Many burning piles had already been erected in France, Germany, and elsewhere, and Christians more earnest than Maisonneuve, but not freer or more courageous, had perished on them for their faith. Were the persecutors always influenced by cruelty and hatred? Were the vicars-general, the canons of St. John, the archbishop-primate of France—all of them thirsting for blood? No doubt there were malignant fanatics among them, but it would be unjust to form so severe a judgment of all. Some of them were upright and perhaps benevolent men, to whom the words uttered upon the cross might be justly applied: _Forgive them, for they know not what they do_. Atrocious as are the deeds of the persecutors in the sixteenth century, they easily admit of explanation. A religion convinced of the truth of its dogmas considers it to be its right and duty to combat the errors which destroy souls (as it believes); and, if it is allied with the civil power, makes it a virtue and a law to borrow the secular sword to purify the Church from contagion. The fault of such judges—and it is a great fault—is to put themselves in the place of God, to whom alone belongs the dominion over conscience; to forget that religion, being in its nature spiritual, has nothing to do with constraint, and can be propagated and received by moral convictions only. The sword, when religion determines to grasp it, easily becomes insensate and ruthless in her hands. _Put up thy sword into the sheath_, said Jesus to Peter; and those who call themselves Peter’s successors have been always drawing it. The ground is so slippery, the gulf so near, that, besides the thousands of cases in which the Church of Rome during the sixteenth century suffered that great fall, two or three instances may be quoted in which even protestants have stumbled. Three centuries have corrected such lamentable aberrations; we no longer erect scaffolds, but tribunals, dungeons, and exile still coerce religious convictions. What must we do to destroy forever such evils in all their ramifications? The most effectual remedy would seem to be the separation of the spiritual and temporal power, the destruction of the links which still unite the ecclesiastical with the civil power. The doctrine which condemns those fanatical murders has long prevailed all over evangelical Christendom; at Rome the acts are tempered, but the principles remain. Modern civilization is waiting for the time when salutary modifications between the Church and the State will take from the former, everywhere and forevermore, the possibility of again grasping the unholy sword which has poured forth such torrents of the most generous blood. Footnote 578: MS. du Procès inquisitionnel, pp. 260-262. Footnote 579: MS. du Procès inquisitionnel, pp. 303, 304. Footnote 580: MS. du Procès inquisitionnel, pp. 324-327. Footnote 581: MS. du Procès inquisitionnel, pp. 335-338. Footnote 582: MS. du Procès inquisitionnel, pp. 345-349. Footnote 583: