Anselm had no sooner returned from banishment, than his refusal to do homage to the king raised a dispute, which Henry evaded at that critical juncture, by promising to send a messenger, in order to compound the matter with Pascal II, who then filled the papal throne. The messenger, as was probably foreseen, returned with an absolute refusal of the king’s demands;[**] and that fortified by many reasons which were well qualified to operate on the understandings of men in those ages. Pascal quoted the Scriptures to prove that Christ was the door; and he thence inferred that all ecclesiastics must enter into the church through Christ alone, not through the civil magistrate, or any profane laymen.[***]
[*** Eadmer, p. 60. This topic is further enforced in p. 73, 74. See also W. Malms, p. 163.]
“It is monstrous,” added the pontiff, “that a son should pretend to beget his father, or a man to create his God: priests are called gods in Scripture, as being the vicars of God; and will you, by your abominable pretensions to grant them their investiture, assume the right of creating them?”[*]
But how convincing soever these arguments, they could not persuade Henry to resign so important a prerogative; and perhaps, as he was possessed of great reflection and learning, he thought that the absurdity of a man’s creating his God, even allowing priests to be gods, was not urged with the best grace by the Roman pontiff. But as he desired still to avoid, at least to delay, the coming to any dangerous extremity with the church, he persuaded Anselm that he should be able, by further negotiation, to attain some composition with Pascal; and for that purpose he despatched three bishops to Rome, while Anselm sent two messengers of his own, to be more fully assured of the pope’s intentions.[**] Pascal wrote back letters equally positive and arrogant, both to the king and primate, urging to the former that, by assuming the right of investitures, he committed a kind of spiritual adultery with the church, who was the spouse of Christ, and who must not admit of such a commerce with any other person;[***] and insisting with the latter, that the pretension of kings to confer benefices was the source of all simony; a topic which had but too much foundation in those ages.[****]