ance of any sound, lest it should occasion the discovery of some secret. If a person bemoans himself, or bewails his misfortune, or prays to God with an audible voice, or sings a psalm or sacred hymn, he is instantly silenced. Persons may know one another by their cough, as well as by their articulate voice, and therefore, no man was allowed even this expression of his misery in the damp dungeons of the Inquisition. Limborch relates the following instance, which, he says, he had from several persons. "A prisoner in the Inquisition coughed. The jailers came to him, and admonished him to forbear coughing, because it was unlawful to make any noise in that house. He answered it was not in his power to forbear. However, they admonished him a second time to forbear it, and because he did not, they stripped him naked and cruelly beat him. This increased his cough, for which they beat him so often, that at last he died through the pain and anguish of his stripes."

I shall bring in here what was intended for the conclusion of Chap. CXXV., but for which I had not room. These cruelties were not, indeed, committed within the walls of the Inquisition, but they were done with the concurrence of the head of the church, and the head inquisitor at Rome.

Sir Samuel Moreland has given a great number of instances of cruelty to individuals whom he names, with the attestations of witnesses, which he procured upon the spot. With a few of these I shall conclude the present number. I have been accused of being too delicate in some instances, especially in my treatment of the subject of clerical celibacy. I have now with some reluctance brought myself to speak plainly out, some facts and circumstances, which I hope will have the effect which I have all along avowed to be the object of my work, not to injure the persons of Papists, but to hold up the system of popery, which I maintain to be the invention of the devil, to universal detestation. I advise all who have the misfortune to have weak nerves, to read no more of this number.

Upon the 22d of April, 1655, in a certain place called La Sarcena, one Captain Pola, of Pancalier, took two poor women of La Torre, and with a falchion ripped up their bellies, and left them wallowing upon the snow in this lamentable condition. And this was seen by M. Gross, minister of Villaro.

Martha Constantin, wife of Jacob Barral, after she had seen several others most cruelly put to death, was herself first ravished, and then had her breasts cut off. The soldiers took and fried them, and presented

them to their comrades as tripe.

Anna, daughter of Giovanni Charboniere, had a long stake thrust through her body longitudinally, by some soldiers, who carried her thus upon their shoulders, quite naked, until they were tired; and then they stuck the end of the stake in the ground, and thus left her dead body exposed to the world.

Giovanni Tolasano, a mercer of Villaro, as he was passing by the hill of Juliano, saw a poor woman flying from the soldiers, with a cradle upon her head, wherein was a young sucking child; but seeing she was like to be overtaken by them, she left her cradle in the middle of the way, as verily believing those butchers could not possibly have such hearts of adamant as to lay violent hands upon the poor innocent babe, and so hid herself not far from the place, in the cleft of a rock. But

those blood-hounds having found the infant in the cradle, in the most savage manner took it out, and pulled it into four pieces or quarters; and afterwards finding the mother, ravished her, then cut off her head, and left her dead body upon the snow.

The daughter of Moyses Long, of Bobio, about ten years of age, was taken by the soldiers of Piedmont, as she was flying upon the snow, who, broaching her upon a pike or halbert, roasted her alive upon a broad stone not far from the place. When they had thus done, they cut off a slice of her flesh, intending to have made a meal's meat on her, but not finding it thoroughly roasted, their stomachs would not serve them to eat it.

Mr. Gross, pastor of Villario, in Bobio, told the author, (Sir S. M.) during his abode at Geneva, that being at Pignerolio, he heard several persons affirm, that some of the murderers, having taken eleven men at Garcigliana, heated a great oven or furnace red hot, and caused those poor creatures to throw one another into the said burning fiery furnace; and when it came to the last man, they themselves threw him in. It is a thing most certain also, that very frequently these blood-hounds pursued and hunted out multitudes of those poor Protestants among the rocks and mountains, by the very traces of their bleeding feet and legs, which had been sorely cut and mangled by the ice and flints which they met with by the way, in their flight.

These are a few examples, taken almost at random from a catalogue of some hundreds, related with horrible minuteness by the English ambassador. It would be difficult to find instances of such cruelty among the rudest savages; for there is no ferocity or cruelty equal to that with which the devil qualifies his agents for the propagation of idolatry and superstition, and for blotting out the knowledge of real Christianity from the earth.

