in Law, an offence against Christianity, consisting in a denial of some of its essential doctrines, publicly and obstinately avowed; being defined, sententia rerum divinarum humano sensu exegitata, palam dolta et pertinaciter defende. And here it must be acknowledged that particular modes of belief, or unbelief, not tending to overturn Christianity itself, or to sap the foundations of morality, are by no means the object of coercion by the civil magistrate. What doctrines shall therefore be adjudged heresy, was left by our old constitution to the determination of the ecclesiastical judge; who had herein a most arbitrary latitude allowed him. For the general definition of an heretic given by Lyndewode, extends to the smallest deviations from the doctrines of the holy church: hereticus est qui, dubitat de fide catholica, et qui neglit servare ea, quae Romana ecclesia statuit, seu servare decreverat. Or, as the statute 2 Hen. IV. c. 15. expresses it in English, "teachers of erroneous opinions contrary to the faith and blessed determinations of the holy church." Very contrary this to the usage of the first general councils, which defined all heretical doctrines with the utmost precision and exactness. And what ought to have alleviated the punishment, the uncertainty of the crime, seems to have enhanced it in those days of blind zeal and pious cruelty. It is true, that the fanatical hypocrisy of the canons went at first no farther than enjoining penance, excommunication, and ecclesiastical deprivation, for hereby; though afterwards they proceeded boldly to imprisonment by the ordinary, and confiscation of goods in pios usus. But in the mean time they had prevailed upon the weaknels of bigotted princes to make the civil power subservient to their purposes, by making hereby not only a temporal, but even a capital, offence: the Roman ecclesiastics determining, without appeal, whatever they pleased to be hereby, and shifting off to the secular arm the odium and drudgery of executions; with which they themselves were too tender and delicate to intermeddle. Nay, they pretended to intercede and pray, on behalf of the convicted heretic, ut circa mortis periculum sententia circa eum moderetur: well knowing that at the same time they were delivering the unhappy victim to certain death. Hence the capital punishments inflicted on the ancient Donatists and Manicheans by the emperors Theodosius and Justinian: hence also the constitution of the emperor Frederic mentioned by Lyndewode, adjudging all persons without distinction to be burnt with fire who were convicted of hereby by the ecclesiastical judge. The same emperor, in another constitution, ordained, that if any temporal lord, when admonished by the church, should neglect to clear his territories of heretics within a year, it should be lawful for good Catholics to seize and occupy the lands, and utterly to exterminate the heretical possessors. And upon this foundation was built that arbitrary power, so long claimed and so fatally exerted by the pope, of disposing even of the kingdoms of refractory princes to more dutiful sons of the church. The immediate event of this constitution was something singular, and may serve to illustrate at once the gratitude of the holy see, and the just punishment of the royal bigot; for, upon the authority of this very constitution, the pope afterwards expelled this very emperor Frederic from his kingdom of Sicily, and gave it to Charles of Anjou.

Christianity being thus deformed by the daemon of persecution upon the continent, we cannot expect that our own island should be entirely free from the same scourge. And therefore we find among our ancient precedents a writ de heretico comburendo, which is thought by some to be as ancient as the common law itself. However, it appears from thence, that the conviction of hereby by the common law was not in any petty ecclesiastical court, but before the archbishop himself in a provincial synod; and that the delinquent was delivered over to the king to do as he should please with him; so that the crown had a controul over the spiritual power, and might pardon the convict by issuing no procel against him; the writ de heretico comburendo being not a writ of course, but issuing only by the special direction of the king in council.

But in the reign of Henry IV. when the eyes of the Christian world began to open, and the seeds of the Protestant religion (though under the opprobrious name of lollardy) took root in this kingdom; the clergy, taking advantage from the king's dubious title to demand an increase of their own power, obtained an act of parliament, which sharpened the edge of persecution to its utmost keenness. For, by that statute, the diocesan alone, without the intervention of a synod, might convict of heretical tenets; and unless the convict abjured his opinions, or if after abjuration he relapsed, the sheriff was bound ex officio, if required by the bishop, to commit the unhappy victim to the flames, without waiting for the consent of the crown. By the statute 2 Hen. V. c. 7. lollardy was also made a temporal offence, and indictable in the king's courts; which did not thereby gain an exclusive, but only a concurrent, jurisdiction with the bishop's consistory.

Afterwards, when the final reformation of religion began to advance, the power of the ecclesiastics was somewhat moderated; for though what hereby it, was not then precisely defined, yet we are told in some points what it is not: the statute 25 Hen. VIII. c. 14. declaring, that offences against the see of Rome are not hereby; and the ordinary being thereby restrained from proceeding in any case upon mere suspicion; that is, unless the party be accused by two credible witnesses, or an indictment of hereby be first previously found in the king's courts of common law. And yet the spirit of persecution was not yet abated, but only diverted into a lay channel. For in fix years afterwards, by statute 31 Hen. VIII. c. 14. the bloody law of the fix articles was made, which established the fix most contested points of popery, transubstantiation, communion in one kind, the celibacy of the clergy, monastic vows, the sacrifice of the mass, and auricular confession; which points were "determined and resolved by the most godly study, pain, and travail of his majesty: for which his most humble and obedient subjects, the lords