ages claimed the right to exterminate by death those
who were heretics. Numerous provincial and national councils have
issued cruel and bloody laws for the extermination of the Waldenses
and other so-called heretics. Besides these, at least six of their
_General_ Councils, the highest judicial assemblies of the Roman
Church, with the popes themselves sometimes present in person, have
by their decrees pronounced the punishment of death for heresy: 1. The
Second General Council of Lateran (1139) 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 Pope Innocent
III. 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 which he had given Huss
and signed by his own hand and in which he had guaranteed the reformer
a safe return to Bohemia; and this inhuman sentence against Huss
was then carried out. 5. The Council of Sienna (1423), which was
afterwards continued at Basil. 6. The Fifth General Council of Lateran
(1514).

That such teachings and practises were an integral part of Romanism is
easily shown. St. Aquinas, the "angelic doctor," argued that heretics
might justly be killed. Cardinal Bellarmine, in a Latin work, _De
Laicis_, still extant, entered into a regular argument to prove that
the church has the right of punishing heretics with death and should
exercise that right. Bellarmine was a nephew of one pope and a close
friend and associate of others, a champion of Romanism, and a defender
of its doctrines. In the work above referred to be declares that
"_heretics were often_ _burned_ BY THE CHURCH." "The Donatists,
Manicheans, and Albigenses were routed and annihilated by arms."

Many timid-hearted Christians in the present age of religious
toleration think that it is almost unchristianlike for us to bring
up and lay to the charge of Rome such a sweeping indictment for those
massacres of Christians in a barbarous age. Such it would be had Rome
ever disavowed these acts or shown any signs of true repentance. The
fact is that it is the boast of Catholics that "Rome never changes."
Well has Charles Butler said, "It is most true that the Roman
Catholics believe the doctrines of their church to be unchangeable;
and that it is