[1] Lea writes (op. cit., vol. i, p. 229, note) "Saint Raymond of Pennafort, the compiler of the decretals of Gregory I, who was the highest authority in his generation, lays it down as a principle of ecclesiastical law that the heretic is to be coerced by excommunication and confiscation, and if they fail, _by the extreme exercise of the secular power_. The man who was doubtful in faith was to be held a heretic, and so also was the schismatic who, while believing all the articles of religion, refused the obedience due to the Roman Church. All alike were to be forced into the Roman fold, and the fate of Core, Dathan and Abiron was invoked _for the destruction of the obstinate_." (_Summa_, lib. i. tit. v, 2, 4, 8; tit. vi, i.) This is a travesty of the mind, and words of Saint Raymond. He merely called attention to the lot of Core, Dathan and Abiron to show what a great crime schism was. He never asserted that heretics or schismatics, even when obdurate, ought to be "destroyed." _Summa_, lib. i, cap. _De Hæreticis_ and _De Schismaticis_. But St. Thomas, who wrote at a time when the Inquisition was in full operation, felt called upon to defend the infliction of the death penalty upon heretics and the relapsed. His words deserve careful consideration. He begins by answering the objections that might be brought from the Scriptures and the Fathers against his thesis. The first of these is the well-known passage of St. Matthew, in which our Saviour forbids the servants of the householder to gather up the cockle before the harvest time, lest they root up the wheat with it.[1] St. John Chrysostom, he says, "argues from this text that it is wrong to put heretics to death."[2] But according to St. Augustine the words of the Saviour: "Let the cockle grow until the harvest," are explained at once by what follows: "lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also with it." When there is no danger of uprooting the wheat and no danger of schism, violent measures may be used:" _Cum metus iste non subest ... non dormiat severitas disciplinæ_."[3] We doubt very much whether such reasoning would have satisfied St. John Chrysostom, St. Theodore the Studite, or Bishop Wazo, who understood the Saviour's prohibition in a literal and an absolute sense. [1] Matt. xiii. 28-30. [2] _In Matthæum_, Homil. xlvi. [3] Augustine, _Contra epistol. Parmeniani_, lib. iii. cap. ii. But this passage does not reveal the whole mind of the Angelic doctor. It is more evident in his exegesis of Ezechiel xviii. 32, _Nolo mortem peccatoris_. "Assuredly," he writes, "none of us desires the death of a single heretic. But remember that the house of David could not obtain peace until Absalom was killed in the war he waged against his father. In like manner, the Catholic Church saves some of her children by the death of others, and consoles her sorrowing heart by reflecting that she is acting for the general good."[1] [1] St. Thomas, _Summa_, loc. cit., ad. 4m.