THE
Inquisition Revealed;

IN
ITS ORIGIN,
POLICY, CRUELTIES, AND HISTORY,
WITH
Memoirs of its Victims
IN FRANCE, SPAIN, PORTUGAL, ITALY, ENGLAND,
INDIA, AND OTHER COUNTRIES.
DEDICATED TO CARDINAL WISEMAN.
BY
REV. THOMAS TIMPSON,
AUTHOR OF THE “COMPANION TO THE BIBLE,” &c. &c.

“Drunken with the blood of the Saints, and with the blood of the Martyrs of Jesus.”—Rev. xvii. 6.

“They shed innocent blood. This single circumstance shall, God willing, ever separate me from the Papacy. For this crime of cruelty I would fly from her communion as from a den of thieves and murderers!”—Luther.

LONDON:
AYLOTT AND JONES, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCLI.
LONDON
J. UNWIN, GRESHAM STEAM PRESS.
BUCKLERSBURY.

DEDICATION.
TO
HIS EMINENCE, CARDINAL WISEMAN.

My Lord Cardinal,

Roman Catholics and Protestants are alike interested in this volume: designed, as it is, to advance pure Christianity. They have an equal right to profess their own peculiar faith, and to propagate their religious opinions. But, in the free exercise of that right, they are equally bound, by every principle of justice and charity, to cherish towards each other mutual esteem and benevolence.

Romanists, however, do not admit the Holy Scriptures as the sole authority in religion; and their principles will not allow them, therefore, to grant toleration to those who dissent from them. Their intolerance arises from the policy of the Hierarchy and the reception of unscriptural traditions. Hence their illiberality in Italy, Sardinia, Spain, Portugal, the Brazils, and other countries, where the priesthood is dominant. Hence the inveterate hostility of the Romish priests against the popular reading of the Bible. Their people are kept thus in ignorance, deluded by false doctrines; and theirs being not exclusively the principles of the Holy Scriptures, cannot be the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

My Lord Cardinal—Every Briton should understand the character and claims of the Papacy. For, as predicted in “the oracles of God,” Protestants hold that Popery is the “man of sin,”—the “mystery of iniquity,”—the “MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH,”—“drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”—2 Thess. ii. 3—7; Rev. xvii. 5, 6.

Every British Christian is deeply interested in studying the doctrines of Popery; its Priestly power—Absolution—Transubstantiation—Tradition—and Purgatory; and in considering its evil doings in Auricular confession—Penance—Mariolatry—Priestly celibacy—Spiritual domination—and the Inquisition. The history of these is the condemnation of Popery.

This volume contains the substance of the valuable works of Limborch, Llorente, Dellon, Gavin, Buchanan, Bower, Newton, Gibbon, Watson, Ranke, Sismondi, Jones, Puigblanch, Edgar, Elliott, Mendham, Giesler, Dowling, D’Aubigné, De Castro, Achilli, and many others, regarding the Inquisition.

This volume is designed as an Antidote to Popery; especially as a present to young persons; and it is believed, by judicious friends, to be most seasonable, to instruct inquirers, and to advance the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Having these objects in view, this work is dedicated, with due respect, to

Your Eminence,
BY THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

THE INQUISITION REVEALED.

CHAPTER I.
POPERY AS PREDICTED IN SCRIPTURE.

The Court of Inquisition cruel and execrable—Christianity benevolent—The Inquisition predicted, 2 Thess. ii. 3, 4; 1 Tim. iv. 1-3; Rev. xvii. 1-18—Comments by Elliott, Bp. Newton, and Scott.

Religion, as taught by the Romish priesthood, has been enforced and guarded by pains and penalties during many ages. For the last six centuries, this has been done chiefly by a court, denominated, in all countries where it has been established, “The Holy Inquisition.” But this court has been execrated, in every country in which it has existed, as the most dreadful, cruel, and sanguinary of all tribunals, even by professors of the faith of Rome. Still it is supported by the papal hierarchy, as the agents of the Pope may be able to obtain permission of the governments who observe the Romish religion.

Christianity has thus been dishonoured in the assumption of its sacred name by Roman Catholics, while they have practised these cruelties, so contrary to the letter and to the spirit of the religion of Jesus Christ; for all His principles and precepts manifest Divine benevolence, as chanted at the birth of the Redeemer, by a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards men.”

Christianity is the religion of love, and like its ever blessed Author, the Son of God. “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him.” It enjoins upon all its professors the practice of benevolence. It requires them to possess and exemplify that spirit. Its moral code is comprehended in that summary of the Divine law, as given by our Saviour, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Its chief practical maxim is, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” These precepts were followed by the early believers of the Gospel, constraining the heathen to admire their benevolence, exclaiming, “See how these Christians love one another!”

False teachers, however, having corrupted the doctrines and ordinances of Christ, were influenced by another spirit; and, in the course of a few ages, the professed ministers of the loving Redeemer exhibited intolerance, malevolence, and cruelty, exceeding what had ever been witnessed under any form of religion. These enormities have been seen chiefly in the operations of the Roman Catholics, and especially by their execrable “Court of Inquisition,” as this has been established in Spain, France, Portugal, India, and Rome. This court, though denominated “Holy,” has been the most arbitrary, inhuman, and sanguinary that ever existed among men; and because of its enormities, by its various machinery, and by its savage armies, it is symbolised in the Holy Scriptures under the emblem of a harlot, deluding the nations with her intoxicating draughts, and herself “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”—(Rev. xvii. 6.)

Before we enter upon the direct history of the Inquisition, therefore, it will be necessary to notice the inspired prophecies relating to this apostate and cruel hierarchy of popery; and to take a brief review of the rise and progress of that terrible and hated system of Antichrist.

“Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” And equally foreseen were all the forms of falsehood, cruelty, and evil upon the earth. Hence the inspired predictions concerning the hateful enemy of Christ.

Our blessed Lord repeatedly admonished his disciples concerning false teachers, who would be distinguished by their inhumanity; and the apostle Paul, in correcting the mistakes of some, regarding the day of judgment as being near, says, “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”—(2 Thess. ii. 3, 4.) Again, he represents the character of Romish teachers, and says, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them who believe and know the truth.”—(1 Tim. iv. 1—3.)

Still more remarkable is the prediction described by the apostle John: “And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: and upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. And the angel said unto me, Wherefore dost thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings. And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, who have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful. And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the woman whom thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.”—(Rev. xvii. 1—18.)

All these several predictions have been fulfilled with the most striking completeness; and we may have to refer to them in the course of this work; but the descriptions in those from the Revelation require our very special notice, as they lead us more particularly to the Romish hierarchy, and to the terrible court of inquisition. The Rev. Mr. Elliott, in his “Commentary” on this chapter, says:—

“This vision represented pictorially a gaudily dressed drunken harlot, seated on a beast of monstrous form, with seven heads, and on the seventh ten horns. The beast, in respect of its body, depicted the papal empire of the ten western European kingdoms; and in respect of the seventh, or rather, eighth head, the succession of Roman popes, constituting, from after the sixth century, that empire’s spiritual rulers. So the woman represented Rome in its character of the papal see, and mother-church of Western Christendom; including, doubtless, as part and parcel of herself, the ecclesiastical state, or Peter’s patrimony, in Italy, and vast dominions, convents, churches, and other property appertaining to the papal church elsewhere, both in Europe and over the world.

“1. As the beast’s body both upheld and was subject to the woman, the rider, so the empire, as a whole, with the power of its secular kingdoms and many peoples, upheld, and was also at the same time ruled by papal Rome, the mother-church of Christendom.

“2. As the woman was here depicted before St. John under a double character, viz., as a harlot to the ten kings, and a vintner or tavern-hostess vending wines to the common people, just according to the custom of earlier times, in which the harlot and the hostess of a tavern were characters frequently united; so the church of Rome answered to the symbol in either point of view; interchanging mutual favours, such as might suit their respective characters, with the kings of Anti-Christendom; and to the common people dealing out for sale the wine of the poison of her fornication, her indulgences, relics, transubstantiation-cup, as if the cup of salvation, &c. (see the Pope’s own medal, holding out the cup of her apostacy, struck at Rome on occasion of the Jubilee in 1825), therewith drugging and making them besotted and drunk.

“3. With regard to the portraiture of the woman, robed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold, and precious stones and pearls, it is, as applied to the Romish church, a picture, characteristic and from life; the dress specified being distinctively that of the Romish ecclesiastical dignitaries, and the ornaments those with which it has been bedecked beyond any church called Christian; nay, beyond any religion, probably, that has ever existed in the world; not to add that even the very name on the harlot’s forehead, Mystery, (a name allusive, evidently, to St. Paul’s predicted mystery of iniquity,) was one, if we may repose credit on no vulgar authority, once written on the Pope’s tiara; and the apocalyptic title, ‘Mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth,’ the very parody, if I may so say, of the title Rome arrogates to herself, ‘Rome, mother and mistress.’

“4. As to the harlot’s being depicted ‘drunken with the blood of the saints,’ its applicability to the Romish church, throughout the latter half, at least, portion of the beast’s 1260 predicted years of prospering, is written in deep-dyed characters on the page of history.”

Nothing can be more evident than that “Babylon the Great” designs the mystical city of the papal commonwealth, a regnant system of spiritual wickedness—an idolatrous church. This was the judgment of all the chief reformers in Germany, Switzerland, France, England, and Scotland. Some even of the Roman Catholics had the same conviction; and Petrarch, the celebrated Italian poet, calls the papal court “The Babylonian harlot, mother of all idolatries.”

Bishop Newton, having reviewed the prophecy, says, “Moreover, the woman, like other harlots who give philters and love-potions to inflame their lovers, hath ‘a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations, and filthiness of her fornication,’ to signify the specious and alluring arts wherewith she bewitcheth and inciteth men to idolatry, which is ‘abomination and spiritual fornication.’ It is an image copied from Jeremiah li. 7, ‘Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand, that made all the earth drunken.’ And is not this a much more proper emblem of pontifical than of imperial Rome?

“Yet farther to distinguish the woman, she has her name inscribed upon her forehead (verse 5), in allusion to the practice of some notorious prostitutes, who had their names written in a label upon their foreheads. The inscription is so very particular, that we cannot easily mistake the person; ‘Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, or rather, of fornications and abominations of the earth.’ Her name, Mystery, can imply no less than that she dealeth in mysteries; her religion is a mystery, a mystery of iniquity; and she herself is mystically and spiritually ‘Babylon the great.’ But the title of mystery is in no respect proper to ancient Rome, more than any other city; and neither is there any mystery in substituting one heathen, idolatrous, and persecuting city for another; but it is indeed a mystery, that a Christian city, professing and boasting herself to be the city of God, should prove another Babylon in idolatry and cruelty to the people of God. She glories in the name of Roman Catholic, and well, therefore, may she be called ‘Babylon the great.’

“Infamous as the woman is for her idolatry, she is no less detestable for her cruelty, which are the two principal characteristics of the antichristian empire. ‘She is drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,’ (ver. 6) which may indeed be applied both to pagan and to Christian Rome, for both have in their turns cruelly persecuted ‘the saints and the martyrs of Jesus;’ but the latter is more deserving of the character, as she hath far exceeded the former, both in the degree and duration of her persecutions. It is very true, that if Rome pagan hath slain her thousands of innocent Christians, Rome Christian hath slain her ten thousands; for, not to mention other outrageous slaughters and barbarities, the crusades against the Waldenses and Albigenses; the murders committed by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands; the massacres in France and Ireland, will probably amount to above ten times the number of all the Christians slain in all the ten persecutions of the Roman emperors put together. St. John’s admiration also plainly evinces that Christian Rome was intended, for it could be no matter of surprise to him that a heathen city should persecute the Christians; but that a city professedly Christian should wanton and riot in the blood of Christians, was a subject of astonishment indeed; and well might he, as it is emphatically expressed, ‘wonder with great wonder.’”

Mr. Scott, in his commentary on 2 Thessalonians ii. 3, 4, remarks, “No apostacy of equal magnitude and duration, no delusions equally pernicious and abominable, have taken place since the apostle’s days, as those of Rome. The imposture of Mohammed alone can be compared with it, and this could not be intended; for that impostor and his successors were not placed in the temple of God, the visible church (Rev. xi. 1, 2), but without it, and in direct opposition to the very name of Christianity; they propagated their delusions mainly by the sword, and not lying miracles; and, indeed, the impieties of Mohammed never equalled the blasphemies here predicted. This ‘man of sin’ would be the ‘son of perdition’ (John xvii. 12); a genuine descendant of Judas, the apostle and traitor, who sold his Lord for money, and destroyed him with a kiss; a peculiar factor and agent of Satan, in destroying the souls of men, and finally sinking into perdition as his inheritance. It is manifest, that no succession of men have yet appeared on earth to whom this description fully accords, except that of the Roman pontiffs. This deceiver would oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God, or is ‘worshipped,’ either by Christians or pagans; thus the Roman pontiffs have opposed the truths, commandments, and disciples of Christ, in every age; the prophetical office of Christ, by teaching human inventions—his priestly office, by the doctrine of human merits and created intercessors—and his kingly office, by changing and dispensing with his laws. They have exalted themselves ‘above all that is called God,’ and is ‘worshipped,’ by claiming authority to forgive sins; by granting indulgences to men to break the commandments of God; by dispensing with his laws, and presuming to give meaning and authority to the Scriptures themselves. Moreover, this ‘man of sin’ ‘sits as God’ in the temple of God; and we must, therefore, look for him within the visible church; there he blasphemously usurps the throne of God, ‘showing himself to be God.’ Many Roman emperors affected divine honours, and demanded adoration; but there was no antecedent apostacy from Christianity or the worship of Jehovah; and they might rather be said to sit in the temple of Jupiter or Mars, than in that of God, whose temple must be considered to be among his professed worshippers, and not among avowed heathen. But the Roman pontiff—claiming to be the universal head of the whole church of God, called by his flatterers ‘Vice-God,’ a ‘God upon earth,’ arrogating the title of ‘His Holiness,’ boasting of ‘infallibility,’ claiming a right to depose kings and bestow kingdoms on whom he pleases—answers exactly to the description here given. While the Roman pontiff opposes the worship of God, by enjoining the worship of images, of saints, and angels, and the authority of his laws, to enforce subjection to his own edicts, he himself may be called the great idol, as well as the great tyrant, of the Romish church!”

Human sagacity could by no means have conjectured such a character rising up among the people of God, and such deeds perpetrated in the name and form of religion. This required the prescience of the Infinite Mind. But we shall see them all in their dreadful enormity, as we pursue the history of the Romish Inquisition.

CHAPTER II.
PROGRESS OF ANTICHRIST.

Spirit of Antichrist—Priests, Clergy, and Laity—Ceremonies—Mosheim—“Pious Frauds”—Splendour of Prelates—Constantine—the Hierarchy—Titles—Creeds—Arianism—Persecution—Rome and Constantinople—Pope John—Pope Gregory—Mohammed—Claims of the Pope—Henry IV.—Corrupt principles.

Divine Wisdom having foreseen, and thus foretold, all the dreadful corruptions of the Christian church, we are interested in marking the steps by which the progress was made. The spirit of popery we behold in the conduct of the judaising teachers of the early Christians, as censured by Paul, and as seen in the proceedings of Diotrephes, who is believed to have been a pastor. John complained of his refusing to “receive the brethren,” the messengers of the apostle, and of his “malicious words,” persecuting some, and casting others out of the church.—(2 John 9, 10.)

This ambitious spirit led the pastors in some of the larger churches, early in the second century, to assume the character and title of priests, as peculiar to their order. They claimed the privilege of being the Lord’s “heritage,” or clergy, which belonged to the faithful, as distinct from their ministers.—(1 Pet. v. 31.) But they persuaded the people that they had succeeded to the rights of the Jewish priesthood, as God’s clergy; and hence the distinction of clergy and laity, which has no foundation in Christianity. This distinction being established, gave immense force to the spirit of popery, which advanced rapidly among the ignorant people. Dr. Mosheim states, “The Christian doctors had the good fortune to persuade the people, that the ministers of the Christian church succeeded to the character, rights, and privileges of the Jewish priesthood; and this persuasion was a new source of honour and profit to the sacerdotal order. This notion was propagated with industry, some time after the second destruction of Jerusalem [A.D. 135] had extinguished all hopes of seeing their government restored to its former lustre, and their country arising from its ruins. And, accordingly, the bishops considered themselves invested with a rank and character similar to those of the high priests among the Jews, while the presbyters represented the priests, and the deacons the Levites.”

Christianity having no splendid ceremonial to recommend the preaching of the Gospel, priests devised various forms to be added to the Lord’s supper, which was administered every Sabbath, and ceremonies were invented, partly derived from the Jews and some from the idolators, to attract the minds of the people, and with a view to gratify the converts from heathenism. The performance of these, especially in the Lord’s supper, served also as the means of employing the priests in their newly created offices; and they were called mysteries, as having a hidden meaning and a peculiar virtue, after the manner of the rites of the Pagan priests. Hence originated the term sacraments, the Latin word for mysteries, applied to various rites, especially baptism and the Lord’s supper.

Dr. Mosheim, therefore, remarks, “The bishops, by an innocent allusion to the Jewish manner of speaking, had been called ‘chief priests;’ the elders or presbyters had received the title of ‘priests,’ and the deacons that of ‘Levites.’ But in a little time these titles were abused by an aspiring clergy, who thought proper to claim the same rank and station, the same rights and privileges, that were conferred with those titles upon the ministers of religion under the Mosaic dispensation. Hence the rise of tithes, first-fruits, splendid garments, and many other circumstances of external grandeur, by which ecclesiastics were eminently distinguished.”

Priestly power was greatly augmented at this time by the meetings of the bishops, as delegates from the churches, to consult respecting their mutual defence and security against their persecuting enemies. In these synods or councils, as they were called, various decisions were formed unfriendly to the interests of the people; for the bishops soon asserted authority to prescribe laws, and to impose creeds, which led to the most grievous persecution in the following ages. Superiority was claimed in these assemblies by the bishops of the chief cities, especially by the bishop of Rome, as the imperial metropolis. Dr. Mosheim, therefore, states, “Toward the conclusion of this century, Victor, bishop of Rome, took it into his head to force the Asiatic Christians, by the pretended authority of his laws and decrees, to observe the Roman custom of keeping Easter.” They refused compliance; and, as Milner says, “Victor, with much arrogance, as if he had felt the very soul of the future papacy formed in himself, inveighed against the Asiatic churches, and pronounced their excommunication.”

In the second century, popery was further advanced by the peculiar practices of the Egyptian monks being cherished among the Christians. They magnified the virtues of fasting, celibacy, and a solitary life, as the perfection of excellence; and hence the origin of the Romish monks, nuns, and celibacy of the clergy.

Christianity, in the third century, was still more corrupted by the priesthood; for “pious frauds,” or false miracles, were commonly practised. Several of the teachers were guilty of these in the second century; but, to the dishonour of religion, they were now publicly defended, even by some good men, provided they were employed with a design to convert men and advance the cause of Christianity!

Popery continued to advance in this century by rapid strides; for the clergy maintained their various dignities with determined zeal. The simple ordinances of Christ in the ministry of the Gospel were laid aside for the performance of priestly rites. Ecclesiastical government degenerated towards the form of a religious monarchy; while the people were, in most cases, excluded from all share in the management of their own affairs in the churches. Dr. Mosheim, therefore, testifies—“The bishops assumed, in many places, a princely authority, particularly those who presided over the most opulent assemblies. They appropriated to their evangelical function the splendid ensigns of temporal majesty. A throne, surrounded with ministers, exalted above his equals the servant of the meek and humble Jesus, and sumptuous garments dazzled the eye and the mind of the multitude into an ignorant veneration for their arrogated authority. The example of the bishops was ambitiously imitated by the presbyters, who, neglecting the sacred duties of their station, abandoned themselves to the indolence and delicacy of an effeminate and luxurious life. When the honours and privileges of the bishops and presbyters were augmented, the deacons also began to extend their ambitious views, and to despise those lower functions and employments which they had hitherto exercised with such humility and zeal; and the effects of a corrupt ambition were spread through every rank of the sacred order.”

Ecclesiastical ambition was not satisfied with the creation of a hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons; but various lesser orders of ministers were now instituted, on account of the increasing ceremonies which had been adopted in imitation of the heathen mysteries. Various forms of prayer and consecration were prepared for these ceremonies; the table of the Lord was converted into an altar; wax tapers were burnt upon it; the bread and wine were regarded as possessing a kind of saving virtue; and much solemn pomp was observed in celebrating the Lord’s supper. Baptism was preceded by a terrifying process—exorcism, to expel the evil spirit, and the newly baptised persons were required to taste milk and honey, as indicating spiritual food, and the converts from heathenism were sent home from the ceremony adorned with crowns and white garments.

