He kissed the executioner and forgave him.
"Thou art," said he, "to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive:
pluck up thy spirit man, and be not afraid to do thine office."
UTOPIA.--His great work, and that which best illustrates the history of
the age, is his Utopia, ([Greek: ou topos], not a place.) Upon an island
discovered by a companion of Vespuccius, he established an imaginary
commonwealth, in which everybody was good and everybody happy. Purely
fanciful as is his Utopia, and impossible of realization as he knew it to
be while men are what they are, and not what they ought to be, it is
manifestly a satire on that age, for his republic shunned English errors,
and practised social virtues which were not the rule in England.
Although More wrote against Luther, and opposed Henry's Church
innovations, we are struck with his Utopian claim for great freedom of
inquiry on all subjects, even religion; and the bold assertion that no man
should be punished for his religion, because "a man cannot make himself
believe anything he pleases," as Henry's six bloody articles so fearfully
asserted he must.
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