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There is a growing desire for experimenting upon the dogmas and expedients and practices of other sects. I speak only of admitted facts, and not for the purpose of censure or complaint. No one has less right than myself to indulge in heresy-hunting or impatience of minor differences of opinion. If my dear friends can bear with me, I shall not find it a hard task to bear with them.
One of these has been a tolerance in questions of intellectual belief-doctrine-that is amazing to the West, where for many centuries heresy-hunting was common, and bloody wars between nations over sectarian rivalries were frequent."-Extracts from an article by Professor W. Norman Brown in the May, 1939 issue of the BULLETIN of the American Council of Learned Societies, Washington, D.C.
"Heresy-hunting doesn't flourish in the West," said the Superintendent. "There's no time for it. Some of the Eastern Presbyteries have too many men with more time on their hands than sense in their heads." "Certainly there was no time lost in this case," replied the Convener. "We knew Boyle's scholarship was right. We knew his heart was sound.
Small wonder that, under such conditions, the early ages of the Church were marked by a fruitful crop of Heresies, and heresy-hunting became an intellectual pastime in high favour among the strictly orthodox. Among the writers of this period whose works have been preserved Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus in the early years of the third century, was one of the most industrious.
Perhaps there IS a very slow amelioration; but the briefest glance at the history of the Christian churches the horrible rancours and revenges of the clergy and the sects against each other in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., the heresy-hunting crusades at Beziers and other places and the massacres of the Albigenses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the witch-findings and burnings of the sixteenth and seventeenth, the hideous science-urged and bishop-blessed warfare of the twentieth horrors fully as great as any we can charge to the account of the Aztecs or the Babylonians must give us pause.
This is the first time I have gone heresy-hunting, and I was quite bowed down with the weight of it. And if ever I can help with poor little Hattie, will you let me know? I must have the twins invite her to spend some Saturday with us. That's the way I make the girls like people, by being with them a great, great deal."
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