Popery received a vast accession of power, in the beginning of the fourth century, by the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. He became a most munificent patron of Christianity, as by its profession he succeeded to the throne of the Cæsars. The extravagant claims of the ambitious prelates were now confirmed, and the spiritual institution of Jesus Christ was transformed into a worldly system, framed to resemble the civil government of the empire. The bishops of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria were already regarded as superior to the other prelates—as archbishops, with the title of patriarch; and to these was added a fourth, for the new imperial city of Constantinople. Under this first Christian emperor, as Dr. Haweis remarks, “the prelatical government became modelled, after the imperial, into great prefectures, of which Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople, claimed superiority; whilst a sort of feudality was established, descending from patriarchs to metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, some with greater, and others with less extensive spheres of dominion. Instead of the people choosing their own bishops and presbyters, they were no more consulted. The presbyters wholly depended on the bishops and patrons; the bishops were the creatures of patriarchs and metropolitans; or, if the see was important, appointed by the emperor. So ‘church and state’ formed the first inauspicious alliance; and the corruption, which had been plentifully sown before, now ripened by court intrigues for political bishops of imperial appointment, or at the suggestion of the prime minister.”

“This pernicious example,” says Dr. Mosheim, “was soon followed by the several ecclesiastical orders. The presbyters, in many places, assumed an equality with the bishops, in point of rank and authority. Those more particularly of the presbyters and deacons, who filled the first stations of these orders, carried their pretensions to an extravagant length, and were offended at the notion of being placed upon an equal footing with their colleagues. For this reason, they assumed the titles of archpresbyters and archdeacons.”

These newly created dignities required a corresponding style of address, which was soon contrived. It may be remarked, that all these things are contrary to the New Testament; for though all Christians are there described as saints, or holy persons; they are never addressed with pompous titles. Even the apostles are never called Saint John and Saint Peter; these titles are the inventions of popery. Lord Chancellor King remarks, therefore, “It is very seldom, if ever, that the ancients give the title of saints to those holy persons, but singly style them Peter, Paul, John, &c.; not Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint John.” Priestly dignities originated the addresses of “reverend,” “very reverend,” “right reverend,” “most reverend,” “your grace,” “your holiness.”

Constantine having arranged the offices of his government in church and state, soon found it necessary to attempt to produce uniformity of faith, especially as Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, had declared his belief that the Son of God is inferior to the Father, of another nature, and only the first of all created beings. Finding this heresy prevail, he called the bishops of all the provinces to an assembly, A.D. 325, at Nice, in Bithynia. This assembly, famous, as the first general council, consisted of about two thousand and fifty persons, of whom three hundred and eighteen were bishops. These prelates delivered to the emperor letters of grievous accusation against each other, but the prudent sovereign threw the whole into the fire, and referred them to the day of judgment for a settlement. After two months’ deliberation, they agreed on that form denominated “The Nicene Creed,” which required to be believed by all Christians. But, by this celebrated act, the foundation was laid for the pernicious influence of a political priesthood, and for the authority of councils in ecclesiastical matters, above even the Holy Scriptures; and this authority, claimed and acted upon, produced all the superstition, intolerance, and cruelty, which characterise the terrible Inquisition.

Constantine having established the “creed,” required its universal reception. But the Arians refused; and the bishops prevailed on him to issue edicts against them, as enemies of truth, forbidding their public meetings, and giving their places of worship to the orthodox. He banished Arius, and decreed that his books should be burnt; and that whosoever should dare to keep any of them, as soon as this was proved, should suffer death! In two or three years after, the emperor recalled Arius, and repealed his severe laws against his heresy, which prevailed under his son and successor, Constantius. Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, became the champion of orthodoxy; and thus two parties arose among the clergy.

Decrees and state power authorised inquisition and persecution; and “Hence,” says Dr. Mosheim, “arose endless animosities and seditions, treacherous plots, and open acts of injustice and violence, between the two contending parties. Council was assembled against council, and their jarring and contradictory decrees spread perplexity and confusion throughout the Christian world.” One fact will illustrate the spirit of party in this age: eighty orthodox bishops having waited on the Emperor Valerius, to complain of his appointing an Arian bishop of Constantinople, they were murdered by his order, on shipboard, at sea, A.D. 370.

Popery prevailed amid all the contentions; and, A.D. 410, four bishops, deputed from Carthage, obtained an edict from the Emperor Honorius, which doomed to death every one who differed from the Catholic faith. From this edict serious persecutions arose. But, A.D. 451, the council of Chalcedon resolved, “that the same rights and honours conferred on the bishop of Rome, were due to the bishop of Constantinople,” confirming his jurisdiction, which he had before claimed, over all the provinces of Asia.

Imperial dominion, however, was now declining, under a succession of feeble princes. At the opening of the fifth century, Constantinople was the eastern capital, in which Arcadius presided as emperor, while Rome continued the western metropolis; though Honorius kept his court at Ravenna. Swarms of savage hordes, from the northern regions of Europe, under the names of Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Franks, Burgundians, overran the richest provinces, sacking cities, and committing every species of barbarity and cruelty. Some of these barbarians had embraced the name of Christ from Arian teachers; and many of those bishops who held the true divinity of Christ were tortured, banished, or massacred with their people.

Religion became still more corrupted; and public worship consisted chiefly in the performance of ceremonies, differing but little from those of the pagan Greeks and Romans. Both of them had a splendid ritual, gorgeous robes, tiaras, mitres, wax tapers, crosiers, processions, lustrations, images, and many such circumstances of pageantry, were to be seen equally in the heathen temples and in Christian churches. To engage the admiration of the ignorant population, pictures and statues of Christ, of the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus in her arms, and of numerous saints, were set up in the churches, to be admired and worshipped. An invincible efficacy, in expelling evil spirits and healing diseases, was attributed to the presence of the bones of martyrs. The riches and magnificence of the churches exceeded all bounds; and the altars and the chests for the relics of saints were made of the richest materials, some of solid silver.

Everything in the forms of the Catholic religion appeared to produce false ideas, or to excite the worst passions of the human heart. Hence superstition and intolerance, and dreadful persecution among the different parties. Mr. Gibbon states, of the party called Donatists, that “three hundred bishops, with many thousands of the inferior clergy, were torn from their churches, stripped of their ecclesiastical possessions, banished to the islands, and proscribed by the laws, if they presumed to conceal themselves in the provinces of Africa.”

“Religion in the sixth century became still more corrupt; it lay expiring,” as Dr. Mosheim remarks, “under an enormous heap of superstitious inventions. The worship of Christians was now paid to the remains of the true cross, to the images of the saints, and to bones, whose real owners were extremely dubious. The progress of vice among the clergy was truly shocking. In those very places which were consecrated to the advancement of piety, and the service of God, there was little else to be seen but ghostly ambition, insatiable avarice, pious frauds, intolerable pride, and a superstitious contempt of the natural rights of the people, with many other evils still more enormous.”

Episcopal claims continued to be the subjects of constant disputes, especially between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople. John of Rome visited the eastern capital, A.D. 525, to serve his own purpose, but charged by Theodore, the Gothic king of Italy, to engage the emperor Justin to cease from persecuting the Arians. With a crowd of the nobility and clergy, the emperor met him, and bowed down to the very ground before the vicar of the blessed Peter, and coveting the honour of being crowned by him, received at his hands the imperial diadem! The patriarch invited the Pope to perform Divine service in the great church together with him; but he would neither accept the invitation, nor even see the patriarch, till he agreed not only to yield him the first place, but to seat him on a kind of throne above himself, alleging no other reason than because he was the Roman High Priest! The patriarch indulged him in every thing he required, and they celebrated Easter together, with extraordinary pomp and solemnity. The Pope officiated in the Latin tongue, according to the rites of the Latin church.

Pre-eminence being thus acknowledged by the patriarch of Constantinople to the pontiff of Rome, it cannot be matter of wonder that Justinian, the nephew and successor of the emperor Justin, in his epistle to the new Pope, John II., writes, A.D. 533, “We hasten to SUBJECT and to unite to your holiness all the priests of the whole East. Nor do we suffer anything which belongs to the state of the church, however manifest and undoubted, that is agitated, to pass without the knowledge of your holiness, the head of all the holy churches!”

This pre-eminence was given more fully, two years after, in a memorial to the pontiff, by “the bishops and clergy of Constantinople.” It was addressed—“To our most holy lord, and most blessed father of fathers, Agapetus, archbishop of the Romans and patriarch, the bishops of the oriental diocese, and those who dwell in the holy places of Christ our Lord, with the residents and other classes assembled in this royal city.” Plain Christians may wonder at all this sacerdotal blasphemy, so utterly at variance with all that they read in the New Testament, except of the predicted Antichrist!

But the dignity of “universal patriarch” being assumed by the bishop of Constantinople, “Gregory the Great” denounced it as a “profane,” “proud,” “antichristian” title; as “impious,” “execrable,” “blasphemous,” “infernal,” “diabolical.” On this occasion, Gregory assumed the title of affected humility, ever since retained by the Popes, “Servant of the servants of God!” Still that lofty title, which he condemned in his ambitious brother John, he sought for himself, as is evident from his adulatory letter to those monsters of wickedness, Phocas and his wife Leontia.

Phocas had opened a passage to the imperial throne, by the murder of Mauricius and his six sons; and afterwards, most barbarously, of the empress Constantia, and her three daughters, dragging them from their refuge in one of the churches of Constantinople. Mauricius is commended as a prince of many virtues, and of but few vices; and Gregory, in his letters to him, hypocritically declares, that “his tongue could not express the good he had received of the Almighty, and his lord the emperor; and that he thought himself bound, in gratitude, to pray incessantly for the life of his most pious and most Christian lord; and that, in return for the goodness of his most religious lord to him, he could do no less than love the very ground on which he trod.”

Mauricius, however, favouring the title assumed by the patriarch John, Gregory was offended; and, like many a courtier, congratulated the murderer, Phocas, on his being proclaimed emperor; saying, with the most consummate hypocrisy, “Let the heavens rejoice! let the earth leap for joy! let the whole people return thanks for so happy a change!” In the same strain he wrote, in reply to the first letter of Phocas, and to the Empress Leontia he says, “What tongue can utter, what mind can conceive, the thanks we owe to God, who has placed you on the throne, to ease us of the yoke with which we have hitherto been so cruelly galled? Let the angels give glory to God in heaven! let men return thanks to God upon earth! for the republic is relieved, and our sorrows are banished!”

Mr. Bower, in his “Life of Gregory,” asks, “Who would have expected such letters from a Christian bishop to a usurper! a tyrant! a murderer! a regicide? Who would not have thought Gregory, of all men, the least capable of becoming his panegyrist, of applauding him in his usurpation, murder, and tyranny? Gregory, I say, whose manners and whole conduct have hitherto appeared irreproachable! But what virtue can be proof in a Pope against the jealousy of a rival?”

“Gregory the Great” died A.D. 604, without attaining his object; but he has been highly extolled by the Romish church, by whom he has been canonised as a saint. He was a man of profound talents, and of equal priestcraft, as the venerable martyrologist, John Fox, says of this Pope, “Of the number of all the first bishops before him in the primitive time, he was the basest; of all them that came after him he was the best.”

Sabinian succeeded to the popedom, A.D. 605; and Boniface, A.D. 607. This latter priest, formerly nuncio of Gregory, by flattering the emperor, as his master had done, prevailed on Phocas to “revoke the decree of Constantinople in 588, entailing the title of universal bishop on the bishop of Constantinople, and to transfer it to Boniface and his successors, declaring the bishop of Rome the head of the universal church!”

Pope Boniface, therefore, on receiving this imperial edict, assembled a council in the church of St. Peter at Rome, consisting of seventy-two bishops, and thirty-four presbyters, and all the deacons and inferior clergy of the city, and issued a decree as absolute monarch of the church! His successors pursued his policy; “nor did their boundless ambition allow them or the world,” as Mr. Bower states, “to enjoy any rest, till they got themselves acknowleged for UNIVERSAL MONARCHS, as well as UNIVERSAL BISHOPS!”

Throughout the seventh century, popery advanced, while the name of Christianity was dreaded, and by many abhorred, on account of the wicked lives of its professed ministers. It was dishonoured by various heresies and idolatries. Some of their leaders filled the eastern empire with carnage and assassinations, of which, indeed, the Catholics were scarcely less guilty; so that the vengeance of the Christians was regarded with the deepest horror. This shocking exhibition was observed with astonishment by reflecting Jews and pagans; when Mohammed, an Arab travelling merchant, a young man of singular talents, ambition, and enthusiasm, having witnessed these abominations, formed a design of a new system of religion, which should destroy the popular idolatries. Aided, and perhaps prompted by a learned Jew, and an apostate from Christianity, he succeeded. His system rejected the idolatry of the Arabs, and the worship of saints and relics by professed Christians, while it included the chief facts of patriarchal history in the Scriptures, mingled with many Arabian and Jewish fables. This he pretended was the pure religion taught by Moses, by the prophets, and by Jesus Christ. By this artful device, and as a military chief, he engaged multitudes of followers; and thus, by rapine and war, he soon obtained the sovereignty of Arabia and several adjoining countries. In this century, therefore, “the mystery of iniquity” prevailed, fulfilling the Divine prophecies regarding Antichrist in the west, as monarch in the church at Rome, but in the language of Scripture, a “BEAST;” and, in the east, by the imposture of Mohammed, as the predicted “FALSE PROPHET.” (Rev. xvi. 13-xvii.)

Mohammedanism reigned, in all its savage bigotry, in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, under the Saracen and Turkish military leaders, over the finest parts of Asia and Africa, and in several kingdoms of Europe; and as image-worship prevailed among professing Christians, with endless priestly abuses and pious frauds, the Scriptures being almost unknown to the people, many families, nominally Christian, relinquished the name of Christ, assuming that of the false prophet, Mohammed.

Popery still advanced in the west; and the barbarous nations proselyted from paganism, being kept in ignorance of the Holy Scriptures, were unable to detect the gross impositions of the priests, who pretended to possess the power of forgiving the sins of men. Hence, many of the princes and nobles, having acquired wealth by rapine and murder, gave large donations to their religious instructors, to save them from the torments in the future world due to their crimes. These gifts were commonly called “The price of transgression for the redemption of souls!” Pepin, king of France, transferred to Pope Stephen III., A.D. 756, the Italian provinces, which he had conquered from the Lombards; and this was enlarged by the addition of Rome itself, by Charlemagne, a few years after. From that time to the present, that territory has been regarded as “the temporal patrimony of St. Peter.”

Immense riches were by this means soon possessed by the priesthood. Emperors, kings, and princes invested bishops with the possession of whole provinces, cities, castles, and fortresses, with the rights of sovereignty! But, among all these, the Pope maintained his pre-eminence; and this was willingly conceded, as essential to the usurped dominations of the inferior prelates. The western barbarians who received the name of Christ, looked upon the bishop of Rome as they had regarded their arch-druid; and the ignorant people yielded to the bishops a boundless authority, which they had given to their priests in paganism. The consequences of this superstition were most pernicious; for it gave to the Roman pontiff a despotic power in civil affairs; and hence arose the horrible notion, that all those who were excommunicated by the Pope forfeited thereby all their rights as citizens, and the common claims of humanity.

Twenty-eight popes, amid five dreadful schisms, are enumerated in the tenth century; several were sons of the infamous prostitutes Theodora and her daughters, Theodora and Merozia influencing the chief ecclesiastics. Their premature deaths or deposition were the fruits of their flagitious lives, details of which cannot stain these pages. Dr. Mosheim truly states, “the history of the Roman pontiffs that lived in this century, is a history of so many monsters, and not of men, and exhibits a horrible series of the most flagitious, tremendous, and complicated crimes.” Cardinal Baronius describes them as “monstrous and infamous in their lives, dissolute in their manners, and villanous in all things.”

Popery attained its highest elevation in the eleventh century; and this will be seen in its genuine form, as the “man of sin,” “exalting himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped,” in the extravagant titles now assumed by the popes. They were called “universal fathers,” and “masters of the world.” Notwithstanding vigorous opposition from several sovereigns, they carried their insolent pretensions so far as to proclaim themselves, “lords of the universe,” “arbiters of the fate of nations,” and “supreme rulers of the kings and princes of the earth!” One instance of this abominable assumption will best illustrate the hateful spirit of popery, while the reading of it will not fail to shock the feelings of every Christian.

Henry IV., emperor of Germany, opposed the arrogant claims of Gregory VII. The haughty pontiff at once excommunicated him, and excited the princes of the empire to make war upon him. Being ignorant of the Holy Scriptures, and bowed down by superstition, he was terrified by the anathemas of the Pope, as if he had command over the destinies of men, as the pretended vicar of Christ; he was, therefore, persuaded to throw himself into the hands of the pontiff, to yield to his clemency, and to await his dread decision. Filled with apprehension of eternal consequences if he refused, Henry consented; and submitted to the degrading penance which had been prescribed; so as to stand, with his empress and family, at the gates of the fortress of Canusium, during three days, in the open air, in a severe February, A.D. 1077, having his feet bare, his head uncovered, and with no other raiment than a piece of coarse woollen cloth thrown over his body, to cover his nakedness. On the fourth day he was with difficulty admitted to the presence of that lordly priest, who, with the utmost hypocrisy, as a minister of religion, and with much ceremony, granted him absolution! But he forbade him ever after to assume the title or the ensigns of sovereignty! Such a daring outrage upon humanity, as well as royalty, excited universal abhorrence; but not one of the greatest princes in Europe had the courage to utter a word of reproof to the terrible Antichrist!! Such was the spirit and the power that originated and carried on the execrable Court of Holy Inquisition!!

With these advances of the papal power there was a corresponding corruption in the doctrines and ceremonies of religion. While Romanists pretend that theirs is the only pure form of Christianity, we know that all their peculiarities are novelties, the contrivances of priests, to serve their own purposes. Their doctrines were never formed into a system or settled until the council of Trent, at the close of which, A.D. 1564, they were first published in the creed of Pope Pius IV. And one of the greatest points,—relating to the Virgin Mary, whether she were conceived in sin,—fiercely contested between monkish sects in the Romish Church,—was determined in the affirmative, first by Pope Pius IX., in 1849.

Many of the practices had previously been inculcated by individuals, before their establishment as follows:—

CHAPTER III.
ORIGIN OF THE ROMISH INQUISITION.

Persecution of the Paulicians—Albigenses—Their sufferings in Languedoc—In England, Spain, France—Counts Raymond and Roger—Massacre of their People—Dominic, founder of the Inquisition.

Intolerance seems essential to the office of a priest; as no sooner was this character assumed by Christian pastors, than they commenced persecution against those who disputed their claims. Hence originated the Inquisition. Its operations have ever been directed against all who differed from the ruling prelates, even when making their appeal to the Holy Scriptures. And such there were from the time of the apostles. Among the earliest of those who were put to death by professing Christians were the Paulicians.

These people are thought to have been so called from Paul, a preacher, of the Armenian church, in the seventh century; but some consider Constantine of Samosata their founder, about A.D. 660. He received from a pious deacon, who had escaped from captivity among the Mohammedans, a copy of the New Testament. This he esteemed as a precious gift; and, finding the instruction of the Scriptures different from the prevailing superstitions, he formed a system of theology for himself from the sacred oracles. Constantine devoted himself to the work of the ministry, assuming the name of Sylvanus, a companion of the apostle Paul. His colleagues in preaching were called Timothy, Titus, and Tychicus; and six of their churches were named after those to whom Paul had addressed his Epistles. They rejected human traditions in religion, the worship of the Virgin Mary, of images, and of the cross. They abolished the lofty titles of the priesthood, and instituted pastors, with perfect equality, and without robes to distinguish them from the people. In Asia Minor they increased greatly, and the Greek emperors persecuted them grievously. An officer named Simeon was sent, as an inquisitor, to seek Sylvanus, and he was apprehended, with some of his followers, at Colonia. As the price of liberty, they were required to stone their pastor! One only among them, Justus, was found sufficiently base; and he murdered thus his faithful teacher, who fell a martyr for Christ, after having laboured for twenty-seven years, diffusing the doctrine of the Gospel. Justus aggravated his guilt by betraying his brethren; while Simeon, observing the grace of God in the joyful sufferers, embraced the Gospel, forsook the world, preached the faith, and died also a martyr for Jesus.

