These advances, consented to by Henry, were the act of Cromwell, and were designed as the commencement of a _Foedus Evangelicum_--a league of the great Reforming nations of Europe. It was a grand scheme, and history can never cease to regret that it was grasped at with too faint a hand. The bishop succeeded in neutralizing partially the scheming of the French, partially in attracting the sympathies of the German powers towards England; but the two great streams of the Teutonic race, though separated by but a narrow ridge of difference, were unable to reach a common channel. Their genius drove them into courses which were to run side by side for centuries, yet ever to remain divided. And if the lines in which their minds have flowed seem to be converging at last, and if hereafter Germans and English are again to unite in a single faith, the remote meeting point is still invisible, and the terms of possible agreement can be but faintly conjectured. NOTES: [383] "These be no causes to die for," was the favourite phrase of the time. It was the expression which the Bishop of London used to the Carthusian monks (_Historia Martyrum Anglorum_), and the Archbishop of York in his diocese generally.--Ellis, third series, Vol. II. p. 375. [384] Si Rex Præfatus, vel alii, inhibitioni ac prohibitioni et interdicto hujusmodi contravenerint, Regem ipsum ac alios omnes supradictos, sententias censuras et poenas prædictas ex nunc prout ex tunc incurrisse declaramus, et ut tales publicari ac publice nunciari et evitari--ac interdictum per totum regnum Angliæ sub dictis poenis observari debere, volumus atque mandamus.--_First Brief of Clement_: Legrand, Vol. III. pp. 451, 452. The Church of Rome, however, draws a distinction between a sentence implied and a sentence directly pronounced. [385] Strype's _Memorials_, Vol. I. p. 292. Ellis, third series, Vol. II. p. 336. [386] It is remarkable that in this paper it seems to be assumed, that the pope would have fulfilled this engagement if Henry had fully submitted. "He openly confessed," it says, "that our master had the right; but because our prince and master would not prejudicate for his jurisdictions, and uphold his usurped power by sending a proctor, ye may evidently here see that this was only the cause why the judgment of the Bishop of Rome was not given in his favour; whereby it may appear that there lacked not any justice in our prince's cause, but that ambition, vain glory, and too much mundanity were the lets thereof." [387] An Order for Preaching: printed in Burnet's _Collectanea_, p. 447. [388] Ellis, third series, Vol. II. p. 373. [389] John ap Rice to Secretary Cromwell, with an account of the search of the Bishop of Durham's chamber: _Rolls House MS._