The Church, it is claimed, enjoined excommunication, but not death, as the punishment of heresy. This is true of particular periods only; as applied to the whole career of the Inquisition it is part of the conventional hypocrisy. The Church disliked the term “blood,” but caused it to be shed freely enough; it seldom used the word “death,” but it handed over the heretic to the secular power with a perfectly clear understanding that death was to be the penalty. According to Father Blötzer, the general lay opinion was that heretics should be severely punished, and the Church endeavoured to soften this feeling. If the Church is entitled to the credit of its rare attacks of tenderness, it must also take the discredit of its general barbarity. It cannot be allowed to “have it both ways.” And in the Middle Ages it was, of course, the clerical body that was the fount of lay opinion regarding heresy. Some doubt as to the softening process is natural enough in view of the Papal decree of 1184 previously referred to. Peter Cantor was ordered not to put the Cathari to death immediately after the ecclesiastical judgment had been delivered, for the significant reason that the Church might not be compromised. This shows that the Church was aware of its complicity in the proceedings and in the fate of its victims. In their language dealing with these matters the apologists of the Inquisition display no small skill in casuistry. The _Catholic Encyclopædia_ palliates torture by saying that it was not intended as a punishment, but as a method of eliciting truth. The person on the rack failed to appreciate the distinction. As torture usually elicited error, the Inquisitors cannot be complimented on the rationality of their methods. Other Inquisitorial terms are juggled with in the same way by the apologists. Confiscation of a heretic’s goods was simply a mode of defraying the costs and expenses of his trial. Imprisonment, again, was not punishment; it was nothing more than a useful discipline which afforded an opportunity of repentance.