Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/547

1550.] in these days was to order a man to be hanged for sheep-stealing, notwithstanding the alteration of the law, because hanging was the ancient traditionary treatment to which sheep-stealers were liable. Ridley reasoned with Joan the day before her execution: 'it was not long ago,' she said, 'since you burnt Anne Askew for a piece of bread, yet came yourselves to believe the doctrine for which you burnt her; and now you will burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end you will believe this also.' She would not recant, and so she died, being one of the very few victims of the ancient hatred of heresy with which the Reformed Church of England has to charge itself. Yet, although Protestants were instinctively more susceptible of the altered feelings which the progress of time and of the world brings with it—although earlier than Catholics they awoke to a wiser judgment of the nature of theological errors—the doctrine of persecution is nevertheless an essential part of all dogmatic systems, and the causes which first compelled the Reformed Churches to toleration, have acted more slowly, but with equal