If we are not mistaken, St. Thomas is here trying to prove, on the authority of St. Augustine, that it is sometimes lawful to put heretics to death. But it is only by garbling and distorting the context that St. Thomas makes the Bishop of Hippo advocate the very penalty which, as a matter of fact, he always denounced most strongly. In the passage quoted, St. Augustine was speaking of the benefit that ensues to the Church _from the suicide of heretics_, but he had no idea whatever of maintaining that the Church had the right to put to death her rebellious children.[1] St. Thomas misses the point entirely, and gives his readers a false idea of the teaching of St. Augustine. [1] Ep. clxxxv, ad _Bonifacium_, no. 32. Thinking, however, that he has satisfactorily answered all the objections against his thesis, he states it as follows: "Heretics who persist in their error after a second admonition ought not only to be excommunicated, but also abandoned to the secular arm to be put to death. For, he argues, it is much more wicked to corrupt the faith on which depends the life of the soul, than to debase the coinage which provides merely for temporal life; wherefore, if coiners and other malefactors are justly doomed to death, much more may heretics be justly slain once they are convicted. If, therefore, they persist in their error after two admonitions, the Church despairs of their conversion, and excommunicates them to ensure the salvation of others whom they might corrupt; she then abandons them to the secular arm that they may be put to death."[1] [1] _Summa_, IIa IIae, quæst. xi, art. 3. St. Thomas in this passage makes a mere comparison serve as an argument. He does not seem to realize that if his reasoning were valid, the Church could go a great deal further, and have the death penalty inflicted in many other cases.