In doing this he was led to investigate the grounds of the lawfulness of war in general.
It laid down the lawfulness and necessity of persecution to the death for heresy in the most absolute terms; and Cranmer himself condemned Joan Bocher to the flames.
But, after a royal order had been issued for their sale, Queen Isabella, interested by what she had heard of the gentle and hospitable character of the natives and of their docility, procured a letter to be written to Bishop Fonseca, the superintendent of Indian affairs, suspending the order until inquiry should be made into the causes for which they had been made prisoners, and into the lawfulness of their sale.
It was, however, no doubt at his wish that his chaplain wrote the Life of Julian the Apostate, in reply to Dr Hickes's sermons, in which the lawfulness of resistance in extreme cases was defended.
These parliament enacted into the terrible statute of " The Six Articles," in which a felon's death was prescribed for those who obstinately denied transubstantiation, demanded the communion under both kinds, questioned the binding character of vows of chastity, or the lawfulness of private Masses or the expediency of auricular confession.