Literary Censorship

To ward off the publication of heresies by means of civil or ecclesiastical censorship has proven ineffective and unsuccessful. The Roman Catholic Church put forth a very vigorous effort to accomplish this especially at the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. They considered the writings of the Reformers to be heretical and, therefore, forbade their publication. They threatened the authors of these works with excommunication and martyred and persecuted those who in any way helped...