would that, with the grace of God, you would do the like. These words I write unto you at present, the rest Ί have placed in the mouth of him who bears these presents, a pious man, one of great credit, and, as I believe, a faithful servant of yours. In them, I pray that so it may please you to place full belief; still in preference, with your favour, I could wish to enjoy the condescension of an interview with you. Once and always to my lord, farewell !" " The Letter of the blessed Thomas to Bobert, bishop of Hereford. "Thomas, by the grace of God,-the humble servant of the church of Canterbury, to his venerable brother Robert, by the same grace, bishop of Hereford, health and blessings in all things. If so it is that my letters have caused anxiety in your brotherhood, would that it were the ease that I had not found you slothful in feeling, and not watchful in the due performance of the duties of the office you have undertaken. I have chosen to be cast out and to become accursed on behalf of you all, a reproach before men and a scorn before the people, that I might not behold the evils of the holy ones, and keep silence upon the injuries done to my nation ; and anxiously did I wish that perchance some one of you in his zeal for the law of God, and his love of the liberties of the Church, would follow and come after me, that so we might not give horns68 to the sinful. And behold ! you, whom I believed to be given unto me by the Lord, that with me you might build, and weed, and plant, are suggesting encouragement amid ruin, and solace in despair ; inasmuch as you are preaching humility, nay, even abject submission, and are announcing tidings of good, while, on every side, confusion prevails, to the injury of God and of the clergy : and this, at the moment when you ought to be stipngthening the constancy of my mind amid its vacillation, and, with me, sustaining the attack, in order to defend our inheritance of the cross and repel and crush the enemies of the church, to be suggesting counsel to my ears, to be breathing fresh life into my spirit, to the end that I might entreat with the more firmness, that I might argue with the greater cogency, and rebuke with the greater severity. And, if they should refuse to hear me, then, undoubtedly, ought you to have exclaimed, ' Why dost thou sleep ? Un-58 Give them cause to raise their horns, or exult. VOL. I. 17 A.D. 11CG. THE ARCHBISHOP' TO THE BISHOP OP HEREFORD. 289