yet committed Sacrilege; 'Thou that abhorrest Idols, dost thou commit
Sacrilege?' supposing, I think, Sacrilege the greater sin. This
may occasion your Majesty to consider, that there is such a sin as
Sacrilege; and to incline you to prevent the Curse that will follow
it, I beseech you also to consider, that Constantine, the first
Christian Emperor, and Helena his Mother; that King Edgar, and Edward
the Confessor; and indeed many others of your predecessors, and many
private Christians, have also given to God, and to his Church, much
land, and many immunities, which they might have given to those of
their own families, and did not; but gave them for ever as an absolute
right and sacrifice to God: and with these immunities and lands they
have entailed a curse upon the alienators of them: God prevent your
Majesty and your successors from being liable to that Curse, which
will cleave unto Church-lands as the leprosy to the Jews.

"And to make you, that are trusted with their preservation, the better
to understand the danger of it, I beseech you forget not, that, to
prevent these Curses, the Church's land and power have been also
endeavoured to be preserved, as far as human reason and the law of
this nation have been able to preserve them, by an immediate and most
sacred obligation on the consciences of the Princes of this realm.
For they that consult Magna Charta shall find, that as all your
predecessors were at their Coronation, so you also were sworn before
all the Nobility and Bishops then present, and in the presence of
God, and in his stead to him that anointed you, to maintain the
Church-lands, and the rights belonging to it: and this you yourself
have testified openly to God at the holy Altar, by laying your hands
on the Bible then lying upon it. And not only Magna Charta, but many
modern Statutes have denounced a Curse upon those that break Magna
Charta; a Curse like the leprosy, that was entailed on the Jews: for