nowledged, with loud cries, that the
Nicean doctrine of the three persons of the Godhead was true. But
the Arians charged him with suborning these infernal witnesses with a
weighty bribe. Already, ordeal tribunals were making their appearance.
During the following six centuries they were held as a final resort for
establishing guilt or innocence, under the forms of trial by cold water,
by duel, by the fire, by the cross.

What an utter ignorance of the nature of evidence and its laws have we
here! An accused man sinks or swims when thrown into a pond of water;
he is burnt or escapes unharmed when he holds a piece of red-hot iron
in his hand; a champion whom he has hired is vanquished or vanquishes in
single fight; he can keep his arms outstretched like a cross, or fails
to do so longer than his accuser, and his innocence or guilt of some
imputed crime is established! Are these criteria of truth?

Is it surprising that all Europe was filled with imposture miracles
during those ages?--miracles that are a disgrace to the common-sense of
man!

But the inevitable day came at length. Assertions and doctrines based
upon such preposterous evidence were involved in the discredit that fell
upon the evidence itself. As the thirteenth century is approached, we
find unbelief in all directions setting in. First, it is plainly seen
among the monastic orders, then it spreads rapidly among the common
people. Books, such as "The Everlasting Gospel," appear among the
former; sects, such as the Catharists, Waldenses, Petrobrussians, arise
among the latter. They agreed in this, "that the public and established
religion was a motley system of errors and superstitions, and that the
dominion which the pope had usurped over Christians was unlawful and
tyrannical; that the claim put forth by Rome, that the Bishop of Rome is
the supreme lord of the universe, and that neither princes nor bishops,
civil governors nor ecclesiastical rulers, have any lawful power in
church or state but what they receive from him, is utterly without
foundation, and a usurpation of the rights of man."

To withstand this flood of impiety, the papal government established two
institutions: 1. The Inquisition; 2. Auricular confession--the latter as
a means of detection, the former as a tribunal for punishment.

In general terms, the commission of the Inquisition was, to extirpate
religious dissent by terrorism, and surround heresy with the most
horrible associations;