to an open opposition before her; after which they both quitted the
room, not friends in appearance. But the Bishop made a sudden and
seasonable return to her Majesty,--for he found her alone--and spake
to her with great humility and reverence, to this purpose.

[Sidenote: An address]

"I beseech your Majesty to hear me with patience, and to believe that
your's and the Church's safety are dearer to me than my life, but
my conscience dearer than both: and therefore give me leave to do my
duty, and tell you, that Princes are deputed nursing Fathers of the
Church, and owe it a protection; and therefore God forbid that you
should be so much as passive in her ruin, when you may prevent it;
or that I should behold it without horror and detestation; or should
forbear to tell your Majesty of the sin and danger of Sacrilege.
And though you and myself were born in an age of frailties, when the
primitive piety and care of the Church's lands and immunities are much
decayed; yet, Madam, let me beg that you would first consider that
there are such sins as Profaneness and Sacrilege: and that, if there
were not, they could not have names in Holy Writ, and particularly
in the New Testament. And I beseech you to consider, that though our
Saviour said, 'He judged no man;' and, to testify it, would not judge
nor divide the inheritance betwixt the two brethren, nor would judge
the woman taken in adultery; yet in this point of the Church's rights
he was so zealous, that he made himself both the accuser, and the
judge, and the executioner too, to punish these sins; witnessed,
in that he himself made the whip to drive the profaners out of the
Temple, overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and drove them out
of it. And I beseech you to consider, that it was St. Paul that said
to those Christians of his time that were offended with Idolatry, and