eness."
Their doctrine certainly accorded perfectly with our Saviour's
teaching, in the parable of the cockle and the good grain. As Wazo,
Bishop of Liege said: "May not those who are to-day cockle become
wheat to-morrow?"[1] But in decreeing the death of these sinners, the
Inquisitors at once did away with the possibility of their
conversion. Certainly this was not in accordance with Christian
charity. Such severity can only be defended by the authority of the
Old Law, whose severity, according to the early Fathers, had been
abolished by the law of Christ.[2]

[1] _Vita Vasonis_, cap. xxv, in Migne, P.L., vol. cxlii, col. 753.

[2] St. Optatus (_De Schismate Donatistarum_, lib. iii, cap. vi and
vii) was one of the first of the Fathers to quote the Old Testament
as his authority for the infliction of the death penalty upon
heretics. But in this he was not followed either by his
contemporaries or his immediate successors. Before him, Origen and
St. Cyprian had protested against this appeal to the Mosaic law.

Advocates of the death penalty, like Frederic II and St. Thomas,
tried to defend their view by arguments from reason. Criminals guilty
of treason, and counterfeiters are condemned to death. Therefore,
heretics who are traitors and falsifiers merit the same penalty. But
a comparison of this kind is not necessarily a valid argument. The
criminals in question were a grave menace to the social order. But we
cannot say as much for each and every heresy in itself. It was unjust
to place a crime against society and a sin against God on an equal
footing. Such reasoning would prove that all sins were crimes of
treason against God, and therefore merited death.[1] Is not a
sacrilegious communion the worst possible insult to the divine
majesty? Must we argue, therefore, that every unworthy communicant,
if unrepentant, must be sent to the stake?

[1] Mgr. Bonomelli, Bishop of Cremona, writes: "In the Middle Ages,
they reasoned thus: If rebellion against the prince deserves death,
_a fortiori_ does rebellion against God. Singular logic! It is not
very hard to put one's finger upon the utter absurdity of such
reasoning. For every sinner is a rebel against God's law. It follows
then that we ought to condemn all men to death, beginning with the
kings and the legislators;" quoted by Morlais in the _Revue du Clerge
Francais_, August 1, 1905, p. 457.

It is evident, therefore, that neither reason, Christian tradition
nor the New