The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (252 page)

fierce and violent, far from being an argument of men’s

conviction in their opposite sects, is a certain proof, that they have never reached any serious persuasion with regard to these remote and sublime subjects. Even those, who PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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are the most impatient of contradiction in other controversies, are mild and moderate in comparison of polemical divines; and wherever a man’s knowledge and experience give him a perfect assurance in his own opinion, he regards with contempt, rather than anger, the opposition and mistakes of others. But while men zealously maintain what they neither clearly comprehend, nor entirely believe, they are shaken in their imagined faith, by the opposite persuasion, or even doubts of other men; and vent on their antagonists that impatience, which is the natural result of so disagreeable a state of the understanding. They then easily embrace any pretence for representing opponents as impious and profane; and if they can also find a colour for connecting this violence with the interests of civil government, they can no longer be restrained from giving uncontrouled scope to vengeance and resentment. But surely never enterprize was more unfortunate than that of founding persecution upon policy, or endeavouring, for the sake of peace, to settle an entire uniformity of opinion, in questions which, of all others, are least subjected to the criterion of human reason.

The universal and uncontradicted prevalence of one opinion in religious subjects, can be owing at first to the stupid ignorance alone and barbarism of the people, who never indulge themselves in any speculation or enquiry; and there is no expedient for maintaining that uniformity, so fondly sought after, but by banishing for ever all curiosity and all improvement in science and cultivation. It may not, indeed, appear difficult to check, by a steady severity, the first beginnings of controversy; but besides that this policy exposes for ever the people to all the abject terrors of superstition, and the magistrate to the endless encroachments of ecclesiastics, it also renders men so delicate, that they can never endure to hear of opposition; and they will some time pay dearly for that false tranquillity, in which they have been so long indulged. As healthful bodies are ruined by too nice a regimen, and are thereby rendered incapable of bearing the unavoidable incidents of human life; a people, who never were allowed to imagine, that their principles could be contested, fly out into the most outrageous violence, when any event (and such events are common) produces a faction among their clergy, and gives rise to any difference in tenet or opinion. But whatever may be said in favour of suppressing, by persecution, the first beginnings of heresy, no solid argument can be alleged for extending severity towards multitudes, or endeavouring, by capital punishments, to extirpate an opinion, which has diffused itself among men of every rank and station. Besides the extreme barbarity of such an attempt, it commonly proves ineffectual to the purpose intended; and serves only to make men more obstinate in their persuasion, and to encrease the number of their proselytes. The melancholy, with which the fear of death, torture, and persecution inspires the sectaries, is the proper disposition for fostering religious zeal: The prospect of eternal rewards, when brought near, overpowers the dread of temporal punishments: The glory of martyrdom stimulates all the more furious zealots, especially the leaders and preachers: Where a violent animosity is excited by oppression, men naturally pass, from hating the persons of their tyrants, to a more violent abhorrence of their doctrines: And the spectators, moved with pity towards the supposed martyrs, are easily seduced to embrace those principles, which can inspire men with a constancy that appears almost supernatural. Open the door to toleration, mutual hatred relaxes among the sectaries; their attachment to their particular modes of religion decays; the common occupations and pleasures of life succeed to the acrimony of disputation; and the same man, who, in other circumstances, would have braved flames and tortures, is induced to change his sect from the smallest prospect of favour and advancement, or PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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even from the frivolous hope of becoming more fashionable in his principles. If any exception can be admitted to this maxim of toleration, it will only be where a theology altogether new, nowise connected with the ancient religion of the state, is imported from foreign countries, and may easily, at one blow, be eradicated, without leaving the seeds of future innovation. But as this exception would imply some apology for the ancient pagan persecutions, or for the extirpation of Christianity in China and Japan; it ought surely, on account of this detested consequence, to be rather buried in eternal silence and oblivion.

