The way in which religion was purposely confused with political grievances, real or supposed, was the cause of more than half the difficulty. The Council were still for prosecuting the criminals for heresy, the Emperor for ever maintained that they should be tried for treason.
The Venetian ambassador notifies a slight insurrection in Essex, whereupon Bonner received an order from the Privy Council to send “certain discreet and learned preachers to reduce the people who hath been of late seduced by sundry lewd persons named ministers there”.[515] The state of affairs is thus seen to have entered into a vicious circle. The lawlessness of the sectaries prompted severe reprisals, and the punishments inflicted did but aggravate the evil instead of suppressing it. “I have never,” said Renard, “seen the people so disturbed and discontented as now.” For six months, he had not ceased urging that Elizabeth, who was, he considered, the cause of all the troubles, should be sent abroad.
The opinion was at that time general, that capital punishment might be inflicted in religious matters. Catholics and Reformers were alike agreed on this subject, differing only as to their definition of heresy. Catholics regarded it as a revolt from the teaching of a divinely appointed Church; each individual Reformer submitted it to the test of his own private judgment. Calvin burned Servetus for his opinions on the Blessed Trinity, an act that was not only attended with as many aggravating circumstances as any death for heresy that had ever been suffered, but which was almost unanimously applauded by the Protestants of that time, Melancthon, Bullinger and Farel all writing to express their approval of it. Those who objected were called by Beza, “emissaries of Satan”. Luther, in his reply to Philip of Hesse, distinctly asserted the right of civil magistrates to punish heresy with death, a right that was maintained by the Helvetic, Belgic, Scottish and Saxon confessions. Calvin, Beza and Jurieu all wrote books to prove the lawfulness of persecution for false doctrine, each having independent views of what was the true.[516] Knox in his famous Appellation says: “None provoking the people to idolatry ought to be exempted from the punishment of death ... it is not only lawful to punish to the death such as labour to subvert the true religion, but the magistrates and people are bound to do so, unless they will provoke the wrath of God against themselves ... and therefore, my Lords, to return to you, seeing that God hath armed your hands with the sword of justice, seeing that His law most straightly commandeth idolaters and false prophets to be punished with death, and that you be placed above your subjects, to reign as fathers over children, and further, seeing that not only I, but with me many thousand famous, godly and learned persons accuse your bishops, and the whole rabble of the Papistical clergy, of idolatry, of murder and of blasphemy against God committed, it appertaineth to your honours to be vigilant and careful in so weighty a matter. The question is not of earthly substance, but of the glory of God and of the salvation of yourselves.”[517]
In Edward’s reign, Cranmer not only pronounced sentence on Joan Bocher, for holding that Christ was not incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but informed the King, in delivering her over to the civil power, that she was to be “deservedly punished,” which meant that she was to be burned.[518] He also pronounced sentence on van Parris, and gave the same recommendation, and handed over several Anabaptists to be burned at Smithfield. In his new code of ecclesiastical discipline, Cranmer classed belief in Transubstantiation, in Papal supremacy, and in the denial of justification by faith alone, as heresy. But Edward died before this code had obtained the sanction of Parliament.[519]
Both in England and Scotland, the Reformation signalised itself by a law, making it penal for any priest to say Mass, for any worshipper to hear it, under pain of death for the one, of confiscation of his goods, heavy fines, exile, and finally death for the other. “One Mass,” exclaimed Knox, “is more fearful to me than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in any part of the realm!” In 1572, the two Houses of Convocation implored Elizabeth to put Mary Queen of Scots to death, giving as one reason, that she had endeavoured to seduce God’s people to idolatry, and that according to the Old Testament, all who did so should be put to death.[520] “There was an express order that no pity should be shown them.” But not only did the Reformers adopt the principle, that heresy, such as each understood it to be, was punishable by death, the newly established Protestant Governments also claimed the right to define heresy, as well as to punish it. Mr. Lecky states no more than bare facts, when he says that, “In Scotland during nearly the whole period that the Stuarts were on the throne of England, a persecution, rivalling in atrocity almost any on record, was directed by the English Government, at the instigation of the Scotch bishops, and with the approval of the English Church, against all who repudiated episcopacy. If a conventicle was held in a house, the preacher was liable to be put to death. If it was held in the open air, both minister and people incurred the same fate. The Presbyterians were hunted like criminals over the mountains. Their ears were torn from the roots. They were branded with hot irons. Their fingers were wrenched asunder by the thumbkins. The bones of their legs were shattered in the boots. Women were scourged publicly through the streets. Multitudes were transported to Barbadoes, infuriated soldiers were let loose upon them and encouraged to exercise all their ingenuity in torturing them.”[521]
