this necessarily implied the power of determining
what constitutes heresy. The criterion of truth was thus in possession
of this tribunal, which was charged "to discover and bring to judgment
heretics lurking in towns, houses, cellars, woods, caves, and fields."
With such savage alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the
interests of religion, that between 1481 and 1808 it had punished three
hundred and forty thousand persons, and of these nearly thirty-two
thousand had been burnt! In its earlier days, when public opinion could
find no means of protesting against its atrocities, "it often put to
death, without appeal, on the very day that they were accused, nobles,
clerks, monks, hermits, and lay persons of every rank." In whatever
direction thoughtful men looked, the air was full of fearful shadows. No
one could indulge in freedom of thought without expecting punishment. So
dreadful were the proceedings of the Inquisition, that the exclamation
of Pagliarici was the exclamation of thousands: "It is hardly possible
for a man to be a Christian, and die in his bed."

The Inquisition destroyed the sectaries of Southern France in the
thirteenth century. Its unscrupulous atrocities extirpated Protestantism
in Italy and Spain. Nor did it confine itself to religious affairs; it
engaged in the suppression of political discontent. Nicolas Eymeric, who
was inquisitor-general of the kingdom of Aragon for nearly fifty years,
and who died in 1399, has left a frightful statement of its conduct and
appalling cruelties in his "Directorium Inquisitorum."

This disgrace of Christianity, and indeed of the human race, had
different constitutions in different countries. The papal Inquisition
continued the tyranny, and eventually superseded the old episcopal
inquisitions. The authority of the bishops was unceremoniously put aside
by the officers of the pope.

By the action of the fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, the power of
the Inquisition was frightfully increased, the necessity of private
confession to a priest--auricular confession--being at that time
formally established. This, so far as domestic life was concerned, gave
omnipresence and omniscience to the Inquisition. Not a man was safe.
In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or
extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants
were turned into spies. Summoned before the dread tribunal, he was
simply informed that he lay