Popular rumor reports to us that you and the lord Otto, Cardinal Deacon of the Holy Roman Church, invited by our illustrious lord the King of the English, and commissioned by Papal mandate, are come down to the Aquitanian country, with the help of God by your best endeavor to restore to the English Church its inalienable freedom, and to renew peace and concord between the king and the archbishop. By princes, yea, and even by prelates, it has been heard that our aforesaid lord the king so trusts your devotion that his acceptance of your advice in every particular is a foregone conclusion: in my exceeding joy whereat, I have decided that I too should ask advice of you and assistance, ready in all things to obey you, saving my freedom of conscience and my personal honor. For I trust in the Lord that with you consideration of personages and of rewards will not be so influential that by any of your actions the Church shall be injured, scandal be engendered in lay folk, or your bright reputation be darkened. These, indeed, are the works of men by whom either the law is unknown or its Author is disregarded. Not such are you, whose good faith and whose prudence the Lord has so honored with his approval that you are set before the world upon the golden candlestick of seven lamps as a lantern and as a beacon, that yours may be the light for all men that enter. On you, therefore, all men are fixing their observation; and many fear lest the temptation of Lucifer should end in extinction and in ruin, lest the intimacy with the king, which they say you have lately been cementing, be to you beginning of dereliction. And indeed, Sin will be judged by intent; but its crime becomes greater and greater Strictly with every degree of the criminal’s office and station. (Juvenal, III. viii. 140.) But in the meantime I am hopeful that this intimacy between you and the king, which to many is so suspect, will be fruitful to the Church, necessary to us, salutary to him, to you a further glory. For if he gives you obedience where even legal necessity binds him, and where any evasion would be at the risk of his salvation, without doubt he will be repentant, will confess his transgression, and humbly giving the Church satisfaction, will restore to us all peace and freedom with our stolen integrity, and will tear quite out of his heart the hate of his brethren. Otherwise what power is able to save him from the snare of the devil?