for its repression. By
these the reading of the Evangelists and Apostles; all open or secret
meetings to which religion gave its name in ever so slight a degree; all
conversations on the subject, at home or at the table, were forbidden
under severe penalties. In every province special courts of judicature
were established to watch over the execution of the edicts. Whoever
held these erroneous opinions was to forfeit his office without regard
to his rank. Whoever should be convicted of diffusing heretical
doctrines, or even of simply attending the secret meetings of the
Reformers, was to be condemned to death, and if a male, to be executed
by the sword, if a female, buried alive. Backsliding heretics were to
be committed to the flames. Not even the recantation of the offender
could annul these appalling sentences. Whoever abjured his errors
gained nothing by his apostacy but at farthest a milder kind of death.

The fiefs of the condemned were also confiscated, contrary to the
privileges of the nation, which permitted the heir to redeem them for a
trifling fine; and in defiance of an express and valuable privilege of
the citizens of Holland, by which they were not to be tried out of their
province, culprits were conveyed beyond the limits of the native
judicature, and condemned by foreign tribunals. Thus did religion guide
the hand of despotism to attack with its sacred weapon, and without
danger or opposition, the liberties which were inviolable to the secular
arm.

Charles V., emboldened by the fortunate progress of his arms in Germany,
thought that he might now venture on everything, and seriously meditated
the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands. But the
terror of its very name alone reduced commerce in Antwerp to a
standstill. The principal foreign merchants prepared to quit the city.
All buying and selling ceased, the value of houses fell, the employment
of artisans stopped. Money disappeared from the hands of the citizen.
The ruin of that flourishing commercial city was inevitable had not
Charles V. listened to the representations of the Duchess of Parma, and
abandoned this perilous resolve. The tribunal, therefore, was ordered
not to interfere with the foreign merchants, and the title of Inquisitor
was changed unto the milder appellation of Spiritual Judge. But in the
other provinces that tribunal proceeded to rage with the inhuman
despotism which has ever been peculiar to it. It has been