198 REMARKS ON THE SUPPOSITION THAT HENRY VIII. WAS 



in whose eyes the very absurdities* of this illustrious schoolman 

 were venerable. If we couple these facts with Henry's eager vanity 

 to extort from his fellow sovereigns the same undissembled homage 

 to his literary qualifications which they had, for a time, paid to the 

 supremacy of his power,t we shall cease to wonder at his entering 

 the lists of controversy with Luther with a confidence of success 

 which sprung from a conviction that he would bring it to a trium- 

 phant issue. Indeed, if Erasmus and MelancthonJ were as sincere 

 as they have been copious in their praises of the king's scholarship, 

 and they ought not in common fairness to be suspected, on this occasion, 

 of throwing a grain of incense upon the altar of vanity, as neither 

 of them was the pensioner of his bounty, he could not be esteemed 

 a feeble adversary. Some of his Latin compositions had previously 

 acquired the applause of the lettered part of Europe; while his 

 close study of the subtleties of Aquinas had mightily strengthened 

 his reasoning faculties for a theological combat. Collier, certainly 

 no contemptible judge, unhesitatingly assigns to Henry the victory 

 in it ; for he says — '^ The king had the better of the controversy, 

 and was, generally speaking, the soundest divine ; superior to his 

 adversary in the vigour and propriety of his style, the force of his 

 reasoning, and the learning of his quotations." He adds that '* his 

 manner was not altogether unexceptionable, and that he leant too 

 muchon his character, argued in his garter-robes, and wrote, as *t were, 

 with his sceptre." IT The consciousness of having sounded so loud 



• Some of his paradoxes are more than absurd, they are dangerous. In 

 the following opinion, this great Doctor of the Augustine school, scales not 

 the summits of reflection, but goes to the very edge of extreme and licen- 

 tious speculation. Quamvis omne quod Deus vult justum sit, non tamen 

 ex hoc justum dicitur quod Deus illud vult. Opera, par. 1664, vol. vii, p. 

 697. For three centuries however he was the moral teacher of Europe. 

 Nothing indeed can shew the real superiority of his genius in a more striking 

 point of view than the praises bestowed upon his ethical works in particular, 

 by Erasmus, Grotius, and Leibnitz. These are his best epitaph, for their 

 commendation is glory. 



•f- Robertson has touched upon this topic with his usual discrimination. 

 See Reign of Charles V., vol. iL, p. 70. 



X Mr. Sharon Turner in his History of the Reign of Henry VIII, book i. 

 chap, ii., p. 29 — 34, has produced passages from the epistles of these two 

 celebrated men, in which they speak of Henry's literary merit in the aggre- 

 gate, in such superlative terms ofencomium, that according to their judgment, 

 he may be almost considered as the wonder of the sixteenth century. 



% Eccles. Ist,y vol. ii. p. 17. In the opinion however of the public, who gene- 

 rally embrace the cause of the weaker side, Luther had the advantage. See 

 Fra Paolo Istoria del Concil Trident. Lib. ii. p. 13. 



