John Calvin was not more tolerant, as the burning of Michael Servetus over a slow fire made of green wood, and his pamphlet justifying the burning of heretics, amply prove. Henry VIII. of England put to death Catholics and Lollards, beheaded Cardinal Fisher and Sir Thomas More, because they refused to take the oath of the royal supremacy, except with the qualification, "as far as the law of Christ permits." In Sweden, the peasants were entrapped into the support of the Reformation by the infamous Gustavus Vasa, under pretence of recovering and reëstablishing the national independence; and after the prince had regained by their aid his throne and been crowned king, were massacred by thousands because they wished still to adhere to the Catholic Church, and resisted its abolition. In Geneva, Protestantism gained a footing in much the same way. Protestants came from Berne and other places to assist the citizens in a political rebellion against their prince, who was also their bishop, and afterward drove out the Catholics who could not be forced to accept the Reformation. We need not pursue the history of the establishment of Protestantism, which is written in blood. Suffice it to say, that in no country was the Reformation introduced but by the aid of the civil power, and in no state in which it gained the mastery did it fail to be established as the religion of the state, and to obtain the suppression by force or civil pains and penalties of the old religion, and of all forms even of Protestant dissent. The state religion was bound hand and foot, and could move only by permission of the temporal sovereign, and no other religion was tolerated. We all know the penal laws against Catholics in England, Ireland, and Scotland, reënacted with additional severity under William and Mary, almost in the eighteenth century. James II., it is equally well known, lost the crown of his three kingdoms by an edict of toleration, which, as it tolerated Catholics, was denounced as an act of outrageous tyranny. The penal laws against Catholics were adopted by the Episcopalian colony of Virginia, and the Puritan colony of Massachusetts made it an offence punishable with banishment from the colony for a citizen to harbor a Catholic priest for a single night, or to give him a single meal of victuals. It was only in 1788 that the Presbyterian Assembly of the United States expunged from their confession of faith the article which declares it the duty of the civil magistrate to extirpate heretics and idolaters--an article still retained by their brethren in Scotland, and by the United Presbyterians in this country.