Note 15 — II. THE TARES.

Lange (in loc.), having quoted Gerlach to the effect that this prohibition refers to extremes of ecclesiastical discipline, for the purpose of excluding all unbelievers and hypocrites, and constituting a perfectly pure Church, timidly replies: “We can scarcely agree with him that it contains no allusion to the punishment of death for heresy.... It is well known that Novatianism, on the one hand, and the Papal hierarchy, on the other, have addressed themselves to this work of uprooting despite the prohibition of the Lord, and that the Romish Church has at last ended by condemning to the flames only the best wheat.... The auto da fés of the middle ages were only a humble caricature and anticipation of that fiery judgment.”[15]