enry
himself (Kal. Nov. xiv. An. iv.) nearly two years
before his death, the Pope refers to a promise made
by Henry that he had no desire to curtail the
authority of the Roman See in his new dominions;
and also to an undertaking that he would bring the
obnoxious statutes under the notice of his
parliament; and that, "_if they could not be
supported on honest and lawful grounds_," he would
satisfy the Pope in that particular. Surely these
are not the expressions of one who was "the slave
of the Popedom."--See "Annales Ecclesiastici."]

[Footnote 249: Milner's Church History, vol. iv. p.
196.]

It is very painful to read this sentence; but the historian and
biographer must not be driven by such sweeping condemnation into the
opposite extreme; nor be deterred by the apprehension of unpopularity
from laying open his views both of the moral and religious question in
the abstract, and also of the acts, and character, and spirit of the
individual subject of inquiry.

The principles of religious liberty were ill understood through many
years before, and subsequently to, the time of Henry V. The sentiments
of persons in every rank of life in those days seem to have been built
upon an understanding, that the authorities, ecclesiastical and civil,
were bound in duty to expel heresy by force. It was not the case of a
dominant party enacting penalties abhorrent from the sympathies of the
mass of the people; "the people themselves wished to have it so, and
the priests bore rule by their means." So thorough a triumph had the
gigantic policy of Rome achieved over the freedom, and the wills, and
the judgments of the inhabitants of Europe! Like her other victories,
this too was the work of progressive inroads on the liberties (p. 325)
of Christians. Never at rest, ever active, the arch-conqueror fastened
to her chariot-wheels, one by one, the most valued rights and most
solemn duties of responsible agents. The right of private judgment in
matters of religion had been resigned by the vast majority of the
people of Christendom, and the duty and responsibility in each
individual of searching for the truth himself had been laid aside long
before Henry V. was called to take a part in the affa