[52] It is easy to understand the high ecclesiastical authorities in the Catholic Church, who maintain as an article of faith the right to repress error. Recollect the well-known pages in which St. Augustine speaks of what good effects he had observed to result from the employment of constraint in religious matters. “A great many of those who have been brought back into the Church by force confess themselves to be greatly rejoiced at having been delivered from their former errors, who, however, by I know not what force of custom, would never have thought of changing for the better if the fear of the law had not put them in mind of the truth. Good precepts and wholesome fear must go together so that not only the light of truth may drive away the gloom of error, but that charity may break the bonds of bad custom, so that we may rejoice over the salvation of the many.... It is written: ‘Bid them to enter in.’ ... God Himself did not spare his son, but delivered Him for our sake to the executioners.” Schiller makes the great inquisitor in _Don Carlos_ say the same thing. See St. Augustine, _Epist._ cxiii. 17, 5—St. Paul, _Ephes._, vi. 5, 6, 9. Lastly, recollect also the reasoned decision of the doctors and councils. “Human government,” said St. Thomas, “is derived from _divine government_ and should _imitate_ it. Now although God is all-powerful and infinitely good, He nevertheless permits in the universe that He has made the existence of evils which He could prevent; He permits them for fear that in suppressing them more than equivalent goods might be suppressed incidentally along with them and greater evils provoked in their stead. The same is true in human government; _rulers naturally tolerate certain evils for fear of putting an obstacle in the way of certain goods, or of causing greater evils_, as St. Augustine said in the treatise on _Order_. It is thus that _infidels_, though they sin in their rites, may be _tolerated, either because of some good coming from them, or to avoid some evil_. The Jews observe their rites, in which formerly the truth of the faith that we hold was prefigured; the result is advantageous in this, that we have the testimony of our enemies in favour of our faith, and that the object of our faith is, so to speak, shown in a reflected image. As for the worship of the other unbelievers, which is opposed in every way to truth and is entirely useless, _it would merit no tolerance_ if it were not to avoid some evil, such as the scandal or _the trouble which might result from the suppression of this worship_; or again as an impediment to the salvation of those who, under cover of this species of tolerance, come little by little into the faith.