the northern counties, who would have admitted, in theory, the
deposing power of the Pope, but who would not have been ambitious
to be stretched on the rack, even though it were to be used,
according to the benevolent proviso of Lord Burleigh, "as
charitably as such a thing can be," or to be hanged, drawn, and
quartered, even though, by that rare indulgence which the Queen,
of her special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion,
sometimes extended to very mitigated cases, he were allowed a
fair time to choke before the hangman began to grabble in his
entrails.

But the laws passed against the Puritans had not even the
wretched excuse which we have been considering. In this case, the
cruelty was equal, the danger, infinitely less. In fact, the
danger was created solely by the cruelty. But it is superfluous
to press the argument. By no artifice of ingenuity can the stigma
of persecution, the worst blemish of the English Church, be
effaced or patched over. Her doctrines, we well know, do not tend
to intolerance. She admits the possibility of salvation out of
her own pale. But this circumstance, in itself honourable to her,
aggravates the sin and the shame of those who persecuted in her
name. Dominic and De Montfort did not, at least, murder and
torture for differences of opinion which they considered as
trifling. It was to stop an infection which, as they believed,
hurried to certain perdition every soul which it seized, that
they employed their fire and steel. The measures of the English
government with respect to the Papists and Puritans sprang from a
widely different principle. If those who deny that the founders
of the Church were guilty of religious persecution mean only that
the founders of the Church were not influenced by any religious