to return to the obedience due to the Holy Apostolic See, giving them all his goods for their reward, and he and his to be their slaves.'[158] Anger had the same effect upon the pontiff as inebriety; he had lost the use of his reason, and allowed himself to be carried away to threats and excesses of which he would have been ashamed, had he been sober. Accordingly the drunkenness was hardly over, before the unfortunate Paul hastened to hide his bull, and carefully laid aside his thunderbolts in the arsenal, free to bring them out later. [Sidenote: HENRY'S PALTRY EXCUSES.] Henry VIII., more calm than the pope, having heard of his discontent, feared to push him to extremities; and Cromwell, a month after the date of the bull, instructed Da Casale to justify the king to the Vatican. 'Fisher and More,' he was to say, 'had on all points of the internal policy of England come to conclusions diametrically opposed to the quiet and prosperity of the kingdom. They had held secret conversations with certain men notorious for their audacity, and had poured into the hearts of these wretches the poison which they had first prepared in their own.[159] Could we permit their crime, spreading wider and wider, to give a death-blow to the State? Fisher and More alone opposed laws which had been accepted by the general consent of the people, and were necessary to the prosperity of the kingdom. Our _mildest_ of sovereigns could not longer tolerate an offence so atrocious.'[160] Even these excuses accuse and condemn Henry. Neither More nor Fisher had entered into a plot against the State; their resistance had been purely religious; they were free to act according to their consciences. It might have been necessary to take some prudential measures in an age as yet little fitted for liberty; but nothing could excuse the scaffold, erected by the king's orders, for men who were regarded with universal respect. [124] 'Qua de re tota urbe sermo fuit.'—_State Papers_, vii. p. 604. [125] 'Nunquam alias gravius erratum fuisse.'—_Ibid._ [126] 'Eo maturius truncatur capite.'—Erasmi _Epp._ i. p. 1543. [127] Interrogatories.—_State Papers_, i. p. 432. [128] More's _Life_, p. 271. [129] Fuller, p. 203. [130] John xvii. 3. The Testament was in Latin. [131] Fuller, p. 204. [132] 'Eia, pedes, officium facite; parum itineris jam restat.'—Sanders, p. 79. [133] Psalm xxxiv. 5. [134] 'He went thither leaning on his staff.'—More's _Life_, p. 255. [135] 'Longa et perplexa accusatio.'—Polus, _Pro Unitatis Defensione_, p. 63. [136] More's _Life_, p. 260. Herbert: _Henry VIII._ p. 393. [137] 'Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit, et habeat omnia jura integra, et libertates suas illæsas.'—Herbert: _Henry VIII._ p. 268. [138] More's _Life_, p. 274. [139] 'Exanimata dolore.'—Polus, _Pro Unitatis Defensione_. [140] More's _Life_, p. 274. [141] 'Cui jam pietas multorum virorum robur addiderat.'—Polus, _Pro Unitatis Defensione_, p. 66.