No More Learning

Look to the Netherlands, wherein have been
Such holocausts of heresy! to what end?
For yet the faith is not established there.

GARDINER. The end's not come.

POLE. No--nor this way will come,
Seeing there lie two ways to every end,
A better and a worse--the worse is here
To persecute, because to persecute
Makes a faith hated, and is furthermore
No perfect witness of a perfect faith
In him who persecutes: when men are tost
On tides of strange opinion, and not sure
Of their own selves, they are wroth with their own selves,
And thence with others; then, who lights the faggot?
Not the full faith, no, but the lurking doubt.
Old Rome, that first made martyrs in the Church,
Trembled for her own gods, for these were trembling--
But when did our Rome tremble?

PAGET. Did she not
In Henry's time and Edward's?

POLE. What, my Lord!
The Church on Peter's rock? never!
I have seen
A pine in Italy that cast its shadow
Athwart a cataract; firm stood the pine--
The cataract shook the shadow. To my mind,
The cataract typed the headlong plunge and fall
Of heresy to the pit: the pine was Rome.
You see, my Lords,
It was the shadow of the Church that trembled;
Your church was but the shadow of a church,
Wanting the Papal mitre.

GARDINER (_muttering_). Here be tropes.

POLE. And tropes are good to clothe a naked truth,
And make it look more seemly.

GARDINER. Tropes again!

POLE. You are hard to please. Then without tropes, my Lord,
An overmuch severeness, I repeat,
When faith is wavering makes the waverer pass
Into more settled hatred of the doctrines
Of those who rule, which hatred by and by
Involves the ruler (thus there springs to light
That Centaur of a monstrous Commonweal,
The traitor-heretic) then tho' some may quail,
Yet others are that dare the stake and fire,
And their strong torment bravely borne, begets
An admiration and an indignation,
And hot desire to imitate; so the plague
Of schism spreads; were there but three or four
Of these misleaders, yet I would not say
Burn! and we cannot burn whole towns; they are many,
As my Lord Paget says.

GARDINER. Yet my Lord Cardinal--

POLE. I am your Legate; please you let me finish.