act worthy of notice was, the administration of the oath to the king in his balcony by the Inquisitor-General, who descended from his throne for that purpose. The oath, which is given, purports, that his Majesty will defend the holy mother and Apostolic Church of Rome with all his power; persecute and cause to be persecuted all heretics and apostates ; and assist the Inquisition in taking and castigating such, of whatever quality, without exception. Afterwards, the Celebrator of the Mass ascends the pulpit, and administers a long oath to the people, engaging them to persecute and reveal all heretics, and give no harbour or assistance to them, or any suspected of heresy; and if they have failed so to do, through ignorance, when informed they will denounce the offenders." So help us God, and the holy Gospels, and the Crucifix which is now before us," (the green one) &c. "And they all said Amen." The worthy Alcaide is transported when in imagination he surveys the immense and splendid assembly brought into one view, and disposed with every advantage for the display of its magnificence. In the large building at the north side, called the Panaderia, overlooking the theatre, with its four tiers of balconies, each containing near fifty divisions, numbered, was seen in the centre of the first, the King and Queens, both consort and mother; and near them, the Ladies of the Palace, displaying in their costly dress, or in valuable medals, the insignia of the Holy Office. In the theatre, on the division to the right of his Majesty was seated on his throne the Inquisitor-General, and, about him, all the hierarchy and nobility of the kingdom. The opposite division was occupied by the lugubrious assemblage of the condemned-effigies of the dead, with boxes of their bones, those condemned to suffer in person on the highest bench, and, on the lower, the various penitents with all the insignia of their condemnation and punishment, together with the ministers and religious, who endeavoured to reclaim the obstinate and comfort the reclaimed. In the open central space was seen the altar with the crucifix, the celebrating priest, the three pulpits, the chests containing the sentences, the two cages in which the condemned were placed when hearing their sentence. Upon the whole, here was a scene of well-ordered confusion which astonished all those who composed it, as well as all who beheld it. Our author is so much pleased with his subject, that he has given a particular account, number by number, of every division of the balconies and their occupants. It should not be forgotten, as is here observed, that this was formerly the scene of the bull-fights. There is now an amphitheatre for that purpose out of the city.

And here I have to regret the rapacity of some barbarous print collector, or illustrator, or whatever he may be, who has mercilessly abstracted from the copy of the work which I am representing, an engraved view of this magnificent theatre, and to every part of which there are references with explanations. If the guilty individual has not, under the influence of the principles in contact with it, committed it to the flames, I trust his conscience will oblige him, through you, to make some attempt at restitution.*

After this view and explanation we are informed, that the sermon usual on such occasions was preached by El Reverendissimo Padre Maestro Fray Tomàs Navarro, Dominican, &c. He ought to be immortalized; for his sermon, on the invariable text, the legend of the Inquisitorial insignia, Exurge Domine, judica causam tuam, is just that dull and fiery farrago of bigotry and intolerance, which any one, acquainted with the principles of the community, might compose, as an exercise, for the occasion. And he would not be in much danger of caricaturing.

• The plates in Limborch are entirely without explanation; and though generally agreeing with the description above, the scene cannot be Madrid.

The close of it breathes the tender mercies of the holy office. The preacher having claimed with some complacency those who became reconciled to the faith, directs himself to "the rest, who, as pertinacious, are condemned to the fire; whence, losing their corporal life, their obstinate souls will go immediately to burn in that of hell," &c.

Suitably to such a sermon, and particularly its close, his Excellency rings a little bell as a signal to begin reading the causes and sentences. And immediately our friend Olmo, and another, who had the list of the condemned, and to whom the office belonged, brought them in order down to the platform and placed them in one of the cages, and their sentences were read from one of the pulpits. Two cages were used for greater expedition, as two secretaries could be employed at the same time. We are here told that a man, and woman, and therefore, I presume, two different and additional individuals to the two women mentioned before, requested an audience for the purpose of recanting; and, so doing, the tenderness of the mercy (thus we read) of the Inquisition remitted the capital sentence. Before the author leaves this division of his work, he observes, that curiosity might desire an entire detail of the causes; but, not to profane the sacredness of secresy, (por no profanar el sagrado del secreto,) he thinks it best to give only a compend.

