ody Six
Articles." Concerning these the People's Cyclopaedia says: "The doctrines
were substantially those of the Roman Catholic Church. Whoever denied
the first articles (that embodying the doctrine of transubstantiation)
was to be declared a heretic, and burnt without opportunity of
abjuration; whoso spoke against the other five articles should, for the
first offense, forfeit his property; and whosoever refused to abjure his
first offense, or committed a second, was to die like a felon." Art.
Henry VIII. "The royal reformer persecuted alike Catholics and
Protestants. Thus, on one occasion, three Catholics who denied that the
king was the rightful head of the church, and three Protestants who
disputed the doctrine of the real presence in the sacrament,... were
dragged on the same sled to the place of execution." In speaking of that
period of history and of the religious persecutions of the times, Myers
says: "Punishment of heresy was then regarded, by both Catholics and
Protestants alike, as a duty which could be neglected by those in
authority only at the peril of Heaven's displeasure. Believing this,
those of that age could consistently do nothing less than labor to
exterminate heresy with axe, sword and fagot." General History, p. 553.

That religious intolerance even at a later date was practised in
England, witness the twelve years' imprisonment of John Bunyan and the
hundreds confined in jails throughout that country for not conforming to
the established religion. It was such severe persecution by that early
Protestant sect that drove the Puritans from England's fair country to
the then inhospitable shores of America, that they might have an
opportunity to worship God according to the dictates of their own
conscience. In Scotland the Covenanters "insisted on their right to
worship God in their own way. They were therefore subjected to most
cruel and unrelenting persecution. They were hunted by English troopers
over their native moors and among the wild recesses of their mountains,
whither they secretly retired for prayer and worship. The tales of the
suffering of the Scotch Covenanters at the hands of the English
Protestants form a most harrowing chapter of the records of the ages of
religious persecution." This list might be considerably augmented, but
it is unnecessary. However, that Protestant persecution and tyranny
should never reach the enormous extent of the Romanists before them is
proved by the fact that