at any such in which the adherents of the above-mentioned heretics
teach, baptize, and form conspiracies against the Holy Church and the
general welfare..... Moreover, we forbid," continues the edict, in name
of the sovereign, "all lay persons to converse or dispute concerning the
Holy Scriptures, openly or secretly, especially on any doubtful or
difficult matters, or to read, teach, or expound the Scriptures, unless
they have duly studied theology and been approved by some renowned
university..... or to preach secretly, or openly, or to entertain any of
the opinions of the above-mentioned heretics..... on pain, should anyone
be found to have contravened any of the points above-mentioned, as
perturbators of our state and of the general quiet, to be punished in the
following manner." And how were they to be punished? What was the
penalty inflicted upon the man or woman who owned a hymn-book, or who
hazarded the opinion in private, that Luther was not quite wrong in
doubting the power of a monk to sell for money the license to commit
murder or incest; or upon the parent, not being a Roman Catholic doctor
of divinity, who should read Christ's Sermon on the Mount to his children
in his own parlor or shop? How were crimes like these to be visited upon
the transgressor? Was it by reprimand, fine, imprisonment, banishment,
or by branding on the forehead, by the cropping of the ears or the
slitting of nostrils, as was practised upon the Puritan fathers of New
England for their nonconformity? It was by a sharper chastisement than
any of these methods. The Puritan fathers of the Dutch Republic had to
struggle against a darker doom. The edict went on to provide--

"That such perturbators of the general quiet are to be executed, to wit:
the men with the sword and the women to be buried alive, if they do not
persist in their errors; if they do persist in them, then they are to be
executed with fire; all their property in both cases being confiscated to
the crown."