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

567
The penal legislation against heresy was inaugurated by Theodosius the
Great after the final triumph of the Nicene Creed in the second
Oecumenical 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. f1000 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 Manichaean 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 himself been a
Manichaean heretic for nine years, justified forcible measures against the
Donatists, in contradiction to his noble sentiment: “Nothing conquers but
truth, the victory of truth is love.” f1001 The same Christian Father who
ruled the thinking of the Church for many centuries, and moulded the
theology of the Reformers, excluded all unbaptized infants from salvation,
though Christ emphatically included them in the kingdom of heaven. Leo
I., the greatest of the early popes, advocated the death penalty for heresy
and approved of the execution of the Priscillianists. Thomas Aquinas, the
master theologian of the Middle Ages, lent the weight of his authority to
the doctrine of persecution, and demonstrated from the Old Testament and
from reason that heretics are worse criminals than debasers of money, and
ought to be put to death by the civil magistrate. f1002 Heresy was regarded
as the greatest sin, and worse than murder, because it destroyed the soul. It
took the place of idolatry in the Mosaic law.
The Theodosian Code was completed in the Justinian Code (527–534); the
Justinian Code passed into the Holy Roman Empire, and became the basis
of the legislation of Christian Europe. Rome ruled the world longer by law
and by the cross than she had ruled it by the sword. The canon law likewise
condemns to the flames persons convicted of heresy. f1003 This law was
generally accepted on the Continent in the thirteenth century. f1004 England
in her isolation was more independent, and built society on the foundation
of the common law; but Henry IV. and his Parliament devised the
sanguinary statute de haeretico comburendo, by, which William Sawtre, a
parish priest, was publicly burnt at Smithfield (Feb. 26, 1401) for denying