hreatening than its predecessor. The
thing, it was said, must be done, and should be done. If it was not done by
the pope it would be done at home in some other way, and the pope must take
the consequences.[140] Wolsey warned him passionately of the rising
storm,[141] a storm which would be so terrible when it burst "that it would
be better to die than to live." The pope was strangely unable to believe
that the danger could be real, being misled perhaps by other information
from the friends of Queen Catherine, and by an over-confidence in the
attachment of the people to the emperor. He acted throughout in a manner
natural to a timid amiable man, who found himself in circumstances to which
he was unequal; and as long as we look at him merely as a man we can pity
his embarrassment. He forgot, however, that only because he was supposed to
be more than a man had kings and emperors consented to plead at his
judgment seat--a fact of which Stephen Gardiner, then Wolsey's secretary,
thought it well to remind him in the following striking language:--

"Unless," said the future Bishop of Winchester in the council, at the close
of a weary day of unprofitable debating, "unless some other resolution be
taken than I perceive you intend to make, hereupon shall be gathered a
marvellous opinion of your Holiness, of the college of cardinals, and of
the authority of this See. The King's Highness, and the nobles of the realm
who shall be made privy to this, shall needs think that your Holiness and
these most reverend and learned councillors either will not answer in this
cause, or cannot answer. If you will not, if you do not choose to point out
the way to an erring man, the care of whom is by God committed to you, they
will say, 'Oh race of men most ungrateful, and of your proper office most
oblivious! You who should be simple as doves are full of all deceit, and
craft, and dissembling. If the king's cause be good, we require that you
pronounce it good. If it be bad, why will you not say that it is bad, so to
hinder a prince to whom you are so much bounden from longer continuing with
it? We ask nothing of you but justice, which the king so loves and values,
that whatever sinister things others may say or think of him, he will
follow that with all his heart; that, and nothing else, whether it be for
the marriage or against the marriage.'

"But if the King's Majesty," continued Gardiner, hitting the very point of
the difficulty, "if the King