From the Paulicians arose, as it is believed, a branch of the celebrated Christian confessors, the Valdenses, or Waldenses. Dr. Haweis, therefore, says of them, “At the close of the seventh century we see the first traces of a small but precious body, afterwards named Valdenses, which some suppose a branch of the Paulicians. Retiring from the insolence and oppressions of the Romish clergy, and disgusted with their vices, they sought a hiding-place in the secluded valleys of the Pais de Vaud, embosomed by the Alps, and removed from the observation of their persecutors, where they might enjoy purer worship and communion with God.”

These Paulicians increased, and scriptural knowledge was eagerly sought by several persons, who became eminent preachers in the southern parts of France, in Savoy, in Piedmont, and in the contiguous districts of Germany. Their followers were called after their teachers, or by various contemptuous appellations, taken from their peculiar customs or principles. Some were Petrobrusians, from Peter de Bruys, who, after twenty years’ labour, became a martyr for Christ; Henricians, from Henry, a disciple and colleague of Peter; Albigenses, from the city of Albi, where they were condemned in a council; Cathari, or Puritans, from their seeking the purity of Christian doctrine; and Waldenses, from Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, in France. This great man procured translations of several parts of the Scriptures, and commenced his ministry, having relinquished his trade, about A.D. 1180, especially in France and Lombardy. The converts of these zealous men became very numerous; and they soon attracted the notice of the papal court in this century.

Egbert, a German abbot, says of them, “They are increased to great multitudes throughout all countries. In Germany, we call them Cathari; in Flanders, they call them Pipples; in France, Tisserands (weavers), because many of them are of that occupation.”

Among these people many churches were formed, with intelligent and devout pastors of their own choosing. The Cathari, especially in Piedmont, formed separate societies, which were screened, in a great measure, from the popish prelates, by the retired seclusion of their habitations in the valleys, from which they were called Valdenses.

These people were regarded with jealousy by the prelates, and their enemies commonly accused them of grievous errors; but it is well known that they were slandered, and that, while they rejected the claims and idolatries of the Romish priesthood, they generally held the essentials of the Gospel, as they derived their principles from the Scriptures. Egbert, the abbot, says of them, “They are armed with all those passages of Holy Scripture, which, in any degree, seem to favour their views: with these they know how to defend themselves, and to oppose the Catholic truth, though they mistake entirely the true sense of Scripture, which cannot be discovered without great judgment.”

Evervinus, an abbot in Cologne, in a letter to Bernard, the most famous priest of the church of Rome of his time, called St. Bernard, says, A.D. 1140, “There have been lately some heretics discovered among us, near Cologne, though some of them have, with satisfaction, returned again to the church. One of their bishops and his companions openly opposed us in the assembly of the clergy and laity, in the presence of the archbishop of Cologne and of many of the nobility, defending their heresy by the words of Christ and his apostles. Finding that they made no impression, they desired that a day might be appointed for them, on which they might bring their teachers to a conference, promising to return to the church, provided they found their masters unable to answer the arguments of their opponents, but that otherwise they would rather die than depart from their judgment. Upon this declaration, having been admonished to repent for three days, they were seized by the people in the excess of zeal, and burnt to death; and what is very amazing, they came to the stake, and bore the pain, not only with patience, but even with joy! Were I with you, father, I should be glad to ask you, how these members of Satan could persist in their heresy with such courage and constancy as is scarcely to be found in the most religious believers in Christianity.”

St. Bernard himself was a violent persecutor, yet he says of them, “If you ask them of their faith, nothing can be more Christian; if you observe their conversation, nothing can be more blameless; and what they speak they prove by deeds.” Claudius, archbishop of Turin, writes, “Their heresy excepted, they generally live a purer life than other Christians.” Cassini, a Franciscan friar, says, “That ALL THE ERRORS of these Waldenses consisted in this, that they denied the church of Rome to be the HOLY MOTHER-CHURCH, AND WOULD NOT OBEY HER TRADITIONS!” Thuanus, a Catholic historian, says they are charged with holding, “That the church of Rome, because it renounced the true faith of Christ, was the whore of Babylon, and the barren tree which Christ himself cursed and commanded to be plucked up; that, consequently, no obedience was to be paid to the Pope, or to the bishops who maintain her errors; that a monastic life was the sink and dungeon of the church; that the orders of the priesthood were marks of the great beast mentioned in the Revelation; that the fire of purgatory, the solemn mass, the consecration days of churches, the worship of saints, and propitiation for the dead, were devices of Satan.”

Exemplary as were their morals, and scriptural as were their principles, thus testified by their enemies, cruel persecution was carried on against these dissenters; and the inquisitors, sent by the Pope to search for and to destroy them, brought multitudes to suffer as martyrs for Christ. Some, we have seen, fell victims at Cologne, while others escaped from the power of their enemies. They found, however, the intolerance of popery where-ever they went. This will be illustrated by one fact in English history of that period. Thirty of these persecuted Germans sought an asylum in England, and settled as a church near Oxford, A.D. 1159, but they were apprehended by order of the clergy. Their pastor, Gerard, was a man of learning; and he professed that they believed the doctrines of the apostles, though they disbelieved in purgatory, prayers for the dead, and the invocation of saints. But they were condemned in an ecclesiastical council, and delivered to the magistrates to be punished. The king, Henry II., at the instigation of the ruling clergy, ordered them to be branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron; to be whipped through the streets of Oxford; and, having their clothes cut short at their girdles, to be turned into the open country. None being allowed to afford them shelter, they perished with cold and hunger!

Dr. Milner, in his valuable “Church History,” in recording this fact concerning these earliest dissenters from popery, who were put to death in England, makes this natural reflection:—“What darkness must at that time have filled this island! A wise and sagacious king, a renowned university, the whole body of the clergy and laity, all united in expelling Christ from their coasts! Driven, most probably, from home by the rage of persecution, they had brought the light and power of the Gospel with them into England. Brief as is the account of them, it is evident they were the martyrs of Christ.”

Papal vengeance was threatened against all whom the prelates regarded as heretics; and, A.D. 1163, in the synod of Tours, it was commanded to all bishops and priests in Languedoc, whose capital was Thoulouse, “to take care, and to forbid, under pain of excommunication, every person from presuming to give reception, or the least assistance to the followers of this heresy, which first began in the country of Thoulouse, whenever they shall be discovered. As many of them as can be found, let them be imprisoned by the Catholic princes, and punished with the forfeiture of all their substance.”

In like manner, Pope Alexander III., A.D. 1179, issued an edict, which expresses his mind thus:—“Because in Gascony, Albi, in the parts of Thoulouse, and other regions, the accursed perverseness of the heretics, Cathari, or Patrenas, or Publicans, or distinguished by sundry names, has so prevailed: We therefore SUBJECT TO A CURSE, both themselves and their defenders and harbourers; and, under a curse, we prohibit all persons from admitting them into their houses, or receiving them upon their lands, or cherishing them, or exercising any trade with them. But if any die in their sin, let them not receive Christian burial, under pretence of any privilege granted by us, or any other pretext whatever!”

Some of the Waldenses having escaped to Arragon, in Spain, King Ildefonsus, A.D. 1194, issued an edict, by which he banished them from his kingdom, and all his dominions, as enemies of the cross of Christ, profaners of the Christian religion, and public enemies, adding, “If any, from this day, shall presume to receive into their houses the aforesaid Waldenses, or other heretics, or to hear their abominable preachings, or to give them food, let him know that he shall incur the indignation of Almighty God and ours, and without appeal be punished as though guilty of high treason. However, we give these wicked wretches liberty till the day after All Saints (though it may seem contrary to justice and reason), by which they must be gone from our dominions; but afterwards they shall be plundered, whipped, and beaten, and treated with all manner of disgrace and severity.”

Pope Innocent III., about A.D. 1198, having just ascended the pontifical throne, deputed two monks of Citeaux, Guido and Regnier, to proceed to Narbonne, as inquisitors, to search after and punish heretics; and in the following year, Peter of Castelnau was added to that mission, with increased authority. They promised indulgences to all who afforded them aid against the heretics; and they succeeded in this office, but rendered themselves hated for their bigotry and cruelty, wherever they carried on their antichristian work. They were assisted greatly by the services of a body of preaching friars, under their leader, Dominic. Francis, another zealous monk, with a numerous company of disciples, was deputed by the Pope to contend against the heretics in Italy; and these two leaders became the founders, about A.D. 1200, of the famous, but opposed orders of friars, called, after them, Dominicans and Franciscans.

Castelnau projected the extension of his mission into the territories of Thoulouse, A.D. 1207; but the prince refused his sanction to this invasion, for such a purpose, and the haughty priest excommunicated Raymond. This audacious act received the express sanction of the Pope, but it led to contests; and one of the friends of Raymond, provoked by the insulting denunciations of the agent of the pontiff, struck him with his poniard, and killed him.

Innocent, incensed to fury by the murder of Castelnau, seized the occasion to prosecute the designs of his cruel bigotry, and summoned the counts, barons, and knights of the four provinces of the southern parts of France, to invade the territories of Count Raymond, authorising them to seize the property of the heretics. As the same indulgences were promised to those engaging in this war, as had been assured to the crusaders against the Saracens in the Holy Land, an army of fifty thousand cross-bearers was soon assembled, and placed for service, during the period of forty days, under the direction of Arnald Almeric, abbot of Citeaux. The Pope gave directions regarding this crusade:—“We counsel you, with the apostle Paul, to employ guile with regard to the count; for in this case it ought to be called prudence. We must attack separately, those who are separated from unity. Leave, for a time, the count of Thoulouse, employing towards him a wise dissimulation, that the other heretics may the more easily be defeated, and that afterwards we may crush him, when he shall be left alone.”

Raymond and his nephew, Roger, count of Beziers, waited upon Arnald, to avert the impending storm; but to no purpose. Raymond submitted to the terrible power, and joined the army that was marching against his own subjects and those of his nephew; but he first performed the dreadful penance appointed for him on account of the murder of Castelnau. He was made to swear upon the host, as the body of Christ, and upon the relics of the saints, that he would obey the Pope, and the holy Roman church, and pursue the Albigenses, with fire and sword, till they were extirpated. Having taken this oath, he was ordered to strip himself naked, from head to foot, with only a linen cloth around his waist; the legate threw a priest’s stole round his neck, and leading him by it into the church, nine times round the pretended martyr’s grave, he inflicted the discipline of the church upon the naked shoulders of the humbled prince. He then granted him absolution, on his taking another oath, inviolably to maintain all the rights, privileges, immunities, and liberties of the church and the clergy!

Count Roger offered terms of reconciliation; but the legate rejected his proposals, and intimated that no mercy would be shown to him. The city of Beziers was taken; and the inhabitants, who had crowded into the churches, were barbarously massacred; so that seven thousand corpses were said to have been found in the church of St. Magdalen. Some were desirous of sparing the Catholics who might be among the heretics, and they applied to the legate for that purpose; but, in a rage, he replied, “Kill them all; the Lord knoweth them that are His!”

Beziers contained a population of about fifteen thousand; and Arnald, in his report to the Pope, acknowledged that so many were massacred! But as multitudes, especially women and children, from the surrounding country, had sought a refuge there, in hope of security against the invading army, and none were spared, historians of fidelity reckon that sixty thousand were then murdered by the agents of the Pope, and the city was then burnt to ashes!

Count Roger had escaped to Carcassonne, which was next besieged, as he had shut himself up with the inhabitants in that city; but he offered to capitulate. Dissimulation was practised, as enjoined by the Pope; so that the prince, with three hundred knights, were admitted to confer with Arnald, who, with the leaders of the army, had given a solemn oath for their safety; but having them now in his power, he perfidiously arrested them, delivering them over to the general of the army, Simon de Montfort. The citizens, however, made their escape, during the night, and fled to other provinces; but a few of them being captured, four hundred of the captives were burned alive, and fifty more were hanged, by Simon de Montfort, under the direction of Arnald, as legate of the Pope. The noble Count Roger was thrown into prison, and soon died by violence, as acknowledged by the Pope.

It would be impossible to detail the sufferings of the poor Albigenses, under Simon de Montfort. With an army of cross-bearers, A.D. 1210, he took several strong castles, and hanged the inhabitants and refugees on gibbets. He selected more than a hundred of the people of Brom, tore out their eyes, and cut off their noses, and sent them, under the guidance of a one-eyed man, to Cabaret, to terrify the inhabitants by their example. In the following year, he stormed La Vaur, and destroyed the inhabitants by fire and sword. He hanged Almeric, the governor, lord of Montreal, and then massacred eighty of the chief citizens. His sister, Girarda, the lady of the castle, by order of the count, was thrown into a pit, and covered with stones. He afterwards collected all the heretics in the castle, and burned them, with rejoicing. He took possession of the castle of Cassero, which surrendered; but “the pilgrims, seizing nearly sixty heretics, burned them with infinite joy,” as testified by the Catholic historian, Petrus Pallensis. At Castris de Termis they put Raymond, the governor, into prison, where he died shortly; and, in one large fire, they burned his wife, his sister, and his daughter, with some other noble ladies, whom they could not prevail upon to return to the profession of the church of Rome. Thus they were sacrificed to papal bigotry, as faithful martyrs for Christ! What adds to the revolting character of these murders was, as usual, the bishops and priests present in the army, in their pontifical habits, who expressed their satisfaction in witnessing the carnage, by singing Veni Creator!

Historians scarcely know how to speak of these enormities. Sismondi states, that “hundreds of villages had seen all their inhabitants massacred with a blind fury, and without the crusaders giving themselves the trouble to examine whether they contained a single heretic. We cannot tell what credit to give to the numbers assigned for the armies of the cross, nor whether we may believe that, in the course of a single year, five hundred thousand men were poured into Languedoc.” But this we certainly know, that armies, much superior in numbers, and much inferior in discipline, to those which were employed in other wars, had arrived for seven or eight successive years; that they entered this country without pay, and without magazines; that they provided for all their necessities with the sword; that they considered it as their right to live at the expense of the country; and that all the harvests of the peasants, all the provisions and merchandise of the citizens, were on every occasion seized with a rapacious hand, and divided among the crusaders. No calculation can ascertain, with any degree of precision, the dissipation of wealth, or the destruction of human life, which were the consequences of the crusade against the Albigenses. “There was scarcely a peasant who did not reckon in his family some unhappy one cut off by the sword of Montfort’s soldiers. More than three quarters of the knights and landed proprietors had been spoiled of their castles and fiefs, to gratify some of the French soldiers—some of Simon de Montfort’s creatures. Thus spoiled, they were named Faidits, and had the favour granted them of remaining in the country, provided they were neither heretics nor excommunicated, nor suspected of having given an asylum to those who were so; but they were never to be permitted to enter a walled city, nor to enjoy the honour of mounting a war-horse. Every species of injustice, all kinds of affronts, persecutions of every name, had been heaped on the heads of the unhappy Languedocians, under the general name of Albigenses.”

So truly horrible was this bloody work, that a native of Thoulouse, a poet and a Catholic, who witnessed this crusade against the Albigenses, afterwards delivered the following denunciation against Antichrist:—“I know I shall be censured if I write against Rome, that sink of all evil; but I cannot hold my peace. It is no wonder that the world lies in wickedness. It is you, treacherous Rome, who have sown confusion and war. By the baits of thy delusive pardons, thou deliverest up the French nobility to persecution, and dost establish thy throne in the bottomless pit. Heaven will remember thy pilgrimage to Avignon, and the murders thou committest there. In what book hast thou read that it was thy duty to exterminate Christians? Like an enraged beast, thou devourest both great and small. Rome, your head and whole body is arraigned for having committed that horrible murder at Beziers. Under the appearance of a lamb, with an air of modesty and simplicity, you are inwardly a wily serpent and a ravenous wolf. Rome, I comfort myself in the assurance that thy power will decay, and thou wilt soon be no more. If thy dominion is not destroyed, the world will be overthrown!”

Dominic witnessed many of these sad outrages and dreadful slaughters; and he proceeded, as the chief inquisitor, to search out the number and quality of the alleged heretics, to excite the princes and prelates to extirpate them, and so to fulfil his commission from the Pope. His success he fully reported to Rome; and formed a plan of a regular Court of Inquisition. In this he was aided by a nobleman, with whom he had resided at Thoulouse; for having been seduced by that zealous monk to the Catholic faith, he devoted his mansion and his other property to the service of that father. Dominic submitted his scheme to the papal legate, Arnald, by whom it was highly approved; and that abbot appointed him inquisitor-general in Gallia Narbonensis, about A.D. 1208; and he was confirmed in that office, in the fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, at which Dominic was present, and greatly honoured by the Pope on account of his exploits against the Albigenses.

Dominic was a native of Spain, of the noble family of Gusman. His mother dreamed, before his birth, that she was delivered of a whelp carrying a lighted torch in his mouth; that he alarmed the world by his barking, and set it on fire by his torch. These were interpreted of his preaching, by which he terrified the people, and of his dreadful Inquisition. His promotion was the consequence of his fiery zeal and activity; and his priestly domination will appear from a few passages in his imposition of penance on a reclaimed heretic, as follow:—

“Brother Dominic, the least of preachers, to all Christ’s faithful people, to whom these presents shall come, greeting in the Lord:—

“By the authority of the Cistertian abbot, who hath appointed us to this office, we have reconciled the bearer of these presents, P. Rogerius, converted by God’s blessing from the heretical sect, charging and requiring him, by the oath which he hath taken, that three Sundays, or three festival days, he be led by a priest, naked from his shoulders down to his drawers, from the coming into the town unto the church doors, being whipped all the way!” Most rigorous rules for the whole of his life, and total separation from his wife, were also imposed on him, on pain of excommunication!

Dominic founded sixty monasteries, in different provinces, forming the centres of so many courts of inquisition; and he died, A.D. 1221, esteemed as an extraordinary character; so that he was canonised, A.D. 1234, by Pope Gregory IX. The Dominicans were called Jacobins in France, and Black Friars in England.

CHAPTER IV.
THE INQUISITION IN SEVERAL COUNTRIES.

Inquisition in France—Pontifical decrees—Used by Princes—Arragon, Castile, Navarre and Portugal—Various countries—Sicily, Rome, Venice—Apostolics—Knights Templars—Beghards—Beguins—Lombardy—Milan.

Papal policy, by courts of inquisition, continued to prevail in many countries where they had been established. Raymond the younger recovered the dominions of his father, and banished the inquisitors from Thoulouse. But his chief city was besieged and taken by Amalric, son of Simon de Montfort. In the presence of two cardinals, therefore, he was led up before the high altar in the church, covered with only a linen garment, and there absolved; but it was on the hard condition of resigning the greater part of his dominions. The Inquisition was then restored, and laws still more severe than before were passed against heretics.

Louis, the French king, to oblige and gratify the Pope, made laws against the heretics, constituting every bishop in France a kind of inquisitor, with power to punish those whom he judged enemies of the Pope. Provincial councils were held at Thoulouse, A.D. 1229, and, A.D. 1230, at Rome, where several persons were burnt alive the following year; and at Narbonne, A.D. 1235, in which the prelates made severe laws against the heretics. These laws were collected by order of Pope Gregory IX.; and, with other decretals of Pope Boniface VIII., they formed the laws for the “Court of Holy Inquisition.”

Frederick II., emperor of Germany, issued severe edicts, ordaining that those who should be adjudged as heretics by the prelates of the church, should be put to death without mercy; and that his imperial protection should be enjoyed by the Predicant friars.

Louis, to ingratiate himself with Pope Alexander, as Innocent IV. had appointed the provincial of the Predicant friars inquisitor to extirpate heretics in Thoulouse, requested that pontiff to constitute the prior of the Predicant order at Paris inquisitor over the whole kingdom. The proposal was too pleasing to be refused by him; and he nominated him, therefore, to that office, with ample power. Besides, as many, who had excited the fury of the inquisitors, fled to the churches for the benefit of ecclesiastical immunity, the Pope abolished that privilege. With this he republished seven terrible laws, empowering magistrates to aid the inquisitors in punishing heretics, as ordained by the Emperor Frederick. These pontifical decrees, authorising inquisitors in their proceedings generally, exhibit the will of the Pope regarding those who rejected his religion for the doctrine of Christ in the Scriptures:—

“We being willing to prevent the danger of so many souls, entreat, admonish, and beseech your wisdom, and strictly command you, by these apostolical writings, as you have any regard for the Divine judgment, that you appoint some of the brethren committed to your care, men learned in the law of the Lord, and such as you know to be fit for this purpose, to be preachers generally to the clergy and people; and, in order the more effectually to execute their office, let them take into their assistance some discreet persons, and carefully inquire out heretics. And if they find out any, either really culpable, or such who are defamed, let them proceed against them according to our statutes. And that they may more freely and effectually execute the office committed to them, we, confiding in the mercy of God Almighty, and the authority of the blessed apostles, Peter and Paul, remit, for three years, the penance enjoined them, to all who shall attend their preaching for twenty days. And as for those who shall be happy to die in the prosecution of this affair, we grant a plenary pardon of all their sins, for which they are contrite in their hearts, and which they confess with their mouths.”

