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not indeed fear anything from the child as they do in the idea that Rachel weepof obscure and poor parents, residing ining for the Benjamites at Ramah has no a petty village; but that labouring at reference whatever to the massacre of the that time under the disorder of which he innocents by Herod. at length died, his blood might have be- They dare even to urge, that these two come so corrupt, that he might in conse- allusions being clearly false, are a maniquence have lost both reason and hu- fest proof of the falsehood of this narramanity; that, in short, all these incom- tive; and conclude, that the massacre of prehensible events, which prepared the the children, and the new star, and the way for mysteries still more incompre-journey of the three kings, never had the hensible, were directed by an inscrutable slightest foundation in fact. providence.

They even go much further yet; they think they find as palpable a contradiction between the narrative of St. Matthew and that of St. Luke, as between the two genealogies adduced by them. St. Matthew says that Joseph and Mary carried Jesus into Egypt, fearing that he would be involved in the massacre. St. Luke, on the contrary, says, "That after having fulfilled all the ceremonies of the law, Joseph and Mary returned to Na

It is objected, that the historian Josephus, who was nearly contemporary, and who has related all the cruelties of Herod, has made no more mention of the massacre of the young children than of the star of the three kings; that neither the Jew Philo, nor any other Jew, nor any Roman, takes any notice of it; and even that three of the evangelists have observed a profound silence upon these important subjects. It is replied, thatzareth their city, and went every year to they are nevertheless announced by St. Matthew, and that the testimony of one inspired man is of more weight than the silence of all the world.

The critics, however, have not surrendered; they have dared to censure St. Matthew himself, for saying that these children were massacred, "that the words of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. A voice is heard in Ramah, a voice of groaning and lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."

Jerusalem, to keep the Passover."

But thirty days must have expired before a woman could have completed her purification from childbirth and fulfilled all the ceremonies of the law. During these thirty days, therefore, the child must have been exposed to destruction by the general proscription. And if his parents went to Jerusalem to accomplish the ordinances of the law, they certainly did not go to Egypt.

These are the principal objections of unbelievers. They are effectually refuted by the faith both of the Greek and These historical words, they observe, Latin churches. If it were necessary were literally fulfilled in the tribe of Ben- always to be clearing up the doubts of jamin, which descended from Rachel, persons who read the scriptures, we must when Nabuzaradan destroyed a part of inevitably pass our whole lives in disthat tribe near the city of Ramah. It puting about all the articles contained in was no longer a prediction, they say, any them. Let us rather refer ourselves to more than were the words, "He shall be our worthy superiors and masters; to called a Nazarene. And he came to the university of Salamanca when in dwell in a city called Nazareth, that it Spain, to the Scrbonne in France, and to might be fulfilled which was spoken by the holy congregation at Rome. Let us the prophets. He shall be called a Na- {submit both in heart and in understandzarene. They triumph in the circum-ing to that which is required of us for our stance, that these words are not to be good.

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fort took the city of Beziers by assault, and put all the inhabitants to the sword: and at Laval, four hundred Albigenses were burnt at once." In all the histories of the inquisition that I ever read," says Paramo," I never met with an act of faith so eminent, or a spectacle so solemn. At the village of Cazera, sixty were burnt; and in another place a hundred and eighty."

The inquisition was adopted by the

That we may not be suspected of resorting to falsehood, in order to render this tribunal odious, we shall in this pre-Count of Thoulouse in 1229, and consent article give the abstract of a Latin work on the "Origin and Progress of the Office of the Holy Inquisition," printed by the royal press at Madrid in 1589, by order of Louis de Paramo, Inquisitor in the kingdom of Sicily.

