ay make use thereof towards any that shall not be so
modestly and so reasonably minded as you are. I find therefore her
majesty's proceedings to have been grounded upon two principles.

"1. The one, that consciences are not to be forced, but to be won and
reduced by the force of truth, with the aid of time, and use of all good
means of instruction and persuasion.

"2. The other, that the causes of conscience, wherein they exceed their
bounds, and grow to be matter of faction, lose their nature; and that
sovereign princes ought distinctly to punish the practice in contempt,
though coloured under the pretence of conscience and religion.

"According to these principles, her majesty, at her coming to the crown,
utterly disliking the tyranny of Rome, which had used by terror and
rigor to settle commandments of men's faiths and consciences; though, as
a prince of great wisdom and magnanimity, she suffered but the exercise
of one religion, yet her proceedings towards the papists was with great
lenity, expecting the good effects which time might work in them. And
therefore her majesty revived not the laws made in the 28 and 35 of her
father's reign, whereby the oath of supremacy might have been offered at
the king's pleasure to any subject, though he kept his conscience never
so modestly to himself; and the refusal to take the same oath without
further circumstance was made treason. But contrariwise her majesty, not
liking to make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts, except the
abundance of them did overflow into overt or express acts or
affirmations, tempered her laws so as it restraineth every manifest
disobedience in impugning and impeaching advisedly and maliciously her
majesty's supreme power, maintaining and extolling a foreign
jurisdiction. And as for the oath, it was altered by her majesty into a
more grateful form; the hardness of the name and appellation of supreme
head was removed; and the penalty of the refusal thereof turned only
into disablement to take any promotion, or to exercise any charge, and
yet with liberty of being reinvested therein if any man should accept
thereof during his life. But when, after Pius Quintus had excommunicated
her majesty, and the bills of excommunication were published in London,
whereby her majesty was in a sort proscribed; and that thereupon, as a
principal motive or preparative, followed the rebellion in the North;
yet because the ill-humors of the realm were by that reb