* Burnet, vol. ii, p 104.

These severities, being exercised on men possessed of office and
authority, seemed in that age a necessary policy, in order to enforce
a uniformity in public worship and discipline; but there were other
instances of persecution, derived from no origin but the bigotry
of theologians; a malady which seems almost incurable. Though the
Protestant divines had ventured to renounce opinions deemed certain
during many ages, they regarded, in their turn, the new system as so
certain, that they would suffer no contradiction with regard to it; and
they were ready to burn in the same flames from which they themselves
had so narrowly escaped, every one that had the assurance to differ from
them. A commission, by act of council, was granted to the primate and
some others, to examine and search after all Anabaptists, heretics, or
contemners of the Book of Common Prayer.[*]

* Burnet, vol. ii. p. 3. Rymer, tom. xv. p. 181.

The commissioners were enjoined to reclaim them, if possible; to impose
penance on them, and to give them absolution; or, if these criminals
were obstinate, to excommunicate and imprison them, and to deliver them
over to the secular arm: and in the execution of this charge, they were
not bound to observe the ordinary methods of trial; the forms of law
were dispensed with; and if any statutes happened to interfere with
the powers in the commission, they were overruled and abrogated by
the council. Some tradesmen in London were brought before these
commissioners, and were accused of maintaining, among other opinions,
that a man regenerate could not sin, and that, though the outward man
might offend, the inward was incapable of all guilt. They were prevailed
on to abjure, and were dismissed. But there was a woman accused of
heretical pravity, called Joan Bocher, or Joan of Kent, who was so
pertinacious, that the commissioners could make no impression upon her
Her doctrine was, "that Christ was not truly incarnate of the Virgin,
whose flesh, being the outward man, was sinfully begotten, and born in
sin, and, consequently, he could take none of it; but the Word, by
the consent of the inward man of the Virgin, was made flesh."[*] This
opinion, it would seem, is not orthodox; and there was a necessity for
delivering the woman to the flames for maintaining it. But the
young king, though in such tender years, had more sense than all his
counsellors and preceptors; and he long refused to sign