Note 1 — Chapter XXI · THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD.
George Eliot translation
The denial of a fact is not a matter of indifference; it is something morally evil,—a disowning of what is known to be true. Christianity made its articles of faith objective, i.e., undeniable, unassailable facts, thus overpowering the reason, and taking the mind prisoner by the force of external reality: herein we have the true explanation why and how Christianity, Protestant as well as Catholic, enunciated and enforced with all solemnity the principle, that heresy—the denial of an idea or a fact which forms an article of faith—is an object of punishment by the temporal power, i.e., a crime. What in theory is an external fact becomes in practice an external force. In this respect Christianity is far below Mohammedanism, to which the crime of heresy is unknown. ↑