sin of believing that it was against the truth of Christ's natural
body to be in heaven and earth at the same time. To them soon
succeeded Cranmer, the father of the English liturgy, not a man of
unblemished character, but incomparably superior to Gardiner, to
Bonner, or to Pole. For Cranmer Froude had a peculiar affection, and
his account of the Archbishop's martyrdom is unsurpassed by any
other passage in the History. I need make no apology for quoting the
end of it; "So perished Cranmer. He was brought out with the eyes of
his soul blinded to make sport for his enemies, and in his death he
brought upon them a wider destruction than he had effected by his
teaching while alive. Pole was appointed next day to the See of
Canterbury; but in other respects the Court had overreached
themselves by their cruelty. Had they been contented to accept the
recantation, they would have left the Archbishop to die broken-
hearted, pointed at by the finger of pitying scorn, and the
Reformation would have been disgraced in its champion. They were
tempted, by an evil spirit of revenge, into an act unsanctioned even
by their own bloody laws; and they gave him an opportunity of
redeeming his fame, and of writing his name in the roll of martyrs.
The worth of a man must be measured by his life, not by his failure
under a single and peculiar trial. The Apostle, though forewarned,
denied his Master on the first alarm of danger; yet that Master, who
knew his nature in its strength and its infirmity, chose him for the
rock on which He would build His Church."

It used to be said of Ernest Renan that he was toniours seminariste,
and there is a flavour of the pulpit in these beautiful sentences.
Beautiful indeed they are, and not more beautiful than true. The
implacable Mary, whose ghastly epithet clings to her for all time,
like the shirt of Nessus, found in Pole an apt and zealous pupil in