The point on which Bishop Douais lays most stress is that the delivery of the heretic to the secular arm was a matter quite distinct from his subsequent fate, with which neither Inquisition nor Church had any concern. It was regrettable that people should be burnt alive, but that was entirely the affair of the civil power. The Church could not carry out a sentence which it had not delivered; its own sentence was merely a harmless pronouncement that the heretic was cut off from the Church. And the Church always took particular care to plead for his gentle and merciful treatment. Now the formula, “Without shedding of blood,” was known to be a callous and cruel pretence. The Inquisition was perfectly aware of the result of its relinquishing the heretic to the secular arm. If it objected to men being burnt alive, if the civil power exceeded the intentions and wishes of the Church, why did the Church never raise a word of protest? What it did was usually to send a secretary to see that the burning was properly carried out, and if it was not the magistrate himself was liable to the penalties for heresy.[55] Finally, Monseigneur Douais claims that the Inquisition, by its wise conformity with the social justice of the period, succeeded in reducing heresy, and “separated the secular power from the spiritual domain of the Church.”[56] Thus an arrangement by which the Church compelled the State to do its dirty work is termed a “separation.” An ecclesiastic sees separation where other people would see alliance. This is called “reconciling the interests of God and Cæsar.” The blasphemy appears to be quite unconscious. An article on the Inquisition by a Jesuit priest, Joseph Blötzer, of Munich, which appears in the _Catholic Encyclopædia_, contains one or two statements which may be very briefly noticed. The assertion that the Church was more merciful than the State is true only in comparatively rare instances; but, considering the claims of the Church to a Divine origin and also the general spirit of its founder’s teachings, one would expect the difference to be very much more perceptible. Heresy is said to have been primarily a political offence. On the contrary, it was primarily a religious offence, as would naturally be inferred from the flourishing condition of the Netherlands, the Albigensian and other heretical communities, the remarkable industry of whose members made them most valuable citizens. Throughout the shameful story of religious persecution it was usually the Church which goaded the sometimes reluctant State to suppress heresy; it was the Church that nagged and bullied rulers into compliance with its will. They were fools to comply, but comply they did, frequently under threat of excommunication. Occasionally the Church and its favourite department, the Holy Office, did have a fit of compassion, but it was the exception that proved the rule. And the fit usually came on when there was money to be made by clemency.