§ 138.7. The Victory of Calvinism over Zwinglianism.—By his extensive correspondence and numerous writings Calvin’s influence extended far beyond the limits of Switzerland. Geneva became the place of refuge for all who were exiled on account of their faith, and the university founded there by Calvin furnished almost all Reformed churches with teachers, who were moulded after a strict Calvinistic pattern. Bern, not uninfluenced by political jealousies, showed most reluctance in adopting the Calvinistic doctrine. Zürich was more compliant. After Zwingli’s death, Henry Bullinger stood at the head of the Zürich clergy. With him Calvin entered into doctrinal negotiations, and succeeded in at last bringing him over to his views of the Lord’s Supper. In the Consensus Tigurinus of A.D. 1549, drawn up by Calvin, a union was brought about on a Calvinistic basis; but Bern, where the Zwinglians contending with the Lutheranised friends of Calvin had the majority, refused subscription. The Consensus pastorum Genevensium, of A.D. 1554, called forth by the conflict with Bolsec, in which the predestination doctrine of Calvin had similar prominence, not only Bern, but also Zürich refused to accept. Yet these two confessions gradually rose in repute throughout German Switzerland. Even Bullinger’s personal objection to the predestination doctrine was more and more overcome from A.D. 1556 by the influence of his colleague Peter Martyr (§ [139, 24]), though he never accepted the Calvinistic system in all its severity and harshness. When even the Elector-palatine Frederick III. (§ [144, 1]) wished to lay a justificatory confession before the Diet of Augsburg in A.D. 1566, which threatened to exclude him from the peace on account of his going over to the Reformed church, Bullinger, who was entrusted with its composition, sent him, as an appendix to the testament he had composed, a confession, which came to be known as the Confessio Helvetica posterior (§ [133, 8]). This confession, not only obtained recognition in all the Swiss cantons, with the exception of Basel, which likewise after eighty years adopted it, but also gained great consideration in the Reformed churches of other lands. Its doctrine of the sacraments is Calvinistic, with not unimportant leanings toward the Zwinglian theory. Its doctrine of predestination is Calvinism, very considerably modified.
§ 138.8. Calvin’s Successor in Geneva.—Theodore Beza was from A.D. 1559 Calvin’s most zealous fellow labourer, and after his death succeeded him in his offices. He soon came to be regarded at home and abroad with something of the same reverence which his great master had won. He died in A.D. 1605. Born in A.D. 1519 of an old noble family at Vezelay in Burgundy, he was sent for his education in his ninth year to the humanist Melchior Wolmar of Orleans, and accompanied his teacher when he accepted a call to the Academy of Bourges, until in A.D. 1534 Wolmar was obliged to return to his Swabian home to escape persecution as a friend and promoter of the Reformation. Beza now applied himself to the study of law at the University of Orleans, and obtained the rank of a licentiate in A.D. 1539. He then spent several years in Paris as a man of the world, where he gained the reputation of a poet and wit, and wasted a considerable patrimony in a loose and reckless life. A secret marriage with a young woman of the city in humble circumstances, in A.D. 1544, put an end to his extravagances, and a serious illness gave a religious direction to his moral change. He had made the acquaintance of Calvin at Bourges, and in A.D. 1543 he went to Geneva, was publicly married, and in the following year received, on Viret’s recommendation, the professorship of Greek at Lausanne. Thoroughly in sympathy with all Calvin’s views, he supported his doctrine of predestination against the attacks of Bolsec, justified the execution of Servetus in his tract De hæreticis a civili magistratu puniendis, zealously befriended the persecuted Waldensians, along with Farel made court to the German Protestant princes in order to secure their intercession for the French Huguenots, and negotiated with the South German theologians for a union in regard to the doctrine of the supper. In A.D. 1558 Calvin called him to Geneva as a preacher and professor of theology in the academy erected there. In A.D. 1559 he vindicated Calvin’s doctrine of the supper against Westphal’s attacks (§ [141, 10]) in pretty moderate language; but in A.D. 1560 he thundered forth two violent polemical dialogues against Hesshus (§ [144, 1]). The next two years he spent in France (§ [139, 14]) as theological defender and advocate of the Huguenots. After Calvin’s death the whole burden of the government of the Genevan church fell upon his shoulders, and for forty years the Reformed churches of all lands looked with confidence to him as their well-tried patriarch. Next to the church of Geneva, that of his native land lay nearest to his heart. Repeatedly we find him called to France to direct the meetings of synod. But scarcely less lively was the interest which he took in the controversies of the German Reformed with their Lutheran opponents. At the Religious Conference of Mömpelgard, which the Lutheran Count Frederick of Württemberg called in A.D. 1586, to make terms if possible whereby the Calvinistic refugees might have the communion together with their Lutheran brethren, Beza himself in person took the field in defence of the palladium of Calvinistic orthodoxy against Andreä, whose theory of ubiquity (§ [141, 9], [10]) he had already contested in his writings. Very near the close of his life the Catholic Church, through its experienced converter of heretics, Francis de Sales (§ 156, 1), made a vain attempt to win him back to the Church in which alone is salvation.To a foolish report that this effort had been successful Beza himself answered in a satirical poem full of all his youthful fire.[373]
§ 139. The Reformation in Other Lands.
