tranged from faith; dissenters—those who differed in opinion in regard to certain church subjects and questions which admitted of healing; but arbitrary concourses—meetings formed by disobedient presbyters and bishops and the ignorant people;’ (b) from St. Jerome: ‘Between heresy and dissent there is, in my opinion, this difference, that heresy consists in the subversion of the dogma, while a dissent similarly expels from the church on account of a disagreement with the bishop (propter episcopacem dissensionem). Consequently these two things may in certain relations appear different by their origin; but in reality there is no dissent which has not something common with some heresy in its revolt against the church.’” (p. 202.)
Why not tell the truth? The following words are not merely remarkable, but simply disgusting:
“When we say that the heretics and the dissenters do not belong to the church, we do not mean those who hold the heresy or dissent in secret, trying to appear as belonging to the church and outwardly carrying out its regulations; or those who are carried away by heretical and schismatic errors in their ignorance and without any malice or stubbornness, for it is evident that neither have they absented themselves from the society of the believers, nor have they been excommunicated by the power of the church, although they may already be excommunicated by the judgment of God, though neither they nor we may know it: such people it is best to leave to the judgment of him who knows all the secret thoughts of man, and searches their hearts and entrails. But we mean the declared heretics and dissenters, who have already separated themselves from the church or are excommunicated by it, consequently intentional, stubborn, and therefore in the highest degree guilty heretics and dissenters. Against them were chiefly directed the utterances of the holy fathers and teachers of the church, which we have quoted above.” (p. 203.)
