Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/185

Rh in its clergy, two-thirds of the people had become dissenters at the commencement of the present revolution. The laws, indeed, were still oppressive on them, but the spirit of the one party had subsided into moderation, and of the other had risen to a degree of determination which commanded respect.

The present state of our laws on the subject of religion is this. The convention of May, 1776, in their declaration of rights, declared it to be a truth, and a natural right, that the exercise of religion should be free; but when they proceeded to form on that declaration the ordinance of government, instead of taking up every principle declared in the Bill of Rights, and guarding it by legislative sanction, they passed over that which asserted our religious rights, leaving them as they found them. The same convention, however, when they met as a member of the General Assembly in October, 1776, repealed all acts of Parliament which had rendered criminal the maintaining any opinions in matters of religion, the forbearing to repair to church, and the exercising any mode of worship; and suspended the laws giving salaries to the clergy, which suspension was made perpetual in October, 1779. Statutory oppressions in religion being thus wiped away, we remain at present under those only imposed by the common law, or by our own acts of assembly. At the common law, heresy was a capital offence, punishable by burning. Its definition was left to the ecclesiastical judges, before whom the conviction was, till the statute of the 1 El., c. 1, circumscribed it, by declaring that nothing should be deemed heresy, but what had been so determined by authority of the canonical Scriptures, or by one of the four first general councils, or by some other council having for the grounds of their declaration the express and plain words of the Scriptures. Heresy, thus circumscribed, being an offence at the common law, our act of assembly of October, 1777, c. 17, gives cognizance of it to the General Court, by declaring that the jurisdiction of that court shall be general in all matters at the common law. The execution is by the writ De hæretico comburendo. By