Question VII: Whether the Church can compel heretics to receive the Catholic faith

ON this Bellarmine disputes at greater length Tom. 1. Lib. 3. de Laicis, cap. 21. et 22. Valencia disp. 1. q. 11. puncto 3. Suarez disp. 20. sect. 3.

HERETICS — certain very ancient lovers of liberty, and of a bad peace, cried out that all should be left in their own religion, and cherished and kept in fraternal peace. So a certain Apelles, in Eusebius lib. 5. hist. cap. 13. Nicephorus lib. 4. cap. 29. provided, however (they say), that they confess Christ the Redeemer. Much the same did George Cassander teach in our own time, in Bellarm. cap. 19. But let these men hear the Apostle Paul: What concord hath Christ with Belial?

HERETICS, sectarians, enemies of Catholics, and lovers of a most foul liberty, have said that such men are not to be punished in any way. So thought of old the Donatists, and recently John Hus, and Luther, in Bellarmine, cap. 21. and it is the universal complaint of heretics against us. It is truly marvelous that they, execrating the just punishments of the most holy Inquisition, found in England so many unusual kinds of torments for putting Catholics to death, that they far surpassed the tyrannies of the Barbarians.

The unshaken truth of the holy Church asserts that heretics are justly punished, and can be compelled to profess the faith.

THIS was defined in the Council of Constance sess. 15. and by Leo X. in the Bull against the articles of Luther, and in cap. ad abolendam, and cap. excommunicamus, and other de haeret. cap. super eo, of the same title, Lib. 6. from Leo Pope epist. 2. to the Bishops of Italy, and other letters, cited by Suarez num. 11. and by Lucius P. epist. to the Bishops of France. The Fourth Council of Toledo, cap. 57. and 59. from the Nicene, where it was requested of Constantine that he punish the Arian heretics.

The same is evident from the Laws of the best Princes, who established the gravest penalties against heretics: Leg. Manichaeos. Leg. Arrianis. Leg. quicunque Cod. de haeret. which laws St. Augustine praises, Lib. 1. contra epist. Parmen. c. 7. and epist. 166. ad Donatistas, where he adds that only the Emperor Julian the Apostate left heretics unpunished. Wherefore in Lib. 2. Retract. cap. 5. and epist. 48. and 50. he retracts what he had said before, that heretics were not to be punished with bodily punishment; and in Lib. 1. contra epist. Parmeniani, cap. 7. and tract. 11. in Ioan. and epist. 50. ad Bonifacium, he asserts that the punishment of death is owed to them. D. Gregory also may seem [to hold this], Lib. 1. epist. 72. Bernard serm. 66. in Cant. and Lib. 4. de consider. Leo epist. 91. et 923.

IT IS PROVED by D. Bonaventure on 2. Ioan. on these words: Having made a whip of cords, he cast out those selling doves, sheep, and oxen. Where he exercised the power of the forum, showing that sellers of doves, that is, of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, were to be punished for simony: the oxen, who undergo Ecclesiastical labors for merely temporal reward: and the sheep, who call away the sheep of Christ from his pastures, and sell the truths of the faith to the devil, perverting them and dragging them into heresies, as the Fathers expound.

The holy Doctor observes, moreover, that he had twice reproved their acts, saying: But you have made the house of my Father, a den of thieves.

IT IS PROVED secondly by the holy Doctor in 4. dist. 18. p. 2. quaest. 1. from 1 Corinthians 5. where he delivered the incestuous man to satan for the destruction of the flesh; and 1. ad Timot. 1. He delivered Hymenaeus and Alexander to satan, to torture even of the body, as he observes on the last.

IT IS PROVED thirdly by D. Bonaventure on 22. Lucas and 19. Ioannis, where Peter drawing a sword struck the servant of the Pontiff, whose name was Malchus. There he shows the Pontifical power of Peter, in that he struck the servant of the Pontiff, Malchus, which means King, understanding the people of the Jews, which was made a servant by its unbelief, whose right ear he cut off, that it might no longer hear error. And if he was corrected, it was not because he was to use the sword; but because not for the occasion, as D. Bernard notes, Lib. 4. de consideratione ad Eugenium. That the sword, even the temporal and material one, was understood to be given to the Church, Sanderus proves learnedly de clave David, lib. 2. cap. 11. from D. Augustine contra Faustum.