Without going back to the origin of the inquisition, which Paramo thinks he discovers in the manner in which God is related to have proceeded against Adam and Eve, let us abide by the new law, of which Jesus Christ, according to him, was the chief inquisitor. He exercised the functions of that office on the thirteenth day after his birth, by announcing to the city of Jerusalem, through the three kings or magi, his appearance in the world, and afterwards by causing Herod to be devoured alive by worms; by driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple; and finally, by delivering Judea into the hands of tyrants, who pillaged it in punishment of its unbelief.

fided to the Dominicans by Pope Gregory IX. in 1233; Innocent IV. in 1251, established it in the whole of Italy, with the exception of Naples. At the commencement, indeed, heretics were not subjected in the Milanese to the punishment of death, which they nevertheless so richly deserved, because the popes were not sufficiently respected by the emperor Frederick, to whom that state belonged; but a short time afterwards, heretics were burnt at Milan, as well as in the other parts of Italy; and our author remarks, that in 1315 some thousands of heretics having spread themselves through Cremasco, a small territory included in the jurisdiction of the Milanese, the Dominican brothers burnt the greater part of them; and thus checked the ravages of the theological pestilence by the flames.

As the first canon of the council of Thoulouse enjoined the bishops to appoint in every parish a priest and two or After Jesus Christ, St. Peter, St. Paul, three laymen of reputation, who should and the rest of the apostles, exercised the be bound by oath to search carefully and office of inquisitor, which they trans- frequently for heretics, in houses, caves, mitted to the popes and bishops, their and all places wherever they might be successors. St. Dominic having arrived able to hide themselves, and to give the in France with the Bishop of Osma, of speediest information to the bishop, the which he was archdeacon, became ani- seigneur of the place, or his bailiff, after mated with zeal against the Albigenses, having taken all necessary preparaand obtained the regard and favour of tions against the escape of any heretics Simon, Count de Montfort. Having discovered, the inquisitors must have been appointed by the pope inquisitor in acted at this time in concert with the Languedoc, he there founded his order, bishops. The prisons of the bishop and which was approved of and ratified in of the inquisition were frequently the 1216, by Honorius III. Under the same; and, although in the course of the auspices of St. Madelaine, Count Mont-procedure the inquisitor might act in his

own name, he could not, without the in-constrained to embrace the faith of Jesus tervention of the bishop, apply the tor- { Christ, and that these violences are a disture, pronounce any definitive sentence, grace to our religion. or condemn to perpetual imprisonment, &c. The frequent disputes that occurred between the bishops and the inquisitors, on the limits of their authority, on the spoils of the condemned, &c. compelled Pope Sixtus IV. in 1473, to make the inquisitions independent and separate from the tribunals of the bishops. He created for Spain an inquisitor-general, with full powers to nominate particular inquisitors; and Ferdinand V. in 1478, founded and endowed the inquisition.

At the solicitation of Turrecremata (or Torquemada) a brother of the Dominican order, and grand-inquisitor of Spain, the same Ferdinand, who was surnamed the Catholic, banished from his kingdom all the Jews, allowing them three months from the publication of his edict, after the expiration of which period they were not to be found in any of the Spanish dominions under the pain of death. They were permitted, on quitting the kingdom, to take with them the goods and merchandize which they had purchased, but forbidden to take out of it any description of gold or silver.

But these arguments are very weak; and I contend, says Paramo, that the edict is pious, just, and praiseworthy, as the violence with which the Jews are required to be converted is not an absolute but a conditional violence, since they might avoid it by quitting their country. Besides, they might corrupt those of the Jews who were newly converted, and even Christians themselves; but, as St. Paul says, what communion is there between justice and iniquity, light and darkness, Jesus Christ and Belial?

With respect to the confiscation of their goods, nothing could be more equitable, as they had acquired them only by usury towards Christians, who only received back, therefore, what was in fact their own.

In short, by the death of our Lord, the Jews became slaves, and everything that a slave possesses belongs to his master. We could not but suspend our narrative for a moment, to make these remarks, in opposition to persons who have thus calumniated the piety, the spotless justice, and the sanctity of the catholic king.

