“As touching heretics, I hate that vice of theirs, and not their persons, and very fain would I that the one were destroyed and the other saved. And that I have toward no man any other mind than this—how loudly soever these blessed new brethren and professors and preachers of heresy belie me—if all the favour and pity that I have used among them to their amendment were known, it would, I warrant you well and plain appear; whereof, if it were requisite, I could bring forth witnesses more than men would ween. Howbeit, because it were neither right nor honesty, that any man should look for more than he deserveth, I will that all the world wit it on the other side, that whoso be so deeply grounded in malice, to the harm of his own soul, and other men’s too, and so set upon the sowing of seditious heresies, that no good means that men may use unto him can pull that malicious folly out of his poisoned, proud, obstinate heart, I would rather be content that he were gone in time, than overlong to tarry to the destruction of other.”[529] Mary’s Parliament of 1554, which abolished her title of Supreme Head of the Church of England, threw out the bill for reviving the Act of 1401 against heresy, chiefly on Paget’s motion, but it was brought in again in the following January, and in four days it had passed through both Houses without opposition. It was felt that a breakwater had become imperatively necessary to stop the inflowing tide of sedition. Ross, a reformed preacher, prayed openly, that God would “either convert the heart of the Queen, or take her out of this world”. It was then made treason to pray in public for the Queen’s death. But those who had been already committed for this offence might recover their liberty, by making humble protestation and promise of amendment. While the Council were debating on the manner in which the revived Act should be enforced, the Queen sent them a message, written in her own hand, in which, after expressing her wishes with regard to several points of ecclesiastical discipline, she said:— “Touching punishment of heretics, me thinketh it ought to be done without rashness, not leaving in the meanwhile to do justice to such as by learning would seem to deceive the simple: and the rest so to be used, that the people might well perceive them not to be condemned without just occasion, whereby they shall both understand the truth, and beware to do the like: and especially within London, I would wish none to be burnt without some of the Council’s presence, and both there and everywhere good sermons at the same”.[530]