our old friend Heresy in
disguise, and that, we know, is a priestly manufacture. 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. Foote and others. Revised with a Preface by the Lord Chief
Justice of England. London, Stevens and Sons.] Sir James Stephen also,
after referring to the writ _De Heretico Comburendo_, under which heresy
and blasphemy were punishable by burning alive, and which was abolished
in 1677, without abridging the jurisdiction of Ecclesiastical Courts
"in cases of atheism, blasphemy, heresie, or schism, and other damnable
doctrines and opinions," adds that "In this state of things, the Court
of Queen's Bench took upon itself some of the functions of the old
Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, and treated as misdemeanours
at common law many things which those courts had formerly punished...
This was the origin of the modern law as to blasphemy and blasphemous
libel." [Reference: _Blasphemy and Blasphemous Libel_. By Sir James
Stephen. _Fortnightly Review_, March, 1884.]

Less than ten years after the "glorious revolution" of 1688 there was
passed a statute, known as the 9 and 10 William III., c. 32, and
called "An Act for the more effectual suppressing of Blasphemy and
Profaneness." This enacts that "any person or persons having been
educated in, or at any time having made profession of, the Christian
religion within this realm who shall, by writing, printing, teaching, or
advised speaking, deny any one of the persons in the Holy Trinity to be
God, or shall assert or maintain there are more gods than one, or shall
deny the Christian doctrine to be true, or the Holy Scriptures of the
Old and New Testament to be of divine authority," shall upon conviction
be disabled from holding any ecclesiastical, civil, or military
employment, and on a second conviction be imprisoned for three years and
deprived for ever of all civil rights.

Lord Coleridge and Sir James Steph