As a matter of fact, the Church saw to it, that the penalty meted out by the secular arm to the relaxed was death. Hardly ever did the secular ruler show any reluctance to inflict it. But if he forbore, he would probably be excommunicated.[456] Ever after the Fourth Council of the Lateran the Church made it incumbent upon the lay power to carry out the imperial edicts against heresy. The formula of mercy, then, may be called either a ‘legal fiction’ or bluntly, a ‘hypocrisy’: it was never intended to be taken literally.[457] The scrupulous regard of the Church for regularity in accordance with the Canon showed susceptibility to decorum; as a repudiation of moral responsibility it would have been contemptible. But the mediæval Church did not repudiate such responsibility, as some of its modern apologists have sought to do. Had it disapproved of the penalty of death for the obdurate heretic, it both could and would have said so. Nay, more. It possessed the authority and practical power to have prevented it. To doubt that is to attribute to the mediæval Church infinitely less influence than it actually possessed. A papacy, claiming and at times exercising authority in matters temporal as well as spiritual, could have brought pressure to bear upon the secular power in a matter peculiarly the Church’s concern. The fact that it never made any attempt to do so is proof that it never desired to. As a matter of fact, the Church in the Middle Ages felt no such squeamishness, as is natural in these modern days of religious toleration, regarding the drastic punishment of errors _in intellectu_. Once granted the point of view that heresy is a more heinous offence than coining—to use St. Thomas’ analogy—or than treason, to use a commoner and more forcible comparison, and the penalty of death for heresy appears not shocking and horrible, but something eminently just and proper. We may take St. Thomas as representative of the best thought of the Church on the subject in the Middle Ages. Later inquisitors were quite unequivocal in their language. ‘Pertinax non tantum est relaxandus, sed etiam vivus a saeculari potestate conburendus.’[458] Simancas, likewise, has no qualms. The best human law demands the burning of the heretic; in this according with the divine law. Christ is quoted in proof. ‘Igne igitur extirpanda est haeretica pubis: ne nobis Deus irascitur, si haereticos dimittimus impunitos.’[459] A favourite line of argument was that adopted by Ludovico à Paramo, in comparing the Church to the ark of Noah. As God utterly destroyed the unbelievers outside the Ark by a deluge, so now does he destroy the heretic.[460] It is modern humanitarianism, not Inquisitorial authorities, that seeks to disclaim moral responsibility for the stake.