" [Footnote: Deut. VII, 16.] And the penalty for slackness was "lest
the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee
from off the face of the earth." [Footnote: Deut. VI, 15.] There is,
nevertheless, this much to be said in favor of the morality of Moses as
contrasted with that of thirteenth-century orthodox Christians like
Arnold; Moses led a crusade against a foreign and hostile people, while
Arnold slaughtered the Albigenses, who were his own flock, sheep to whom
he was the shepherd, communicants in his own church, and worshippers of
the God whom he served. What concerns us, however, is that the same
stimulant animated Moses and Arnold alike. The stimulant, pure and simple,
of greed. On these points Moses was as outspokenly, one may say as
brutally, frank as was Arnold. In the desert Moses commanded his followers
to exterminate the inhabitants of the kingdom of Bashan in order that they
might appropriate their possessions, which he enumerated, and Moses had no
other argument to urge but the profitableness of it by which to secure
obedience to his moral law.
Arnold stood on precisely the same platform. He did not accuse Count
Raymond of heresy or any other crime, nor did Pope Innocent III consider
Raymond as morally guilty of a criminal offence, or worthy of punishment.
Indeed, the pope would have protected the Count had it been possible, and
summoned him before the Fourth Lateran Council for that purpose.
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