CHAPTER XV. TESTIMONIES AGAINST PERSECUTION.
It is an impious act to deprive men of liberty in matters of religion, or prevent them from making choice of a God. No God nor man would be pleased with a forced service.—Apologetic, chap. xxiv.
Were violence to be used in defence of the faith, the bishops would oppose it.—St. Hilarius, lib. i.
Religion when forced ceases to be religion; we should persuade and not compel. Religion cannot be commanded.—Lactantius, lib. iii.
It is detestable heresy to endeavor to bring over by violence, bodily punishments, or imprisonments, those we cannot convince by reasoning.—St. Athanasius, lib. i.
Nothing is more contradictory to true religion than constraint.—St. Justin, Martyr, lib. v.
Is it for us to persecute those whom God tolerates? said St. Augustine, before his dispute with the Donatists had soured his disposition.
Let no violence be done to the Jews.—The 56th Canon of the 4th Council of Toledo.
Advise but compel not.—St. Bernard’s Letters.
We do not pretend to overcome error by violence.—Speech of the Clergy of France to Louis XIV.
We have always disapproved of rigorous measures.—Assembly of the Clergy, August 11, 1560.
We know that faith may yield to persuasion, but it never will be controlled.—Fléchier, Bishop of Nîmes, Letter, 19.
We ought to abstain even from reproachful speeches.—Bishop of Belley’s Pastoral Letters.
Remember that the diseases of the soul are not to be cured by restraint and violence.—Cardinal Camus’ Pastoral Instructions for the Year 1688.
Indulge every one with civil toleration—Archbishop Fénelon to the Duke of Burgundy.
Compulsion in religion proves the spirit which dictates it to be an enemy to truth.—Dirois, a Doctor of the Sorbonne, b. vi. chap. iv.
Compulsion may make hypocrites, but never can persuade.—Tillemont’s Hist. Eccles. tom. vi.
We have thought it conformable to equity and right reason to walk in the paths of the ancient church which never used violence to establish or extend religion.—Remonstrance of the Parliament of Paris to Henry II.
Experience teaches us that violence is more likely to irritate than to cure a distemper which is seated in the mind.—De Thou’s Epistle Dedicatory to Henry IV.
Faith is not inspired by the edge of the sword.—Cerisier, in the Reigns of Henry IV. and Louis XIII.
It is a barbarous zeal which pretends to force any religion upon the mind, as if persuasion could be produced by constraint.—Boulainvillier’s State of France.
It is with religion as with love; command can do nothing, constraint still less; nothing is so independent as love and belief.—Amelot de la Houssaye on Cardinal Ossat’s Letters.
If Providence has been so kind to you as to give you a knowledge of the truth, receive it as an instance of His great goodness; but should those who enjoy the inheritance of their father hate those who do not?—Spirit of Laws, book xxv.
One might compose an immense volume of such passages. All our histories, discourses, sermons, moral treatises and catechisms of the present time abound with and inculcate this holy doctrine of indulgence. What fatality, what false reason, then, leads us to contradict by our practice the theory we are every day teaching? When our actions give the lie to our morals it must certainly proceed from our thinking it to our interest to practise the contrary of what we teach; but what advantage can arise from persecuting those who do not think in the same manner as we do, and thereby making ourselves hated by them? Once more, then, let me repeat it; there is the highest absurdity in persecution. It may be replied that those who found it to their interest to lay a restraint upon the consciences of others are not absurd in so doing. To such men I address the following chapter.