(438).

This concept of the State implied the vigorous prosecution of heresy.
We therefore see the Christian emperors severely punishing all those
who denied the orthodox faith, or rather their own faith, which they
considered, rightly or wrongly, the faith of the Church. From the
reign of Valentinian I, and especially from the reign of Theodosius
I, the laws against heretics continued to increase with surprising
regularity. As many as sixty-eight were enacted in fifty-seven years.
They punished every form of heresy, whether it merely differed from
the orthodox faith in some minor detail, or whether it resulted in a
social upheaval. The penalties differed in severity; i.e., exile,
confiscation, the inability to transmit property. There were
different degrees of exile; from Rome, from the cities, from the
Empire. The legislators seemed to think that some sects would die out
completely, if they were limited solely to country places. But the
severer penalties, like the death penalty, were reserved for those
heretics who were disturbers of the public peace, e.g., the
Manicheans and the Donatists. The Manicheans, with their dualistic
theories, and their condemnation of marriage and its consequences,
were regarded as enemies of the State; a law of 428 treated them as
criminals "who had reached the highest degree of rascality."

The Donatists, who in Africa had incited the mob of Circumcelliones
to destroy the Catholic churches, had thrown that part of the Empire
into the utmost disorder. The State could not regard with
indifference such an armed revolution. Several laws were passed,
putting the Donatists on a par with the Manicheans, and in one
instance both were declared guilty of the terrible crime of treason.
But the death penalty was chiefly confined to certain sects of the
Manichcans. This law did not affect private opinions (except in the
case of the Encratites, the Saccophori, and the Hydroparastatae), but
only those who openly practiced this heretical cult. The State did
not claim the right of entering the secret recesses of a man's
conscience. This law is all the more worthy of remark, inasmuch as
Diocletian had legislated more severely against the Manicheans in his
Edict of 287: "We thus decree," he writes Julianus, "against those
men, whose doctrines and whose magical arts you have made known to
us: the leaders are to be burned with their books, their followers
are to be put to death, or sent to the mines." In c