§ 138. CATHOLIC INTOLERANCE. 695
well the stranger, as the home-born, when he blasphemeth the name of Jehovah, shall l)e put to death." ^
The Mosaic theocracy was superseded in its national and temporal provisions by the kingdom of Christ, which is " not of this world." The confounding of the Old and New Testaments, of the law of Moses and the gospel of Christ, was the source of a great many evils in the Church.
The New Testament furnishes not a shadow of support for the doctrine of persecution. The whole teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles are directly opposed to it. They suffered persecution, but they persecuted no one. Their weapons were spiritual, not carnal. They rendered to God the things that are God's, and to Ceesar the things that are Caesar's. The only passage which St. Augustin could quote in favor of coercion, was the parabolic "Constrain them to come in " (Luke 14 : 23), which in its literal acceptation would teach just the reverse, namely, a forced salvation. St. Thomas Aquinas does not quote any passage from the New Testament in favor of intolerance, but tries to explain away those passages which commend toleration (Matt. 13:29, 30; 1 Cor. 11:19; 2 Tim. 2:24). The Church has never entirely forgotten this teaching of Christ and always, even in the darkest ages of persecution, avowed the principle, '■'■ Ecclesia non sitit sanguinem'" ; but she made the State her executor.
In the first three centuries the Church had neither the power nor the wish to persecute. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Lactantius were the earliest advocates of the liberty of conscience. The Toleration Edict of Constantine (313) anticipated the modern theory of the right of every man to choose his religion and to worship according to his conviction. But this was only a step towards the union of the empire with the Church, when the Church assumed the position and power of the heathen state religion.
1 Lev. 24 : 16 ; comp. 1 Kings 21 : 10, 13.
696 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
The era of persecution within the Church began with the first Oecumenical Council, which was called and enforced by Constantine. This Council presents the first instance of a subscription to a creed, and the first instance of banishment for refusing to subscribe. Arius and two Egyptian bishops, who agreed with him, Avere banished to Illyria. During the violent Arian controversies, which shook the empire between the first and second (Ecumenical Councils (325-381), both parties when in power freely exercised persecution by imprisonment, deposition, and exile. The Arians were as intolerant as the orthodox. The practice furnished the basis for a theory and public law.
The penal legislation' against heresy was inaugurated by Theodosius the Great after the final triumph of the Nicene Creed in the second Qiicumenical Council. He promulgated during his reign (379-395) no less than fifteen severe edicts against heretics, especially those who dissented from the doctrine of the Trinity. They were deprived of the right of public worship, excluded from public offices, and exposed, in some cases, to capital punishment.^ His rival and colleague, Maximus, put the theory into full practice, and shed the first blood of heretics by causing Priscillian, a Spanish bishop of Manichsean tendency, with six adherents, to be tortured, condemned, and executed by the sword.
The better feeling of the Church raised in Ambrose of Milan and Martin of Tours a protest against this act of inhumanity. But public sentiment soon approved of it. Jerome seems to favor the death penalty for heresy on the ground of Deut. 13 : 6-10. The great Augustin, who had
1 See the Theodosian and Justinian Codes under the titles : De summa Trinitate, De Catholica Fide, De Hcereticis, De Apostatis. For a summary compare Gibbon, ch. XXVII. (vol. III. 197 sqq.), and Milman, Latin Christianity, bk. III. ch. V. (I. 512 sqq.). Gibbon says: "Theodosius considered every heretic as a rebel against the supreme powers of lieaven and of earth ; and each of these powers might exercise their peculiar jurisdiction over the soul and body of the guilty."