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.