Though these arguments appear entirely satisfactory, yet such is the subtilty of human wit, that Gardiner, and the other enemies to toleration, were not reduced to silence; and they still found topics on which to maintain the controversy. The doctrine, said they, of liberty of conscience, is founded on the most flagrant impiety, and supposes such an indifference among all religions, such an obscurity in theological doctrines, as to render the church and magistrate incapable of distinguishing, with certainty, the dictates of Heaven from the mere fictions of human imagination. If the Divinity reveals principles to mankind, he will surely give a criterion by which they may be ascertained; and a prince, who knowingly allows these principles to be perverted or adulterated, is infinitely more criminal than if he gave permission for the vending of poison, under the shape of food, to all his subjects. Persecution may, indeed, seem better calculated to make hypocrites than converts; but experience teaches us, that the habits of hypocrisy often turn into reality; and the children at least, ignorant of the dissimulation of their parents, may happily be educated in more orthodox tenets. It is absurd, in opposition to considerations of such unspeakable importance, to plead the temporal and frivolous interests of civil society; and if matters be thoroughly examined, even that topic will not appear so universally certain in favour of toleration as by some it is represented. Where sects arise, whose fundamental principle on all sides is to execrate, and abhor, and damn, and extirpate each other; what choice has the magistrate left but to take part, and by rendering one sect entirely prevalent, restore, at least for a time, the public tranquillity? The political body, being here sickly, must not be treated as if it were in a state of sound health; and an affected neutrality in the prince, or even a cool preference, may serve only to encourage the hopes of all the sects, and keep alive their animosity. The protestants, far from tolerating the religion of their ancestors, regard it as an impious and detestable idolatry; and during the late minority, when they were entirely masters, they enacted very severe, though not capital, punishments against all exercise of the catholic worship, and even against such as barely abstained from their profane rites and sacraments. Nor are instances wanting of their endeavours to secure an imagined orthodoxy by the most rigorous executions: Calvin has burned Servetus at Geneva: Cranmer brought Arians and Anabaptists to the stake: And if persecution of any kind be admitted, the most bloody and violent will surely be allowed the most justifiable, as the most effectual. Imprisonments, fines, confiscations, whippings, serve only to irritate the sects, without disabling them from resistance: But the stake, the wheel, and the gibbet, must soon terminate in the extirpation or banishment of all the heretics, inclined to give disturbance, and in the entire silence and submission of the rest.

The arguments of Gardiner, being more agreeable to the cruel bigotry of Mary and Philip, were better received; and though Pole pleaded, as is affirmed,
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the advice of PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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the emperor, who recommended it to his daughter-in-law, not to exercise violence against the protestants, and desired her to consider his own example, who, after endeavouring, through his whole life, to extirpate heresy, had, in the end, reaped nothing but confusion and disappointment, the scheme of toleration was entirely rejected. It was determined to let loose the laws in their full vigour against the reformed religion; and England was soon filled with scenes of horror, which have ever since rendered the catholic religion the object of general detestation, and which prove, that no human depravity can equal revenge and cruelty, covered with the mantle of religion.

The persecutors began with Rogers, prebendary of St. Paul’s, a Violent persecutions

man eminent in his party for virtue as well as for learning.

in England.

Gardiner’s plan was first to attack men of that character, whom, he hoped, terror would bend to submission, and whose example, either of punishment or recantation, would naturally have influence on the multitude: But he found a perseverance and courage in Rogers, which it may seem strange to find in human nature, and of which all ages, and all sects, do nevertheless furnish many examples.

