Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 7
This protest is the outcry of a man who had suffered
from the intolerance of the civil power, and who had
learned by experience how even a Christian state may
hamper the liberty of the Church, and hinder the true
progress of the Gospel.
To sum up : As late as the middle of the fourth century
and even later, all the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers
who discuss the question of toleration are opposed to the
use of force. To a man they reject absolutely the death
penalty and enunciate that principle which was to prevail
in the Church down the centuries,
sanguine l
i.e. Ecclesia abhorret a
(the Church has a horror of bloodshed) ; and
they declare faith must be absolutely free, and conscience
a domain wherein violence must never enter. 2
The stern laws of the Old Testament have been abol
ished by the New.
depcrditse, res ipsa quae in oculis omnium est atque ore clamavit." Liber
contra Auxentium, cap. iv. Written in 365.
1 "Christianas ne fiat propria voluntate miles, nisi coactus a duce. Habeat
gladium, caveat tamen ne criminis sanguinis effusi fiat reus." Canons of
Hippolytus, in the third or fourth century, no 74-75; Duchesne, Les origines
du culte chretien, 2 e ed., p. 309. "Ita neque militare justo licebit," says Lac-
"
tantius, neque accusare quemquam crimine capitali, quia nihil distat utrumne
ferro an verbo potius occidas; quoniam occisio ipsa
Institut. lib. t vi, cap.
prohibetur." Divin.
xx. Cf. the passages quoted from Tertullian, De
Idolatria, and from Origen, Contra Celsum.
2
"Non est . . .
religionis cogere religionem ; sponte, non vi." Tertullian,
loc. cit. "Non est opus vi et injuria, quia religio cogi non potest." Lac-
tantius, Divin. Institut., lib. v, cap. xx.