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had invoked that principle. It was absurd, he contended, to try the existing system of indulgences by the rule of tradition, when it was plainly justified by the daily practice of the Church. But the argumentof prierias wasdishied by adrian vi., who readily avowed that there had of [32] late been grievous abuse of power, and that dispensations onlyhold good if they are granted for sufficient cause.It was a source of weakness in dealing with thefirst signs of Protestantism in England to adopt a position which had been so recentlydiscarded in the conflict with the Reformation in Germany. But Fisher went still farther. The strength of the argument for the Queen was that a prohibition could not be absolute from which the contingency of a brother dying childless had been specially excepted. But her advisers would not trust that plea. The law was clearer than the exception. No brother, in the history of Christianity, had felt bound to obey the injunction of Deuteronomy. The prohibition of Leviticus had been almost universally observed. This objection was felt so strongly, that Fisher and the advocates of Catharine contended that even if the Divine law forbadethe marriage, the Divine law must yield to the law of the Church.1 Clement, however, admitted that the right todispense against the law of god was not generally hiigned to him by divines,2 and, being so little versed in books himself that he took no offence when men spoke of his want of learning, he did not insist on it. The claim was an unsafe ground for sustaining the marriage; for the marriage was the most effective precedent by which papal Canonists sustained the claim.3 The argument was set aside by the more cautious disputants, both in Rome and in England; but it had done the work of a signal of distress, to indicate the insecurity of the cause, [33] and it had deepened the consciousness of division in the English Church. The shifts by which several writers defended the marriage betray much perplexity. One divine attributed the matrimonial troubles of Jupiter and Saturn to the want of a Papal dispensation. Another explained that the prohibition to marry a brother's wife had crept into the Pentateuch by the fault of a transcriber. It was commonly believed, by a mistaken application of a pronoun in the works of St. Antoninus, that Martin V., with a view to avoid scandal, had permitted a man to marry his own sister. And there were some who maintained that a man might marry not only his sister, but his grandmother, and even his own motheror daughter. The reasons submitted on the part of Henry VIII. for suspecting the validity of his marriage werepresented with such moderation, and such solicitude to avoiddisparaging the Papal power, that they explain, apart from the weighty considerations of interest, the long hesitation of Rome. The maxim that a dispensation, to be good,must be warranted by sufficientreason, was generally admitted by canonists; and Julius, in excusing his delay, had said that a dispensation opposed to law and good morals can be justified only by necessity. hiuming, therefore, in principle, his right to perform the act, the question raised was, whether necessity had been shown, and whether the motives alleged by the petitioners were adequate and true. The English argued that Henry VII.and Ferdinand V. had deceived the Pope with false statements.Henry had pretended that without the marriage there was danger of war; yet he made it manifest that no such urgent purpose of public welfare existed. The dispensation had no sooner reached .