and prayed,
that out of her goodness and clemency she might be delivered from the
dreadful punishment of the fire. 'Great Queen,' said she, 'is not your
presence able to bring me some comfort under my misery? Consider my
youth, and that I am condemned for a religion which I have sucked in
with my mother's milk.' The Queen turned away her eyes, declaring, she
pitied the miserable creature, but did not dare to intercede for her
with a single word.

Not only have Roman Catholic writers defended these inquisitorial
abominations, but, with what every Protestant must needs consider daring
and blasphemous impiety, laboured to prove that the first Inquisitor was
God himself. Luis de Paramo, for instance, in his book 'De Origine et
Progressu Officii Sanctoe Inquisitionis, ejusque dignitate et
utilitate,' proves God to be the first Inquisitor, and that in the
Garden of Eden was the first auto da fe.

Nor do these most pious casuists discover anything in Scripture which
forbids the burning of heretics, notwithstanding such texts as
'Whosoever sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed,' which
they contend inquisitors do never violate the true meaning or spirit of,
it being evident that to burn men is not to shed their blood--thus
eluding the maxim Ecclesia non novit sanguinem. And if their right to
burn heretics was questioned they triumphantly cited the text (as given
in the 'Beehive' of the Romish Church) 'Whosoever doth not abide in me,
shall be cast out of the vineyard as a branch and there wither; and men
gather those branches and cast them into the fire and burn them.'

On this text John Andreas, Panormitamis, Hostraensii, Bernardus
Leizenburgen, and others of the Roman Catholic casuists built up their
proof that heretics, like grape branches, should be cast into the fire
and burnt.

The execrable duplicity of these men is by Protestant priests made the
theme of unsparing invective, as if the burning of heretics and its
justification by Scripture were crimes peculiar to Roman Catholics, when
in point of fact both have been shamelessly committed by Christians
rejoicing in the name of Protestants. John Calvin burnt Servetus, and
Robert Hall, as we have seen, applauded the act. England, to say nothing
of other countries, has had its auto da fe, as well since as before the
Reformation. Heretics were first made bonfires of in England during the
reign of Henry the Fourth, who permitted the abomination in order to
pl