Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 173
church from the suicide of heretics, but he had no idea
whatever of maintaining that the church had the right
to put to death her rebellious children. 1
St. Thomas
misses the point entirely, and gives his readers a false idea
of the teaching of St. Augustine.
Thinking, however, that he has satisfactorily answered
all the objections against his thesis, he states it as fol
lows: "Heretics who persist in their error after a second
admonition ought not only to be excommunicated, but
also abandoned to the secular arm to be put to death.
For, he argues, it is much more wicked to corrupt the
faith on which depends the life of the soul, than to de
base the coinage which provides merely for temporal life ;
wherefore, if coiners and other malefactors are justly
doomed to death, much more may heretics be justly
slain once they are convicted. If, therefore, they per
sist in their error after two admonitions, the Church
despairs of their conversion, and excommunicates them
to ensure the salvation of others whom they might cor-
1 "Illi autem . . . quod sibi faciunt, nobis imputant. Quis enim nostrum
velit non solum aliquera illorum perire, verumetiam aliquid perdere ? Sed si
aliter non meruit pacem habere domus David, nisi Absalon films ejus in
bello quod contra patrem gerebat, fuisset extinctus, quamvis magna cura
mandaverit suis, ut eum quantum possent vivum salvumque servarent, ut
esset cui poenitenti paternus affectus ignosceret, quid ei restitit, nisi perditum
flere et sui regni pace acquisita suam maestitiam consolari ? Sic ergo catholica
mater Ecclesia, bellantibus adversus earn quibus allis quam filiis suis . . . ,
si aliquorum perditione caeteros tarn multos colligit, prassertim quia isti, non
sicut Absalon casu bellico, sed spontaneo magis interitu pereunt, dolorem
materni cordis lenit et sanat tantorum liberatione populorum." Ep. clxxxv,
ad Bonifacium, no. 32.