This follows under the title, Breve Sumario de los Reos, meritos, y sentencias. The list is meagre enough; the seal of secresy is sacredly observed. The number of the condemned was one hundred and eighteen. The last nineteen were sentenced to be burned; all for Judaism, except the last for Mahometanism. About four o'clock in the afternoon, the reading of the sentences of the Relaxed was finished, and the miserable procession (infausta procession) was conducted to the place of execution. The court in the mean time proceeded with the other causes, and with abjurations, of the three kinds, de levi, de vehementi, and en forma, till nine o'clock. The forms of abjuration are given at length, and the ceremonies of receiving the Reconciled. In about half an hour more the whole was finished; and this is declared to be the termination of the Auto. The rest is presumed to belong to the secular power; we shall see how justly. The ceremony of the day, therefore, lasted from five in the morning to half-past nine in the evening. Their Majesties then retired, and after them, the rest of the company, and the first, with some others, are highly applauded for the patience with which they bore the fatigue and occupations of certainly a very laborious day. At the dissolution of the meeting, El Alcaide Joseph del Olmo, with all his other titles, delivered the penitent prisoners to the Ministers and Familiars, who conducted them to their prison. The green crucifix was then returned in procession to its own Great Altar in the magnificent church of San Martin. The 30th of June in the year 1680 would be Saturday, although that day is not named; but afterwards, the 3rd and 4th of July are called Tuesday and Wednesday. This observation is of some importance, because it proves the day after the Auto to be Sunday, of which day and the way of occupying it, no account appears. Probably the first day being a very busy one, the next was made a day of rest: and it might be spent partly in efforts to reclaim the relaxed. At all events, it appears, that the next day, Monday, was the day of execution for those who were to be burned.

We are now then arrived at that dreadful close of the whole nefarious transaction, and perhaps the most important portion of the whole book. The title is, De la Execution de las sentencias de los relaxados, y demas Reos. The Auto being terminated, nothing remained but the tragical fate of the impenitent and relaxed, who had given occasion to the display of a judgment, so formidable for the delinquents, and so admirable and awful for the rest. The Tribunal of the Inquisition-attend gentle

reader-had in good time instructed the secular Judges to prepare in the Brasero as many as twenty stakes, and ropes for strangling, and conveniences to apply the fire without the horrible violence practised in more sanguinary executions, and a sufficient number of executioners to secure greater despatch in the discharge of justice. The pious providence of the Holy Tribunal, which engages to the strict observance of the sacred canons while the guilty are in her power, observes the same anxiety, says our relator, when she delivers them over to the public Magistrate. In proof whereof is produced the form of delivery, which is to the Corregidor and his Lieutenant; whom we entreat and charge very earnestly, as we have the best right to do, that they treat the condemned humanely and mercifully. (A los quales rogamos, y encargamos muy afectuosamente, como de derecho mejor podemos, se ayan benigna, y piedosamente con el.) Our author is here very anxious that in such executions of justice, neither defect nor excess should be incurred. And he is particularly severe against those who may from extreme zeal be guilty of the latter, as exposing themselves and their cause to the charge of cruelty, temerity, and impiety. Leaving Alcaide Joseph for a moment, it may be acceptable to the reader to learn from a most unexceptionable authority, what was the established forms of delivery to the secular power, in the concluding request which has been just adduced. The Dominican EYMERIC, in his Directorium Inquisitorum, &c. Romæ, 1587, p. 512, gives it thus:-Rogamus tamen et efficaciter dictam curiam sæcularem, quod circa te, citra sanguinis effusionem, et mortis periculum sententiam suam modereter. In forms repeated, pp. 515, 520, 524, it stands nearly in the same words. Now, what can any unprejudiced person say to this, but that, in the whole transaction, to the most savage barbarity is added the most deliberate and unprincipled hypocrisy? Away with the pretence, that all this is a mere seular act; it is foreknown, provided for, and, if omitted, would be enforced by the Inquisition. The Italians, in such an exigency, apply excommunication.

