A.D. 1168. ΤΠΕ AKCHEISHOr TO THE BISHOP OP HEREFORD. 315 with lying and deceitful testimony that he will allow him to bear the cross throughout our province, supposing that some great gain will be the result, if through hatred to our person he shall be enabled in any way to inflict an injury upon the Church to which by his canonical profession he owes duty and obedienee. But Christ, who from its first foundation, amid various storms and many and great tempests, has guided and cherished the church of Canterbury, has wrought mercifully in that, in fuB consistory, his falsehood and wickedness have been, by means of unexceptionable witnesses, made manifest. Wherefore, in the first place I return thanks to God, and in the next to yourselves and the rest of our brethren, who have withheld yourselves from aB communion with him from the time that it was known that he had been condemned to excommunication, and have ordered by public notice throughout your see, not only him, but the rest of those who have been excommunicated among you, to be avoided. In this has been made maniïest your fidelity, and the constancy of your virtue has shone forth, which has determined that the threats of public power and of officials, equally with their blandishments, ought to be postponed to the commands of God. You have set at Uberty your consciences, you have preserved your good name, whUe, both by the words of truth, and by the example of fortitude, you have taught that it is more beeoming to obey God than man. Inasmuch, therefore, as the love of God, diffused so greatly by his Holy Spirit in your hearts, has gone forth to the publie as a testimony of your weB-doing, aU servile fear being repulsed and laid aside, let this sincerity of yours feel assured that God wBl speedily beat down Satan under your feet, and will bring the contest to a happy issue; and this, too, the more speedUy and gloriously, the more fervently and constantly your truth snail have been made manifest in the course on which you have begun. Wherefore, in the love of God, we do beg and entreat of you, and, by your fideUty, by your obedience, and by the sincere affection which you entertain towards your mother, the church of Canterbury, adjure you; that in order to maintain the dignity and the rights of the church of Canterbury to which you have made profession of fidelity, you will arise and come to our rescue against the above-named archbishop, and send in writing to our lord the pope, and to the court, a testimony of the truth, such as it befits her eons