My view has since been borne out by two high authorities.

Lord Coleridge says that "this law of blasphemous libel first appears in our books--at least the cases relating to it are first reported--shortly after the curtailment or abolition of the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts in matters temporal.

Speaking broadly, before the time of Charles II.

these things would have been dealt with as heresy; and the libellers so-called of more recent days would have suffered as heretics in earlier times." [Reference: _The Law of Blasphemous Libel_.

The Summing-up in the case of Regina v.