Читать книгу The Inquisition - E. Vacandard - Страница 15

ST. PAUL was the first to pronounce a sentence of condemnation upon heretics. In his Epistle to Timothy, he writes: "Of whom is Hymeneus and Alexander, whom I have delivered up to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme."[1] The Apostle is evidently influenced in his action by the Gospel. The one-time Pharisee no longer dreams of punishing the guilty with the severity of the Mosaic Law. The death penalty of stoning, which apostates merited under the old dispensation,[2] has been changed into a purely spiritual penalty: excommunication.

[1] 1) Tim. i. 20. Cf . Tit. iii. 10–11. "A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid, knowing that he, that is such an one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment."

[2] Deut. xiii. 6–9) ; xvii. 1–6.

During the first three centuries, as long as the era of persecution lasted, the early Christians never thought of using any force save the force of argument to win back their dissident brethren. This is the meaning of that obscure passage in the Adversus Gnosticos of Tertullian, in which he speaks of "driving heretics (i.e., by argument), to their duty, instead of trying to win them, for obstinacy must be conquered, not coaxed."[1] In this work he is trying to convince the Gnostics of their errors from various passages in the Old Testament. But he never invokes the death penalty against them. On the contrary, he declares that no practical Christian can be an executioner or jailer. He even goes so far as to deny the right of any disciple of Christ to serve in the army, at least as an officer, "because the duty of a military commander comprises the right to sit in judgment upon a man's life, to condemn, to put in chains, to imprison and to torture."[2]

[1] Adversus Gnosticos Scorpiace, cap. ii, Migne, P.L., vol. 11, col. 125.

[2] De Idololatria, cap. xvii, P.L., vol. i, col. 687.

If a Christian has no right to use physical force, even in the name of the State, he is all the more bound not to use it against his dissenting brethren in the name of the Gospel, which is a law of gentleness. Tertullian was a Montanist when he wrote this. But although he wrote most bitterly against the Gnostics whom he detested, he always protested against the use of brute force in the matter of religion. "It is a fundamental human right," he says, "a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his convictions. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion. It must be embraced freely, and not forced."[1] These words prove that Tertullian was a strong advocate of absolute toleration.

[1] Liber ad Scapulam, cap. ii, P.L., vol. i, col. 699

Origen likewise never granted Christians the right to punish those who denied the Gospel. In answering Celsus, who had brought forward certain texts of the Old Testament that decreed the death penalty for apostasy, he says: "If we must refer briefly to the difference between the law given to the Jews of old by Moses, and the law laid down by Christ for Christians, we would state that it is impossible to harmonize the legislation of Moses, taken literally, with the calling of the Gentiles. … For Christians cannot slay their enemies, or condemn, as Moses commanded, the contemners of the law to be put to death by burning or stoning."[1]

[1] Contra Celsum, lib. vii, cap. xxvi.

St. Cyprian also repudiates in the name of the Gospel the laws of the Old Testament on this point. He writes as follows: "God commanded that those who did not obey his priests or hearken to his judges,[1] appointed for the time, should be slain. Then indeed they were slain with the sword, while the circumcision of the flesh was yet in force; but now that circumcision has begun to be of the spirit among God's faithful servants, the proud and contumacious are slain with the sword of the spirit by being cast out of the Church."[2]

[1] Deut. xvii. 12.

[2] Ep. lxii, ad Pomponium, n. 4, P.L., vol. iii. col. 371. Cf. De unitate Ecclesiæ, n. 17 seq.; ibid., col. 513 seq.

The Bishop of Carthage, who was greatly troubled by stubborn schismatics, and men who violated every moral principle of the Gospel, felt that the greatest punishment he could inflict was excommunication.

When Lactantius wrote his Divinæ Institutiones in 308, he was too greatly impressed by the outrages of the pagan persecutions not to protest most strongly against the use of force in matters of conscience. He writes: "There is no justification for violence and injury, for religion cannot be imposed by force. It is a matter of the will, which must be influenced by words, not by blows. … Why then do they rage, and increase, instead of lessening, their folly? Torture and piety have nothing in common; there is no union possible between truth and violence, justice and cruelty.[1] … For they (the persecutors) are aware that there is nothing among men more excellent than religion, and that it ought to be defended with all one's might. But as they are deceived in the matter of religion itself, so also are they in the manner of its defence. For religion is to be defended, not by putting to death, but by dying; not by cruelty but by patient endurance; not by crime but by faith. … If you wish to defend religion by bloodshed, by tortures and by crime, you no longer defend it, but pollute and profane it. For nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion."[2]

[1] Cf. Pascal, Lettre provinciale, xii.

[2] Divin. Institut., lib. v, cap. xx.

An era of official toleration began a few years later, when Constantine published the Edict of Milan (313), which placed Christianity and Paganism on practically the same footing. But the Emperor did not always observe this law of toleration, whereby he hoped to restore the peace of the Empire. A convert to Christian views and policy, he thought it his duty to interfere in the doctrinal and ecclesiastical quarrels of the day; and he claimed the title and assumed the functions of a Bishop in externals. "You are Bishops," he said one day, addressing a number of them, "whose jurisdiction is within the Church; I also am a Bishop, ordained by God to oversee whatever is external to the church."[1] This assumption of power frequently worked positive harm to the Church, although Constantine always pretended to further her interests.

[1] Eusebius, Vita Constantini, lib. iv, cap. xxiv.

When Arianism began to make converts of the Christian emperors, they became very bitter toward the Catholic bishops. We are not at all astonished, therefore, that one of the victims of this new persecution, St. Hilary, of Poitiers, expressly repudiated and condemned this regime of violence. He also proclaimed, in the name of ecclesiastical tradition, the principle of religious toleration. He deplored the fact that men in his day believed that they could defend the rights of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ by worldly intrigue. He writes: "I ask you Bishops to tell me, whose favor did the Apostles seek in preaching the Gospel, and on whose power did they rely to preach Jesus Christ? To-day, alas! while the power of the State enforces divine faith, men say that Christ is powerless. The Church threatens exile and imprisonment; she in whom men formerly believed while in exile and prison, now wishes to make men believe her by force. … She is now exiling the very priests who once spread her gospel. What a striking contrast between the Church of the past and the Church of to-day."[1]

[1] Liber contra Auxentium, cap. iv.

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, i.e., Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine[1] (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]

[1] Canons of Hippolytus, in the third or fourth century, no. 74–75; Duchesne, Les origines du culte chrétien, 2e ed., p. 309; Lactantius, Divin. Institut., lib. vi, cap. xx.

[2] Lactantius, Divin. Institut., lib. v, cap. xx.

The stern laws of the Old Testament have been abolished by the New.