Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex: Quotes about God

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex was English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England. Explore interesting quotes on god.
Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex: 28 quotes0 likes

“This had been no great cause more to reject the one than thother, for ye know by histories of the bible that god may by his revelation dispense with his own Law.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Letter to Fisher. (Merriman, i. p. 376.)

“My lord, you had showed yourself of much more patience—I wll not say of much more prudency—if ye had contented yourself with their lawful appeal and my lawful injunctions and rather have sought fully to instruct me in the matter than thus to desire to conquer me by shrewd words, to vanquish me by sharp threaps [assertions] of Scripture which, as I know to be true, so I trust to God—as great clerk as ye be—ye allege them out of their place.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Source: Letter to Nicholas Shaxton, quoted in G. R. Elton, England Under the Tudors (3rd edn., 1991), p. 442

“My prayer is that God give me no longer life than I shall be glad to use mine office in edification, and not in destruction.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Letter of March 1538. (Merriman, ii. p. 129.)

“And shall I name one who hath been in our age, and wish him now to live to cure so great a canker? Would God England had a Cromwell: I will say no more.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Thomas Wilson, Discourse on Usury (1571), p. 182.
About

“[I have had many a talk with Cromwell] of god, of nature & of other polytyke & wordly thyngys [from which he has] geddryd more frute of truth then I have downe of any other man lyvyng syth I cam here to my cuntrey.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Thomas Starkey.
About

“Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same, unto whom a body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people divided in terms and by names of Spirituality and Temporalty, be bounden and owe to bear next to God a natural and humble obedience.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Cromwell's preamble to the Act in Restraint of Appeals, March 1533.

“The king's majesty desires nothing more than concord…; he knows there are those who would stir up strife, and that in many places in his field tares have sprongen to harm the wheat. The forwardness and carnal lust of some, the inveterate corruption and superstitious tenacity of opinion of others, excite disputation and quarrels most horrible to good Christian men; one side calls the other papists, and the other again calls them heretics, both naughty and not to be borne; and that the less so because they miserably abuse the Holy Word of God and the Scriptures which the same most noble prince of his gentleness and for the salvation and consolation of his people has permitted them to read in the vulgar tongue. They twist God's sacred gift, now into heresy and now into superstition. [The king] favours nor one side nor the other but, as becometh a Christian prince, profess the true Christian faith [therefore the king desires the] true doctrine and rule of the Gospel shall be published clear and established [and] the pious observation of ceremonies shall be distinguished from the impious, their use taught and their abuse abolished.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex

Speech to the reassmbled Parliament, 12 April 1540. (Journal of the House of Lords: I, pp. 128-9.)