It is thus clear, that if the sixteenth century, and the ages preceding it were not acquainted with our modern ideas of religious toleration, neither indeed were the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. As late as 1679, an Irish Franciscan was executed for his priesthood at Ruthin, being hanged, cut down while yet alive, drawn and quartered;[522] and in 1729 died in Hurst Castle another Franciscan, Father Paul Atkinson, who had been apprehended and condemned to perpetual imprisonment for the same crime.[523]
On the Catholic side, two authorities may be quoted in favour of the punishment of heresy as a crime; and the standpoint from which it was so regarded may be briefly stated thus. Before the Reformation, the Catholic Church was universally recognised as the sole depositary of revealed truth. To the mediæval mind, he who was convicted of spreading doctrine contrary to the teaching of this divine institution was worse than a fratricide, since by poisoning the wells of truth, he murdered not his brother’s perishable body, but his immortal soul, and was, therefore, deserving of death. It is difficult for us, whose minds are necessarily imbued with modern ideas, to realise the mode of thought concerning novelties of doctrine which agitated all the countries of Europe in the middle ages, and which still agitated them when so much that was purely mediæval had passed away. Nor can we estimate to the full the depth of those profound convictions, on the subject of revealed religion, which called forth the ecclesiastical and civil enactments, framed to prevent any tampering with dogma. We have in our days no practical experience of a system universally admitted and recognised to be the sole depositary of revealed truth, such as the Catholic Church was acknowledged to be, before the rise and growth of Protestantism. Accustomed to the presence of religious speculation, doubt, and unbelief around us, or at least to the existence of varying creeds, we are familiar with the notion that every man may weigh and consider the credibility of each doctrine proposed to him, and that he is at liberty to accept or reject it, to halve or to double it, according to the promptings of his own individual judgment. Religious truth has come to be considered so much a personal affair, that Roman Catholics are perhaps alone in looking upon it as a divine deposit, a purely objective matter, independent of what this or that man may think, and to be accepted undoubtingly by the faithful. And this was precisely the state of the pre-Reformation mind. But the opinion is sometimes expressed in our own day, that were the Catholic Church again powerful, as in the middle ages, we should see a recurrence of persecution as determined as any that marked with horror the former annals of our country. The notion is as absurd as it would be to imagine that if the Puritans were again masters, they would bring back the thumbkin, the boots, the rack and the sword, in order to enforce the uselessness of good works. No organised persecution could ever be possible where the general trend of ideas was not in its favour. Our thicker-skinned ancestors had far less sympathy with bodily suffering, and a much lower appreciation of the value of human life than ourselves. In an age when coiners and forgers were punished with death, it would have seemed incongruous that apostates and heretics should fare more softly.[524] The Reformers, who rejected nearly every tenet held by the universal Church, were almost all agreed to retain the punishment by which those tenets had been vindicated. St. Thomas Aquinas says:—
“The crime of heresy must be considered first in itself and then in its connexion with the Church. If we consider the crime in itself, heretics deserve not only to be cut off from the Church by excommunication, but to be cut off from the world by death. They are more guilty than those who coin false money, for it is more grave to corrupt the faith which is the life of the soul, than to falsify coins, by which that of the body is supported; and thus they are justly put to death like other malefactors. Considered in connexion with the Church, it is clear that she, ever merciful and desirous of obtaining the conversion of those who are in error, does not at once condemn the heretic, but exhorts him to repentance, according to the teaching of the apostle. It is only when he shows himself obstinate, and if she despairs of his salvation, that she cuts him off from herself, and abandons him to the secular arm that he may be put to death.”[525]
The fourth Lateran Council decreed, that no beneficed clerk, or any clerk in holy orders, might take any part, even the most mechanical and subordinate, in the judicial doing to death of a criminal.[526] Heresy was, however, looked upon as an ecclesiastical as well as a civil offence, the delinquent first committing a grave crime against God, by denying and attacking the truths which He had revealed, so that by his example he led other men astray. Secondly, by so doing he raised tumults, and endangered the peace of the commonwealth. He was, therefore, tried in the ecclesiastical courts, and if found guilty and obdurate, was handed over to the State for punishment. “Cognisance of heresies, errors and Lollardies appertaineth to the judge of holy Church.”[527]