We have a description of the Brasero, or, as it is likewise called, with the same reference to its use, the Quemadero, which is worth attending to. It was sixty feet square, and seven in heigth, (I presume an eleyated piece of ground,) accessible by a flight of steps seven feet broad, and of such capacity as to allow the proper distance between the stakes, for the execution of justice, and the admission of the spiritual officers. It was guarded by the soldiers of the faith, who, on the present occasion, could not perfectly prevent the intrusion of the multitude.

The author then expatiates upon the labours of the religious of all orders to assist, that is, convert, the condemned; and, giving them all credit for their intentions where they failed, magnifies the triumph of divine grace where they succeeded; particularly in the case of the Jews, whose obstinacy and blindness present such formidable impediments to conversion. And truly, (I am using the language of my book,) if one attend to external signs, there will appear as great a difference between the reclaimed and the obstinate, as between the elect and the reprobate. The latter went with a horrible colour in their countenances, with eyes disturbed, and, as it were, emitting flames, and their whole physiognomy such, that they appeared possessed by a demon.* On the other hand,

• In DR. MICHAEL GEDDES'S View of the Inquisition in Portugal, and a particular Act of Faith celebrated at Lisbon, May 10, 1682, two years only after that of Madrid here de. scribed, of which he was a witness, we read the following analogous passage - Pegna, a famous Spanish Inquisitor, calls this procession, Horrendum ac tremendum Spectaculum, and so it is in truth, there being something in the looks of all the prisoners, besides those that are to be burnt, that is ghastly and disconsolate, beyond what can be imagined, and in the eyes and countenance of those that are to be burnt, there is something that looks fierce and eager." Tracts, Vol. i. p, 409.

the converted went with such humility, apparent comfort, obedience, and spiritual cheerfulness, that the grace of God appeared to shine through them. It might be believed, that they were even then in heaven from the many prayers and suffrages which the pious offered for their souls. The mercy shewn to these latter was, that they were only to be strangled, which was done; and then the fire was applied to the impenitent, who were burned alive (my author is still speaking) with no small signs of impatience, rage, and despair. The executioners then cast the bodies into the fire till they were reduced to ashes, which was completed about nine o'clock in the morning. An attempt is then made by the ascription of the praise of martyrdom to any such sufferers, founded upon the assertion, true where it applies, that it is the cause, not the death, which makes the martyr. Instances are adduced, of heretics, of the widows at Malabar, and of the self-murderers under the wheels of the idol's car, (Juggernaut). The crowning instance is that of three hundred pertinacious Albigeois, who, on a similar occasion to that here described, threw themselves into the flames of the Brasero, without being moved by the miraculous preaching and exhortation of the glorious patriarch St. Dominic. When this dismal performance was ended, the white crucifix was removed and carried in procession to the church of San Miguel, where it was replaced upon its high altar, and a Response was sung for the converted who had suffered. It was placed by the side of another crucifix presented by the Inquisition-I sometimes forget to add, holy-on occasion of the Auto de Fe celebrated in Madrid, July 4,

1632.

The remaining ceremonies and punishments of minor criminals are of no material moment; they took place on the 2nd and 3rd of July. And so this savage mockery and outrage upon Christianity ended. Ŏ! with what justice might the motto on the banners of this diabolic institution, "Arise, O God, plead thine own cause," be wrested from their profane hands and flung back in their faces! For, should the Great Avenger arise, and thus enter into judgment with them, I do not ask, whether they could stand, but how would they stand? Where are the thirty thousand of those, whose blood has been shed, and whose bodies have been burned, by this vile and insulting imitation of the final Tribunal and for what do they cry? On what generation will the accumulated guilt of so many preceding ones be visited? Let us, with true piety and charity, hope, that a sincere, deep, and national repentance in the present generation, with an utter and final abolition of the Great Fountain

