to his
commonwealth to make a league with dicers. But if we should content
ourselves to return to the Pope, and to his popish errors, and to make a
covenant not only with dicers, but also with men far more ungracious and
wicked than any dicers be; besides that this should be a great blot to
our good name, it should also be a very dangerous matter, both to kindle
God's wrath against us, and to clog and condemn our own souls for ever.
For of very truth we have departed from him, who we saw had blinded the
whole world this many a hundred year: from him, who too far
presumptuously was wont to say, "he could not err," and whatsoever he did
"no mortal man had power to condemn him, neither kings, nor emperors, nor
the whole clergy," nor yet all the people in the world together; no, and
though he should carry away with him to hell a thousand souls from him
who took upon him power to command, not only men, but even God's angels,
to go, to return, to lead souls into purgatory, and to bring them back
again when he list himself: whom Gregory said, without all doubt, is the
very forerunner and standard-bearer of Antichrist, and hath utterly
forsaken the Catholic faith, from whom also these ringleaders of ours,
who now with might and main resist the gospel, and the truth, which they
know to be the truth, have ere this departed every one of their own
accord and goodwill, and would even now also gladly depart from him, if
the note of inconstancy and shame, and their own estimation among the
people, were not a let unto them. In conclusion, we have departed from
him, to whom we were not bound, and who had nothing to say for himself,
but only I know not what virtue or power of the place where he dwelleth,
and a continuance of succession.

And as for us, we of all others most justly have left him. For our
kings, yea, even they which with greatest reverence did follow and obey
the authority and faith of the bishops of Rome, have long since found and
felt well enough the yoke and tyranny of the Pope's kingdom. For the
bishops of Rome took the crown off from the head of our King Henry the
Second, and compelled him to put aside all majesty, and like a mere
private man to come unto their legate with great submission and humility,
so as all his subjects might laugh him to scorn. More than this, they
caused bishops and monks, and some part of the nobility, to be in the
field against our King John, and set all the people at liberty from their