This dreadful tribunal was found, by the sovereign princes, to be a convenient engine for revenging supposed or real injuries received by them; since it was necessary, for their purpose, only to bring against their victims the charge of heresy. By this means, a great number of individuals, known to be devoted Catholics, were prosecuted to death by the Emperor Frederick. Yet both he and Louis, as it suited their interests, made vigorous opposition to the proceedings of the Inquisition; for which, however, they paid dearly, as they were threatened and humbled by the haughty Antichrist. Hence arose a series of ruinous contests between the intolerant pontiff and the mightiest sovereign princes.

Spain, at this period, comprehended the four Christian kingdoms of Arragon, under James I.; Castile, under Ferdinand III.; Navarre, under Sancho VIII.; and Portugal, under Sancho II. Arragon was found, A.D. 1232, to contain some of the Waldenses; and the Pope commanded King James to proceed in the work of extirpating them as heretics. A synod was held against them, A.D. 1240, at Tarracon, when the archbishop, with his suffragans, and Peter Cadente, were appointed inquisitors for the province.

Castile and Leon also received this court, A.D. 1290, as it had been established in Arragon. And during the thirteenth century the Inquisition was set up in various other countries, where the Pope possessed influence, especially in Austria, Hungary, Poland, Dalmatia, Ragusia, Bosnia, Croatia, Istria, and several provinces of Germany. It was extended, also, to Syria and Palestine, for the purpose of proceeding against Jews as well as heretics. The policy of the inquisitors, however, differed in different places; but the Austrian Inquisition appears to have been, conducted with extreme cruelty; as Catholic historians testify, that many thousands of those deemed heretics were apprehended, and being condemned, were burnt, by the order of the sacred judges, in the city of Crema.

Sicily received the Inquisition about A.D. 1224. It was at first opposed, both in the town of St. Mark, and at Palermo; but the Emperor Frederick is said to have ordained, as a regulation of the profits arising from its proceedings, that “one-third part of the confiscated goods should be appropriated to the common treasury, another third be reserved for the Pope, and the remainder to be shared by the inquisitors; that the spiritual husbandmen should not be defrauded of their reward.” This privilege seemed to satisfy the ruling powers; it was renewed, A.D. 1452, by King Alphonsus, and confirmed, A.D. 1477, by Ferdinand and Elizabeth; and various other privileges were accorded to the inquisitors by the Emperor Charles V.

Rome had become the court of appeal for the bishops from an early period. This was a most politic arrangement of the Pope. But, to prevent inconvenience to himself, Urban IV. created Ursarius inquisitor-general, A.D. 1265. This office was continued, with some intermissions, until the Reformation under Luther. The doctrines of that great man were disseminated so extensively in Italy, as well as Germany, that the Romish court became alarmed. Pope Clement VII., therefore, ordered that the utmost rigour should be used against all who professed the doctrines of the reformer; and, as their number appeared to increase, exhibiting the utmost boldness, patience, and zeal, Paul III., A.D. 1543, constituted the “Holy Office” with more extended powers, appointing six cardinals as “inquisitors-general.” To these cardinals were added a “commissary-general,” always to be a Dominican; an “assessor-general,” and the “master of the sacred palace.” This court was carried on with magnificence and ceremony suited to the grandees who composed it; and on certain occasions the Pope presided in person. By its dreadful operations the doctrines of the reformers were suppressed, and its professors exterminated from Italy.

Venice received the Inquisition about A.D. 1249, while the contests were being carried on between the Pope and the Emperor. Many persons of different opinions, and, perhaps, under several denominations, fled to Venice, to live in the greater security and quiet of that famous city; but the magistrates, being excited to prevent their city from being polluted by foreign doctrines, chose certain grave persons, zealous for the Catholic faith, to inquire after heretics. Full power was given to the patriarch of Grado, and other Venetian bishops, to judge of those opinions; and it was decreed that whosoever was pronounced an heretic by any bishop should be condemned to the fire. In this process, secular judges made inquisition against heretics, and the duke and senators pronounced the fatal sentence.

Father Paul states, “Notwithstanding the instant requests of Pope Innocent, Alexander, Urban, Clement, and seven other Popes, their successors, the most renowned commonwealth could never be persuaded to receive the office of the friar inquisitors, instituted by the Pope. The secular sufficed it, instituted by itself, and brought forth good fruit for God’s service.”

Nicholas IV., a minor friar, being exalted to the pontifical throne, got the Inquisition to be received by a public decree at Venice, A.D. 1289. Still, this court was established on different principles from those which govern it in other countries; for while the judgment concerning the doctrine for which a person may be pronounced an heretic, is determined by ecclesiastics, the judgment of the fact, or who maintains that doctrine, and the pronouncing of the sentence, are held to belong to the secular judges in Venice. So that they determine what books shall be prohibited, as well as who are heretics, and their court is far milder, and less under the influence of the Pope, than the other inquisitions in Italy.

Among the heretics accused by the inquisitors, there were some forming a sect called apostolics, from their professing to imitate the zeal of the apostles of Christ. They attracted the notice of Pope Honorius, A.D. 1290. Sagarelli, their leader, was condemned by the Inquisition and burned. Dulcinus, another of their teachers, withdrew, with about six thousand adherents, to the valleys of the Alps; but Pope Clement V. sent inquisitors to seek them with an army of crusaders, by which many were driven among the mountains, and perished with cold and hunger. Some of them were captured, including Dulcinus and his wife, who were sacrificed at the stake, as victims to the cruelty of their antichristian persecutors.

Clement V., jealous of the Knights Templars, who possessed large property in France, gladly listened to the accusations against them by the king. Their grand-master, De Molai, and many others, therefore, were arrested, A.D. 1307. The order was abolished in the council held at Vienne, A.D. 1311, and nearly sixty of the prisoners were condemned and burnt. Several others were brought to the stake in Paris, where they protested their innocence; but their property was shared by Pope Clement and Philip, king of France.

Others of the reputed heretics were Beghards, so called from their ardour in prayer; Beguins, pious females of that society; and Lollards, so named from their singing psalms in social worship. These were hunted in several provinces, and punished in the usual manner by the officers of the Inquisition as enemies of the Pope. Some of the Beguins were patronised by persons of distinction; and a famous controversy arose respecting their opinions regarding the possession of property. Four of their leading men were burnt at Marseilles, A.D. 1318; and they were condemned as heretics and arch-heretics by the Pope, A.D. 1329.

Lombardy received the Inquisition before A.D. 1233, when Pope Gregory IX. appointed, as chief-inquisitor, Pietro da Verona, a Dominican. He was the first that put heretics to death at Milan. In the course of his ministry he burnt many, but he was assassinated, A.D. 1252; and another fell a sacrifice to his own cruelty, Pagano da Lecco, A.D. 1277.

About A.D. 1320, the Pope excommunicated Matthew Galeacius, viscount of Milan, his sons, and followers. The city was deprived of its charter, and all its municipal privileges; the citizens, who might favour the viscount, were given up to be seized by the faithful as slaves, in full right, and their property was granted to any who might lay hold of it. All who should supply the city with provisions were in like manner denounced; and this state of things continued during three years, in which the viscount set at nought the papal censures. With a view to humble him, the Pope, John XXII., prosecuted the viscount for heresy; and, after several citations, pronounced the definite sentence against him. The Pope also commanded Aycard, the archbishop of Milan, and the inquisitors in Lombardy, to proceed against him and his adherents; and the bishop of Padua and two abbots published these sentences.

Raymond Cardonus was ordered to collect an army to invade his dominions. Several cities were taken, and the viscount routed; when the senate of Milan sent a deputation of twelve of their elders to implore peace and absolution. Matthew resigned his principality to his son Galeacius, and himself repairing to the cathedral, protested, with a solemn oath, against the Pope’s legate as having treated him unjustly. He left the city, and made the same oath next day in the church of Monza, where he died of fever, through grief. His sons buried him, but his body was sought for to be burned, by order of the cardinal-legate and the inquisitors.

CHAPTER V.
THE WYCLIFFITES AND HUSSITES.

Wycliffe’s ministry—The Lollards—Sawtree—Other Martyrs—Wycliffe’s bones burnt—His writings—Martyrdom of Huss and Jerome—Persecution of the Hussites—The Waldenses.

Divine prophecy dooms a perpetual overthrow to popery; and it declares also that this is to be accomplished by the light of the Gospel of Christ. Instruments and agents, therefore, are needed for this important work; and these began to increase in the fourteenth century. But the Inquisition was fearfully employed in various forms to destroy them.

Among the most distinguished opponents of the papacy, we must number John Wycliffe, justly called “The Morning Star of the Reformation!” He was born A.D. 1324; and being enlightened by the Holy Scriptures, his ministry, under the Spirit of God, and his numerous writings, especially his translation of the Bible, contributed very much to prepare the way for the Protestant Reformation. This great man was impelled, not only by love to the truth of Christ, but by an extensive knowledge of the enormous evils manifestly arising from the Romish priestcraft. The papal exactions in England were grievous, estimated at five times the amount of the royal revenue; and the parliament determined, therefore, A.D. 1374, to seek redress by a remonstrance, sent by delegates, who should present it to the Pope. Wycliffe was one of them; and during two years, near the seat of “his holiness,” he had an opportunity of observing the intrigues and iniquities of the court of Rome.

Wycliffe became the more determined in his opposition to the friars, who, as agents of the Pope and the Inquisition, were enemies to the welfare of the country. Their false doctrines, avarice, and wickedness were exposed by the reformer, with the light of Divine truth; and he possessed the best opportunities of doing good service to the cause of Christ, as professor of divinity in the university of Oxford. But his boldness in the Gospel provoked the papal court; and the Pope addressed letters to the heads of the colleges, requiring them, by inquisitors and punishment, to suppress his doctrine, and to deliver him in custody to the archbishop of Canterbury or the bishop of London. He then appealed to those prelates, requiring them to apprehend the daring reformer, and to keep him in irons till they should receive his further orders from Rome. The king also was required by the Pope to aid those prelates in proceeding against Wycliffe. He was cited before the prelates, at the palace of the archbishop of Canterbury; but he was secure under the protection of John of Gaunt, the great duke of Lancaster.

Divine Providence favoured this zealous servant of Christ, so that he escaped the prison, and died in peace, A.D. 1384. Multitudes were enlightened by his controversial and evangelical writings, and by his translation of the Scriptures. Many from the Continent sought his instruction and copies of his works; by which he contributed to produce a revolution in religion, not only in England, but in several other kingdoms in Europe.

Wycliffe’s enemies were indefatigable during his life; and after his death they persecuted his disciples. Oxford was regarded as infected with his heresies; and those who followed his scriptural doctrines were distinguished as “Lollards.” The heads of the university were, therefore, required, on pain of excommunication, to inquire, every month, whether any scholar held doctrines contrary to the decisions of the church. “Twelve inquisitors of heresy—for this dreadful name,” as Dr. Southey remarks, “had been introduced among us—were appointed at Oxford, to search out heresy and heretical books.”

King Richard II. being deposed, was succeeded, A.D. 1392, by Henry II., a dupe of the prelates; and under him they procured the sanguinary statute, ex officio, which authorised the bishops, as inquisitors, to proceed against all persons suspected of heresy. This was the first law in England for the burning of men on account of religion.

William Sawtree, parish priest of St. Osith’s, London, was the first that was condemned to the stake in England, A.D. 1400; and the forms of degradation and execution were carefully observed, that it might be an exact precedent for future occasions. These forms, Dr. Southey states, “were probably derived from the practice of the accursed Inquisition in Languedoc; and they were well devised for prolonging the impression on the spectators.” After the ceremonies of degradation, “the cap of a layman was placed upon his head, and Archbishop Arundel then delivered him, as a lay person, to the secular court of the high constable and marshal of England there present; beseeching the court to receive favourably the said William Sawtree, unto them thus recommitted. For with this hypocritical recommendation to mercy the Romish church always delivered over its victims to be burnt alive! Sawtree accordingly suffered martyrdom at the stake in Smithfield, leaving a name slandered by the Romanists, but held in deserved respect for the sake of the Gospel by British Christians.”

Wycliffe’s disciples continued to be sought after by the inquisitors, and many suffered at the stake for Christ. But volumes are required to detail their sufferings and triumphs.

Archbishop Arundel procured “a law for ever,” A.D. 1410, “that whosoever they were that should read the Scriptures in the mother tongue,” which was then denounced as “Wycliffe’s learning,” should “forfeit lands, cattle, body, life, and goods, from their heirs for ever, and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and most arrant traitors to the land.”

Bale says, “Anon after, that Act was proclaimed throughout the realm, and then the bishops, the priests, and the monks, had a world somewhat to their minds. For then were many taken in divers quarters, and suffered most cruel deaths. And many fled out of the land into Germany, Bohemia, France, Spain, Portugal, and into Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, working there many marvels against the false kingdom, too long to write. In the Christmas following was Sir Roger Acton, knight, Master John Browne, and Sir John Beverly, a learned preacher, and divers others, imprisoned for quarrelling with certain priests. In January following, A.D. 1413, was the before-named Sir Roger Acton, Master John Browne, Sir John Beverly, and thirty-six more, of whom the more part were gentlemen of birth, convicted of heresy by the bishops, and condemned of treason by the temporality, and, according to the Act, were first hanged and then burned in the Giles-field. In the same year, also, one John Claydon, a skinner, and one Richard Turning, a baker, were both hanged and burned in Smithfield by that Act, besides what was done in all other quarters of England; which was no small number, if it were thoroughly known.” Fox calls Sir Roger Acton “this worthy, noble, virtuous knight,” in giving an account of the dreadful persecutions of these faithful martyrs of Christ.

Wycliffe’s ashes were not allowed to rest in quiet: for, A.D. 1415, by the council of Constance, forty-four conclusions, drawn from his writings, were declared to be heretical, and their author condemned as an obstinate heretic. Inquisitors sought his bones, which were ordered to be dug up and cast upon a dunghill; but the sentence was not executed till A.D. 1428, when Pope Martin V. sent order to Fleming, bishop of Lincoln, once a professed favourer of the reformed doctrine. The inquisitors obeyed the order of the bishop—the bones were burnt, and the ashes were cast into the adjoining rivulet, Swift. From Lutterworth, as Dr. Fuller beautifully remarks, “this brook conveyed his ashes into the Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; they into the ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are emblems of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all over the world!”

Wycliffe’s writings were copied and circulated among studious inquirers after the Gospel in several nations; and, as the sister of Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia, had become the queen of Richard II., learned Bohemians frequented England. One of these, Jerome of Prague, on his return from study at Oxford, A.D. 1400, carried with him some of Wycliffe’s books, which became the means of enlightening John Huss, a famous divine of Prague university. He laboured to promote a reformation, opposing the false miracles, and impostures, and evil lives of the priests. But the archbishop being incensed against him, accused him before the Inquisition, from which he appealed by proctors to Cardinal Colonna, who declared him contumacious, and excommunicated him. He then appealed to the Pope, who confirmed the sentence, and excommunicated his followers. But he continued his labours in teaching and writing, until he was summoned before the council of Constance. The Emperor Sigismund pledged his honour for his protection, and John, Count of Chlum, interposed on his behalf; but that holy synod violated the solemn engagement of the emperor, seizing his person, and requiring him to plead guilty of heresy in thirty propositions extracted from his writings. With this requisition of the inquisitors Huss could not comply; yet he protested his readiness to yield to the testimony of Holy Scripture. Being then presented before the council, in the presence of the emperor, the princes of the empire, and an immense assemblage of prelates, he was condemned to the stake, and his writings to be burned.

Dignified priests endeavoured in vain to induce him to recant. The bishops stripped him of his priestly robes, and put on his head a mitre of paper, on which devils were painted, with the inscription, “Ringleader of Heretics.” They then delivered him to the unworthy emperor, and he to the duke of Bavaria. His books were burnt at the church gate, and he was led to the stake at the suburbs of the city. He manifested the true spirit of a martyr for Christ. Multitudes attended his execution, and were astonished at his piety, saying, “What this man has done before, we know not; but we hear him now offer up most excellent prayers to God.”

Huss wished to address the people; but the elector palatine prevented him, ordering that he should immediately be burnt. The martyr then cried with a loud voice, “Lord Jesus, I humbly suffer this cruel death for thy sake; I pray thee forgive all my enemies.” Thus suffered Dr. John Huss, as a faithful martyr of Jesus, A.D. 1415; leaving a most instructive example to the church of God, and the fame, as Luther testifies, of being “a most rational expounder of Scripture.”

Jerome also was sacrificed to papal bigotry. For, having translated the works of Wycliffe into his native language, and professed himself a reformer of Christian doctrine and worship in connexion with Dr. Huss, when he heard of his friend’s danger at Constance, he repaired thither in hope of rendering him some assistance. Jerome found that the inquisitors had caused him also to be cited before the council, and that his own destruction had been determined. He returned, therefore, to Bohemia, after writing to the emperor in favour of his friend; but he was arrested, and imprisoned for nearly a year. By the tortures and entreaties of the inquisitors he was induced to sign a recantation. His conscience, however, would not allow him to suffer this to stand; and he was brought again before the inquisitors. He defended the principles of his martyred friend, and made a solemn appeal to his persecutors:—“How unjust is it, that ye will not hear me! Ye confined me three hundred and forty days in several prisons, where I have been cramped with irons, almost poisoned with filth and stench, and pinched with the want of all necessaries. During this time, ye always gave to my enemies a hearing, but refused to hear me so much as a single hour. I came to Constance to defend John Huss, because I advised him to go thither, and had promised to come to his assistance, in case he should be oppressed. Nor am I ashamed to make here a public confession of my own cowardice. I confess, and tremble while I think of it, that, through fear of punishment by fire, I basely consented against my conscience to the condemnation of Wycliffe and Huss. I appeal to the Sovereign Judge of all the earth, in whose presence ye must shortly answer me!”

Jerome’s judges were implacable, and he was murdered at the stake, singing a hymn in the flames, while he yielded up his spirit to his Divine Redeemer, A.D. 1416.

Many of the nobles of Bohemia regarded the murder of these two excellent men as an outrage against their nation, and they meditated revenge. This passion was inflamed by the policy of Pope Martin, who promoted the organisation of the Inquisition in their country, and excited the Catholics in Moravia to unite in the destruction of the Hussites. King Wenceslaus inclined to support the Pope, but through terror of being opposed in the bloody work, he died, A.D. 1419, when the crown of Bohemia falling to the emperor, Sigismund sent an army on a crusade against the heretics. Multitudes fell victims to their cruel bigotry, and perished in the mines of Kuttenburgh, and by drowning, as well as at the stake. It is said there were thrown into one mine 1,701 persons; into another, 1,038; and into a third, 1,334, A.D. 1420.

The chief magistrate of Litomerici, a cruel bigot, to gratify the inquisitors, caused twenty-four of the principal citizens to be arrested and accused of heresy. One of these was the husband of his own daughter. They were imprisoned in a lofty tower; and, when perishing with hunger and cold, they were brought out and sentenced to immediate death by drowning in the river Albis. The magistrate himself had to pronounce the sentence upon them, which he performed, regardless of the tears and entreaties of his daughter; and the whole were conveyed in carts, bound hand and foot, to the river, into which they were plunged, while officers were employed, armed with iron forks and poles, to watch that none might escape, and to stab those who should make the attempt. The young lady, being unable to move her cruel father to pity, plunged into the river, in hope of aiding her husband to escape—but she failed; and the next day the bodies of both were found in the water, her arms clasped around the body of her husband! Other instances of murderous cruelty, equally shocking, are recorded of the bloody operations of the Inquisition.

Many of the Hussites now withdrew to a high mountain, which they fortified; and there they held their religious meetings, administering the Lord’s supper, not only in bread, but with wine, which had been forbidden by the Catholics. Their fortification they called Tabor, and the people were hence called Taborites. They chose leaders, and defeated the troops of the emperor in eleven engagements; so that they gained the use of the cup in the Lord’s supper, by the consent of the council of Basil, A.D. 1431.

Part of the Hussites sought more than the cup; they insisted on having a reformation according to the Scriptures. They were still persecuted by the Catholics, and obliged to conceal themselves in thickets and caves, kindling fire only at night, when they read the Scriptures and united in the social worship of God. Stephen, their last bishop, having been burnt alive for his profession of Christ, the Bohemian brethren united with the Waldenses, A.D. 1480.

