The profound conviction that those who did not believe in its doctrines would be damned eternally, and that God punishes theological error as if it were the most heinous of crimes, led naturally to persecution. It was a duty to impose on men the only true doctrine, seeing that their own eternal interests were at stake, and to hinder errors from spreading. Heretics were more than ordinary criminals, and the pains that man could inflict on them were as nothing to the tortures awaiting them in hell.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bury: History of Freedom of Thought, pp. 52-53.]
In fevered zeal for the Faith began that long hunting and punishment of heresy, which has done so much to darken the history of religion in Western Europe. There were, as in the Albigensian Crusade, wholesale burnings and hangings of men, women, and children.[1] Heresy was hunted out in secret retreats. "It was the foulest of crimes; to prevail against it was to prevail against the legions of Hell." The culmination of intolerance was, of course, the Inquisition. One need not pause to recall its espionage system, its search for the spreaders of false doctrine, its use of any and every witness against the suspect, its granting of indulgences to any one who should bear witness against him, its "relaxing of the criminal to the secular arm," which unfailingly punished him with death. It must be pointed out that in the instance of the Inquisition, just as in the case of all religious persecution, the motives were most frequently of the noblest. "In the Middle Ages and after, men of kindly temper and the purest zeal were absolutely devoid of mercy when heresy was suspected." Nor are intolerance and persecution to be laid exclusively at the door of any one religion. In Protestant countries, in England and Scotland, the persecution and torture of alleged witches is one of the most painful instances of the cruelties into which men can be led by loyalty to their religious convictions. And Mohammedanism vividly taught men how a faith might be spread by fire and sword.
[Footnote 1: Ibid., pp. 56-57.]
Quietism and consolation—Other-worldliness. Many religions, including Christianity, have emphasized "other-worldliness." This has most frequently taken the form of emphasis on the life to come. This world has been conceived, as it were, as a prelude to eternity. In the Christian world scheme, as most clearly expounded and universally accepted during the Middle Ages, man's chief imperative business was salvation. All else was trivial in comparison with that incomparable eternal bliss which would be the reward of the virtuous, and that unending agony which would be the penalty for the damned. "Salvation was the master Christian motive. The Gospel of Christ was a gospel of salvation unto eternal life. It presented itself in the self-sacrifice of divine love, not without warnings touching its rejection."[1]
[Footnote 1: H. O. Taylor: Mediœval Mind, vol. I, p. 61.]
Where interest is centered on a world to come, there not infrequently results a loss of interest and discrimination in the goods of earthly life. "For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" The beauties, goods, and distinctions of this world coalesce into an indiscriminate triviality in comparison with that infinite glory hereafter to be attained. One does not trouble one's self about the furniture of earthly life any more than one would take pains with the beautification of a room in which one happens to be lodged for a night.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.
But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.
Though on earth you may live in squalor, poverty, and disease, yet "in my Father's house are many mansions."