IT IS PROVED fourthly by D. Bonaventure in 4. dist. 18. p. 2. quaest. 1. for since the Church is a well-ordered Monarchy, it ought to have a power proportioned to amending the fallen and coercing rebels and the contumacious; for so it is done in every rightly ordered Republic; and no crime is more pernicious than heresy. As therefore the Physician, when a soothing remedy does not help, uses the knife and fire; so in our matter the Lord, the best founder and institutor of the Church, gave arms for governance, and remedies apt for preserving the body of the Church unharmed, that when soothing remedies do not avail, they may be cut with the sword of excommunication and burned with a punishment worthy of their most pestilent disease.

THIS power is FOUNDED on Matth. 16. where it is said to Peter: Whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven, etc. And Matth. 18. If he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican, as D. Bonaventure teaches, eadem dist. p. 2. quaest. 5.

THAT THIS power was prefigured by Phinees, son of the Pontiff, Numer. 25. when he pierced the fornicating sacrilegious Idolaters, and that work was by God rewarded to him with the supreme priesthood, D. Bonaventure notes on the place secondly cited, Lucas 22. from the Interlinear Gloss. Nor can this power be denied without error, as Suarez admonishes num. 21. Cast. Lugo num. 10. disp. 21. sect. 1. and it is evident from the definition of Innocent IV. in the Council of Lyons, and cited in cap. Ad Apostolicae, de sentent. et re iudicata, in 6.

With these means of D. Bonaventure all the more recent authors make use.

YOU OBJECT first. In Scripture we are only commanded to avoid heretics, not to kill them: Ad Titum 3. secunda Timoth. 2. prima Thessal. 3. and prima Ioan. Hence Christ did not punish the disciples withdrawing from him, but said to the others: Will you also go away? Ioan. 6. as Cyprian also noted, epist. 55. Matth. 18. however commands only separation from the heretic: Let him be to thee as the Ethnic.

The holy Doctor RESPONDS to that place of John, that Christ said this lest he seem to flatter the disciples, and he was unwilling to hold them by force and necessity in the following of him of such great perfection, of which the others had shown themselves unworthy and incapable. He did not dismiss them, therefore, to the world, or to errors; but he was unwilling to use coercive power.

To that of Matth., the holy Doctor observes in 4. dist. 18. p. 2. quaest. 1. fundamento primo, that Christ immediately added: Amen I say to you: Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven, giving them the power of punishing those whom he had said were to be cast out with anathema. Wherefore even the Apostles indeed applied separation, but also coercive punishments. The holy Doctor observes further, in Hexaëmer. serm. 16. that the Church could not always coerce rebels, because she lay under Pagan Princes; but in the time of Constantine she raised her head, and began to use her power against heretics, decreeing in the Council of Nicaea that the Arians be punished.

YOU OBJECT secondly, Lucas 11. to James and John, wishing to call down fire from heaven against the Samaritans, Christ objected.

The holy Doctor RESPONDS that at that place those Disciples were led by a bitter, not a reasonable, zeal, against those who were still infidels and not yet instructed. Then he adds that Christ wished to admonish them, that he willed in that first coming of his to show humility and patience toward blind infidels, as Jerome interprets, ad Algasiam.

YOU OBJECT thirdly, Matth. 13. the Lord reproved the servants wishing to pluck up the Zizania: but heretics are understood, as Cyprian expounds, Lib. 3. epist. 3. Chrysost. and Ambr. in Maldonatus.

IT IS ANSWERED from D. Bonaventure, de sex alis Seraph. cap. 7. and sermone Dominica prima in Quadragesima, that by the Zizania are understood all the impious whatever, and not heretics: whence also D. Augustine, who had understood heretics by it, afterwards retracted it, Lib. 2. Retract. cap. 18. where from Cyprian he understands all the wicked. The same think Gregory, Ambrose, Theophylactus, in Cornelius there; and as he does not command thieves, adulterers, etc. to be killed, so neither heretics; and yet he does not prohibit all these from being rooted up: he only prohibits that they be taken away rashly, lest with the wicked the good also. Lest gathering the zizania, you root up also the wheat together with it, as D. August. warns, Lib. 3. cont. epist. Parmen. cap. 2.

From what has been said they infer that this power of the Church extends even to those who were baptized in infancy and fall away from the faith. Nay, the Fourth Council of Toledo, can. 55. includes even those baptized out of fear.

THEY INFER secondly, that the sons of heretics can be led to baptism per se. See Suarez 3. part. Tom. 3. disp. 25. sect. 3. I said per se, because per accidens say the opposite, if it be certain that those boys are to be brought up by their parents in heresy; for then it would redound to the injury of Baptism. See Suarez here disp. 25. sect. 5. and Card. Lugo disp. 21. sectione 1.