opinion: therefore they condemn Master Cranmer and Master Ridley
for burning Joan of Kent."

We shall have occasion to refer to some of these doctrines again later
on. It may be well, however, to mention here that the views that no
Christian ought to be a magistrate; that magistrates should not meddle
with religion; that no man ought to be compelled to faith, or put to
death for his religion; that war is unlawful to Christians; that their
speech should be yea or nay, without any oath: seem to have been
accepted by Anabaptists generally, as they were by the primitive
Christian communists of the fourteenth century.[18:2]

To return to our immediate subject. To the development of religious and
political thought in England, as to the inevitable struggle due to the
inherent antagonism of Catholic and Protestant ideals and aspirations,
we can refer only very briefly. The former can perhaps best be traced in
the writings of three eminent theological writers, Jewel, Hooker, and
Chillingworth. Though in 1567 we hear of the first instance of actual
punishment of Protestant Dissenters, still during the earlier portion of
the reign of Elizabeth, to the year 1571, there seems to have been a
gradual growth of national sentiment toward a simpler form of worship,
resulting in a modification of those rites and usages disliked by
Protestants of all shades and sects, and against the established policy
of forcible suppression of religious differences. In 1571, a Bill having
been introduced imposing a penalty for not receiving the communion, it
was objected to in the House of Commons on the grounds that "consciences
ought not to be forced." The same Parliament "refused to bind the clergy
to subscription to three articles on the Supremacy, the form of Church
Government, and the power of the Church to ordain rites and ceremonies,
and favoured the project of reforming the Liturgy by the omission of