“Chapter XXI. That heretics, condemned by the church, may be punished with temporal penalties and even death. We will briefly show that the church has the power and ought to cast off incorrigible heretics, especially those who have elapsed, and that the secular power ought to inflict on such temporal punishments and even death itself. 1.  This may be proved from the Scripture. 2.  It is proved from the opinions and laws of the emperors, which the church has always approved. 3. It is proved by the laws of the church ... experience proves that there is no other remedy; for the church has tried step by step all remedies—­first excommunication alone; then pecuniary penalties; afterward banishment; and lastly has been forced to put them to death; to send them to their own place....  There are three grounds on which reason shows that heretics should be put to death:  the first is, Lest the wicked should injure the righteous; second, That by the punishment of a few many may be reformed.  For many who were made torpid by impunity, are roused by the fear of punishment; AND THIS WE DAILY SEE IS THE RESULT WHERE THE INQUISITION FLOURISHES,” etc.

“Chapter XXII. Objections answered. It remains to answer the objections of Luther and other heretics.  Argument 1.  From the history of the church at large.  ‘The church,’ says Luther, ’from the beginning even to this time, has never burned a heretic.  Therefore it does not seem to be the mind of the Holy Spirit that they should be burnt!’ [He surely misunderstood Luther.] I reply that this argument proves not the sentiment, but the ignorance, or impudence of Luther; FOR AS ALMOST AN INFINITE NUMBER WERE EITHER BURNED OR OTHERWISE PUT TO DEATH, Luther either did not know it, and was therefore ignorant; or if he knew it, he is convicted of impudence and falsehood,—­for that heretics were often burnt BY THE CHURCH may be proved by adducing a few from many examples.  Argument 2.  ‘Experience shows that terror is not useful.’  I reply EXPERIENCE PROVES THE CONTRARY—­for the Donatists, Manicheans, and Albigenses WERE ROUTED AND ANNIHILATED BY ARMS,” etc.

So this high dignitary of the Catholic church, a cardinal, a nephew of one Pope and the special favorite of others, freely admits the charge so often laid to Popery by creditable historians—­the butchering of an “infinite number” of people that differed from them—­and here labors hard to uphold it as a principle of righteousness.  Their bloody crusades against the innocent, unoffending Waldenses, Albigenses, and other peoples, in which thousands, and in the aggregate millions, were slaughtered like venomous reptiles, stand out on the page of history with a prominence that can not be mistaken; and they themselves can not deny it.  Dowling has well said that their “history is written in lines of blood.  Compared with the butcheries of holy men and women by the Papal Antichrist, the persecutions of the Pagan emperors of the first three centuries sink into comparative insignificance.  For not a tithe of the blood of martyrs was shed by Paganism, that has been poured forth by Popery; and the persecutors of Pagan Rome never dreamed of the thousand ingenious contrivances of torture which the malignity of Popish inquisitors succeeded in inventing.”  P. 541.