Interpretation of the Apocalypse by the Rev. George Croly.

In our fortunate country, the power of the Romish church has so long
perished, that we find some difficulty in conceiving the nature, and
still more in believing the tyranny of its dominion. The influence of
the monks and the murders of the inquisition have passed into a nursery
tale; and we turn with a generous, yet rash and most unjustifiable
scepticism from the history of Romish authority.

Through almost the entire of Italy, through the Flemish dominions of
Germany, through a large portion of France, and through the entire of
Spain, a great monastic body was established, which, professing a
secondary and trivial obedience to the sovereign, gave its first and
real obedience to the pope. The name of spiritual homage cloaked the
high treason of an oath of allegiance to a foreign monarch; and whoever
might be king of France, or Spain, the pope was king of the Dominicans.
All the other monastic orders were so many papal outposts. But the great
Dominican order, immensely opulent in its pretended poverty; formidably
powerful in its hypocritical disdain of earthly influence; and
remorselessly ambitious, turbulent, and cruel in its primitive zeal; was
an actual lodgment and province of the papacy, an inferior Rome, in the
chief European kingdoms.

In the closest imitation of Rome, this spiritual power had fiercely
assumed the temporal sword; the inquisition was army, revenues, and
throne in one. With the racks and fires of a tribunal worthy of the gulf
of darkness and guilt from which it rose, the Dominicans bore popery in
triumph through christendom, crushing every vestige of religion under
the wheels of its colossal idol. The subjugation of the Albigenses in
1229 had scattered the church; the shock of the great military masses
was past; a subtler and more active force was required to destroy the
wandering people of God; and the inquisition multiplied itself for the
work of death. This terrible tribunal set every principle, and even
every form of justice at defiance. Secrecy, that confounds innocence
with guilt, was the spirit of its whole proceeding. All its steps were
in darkness. The suspected revolter from popery was seized in secret,
tried in secret, never suffered to see the face of accuser, witness,
advocate, or friend, was kept unacquainted with the charge, was urged to
criminate himself; if tardy, was compelled to this self-murder by the
rack; if terrif