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 chretien_, 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.

CHAPTER II
SECOND PERIOD
FROM VALENTINIAN I To THEODOSIUS II
THE CHURCH AND THE CRIMINAL CODE OF THE CHRISTIAN EMPERORS AGAINST
HERESY

CONSTANTINE considered himself a bishop in externals. His Christian
successors inherited this title, and acted in accordance with it. One
of them, Theodosius II, voiced their mind when he said that "the
first duty of the imperial majesty was to protect the true religion,
whose worship was intimately connected with the prosperity of human
undertakings."[1]

[1] Theodosii II, _Novellae_, tit. iii.