f within the promised rules of brevity in this
account of his interest with her Majesty, and his care of the Church's
rights, if in this digression I should enlarge to particulars; and
therefore my desire is, that one example may serve for a testimony of
both. And, that the Reader may the better understand it, he may take
notice, that not many years before his being made Archbishop,
there passed an Act, or Acts of Parliament, intending the better
preservation of the Church-lands, by recalling a power which was
vested in others to sell or lease them, by lodging and trusting the
future care and protection of them only in the Crown: and amongst many
that made a bad use of this power or trust of the Queen's, the Earl
of Leicester was one; and the Bishop having, by his interest with her
Majesty, put a stop to the Earl's sacrilegious designs, they two fell
to an open opposition before her; after which they both quitted the
room, not friends in appearance. But the Bishop made a sudden and
seasonable return to her Majesty,--for he found her alone--and spake
to her with great humility and reverence, to this purpose.

[Sidenote: An address]

"I beseech your Majesty to hear me with patience, and to believe that
your's and the Church's safety are dearer to me than my life, but
my conscience dearer than both: and therefore give me leave to do my
duty, and tell you, that Princes are deputed nursing Fathers of the
Church, and owe it a protection; and therefore God forbid that you
should be so much as passive in her ruin, when you may prevent it;
or that I should behold it without horror and detestation; or should
forbear to tell your Majesty of the sin and danger of Sacrilege.
And though you and myself were born in an age of frailties, when the
primitive piety and care of the Church's lands and immunities are much
decayed; yet, Madam, let me beg that you would first consider that
there are such sins as Profaneness and Sacrilege: and that, if there
were not, they could not have names in Holy Writ, and particularly
in the New Testament. And I beseech you to consider, that though our
Saviour said, 'He judged no man;' and, to testify it, would not judge
nor divide the inheritance betwixt the two brethren, nor would judge
the woman taken in adultery; yet in this point of the Church's rights
he was so zealous, that he made himself both the accuser, and the
judge, and the executioner too, to punish these sins; witnessed,
in that he himself