e.]

The bishop had been in communication with Melancthon and many of the
leading Lutheran theologians upon the terms on which they would return
to the church. The Protestant divines had drawn up a series of articles,
the first of which was a profession of readiness to recognise the
authority of the pope;[474] accompanying this statement with a
declaration that they would accept any terms not plainly unjust and
impious. These articles were transmitted to Paris, and again
retransmitted to Germany, with every prospect of a mutually satisfactory
result; and Melancthon was waiting only till the bishop could accompany
him, to go in person to Paris, and consult with the Sorbonne.[475]

[Sidenote: Of which Henry is partly the cause.]

[Sidenote: Henry is driven to conciliate the German princes.]

This momentary (for it was only momentary) weakness of the German
Protestants was in part owing to their want of confidence in Henry
VIII.[476] The king had learnt to entertain a respect for the foreign
Reformers, far unlike the repugnance of earlier years; but the prospect
of an alliance with them had hitherto been too much used by him as a
weapon with which to menace the Catholic powers, whose friendship he had
not concealed that he would prefer. The Protestant princes had shrunk
therefore, and wisely, from allowing themselves to be made the
instruments of worldly policy; and the efforts at a combination had
hitherto been illusive and ineffectual. Danger now compelled the king to
change his hesitation into more honest advances. If Germany accepted the
mediation of Francis, and returned to communion with Rome; and if, under
the circumstances of a reunion, a general council were assembled; there
could be little doubt of the attitude in which a council, called
together under such auspices, would place itself towards the movement in
England. To escape so imminent a peril, Henry was obliged (as Elizabeth
after him) to seek the support of a party from which he had shrunk: he
was forced, in spite of himself, to identify his cause with the true
cause of freedom, and consequently to admit an enlarged toleration of
the Reformed doctrines in his own dominions. There could be little doubt
of the support of the Germans, if they could be once assured that they
would not again be trifled with; and a Protestant league, the steady
object of Cromwell's efforts, seemed likely at length to be realized.

[Sidenote: August. Nature of the relations of