The need of reform was so great and widespread, that the movement begun in Germany and Switzerland soon spread to every country in Europe. The Catholic Church opposed the Reformation everywhere with fire and sword, and succeeded in some countries in utterly suppressing it; while in others it was restricted within the limits of a merely tolerated sect. The German Lutheran Confession found acceptance generally among the Scandinavians of the north of Europe, the Swiss Reformed among the Romanic races of the south and west; while in the east, among the Slavs and Magyars, both confessions were received. Calvin’s powerful personal influence had done much to drive the Lutheran Confession out of those Romance countries where it had before obtained a footing. The presence of many refugees from the various western lands for a time in Switzerland, as well as the natural intercourse between it and such countries as Italy and France, contributed to the same result. But deeper grounds than these are required to account for this fact. On the one hand, the Romance people are inclined to extremes, and they found more thorough satisfaction in the radical reformation of Geneva than in the more moderate reformation of Wittenberg; and, on the other hand, they have a love for democratic and republican forms of government which the former, but not the latter, gratified.—Outside of the limits of the German empire the Lutheran Reformation first took root, from A.D. 1525, in Prussia, the seat of the Teutonic Knights (§ [127, 3]); then in the Scandinavian countries. In Sweden it gained ascendency in A.D. 1527, and in Denmark and Norway in A.D. 1537. Also in the Baltic Provinces the Reformation had found entrance in A.D. 1520; by A.D. 1539 it had overcome all opposition in Livonia and Esthonia, but in Courland it took other ten years before it was thoroughly organized. The Reformed church got almost exclusive possession of England in A.D. 1562, of Scotland in A.D. 1560, and of the Netherlands in A.D. 1579. The Reformed Confession obtained mere toleration in France in A.D. 1598; the Reformed alongside of the Lutheran gained a footing in Poland in A.D. 1573, in Bohemia and Moravia in A.D. 1609, in Hungary in A.D. 1606, and in Transylvania in A.D. 1557. Only in Spain and Italy did the Catholic Church succeed in utterly crushing the Reformation. Some attempts to interest the Greek church in the Lutheran Confession were unsuccessful, but the remnants of the Waldensians were completely won over to the Reformed Confession.
