Charles River Editors
ASIN: B08K9D74S1
Publisher: Charles River Editors (September 27, 2020)
Pages: 44
*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents “The Roman Church...[says] that the heretics they persecute are the church of wolves. But this is absurd, for the wolves have always pursued and killed the sheep, and today it would have to be the other way around for the sheep to be so mad as to bite, pursue, and kill the wolves, and for the wolves to be so patient as to let the sheep devour them!” – Excerpt from the alleged writings of the Cathars Christianity was not a state religion for its first three centuries, and it was only when Emperor Constantine the Great declared it so in the early 4th century that the Church was faced with the thorny problem of state-sanctioned violence. The first major Christian authority to justify the use of arms in defense of Church and State was Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who wrote in the 5th century, “They ...