Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/548

528 effect, upon their rival. The Court of Rome could as little venture at the present day to send an unbeliever to the stake, as the Court of St James's; and the code of canon law for which the Reformers of the Church of England desired the sanction of Parliament, was no more tolerant of what the Church of England considers heresy, than the code of the Inquisition.

The council could prosecute heretics. They were earnest, too, in the purification of the faith from superstition. The conscientious acceptance of the Prayer-book was possible as yet to believers in transubstantiation. The Prayer-book, with the help of the foreign refugees, was about to be revised, and Ridley was no sooner settled in the See of London, than he undertook