘I had rather suffer extreme punishment,’ he said, ‘than be a traitor unto the truth.’[[76]]

Latimer’s Letter To Henry.

Latimer reflected that the ecclesiastical law, which for ages had been the very essence of religion, must give way to evangelical faith—that the form must yield to the life. The members of the Church (calling themselves regenerate by baptism) used to attend catechism, be confirmed, join in worship, and take part in the communion without any real individual transformation; and then finally rest all together in the churchyard. But the Church, in Latimer’s opinion, ought to begin with the conversion of its members. Lively stones are needed to build up the temple of God. Christian individualism, which Rome opposed from her theocratic point of view, was about to be revived in Christian society.