Covered with everlasting shame, branded with eternal infamy, and dreading to hear the reproaches which must have been cast upon him as the author of the late calamities, he retired from the city of St. Peter, in company with his allies, while its ruins were still smoking, its streets lying desolate, and its once numerous inhabitants slaughtered, burned, or carried into captivity. Faint and broken-hearted, we doubt not—from pride awfully mortified—he first rested at the monastery of Monte Casino, then proceeded to the Normans' strong castle of Salerno. He never saw Rome again.
A numerous body of ecclesiastics, devoted to the promotion of the lofty pretensions of the degraded pope, followed him to Salerno. There he held a synod, and as if unmoved and unshaken by the horrors he had caused and witnessed, he thundered out again anathemas and excommunications against Henry, the anti-pope Clement, and all their adherents. But these were his last thunderpeals. Death was approaching rapidly. The great, the inflexible, asserter of the supremacy of the sacerdotal order must die like other men. He called before him his fellow-exiles, made a confession of his faith—especially as to the eucharist, having been suspected of sympathizing with Berengar's views—forgave and absolved all whom he had anathematized, with the exception of the Emperor and the anti-pope. With these he charged his followers to make no peace unless on their entire submission to the church.
A fearful tempest raged, it is said, as his friends hung over the dying pope. His last memorable words were, "I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile." "In exile, my lord," said a bishop of congenial feelings, whose priestly pride was not rebuked by that spectacle of mortality, "thou canst not die in exile! Vicar of Christ and His apostles, thou hast received from God the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession!" The daring breath of blasphemy thus closed, as it had surrounded, the life of the great churchman. But his departed spirit was far away from the flattery of his friends to be manifested before another tribunal. There all would be judged, not according to the principles of popery, but according to the eternal truth of God as it has been revealed unto us in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
"Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him" is a word of sweetest assurance to the heart; for what must that word "blessed" mean, when used by God Himself! But oh! what of those who live and die without Christ! who will at last have to say, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." Oh! who can fathom the depths of misery—the eternity of woe, in these two words, "not saved!" "not saved!" What a text for a preacher! what a warning word for a sinner! May my reader lay it to heart, before laying down this volume; and may he carefully contrast the death of the great churchman with the death of the great apostle. "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing." (2 Tim. 4:7, 87I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: 8Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7‑8).) Even a false prophet was compelled to say, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his."