To meet these arguments the Catholic apologists call attention to the fact that the church "has a horror of blood," and that it has never put anyone to death for any cause whatever. But this is true only in a Pickwickian sense. It is like the head saying to the hands, "I have never committed the least violence against anyone." The hands, it is evident, commit the acts, but whose hands are they? The hands only obey the head, and for the head to blame the hands for carrying out its orders, realizing its thoughts and wishes, would not even be amusing, much less convincing. It is the judge, or the court, that takes the life of the culprit, for instance, and not the executioner. The Catholic Church demands the death of the heretic. Is this denied? Read Thomas Aquinas, the most honored saint and theologian of Catholicism; read the decrees of the general councils of the church and the encyclicals of St. Peter's successors, and a thousand, thousand proofs will be found in them to substantiate the statement. It is the Bible that commands the death of the heretic. No church founded on the Bible can afford to be tolerant. The theory of Christianity as well as of Mohammedanism is that the sword which the king carries has been blessed and put in his hands that he may put down the heretics. The civil authorities then, in bringing Joan of Arc to the fire were carrying out the instructions of the forty ecclesiastical judges who condemned her to death. Had these judges found her innocent, the state could not have destroyed her life; it was the will of the priestly court that she should die, and the secular authorities fulfilled its wish.