case in point. In his
register of sentences from 1244 to 1248, we meet with sixty cases of
relapse, not one of whom was punished by a penalty severer than
imprisonment. But a little later on the strict interpretation of the
_Animadversio debita_ began to prevail. In St. Thomas's time it meant
the death penalty; and we find him citing the bull _Ad Abolendam_[2]
as his authority for the infliction of the death penalty upon the
relapsed, penitent or impenitent, in ignorance of the fact that this
document originally had a totally different interpretation.

[1] Decretals, in cap. ix, _De haereticis_, lib. v, tit. vii.

[2] _Summa_, IIa IIae, quaest. ix, art. 4: _Sed contra_.

His reasoning therefore rests on a false supposition. He advocates
the death penalty for the relapsed in the name of Christian charity.
For, he argues, charity has for its object the spiritual and temporal
welfare of one's neighbor. His spiritual welfare is the salvation of
his soul; his temporal welfare is life, and temporal advantages, such
as riches, dignities, and the like. These temporal advantages are
subordinate to the spiritual, and charity must prevent their
endangering the eternal salvation of their possessor. Charity,
therefore, to himself and to others, prompts us to deprive him of
these temporal goods, if he makes a bad use of them. For if we
allowed the relapsed heretic to live, we would undoubtedly endanger
the salvation of others, either because he would corrupt the faithful
whom he met, or because his escape from punishment would lead others
to believe they could deny the faith with impunity. The inconstancy
of the relapsed is, therefore, a sufficient reason why the Church,
although she receives him to penance for his soul's salvation,
refuses to free him from the death penalty.

Such reasoning is not very convincing. Why would not the life
imprisonment of the heretic safeguard the faithful as well as his
death? Will you answer that this penalty is too trivial to prevent
the faithful from falling into heresy? If that be so, why not at once
condemn all heretics to death, even when repentant? That would
terrorize the wavering ones all the more. But St. Thomas evidently
was not thinking of the logical consequences of his reasoning. His
one aim was to defend the criminal code in vogue at the time. That is
his only excuse. For we must admit that rarely has his reasoning been
so faulty and so weak as in his thesis upon the coercive power