This remark is confirmed by what Dr. Geddes records of what came under his own observation, when he was an eyewitness of an autoda-fe. The victims were chained to stakes, at the height of about four feet from the ground. A quantity of furze that lay round the bottom of the stakes was set on fire; by a current of wind it was in some cases prevented from reaching above the lowest extremities of the body. Some were thus kept in torture for an hour or two, and were actually roasted, not burnt to death. This spectacle, says he, is beheld by people of both sexes, and all ages, with such transports of joy and satisfaction, as are not on any other occasion to be met with. And that the reader may not think that this inhuman joy is the effect of a natural cruelty that is in these people's disposition, and not the spirit of their religion, he may rest assured, that all public malefactors, except heretics, have their violent death nowhere more tenderly lamented, than amongst the same people, and even when there is nothing in the manner of their death that appears inhuman or cruel. See Limborch, Vol. II. p. 301.

AUTO-DA-FE.

CHAPTER CXXIX.

HYPOCRITICAL MOCKERY OF THE INQUISITION. SUFFERINGS OF ISAAC MARTIN. MASSACRE AT PARIS, AND MEDAL STRUCK BY ORDER OF THE POPE TO COMMEMORATE IT. MASSACRE OF PROTESTANTS IN IRELAND IN THE YEAR ONE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY-ONE. GRAHAM'S ANNALS OF IRELAND. REMARKS. SATURDAY, December 30th, 1820.

ACCORDING to the courtly, or over-courteous morality of this world, it is alleged, that the more deficient a man is known to be, with respect to any particular virtue, the more abundantly it ought to be bestowed upon him, by his flatterers during his life, and his panegyrists after his death. The Inquisition seems to have acted upon this principle from its very commencement. It gave itself out as the holy office, and all men were required to regard it, and call it holy, though it is well known to have been the most unholy tribunal that ever afflicted the world. In like manner the Inquisition incessantly boasted of its justice and its mercy, especially of the latter, though it is certain that its justice was a perversion of all righteousness, and the tenderest of its mercies was the most barbarous cruelty.

Those

I had thought of afflicting my readers by presenting them with a particular account of an auto-da-fe, which would have occupied a number or two, but on reflection, I rather chose to pass this over. who wish to have their souls harrowed up by such an exhibition, may find materials in Limborch's History, and in almost all the Martyrologies in the English language. Suffice it to say, that an auto-da-fe, or act of faith, was the burning to death of such persons as the holy Inquisition was pleased to pronounce defective in their belief of all, or any of the error and nonsense which the church of Rome had propounded as articles of faith. This burning took place as often as the holy office could provide subjects for the fire. Kings and queens were not only invited to witness it as a most joyful spectacle; but actually required to sanction it with their presence, under the pain of being themselves suspected of heretical pravity. Limborch gives a series of prints, in which the king and queen of Spain are represented under a rich and royal canopy, feasting their eyes with the delightful spectacle of a number of poor wretches led to be committed to the flames; and the representation is by no means a production of the fancy. It is sober historical truth, the memory of which will remain to the latest ages, as an evidence of the diabolical cruelty and wickedness of the church of Rome, and of all those who lent themselves to its support.

It was the manner of the holy inquisitors to be continually boasting of their mercy. It often happened that the most inoffensive man in a city was brought before them, under a vague suspicion of something which related to the integrity of the faith. After having his spirits. broken by confinement in a dungeon for months or years, he was required to make confession of his crimes, while he was not conscious of any thing in his conduct that deserved the name of crime. The holy fathers would not condescend to tell him what it was of which he was accused; but they would assure him that the holy Inquisition was merciful, and that if he would make a free and candid confession, he should be mercifully dealt with. The poor man could not confess crimes of

which he was not guilty; and the holy inquisitors, in their great mercy would send him back to his dungeon, with a command to review his whole life; and there they would leave him for a year or two longer, to recollect, if he could, every word that he had spoken, and every person to whom he had spoken, during the whole period of his conscious existence.

A man thus shut up in a dark and loathsome dungeon, without the society of a living creature, would very probably recollect some foolish thing that he had said to some person in the course of his life; and trusting in the boasted mercy of the holy tribunal, he would confess this the next time he was called to a hearing. This however would only furnish his tormentors with a pretext for teasing him with more ensnaring questions, not only with regard to himself, but also the persons with whom he had conversed upon any point of religion. These persons would be immured within the sacred walls before the next morning; and he himself would be sent back to his dungeon to consider of what other crimes he ought to accuse himself.

