His situation made it his clear duty to declare publicly what he thought.
Nobody can suspect him of personal cowardice or of vulgar cupidity.
It was probably from a nervous fear of doing wrong that, at this great conjuncture, he did nothing: but he should have known that, situated as he was, to do nothing was to do wrong.

A man who is too scrupulous to take on himself a grave responsibility at an important crisis ought to be too scrupulous to accept the place of first minister of the Church and first peer of the realm.
It is not strange, however, that Sancroft's mind should have been ill at case; for he could hardly be blind to the obvious truth that the scheme which he had recommended to his friends was utterly inconsistent with all that he and his brethren had been teaching during many years.

That the King had a divine and indefeasible right to the regal power, and that the regal power, even when most grossly abused, could not without sin, be resisted, was the doctrine in which the Anglican Church had long gloried.

Did this doctrine then really mean only that the King had a divine and indefeasible right to have his effigy and name cut on a seal which was to be daily employed in despite of him for the purpose of commissioning his enemies to levy war on him, and of sending his friends to the gallows for obeying him?
Did the whole duty of a good subject consist in using the word King?
If so, Fairfax at Naseby and Bradshaw in the High Court of justice had performed all the duty of good subjects.
For Charles had been designated by the generals who commanded against him, and even by the judges who condemned him, as King.

Nothing in the conduct of the Long Parliament had been more severely blamed by the Church than the ingenious device of using the name of Charles against himself.