On Toleration
55
of intolerance. If it were allowed to despoil, cast in prison, and put to death a citizen who, at a certain degree of latitude, would not profess the religion generally admitted at that degree, how could we except the leaders of the State from those penalties? Religion equally binds the monarch and the beggar; hence more than fifty doctors or monks have made the monstrous assertion that it was lawful to depose or slay any sovereign who dissented from the dominant religion, and the Parliaments of our kingdom have repeatedly condemned these abominable decisions of abominable theologians.[1]
The blood of Henry the Great [IV.] was still
- ↑ The Jesuit Busenbaum, edited by the Jesuit La Croix, says that "it is lawful to kill a prince excommunicated by the Pope, in whatever country he may be found, because the universe belongs to the Pope, and he who accepts this commission does a charitable deed." This proposition, drawn up in the antechambers of hell, has done more than anything to raise France against the Jesuits. [They were expelled from France in 1767.—J. M.]. They endeavoured to justify themselves by pointing out that the same conclusions are found in St. Thomas and other Dominicans. As a matter of fact, St. Thomas of Aquin, the "angelic doctor" and "interpreter of the divine will"—such are his titles,—says that an apostate prince loses his right to the crown, and should no longer be obeyed (Bk. II., Part II., quest. xii.); that the Church may punish him with death; that the Emperor Julian was tolerated only because the Christians were weak (same passage); that it is right to kill any heretic (same place, questions xi. and xii.); that those are laudable who free a people from a tyrannical prince, etc. We must admit that Gerson, Chancellor of the University, went farther than St. Thomas, and the Franciscan Jean Petit much farther than Gerson.