§ 139.1. Sweden.—For fifty years Sweden had been free from the Danish yoke which had been imposed upon it by the Calmar union of A.D. 1397. The higher clergy, who possessed two-thirds of the land, had continuously conspired in favour of Denmark. The Archbishop of Upsala, Gustavus Trolle, fell out with the chancellor, Sten Sture, and was deposed. Pope Leo X. pronounced the ban and interdict against Sweden. Christian II. of Denmark conquered the country in A.D. 1520, and in the frightful massacre of Stockholm during the coronation festivities, in spite of his sworn assurances, 600 of the noblest in the land, marked out by the archbishop as enemies of Denmark, were slain. But scarcely had Christian reached home when Gustavus Vasa landed from Lübeck, whither he had fled, drove out the Danes, and was elected king, A.D. 1523. In his exile he had become favourably inclined to the Reformation, and now he joined the Protestants to have their help against the opposing clergy. Olaf Peterson, who had studied from A.D. 1516 in Wittenberg, soon after his return home, in A.D. 1519, began as deacon in Strengnæs, along with Lawrence Anderson, afterwards administrator of the diocese of Strengnæs, to spread the reformed doctrines. Subsequently they were joined by Olaf’s younger brother, Laurence Peterson. During the king’s absence in A.D. 1524, two Anabaptists visited Stockholm, and even the calm-minded Olaf was for a time carried away by them. The king quickly suppressed the disturbances, and entered heartily upon the work of reformation. Anderson, appointed chancellor by Vasa, in A.D. 1526 translated the N.T., and Olaf with the help of his learned brother undertook the O.T. The people, however, still clung to the old faith, till at the Diet of Westnæs, in A.D. 1527, the king set before them the alternative of accepting his resignation or the Reformation. The people’s love for their king overcame all clerical opposition. Church property was used to supply revenues to kings and nobles, and to provide salaries for pastors who should preach the gospel in its purity. The Reformation was peacefully introduced into all parts of the land, and the diets at Örebro, in A.D. 1529, 1537, and at Westnæs, in A.D. 1544, carried out the work to completion. The new organization adopted the episcopal constitution, and also in worship, by connivance of the people, many Catholic ceremonies were allowed to remain. Most of the bishops accepted the inevitable. The Archbishop Magnus of Upsala, papal legate, went to Poland, and Bishop Brask of Linköping fled with all the treasures of his church to Danzig. Laurence Peterson was made in A.D. 1531 first evangelical Archbishop of Upsala, and married a relative of the royal house. But his brother Olaf fell into disfavour on account of his protest against the king’s real or supposed acts of rapacity. He and Anderson, because they had failed to report a conspiracy which came to their knowledge in the confessional, were condemned to death, but were pardoned by the king. Gustavus died in A.D. 1560. Under his son Eric a Catholic reaction set in, and his brother John III., in A.D. 1578, made secret confession of Catholicism to the Jesuit Possevin, urged thereto by his Catholic queen and the prospect of the Polish throne. John’s son Sigismund, also king of Poland, openly joined the Romish Church. But his uncle Charles of Sodermanland, a zealous Protestant, as governor after John’s death, called together the nobles at Upsala in A.D. 1593, when the Latin mass-book introduced by John was forbidden, and the acknowledgment of the Augsburg Confession was renewed. But as Sigismund continued to favour Catholicism, the peers of the realm declared, in A.D. 1604, that he had forfeited the throne, which his uncle now ascended as Charles IX.—The Reformation had been already carried from Sweden into Finland.[374]
§ 139.2. Denmark and Norway.—Christian II., nephew of the Elector of Saxony and brother-in-law of the Emperor Charles V., although he had associated himself with the Romish hierarchy in Sweden for the overthrow of the national party, had in Denmark taken the side of the Reformation against the clergy, who were there supreme. In A.D. 1521 he succeeded in getting Carlstadt to come to his assistance, but he was soon forced to quit the country. In A.D. 1523 the clergy and nobles formally renounced their allegiance, and gave the crown to his uncle Frederick I., Duke of Schleswig and Holstein. Christian fled to Saxony, was there completely won over to the Reformation by Luther, converted also his wife, the emperor’s sister, and had the first Danish N.T., by Hans Michelson, printed at Leipzig and circulated in Denmark. To secure the emperor’s aid, however, he abjured the evangelical faith at Augsburg in A.D. 1530. In the following year he conquered Norway, and bound himself on his coronation to maintain the Catholic religion. But in A.D. 1532 he was obliged to surrender to Frederick, and spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in prison, where he repented his apostasy, and had the opportunity of instructing himself by the study of the Danish Bible.