presence of your Lord, and you rebelled against his
servant the pope. May you see your crimes. May you feel the greatness
of your need of mercy. Now, even now, by my mouth, Christ offers you
that mercy; and with the passionate hope which I am bound to feel for
your salvation, I wait your answer to your Master's call."

The exact day on which this letter reached the archbishop is
uncertain, but it was very near the period of his sentence. He had
dared death bravely while it was distant; but he was physically timid;
the near approach of the agony which he had witnessed in others
unnerved him; and in a moment of mental and moral prostration Cranmer
may well have looked in the mirror which Pole held up to him, and
asked himself whether, after all, the being there described was his
true image--whether it was himself as others saw him. A faith which
had existed for centuries, a faith in which generation after
generation have lived happy and virtuous lives; a faith in which all
good men are agreed, and only the bad dispute--such a faith carries an
evidence and a weight with it beyond what can be looked for in a creed
reasoned out by individuals--a creed which had the ban upon it of
inherited execration; which had been held in abhorrence once by him
who was now called upon to die for it. Only fools and fanatics believe
that they cannot be mistaken. Sick misgivings may have taken hold upon
him in moments of despondency, whether, after all, the millions who
received the Roman supremacy might not be more right than the
thousands {p.250} who denied it; whether the argument on the real
presence, which had satisfied him for fifty years, might not be better
founded than his recent doubts. It is not possible for a man of gentle
and modest nature to feel himself the object of intense detestation
without uneasy pangs; and as such thoughts came and went, a window
might seem to open, through which there was a return to life and
freedom. His trial was not greater than hundreds of others had borne,
and would bear with constancy; but the temperaments of men are
unequally constituted, and a subtle intellect and a sensitive
organisation are not qualifications which make martyrdom easy.

Life, by the law of the church, by justice, by precedent, was given to
all who would accept it on terms of submission. That the archbishop
should be tempted to recant, with the resolution formed,
notwithstanding, that he should still suffer, whether he yielded