• In another Auto Publice de Fee, as it is entitled, celebrated in Seville, March 29, Sunday, 1648, in my possession, printed by a printer of the Holy Office in Seville, and which is far less particular than that described, there was one only Relaxado en Persona, and he was reclaimed by the importunities of his instructors, and therefore indulged with strangling instead of burning. During the time that his constancy was thus assailed and overcome, the anonymous author writes, he confessed generally, was reconciled many times, and contemned performing many acts of profession of the Roman Catholic Faith, of contrition for his faults, of detestation of his former errors, and of conformity to the will of God, until his death. The reader, unacquainted with the result, would have expected that the life, at least, of this poor creature would have been spared. But no. He was now out of the power of the merciful Inquisition, and all that was future was the act of the secular power, with which it could not interfere. So then, the gentle spirits of this tribunal did nothing to bring their prisoner into the situation in which he was then found. They only drew the trigger; it was the wicked bullet which killed. It is in this manner that the Protestant martyrdoms in this country, under a Queen, called in a British senate, with facetious mockery, “ the bloody Queen Mary," have been justified. The act and responsibility have been thrown upon the secular laws of the country. lf, for one moment, this odious hypocrisy could shake the necessary conviction of even the most unreflecting individual, the truth would, in the next, be restored to its proper place by the simple question... by what, and by whose influence, did the secular laws become what they were!

of iniquity, will avert the just and impending wrath, and be some, although a late and insufficient compensation to the Christian world for the acts of those who have been its most deadly enemies and persecutors. Let them no longer boast, that by the agency and activity of this infernal tribunal the efforts of the most sincere, disinterested, and devoted servants of God were effectually put to silence, and that thus the corruption of their land was preserved from purification. But let them at last bow to the authority, which for many long ages they have only assumed to insult; and together with those whom they have been used to calumniate and persecute as heretics, submit to the righteousness of God, and seek both their own salvation and that of others through the alone Saviour of the world, in the way prescribed by the only authentic revelation of the Divine Will.

TORQUEMADA.

JESUIT MISSIONARIES IN THE EAST. No. 2.

To the Editor of the Protestant Guardian.

SIR,-Having in your 10th number briefly adverted to the establishment of the Jesuits Mission in the southern region of Hindostan, to the fictitious character which they assumed, and to the singular conduct which they observed in their intercourse with the different classes of the natives, I shall now proceed to give a short detail of some of those pagan rites and practices in which they freely indulged themselves and their converts. The reader will not, I trust, consider the prosecution of this subject needless or uninteresting, if he views those ceremonies and observances as indications of the real nature of that system which the Loyolists uniformly strove to establish under the name of Christianity. They are also deserving of some regard as the alleged, if not the real cause of that civil war, which raged for about a century among the rival orders of the Roman Apostles in the East, and which probably contributed, in no small degree, to the gradual decline and ultimate extinction of most of their Missions in that quarter of the world.

There are not many, 1 imagine, of any party who will be disposed gratuitously to suspect that the Jesuits would be guilty of circulating many vernacular copies of the Scriptures among their neophytes; for it is, a priori, highly improbable that men, proverbially so sagacious, and so zealous for Mother Church, would be so foolish as to endanger her interests by needlessly exposing her doctrines and practices to the serious inconvenience of a contrast with the truths of revelation. An additional motive for this omission may be found in the conduct, and assumed character of the Missionaries themselves; for what communion could light have with darkness, or the records of truth with a system of acknowledged imposture and falsehood? In accordance with these antecedent presumptions, there is not, so far as I am aware, an instance on record of any infringement on their part of that papal safeguard, the fourth rule of the congregation of the Index,* which denounces the general circulation of the Scriptures in the Vulgar tongue as a measure calculated to produce “more harm than good;" (the reader, of course, knows whose Church apprehends such an effect from such a cause, and he can probably guess the reason.) In default, then, of positive evidence, the Jesuits, and probably the Romish Missionaries generally, are fairly

• See Prot. Guard. p. 69 & 129.