—Frederick I. had been previously favourable to the Reformation, yet his hands were bound by the express terms of his election. His son Christian III. unreservedly introduced the Reformation into his duchies. In this he was encouraged by his father. In A.D. 1526 he openly professed the evangelical faith, and invited the Danish reformer Hans Tausen, a disciple of Luther, who had preached the gospel amid much persecution since A.D. 1524, to settle as preacher in Copenhagen. At a diet at Odensee [Odense] in A.D. 1527 he restricted episcopal jurisdiction, proclaimed universal religious toleration, gave priests liberty to marry and to leave their cloisters, and thus laid the foundations of the Reformation. Tausen in A.D. 1530 submitted to the nobles his own confession, Confessio Hafinca, and the Reformation rapidly advanced. Frederick died in A.D. 1533. The bishops now rose in a body, and insisted that the estates should refuse to acknowledge his son Christian III. But when the burgomaster of Lübeck, taking advantage of the anarchy, plotted to subject Denmark to the proud commercial city, and in A.D. 1534 actually laid siege to Copenhagen, the Jutland nobles hastened to swear fealty to Christian. He drove out the Lübeckers, and by A.D. 1536 had possession of the whole land. He resolved now to put an end for ever to the machinations of the clergy. In August, A.D. 1536, he had all bishops imprisoned in one day, and at a diet at Copenhagen had them formally deposed. Their property fell into the royal exchequer, all monasteries were secularized, some presented to the nobles, some converted into hospitals and schools. In order to complete the organization of the church Bugenhagen was called in in A.D. 1537. He crowned the king and queen, sketched a directory of worship, which was adopted at the Diet of Odensee [Odense] in A.D. 1539, and returned to Wittenberg in A.D. 1542. In place of bishops Lutheran superintendents were appointed, to whom subsequently the title of bishop was given, and the Augsburg Confession accepted as the standard. The Reformation was contemporaneously introduced into Norway, which acknowledged the king in A.D. 1536. The Archbishop of Drontheim, Olaf Engelbrechtzen, fled with the church treasures to the Netherlands.Iceland stood out longer, but yielded in A.D. 1551, when the power of the rebel bishops was broken.[375]
§ 139.3. Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia.—Livonia had seceded from the dominion of the Teutonic knights in A.D. 1521, and under the grand-master Walter of Plattenburg assumed the position of an independent principality. In that same year a Lutheran archdeacon, Andr. Knöpken, expelled from Pomerania, came to Riga, and preached the gospel with moderation. Soon after Tegetmaier came from Rostock, and so vigorously denounced image worship that excited mobs entered the churches and tore down the images; yet he was protected by the council and the grand-master. The third reformer Briesmann was the immediate scholar of Luther. The able town clerk of Riga, Lohmüller, heartily wrought with them, and the Reformation spread through city and country. At Wolmar and Dorpat, in A.D. 1524, the work was carried on by Melchior Hoffmann, whose Lutheranism was seriously tinged with Anabaptist extravagances (§ [147, 1]). The diocese of Oesel adopted the reformed doctrines, and at the same time a Lutheran church was formed in Reval. After strong opposition had been offered, at last, in A.D. 1538, Riga accepted the evangelical confession, joined the Schmalcald League, and in a short time all Livonia and Esthonia accepted the Augsburg Confession. Political troubles, occasioned mainly by Russia, obliged the last grand-master, Kettler, in A.D. 1561 to surrender Livonia to Sigismund Augustus of Poland, but with the formal assurance that the rights of the evangelicals should be preserved. He himself retained Courland as an hereditary duchy under the suzerainty of Poland, and gave himself unweariedly to the evangelical organization of his country, powerfully assisted by Bülau, first superintendent of Courland.—The Lutheran church of Livonia had in consequence to pass through severe trials. Under Polish protection a Jesuit college was established in Riga in A.D. 1584. Two city churches had to be given over to the Catholics, and Possevin conducted an active Catholic propaganda, which was ended only when Livonia, in A.D. 1629, as also Esthonia somewhat earlier, came under the rule of Sweden. In consequence of the Norse war both countries were incorporated into the Russian empire, and by the Peace of Nystadt, of A.D. 1721, its Lutheran church retained all its privileges, on condition that it did not interfere in any way with the Greek Orthodox Church in the province. In A.D. 1795 Courland also came under Russian sway, and all these are now known as the Baltic Provinces.
