IV - His transactions with Pope Gregory the IX and with Pope Innocent IV. His high notion of the Pope's power: yet opposes their oppressive measures. Goeth to the Council of Lions, where he receives several commissions from the Pope Innocent IV. Goeth again to Lions, and puts up a remonstrance to the Pope on the abuses reigning in his Court.

Summary

We are now entering upon the most remarkable as well as the most delicate, and we may add the most glorious part of the Bishop of Lincoln's life, viz those controversies he had with the head of the Church and wherein like another Paul, he resisted Peter's successor or his officers, in the face in some instances wherein he thought them reprehensible. But then if it was with the zeal and courage of St Paul, it was also with a like humility and respect for his superior. And this his resisting the head of the Church is as awkwardly lugged in by some to prove his renouncing or questioning the pope's supremacy as that of St Paul to discredit the superiority and primacy of St Peter over Paul and the other Apostles. Now as the fault of the Prince of the Apostles and opposition made against it by his inferior and brother apostle Paul have been transmitted by the sacred penmen without any prejudice either to the sanctity of the opposer or to the authority of the opposed, so after their example, and we hope with the same spirit, we shall not scruple to lay open the like controversies betwixt the Holy Father and our Prelate of Lincoln without fearing the imputation of disrespect to the Supreme Pastor, or exposing our heroe's virtue to a trial it cannot bear. But they who confine Bishop Grossetete's transactions with the Holy See to this one article of his oppositions are not only faithless historians and suppressors of the truth, but leave out a curious and edifying part of his history, which would present the true clue to the sense and meaning of his oppositions and reflect a new lustre both upon his sanctity and orthodoxy by shewing that as he never lost his respect for the persons whose measures he opposed, so he never forfeited their esteem and confidence, tho in the first moments of surprise he might be the object of their displeasure and would to God all opposers of abuses, whether in Church or State, had known how to have managed their zeal with the like prudence! How many schisms in the Church, and how many rebellions in the State, would have been spared?