Hoveden, p.496.

M.
Paris, p.

73,] [** "Quis dubitet," says Becket to the king, "sacerdotes Christi legum et principum omniumque fidelium patres et magistros censeri," Epist.

St.Thom.97, 148.] Principle, therefore, stood on the one side, power on the other; and if the English had been actuated by conscience more than by present interest, the controversy must soon, by the general defection of Henry's subjects, have been decided against him, Becket, in order to forward this event, filled all places with exclamations against the violence which he had suffered.

He compared himself to Christ, who had been condemned by a lay tribunal,[*] and who was crucified anew in the present oppressions under which his church labored: he took it for granted, as a point incontestable, that his cause was the cause of God:[**] he assumed the character of champion for the patrimony of the divinity: he pretended to be the spiritual father of the king and all the people of England:[***] he even told Henry that kings reign solely by the authority of the church,[****] and though he had thus torn off the veil more openly on the one side than that prince had on the other, he seemed still, from the general favor borne him by the ecclesiastics, to have all the advantage in the argument.