Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed, 1770, vol IV).djvu/60

48, communion in one kind, the celibacy of the clergy, monatic vows, the acrifice of the mas, and auricular confeion; which points were “determined and reolved by the mot godly tudy, pain, and travail of his majety: for which his mot humble and obedient ubjects, the lords piritual and temporal and the commons, in parliament aembled, did not only render and give unto his highnes their mot high and hearty thanks,” but did alo enact and declare all oppugners of the firt to be heretics, and to be burnt with fire; and of the five lat to be felons, and to uffer death. The ame tatute etablihed a new and mixed juridiction of clergy and laity for the trial and conviction of heretics; the reigning prince being then equally intent on detroying the upremacy of the bihops of Rome, and etablihing all other their corruptions of the chritian religion.

not perplex this detail with the various repeals and revivals of thee anguinary laws in the two ucceeding reigns; but hall proceed directly to the reign of queen Elizabeth; when the reformation was finally etablihed with temper and decency, unullied with party rancour, or peronal caprice and reentment. By tatute 1 Eliz. c. 1. all former tatutes relating to herey are repealed, which leaves the juridiction of herey as it tood at common law; viz. as to the infliction of common cenures, in the eccleiatical courts; and, in cae of burning the heretic, in the provincial ynod only. Sir Matthew Hale is indeed of a different opinion, and holds that uch power reided in the diocean alo; though he agrees, that in either cae the writ de haeretico comburendo was not demandable of common right, but grantable or otherwie merely at the king's dicretion. But the principal point now gained, was, that by this tatute a boundary is for the firt time et to what hall be accounted herey; nothing for the future being to be o determined, but only uch tenets, which have been heretofore o declared, 1. By the words of the canonical criptures; 2. By the firt four general councils, or uch others Rh