Rogers, beside the care of his own preservation, lay under other powerful temptations to compliance: He had a wife, whom he tenderly loved, and ten children; yet such was his serenity after his condemnation, that the jailors, it is said, waked him from a sound sleep, when the hour of his execution approached. He had desired to see his wife before he died; but Gardiner told him, that he was a priest; and could not possibly have a wife; thus joining insult to cruelty. Rogers was burnt in Smithfield.
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Hooper, bishop of Glocester, had been tried at the same time with Rogers; but was sent to his own diocese to be executed. This circumstance was contrived to strike the greater terror into his flock; but it was a source of consolation to Hooper, who rejoiced in giving testimony, by his death, to that doctrine, which he had formerly preached among them. When he was tied to the stake, a stool was set before him, and the queen’s pardon laid upon it, which it was still in his power to merit by a recantation: But he ordered it to be removed; and cheerfully prepared himself for that dreadful punishment, to which he was sentenced. He suffered it in its full severity: The wind, which was violent, blew the flame of the reeds from his body: The faggots were green, and did not kindle easily: All his lower parts were consumed, before his vitals were attacked: One of his hands dropped off: With the other he continued to beat his breast: He was heard to pray and to exhort the people; till his tongue, swollen with the violence of his agony, could no longer permit him utterance. He was three quarters of an hour in torture, which he bore with inflexible constancy.
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Sanders was burned at Coventry: A pardon was also offered him; but he rejected it, and embraced the stake, saying, “Welcome the cross of Christ; welcome everlasting life.” Taylor, parson of Hadley, was punished by fire in that place, surrounded by his ancient friends and parishioners. When tied to the stake, he rehearsed a psalm in English: One of his guards struck him on the mouth, and bade him speak Latin: Another, in a rage, gave him a blow on the head with his halbert, which happily put an end to his torments.

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There was one Philpot, archdeacon of Winchester, enflamed with such zeal for orthodoxy, that having been engaged in dispute with an Arian, he spit in his adversary’s face, to shew the great detestation, which he had entertained against that heresy. He afterwards wrote a treatise to justify this unmannerly expression of zeal: He said, that he was led to it, in order to relieve the sorrow conceived from such horrid blasphemy, and to signify how unworthy such a miscreant was of being

admitted into the society of any Christian.p
Philpot was a protestant; and falling now into the hands of people as zealous as himself, but more powerful, he was condemned to the flames, and suffered at Smithfield. It seems to be almost a general rule, that, in all religions except the true, no man will suffer martyrdom, who would not also inflict it willingly on all that differ from him. The same zeal for speculative opinions is the cause of both.

The crime, for which almost all the protestants were condemned, was, their refusal to acknowledge the real presence. Gardiner, who had vainly expected, that a few examples would strike a terror into the reformers, finding the work daily multiply upon him, devolved the invidious office on others, chiefly on Bonner, a man of profligate manners, and of a brutal character, who seemed to rejoice in the torments of

the unhappy sufferers.q
He sometimes whipped the prisoners with his own hands, till he was tired with the violence of the exercise: He tore out the beard of a weaver, who refused to relinquish his religion; and that he might give him a specimen of burning, he held his hand to the candle, till the sinews and veins shrunk and burst.
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It is needless to be particular in enumerating all the cruelties practised in England during the course of three years that these persecutions lasted: The savage barbarity on the one hand, and the patient constancy on the other, are so similar in all those martyrdoms, that the narrative, little agreeable in itself, would never be relieved by any variety. Human nature appears not, on any occasion, so detestable, and at the same time so absurd, as in these religious persecutions, which sink men below infernal spirits in wickedness, and below the beasts in folly. A few instances only may be worth preserving, in order, if possible, to warn zealous bigots, for ever to avoid such odious and such fruitless barbarity.

Ferrar, bishop of St. David’s, was burned in his own diocese; and his appeal to cardinal Pole was not attended to.
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Ridley, bishop of London, and Latimer, formerly bishop of Worcester, two prelates celebrated for learning and virtue, perished together in the same flames at Oxford, and supported each other’s constancy by their mutual exhortations. Latimer, when tied to the stake, called to his companion, “Be of good cheer, brother; we shall this day kindle such a torch in England, as, I trust in God, shall never be extinguished.” The executioners had been so merciful (for that clemency may more naturally be ascribed to them than to the religious zealots) as to tie bags of gunpowder about these prelates, in order to put a speedy period to their tortures: The explosion immediately killed Latimer, who was in extreme old age: Ridley continued alive during some time in the midst of the flames.
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