The brother Turrecremata followed up and strengthened this edict, in the diocese of Toledo, by prohibiting all Chris-rity tians, under pain of excommunication, from giving anything whatever to the Jews, even that which might be necessary to preserve life itself.

At Seville, where an example of seve

to the Jews was ardently desired, it was the holy will of God, who knows how to draw good out of evil, that a young man who was in waiting in consequence of an assignation, should see În consequence of these decrees, about through the chinks of a partition an asa million Jews departed from Catalonia,sembly of Jews, and in consequence inthe kingdom of Arragon, that of Valen-form against them. A great number of cia, and other countries subject to the dominion of Ferdinand; the greater part of whom perished miserably so that they compare the calamities that they suffered during this period to those they experienced under Titus and Vespasian. This expulsion of the Jews gave incredible joy to all Catholic sovereigns.

Some divines blamed these edicts of the King of Spain; their principal reasons are, that unbelievers ought not to be

the unhappy wretches were apprehended, and punished as they deserved. By virtue of different edicts of the kings of Spain, and of the inquisitors, general and particular, established in that kingdom, there were, in a very short time, about two thousand heretics burnt at Seville, and more than four thousand from 1482 to 1520. A vast number of others were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, or exposed to inflictions of different de

seriptions. The emigration from it was so great, that five hundred houses were supposed to be left in consequence quite empty, and in the whole diocese, three thousand, and altogether more than a hundred thousand heretics were put to death, or punished in some other manner, or went into banishment, to avoid severer suffering. Such was the destruction of heretics accomplished by these pious brethren.

dextrous impostor, whom God made use of as an instrument for accomplishing the good work. In fact, the wicked are frequently useful instruments in God's hands, and he does not reject the good they bring about. Thus, when John remarks to our Lord Jesus Christ, "Lord, we saw one who was not thy disciple casting out demons in thy name, and we prevented him from doing so," Jesus answered him, "Prevent him not; for he who works miracles in my name will not speak ill of me; and he who is not against me is for me."

The establishment of the inquisition at Toledo was a fruitful source of revenue to the Catholic church. In the short space of two years, it actually burnt at Paramo relates, afterwards, that he saw the stake fifty-two obstinate heretics, and in the library of St. Laurence, at the Estwo hundred and twenty more were out-curial, a manuscript in the hand-writing lawed; whence we may easily conjecture of what utility the inquisition has been from its original establishment, since in so short a period it performed such wonders.

From the beginning of the fifteenth century, Pope Boniface IX. attempted in vain to establish the inquisition in Portugal, where he created the provincial of the Dominicans, Vincent de Lisbon, in- { quisitor-general. Innocent VII., some years after, having named as inquisitor the Minim Didacus de Sylva, King John I. wrote to that pope, that the establishment of the inquisition in his kingdom was contrary to the good of his subjects, to his own interests, and perhaps also to the interests of religion.

of Saavedra, in which that knave details his fabrication of a false bull, and obtaining thereby his entrée into Seville as legate, with a train of a hundred and twenty domestics; his defrauding of thirteen thousand ducats the heirs of a rich nobleman in that neighbourhood, during his twenty days' residence in the palace of the archbishop, by producing a counterfeit bond for the same sum, which the nobleman acknowledged, in that instrument, to have borrowed of the legate when he visited Rome; and finally, after his arrivai at Badajos, the permission granted him by King John III., to whom he was presented by means of forged letters of the pope, to establish tribunals of the inquisition in the principal cities of the

These tribunals began immediately to

The pope, affected by the representa- { kingdom. tions of a too mild and easy monarch, revoked all the powers granted to the in-exercise their jurisdiction; and a vast quisitors newly established, and authorised Mark, Bishop of Senigaglia, to absolve the persons accused; which he accordingly did. Those who had been deprived of their dignities and offices were re-established in them, and many were delivered from the fear of the confiscation of their property.

