RATIONALISM IN EUROPE.

they would have escaped; these men will, sooner or later, persecute to the full extent of their power. If you speak to them of the physical and mental suffering which persecution produces, or of the sincerity and unselfish heroism of its victims, they will reply that such arguments rest altogether on the inadequacy of your realization of the doctrine they believe. What suffering that man can inflict can be comparable to the eternal misery of all who embrace the doctrine of the heretic? What claim can human virtues have to our forbearance, if the Almighty punishes the mere profession of error as a crime of the deepest turpitude Depravity or wickedness.? If you encountered a lunatic who, in his frenzy, was inflicting on multitudes around him a death of the most prolonged and excruciating agony, would you not feel justified in arresting his career by every means in your power—by taking his life if you could not otherwise attain your object? But if you knew that this man was inflicting not temporal but eternal death, if he was not a guiltless though dangerous madman, but one whose conduct you believed to involve the most heinous criminality, would you not act with still less compunction or hesitation?¹ Arguments from expediency Actions based on practical advantage rather than moral principle., though they may induce men under some special circumstances to refrain from persecuting, will never make

¹ As St. Thomas Aquinas says, ‘If counterfeiters of money or other criminals are justly put to death by secular princes immediately, then heretics, once they are convicted of heresy, may much more justly be not only excommunicated but also put to death.’ (Summa, part ii, question xi, article iii.)