When Arianism began to make converts of the Christian emperors, they became very bitter toward the Catholic bishops. We are not at all astonished, therefore, that one of the victims of this new persecution, St. Hilary, of Poitiers, expressly repudiated and condemned this regime of violence. He also proclaimed, in the name of ecclesiastical tradition, the principle of religious toleration. He deplored the fact that men in his day believed that they could defend the rights of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ by worldly intrigue. He writes: "I ask you Bishops to tell me, whose favor did the Apostles seek in preaching the Gospel, and on whose power did they rely to preach Jesus Christ? To-day, alas! while the power of the State enforces divine faith, men say that Christ is powerless. The Church threatens exile and imprisonment; she in whom men formerly believed while in exile and prison, now wishes to make men believe her by force…. She is now exiling the very priests who once spread her gospel. What a striking contrast between the Church of the past and the Church of to-day."[1]
[1] Liber contra Auxentium, cap. iv.
This protest is the outcry of a man who had suffered from the intolerance of the civil power, and who had learned by experience how even a Christian State may hamper the liberty of the Church, and hinder the true progress of the Gospel.
To sum up: As late as the middle of the fourth century and even later, all the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers who discuss the question of toleration are opposed to the use of force. To a man they reject absolutely the death penalty, and enunciate that principle which was to prevail in the Church down the centuries, i.e., Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine[1] (the Church has a horror of bloodshed); and they declare faith must be absolutely free, and conscience a domain wherein violence must never enter.[2]
[1] Canons of Hippolytus, in the third or fourth century, no. 74-75; Duchesne, Les origines du culte chrétien, 2e ed., p. 309; Lactantius, Divin. Institut., lib. vi, cap. xx.
[2] Lactantius, Divin. Institut., lib. v, cap. xx.
The stern laws of the Old Testament have been abolished by the New.
CHAPTER II SECOND PERIOD FROM VALENTINIAN I To THEODOSIUS II THE CHURCH AND THE CRIMINAL CODE OF THE CHRISTIAN EMPERORS AGAINST HERESY
CONSTANTINE considered himself a bishop in externals. His Christian successors inherited this title, and acted in accordance with it. One of them, Theodosius II, voiced their mind when he said that "the first duty of the imperial majesty was to protect the true religion, whose worship was intimately connected with the prosperity of human undertakings."[1]
[1] Theodosii II, Novellæ, tit. iii. (438).