He considered
it no indication of weakness to acknowledge the spiritual supremacy
and jurisdiction of the Sovereign Pontiff, and to subscribe himself as
a most obedient son of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, as we shall now
proceed to prove, in spite of all the frogs and jackdaws that the
Bishop of London appeals to as witnesses to the contrary.
Now, it so fell out that, in the second decade of his reign, certain
persons, with perhaps more zeal than discretion, began to lodge sundry
complaints against the King. They carried stories to Rome, and sought
to prejudice the Pope, Benedict XII., against King Edward. In the
course of time the King got wind of what was going on, and found that
the suspicions of the Pope had been raised against him. Now, what did
Edward do? If he had been a modern Anglican, he would have snapped his
fingers at the Pope. Forgetful of Our Lord's words, "Unless you become
as little children you shall not enter the Kingdom of heaven," he
would have proudly declared that no Pope or foreign Bishop could claim
any jurisdiction in England, for that he himself was, in his own
realm, the supreme authority in things ecclesiastical as well as in
things temporal.
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