ore offended God by giving favour to heretics, now
temper your favour under such manner that if you can convert them by
any ways unto the unity of the church, then do it, for it is a great
work of mercy. But if ye cannot, and ye suffer or favour them, there
cannot be a work of greater cruelty against the commonwealth than to
nourish or favour any such. _For be you assured, there is no kind of
men so pernicious to the commonwealth as they be; there are no
thieves, no murderers, no adulterers, nor no kind of treason, to be
compared to theirs, who, as it were, undermining the chief foundation
of all commonwealths, which is religion, maketh an entry to all kinds
of vices in the most heinous manner._" ... "You specially of the City
of London, you being the first that received the fruit of grace in the
new plantation, the seed of benediction being first cast upon you, to
make you a ground to bring forth all fruit of sanctity and justice;
... shall I say, that after all this done, more briars and thorns hath
grown here among you than in all the realm besides? I cannot say so,
nor I will not; albeit it might so seem, for a greater multitude of
these brambles and briars were cast in the fire here among you than in
any place besides; but many of them being grown in other places, and
brought in and burned among you, may give occasion that you have a
worse name without your desert. The thing standeth not in the
name--bethink you yourselves how it standeth.... Wherefore cometh
this, that when any heretic {p.280} shall go to execution, he shall
lack no comforting of you, and encouraging to die in his perverse
opinion? that when he shall be put in prison he shall have more
cherishing?... As it is now, this may not be suffered.... For their
boldness in their death, it is small argument of grace to be in them;
Christ himself showing more heaviness and dolour at his dying hour
than did the thieves that hung beside him, which did blaspheme Christ,
setting nought by him, specially one of them, showing no further fear.
So do the heretics at their deaths like the blasphemer."[592]

[Footnote 592: Address of Cardinal Pole to the
citizens of London: Strype's Memorials, vol. vi.]

Cruel and savage as the persecution had become, it was still
inadequate. The famine lasted, and therefore God was angry.

The new year opened with the appointment of a commission, consisting
of Bonner, Thirlby, and twenty other