The Enquisition.

AMONG all the institutions in any way connected with the Catholic Church, there are two, which the whole Protestant world seem in a special manner to have agreed in hating, denouncing, vilifying, painting in the most hideous colours, and shamelessly calumniating, I mean the Jesuits and the Inquisition. These two words have actually passed into the English vocabulary as having a meaning of their own, a bad meaning, independently of that meaning which belongs to them properly and historically. They are not only used as proper names, denoting certain bodies and institutions which exist and have a history, but they are also used as common names, denoting certain moral, or immoral, qualities which are assumed to be the characteristics of those bodies. Take, for instance, Johnson's Dictionary, or any other dictionary of our language, and look at the meanings which are assigned to these words-look at Jesuit, for example, and you will find " a member of a religious society or company in the Roman Catholic Church, founded by Ignatius Loyola in the sixteenth century;" this is its first, or proper and historical meaning; then follows its intellectual and moral meaning, when used, not as a proper, but as a common name, and it stands thus―" a very clever man, one wiser than yourself, a crafty and cunning man ;" and the word "Jesuitically" is explained simply as "craftily." And so of Inquisitors and the Inquisition in the same manner; our English dictionaries first tell us, and tell us truly, that the Inquisition is a court or tribunal in some Catholic countries for examining persons suspected of heresy;" and then they go on to explain

"Inquisitorial" as meaning "with all the harshness and severity of an Inquisitor," thereby intending to teach, and actually teaching the great mass of Englishmen, that the Inquisition was habitually a harsh, severe, and cruel tribunal.

Now, in what follows I am not going to say anything about the first of these words, but only about the second. I propose to tell you something of the true character of that great bugbear of Protestantism, the horrors of the Inquisition. I suppose that when a Protestant hears the word Inquisition, immediately there rises up before his eyes a horrible vision of a secret tribunal, whose head-quarters are at Rome, but whose hands are everywhere; a tribunal which shrinks from no measures either of fraud or violence in order to compass its ends; and whose one great aim and object is to sweep away Protestantism and Protestants from off the face of the earth. They have heard so much of the dungeons of the Inquisition, of its "tortures," its "horrors," its "myrmidons," its "familiars," its "victims," and the like; that it is inseparably associated in their minds with the idea of a most diabolical, blood-thirsty cruelty. They think that it was a vast machine, invented by the bigoted monks and friars of the dark ages, to rob and murder all lovers of pure Gospel truth. In a word, their notion of it is not very unlike that which Holy Scripture sets before us as an image of the great enemy of mankind, namely, of one "going about seeking whom he may devour."

The object of the following pages is to tell you something of the real history of this much-maligned institution—to give you some idea of the circumstances out of which it took its rise, and to lay before you some account of its modes of procedure; that so you may be enabled to judge how far it can justly be made the subject of reproach against the Bishops of Rome, and through them against the Catholic Church.

Now, you can see for yourselves that the first idea contained in the word " Inquisition" is simply that of inquiring after, or seeking to discover, some hidden thing or person. A policeman, or a magistrate, may in this sense be said to be an inquisitor, because it is his duty to investigate offences that have been committed against the law of the land, and to bring the offenders to justice. And in matters spiritual, a

bishop, by virtue of his office, is an inquisitor of the same kind. It is his duty, laid down in the plainest language of Holy Writ, to watch over those who are entrusted to his charge; and where he sees any going astray, to " reprove," to "rebuke sharply," and "with all authority," and if necessary, "after the first and second admonition to reject," that is, to cut off from the society of the church, or in other words, to excommunicate.* This, I say, is contained in the very idea of a bishop, or overseer of God's flock. He is bound to maintain the integrity of the faith, and to keep his people from being corrupted by teachers of false doctrines; and he has authority given him for this special purpose. Accordingly, for several hundred years after the Ascension of our Lord into heaven, the bishops were the only inquisitors in their respective dioceses; and it is not until the end of the twelfth century, that we read of any other persons being either associated with them, or substituted for them, for the discharge of the duties attached to this part of their office. At that time, however, peculiar circumstances rendered the appointment of special additional officers absolutely necessary in a particular part of the church; from whence it spread by degrees into other countries also, and a tribunal was established, which has since been commonly known in history by the name of the Inquisition. What those peculiar circum

stances were I must now explain.

