The next is Bishop Bonner himself, in his preface to Gardiner’s book of “True Obedience;” for thus he begins: “Forasmuch as there be some doubtless now at this present, which think the controversy between the king’s royal majesty and the bishop of Rome, consisteth in this point, for that his majesty hath taken the most excellent and most noble lady Ann to his wife; whereas in very deed, notwithstanding the matter is far otherwise, and nothing so.” So that, if Bishop Bonner may be believed, there was no such immediate cause of the schism, as the love to Ann Bolleyn. And withal he adds, “that this book was published, that the world might understand what was the whole voice and resolute determination of the best and greatest learned bishops, with all the nobles and commons of England, not only in the cause of matrimony, but also in defending the gospel’s doctrine, _i.e._ against the Pope’s usurped authority over the church.” Again he saith, “that the king’s marriage was made by the ripe judgment, authority, and privilege, of the most and principal universities of the world; and then with the consent of the whole church of England; and that the false pretended supremacy of the bishop of Rome was most justly abrogated: and that if there were no other cause but this marriage, the bishop of Rome would content himself, _i.e._ if he might enjoy his power and revenues still, which,” he saith, “were so insupportable, that there lay the true cause of the breach: For his revenues here were near as great as the king’s; and his tyranny was cruel and bitter, which he had exercised here under the title of the Catholic church, and the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul, when notwithstanding he was a very ravening wolf, dressed in sheep’s cloathing, calling himself the servant of servants.” These are Bonner’s words, as I have transcribed them out of two several translations, whereof one was published while he was bishop of London. Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, in his book, not only affirms the king’s former marriage to be unlawful, and the second to be just and lawful, but that he had the consent of the nation, and the judgment of his church, as well as foreign learned men for it; and afterwards he strenuously argues against the Pope’s authority here, as a mere usurpation. And the whole clergy not only then owned the king’s supremacy, (Fisher excepted,) but in the book published by authority, called “A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian Man,” &c., the Pope’s authority was rejected as an usurpation, and confuted by Scripture and antiquity. King James I. declares, “that there was a general and catholic conclusion of the whole church of England in this case;” and when some persons suspected, that it all came from the king’s marriage, Bishop Bonner, we see, undertakes to assure the world it was no such thing.[108]