Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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be no martyrs. Every church, yea, every truth and every good cause, has its
martyrs, who stood the fiery trial and sacrificed comfort and life itself to
their sacred convictions. The blood of martyrs is the seed of toleration;
toleration is the seed of liberty; and liberty is the most precious gift of God
to every man who has been made in his image and redeemed by Christ.
Of all forms of persecution, religious persecution is the worst because it is
enacted in the name of God. It violates the sacred rights of conscience, and
it rouses the strongest and deepest passions. Persecution by word and pen,
which springs from the hatred, envy, and malice of the human heart, or
from narrowness and mistaken zeal for truth, will continue to the end of
time; but persecution by fire and sword contradicts the spirit of humanity
and Christianity, and is inconsistent with modern civilization. Civil offences
against the State deserve civil punishment, by fine, imprisonment,
confiscation, exile, and death, according to the degree of guilt. Spiritual
offences against the Church should be spiritually judged, and punished by
admonition, deposition, and excommunication, with a view to the
reformation and restoration of the offender. This is the law of Christ. The
temporal punishment of heresy is the legitimate result of a union of Church
and State, and diminishes in rigor as this union is relaxed. A religion
established by law must be protected by law. Hence the Constitution of the
United States in securing full liberty of religion, forbids Congress to
establish by law any religion or church. f997 The two were regarded as
inseparable. An established church must in self-defence persecute
dissenters, or abridge their liberties; a free church cannot persecute. And
yet there may be as much individual Christian kindness and charity in an
established church, and as much intolerance and bigotry in a free church.
The ante-Nicene Fathers had the same zeal for orthodoxy and the same
abhorrence of heresy as the Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers, the mediaeval
popes and schoolmen, and the Reformers; but they were confined to the
spiritual punishment of heresy. In the United States of America persecution
is made impossible, not because the zeal for truth or the passions of hatred
and intolerance have ceased, but because the union between Church and
State has ceased.
The theory of religious persecution was borrowed from the Mosaic law,
which punished idolatry and blasphemy by death. “He that sacrificeth unto
any god, save unto Jehovah only, shall be utterly destroyed.” f998 He that
blasphemeth the name of Jehovah, he shall surely be put to death; all the