ABSTRACT
Blasphemy has been held to be the greatest of sins, and in the period when sin and crime were hardly distinguished, it was thought to be the greatest of crimes. In England during the years from 1400 to 1612, death by fire was the penalty for the worst cases of blasphemy. The accommodation of what was thought to be blasphemous was the furthest stretch of religious toleration. When England made its first experiments with religious toleration in the Commonwealth period, the trial of Naylor (1656), who had been worshipped as 'the lamb of God', was its severest test, and the fact that he escaped with his life (though little else) its greatest triumph. 1 In the 1977 Gay News blasphemy case, to some it seemed incredible that in this day and age a person could be in danger of a jail sentence for offending against religious sensitivities, but for others the question at issue was 'Is nothing sacred?'