§ 139.4. England.[376]—Henry VIII., A.D. 1509-1547, after the literary feud with Luther (§ [125, 3]), sought to justify his title, “Defender of the Faith,” by the use of sword and gibbet. Luther’s writings were eagerly read in England, where in many circles Wiclif’s movements were regarded with favour, and two noble Englishmen, John Fryth and William Tyndal, gave to their native land a translation of the N.T. in A.D. 1526.Fryth was rewarded with the stake in A.D. 1533, and Tyndal was beheaded in the Netherlands in A.D. 1535.[377] But meanwhile the king quarrelled with the pope. On assuming the government he had married Catharine of Arragon, daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, six years older than himself, the widow of his brother Arthur, who had died in his 16th year, for which he got a papal dispensation on the ground that the former marriage had not been consummated. His adulterous love for Anne Boleyn, the fair maid of honour to his queen, and Cranmer’s biblical opinion (Lev. xviii. 16; xx. 21) convinced him in A.D. 1527 of the sinfulness of his uncanonical marriage. Clement VII., at first not indisposed to grant his request for a divorce, refused after he had been reconciled to the emperor, Catharine’s nephew (§ [132, 2]). Thoroughly roused, the king now threw off the authority of the pope. Convocation was forced to recognise him in A.D. 1531 as head of the English Church, and in 1532 Parliament forbade the paying of annats to the pope. In the same year Henry married Anne, and had a formal divorce from Catharine granted by a spiritual court. Parliament in A.D. 1534 formally abolished papal jurisdiction in the land, and transferred all ecclesiastical rights and revenues to the king. The venerable Bishop Fisher of Rochester and the resolute chancellor, Sir Thomas More (§ [120, 7]), in A.D. 1535 paid the price of their opposition on the scaffold.Now came the long threatened ban. Under pretext of a highly necessary reform no less than 376 monasteries were closed during the years 1536-1538, their occupiers, monks and nuns, expelled, and their rich property confiscated.[378] Nevertheless in doctrine the king wished to remain a good Catholic, and for this end passed in the Parliament of A.D. 1539 the law of the Six Articles, which made any contradiction of the doctrines of transubstantiation, the withholding of the cup, celibacy of the clergy, the mass, and auricular confession, a capital offence. Persecution raged equally against Lutherans and Papists, sometimes more against the one, sometimes more against the other, according as he was moved by his own caprice, or the influence of his wives and favourites of the day. On the one side, at the head of the Papists, stood Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Bonner, Bishop of London; and on the other, Thomas Cranmer, whom the king had raised in A.D. 1533 to the see of Canterbury, in order to carry out his reforms in the ecclesiastical constitution. But Cranmer, who as the king’s agent in the divorce negotiations had often treated with foreign Protestant theologians, and at Nuremberg had secretly married Osiander’s niece, was in heart a zealous adherent of the Swiss Reformation, and furthered as far as he could with safety its introduction into England. Among other things, he secured the introduction in A.D. 1539, into all the churches of England, of an English translation of the Bible, revised by himself. He was supported in his efforts by the king’s second wife, Anne Boleyn; but she, having fallen under suspicion of unfaithfulness, was executed in A.D. 1536. The third wife, Jane Seymour, died in A.D. 1537 on the death of a son. The fourth, Anne of Cleves, was after six months, in A.D. 1540, cast aside, and the promoter of the marriage, the chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, was brought to the scaffold. The king now in the same year married Catharine Howard, with whom the Catholic party got to the helm again, and had the Act of the Six Articles rigorously enforced. But she, too, in A.D. 1543, was charged with repeated adulteries, and fell, together with her friends and those reputed as guilty with her, under the executioner’s axe.The sixth wife, Catharine Parr, who again favoured the Protestants, escaped a like fate by the death of the tyrant.[379]
§ 139.5. Edward VI., A.D. 1547-1553, son of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, succeeded his father in his tenth year. At the head of the regency stood his mother’s brother, the Duke of Somerset. Cranmer had now a free hand. Private masses and image worship were forbidden, the supper was administered in both kinds, marriage of priests was made legitimate, and a general church visitation appointed for the introduction of the Reformation. Gardiner and Bonner, who opposed these changes, were sent to the Tower. Somerset corresponded with Calvin, and invited at Cranmer’s request distinguished foreign theologians to help in the visitation of the churches.Martin Bucer and Paul Fagius from Strassburg came to Cambridge, and Peter Martyr to Oxford.