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

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congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as the homeborn,
when he blasphemeth the name of Jehovah, shall be put to death.” f999
The Mosaic theocracy was superseded in its national and temporal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 Caesar 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.
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, were banished to Illyria. During the violent Arian
controversies, which shook the empire between the first and second
Oecumenical 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.