Nor are instances wanting of their endeavors to secure an imagined orthodoxy by the most rigorous executions: Calvin has burned Servetus at Geneva; Cranmer brought Arians and Anabaptists to the stake; and if persecution of any kind be admitted, the most bloody and violent will surely be allowed the most justifiable, as the most effectual.
Imprisonments, fines, confiscations, whippings, serve only to irritate the sects, without disabling them from resistance: but the stake, the wheel, and the gibbet, must soon terminate in the extirpation or banishment of all the heretics inclined to give disturbance, and in the entire silence and submission of the rest.
The arguments of Gardiner, being more agreeable to the cruel bigotry of Mary and Philip, were better received; and though Pole pleaded, as is affirmed,[*] the advice of the emperor, who recommended it to his daughter-in-law not to exercise violence against the Protestants, and desired her to consider his own example, who, after endeavoring through his whole life to extirpate heresy, had in the end reaped nothing but confusion and disappointment, the scheme of toleration was entirely rejected.

It was determined to let loose the laws in their full vigor against the reformed religion; and England was soon filled with scenes of horror, which have ever since rendered the Catholic religion the object of general detestation and which prove, that no human depravity can equal revenge and cruelty covered with the mantle of religion.
* Burnet, vol.ii.Heylin, p.47.It is not likely, however, that Charles gave any such advice; for he himself was, at this very time, proceeding with great violence in persecuting the reformed in Flanders.

Bentivoglio, part i, lib.

i.
The persecutors began with Rogers, prebendary of St.Paul's, a man eminent in his party for virtue as well as for learning.

Gardiner's plan was first to attack men of that character, whom, he hoped, terror would bend to submission, and whose example, either of punishment or recantation, would naturally have influence on the multitude: but he found a perseverance and courage in Rogers, which it may seem strange to find in human nature, and of which all ages and all sects do nevertheless furnish many examples.