t understand to-day how Gregory IX could rejoice
on learning that fathers did not scruple to denounce their children,
children their parents, a wife her husband or a mother her
children.[4]

[1] 4 and 19, cap _De haereticis_, iv, 5, _Manichaeos_ and
_Cognovimus_.

[2] Decretal _Vergentis_ of Innocent III. Decretals, cap. x, _De
Haereticis_, lib. v, tit. vii.

[3] _Mon. Germ., Leges_, vol. ii, sect. iv, p. 197; Ripoll,
_Bullarium ordinis Praedicat_., vol. i, p. 126.

[4] Bull _Gaudemus_, of April 12, 1233, in Ripoll, vol. i, p. 56.

Granting that banishment and confiscation were just penalties for
heretics who were also State criminals, was it right for the Church
to employ this penal system for the suppression of heresy alone?

It is certain that the early Christians would have strongly denounced
such laws as too much like the pagan laws under which they were
persecuted. St. Hilary voiced their mind when he said: "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."[1] St. Augustine was of the same mind. He thus addressed the
Manicheans, the most hated sect of his time: "Let those who have
never known the troubles of a mind in search for the truth, proceed
against you with rigor. It is impossible for me to do so, for I for
years was cruelly tossed about by your false doctrines, which I
advocated and defended to the best of my ability. I ought to bear
with you now, as men bore with me, when I blindly accepted your
doctrines."[2] Wazo, Bishop of Liege, wrote in a similar strain in
the eleventh century.[3]

[1] _Liber contra Auxentium_, cap. iv; cf. supra, p. 6.

[2] _Contra epistolam Manichaei, quam vocant Fundamenti_, n. 2 and 3,
supra, p. 12.

[3] _Vita Vasonis_, cap. xxv and xxvi, Migne, P.L., vol. cxlii, col.
752, 753; cf. supra, p. 51.

But, continued St. Augustine, retracting his first theory,--and
nearly all the Middle Ages agreed with him,--"these severe penalties
are lawful and good when they serve to convert heretics by inspiring
them with a salutary fear." The end here justifies the means.

Such reasoning was calculated to lead men to great extremes, and was
responsible for the cruel teaching of the theologians of the school,
who were more logically consistent than the Bishop of Hippo. They
endeavored to terrorize heretics by the specter of the stake. St.
Augustine, bold as he was, shrank from such