in its twenty-third canon. 2.  The third General Council of Lateran (1179), under Pope Alexander III. 3.  The fourth General Council of Lateran (1215), under the inhuman Pope Innocent III., which exceeded in ferocity all similar decrees that had preceded it. 4.  The sixteenth General Council, held at Constance in 1414.  This Council, with Pope Martin present in person, condemned the reformers Huss and Jerome to be burned at the stake and then prevailed on the emperor Sigismund to violate the safe-conduct that he had given Huss, signed by his own hand, in which he guaranteed the reformer a safe return to Bohemia; and the inhuman sentence was carried out, with the haughty prelates standing by to satiate their eyes on the sight of human agony.  This council also condemned the writings of Wickliffe and ordered his bones to be dug up and burnt, which savage sentence was afterwards carried into effect; and after lying in their grave for forty years, the remains of this first translator of the English Bible were reduced to ashes and thrown into the brook Swift.  Well has the historian Fuller said, in reference to this subject, “The brook Swift did convey his ashes into Avon, the Avon into Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas, and they into the main ocean.  And thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrie, which is now dispersed all over the world.” 5.  The Council of Sienna (1423), which was afterwards continued at Basil. 6.  The fifth General Council of the Lateran (1514).  The laws enacted in each succeeding Council were generally marked, if possible, with augmented barbarity.

Says the learned Edgar, in his Variations of Popery:  “The principle of persecution, being sanctioned not only by theologians, Popes and provincial synods but also by General Councils, is a necessary and integral part of Romanism.  The Romish communion has, by its representatives, declared its right to compel men to renounce heterodoxy and embrace Catholicism, and to consign the obstinate to the civil power to be banished, tortured, or killed.”  St. Aquinas, whom Romanists call the “angelic Doctor,” says, “Heretics are to be compelled by corporeal punishments, that they may adhere to the faith.”  Again, “Heretics may not only be excommunicated, but justly killed.”  He says that “the church consigns such to the secular judges to be exterminated from the world by death.”

Cardinal Bellarmine is the great champion of Romanism and expounder of its doctrines.  He was the nephew of Pope Marcellus, and he is acknowledged to be a standard writer with Romanists.  In the twenty-first and twenty-second chapters of the third book of his work entitled De Laicis, he enters into a regular argument to prove that the church has the right, and should exercise it, of punishing heretics with death.  The heading is his, together with what follows.