MORE ON THE GOOD OLD DAYS

I felt I had to post this tidbit about a heretic of the Middle Ages:

Amaury de Chartres (died ca.1204-1207)
Amaury, also known as Amaury de Bene, was a French theologian at the University of Paris who, according to James Thrower, taught that "God is identical with all that is, even evil . . . There is no other life, and man's fulfillment, therefore, must be in this life alone."

Amaury was a teacher of logic who wrote Physion, which was condemned by a bull of Pope Innocent III (1204). Amaury is said to have taught a kind of pantheism and held that the reign of the Father and Son must give place to that of the Holy Spirit. He maintained that the sacraments were useless and that there is no other heaven than the satisfaction of doing right, nor is there any other hell than ignorance and sin. Ten of his disciples were burned in Paris in 1210, and his own bones were exhumed and thrown into the flames.

A few hundred years later, religious dissent was still being suppressed. In England for example, Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was severe towards all who did not agree with the Church of England:

The court of high commission was another jurisdiction still more terrible ; both because the crime of heresy, of which it took cognizance, was more undefinable than any civil offence, and because its methods of inquisition and of administering oaths were more contrary to all the most simple ideas of justice and equity. The fines and imprisonments imposed by this court were frequent : the deprivations and suspensions of the clergy for nonconformity were also numerous, and comprehended at one time the third of all the ecclesiastics of England.SOURCE: David Hume, The History of England, p. 139