That is, it is common for statesmen to be atheists at the bottom; to be seemingly of that religion which is most for their interest; to crush and ruin that from which they have no future prospect of advantage, and to join with its most inveterate enemies, without consideration of their king’s interest: and this was the case of the Duke of Somerset. All which together amounts to this; that it is no matter by what means a Reformation be compassed, by what instruments it be brought to pass, or with what design, though all these be never so ungodly; it is enough if the Reformation itself be made by the legislative power of the land. The matter of fact then is given up, only it is faced with recriminations; that Alexander the Sixth, for example, was as wicked a Pope as King Henry was a king: as if any Catholic denied, that God Almighty, for causes best known to his divine wisdom, has not sometimes permitted impious men to sit in that supreme seat, and even to intrude into it by unlawful means. That Alexander the Sixth was one of the worst of men, I freely grant; which is more than I can in conscience say of Henry the Eighth, who had great and kingly virtues mingled with his vices. That the Duke of Somerset raised his estate out of church lands, our author excuses no other ways than by retorting, that Popes are accustomed to do the like in consideration of their nephews, whom they would greaten. But though it is a wicked thing for a Pope to mispend the church revenues on his relations, it is to be considered he is a secular prince, and may as lawfully give out of his temporal incomes what he pleases to his favourite, as another prince to his. But as our author charges this miscarriage home upon some late Popes of the former and the present age, so I hope he will exempt his present Holiness[80] from that note. No common father of God’s church, from St Peter even to him, having ever been more bountiful, in expending his revenues for the defence of Christendom; or less interested, in respect of his relations, whom he has neither greatened, nor so much as suffered to enter into the least administration of the government. But after all, what have these examples to do with this lady’s conversion? Why, our author pretends, that these bad Popes, and their ill proceedings, ought as reasonably to have hindered the Duchess from entering into the Catholic church, as the like proceedings under Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, and Queen Elizabeth, might move her Highness to leave the Protestant.