From what I have already told you concerning the Albigenses, or Manicheans of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, you will have learnt the abominable nature of their principles, and the outrageous violence and gross licentiousness of their practice. But there was another feature in their character of which I did not then speak, but reserved to the present as a more fitting occasion; I allude to their extraordinary deceitfulness and hypocrisy. They sought in every possible way to conceal the fact of their heresy from the notice of the bishops, and were anxious to be supposed to belong to the number of the faithful. For this purpose they frequented the public functions of the church, and even approached the holy sacraments, and the Popes were obliged at various times to have recourse to various measures for the purpose of discovering * 2 Tim. iv, 2. Titus i, 13. ii, 15. iii, 10.

and detecting them. Thus, it was a part of their superstition always to pray towards the east; and St. Leo was obliged to forbid this to Christians, although in itself a thing indifferent, in order that he might by this means distinguish the faithful from the heretic. At a later period, Pope Gelasius, for the same reason, enjoined all Christians to receive Holy Communion under both species; heretofore, it had been the practice to communicate in both kinds, or in either, indifferently; but as it was one of the errors of the Manicheans that the fruit of the vine was evil, and they would not, under any circumstances, partake of it, therefore, Gelasius ordered all Christians to receive of the Chalice as well as of the Host, in order that these heretics might be thereby discovered. In a word, hypocrisy was a characteristic of the Manichean heretics from the very first, and they had not lost it in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when they come before us in the south of France as Albigenses. At that time, if they were anywhere brought before the bishops, the answers which they gave to their examiners were so grossly equivocating, that it required no ordinary skill to detect them. When interrogated, for example, as to the waters of baptism, they answered that they received and acknowledged them, meaning, however, by "the waters of baptism," the doctrines of the Christian religion, whereby our souls are purified as our bodies are by water. And allegories of the same kind so abounded in their conversations and writings and sermons, that men who did not know of their habit of equivocation, often took them for orthodox. Moreover, if their equivocations were discovered, and they were convicted of heresy, they would then feign themselves penitent, submit to the ecclesiastical penance inflicted, and return to their former evil practices the moment the danger was past. It required, therefore, great skill and care and diligence to detect these heretics, whilst, unfortunately, both the bishops and princes of the south of France, where they abounded, were very careless and negligent in taking any measures to stay their progress. It was this state of things, which, as I have already shown, gave rise to the crusades against the Albigenses; and it was out of these same circumstances that the Inquisition had its origin.

It is in a decree of the Council of Verona, A.D., 1182, that we find the first germ of the Inquisition properly so called; the first appointment, that is, of officers specially appointed to find out all who were heretics and to report them to the bishops. The Council required all bishops, either personally, or by their archdeacons, to make a yearly visitation of their dioceses; and four men of high character and known responsibility were to report to them on these occasions the names of all such persons as kept aloof from the company of the faithful, frequented secret meetings, and were justly suspected of heresy. It must be allowed that there is nothing very formidable in the Inquisition at this stage of its development; if we are not misinformed, something of the same kind remains, in form at least, among our neighbours in the Anglican establishment at the present day. We believe that in the printed schedule of questions, supplied to all churchwardens on occasion of the triennial visitation of the bishop, one of them concerns the names of all persons in the parish who are leading wicked and scandalous lives, who do not frequent the Sacraments, &c. Churchwardens are pro hac vice Inquisitors! By and bye, in the year 1229, there was held the celebrated Council of Toulouse, from which most historians have agreed to date the real commencement of the Inquisition. In this Council it was agreed that one priest and several laymen of unblemished character, should be appointed in each parish, by the bishop or archbishop of the diocese, and that these persons should be bound by an oath, diligently to inquire after all heretics, and to denounce them, either to the bishop, or to the temporal lord of the place; and if they neglect this duty, they are to be severely punished. Moreover, all men above the age of fourteen, and all women above the age of twelve, are required to renew every two years an oath of fidelity to the Church, and promise that they will denounce to the proper authorities, all whom they know to be heretics. Remember what you have heard of the hypocrisy of the heretics whom this council condemned, and at the same time of the frightful nature of their opinions and their practices, and you will not be surprised at finding such measures as these adopted with a view to detecting and rooting out the evil. The crusades against them were now over, and