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Though these arguments appear entirely satisfactory, yet such is the subtlety of human wit, that Gardiner and the other enemies to toleration were not reduced to silence; and they still found topics on which to maintain the controversy. The doctrine, said they, of liberty of conscience, is founded on the most flagrant impiety, and supposes such an indifference among all religions, such an obscurity in theological doctrines, as to render the church and magistrate incapable of distinguishing with certainty the dictates of Heaven from the mere fictions of human imagination. If the Divinity reveals principles to mankind, he will surely give a criterion by which they may be ascertained; and a prince who knowingly allows these principles to be perverted or adulterated, is infinitely more criminal than if he gave permission for the vending of poison, under the shape of food, to all his subjects. Persecution may, indeed, seem better calculated to make hypocrites than converts; but experience teaches us, that the habits of hypocrisy often turn into reality; and the children, at least, ignorant of the dissimulation of their parents, may happily be educated in more orthodox tenets. It is absurd, in opposition to considerations of such unspeakable importance, to plead the temporal and frivolous interests of civil society; and if matters be thoroughly examined, even that topic will not appear so universally certain in favor of toleration as by some it is represented. Where sects arise whose fundamental principle on all sides is to execrate, and abhor, and damn, and extirpate each other, what choice has the magistrate left but to take part, and by rendering one sect entirely prevalent, restore, at least for a time, the public tranquillity? The political body, being here sickly, must not be treated as if it were in a state of sound health; and an affected neutrality in the prince, or even a cool preference, may serve only to encourage the hopes of all the sects, and keep alive their animosity. The Protestants, far from tolerating the religion of their ancestors, regard it as an impious and detestable idolatry; and during the late minority, when they were entirely masters, they enacted very severe, though not capital, punishments against all exercise of the Catholic worship, and even against such as barely abstained from their profane rites and sacraments. Nor are instances wanting of their endeavors to secure an imagined orthodoxy by the most rigorous executions: Calvin has burned Servetus at Geneva; Cranmer brought Arians and Anabaptists to the stake; and if persecution of any kind be admitted, the most bloody and violent will surely be allowed the most justifiable, as the most effectual. Imprisonments, fines, confiscations, whippings, serve only to irritate the sects, without disabling them from resistance: but the stake, the wheel, and the gibbet, must soon terminate in the extirpation or banishment of all the heretics inclined to give disturbance, and in the entire silence and submission of the rest.

The arguments of Gardiner, being more agreeable to the cruel bigotry of Mary and Philip, were better received; and though Pole pleaded, as is affirmed,[*] the advice of the emperor, who recommended it to his daughter-in-law not to exercise violence against the Protestants, and desired her to consider his own example, who, after endeavoring through his whole life to extirpate heresy, had in the end reaped nothing but confusion and disappointment, the scheme of toleration was entirely rejected. It was determined to let loose the laws in their full vigor against the reformed religion; and England was soon filled with scenes of horror, which have ever since rendered the Catholic religion the object of general detestation and which prove, that no human depravity can equal revenge and cruelty covered with the mantle of religion.

* Burnet, vol. ii. Heylin, p. 47. It is not likely, however,
that Charles gave any such advice; for he himself was, at
this very time, proceeding with great violence in
persecuting the reformed in Flanders. Bentivoglio, part i,
lib. i.

The persecutors began with Rogers, prebendary of St. Paul’s, a man eminent in his party for virtue as well as for learning. Gardiner’s plan was first to attack men of that character, whom, he hoped, terror would bend to submission, and whose example, either of punishment or recantation, would naturally have influence on the multitude: but he found a perseverance and courage in Rogers, which it may seem strange to find in human nature, and of which all ages and all sects do nevertheless furnish many examples. Rogers, beside the care of his own preservation, lay under other powerful temptations to compliance: he had a wife whom he tenderly loved, and ten children; yet such was his serenity after his condemnation, that the jailers, it is said, waked him from a sound sleep when the hour of his execution approached. He had desired to see his wife before he died; but Gardiner told him that he was a priest, and could not possibly have a wife; thus joining insult to cruelty. Rogers was burned in Smithfield.[*]

Hooper, bishop of Glocester, had been tried at the same time with Rogers; but was sent to his own diocese to be executed. This circumstance was contrived to strike the greater terror into his flock; but it was a source of consolation to Hooper, who rejoiced in giving testimony, by his death, to that doctrine which he had formerly preached among them. When he was tied to the stake, a stool was set before him, and the queen’s pardon laid upon it, which it was still in his power to merit by a recantation; but he ordered it to be removed, and cheerfully prepared himself for that dreadful punishment to which he was sentenced. He suffered it in its full severity: the wind, which was violent, blew the flame of the reeds from his body: the fagots were green, and did not kindle easily: all his lower parts were consumed before his vitals were attacked: one of his hands dropped off: with the other he continued to beat his breast: he was heard to pray, and to exhort the people; till his tongue, swollen with the violence of his agony, could no longer permit him utterance. He was three quarters of an hour in torture, which he bore with inflexible constancy.[**]

* Fox, vol. iii. p. 119. Burnet, vol. ii. p. 302.

** Fox, vol. iii. p. 145, etc. Burnet, vol. ii p. 302,
Heylin, p. 48, 49. Godwin, p. 349.

Sanders was burned at Coventry: a pardon was also offered him; but he rejected it, and embraced the stake, saying, “Welcome the cross of Christ; welcome everlasting life.” Taylor, parson of Hadley, was punished by fire in that place, surrounded by his ancient friends and parishioners. When tied to the stake, he rehearsed a psalm in English: one of his guards struck him on the mouth, and bade him speak Latin: another, in a rage, gave him a blow on the head with his halbert, which happily put an end to his torments.

There was one Philpot, archdeacon of Winchester, inflamed with such zeal for orthodoxy, that having been engaged in dispute with an Arian, he spit in his adversary’s face, to show the great detestation which he had entertained against that heresy. He afterwards wrote a treatise to justify this unmannerly expression of zeal: he said, that he was led to it in order to relieve the sorrow conceived from such horrid blasphemy, and to signify how unworthy such a miscreant was of being admitted into the society of any Christian.[*] Philpot was a Protestant; and falling now into the hands of people as zealous as himself, but more powerful, he was condemned to the flames, and suffered at Smithfield. It seems to be almost a general rule, that in all religions, except the true, no man will suffer martyrdom who would not also inflict it willingly on all that differ from him. The same zeal for speculative opinions is the cause of both.