[380] Bernardino Ochino was preacher to a congregation of Italian refugees in London. A commission under Cranmer’s presidency drew up for reading in the churches a collection of Homilies, for the instruction of the young a Catechism, and for the service a liturgy mediate between the Catholic and Protestant form, the so-called Book of Common Prayer of A.D. 1549; but from the second edition of which were left out chrism and exorcism, auricular confession, anointing the sick, and prayer for the dead. Then followed, in A.D. 1553, a confession of faith, consisting of forty-two articles, drawn up by Cranmer and Bishop Ridley of Rochester, which was distinctly of the reformed type, and set forward the ecclesiastical supremacy of the king as an article of faith. The young king, who supported the Reformation with all his heart, died in A.D. 1553, after nominating as his successor Jane Grey, the grand-daughter of a sister of his father. Not she, however, but a fanatical Catholic, Mary, A.D. 1553-1558, daughter of Henry VIII. and Catharine of Spain, actually ascended the throne. The compliant Parliament now abrogated all the ecclesiastical laws of Edward VI., which it had itself sanctioned, reverted to Henry’s law of the Six Articles, and entrusted Gardiner as chancellor with its execution. The Protestant leaders were thrown into the Tower, the bones of Bucer and Fagius were publicly burnt, married priests with wives and children were driven in thousands from the land.In the following year, A.D. 1554, Cardinal Reginald Pole, who had fled during Henry’s reign, returned as papal legate, absolved the repentant Parliament, and received all England back again into the fold of the Romish church.[381] The noble and innocent Lady Jane Grey, only in her sixteenth year, though she had voluntarily and cheerfully resigned the crown, was put to death with her husband and father.In the course of the next year, A.D. 1555, Bishops Ridley, Latimer, Ferrar, and Hooper with noble constancy endured death at the stake.[382] In prison, Cranmer had renounced his evangelical faith, but abundantly atoned for this weakness by the heroic firmness with which he retracted his retractation, and held the hand which had subscribed it in the flames, that it might be first consumed. He suffered in A.D. 1556.—The queen had married in A.D. 1554 Philip II. of Spain, eleven years her junior, and when in A.D. 1555 he returned to Spain, she fell into deep melancholy, and under its pressure her hatred of Protestantism was shown in the most bloody and cruel deeds. A heretic tribunal, after the fashion of the Spanish Inquisition, was created, which under the presidency of the “Bloody Bonner,” consigned to the flames crowds of confessors of the gospel, clergymen and laymen, men and women, old and young.After the persecution had raged for five years, “Bloody Mary” died of heart-break and dropsy.[383]
§ 139.6. Elizabeth, A.D. 1558-1603, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, though previously branded by the Parliament as a bastard, now ascended the throne unopposed as the last living member of the family of Henry VIII. Educated under the supervision of Cranmer in the Protestant faith of her mother, she had been obliged during the reign of her sister outwardly to conform to the Romish church. She proceeded with great prudence and moderation; but when Paul IV. pronounced her illegitimate, and the Scottish princess Mary Stuart, grand-daughter of Henry’s sister, assumed the title of queen of England, Elizabeth more heartily espoused the cause of Protestantism. In A.D. 1559 the Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity, which reasserted the royal supremacy over the national church, prescribed a revision of the Book of Common Prayer, which set aside the prayer for deliverance from the “detestable enormities” of the papacy, etc., and practically reproduced the earlier, less perfect of the Prayer Books of Edward VI., while every perversion to papacy was threatened with confiscation of goods, imprisonment, banishment, and in cases of repetition with death, as an act of treason. At the head of the clergy was Matthew Parker, consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury by some bishops exiled under Mary. He had formerly been chaplain to Anne Boleyn. Under his direction Cranmer’s forty-two articles were reduced to thirty-nine, giving a type of doctrine midway between Lutheranism and Calvinism; these were confirmed by convocation in A.D. 1562, and were adopted as a fundamental statute of England by Act of Parliament in A.D. 1571.This brings to a close the first stage in the history of the English Reformation,—the setting up by law of the Anglican State Church with episcopal constitution, with apostolical succession, under royal supremacy, as the Established Church.[384] (For the Puritan opposition to it see § [143, 3].) The somewhat indulgent manner in which the Act of Uniformity was at first enforced against the Catholics encouraged them more and more in attempts to secure a restoration. Even in A.D. 1568 William Allen founded at Douay a seminary to train Catholic Englishmen for a mission at home, and Gregory XIII. some years later, for a similar purpose, founded in Rome the “English College.” His predecessor, Pius V., had in A.D. 1570 deposed and issued the ban against the queen, and threatened all with the greater excommunication who should yield her obedience. Parliament now punished every withdrawal from the State church as high treason.Day and night houses were searched, and suspected persons inquisitorially examined by torture, and if found guilty they were not infrequently put to death as traitors.[385]—Continuation, §§ 153, 6; 154, 3.