But how admirable, continues Paramo, is the Lord in all bis ways! That which the sovereign pontiffs had been unable effectually to obtain with all their urgency, King John granted spontaneously to a

number of condemnations and executions of relapsed heretics took place, as also of absolutions of recanting and penitent heretics. Six months had passed in this manner, when the truth was made apparent of that expression in the gospel,

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There is nothing hid which shall not be made known." The Marquis de Villeneuve de Barcarotta, a Spanish nobleman, assisted by the governor of Mora, had the impostor apprehended and conducted to Madrid. He was there carried before John de Tavera, Archbishop of

and its roots throughout the world, and produced the most pleasant fruits.

In order to form some correct idea of

Toledo. That prelate, perfectly astonished at all that now transpired of the knavery and address of the false legate, despatched all the depositions and documents rela-the jurisprudence of the inquisition, and tive to the case to Pope Paul III.; as the forms of its proceedings, unknown to he did also the acts of the inquisitions civil tribunals, let us take a cursory view which Saavedra had established, and by of the "Directory of Inquisitors," which which it appeared that a great number of Nicolas Eymeric, grand inquisitor of the heretics had already been judged and kingdom of Arragon about the middle of condemned, and that the impostor had the fourteenth century, composed in Latin, extorted from his victims more than three and addressed to his brother inquisitors, hundred thousand ducats. in virtue of the authority of his office.

The pope could not help acknowledging in all this the finger of God and a miracle of his providence; he accordingly formed the congregation of the tribunal of the inquisition, under the denomination of "The Holy Office," in 1545, and Sixtus V. confirmed it in 1588.

All writers but one agree with Paramo on the subject of the establishment of the inquisition in Portugal. Antoine de Sousa alone, in his "Aphorisms of Inquisitors," calls the history of Saavedra in question, under the pretence that he may very easily be conceived to have accused himself without being in fact guilty, in consideration of the glory which would { redound to him from the event, and in the hope of living in the memory of mankind. But Sousa, in the very narrative which he substitutes for that of Paramo, exposes himself to the suspicion of bad faith, in citing two bulls of Paul III. and two others from the same pope to Cardinal Henry, the king's brother; bulls which Sousa has not introduced into his printed work, and which are not to be found in any collection of apostolical bulls extant; two decisive reasons for rejecting his opinion, and adhering to that of Paramo, Hiescas, Salasar, Mendoça, Fernandez, and Placentinus, &c.

When the Spaniards passed over to America, they carried the inquisition with them; the Portuguese introduced it in the Indies, immediately upon its being established at Lisbon, which led to the observation which Louis de Paramo makes in his preface, that this flourishing and verdant tree had extended its branches

A short time after the invention of printing, an edition of this work was printed at Barcelona, and soon conveyed to all the inquisitions in the Christian world. A second edition appeared at Rome in 1578, in folio, with scholia and commentaries by Francois Pegna, doctor in theology and canonist.

The following eulogium on the work is given by the editor in an epistle dedicatory to Gregory XIII.:-"While Christian princes are everywhere engaged in combatting with arms the enemies of the Catholic religion, and pouring out the blood of their soldiers, to support the unity of the church and the authority of the apostolic see, there are also zealous and devoted writers, who toil in obscurity, either to refute the opinions of innovators or to arm and direct the power of the laws against their persons, in order that the severity of punishments, and the solemnity and torture attending executions, keeping them within the bounds of duty, may produce that effect upon them which cannot be produced in them by the love of virtue.

"Although I fill only the lowest place among these defenders of religion, I am nevertheless animated with the same zeal for repressing the impious audacity and horrible depravity of the broachers of innovation. The labour which I here present to you on the " Directory of Inquisitions," will be a proof of my assertion. This work of Nicolas Eymeric, respectable for its antiquity, contains a summary of the principal articles of faith, and an elaborate and methodical code of instruc

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