CHAPTER VI.
THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN.

Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella—Holy Office—Torquemada, inquisitor—His victims and policy—Persecution of Jews—Diego Deza—Cisneros—Charles V.—Philip II.—Acts of faith—Victims under Philip II.—Murder of his son, Don Carlos.

Spain, above every other country, has been afflicted and degraded by the court of inquisition. We have seen that it was introduced into its provinces at an early period, and several persons were publicly burnt, A.D. 1302, in Arragon, by Father Bernard; and one of the spectacles of burning heretics, A.D. 1325, was sanctioned by the presence of King James and his two sons. About A.D. 1356, Nicholas Eymerick, inquisitor-general of Arragon, wrote a book of rules, as “The Guide of Inquisitors;” and this was the chief directory, though the Inquisition greatly declined, until the union of the crowns of Arragon, Castile and Leon, Asturias and Granada, by the marriage of Ferdinand V. of Arragon, with Isabella, queen of Castile, A.D. 1474.

Spain being thus united under one government, the “Modern Inquisition” was established, in a new form, for the discovery of Moors and heretics, but especially Jews. This people, by diligence in trade, had acquired great wealth; they were celebrated for their learning, and some of them had risen to the highest offices in the state. Yet, even from the first, they were subjected to insult, on account of their religion, by the professors of Christianity. Many of the Jews, however, professed to be converted to the faith of Christ, and intermarried with the Spanish nobility; but no sooner had Ferdinand and Isabella ascended the throne, than the Romish prelates appealed to them, as Catholic princes, to give their sanction to an increased activity and power of the Inquisition.

Isabella was unwilling to become thus guilty of the blood of her subjects; but Ferdinand was led by the priests, and the queen at length yielded to their bigoted counsels. Pope Sixtus IV., therefore, A.D. 1471, at her request, granted a bull, enjoining the arrest and punishment of heretics and apostates. Gentle means were employed for two years, as was desired by Isabella; but it was then reported by the priests, that these were insufficient; and, A.D. 1480, Michael Morillo and John de San Martin, both Dominicans, were constituted inquisitors, with various subordinate officers.

Seville was the seat of their first operations. In their progress, they were furnished by the governors of provinces, according to royal orders, with whatever they required; and the citizens, though opposed to the institution, yielded to the royal commission. They issued their first edict, January 2nd, 1481; and many, dreading the vengeance of the Inquisition, fled from the city. The Spanish nobles were commanded by the inquisitors to seize the emigrants as heretics; their property was confiscated, and such numbers were arrested that they were obliged to provide a larger prison. On a tablet of this building was engraved the following, in barbarous Latin:—

“The Holy Office of the Inquisition, established against the wickedness of heretics, commenced at Seville in the year 1481, under the pontificate of Sixtus IV., who granted, and in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, who had asked for it. The first inquisitor-general was friar Thomas de Torquemada, prior of the convent of Santa Cruz, of Segovia, of the order of the Preaching Brotherhood. God grant that, for the propagation and maintenance of the faith, it may last until the end of the ages. ‘Arise, O Lord, be judge in thy cause—catch the foxes.’”

Terror might reasonably seize the minds of the people; for, January 6th, only four days after the first edict, six persons were publicly burnt to death by the inquisitors; and, about a month after, a much larger number. On account of the numerous victims, the prefect of Seville erected a stone scaffold. Upon this were placed four large hollow statues of plaster, called “the four prophets,” and within, or chained to these, the condemned wretches were burnt. Innocence was by no means a guarantee against imprisonment, confiscation of property, or even death; for the inquisitors invited accusations, and the accusers were secure, as their depositions were kept secret, and the parties accused knew nothing of their being suspected until they had been arrested and chained in the dungeons of the Inquisition.

These inquisitors travelled, and held their courts in different cities, where their agents had filled the prisons. Though the records of the tribunals were not accurately kept, the numbers convicted and punished were most frightful. Llorente estimates the numbers at Seville, A.D. 1481, at 2,000 burnt; 2,000 burnt in effigy; and 17,000 punished by penances; total, 21,000. In 1482, there were eighty-eight burnt; forty-four burnt in effigy; and 625 subjected to penances; total, 757!

Torquemada prosecuted his duties with such vigour and zeal that, A.D. 1483, Pope Sixtus appointed him inquisitor-general of Castile and Leon, and of Arragon. These powers being confirmed by Pope Innocent VIII., A.D. 1485, distinct tribunals were established at Seville, Cordova, Jaen, Villa-Real, and Toledo. King Ferdinand appointed a royal council of the Inquisition, and Torquemada as its president; and this council published, A.D. 1486, a code of laws for the tribunal. These were revised by the president, with additions, A.D. 1488, and again, A.D. 1498. These laws and rules for the Inquisition were worthy of the spirit of their authors, and the genius of the institution, indicating the cunning and malignity of a fiend, rather than the mind of a Christian. Their enforcement, therefore, threw all classes of society in Spain into the deepest misery, such multitudes being condemned and executed. Upwards of one hundred thousand families were reputed to have emigrated from the country. Absolution or redress might, indeed, be obtained at the court of Rome for money, and immense sums were expended, until it was found that it affected the salaries of the Inquisition; when the practice of such appeals was abolished, as being a violation of the agreement of the Pope with Ferdinand and Isabella.

Another expedient was adopted to enrich the Inquisition. The inquisitors charged the Jews with persuading their brethren who had professed Christianity to return to the faith of Israel; with crucifying children on Good Friday, in contempt of our Saviour; and with the fact of the Jewish physicians and surgeons, who were esteemed the most skilful of the medical practitioners, having caused the death of Henry III. In their alarm, they offered Ferdinand and Isabella thirty thousand pieces of silver, in aid of the war against Granada; and to refrain from all trades and professions that might be filled with Christians. Those sovereigns being about to accept the proposal, Torquemada rushed into their presence, holding a crucifix, and appealing to the king and queen—“Behold Him, whom Judas sold for thirty pieces of silver; do you sell Him for a greater sum?” Casting down the crucifix, the haughty priest left the royal apartment; but he gained his object, for the king and queen published a decree, March 31st, 1492, commanding all the Jews to leave the kingdom within three months, under the penalty of death and confiscation of their property. Christians were forbidden to afford them the least assistance. They were allowed to sell their stock, and take their furniture, but not any gold or silver with them. Some of them emigrated to the states of Barbary, where they were cruelly treated by the Moors; so that they returned to Spain and professed Christianity. Others retired to Portugal, where they were permitted to live for a time, and then they were sold as slaves.

How many Jews were thus expelled from Spain, through the Inquisition, cannot be correctly ascertained; some reckon 160,000, and others as many as 800,000. Mariana states that the number was estimated at 170,000 families, or 800,000 souls! But if we suppose only the smaller number, as the Jews were the most intelligent and wealthy part of the community, the expulsion of them was a serious national loss to Spain.

Torquemada having so far prevailed, exhibited his intolerant haughtiness in such a manner that he was dreaded by all. He was not satisfied with the condemnation of thousands of the rich among the laity, but he laboured to subject the bishops to his hated court. Pope Alexander VI. received continual complaints against him; but he feared to suspend him. However, he constituted four others as joint inquisitors-general, A.D. 1494; and Torquemada died in November, A.D. 1498, execrated by the whole community. Aware of the public hatred, he always kept a horn of a unicorn on his table, as the supposed means of discovering poison in his food; and in public he was guarded by a troop of fifty familiars of the Inquisition on horseback, and two hundred on foot, for which he obtained the licence of Ferdinand and Isabella.

During the period that Torquemada held the office of inquisitor-general, the total number of his victims was more than 10,000, committed to the flames: nearly 7,000 burnt in effigy; and upwards of 97,000 sentenced to confiscation, perpetual imprisonment, or infamy!

That terrible inquisitor was succeeded by Don Diego Deza, a Dominican, archbishop of Seville. He was confirmed in his office by the Pope’s bull, December 1, 1498; and proved himself worthy to follow the sanguinary Torquemada. He laboured to re-establish the Inquisition in Sicily and in Naples; and in Granada against the Moors, many of whom, as well as Jews, were cruelly harassed in Spain. Deza prosecuted some of the prelates and the nobility; and the number of his victims, during eight years, were reckoned at 38,440 persons; 2,592 burnt; 896 burnt in effigy; and 34,952 punished by penances.

Ximenes de Cisneros succeeded Deza. He is reported to have been far milder in his temper and administration than his predecessors; yet he re-organised or established the Inquisition in Seville, Cordova, Jaen, Toledo, Estremadura, Murcia, Valladolid, Calahorra, Barcelona, Saragossa, Pampeluna, Cuenca in Valencia, Majorca, Sardinia, the Canary Islands, Oran in Algiers, and America. Yet, with all his moderation, Llorente reckons his victims, during eleven years, as 3,564 burnt; 1232 burnt in effigy; and 48,059 punished by penances; total, 52,855!

Charles V. succeeded his father, Ferdinand, on the throne of Spain, in January, 1517; and during his reign the Cortes made various attempts to reform the Inquisition, that its dreadful proceedings might be conducted publicly, and according to the rules of the common law; but by means of immense presents to the chancellor, and by the representations of Cardinal Adrian, the inquisitor-general, Charles was induced to support the existing enormities of the terrible court. Adrian was elected Pope, in January, 1522; and during the five years of his office, his victims were 28,220; of whom, 1,344 were burnt; 672 burnt in effigy; and 26,214 were punished by penance.

Charles V. was elected emperor of Germany, A.D. 1520, and he became, during nearly forty years, the greatest sovereign in Europe. He sanctioned the Inquisition in persecuting the Lutherans, and all reformers of religion; and how he regarded that pernicious court will appear from his will, in which he commends it to his son Philip thus:—

“Out of regard to my duty to Almighty God, and from my great affection to the most serene prince, Philip II., my dearest son, and from the strong and earnest desire I have, that he may be safe under the protection of virtue, rather than the greatness of his riches, I charge him, with the greatest affection of soul, that he take special care of all things relating to the honour and glory of God, as becomes the most Catholic king, and a prince zealous for the Divine commands, and that he be always obedient to the commands of the church. And, amongst other things, this I principally and most ardently recommend to him, highly to honour and constantly support the office of the Holy Inquisition, as constituted by God against heretical pravity, with its ministers and officials; because by this single remedy the most grievous offences against God can be remedied. Also I command him, that he would be careful to preserve to all churches and ecclesiastical persons their immunities.” In a codicil to his will, also, he thus enjoins his son:—“I ardently desire, and with the greatest possible earnestness beseech him, and command him by his regards to me, his most affectionate father, that in this matter, in which the welfare of all Spain is concerned, he be most zealously careful to punish all infected with heresy, with the severity due to their crimes; and that to this intent he confer the greatest honour on the office of the Holy Inquisition, by the care of which the Catholic faith will be increased in his kingdoms, and the Christian religion be preserved.”

King Philip was obedient to these commands of his father, as the proceedings of the inquisitors in his several provinces proved, as well as his sanction to the horrid course of persecutions and martyrdoms under his queen, in England. See Chapter IX.

On Trinity Sunday, May 21, 1559, there was a most solemn auto da fé against the Spanish Lutherans, in the Great Square of Valladolid. The Princess Donna Juana (governess of the kingdom, in the absence of her brother, Philip II.), the Prince Don Carlos, and many grandees of Spain, as well as prelates and nobles of Castile, and a multitude of ladies and gentlemen, all assisted on that occasion. Sixteen persons were brought out in that auto, to be reconciled by penance; also, the remains and effigy of a lady, already dead, and fourteen living persons, to be consumed by the devouring element! The lady was Donna Eleonora de Vibero, proprietress of a convent in the city. Her daughter, Beatrice, and her two sons, Francis and Dr. Augustin Cazalla, were sacrificed at the stake in this dread auto, all being convicted of Lutheranism.

At Seville, the same year, another auto was celebrated, in which John Pontius, son of Roderic, earl of Villalon, was publicly burnt as a Lutheran. With him were executed, John Gonsalvus, a preacher, with four ladies of note; Bohorques, scarcely twenty years of age; Maria Viroesia, Cornelia, and Vœnia, in whose house assemblies were held for prayer. Besides these, were seven others, and among them, a student, a physician, and a nun. The sacrifice of this company of thirteen persons, besides several effigies, was attended with great pomp, yet it excited the indignation of not a few of the citizens. Two others escaped the fire, dying previously in prison; Dr. John Egidius, nominated by the emperor as bishop of Drossen, and Dr. Constantine Pontius, the confessor of Charles V. They were victims of the Inquisition, suspected of holding the doctrines of Luther.

Philip being alienated from his queen, Mary, left England in 1557, and proceeded to his army in Picardy; and after his arrival in Spain he demanded an auto da fé, which was celebrated with extraordinary magnificence. De Castro, in his very interesting volume, “Spanish Protestants and their Persecutions by Philip II.,” says:—

“Although so many were burnt or oppressed with ignominious penances at the before-mentioned auto da fé, the inquisitors reserved the greatest number, and most noted of the prisoners for Protestantism, in order to bring them to condign punishment on the arrival of Philip II.; a festival very appropriate to this monarch, whose reign in England, with the barbarous Mary Tudor, had terminated after broiling in the flames there a multitude of Protestants.

“This auto was celebrated on the 8th of October, 1559. In order to greater decorum and solemnity, this most pious monarch thought it opportune to assist, with all his court, in those horrors, and recreate himself in the frightful destruction of many of his subjects, illustrious for their birth, their virtue, and their learning.

“Don Diego de Simancas, then secretary of the holy office, says, ‘The auto of those heretics was most solemnly celebrated in the Great Square, upon a stage made upon a new plan, so contrived, that from all parts the culprits might be seen. Upon other stages were assembled the council and principal persons; and so great was the concourse of people, who came from all the country round, that it was believed the number of persons assembled, including those of the city, could not be less than 200,000! In this fashion the most pious king, the clergy, the nobility, and the people, with tumultuous haste, had recourse to a method of amusement worthy of cannibals, or the ancient Mexicans.’”

In the month of October, 1560, twenty-eight persons, many of them members of the noblest families in Spain, were tied to the stakes and publicly burnt, as Lutheran heretics, in the presence of the king at Valladolid.

Philip was not satisfied, however, with the sacrifice of his citizens; he extended the Inquisition to the navy, appointing an inquisitor to his fleet in the year 1571; so that, among the seamen of Spain, many were sacrificed in a public act of faith, in the city of Messina. He established this court at Lima, in 1571, and in Mexico; and in the year 1574, a public act of faith was held in the market-place of that city. In this, there were eighty penitents; two of them, an Englishman and a Frenchman, were released; some others, for judaising and sorcery, were reconciled; but many of them were burnt to death, in the presence of the viceroy, the senate, the priests, and a large concourse of the Mexicans.

Philip II. died in September, 1598, after having reigned forty-two years. His name was abhorred in his own dominions on account of his sanguinary bigotry, and his pernicious policy in government. Historians represent him as worthy to be classed with those monsters of cruelty, Nero and Domitian, deserving the execration of mankind.

The number of the victims of the Inquisition during the reign of Philip II. was estimated at not less than 40,664; of whom, 6,300 were burnt; 3,124 were burnt in effigy; and 31,240 were subjected to various humiliating penances. This was, therefore, the reign of terror in Spain.

Philip’s cruelty may be further illustrated by one act of his domestic administration; for he added his own son, and heir to his throne, to the number of his victims. Don Carlos being shocked at the cruelties exercised by the duke of Alva against the Protestants in the Netherlands, [see Chapter VII.] at the entreaty of several nobles, desired a commission to govern that country, as viceroy, that he might give toleration to those who rejected the domination of the Pope. But his father, attended by several of his privy counsellors and twelve guards, entered his chamber in the middle of the night, seized him, and threw him into prison. The nation was astonished at this outrage against the prince; and the Emperor Maximilian besought Philip to set him at liberty; but in vain. A junta, of whom the inquisitor-general was president, was appointed to try Don Carlos; and he was kept in close confinement. None were allowed to visit him, not even the queen, or the princess, Donna Juana, lest the complaints of the prince should become public; those officials only, with one physician, were permitted to see him, who were appointed by the king. Philip himself dared not see him, fearing the reproaches of the injured prince; and he appears to have been secretly murdered,—the prevailing opinion is, by poison,—July 24, 1568, at the age of twenty-three years!

Philip would never satisfy the public regarding the particulars of the prince’s death. De Castro says, “Don Carlos fell a victim to his desires to banish from Flanders the horrors of the Inquisition, and set all men’s consciences free in matters of religion. The greatest crime of which Carlos was held by his father, the palace favourites, and the inquisitors, to be guilty, was that of entertaining Protestant doctrines. This was the report in and out of Spain. There is one circumstance which confirms the opinion that Don Carlos was murdered, viz., that the Marquis de Bergnes died in the court under the suspicion of having been poisoned; the Baron de Montigny was secretly beheaded in the palace of Segovia, and the Counts of Egmont and Horn perished on a scaffold, before the populace of Brussels,—all of them for their secret correspondence with Don. Carlos!”

Spain greatly declined under this inhuman policy of Philip II., who was succeeded by his son, Philip III., who reigned twenty-three years, dying March 31st, 1621. The number of his victims in the Inquisition in that period was 15,824; of whom 1,840 were burnt; 736 were burnt in effigy; and 13,248 were subjected to penances. Philip IV. succeeded his father, and died in 1665, having reigned forty-four years; in which period the victims of the Inquisition were 18,304; of whom, 2,816 were burnt; 1,408 were burnt in effigy; and 14,080 suffered severe penances. Philip IV. was succeeded by his son, Charles II., only four years old; and at his marriage, in 1680, he was honoured with the celebration of an auto da fé, on a scale of great magnificence, at Madrid! A description of this will be found in Chapter XV.

CHAPTER VII.
THE INQUISITION IN PORTUGAL AND THE NETHERLANDS.

Jews in Portugal—Popular hatred against them—The Inquisition against them—In several cities—Established in Goa—Decree against the Jews—Even after they professed Christianity—Luther’s followers in the Netherlands—Inquisitors seek them—Alarm in the cities—Edicts of Charles V.—Philip succeeds him—Duke of Alva’s murders—“United Provinces.”

Portugal, as we have seen, received some of the Jews, who had been persecuted and driven from Spain under the inquisitor-general Torquemada. Every possible effort, by persecution and cruelty, was employed to convert them to a profession of Christianity. Their children were taken from them,—all under the age of fourteen,—and educated in the Catholic belief. Sismondi states,—“On the occasion of a newly-converted Jew, in 1506, who had appeared to disbelieve in some miracle, the people of Lisbon rose, and having assassinated him, burnt his dead body in the public square. A monk, in the midst of the tumult, addressed the populace, exhorting them not to rest satisfied with so slight a vengeance, in return for such an insult offered to our Lord. Two other monks, raising the crucifix, then placed themselves at the head of the seditious mob, crying aloud only these words, ‘Heresy! heresy! Exterminate! exterminate!’ And during the three following days, two thousand of the newly converted, men, women, and children, were put to the sword, and their reeking limbs, yet warm and palpitating, burnt in the public places of the city. The same fanaticism extending to the armies, converted Portuguese soldiers into the executioners of infidels and the tyrants of the east. At length, in the year 1540, John III. succeeded in establishing the Inquisition, which the progress of superstition had been long preparing.”

King John established the “Holy Office” in Portugal, on the model of that in Spain. “How great his zeal was to maintain the faith in its ancient splendour,” says a Catholic historian, “his introducing the sacred tribunal of the inquisitors of heresy into Portugal, is an abundant proof, bravely overcoming those difficulties and obstructions which the devil had cunningly raised in the city, to prevent or retard his majesty’s endeavours. For he learned experience from others, and grew wise by the misfortunes of many kingdoms, which, from the most flourishing state, were brought to ruin and destruction, by monstrous and deadly heresies. And it is very worthy of observation, that the year in which the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition against heretical pravity was brought into Portugal, the kingdom laboured under the most dreadful barrenness and famine. But when the tribunal was once erected, the following year was remarkable for an incredible plenty, commonly called ‘the year of St. Blaze,’ because before his festival the seed could not be sown in the ground for want of rain, whereas, afterwards, provision was so cheap, that a bushel of corn was sold for two-pence.”

Didacus de Silva was the first inquisitor-general in Portugal, and he erected tribunals in several cities, the first at Evora, A.D. 1537, appointing John de Mello the first inquisitor in that city. The tribunal at Lisbon was erected in 1539, by Cardinal Henry, the second inquisitor-general; and another court at Coimbra, in 1541.

