power of the state. § 27. Restriction of Religious Freedom^ and Beginnings of Persecution of Heretics. Sam. Eliot : History of Liberty. Boston, 1853, 4 vols. Early Christians, vols. i. and ii. The most important facts are scattered through the sections of tjie larger church histories on the heresies, the doctrinal controversies, and church discipline. An inevitable consequence of the union of church and state was restriction of religious freedom in faith and worship, and the civil punishment of departure from the doctrine' and dis- cipline of the established church. The cliurch, dominant and recognized by the state, gained indeed external freedom and authority, but in a measure at the expense of inward liberty and self-control. She cauie, as § 27. KESTBICTION OF KELIGIOUS FREEDOM. 139 we have seen in the previous section, under the patronage and supervision of tlie liead of the Christian state, especially in the Byzantine empire. In the first three centuries, the church, with all her external lowliness and oppression, en- joyed the greater liberty within, in the development of her doctrines and institutions, by reason of her entii-e separation from the state. 13ut tlie freedom of error and division "was now still more restricted. In the ante-Nicene age, heresy and schism were as much hated and abhorred, indeed, as afterward, yet were met only in a moral way, by word and wi*iting, and were punished with excommunication from the rights of the church. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and even Lactantius were the first advo- cates of tlie principle of freedom of conscience, and maintain- ed, against the heathen, that religion was essentially a matter of free will, and could be promoted only by instruction and persuasion, not by outward force.' All they say against the persecution of Christians by the heathen appHes in full to the persecution of heretics by the church. After the iS^icene age all de]3arture3 from the reigning state-church faith were not only abhorred and excommunicated as religious errors, but were treated also as crimes against the Chi-istian state, and hence were punished with civil penalties ; at first with deposi- tion, banishment, confiscation, and, after Theodosins, even with death. This persecution of heretics was a natural consequence of the union of religious and civil duties and rights, the confusion of the civil and the ecclesiastical, the judicial and the moral, which came to pass since Constantine. It proceeded from the state and from the emperors, who in this respect showed them- selves the successors of the Pontifices Maximi, with their rela- tion to the church reversed. The church, indeed, steadfastly adhered to the principle that, as such, she should employ only spiritual penalties, excommunication in extreme cases ; as in fact Christ and the apostles expressly spurned and prohibited all carnal weapons, and would rather sufler and die than use ' Just. Mart. Apol, i. 2, 4, 12 ; Tertull. Apolog. c. 24, 28 ; Ad Scapul. c. 2 ; Lac- tant. Instit. v. 19, 20; Epit. o. 54. Comp. vol. i.