The first of these grounds seems most unfortunate; for corrupt ecclesiastics, from an early age to the present day, have ever shown themselves ready to cast those whom they call heretics, not out of the Church only, but out of the world:[15] the second is a refinement too narrow for building any conclusion upon: the third applies a mistaken view of one parable to support a mistaken view of another: and the fourth is the second in another form. After having in effect explained away his own admission, that the field is the world, and not the Church, he freely concedes in the close that the openly heretical and vicious should not be tolerated within the Church. But I ask what right has he to exclude those whom, according to his exegesis, the Lord commanded his ministers to tolerate in the Church? [15] Lange (_in loc._), having quoted Gerlach to the effect that this prohibition refers to extremes of ecclesiastical discipline, for the purpose of excluding all unbelievers and hypocrites, and constituting a perfectly pure Church, timidly replies: "We can scarcely agree with him that it contains no allusion to the punishment of death for heresy.... It is well known that Novatianism, on the one hand, and the Papal hierarchy, on the other, have addressed themselves to this work of uprooting despite the prohibition of the Lord, and that the Romish Church has at last ended by condemning to the flames only the best wheat.... The _auto da fés_ of the middle ages were only a humble caricature and anticipation of that fiery judgment." In the intimation that it was while men slept that the mischief was done, I cannot find any covert reproof of an indolent ministry in the Church. It was night: all the community had retired to rest. The species of criminal which the parable depicts was not numerous,--the crime was not of daily occurrence. It was neither the practice nor the duty of the people, after they had toiled all day in their fields, to watch their work by night, to protect it from possible injury. The expression, "while men slept," is intended merely to indicate that the evil-doer took advantage of the darkness to cover his deed: accordingly, in the interpretation no specific meaning is attached to this feature of the parable.