Portugal possessed several foreign provinces, among which was Goa, on the Malabar coast of India. Francis Xavier, A.D. 1545, signified to King John III., “that the Jewish wickedness spread every day more and more, in the parts of the East Indies subject to the kingdom of Portugal; and therefore he earnestly besought the king, that to cure so great an evil he would take care to send the office of the Inquisition into those countries.” Upon this, Cardinal Henry, then inquisitor-general in the kingdom of Portugal, erected the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition in the city of Goa, the metropolis, and sent into those parts inquisitors, and other necessary officials, who should take diligent care of the affairs of the faith. Alexius Diaz Falcano entered upon his office, as inquisitor at Goa, A.D. 1541. And from that period this tribunal has continued, so that by its intolerance, victims, and cruelties, it has brought the province to the lowest stage of degradation, and a burden as well as a disgrace to Portugal.

On several occasions, general indulgences were granted to the Hebrew converts in Portugal, in hope of reconciling them fully to the papacy. The first was by Pope Clement VII., A.D. 1535; and this was confirmed by Pope Paul III., A.D. 1536. The second was issued by the same pontiff, A.D. 1547; at the same time the inquisitors were required to proceed with greater vigour against judaisers in that kingdom. Still he granted a general pardon to the new converts and their children.

Sebastian, king of Portugal, on the occasion of his preparation for his unfortunate expedition into Africa, in which he fell, granted to the descendants of the Jews, A.D. 1577, for a large sum of money, that their effects should not be confiscated for ten years. This pretended liberality, though sanctioned by Pope Gregory XIII., was contrary to the advice of Philip II., his uncle, the king of Spain; but upon the defeat of the king’s army by the Saracens, the same year, Cardinal Henry, the king’s great uncle, succeeding him on the throne, immediately recalled the said grant, with consent of the Pope, declaring, as the reason of this revocation, “that after the most mature consultation of learned men, they all agreed that he was bound to make such revocation, because the good of the faith required it.”

Cardinal Henry dying in the year 1580, the crown of Portugal fell to Philip, king of Spain; and the new Christians, as the conforming Jews were called, offered him a large sum of money, on condition of his obtaining for them a general indulgence from the Pope; but his divines declared, “that God was greatly offended with such money; and that he could not reasonably expect any prosperous success from it.” So Philip disregarded their offers of money, though he was engaged in an expensive war with England and France.

These Jewish Christians in Portugal continued for many years to endeavour, by repeated entreaties, to procure the abolition of the Inquisition, or at least the mitigation of its laws and policy. But they were only deluded by empty words and flattering promises: for they have remained liable to the penalties ordained against heretics, and to the terrors of the Inquisition, on being accused, as being in every way opposed to the principles and doctrines of Rome.

Charles V., the famous emperor of Germany and king of Spain, was the great supporter of the Inquisition in the Netherlands. These provinces, comprehending Belgium, Holland, and several adjacent countries, he inherited from his father. At an early period, many of their divines procured the writings and embraced the doctrines of Luther; and, therefore, the Inquisition was introduced there, A.D. 1521, by Francis Vander Hulst, chancellor of the emperor in Brabant, and Nicolas Van Egmont, a Carmelite friar. These were appointed inquisitors-general; and their characters and policy we learn from the celebrated Erasmus. He says, in a letter to the archbishop of Palermo, A.D. 1524, “Now the sword is given to two violent haters of good learning, Hulst and Egmont. If they have a spite against any man, they throw him into prison; here the matter is transacted among a few, and the innocent suffers barbarous usage, that they may not lose anything of their authority; and when they find they have done entirely wrong, they cry out, ‘We must take care of the faith.’” In another letter to a friend, he says, “There reigns Egmont, a furious person, armed with the sword, who hates me twice more than he doth Luther. His colleague is Francis Hulst, a great enemy of learning. They first throw men into prison, and then seek out for crimes for which to accuse them. These things the emperor is ignorant of, though it would be worth his while to know them.”

Many followers of Christ, therefore, suffered under these cruel inquisitors by various torments, and the Emperor Charles endeavoured to establish the Inquisition in the Netherlands, after the manner of its operations in Spain. For this purpose he published an edict against heretics; commanding all magistrates, when required by the inquisitors, and at the request of the bishops, to proceed against any in the affair of heresy, and to afford their utmost countenance and assistance in the execution of their office, discovering and apprehending those who might be infected with heretical pravity. This decree authorised them to proceed against transgressors by execution, whatever their dignity or privileges.

Terror filled the minds of the people on learning the character of this edict, and the most gloomy apprehensions excited many to prepare to emigrate from Antwerp. The magistrates, therefore, assembled the chief merchants and traders, to ascertain from them what losses had been sustained by the city, and what further damage was expected from the establishment of the Inquisition. They declared their minds; and a memorial was prepared and laid before Queen Mary, sister of Charles V., and at that time governess of the Netherlands, showing largely, from the edict of the emperor, from the instructions of the inquisitors, and from the privileges of Brabant, how many evils appeared to threaten the city and the whole country. They besought her to intercede with the emperor, that so rich and flourish a city might not be ruined by the operations of the Inquisition. The several orders of Brabant united with those of Antwerp; and the queen was prevailed on to undertake their cause. She at once proceeded to Augsburg, where she obtained another edict, allowing the ecclesiastical judges to demand some persons from the imperial courts to join with them in proceeding against any one accused of heresy. This did by no means meet the case; it was, therefore, received at Antwerp under protestation, that this edict should not derogate anything from the statutes and privileges of the citizens. Still they were ill at ease, such was the dread of the cruelty which had been known of the inquisitors; especially as they saw that those who were privately commissioned by the pope and the emperor to the office of inquisitors, acted as such by themselves, and by their commissaries. For several were shortly condemned as heretics, in many cities; of whom some were beheaded, others hanged, or burned, and some tied up in sacks and drowned!

King Philip succeeding his father, was appealed to against these enormities, and petitioned to grant religious toleration in the Netherlands. But superstition held the mind of the royal fanatic; and he prostrated himself before a crucifix, solemnly imploring—“I beseech the Divine Majesty, that I may never suffer myself to be, or to be called, the lord of those who deny Thee, the Lord!”

Resolved to annihilate the reformation in the Netherlands, Philip converted the three bishoprics into archbishoprics, and established seventeen bishoprics, with a court of inquisition, under the direction of Cardinal Granvile. The Prince of Orange, Count Egmont, and Count Horn remonstrated with the Duchess of Parma, against the Inquisition and Cardinal Granvile. This was in vain. The executions of the Inquisition became more frequent and more rigorous than before; and a general combination was resolved on, to procure a redress of the common grievances. The Duchess of Parma remonstrated with Philip; but the infatuated monarch was deaf to every argument; and the only concession which he made was, that, for the future, heretics, instead of being burnt, should be hanged.

Philip, influenced by superstition, and governed by the priests, supported the policy of the inquisitors in the Netherlands. Their cruelties, therefore, increased, until the people broke out into open revolt. The populace made disturbances, throwing down the images in the churches, and committing other acts of violence. The king threatened vengeance upon the transgressors; and submitted the case to the supreme court of inquisition in Spain, to know its judgment concerning the revolters—information and depositions being given by the inferior inquisitors among the disaffected, that court determined that the inhabitants of the Netherlands were guilty of treason.

Philip now indulged his bigotry to the utmost, regardless of the welfare of his subjects. He sent “the Duke of Alva, of infamous memory,” into the Netherlands, with a powerful army to destroy the heretics. That monster, whose bigotry, pride, and stubbornness corresponded with those of his royal master, is said to have “poured out the Protestant blood as water on every side; while one hundred and twenty thousand fled from the persecution.” Throughout all their cities, old and young, men and women, without any distinction of dignity, age, or sex, might be seen suffering by the sword, the gibbet, the fire, and other torments, until the wretched people, roused with indignation, arose as one man, and totally overthrew the horrid Inquisition. William, prince of Orange, undertook the deliverance of his native country, which he accomplished with troops levied among the refugees and the German Protestants. The mortified King of Spain recalled the Duke of Alva; but that “monster boasted that he had delivered into the hands of the executioners above eighteen thousand heretics and rebels, besides those who died in the war!”

Father Paul reckons the Belgic martyrs at 50,000; but Hugo Grotius estimates the numbers who suffered by the hands of the executioner at no less than 100,000. Popery, however, with the accursed Inquisition, was thus driven from the country, and the civil war terminated only with a new form of government, which formed a new Protestant state in Europe, under the title of “The Seven United Provinces.”

CHAPTER VIII.
THE INQUISITION IN FRANCE.

Martyrs in France—Francis I., a persecutor—His mother, Louisa, establishes the Inquisition—Early victims—Francis pursues her policy—His processions and victims—His horrid death—Increase of Protestants—Charles IX.—Massacre—Edict of Nantes—Its revocation—Barbarities of dragoons.

France supplied a large number of victims to the cruel bigotry of the Inquisition, at the period of the reformation, especially in the reign of Francis I. This great monarch was nephew to Louis XII., whom he succeeded on the throne at his death, January 21, 1515. Francis was then twenty-one years of age; and no sooner was he seated on the throne than he resolved on an expedition into Italy, in which he was successful. After the battle of Marignan, in which he was victorious, Francis entered Milan, October 23, 1515; and shortly after concluded a peace with Pope Leo X., by which he was confirmed in many privileges, he and the Pope making various concessions. Leo and Francis met at Bologna, where they drew up a treaty, known as the “The Concordat,” in virtue of which they agreed to sacrifice what were understood as the rights of the church, mutually sharing the spoils. The king conceded to the Pope his supremacy, independent of all councils of the church, while Leo despoiled the ecclesiastical corporations of France of the power to nominate to the bishoprics, bestowing this patronage upon the monarch. This treaty was ratified by the Pope making a public procession to the cathedral at Bologna, the king bearing the train of His Holiness! Francis felt conscious of the iniquitous character of the Concordat; and, turning to Duprat, his chancellor, whispered, “there is enough in it to damn us both!”

Francis and Leo having thus linked their interests together, separated, each to pursue his own course: but the king having afterwards been irritated by some delays of the Pope, complained to the papal legate of the conduct of Leo; adding, that if he were not speedily satisfied, he would countenance the Lutherans in his kingdom. The priestly ambassador replied in a manner that silenced the high-spirited monarch. “Sire,” said he, “you would be the first and greatest loser by such a step—a new religion demands a new prince!” By this means Francis was prepared, under the influence of superstition and fear for his crown, to show the most ardent zeal for the cause of the Pope and his Inquisition.

Two ladies, at this period, exercised extraordinary influence in religion in France. Margaret, the duchess of Alençon, sister of Francis, entertained opinions far different from those of the king; and she afforded her powerful protection to the reformers, who increased in several parts of France, especially at Meaux and Lyons. Louisa of Savoy, mother of Francis, professedly a Roman Catholic, but in reality a woman of no religious principle, was made regent of the kingdom, while he carried his arms into Italy, in 1524. He was, at first, successful; but, being eager to take Pavia, he was defeated near that city by the imperial forces, and taken prisoner by Lannoy, vice-king of Naples.

Francis I. became a captive in the power of the Emperor Charles V., and was carried a prisoner into Spain. During his absence the terrors of the Inquisition were felt in France. For, no sooner had Louisa obtained possession of the reins of government, by the captivity of the king, her son, than she wrote to the Pope, as the means of conciliating his favour, asking his advice as to the best mode of dealing with the heretics that infested France. Clement VII., exasperated by the failure of every attempt to arrest the progress of the reformation in Germany and Switzerland, was delighted with the message which laid the heretics throughout the “Most Christian kingdom of France” at the mercy of the sovereign pontiff. He responded with practical effect; and, by a papal bull, established the Inquisition in France.

For the purpose of carrying out his policy, the Pope appointed Chancellor Duprat to be archbishop of Sens, and created him a cardinal. Thus the Inquisition was, at once, constituted in France, as all the influential powers,—the regent, the chancellor, and the parliament,—were leagued with the Pope and the Sorbonne, to exterminate heresy with fire and sword. A commission was appointed, consisting of four priests, to whom was entrusted absolute power to proceed against all persons suspected of being tainted with Lutheran doctrines. The highest dignitaries were held responsible to this dread tribunal; and the first victim of the inquisitors was Briconnet, count of Montbrun, bishop of Meaux. He was compelled to answer, like the humblest priest, before two of the inquisitors, and every appeal that he attempted to make to the parliament, or to the regent, was rejected. He recanted the evangelical doctrines that he had preached; and Lefevre, an aged professor in the university, “the forerunner of the reformation,” fled to Strasburgh. But neither the fall of the bishop, nor the flight of the doctor, could satisfy the inquisitors of Paris. Jean Pavanne was burned at the stake in the Place de Grève, rejoicing that he was counted worthy to suffer death for Christ. Their next victim was “the good hermit of Livry.” As he had evangelised the villagers around his dwelling, about nine miles from Paris, it was resolved to make him a public example. A vast pile was raised in the open area in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame, in which this servant of Christ was sacrificed, in the presence of the whole of the clergy, and a multitude of the people, who had been called together by the great bell of the cathedral. To such humble victims others were added of higher rank, and by other means than the prison and the stake. Michael D’Arande, chaplain to the Princess Margaret, was threatened with death, and Anthony Papillon, chief master of requests to the Dauphin, was carried off by poison. The inquisitors, in a few months, had committed to the flames, or driven from France, nearly every individual who had been the object of their envy or suspicion. At length, after a year’s captivity in Spain, Francis obtained his freedom, on most humiliating conditions, to the performance of which he was bound by a solemn oath. From this oath to the emperor the Pope gave him absolution, and thereby bound him more closely to himself by such faithless bonds of perjury and deceit. But this favour rendered it the more difficult for him to change the policy which, under the regency of his mother, had delivered up the heretics of France to the inquisitors of Rome.

Francis returned to Paris in the character of a doubly perjured vassal of the Pope, bound to assume the office of the persecutor, and take the lead in devoting to tortures and to death the most virtuous, enlightened and faithful of his subjects. The great change which had taken place in the temper of Francis on his return from Spain, became remarkably manifest on his delivering up Louis Berquin, called “the most learned of the nobility,” to the vengeance of the inquisitors. His books were seized, and, in order to strike at the root of the heresy, Luther’s writings were publicly burnt before the cathedral of Notre Dame. Berquin remained faithful; he refused to purchase life by the sacrifice of his faith; and Francis ceased to be protector and king. When the parliament interfered with his early schemes of policy, his haughty reply had been, “There is a king in France;” and when the court, responding to the proud spirit of the sovereign, interfered on the former arrest of Berquin, the king exclaimed, “Of what is he accused? Of challenging the custom of invoking the Virgin in place of the Holy Ghost! Is it for such trifles that they imprison a king’s officer? It is an attack, aimed at literature, true religion, the nobility, nay, the crown itself.” But Francis had descended from this kingly standing to become the wretched tool of a bigoted priesthood. Berquin, the “king’s officer,” was abandoned to his enemies. He was condemned to have his tongue pierced and to be burnt alive; and the sentence was executed with the most merciless severity. Berquin held fast his faith; and his execution was followed by that of fourteen other reformers, who were burnt at the stake, maintaining, to their latest breath, the true faith of Christ.

Francis not only allowed a free course to the inquisitors, and abandoned the nobles of France to their fury, he was drawn to be their humble agent among the executioners of their cruelties. At the beginning of 1535, Jean Morin, the surintendant-criminel, flung into prison immense numbers of men, women, and children, who attended the religious meetings of the evangelicals. They were betrayed by a man named Guainier, who had been employed to keep watch at their secret religious assemblies. These furnished victims for a solemn procession, which the king ordered at Paris, January 21, 1535, in expiation of the offence pretended to have been committed in certain placards, which denied the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation.

Laval, in his “History of the Protestant Reformation in France,” describes this procession, thus expressed by a modern writer:—“Between the hours of eight and nine in the morning the procession began to issue from the church of Saint Geneviéve. There was a long line of priests, dressed in their gorgeous garments; the streets were strewed with flowers, and the windows were crowded with spectators. First were borne the bodies and relics of all the martyrs preserved in the different churches of Paris,—St. Germain, St. Merry, St. Marceau, St. Geneviéve, St. Opportune, St. Landré, St. Honoré; and all those relics of the Holy Chapel which had never been exposed to the public gaze since the grand and mournful day of the funeral of Saint Louis. Then followed a great number of cardinals in their scarlet robes; of bishops, abbés, and other prelates, and all the members of the University of Paris, marching in regular order. Then came Du Bellay, bishop of Paris, carrying in his hands the holy sacrament. Then the king, with his head bare, and bearing a large waxen taper in his hand; then the queen; the princes of the blood; two hundred gentlemen; the king’s guard; the court of parliament; the master of requests, and all the officers of justice. The ambassadors of the emperor, of England, of Venice, &c., were present. The procession, in grave order, proceeded through all the larger streets of Paris; and at six principal places there were erected at each a reposoir, or temporary altar, adorned with flowers, crucifixes, candlesticks, &c., &c. Little children, dressed as angels, or holding the lamb of peace, are usually to be seen at these reposoirs; but here was now a terrible spectacle prepared. At each altar a scaffold and a pile had been arranged, where were very cruelly burned six people, amid the marvellous shouts and rejoicings of the populace, so highly excited, that it was with difficulty they were prevented from snatching the victims out of the hands of the executioners and tearing them in pieces. But if the fury of these was great, the constancy of the martyrs was greater still. The cruelty of the people, in tearing these sufferers to atoms, would have been mercy, compared to the barbarity of the king. He had commanded that these victims should be fastened to a very lofty machine, the beam of which projecting, was, by means of pulleys, raised and lowered alternately; and as it rose and fell it plunged the martyr into a blazing pile below, and raised him up again in order to prolong his sufferings. This continued till the flames had destroyed the cords which bound him, and the body sank into the fire. This horrible machine was not set in motion till the king, queen, and all present might enjoy the satisfaction of seeing the heretic tormented with the flames; during which time the king, handing his torch to the Cardinal de Loraine, joined his hands, and prostrating himself humbly, called down the blessing of heaven upon his people; and in this attitude remained until the agonies of the victim had terminated.

“The procession ended where it began, at the church of St. Geneviéve. The holy sacrament was replaced in the tabernacle, and the mass was sung by the archbishop of Paris. After this there was a splendid dinner, at which the archbishop received the king, the peers, the ambassadors, the courts of parliament, &c., &c. At the conclusion of which entertainment, the king, addressing the numerous guests, after expressing his grief at the execrable opinions that were disseminated in his dominions, said ‘that he had determined and commanded that the most rigorous punishment should be inflicted upon the delinquents; and he required all his subjects to denounce every one whom they should know to be adherents unto, or accomplices in such blasphemies, without regard to alliance, lineage, or friendship. As for himself, if his very arm were thus corrupted, he would tear it from his body; and if his own children were found guilty of falling into such enormities, he would at once yield them up as a first sacrifice to God!’ To give force to his words, the king ordered the executions of the sacramentaries to continue; and from that time the numbers who perished by the balançoire (or swing) is appalling.”

Europe was filled with the reports of these cruelties on the French reformers, and the Protestant princes remonstrated with the king. But Francis had become the slave of superstition and priestly intolerance, and governed by the inquisitors of Rome. He continued his cruel and impolitic course, under the counsel of the inquisitors; and issued a terrible edict, in 1540, against the Vaudois, requiring “that the villages of Mirandol, Cabrieres, Les Aignes, and other places shall all be destroyed, the houses razed to the ground; their caverns and other subterranean retreats demolished; their forests cut down; their fruit trees torn up by the roots; the principal chiefs executed; and the women and children exiled for perpetuity.”

These people were reported as exemplary in their industry; that “they never say mass for the dead; they have prayer in the vulgar tongue; they have no bishops, nor priests, but men whom they elect as simple ministers.” The Papists, therefore, hated their religion, and envied their prosperity, resulting from industry; so that they prevailed on the king to abandon his deserving subjects to the exterminating sword and fire of the inquisitors. Men, women, and children were massacred with fiendish cruelty. Towns, villages, and hamlets were devoted to the flames. Death was threatened to all who should offer food or shelter to the fugitives, so that those who escaped the sword of the persecutors, perished in the mountains.

Francis is said to have been stung with remorse on reflecting upon this infamous massacre, especially on his death-bed. He died in 1547, as the persecutor dies,—despairing, dishonoured, and undeplored. His eldest son, the dauphin, died of poison, administered by his cup-bearer; and his own death is believed to have been caused by the same instrument of revenge, administered by the husband of a lady whom he had dishonoured. His character, therefore, was worthy of “the mystery of iniquity,” the Romish Antichrist.

