Hello well this act surely silenced the people burned at the stake including their actions for all to see. The Catholic Church believed to the ultimate instrument of God and did not like competition of a new religion. That is just an ancient example of how they used the law of the land as their tool of controlling people for all to see and learn not to be the same. It silenced opposition so that people were in fear for their lives if they "rebelled" against authority, in which people loved to do.
As time went by the Church saw the results and they also tried to keep people from having their own personal copy of the Bible, they did not want the people to read the Bible themselves. The past was the way for the future, it seems now that the reason why the church did not want the people to read the Bible for themselves is because people judged them if they were not in agreement with the information in the Bible. All in all, this religious battle that people had against the Catholic church dissolved and today we are allowed to choose our own way of worship.
Today in our modern world we can reason well enough, and we can also reason spiritually. How could the soul be saved spiritually if it was already judged, 2 Thessalonians 1:8-10? How could the afterlife be viewed if the dead have no understanding or consciousness, Psalms 146:4? How could burning at the stake be any different than being punished for the type of religion you wanted, Matthew 24:9-14? A few leading questions may help to modernize a habit of the old country that had a few thousand habitants but has grown today into billions of people.
