he canon of truth.
But heresy, though the definition of it was changing, remained a crime;
and although the limits of permitted belief were imperceptibly
enlarging, to transgress the recognised boundaries was an offence
enormous as ever.

[Sidenote: Popular estimate of the Anabaptists.]

If we can conceive the temper with which the reasonable and practical
English at present regard the Socialists of the continent, deepened by
an intensity of conviction of which these later ages have had but little
experience, we can then imagine the light in which the Anabaptists of
the Netherlands appeared in the eyes or orthodox Europe. If some
opinions, once thought heretical, were regarded with less agitated
repugnance, the heresy of these enemies of mankind was patent to the
world. On them the laws of the country might take their natural course,
and no voice was raised to speak for them.

[Sidenote: May 25.]

[Sidenote: Fourteen of them are executed.]

[Sidenote: They too did not die in vain.]

We find, therefore, in Stow's _Chronicle_, the following: brief entry:
"The five and twentieth day of May were, in St. Paul's church, London,
examined nineteen men and six women, born in Holland, whose opinions
were--first, that in Christ is not two natures, God and man; secondly,
that Christ took neither flesh nor blood of the Virgin Mary; thirdly,
that children born of infidels may be saved; fourthly, that baptism of
children is of none effect; fifthly, that the sacrament of Christ's body
is but bread only; sixthly, that he who after baptism sinneth wittingly,
sinneth deadly, and cannot be saved. Fourteen of them were condemned: a
man and a woman were burnt at Smithfield. The remaining twelve were
scattered among other towns, there to be burnt."[440] The details are
gone,[441]--the names are gone. Poor Hollanders they were, and that is
all. Scarcely the fact seemed worth the mention, so shortly it is told
in a passing paragraph. For them no Europe was agitated, no courts were
ordered into mourning, no papal hearts trembled with indignation. At
their deaths the world looked on complacent, indifferent, or exulting.
Yet here, too, out of twenty-five common men and women were found
fourteen who, by no terror of stake or torture, could be tempted to say
that they believed what they did not believe. History for them has no
word of praise; yet they, too, were not giving their blood in vain.
Their lives might have been as useless as the liv