France exhibited a long series of the most bloody scenes, after the decease of Francis I., the horrid fruit of the Inquisition, the detail of which would require a volume. Notwithstanding persecution, the Protestants increased greatly; so that, in 1570, it is recorded, there were two thousand one hundred and fifty congregations of Protestants in France, some of them containing two thousand members! Papal intrigues were long employed, under the direction of the inquisitors, for their extirpation; and the pages of history do not contain such another record of monstrous treachery and malignant barbarity, as that of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. It is to be remembered that the deed was perpetrated in the name of the religion of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace!

Charles IX., king of France, guided by his wicked mother, the infamous Catherine de Medicis, was induced, by the agents of the Pope, to resolve upon exterminating, by one decisive effort, all the dissenters from the Romish church. For this purpose, many of the principal Protestants were invited to Paris, under a solemn oath of safety, to celebrate the marriage of the king of Navarre with the French king’s sister. The queen dowager of Navarre, a zealous Protestant, was destroyed before the marriage was solemnised, by means of poison, concealed in a pair of gloves. The inhuman butchery commenced at the tolling of the bell of the Palais de Justice, at two o’clock in the morning of the 24th of August (the Sabbath), by the murder of the Admiral Coligny, who had been shot at and wounded two days previously. The hypocritical king of France visited him, and declared the admiral’s wound was his own. But the shocking work was conducted by the Duke of Guise, urged on by the king himself in person!

Most dreadful was the scene. The shrieks of women and children rent the air, mingled with the shouts and blasphemous execrations of their murderers. “Imagine,” says a French author, “sixty thousand assassins, armed with pistols, stakes, cutlasses, poniards, knives, and other deadly weapons, rushing along the streets, blaspheming and abusing the sacred name of God, and murdering and mutilating the innocent and defenceless, amid a horrible tempest of yells and savage cries, and the piteous shrieks of those whom they dragged through the mire, or flung headlong into the bloody Seine!” Five hundred gentlemen, and ten thousand of the common people are believed to have been sacrificed in this horrid massacre, in three days, within the walls of Paris alone. But the bloody work extended to all places where these evangelical dissenters were known; and it is calculated that not less than a hundred thousand Protestants were at this time destroyed in France!

On the third day of the massacre, the priests led the king in royal state to the cathedral of Notre Dame, when high mass was performed; and then solemn thanksgivings to God were rendered, as for the victory which he had thus granted over the enemies of the church! This melancholy tragedy was known to have been contrived by the Romish inquisitors. The announcement of it was received by the clergy, at Rome and in Spain, with expressions of unbounded exultation. The messenger who brought the news to Rome was rewarded with a thousand crowns; and when the letters from the papal legate residing at the French court were read in the assembly of cardinals, it was decreed, that the Pope should march with his cardinals to the church of St. Mark, to offer solemn thanks to God for so signal a blessing conferred upon the see of Rome! Medals to commemorate this horrid deed were struck in Paris and in Rome, by order of the Governments; and that of Pope Gregory XIII., though proclaiming the everlasting dishonour of the papacy and the Inquisition, may still be obtained at the mint of Rome!

Charles IX. raged in savage cruelty against the Protestants. Even the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé were devoted to the same destruction; but their lives were spared on their professing to be reconciled to the Romish church; the king of France, with a terrible oath, proposing to them, “mass, death, or the Bastile for life!” This royal bigot, however, fell a victim to guilt and remorse; for he died, May 30th, 1574, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, after suffering dreadful bodily and mental anguish, poisoned, as many believed, by the hand of his own mother!

As to the sacrifices of the Protestants in France, it is collected from authentic records that during forty years, in the middle of this century, not less than a million were the victims of the unrelenting bigotry of the Romish inquisitors!

Protestantism still survived in France; and many again took up arms in their own defence, until 1598, when Henry IV., of Navarre, succeeded to the throne. He granted the famous “Edict of Nantes,” which was called “Irrevocable!” and by which the Protestants were allowed liberty of conscience, the free exercise of their religion, and access to all places of public trust and dignity. But the Papists continued by all kinds of intrigues to annoy them. One shameful invasion of their rights succeeded another, by the enactment of inhuman laws, until the reign of Louis XIV., who was prevailed on, in 1685, by the Popish bishops and the Jesuits, contrary to the most solemn obligations which human or divine laws can frame, to revoke the “Irrevocable Edict of Nantes.”

By this means it was intended, in one grand effort, to extirpate the very remembrance of the Protestant profession in France. Reconciliation with Rome was required, or banishment from the kingdom. Fifteen days were allowed to the preachers and professors, and many of them fled. About eight hundred thousand, chiefly artisans, escaped from the dragoons, who were commissioned to destroy those who would not conform. Many of the exiles, being weavers, were well received in England, where they contributed greatly to the wealth and prosperity of the nation, by their woollen factories in Yorkshire and the west, and by their silk works in Spitalfields, London.

Those who could not escape were treated with every species of brutality. “The troopers, soldiers and dragoons,” says a French Protestant author, in 1686, “went into the Protestants’ houses, where they marred and defaced their household stuff, broke their looking-glasses, and other utensils and ornaments. Those things which they could not destroy in this manner—such as furniture of beds, linens, wearing apparel, plate, &c.,—they carried to the market-place, and sold them to the Jesuits and other Roman Catholics. They turned the dining-rooms of gentlemen into stables for their horses; and treated the owners of the houses where they were quartered with the highest indignity and cruelty, lashing them about from one to another, day and night, without intermission, not suffering them to eat or drink. In several places the soldiers applied ret-hot irons to the hands and feet of men and breasts of women. At Nantes they hung up several women and maids by their feet, and others by their arm-pits, and thus exposed them to public view, stark naked. They bound to posts mothers that gave suck, and let their sucking infants lie languishing in their sight for several days and nights, crying, mourning, and gasping for life. Some they bound before a great fire, and, being half-roasted, let them go—a punishment worse than death. Amidst a thousand hideous cries and blasphemies, they hung up men and women by the hair, and some by their feet, on hooks in chimneys, and smoked them with wisps of wet hay till they were suffocated. They tied some under the arms with ropes, and plunged them again and again into wells; they bound others like criminals, put them to the tortures, and, with a funnel, filled them with wine, till the fumes of it took away their reason, when they made them say they consented to be Catholics. They stripped them naked, and, after a thousand indignities, stuck them with pins and needles from head to foot. They cut and slashed them with knives; and sometimes with red-hot pincers took hold of them by the nose and other parts of the body, and dragged them about the rooms till they promised to be Catholics. They beat them with staves, and thus bruised, and with broken bones, dragged them to the church, where their forced presence was taken for abjuration. In some places they tied fathers and husbands to their bed-posts, and, before their eyes, ravished their wives and daughters with impunity. With these scenes of desolation and horror the popish clergy feasted their eyes, and made them only a matter of laughter and sport. Though my heart aches, I beg the reader’s patience to lay before him two other instances, which, if he hath a heart like mine, he will not be able to read without watering these sheets with tears. The first is of a young woman, who being brought before the council, upon refusing to abjure her religion, was ordered to prison. There they shaved her head, singed off the hair from other parts of her body; and having stripped her stark naked, led her through the streets of the city, where many a blow was given her, and stones flung at her; then they set her up to the neck in a tub of water for awhile; they took her out, and put on her a shift dipped in wine, which, as it dried and stuck to her sore and bruised body, they snatched off again, and then had another ready dipped in wine to clap on her. This they repeated six times, thereby making her body exceeding raw and sore. When all these cruelties could not shake her constancy, they fastened her by the feet in a kind of gibbet, and let her hang in that posture, with her head downward, till she expired!

“The other is of a man in whose house were quartered some of these missionary dragoons. One day, having drunk plentifully of his wine, and broken their glasses at every health, they filled the floor with fragments, and by often walking over them reduced them to very small pieces. This done, in the insolence of their mirth they resolved on a dance, and told their Protestant host that he must be one of their company; but as he would not be of their religion, he must dance quite bare-foot; and thus bare-foot they drove him about the room, treading on the sharp points of the broken glasses. When he was no longer able to stand, they laid him on a bed, and, in a short time, stripped him stark naked, and rolled him from one end of the room to the other, till every part of his body was full of the fragments of glass. After this they dragged him to his bed; and, having sent for a surgeon, obliged him to cut out the pieces of glass with his instruments, thereby putting him to the most exquisite and horrible pains that can be possibly conceived!

“These, fellow Protestants, were the methods used by the ‘Most Christian King’s’ apostolic dragoons to convert his heretical subjects to the Roman Catholic faith! These, and many other of the like nature, were the torments to which Louis XIV. delivered them over to bring them to his own church; and as popery is unchangeably the same, these are the tortures prepared for you, if ever that religion should be permitted to become settled amongst you; the consideration of which made Luther say of it, what every man that knows anything of Christianity must agree with him in:—‘If you have no other reason to go out of the Roman church, this alone would suffice, that you see and hear how, contrary to the law of God, THEY SHED INNOCENT BLOOD. This single circumstance shall, God willing, ever separate me from the papacy. And if I was now subject to it, and could blame nothing in any of their doctrines; yet, for this crime of cruelty, I would fly from her communion, as from a den of thieves and murderers!’”

CHAPTER IX.
THE INQUISITION IN ENGLAND.

Spiritual Courts—Henry VIII.—His zeal for Popery—Martyrdom of Anne Askew—Queen Mary marries Philip of Spain—The Inquisition and Martyrs—High Commission—Martyrs under Elizabeth—Archbp. Whitgift’s cruelty—Udall—Archbishop Laud—Sufferings of Dr. Leighton—Abolition of Spiritual Courts under William III.

England also received the horrid Romish Inquisition. For though the “Holy Office” was never constituted here, on precisely the same plan as it was established in the despotic countries of Spain, Portugal, and Rome, nor completely set up till the gloomy reign of Queen Mary, the victims of papal bigotry were numerous, as sacrificed on its cruel altars. Pontifical decrees and statutes were brought into England, and carried into effect by the prelates, acting under the authority of the popes. Spiritual courts were organised in many dioceses, where holy men of God were sought after and punished as heretics, by the bishops and archbishops, as inquisitors of heresy. Their antichristian spirit may be learned from the cruel proceedings of the ecclesiastics against the thirty Germans at Oxford, under Henry II., and against the Wycliffites, as noticed in Chapter V.

Volumes are required to record the sufferings of the “Lollards,” and “Gospellers,” in England, as they were called, who read the Scriptures, or the books of Wycliffe. Many of them became faithful martyrs of Christ; and though such severity was used, the cause of God continued and gained strength, especially after Luther arose as the great reformer, in 1517. The translation of the New Testament by William Tindal, in 1526, and his labours in completing the entire Bible, aided by John Frith, William Roye, John Rogers, and Miles Coverdale, greatly provoked the prelates, and all these, except Coverdale, fell sacrifices to papal enmity, as martyrs for Christ.

Popery found a worthy supporter in Henry VIII., who, “through the various stages of his reign, outstripped his predecessors in almost every act of arrogance and barbarity, making himself inquisitor-general and grand judge of heretics. When they were condemned to die, he descended to the office of sitting in judgment upon them.” He even published a book against Luther, in “defence of the seven sacraments of the Catholic church;” for which he was rewarded by the Pope with the title of “Defender of the Faith,” A.D. 1521.

Henry’s vanity being gratified by this favour of the Pope, he entered more zealously into the designs of the Inquisition, and issued a royal proclamation, in which he commands that all persons defamed or suspected of preaching or writing contrary to the Catholic church should, by the bishops, be arrested and cast into prison. He then adds, “If any person, by the law of holy church, be convicted before the bishop or his commissary, that the said bishop may keep in prison the said person so convicted, so long as it shall seem best to his discretion; and may set a fine to be paid to the king, by the person convicted, as it shall be thought convenient to the said bishop, the said fine to be levied for the king’s use. And if any person within the realm of England be convicted of the aforesaid errors and heresies, he shall be committed to the secular jurisdiction, and shall suffer execution according to the laws of this realm.”

Sanctioned thus by the king, the bishops, who appear to have been the authors of this proclamation, proceeded, by vile inquisitors, to search for victims, whom they imprisoned and grievously fined. Their scandalous exactions enriched them, as their inquisitorial power rendered them superior to any law, or screened them from accountability. The temporal lords, and the commons’ house of parliament, therefore, presented a petition to the king for relief, declaring the prelates had “gotten into their hands more than a third part of all his majesty’s realm!” They add, in their appeal to the king against these dreaded inquisitors,—

“And what do all these greedy, idle, holy thieves do with these yearly exactions which they take of the people? Truly nothing, but exempt themselves from the obedience of your grace. Nothing but translate all rule, power, lordship, authority, obedience, and dignity, from your grace to themselves. Nothing but that all your subjects should fall into disobedience and rebellion against your grace, and be under them, as they did to your noble predecessor, King John; who, because he would have punished certain traitors that conspired with the French king, to have deposed him from his crown and dignity, interdicted his land. For which matter your most noble realm hath wrongfully, alas! stood tributary, not to any temporal prince, but to a cruel, devilish bloodsucker, drunken ever since with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Christ!

“What remedy is there? Will you make laws against them? It is doubtful whether you are able. Are they not stronger in your own parliament-house than yourself? What a number of bishops, abbots, and priors, are lords of your parliament! Are not all the learned men in your realm in fee with them, to speak in your parliament for them, against your crown, dignity, and realm; a few of your own learned council only excepted? What law can be made against them that will be available? Who is he, though he be sorely grieved, that, for murder, ravishment, robbery, debt, or any other offence, dare lay it to their charge by way of action? If any one do, he is by-and-by accused of heresy; yea, they will so handle him, that except he bear a faggot for their pleasure, he must be excommunicated, and then all his actions will be quashed.”

Henry became alarmed by this bold exposure of the wicked deeds of the prelates, and he appointed a hearing with all the judges and his temporal council, which resulted in a bill, that soon passed into a law, altering the statute of Henry IV. against heretics. Though this did not remove their liability to burning, it disabled the prelates from being the sole judges in the cause of heresy.

Still the bishops, as inquisitors, continued their proceedings, as they were able to secure the sanction of the king. But we cannot here trace their operations in destroying the faithful followers of Christ; yet we must notice their laying a plan to accomplish the destruction of Archbishop Cranmer, and Katherine Parr, the queen of Henry VIII., who favoured the reformation. They proceeded first against Anne Askew, a celebrated lady of the Court, in hope of inducing her, by torture on the rack, to accuse the queen of heresy. She was imprisoned and examined by Bonner, bishop of London, and Gardiner, bishop of Winchester; and, as she denied transubstantiation, they condemned her to the flames as a heretic.

Dr. Southey relates her martyrdom as follows, referring to her examination on the rack by the inquisitors:—“Henry’s heart was naturally hard, and the age and circumstances in which he was placed had steeled it against all compassion. Some displeasure, indeed, he manifested shortly afterwards, when the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Anthony Knevet, came to solicit pardon for having disobeyed the chancellor, by refusing to let the gaoler stretch the lady on the rack a second time, after she had endured it once without accusing any person of partaking her opinions. It was concerning the ladies of the court that she was put to the torture, in the hope of implicating the queen; and when Knevet would do no more, the Chancellor Wriothesley, and Rich, who was a creature of Bonner, racked her with their own hands, throwing off their gowns that they might perform their devilish office the better. She bore it without uttering cry or groan, though, immediately upon being loosed, she fainted. Henry readily forgave the lieutenant, and appeared ill pleased with his chancellor; but he suffered his wicked ministers to consummate their crime. A scaffold was erected in front of St. Bartholomew’s church, where Wriothesley, the duke of Norfolk, and others of the king’s council, sat with the lord mayor, to witness the execution. Three others were to suffer for the same imaginary offence; one was a tailor, another a priest, and the third a Nottinghamshire gentleman, of the Lascelles family, and of the king’s household. The execution was delayed till darkness closed, that it might appear more dreadful. Anne Askew was brought in a chair, for they had racked her until she was unable to stand, and she was held up against the stake by the chain which fastened her; but her constancy, and cheerful language of encouragement, brought her companions in martyrdom to the same invincible fortitude and triumphant hope. After a sermon had been preached, the king’s pardon was offered to her, if she would recant: refusing even to look upon it, she made answer, that she came not there to deny her Lord! The others, in like manner, refused to purchase their lives at such a price. The reeds were then set on fire—it was in the month of June—and, at that moment, a few drops of rain fell, and a thunder-clap was heard, which those in the crowd, who sympathised with the martyrs, felt as if it were God’s own voice, accepting their sacrifice, and receiving their spirits into everlasting rest.” June, 1546.

Henry VIII. dying January 28, 1547, was succeeded by his son, Edward VI., who laboured to forward the reformation. Those who formed the regency, his protectors, were Protestants, and the persecuting laws were soon repealed, with other measures for the advancement of the religion of the Scriptures. But this pious young king died, July 6, 1553, and was succeeded on the throne by his sister Mary. She was a consistent Papist, directed entirely by the Romish prelates. They revived all the powers of the Inquisition, and soon imprisoned Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, and the other leaders in the reformation, accusing them of heresy.

Queen Mary accepted the proposal to marry Philip, son of the Emperor Charles V., though ten years her junior, and a widower. As a bigot Papist, “all who had espoused the cause of the reformation in England,” as Bishop Bonner states, “anticipated not only a change of religion, but the erection of a Spanish government and Inquisition. Those who valued the civil liberty of their country, without any concern for religion, concluded that England would become a province of Spain; and they beheld how the Spaniards ruled in the Netherlands, in Milan, Naples, and Sicily; but, above all, they heard of their unexampled inhumanities in the West Indies.”

Philip was a man of great talents; but, as it is said of him, “his religion was of the most corrupt kind; it served only to increase the natural depravity of his disposition, and prompted him to commit the most odious and shocking crimes. Of the triumph of honour and humanity over the dictates of superstition, there occurs not a single instance in the whole reign of Philip; who violated the most sacred obligations as often as religion afforded him a pretence, and exercised, for many years, the most unrelenting cruelty, without reluctance or remorse. Few princes have been more dreaded, more abhorred, or have caused more blood to flow, than Philip II. of Spain.”

Mary, on the 23rd of October, before the altar in her private chapel, solemnly plighted her troth to Philip; and Bishop Gardiner was despatched to arrange the marriage settlement with the Emperor Charles V., who borrowed one million two hundred thousand crowns,—a prodigious sum at that time,—to enable that prelate to secure an obsequious parliament.

Philip landed at Southampton, July 20, 1554, and, on the 25th, he was married to Mary, by Gardiner, in his cathedral at Winchester. On the 29th of November, the formal reconciliation to Rome was solemnised, with great pomp, in the hall of the palace at Whitehall. The Queen and the King sat in regal state, with the Pope’s legate, Cardinal Pole, a prince of the blood. A large number of both houses of the new parliament being introduced, they presented, on their knees, a humble supplication on behalf of the whole nation, beseeching their majesties to intercede with the lord cardinal for their admission within the sacred pale of the church, and for absolution from their offences of heresy and schism, on condition of repealing all laws against the Catholic religion, passed in the season of their delusion. Mary and Philip having made the intercession, the legate, after a long speech, declaring the paternal solicitude of his holiness for the welfare of England, in the name of the Pope granted a full absolution, which the members of parliament received on their knees; after which, the king, queen, and legate, together with the whole body of the senators of the nation, chanted Te Deum in the chapel of the palace, expressive of their joy! The Pope solemnly ratified the act of his legate, and the news of the whole transaction was quickly published throughout Europe!

Preparatory for this absolution, an act was passed for the revival of the statutes of Richard II., Henry II., and Henry V., against heretics. They were to come into force on the 20th of January, 1555; so that the year opened with a portentous gloom. Cardinal Pole, on the 23rd of January, received all the bishops at Lambeth Palace, to give them his blessing, and directions how to govern the church; and on the 25th, there was a solemn procession through London, consisting of eight bishops, and one hundred and sixty priests, all in their robes; with Bonner, the bishop, carrying the host, to return thanks to God for their reconciliation. After this solemnity, the first measure of the restored church was for the prelates, as inquisitors, to proceed against the reformers, many of whom were imprisoned, under the direction of Bishop Bonner and Bishop Gardiner, who was lord chancellor.

Bishop Burnet remarks, on this cruel policy of the prelates, “Pope Paul was in the right in one thing, to press the setting up of courts of inquisition everywhere, as the only sure method to extirpate heresy. And it is highly probable that the king, or his Spanish ministers, made the court of England apprehend, that torture and inquisition were the only sure courses to root out heresy.”

