th feelings of admiration from this array of worldly power, to the
poor martyr, who, with no support but what he drew from within, was
prepared to defy this power, and to lay down his life in vindication of
the rights of conscience. Some there may have been, in that large
concourse, who shared in these sentiments. But their number was small
indeed in comparison with those who looked on the wretched victim as the
enemy of God, and his approaching sacrifice as the most glorious triumph
of the Cross.

The ceremonies began with a sermon, "the sermon of the faith," by the
bishop of Zamora. The subject of it may well be guessed, from the
occasion. It was no doubt plentifully larded with texts of Scripture,
and, unless the preacher departed from the fashion of the time, with
passages from the heathen writers, however much out of place they may
seem in an orthodox discourse.

When the bishop had concluded, the grand-inquisitor administered an oath
to the assembled multitude, who on their knees solemnly swore to defend
the Inquisition, to maintain the purity of the faith, and to inform
against any one who should swerve from it. As Philip repeated an oath of
similar import, he suited the action to the word, and, rising from his
seat, drew his sword from its scabbard, as if to announce himself the
determined champion of the Holy Office. In the earlier _autos_ of the
Moorish and Jewish infidels, so humiliating an oath had never been
exacted from the sovereign.

After this, the secretary of the tribunal read aloud an instrument
reciting the grounds for the conviction of the prisoners, and the
respective sentences pronounced against them. Those who were to be
admitted to penitence, each, as his sentence was proclaimed, knelt down,
and, with his hands on the missal, solemnly abjured his errors, and was
absolved by the grand-inquisitor. The absolution, however, was not so
entire as to relieve the offender from the penalty of his transgressions
in this world. Some were doomed to perpetual imprisonment in the cells
of the Inquisition, others to lighter penances. All were doomed to the
confiscation of their property,--a point of too great moment to the
welfare of the tribunal ever to be omitted. Besides this, in many cases
the offender, and, by a glaring perversion of justice, his immediate
descendants, were rendered for ever ineligible to public office of any
kind, and their names branded with perpetual infamy. Thus blighted in
fortun