There is one sentence in the King's letter which is especially worthy of consideration, as it is so pregnant with meaning. We refer to the following: knowing that "your Holiness presides over every creature, which to deny is heresy".
You will observe that the King not only believes, but that he here practically makes an explicit profession of faith in the spiritual supremacy of St. Peter and his successors, the Popes. In fact, he not only admits and confesses the Pope's supremacy to be true, which is one thing, but he declares it to be a revealed truth, taught by Our Blessed Lord Himself, which is a great deal more. How does he do this? Suffer us to explain.
To deny any truth of religion is wrong and sinful, but it is not necessarily and always heretical. Heresy is not the denial of any kind of truth: it is the denial only of a special form of truth. It is the denial of those truths which have been taught by Jesus Christ and the Apostles. But the King explicitly declares in his letter to the Holy Father that to deny the Pope's spiritual supremacy over all is not only wrong, not only sinful, but that it is to be guilty of the specially horrible sin of heresy. His words are: "It is to maintain heresy". Yet Anglicans still fondly cling to the delusion that the Church in England in the time of Edward III. is in unbroken continuity with the Church of England in the time of King Edward VII.!
But, to continue. It is interesting to note that the Pope, Benedict XII., in due course replies to this letter from his "devout and humble son," as Edward describes himself. He begins by expressing his satisfaction that His "most dear Son in Christ King Edward of England" should thus "follow the commendable footsteps of your progenitors, Kings of England who," he goes on to say, "were famous for the fulness of their devotion and faith towards God and the Holy Roman Church".
Will the present Bishop of London, we wonder, be good enough to explain how Pope Benedict XII. could possibly tell a renowned King of England that his progenitors, that is to say, the Kings of England who had preceded him, were famous—mark the word—"famous for the fulness of their devotion and faith towards God and the Holy Roman Church," if they were all the while cut off from the Roman Church, and denounced as heretics by that Church, if, in short, they were of one and the same faith as the Anglicans are to-day? We pause for a reply. Of course we know that Anglicans are very hard pressed, and in a quandary, and that some allowance must be made for drowning men when they stretch forth their trembling hands to clutch at straws. But really the claim to continuity, however vital to them, should hardly be put forward in the face of such clear and overwhelming evidence of its falsity. The ultimate effects of such vain efforts to prove black to be white can only be to make them ridiculous, and to discredit them in the eyes of honest men.
In conclusion, we are persuaded that some may feel curious or interested to see and read King Edward's letter for themselves, and in its entirety. Some may even wish to satisfy themselves that we are stating actual facts, and not romancing; so let us inform any such persons that the letter quoted belongs to the thirteenth year of King Edward III.'s reign (An. Regni xiii. Ed. Rex III.). The original, if not at the Vatican, should be either at the Record Office or at the British Museum. The English version, of which we have made use, may be found on pages 126-30 of The History of Edward III., by J. Barnes, Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and published in 1688. Had this history been composed in more modern times, this famous letter to Pope Benedict would probably have been quietly suppressed or omitted.
But in 1688 the theory of continuity had not been invented by the father of lies, to bolster up a lost cause, so the letter actually appears in Barnes' History, to tell its own unvarnished tale: and to bear its uncompromising testimony to the truth.
In the meanwhile, time wears on, and the end draws near when each man will have to give an account of his life and conduct to the Supreme Judge of the living and the dead. And it will go hard with us if we turn our back upon the truth. God is speaking in this England of ours, and shedding His light, and many are finding their way back to that glorious Faith of which they were cruelly robbed at the "Reformation". "To-day, if you shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts," but lend an attentive ear to His invitation, and pray that you may have courage enough to join hands once again with Bede, and Dunstan, Anselm, and Thomas à Becket, and with Edward III. and his royal predecessors, all faithful sons of St. Peter and the Holy See, and to enter that Church which was built by God Incarnate on Peter, and upon no other foundation; which still rests securely upon Peter, and which (if there be any truth in God's promises) will continue to rest on Peter till the end of time. "Upon this Rock (Peter) will I build My Church, and the gates of hell (i.e., the powers of darkness) shall never prevail against it."