John Rogers, a prebendary of St. Paul’s, London, and a famous preacher, who had aided Tindal in the translation of the Bible, was the first victim. He was burnt to ashes in Smithfield, February 4, 1555, triumphing in Christ.

Laurence Saunders was burnt to death on the 8th of February, where he had been minister, and highly esteemed, at Coventry.

Dr. Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, was carried to suffer at the stake in that city, on the 9th of February.

Dr. Taylor was sent to suffer in like manner, in his own parish, at Hadleigh, in Suffolk, on the 9th of February.

Dr. Farrar, bishop of St. David’s, was carried to seal the truth of the Gospel with his blood, and he triumphed in martyrdom, March 30th, at Carmarthen.

Terrible as were these enormities, they did not satisfy the sanguinary queen nor her bigoted chancellor, Bishop Gardiner. They determined to extirpate heresy, and therefore employed local inquisitors. Bishop Burnet states, therefore, “Instructions were given, in March, 1555, to the justices of peace, to have one or more honest men in every parish, secretly instructed on oath to give information of the behaviour of the inhabitants among them. Here was a great step made towards an Inquisition; this being the settled method of that court, to have sworn spies and informers every where, upon whose secret advertisements persons are taken up; and the first step in their examination is to know of them, for what reason they are brought before them; upon which they are tortured till they tell, as much as the inquisitors desire to know, either against themselves or others. But they are not suffered to know, neither what is informed against them, nor who are the informers. Arbitrary torture, and now secret informers, seem to be two great steps made to prepare the nation for an Inquisition.”

John Bradford, a prebendary of St. Paul’s, London, a powerful and popular preacher, was burnt in Smithfield, July 15th; Bishops Latimer and Ridley were sacrificed in the flames at Oxford, on the 16th of October; and Archbishop Cranmer was executed at the stake, in the same place, March 24, 1556.

Particulars of the sufferings and triumphs of these and the other martyrs for Christ, during the short reign of Mary, cannot here be detailed. Four, five, six, seven, and on one occasion, thirteen persons, were seen murdered in one fire! Neither sex nor age, the lame nor blind, being spared, if they refused conformity to the imposition of the Romish prelates. Barbarities so shocking terrified the whole nation. Petitions to the Queen against them were transmitted from the Protestant exiles abroad; so that even King Philip was so ashamed, that he caused a Spanish divine, of high celebrity, to preach against the cruelties, though the same things were transacted under his direct sanction, in his own dominions in the Netherlands and Spain.

Mary had no child, and Philip spent most of his time in the Netherlands, being apparently alienated from his queen. She became dejected, through a sense of his unkindness, and chagrined at the loss of Calais, so that her health declined; while she was the victim of superstition, and a prey to remorse for her dreadful cruelties, and she finished her wretched life, November 7, 1558.

Of the martyrs for Christ in the reign of Mary, victims of the Inquisition, there were reckoned, one archbishop, four bishops, twenty-one clergymen, eight gentlemen, eighty-four tradesmen, a hundred husbandmen, labourers and servants, fifty-five women, and four children! Cooper estimates the number of those who suffered for the Gospel, from February, 1555, to September, 1558, at about 290! According to Bishop Burnet, there were 284. The most accurate account is, probably, that of Lord Burleigh, who, in his treatise called “The Execution of Justice in England,” reckons the number of those who died in the reign of Mary by imprisonment, torments, famine, and fire, to be nearly 400; of whom those who were burnt alive amounted to 290!

Queen Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on the death of her sister Mary. She was a Protestant in profession, and she restored the reformation in England; but her prelates were persecutors, and they were allowed to retain the spirit and power of the Inquisition, but under another name, “The Court of High Commission.”

This Court of High Commission was created in the name of the queen, for the express purpose of searching out and punishing the nonconformists. These commissioners were principally bishops, and they assumed the power of administering an oath ex officio, by which the prisoner was obliged to answer all questions put to him, and even to accuse himself or his dearest friend. Many refused to take the oath, choosing rather to suffer imprisonment, which was determined, not according to any law, but the will of the commissioners. A detail of the miseries endured by conscientious clergymen, under the High Commission Court, would require volumes; their principles, and many of their practices, being precisely those of the execrable Romish Inquisition.

Archbishop Parker continued a cruel persecutor of the nonconformists: and others of the prelates employed the most dishonourable methods to hunt out and imprison them, hiring unprincipled characters as inquisitors and informers, and making new articles, contrary to the laws of England, for the more certain conviction of those brought before the ecclesiastical courts.

Persecution and cruelty, in character only in accordance with the popish Inquisition, continued even in London. The year 1575 is distinguished by a transaction, which reflects imperishable dishonour on the prelates and the queen. A congregation of Dutch Baptists being discovered on Easter-day, near Aldgate, their house was entered by the bishop’s officers, and twenty-seven of the worshippers were seized and committed to prison. Four recanted; and, according to the popish custom, they were required to bear faggots during sermon at Paul’s Cross, as a token of their deserving the flames! Ten of the men and one woman were condemned to the stake by the ecclesiastical consistory: but the woman was induced to recant; while eight of those who could not be convinced of error were banished, and two were sacrificed in the flames as heretics.

On this occasion, the Dutch residents in London, who were allowed to hold their meetings for religious worship, interceded with the queen for their mistaken countrymen; but she gave them a positive refusal to their request. John Fox, who was in favour with her majesty, on account of his “Acts and Monuments of the Church,” made an application to her on their behalf, in an elegant Latin letter; but though his arguments appear sufficient to convince the most perverted judgment, and his appeals to her compassion, as a woman, calculated to melt the hardest heart, they availed nothing with the virgin queen! A clergyman of our time asks, “What are we to think of those evangelical prelates, who sat in the High Commission Court, and at the council-table, a part of whose office it was to advise the queen? Alas! that none could be found, who, on such an emergency, would give her correct information respecting the will of Christ, and assure her, ‘He, the Son of Man, was not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them!’ A death-like silence reigned, and the law took its course.”

Queen Elizabeth’s intolerance, in the spirit of an inquisitor-general, extended even to Dr. Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury. Having enjoyed that high dignity two years, he was suspended by the queen, for refusing to suppress the “prophesyings,” which were meetings of the evangelical clergy to promote scriptural knowledge by preaching. He appeals to the queen, “Alas! madam, is the Scripture more plain in anything, than that the Gospel of Christ should be plentifully preached? If the Holy Ghost prescribeth, especially, that preachers should be placed in every town, how can it well be that three or four preachers may suffice for a shire? [This was the declared opinion of the queen.] Public and continual preaching of God’s Word is the ordinary means of salvation to mankind.

“Concerning the learned exercises and conferences amongst the ministers of the church—the time appointed for this exercise is once a month; the time of this exercise is two hours—some text of Scripture, before appointed to be spoken, is interpreted in this order—prayer, and a psalm follow. I am enforced with all humility, and yet plainly, to profess that I cannot, with safe conscience, and without the offence of the majesty of God, give mine assent to the suppressing of the said exercises; much less can I send out any instruction for the utter and universal subversion of the same. If it be your majesty’s pleasure for this, or any other cause, to remove me out of this place, I will, with all humility, yield thereunto. Remember, that in God’s cause, the will of God, and not the will of any earthly creature, is to take place; it is the antichristian voice of the Pope, ‘Thus I will—thus I order—my will is reason sufficient!’”

Grindal’s mode of arguing was precisely that of the Protestants against the Papists, and of the apostles against the rulers of the Jews. But this appeal to the Scriptures availed nothing with the royal inquisitor; the prelate continued in disgrace with his sovereign, though he was permitted till his death, in 1583, to retain his dignity as archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr. Whitgift succeeded as archbishop of Canterbury, and he was a severe inquisitor and persecutor. He published three articles for every clergyman to subscribe, declaring from his heart, his approbation of the whole Common Prayer; besides which, he drew up twenty-four articles to be used in examining those who were brought before the bishops. Through these impositions, great numbers of pious clergymen were deprived; among whom were sixty-four in Norfolk, sixty in Suffolk, and thirty-eight in Essex; besides those in other counties.

These inquisitorial proceedings induced Lord Burleigh, the earls of Leicester, Shrewsbury, and Warwick, Lord Charles Howard, Sir James Crofts, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Sir Francis Walsingham, secretary of state, to sign a letter, September 20, 1584, to the archbishop, and the bishop of London, complaining of such intolerant inquisition. But Whitgift disregarded their appeal, sustained in his pernicious course by the queen.

Among the numerous cases of oppression by the prelates, that of Giles Wigginton, the vicar of Sedburgh, Yorkshire, will serve as an example. After having suffered many hardships in prison for his nonconformity, his health being impaired, he was deprived of his living. But, with liberty, his improved health enabled him to visit his beloved flock, to whom he preached, from house to house, the Gospel of Christ. For this he was again imprisoned in Lancaster Castle; from which he wrote to his patron, Sir Walter Mildmay, one of the privy council, to procure his release. He says, “I was arrested at Burroughbridge by a pursuivant, and brought to this place, a distance of fifty miles, in this cold winter. I am here within an iron gate, in a cold room, among felons and condemned prisoners, and, in various ways, worse used than they, or recusant Papists.”

Several efforts were made in parliament to impose a check on these oppressions, which were yet illegal; but the bishops prevailed, especially in the House of Lords.

John Udall, in 1591, was tried for publishing a book—“A Demonstration of the Discipline which Christ hath prescribed in his Word”—and condemned. The judge offered him his life, if he would recant; adding, that he was now ready to pronounce sentence of death. “And I am ready to receive it,” cried the magnanimous confessor; “for, I protest before God, not knowing that I shall live another hour, that the cause is good, and I am contented to receive sentence, so that I may leave it to posterity how I have suffered for His cause.”

Udall was condemned, as he would not sign a recantation of his doctrine; nor could any of the doctors move him in conference from appealing in its proof to the Scriptures. His fame was great; so that several lords of the council, and even James VI., afterwards king of England, interceded for his life. Archbishop Whitgift became afraid of his being put to death in public, and the Turkey merchants offered to employ him as one of their chaplains, and at length Whitgift consented to pardon him on his leaving the country; but while the hard terms were being arranged with the archbishop, Udall died in prison, from his long confinement and ill treatment. Dr. Fuller remarks of him, that “his wisest foes were well contented with his death, lest it should be charged as an act of cruelty on them who procured it.” He calls him “a person of worth, a learned man, blameless for his life, powerful in his praying, and no less profitable than painful in his preaching.”

Fifty-nine, in different prisons of London, in 1592, petitioned Lord Treasurer Burleigh to be brought to trial; complaining that “many had died in the prisons, that they had been imprisoned contrary to all law and equity, many of them for the space of two years and a half, upon the bishop’s sole commandment.” Among these was Henry Barrowe, a barrister of Gray’s Inn, who was apprehended when visiting his relative, Greenwood, a nonconforming clergyman, who had been in prison a long time. They were tried on a charge of “writing and publishing sundry books, tending to the slander of the queen and government.” Mr. Neal remarks, “They had written only against the church; but this was the archbishop’s artful contrivance, to throw off the odium of their death from himself to the civil magistrate. Being condemned, endeavours were made, but in vain, to induce them to recant. They were exposed under the famous gallows, at Tyburn, March the 31st; but this produced no effect on their pious minds, and they were executed, April 6, 1592. John Penry, a clergyman, and several others, were hanged for dispersing the writings of the nonconformists.

Dr. Reynolds, the queen’s professor of divinity at Oxford, attended some of these martyrs for the Scriptures; and he reported to her Majesty the calm piety which they displayed, and how they had blessed and prayed for her, as their sovereign, and for their enemies; and Elizabeth’s heart melted; but she was urged forward by the chief-inquisitor, Whitgift, and she consented to sanction him in his bigotry, by a severer law against the nonconformists. To this was added a form of recantation; which, if the offenders refused to subscribe, it was further enacted, “that within three months they shall abjure the realm, and go into perpetual banishment; and if they do not depart within the time appointed, or if they ever return without the queen’s licence, they shall suffer death without benefit of clergy!!”

Severities towards the nonconformists increased as the queen and the archbishop advanced in years. Dr. Aylmer, the persecuting and profane bishop of London, died in June, 1594. Dr. Fletcher succeeded him, and was banished by the queen. In 1596, Dr. Bancroft, a haughty, unfeeling persecutor, was made bishop of London. Elizabeth died, March 24, 1602, and Archbishop Whitgift, in 1604, when they were called to render up their awful account to God.

Queen Elizabeth was a great monarch, and she was favoured with statesmen of extraordinary abilities; but, as Dr. Warner remarks, “the severity with which she treated her Protestant subjects by her High Commission Court, was against law, against liberty, and against the rights of human nature. She understood nothing of the rights of conscience in matters of religion; and, like the absurd king, her father, she would have no opinion in religion, acknowledged at least, but her own. She differed from her sister; and as she had much greater abilities for governing, so she applied herself more to promote the strength and glory of her dominion, than Mary did; but she had as much of the bigot and tyrant in her as her sister.”

Dr. Bancroft was translated from London to Canterbury, on the death of Whitgift, in 1604; and his severities were sanctioned by the new sovereign, James I., who became a cruel bigot. Under their government the nonconformists suffered grievously. The inquisitors prosecuted their shocking employment, and two men were executed at the stake on the charge of heresy. One of these, Bartholomew Legate, of Essex, was condemned as a heretic, and publicly burnt in Smithfield, March 18, 1612; the other was Edward Wightman, of Burton-upon-Trent; he was condemned by Dr. Neile, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and burnt as a heretic in Lichfield, April 11, 1612. They were said to be Arians and Baptists, and charged with many absurd opinions; but it is admitted that they were exemplary in their morals. They refused to recant, even at the stake; and popular sympathy being called forth in favour of these victims of the prelates, they were the last that publicly suffered death for their religious opinions in England. There were others in prison under sentence, but they were continued to linger out a miserable existence in Newgate.

Dr. Abbot succeeded Bancroft, in 1611, as archbishop of Canterbury; but, being unfitted for political intrigue, he was suspended in 1620, and Laud, bishop of London, exercised almost unlimited authority in ecclesiastical affairs. His bigotry would have qualified him for inquisitor-general in Rome or Spain, and his evil counsels involved both England and Scotland in most grievous troubles, until his intolerance became the chief cause of his own execution, and that of his misguided master, Charles I., to the astonishment of all Europe.

Dr. Williams, bishop of Lincoln, to whom Laud was under the greatest obligations as his patron, disapproving of his severities by the High Commission Court, incurred his displeasure, when “the warmest professions of friendship were succeeded by the most deadly hatred.” Laud became his persecutor, and succeeded, in the second attempt, in obtaining his conviction, on a charge of tampering with the king’s witnesses. Williams was fined £10,000 to the king, £1,000 to Sir J. Mounson, and imprisonment in the Tower during the king’s pleasure. All his property being seized, his private papers were presumed to contain some reflections on Laud, and he again persecuted him. He was sentenced to pay £5,000 to the king, and £3,000 to the archbishop. “Laud’s thirst of revenge outweighed his fear of reproach,” as remarked by Dr. Vaughan.

Laud’s spirit may be learned more fully from his persecution of Dr. Leighton, who had written “An Appeal to Parliament; or, Zion’s Plea against Prelacy.” For this he was condemned in the “Star Chamber,” which was a political Inquisition; and the archbishop being present, as one of the judges, while the sentence was being pronounced, removed his cap from his head, and, with an audible voice, rendered solemn thanks to God for this decision of the court. The illegal sentence was executed upon Dr. Leighton; and the archbishop was found to have made a record in his diary, thus:—“Nov. 6th. 1. He was whipped before he was put in the pillory. 2. Being set in the pillory, he had one of his ears cut off. 3. One side of his nose slit. 4. Branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, with the letters S.S. On that day seven-night, his sores upon his back, ear, nose, and face, being not yet cured, he was whipped again at the pillory in Cheapside, and had the remainder of his sentence executed upon him, by cutting off the other ear, slitting the other side of the nose, and branding the other cheek!”

Probably, the diary of no other man, in any age or nation, ever contained such a record in his private diary, with his approbation. He must have been a monster; and no language can sufficiently reprobate such cruelties, illegally exercised, and that in the abused name of the Prince of Peace!

Leighton bore his sufferings with the meekness and courage of an apostle. “But the fortitude of the sufferer marred the policy of his oppressors. It brought upon them the execrations of the people, and vested him with the honours of martyrdom.”

Prelatical tyranny at length wearied out the nation, and the people arose, demanding redress of their grievances. “The Long Parliament” was called in 1640, and they decreed the abolition of the civil and ecclesiastical Inquisitions,—the High Commission Court and the Star Chamber. Dr. Leighton, on petitioning Parliament, was set at liberty: as the reading of his petition, describing a series of his sufferings, during eleven years, unparalleled, perhaps, in English history, affected many of the senators to tears; and, when released from prison, the venerable man could hardly walk, or see, or hear! Parliament allowed this injured servant of God a pension till his death, in 1644, aged seventy-six. All who were imprisoned by those courts on account of religion were liberated. Dr. Burton, Dr. Bastwick, and Mr. Prynne, a barrister, were met by an immense multitude, and conducted in triumph to London.

Persecution ceased; religious liberty prevailed, in a great degree, under the Long Parliament, and during the Commonwealth. But, after the restoration of Charles II., the principles of the Inquisition, for some years, enabled the prelates to harass the nonconformists, by the “Act of Uniformity,” the “Conventicle Act,” and the “Five Mile Act.” Tyranny triumphed, by these and other shocking statutes, until they were abolished by the “Act of Toleration,” as a shield against priestly oppression, by the “GLORIOUS REVOLUTION” under William III.

CHAPTER X.
CRIMES ALLEGED BY THE INQUISITION.

Heretics—Open and secret—Schismatics—Favourers of Heretics—Hinderers of the Inquisition—Suspected persons relapsed—Readers of forbidden books—Priests soliciting confessors—Blasphemers—Diviners—Witches—Polygamists—Jews.

Roman Catholics denominate the tribunal of the Inquisition Sanctum Officium, or Holy Office; pretending that it is engaged in the sacred service of God, for the seeking out and extirpation of evil persons from the church of Christ. The inquisitors, therefore, proceed against alleged heretics, blasphemers, apostates, relapsed Jews, Mohammedans, witches, wizards, and all others charged with having violated the canons of the holy Roman Catholic church. These classes of alleged offenders require to be mentioned, as illustrating the intolerant and sanguinary character of the Romish Inquisition.

1. Heretics.—These, in general, are persons who, having been baptised, or professed the Romish faith, hold doctrines condemned by the Pope;—as the denial of the sacrifice of the mass, priestly absolution, the worship of the Virgin Mary, transubstantiation, or purgatory. Some are reckoned manifest, and others, concealed heretics. All who hold the doctrines of Luther, or of the other reformers, and all Protestants rejecting the pretended ecclesiastical traditions, and taking the Holy Scriptures as the only rule of faith and duty, are thus declared heretics by the Papists. Such are punished variously, some being burnt alive.

2. Open and Secret Heretics.—These are described thus, by the Romanists:—“An open heretic is one who publicly avows something contrary to the Catholic faith, or who is condemned for it by the judges of the faith. A secret or concealed heretic is one who errs in his mind concerning the faith, and purposes to be obstinate in his will, but hath not shown it by word or deed. Although an heretic be thus concealed, yet, if he infects others, he is immediately to be discovered by his judges.” These are also called affirmative and negative heretics. The latter are those, who, according to the law of the Inquisition, are rightly and justly convicted of some heresy before a judge, but yet profess the Catholic faith. Such were many of those converted from amongst the Jews and Moors in Spain. Obstinate heretics are to be doomed to be burnt alive, delivered over to the fire with their mouths gagged, and their tongues tied, lest, by their speaking, they should induce others to embrace their principles. Some are denominated arch-heretics, as the inventors or chief teachers of doctrines contrary to those established by the Pope. Among the most distinguished of these, the Papists reckon Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Zuingle, Cranmer, Knox, and others, the leaders of the Protestant reformation. Multitudes of these have been burnt alive, especially in France, Spain, and England.

3. Schismatics.—These are described by the Papists as those who depart from the unity of the church, and believe that there may be salvation and true sacraments without the Catholic church, and differ little from heretics; but others are without blame, and err through probable or insuperable ignorance. The punishments of schismatics are privation of ecclesiastical power, if priests, excommunication, and, finally, death.

4. Receivers or Favourers of Heretics.—These are such as, knowing them to be heretics, defend them when persecuted by the church, afford them lodging or shelter, or allow them to read or preach in their houses. Others are favourers of heretics, who omit to discover them to the bishops and inquisitors. Their punishment is excommunication, and banishment for ever, with confiscation of goods.