; hard to reconcile with
the law of gentleness which Jesus preached to the world. But the
theologians quoted Christ's words: "Do not think that I am come to
destroy the law; I am not come to destroy but to fulfill,"[1] and
other texts of the Gospels to prove the perfect agreement between the
Old and the New Law in the matter of penalties. They even went so far
as to assert that St. John[2] spoke of the penalty of fire to be
inflicted upon heretics.

[1] Matt. v. 17.

[2] John xv. 6.

This strange method of exegesis was not peculiar to the founders and
the defenders of the tribunals of the Inquisition. England, which
knew nothing of the Inquisition, save for the trial of the Templars,
was just as cruel to heretics as Gregory IX or Frederic II.

"The statute of May 25, 1382, directs the king to issue to his
sheriffs commissions to arrest Wyclif's traveling preachers, and
aiders and abettors of heresy, and hold them till they justify
themselves _selon reson et la ley de seinte esglise_. After the
burning of Sawtre by a royal warrant confirmed by Parliament in 1400,
the statute '_de haereticis comburendis_' for the first time inflicted
in England the death penalty as a settled punishment for heresy....
It forbade the dissemination of heretical opinions and books,
empowered the bishops to seize all offenders and hold them in prison
until they should purge themselves or abjure, and ordered the bishops
to proceed against them within three months after arrest. For minor
offences, the bishops were empowered to imprison during pleasure and
fine at discretion, the fine inuring to the royal exchequer. For
obstinate heresy or relapse, involving under the canon law
abandonment to the secular arm, the bishops and their commissioners
were the sole judges, and on their delivery of such convicts, the
sheriff of the county, or the mayor and bailiffs of the nearest town,
were obliged to burn them before the people on an eminence. Henry V
followed this up, and the statute of 1414 established throughout the
kingdom a sort of mixed secular and ecclesiastical Inquisition for
which the English system of grand inquests gave special facilities.
Under this legislation, burning for heresy became a not unfamiliar
sight for English eyes, and Lollardy was readily suppressed. In 1533,
Henry VIII repealed the statute of 1400, while retaining those of
1382 and 1414, and also the penalty of burning alive for contumacious
heresy and relapse, and the