This was the old Roman way, and I thought it not amiss to cautionate those, enjoying truth and authority, that if it be possible, they may not walk in their steps and method. The course accounted so sovereign for the extirpation of error was, as you see, first invented for the extirpation of truth.
2. I desire it may be observed, that the general issue and tendance of unlimited, arbitrary persecution, or punishing
^ Epiphan. torn. '2. lib. 1. Haer. '26.
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for conscience sake (because in all ages, di irXdoveg kuko), and the worst of men have set at the upper end of the world, for the most part more false worshippers having hitherto enjoyed authority over others, than followers of the Lamb), hath been pernicious, fatal, and dreadful to the profession and professors of the gospel, little, or not at all serviceable to the truth.
I have heard it averred by a reverend and learned per- sonage, that more blood of heretics hath been shed by- wholesome severity, in the maintenance of the truth, and opposition unto errors, than hath been shed of the witnesses of Jesus, by the sword of persecution, in the hands of he- retics and false worshippers. An assertion, I conceive, under favour, so exceedingly distant from the reality of the thing itself, that I dare take upon me, against any man breathing, that in sundry Christian provinces, almost in every one of the west, more lives have been sacrificed to the one idol Hsereticidium, of those that bear witness to the truth, in the belief for which they suffered, than all the heretics properly so called, that ever were slain in all the provinces of the world, by men professing the gospel. And I shall give that worthy divine, or any other of his persuasion, his option among all the chiefest provinces of Europe, to tie me up unto which they please. He that shall consider that above sixty thousand persons were in six years, or little more, cut off in a judicial way, by duke D'Alva in the Netherlands, in pursuit of the sentence of the inquisition, will conclude that there is ' causa facilis' in my hand.
The ancient contest between the Homoousians and the Arians, the first controversy the churches were agitated withal, after they enjoyed a Christian magistrate (and may justly be supposed to be carried on to the advantage of error, beyond all that went before it, because of the civil magistrates interesting themselves in the quarrel), was not carried out to violence and blood, before the several per- suasions lighted on several dominions and state interests : as between the Goths, Vandals, and the rest of their com- panions on one side, who were Arians ; and the Romans on the other. In all whose bickerings, notwithstanding the honour of severity did still attend the Arians, especially in Africk, where they persecuted the Catholics uith horrible
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outrage and fury : five thousand at one time were barba- rously exposed to all manner of cruel villany. Some erup- tions of passion had been before among emperors themselves, but still with this difference, that they who arianized carried the bell for zeal against dissenters. Witness Valens, who gave place in persecution to none of his pagan predecessors, killing, burning, slaying, making havoc of all orthodox pro- fessors. Yea, perhaps, that which he did, at least was done by the countenance of his authority, at Alexandria, upon the placing in of Lucius an Arian in the room of Athanasius, thrusting Peter besides the chair, who was rightly placed according to the custom of those times ; perhaps, I say, the tumults, rapes, murders, then and there acted, did outgo what before had been done by the Pagans : see Theodoret, Eccles. Hist. lib. 4. cap. 22. It were tedious to pursue the lying, slandering, invectives, banishments, deaths, tumults, murders, which attend this council all along, after once they began to invoke the help of the emperors one against an- other. Yet in this space some magistrates, weary with per- secuting ways, did not only abstain practically from force and violence, as most of the orthodox emperors did, but also enacted laws, for the freedom of such as dissented from them, Jovianus, a pious man, grants all peace, that will be peace- able ; offended only with them, who would offer violence to others. Socrates Eccles. Hist. lib. 4. cap. 21. Gratianus makes a law, whereby he granted liberty to all sects, but Manichees, Photinians, and Eunomians. Sozom. Eccles. Hist. lib. 7. cap, 1. -Many more the like examples might be produced.
The next difference about the worshijj of God, to the Arian and its branches, that was controverted in letters of blood, was about images, and their worship ; in which, though some furious princes, in opposition to that growing idolatry, which by popes, bishops, priests, and especially monks, was in those days, violently urged, did mingle some of their blood with their sacrifices ; yet not to the tithe al- most of what the Iconolatrae getting uppermost returned upon them and their adherents.
This, if occasion were, might be easily demonstrated from Paulus Diaconus, and others. After this, about the year 850, about which time the Iconolatrae having ensnared the
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west by polity (the posterity of Charles the Great, who had stoutly opposed the worship of images, complying with the popes, the fathers of that worship, for their own ends), and wearied the east by cruelty, that contest growing towards an end, the whole power of punishing for religion became subservient to the dictates of the pope, the kings of the earth giving their power to the beast (unto which point things had been working all along) ; from thence, I say, until the death of Servetus in Geneva, the pursuit of Gentilis, Blandrata, and some other madmen in Helvetia, for the space well nigh of seven hundred years, the chiefest season of the reign of Satan and antichrist, all punishing for religion was managed by the authority of Rome, and against the poor witnesses of Jesus, prophesying in sackcloth in the several regions of the west. And what streams of blood were poured out, what millions of martyrs slain in that space, is known to all. Hence Bellarmine boasteth that the Albigenses were extin- guished by the sword. De Laic. cap. 22. It is true there were laws enacted of old by Theodosius, Valentinian, Mar- tian, as C. De. haereticis, 1. Manichseis, 1. Arriani. 1. Unicui- que, which last provideth for the death of seducers ; but yet truly, though they were made by Catholics, and in the favour of Catholics, considering to what end they were used, I can look upon them no otherwise, but as very bottom stones of the tower of Babel.