with the whole spirit of the gospel, and is only a strong descriptive term in the parable, to signify the fervent zeal in the conversion of the heathen, such as St. Paul manifested without ever resorting to physical coercion. § 27. EESTRICTION OF KELIGIOUS FKEEDOM. 145 or by pain. But because the former means are better, tlie latter must not tlierefore be neglected Many must often be brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, by the rod of temporal suffering, before they attain the highest grade of religious development. . . . The Lord himself orders that the guests be first invited, then compelled, to his gi'eat supper." ' This father thinks that, if the state be denied the riglit to punish religious error, neither should she punish any other crime, like murder or adultery, since Paul, in Gal. V. 19, attributes divisions and sects to the same source in the flesh.^ He charges his Donatist opponents with inconsistency in seeming to approve the emperors' prohibitions of idolatry, but condcmuing their persecution of Christian heretics. It is to the honor of Augustine's heart, indeed, that in actual cases he earnestly urged upon the magistrates clemency and humanity, and thus in practice remained true to his noble maxim : " Nothing conquers but truth, the victory of truth is love." ^ But Ids theory, as ISTeander justly observes, " contains the germ of the whole system of spiritual despotism, intoler- ance, and persecution, even to the court of the Inquisition." * Tlie great authority of his name was often afterward made to justify cruelties from which he himself would have shiimk with horror. Soon after him, Leo the Great, the first repre- sentative of consistent, exclusive, universal papacy, advocated even the penalty of death for heresy.^ Henceforth none but the persecuted parties, from time to time, protested against religious persecution ; being made, by their sufferings, if not from principle, at least from policy and self-interest, the advocates of toleration. Thus the Donatist bishop Petilian, in Africa, against whom Augustine wrote, rebukes his Catholic opponents, as formerly his countryman ' Epist. 185, ad Bonifacium, § 21, § 2-4. ^ C. Gaudent. Donat. i. § 20. C. Epist. Parmen. i. § 16. ' " Xon vincit nisi Veritas, victoria veritatia est caritas." * Kirchengesch. iii. p. 427 ; Torrey's ed. ii. p. 217. ' Epist. XV. ad Turribium, where Leo mentions the execution of the Priscillianists with evident approbation: "Etiam mundi principes ita hanc sacrilegam amentiam detestati sunt, ut auctorem ejus cum plerisque discipulis legum pubUcarum ense prosternerent." VOL. n. — 10 146 THIED PEEIOD, A.D. 311-590. Tertullian had condemned the heathen persecutors of the Christians, for using outwai'd force in matters of conscience ; appealing to Christ and the apostles, who never persecuted, but rather suffered and died. " Think you," says he, " to serve God by killing us with your own hand? Ye err, ye err, if ye, poor mortals, think this ; God has not hangmen for