These reflections are not thrown out at random. They are supported by incontestable facts, as any person may see who will read the numerous relations in Limborch, and in Baker's History of the Inquisition. This last author, among a number of instances, relates at great length, the sufferings of one Isaac Martin, an English merchant in Malaga, who was confined in the Inquisition in 1714, and grievously tormented, upon suspicion of his being a Jew, and that upon no stronger evidence than that his name was Isaac, and that he had a son whom he had named Abraham. It was in vain that he protested that he was a Christian of the church of England, and that Abraham and Isaac were not Jews, but had lived hundreds of years before the designation of Jew was known in the world. The inquisitors would not believe his assertion either with regard to himself or the patriarchs. He was known to be guilty of the crime of being rich, of which he was effectually purged by the holy office, for this heresy yields to force sooner than any other; and then he was sent out of the country with a body dreadfully torn by scourging and other torments which he had endured.

But the unparalleled hypocrisy and impudence of the inquisitors appear chiefly in their professions of mercy for those whom they have devoted to the flames. It is pretended that the holy office puts no man to death. It merely, on finding persons obstinate heretics, delivers them over to the civil power, which in a popish country, must submit to be the church's hangman; and when men are so delivered over, it is with great affectation of pity and compassion on the part of the ghostly fathers, who beseech the magistrate, perhaps with tears in their eyes, as a crocodile is said to shed tears over the prey he is about to devour, to deal mercifully with the unhappy criminals, and to be sure not to hurt them; and this at the very time when the stake is fixed, the fuel prepared, and people assembled to witness their execution; and if any magistrate should so understand them as to comply with their request, the fire would soon be applied to himself as a favourer of heretics.

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Is there," says Dr. Geddes, in his View of the Court of Inquisition in Portugal, p. 446, "in all history, an instance of so gross and confident a mockery of God, and the world, as this of the inquisitors beseeching the civil magistrate, not to put the heretics they have condemned

and delivered to them, to death? For were they in earnest when they made this solemn petition to the secular magistrates, why do they bring their prisoners out of the Inquisition, and deliver them to those magistrates in coats painted over with flames? Why do they teach that heretics, above all other malefactors, ought to be punished with death? And why do they never resent the secular magistrates having so little regard to their earnest and joint petition as never to fail to burn all the heretics that are delivered to them by the Inquisition, within an hour or two after they have them in their hands? And why in Rome, where the supreme, civil, and ecclesiastical authority are lodged in the same person, is this petition of the Inquisition, which is made there as well as in other places, never granted?"-Thus far Dr. Geddes. And let me here add, that this hypocrisy and dissimulation is the more vile and execrable, in that the inquisitors are commanded by the bulls of several popes, to compel the secular magistrate, under penalty of excommunication and other ecclesiastical censures, within six days, readily to execute the sentences pronounced by the inquisitors against heretics, that is, to burn them. Limborch, vol. ii. P. 289.

On entering upon this subject, I said that popish writers traced the Inquisition to a period as ancient as that of the Mosaic dispensation. I have since received from a correspondent, an extract from a Spanish author, who maintains that the holy tribunal had its origin in paradise; but instead of ascribing it to its real author, who was a liar and a murderer from the beginning, this writer blasphemously represents the Creator himself as the first inquisitor, and Adam and Eve as the first who were brought before the holy tribunal. The words are "Dizen que Dios fue Inquisidor de Adam y Eva por haver comido el vedado fruto," &c. &c. That is, "It is said that God was inquisitor of Adam and Eve, for having eaten the forbidden fruit."

If there be any of my readers who wish to see more evidence of the bloody and murderous character of popery than I have given in my late numbers, I refer them to the narrative of the grand massacre in Paris, which is recorded in all our ecclesiastical histories and martyrologies. And here I take the opportunity of expressing my best thanks to a worthy correspondent in Ireland, for sending me an impression in wax, of a genuine medal which Pope Gregory XIII. ordered to be struck, in honourable commemoration of that, to him, joyful event. It is pretty generally known, that the pope was so delighted with the intelligence which he received from Paris on that occasion, that he ordered solemn thanksgiving to God to be offered up in all the churches. But that the memory of the thing might not be forgotten, he ordered to be struck a medal in silver, which has on one side, a well-defined profile of himself, and on the reverse, the figure of an angel, with a crucifix in one hand, and a drawn sword in the other, in the act of destroying a confused multitude of human creatures, who are represented as falling down before him. O, what a delightful picture this must be to all good Papists! and how they would rejoice if they had it in their power to do the thing over again! Some sentimental Protestants will cry out against this as uncharitable, and they will insist upon it, that modern Papists are not so bloody-minded; then let modern Papists themselves say so. Let them condemn the bloody massacre of thousands of peaceable citizens; and let them condemn the fiendlike triumph and rejoicing VOL. II.-21