t confessions obtained by torture and retracted
afterwards; the other prejudice, not always so just, but in the
case of those not convicted on fair evidence deserving a better
name, in favour of assertions of innocence made on the scaffold
and at the stake, created, as they still preserve, a strong
willingness to disbelieve the accusations which come so
suspiciously before us.[61] An approximation to the truth may
be obtained if, rejecting as improbable the accusations of
devil-worship and its concomitant rites which, invented to
amuse the vulgar, characterise the proceedings, we admit the
_probability_ of a secret understanding with the Turks, or the
_possibility_ of infidelity to the religion of Christ. Their
destruction had been predetermined; the slender element of truth
might soon be exaggerated and confounded with every kind of
fiction. Their pride, avarice, luxury, corrupt morals, would give
colour to the most absurd inventions.[62]

[60] Michelet's _History of France_, book v. 4. M. Michelet
suggests an ingenious explanation of some of their supposed
secret practices. 'The principal charge, the denial of the
Saviour, rested on an equivocation. The Templars might
confess to the denial without being in reality apostates.
Many averred that it was a symbolical denial, in imitation
of St. Peter's--one of those pious comedies in which the
antique Church enveloped the most serious acts of religion,
but whose traditional meaning was beginning to be lost in
the fourteenth century.' The idol-head, believed to
represent Mohammed or the devil, he supposes to have been 'a
representation of the Paraclete, whose festival, that of
Pentecost, was the highest solemnity of the Temple.' Some
have identified them, like those of the Albigenses or
Waldenses, with the ceremonies of the Gnostics.

[61] _View of the Middle Ages_, chap. i. The judicial
impartiality (eulogised by Macaulay) and patient
investigation of truth (the first merits of a historian) of
the author of the _Constitutional History of England_, might
almost entitle him to rank with the first of historians,
Gibbon.

[62] The alliance of the Church--of the Dominican Order in
particular--with the secular power against its once foremost
champions, is paralleled and explained by the causes that led
to the dissolution of the Order of Jesus by Clement XIV. in
the eighteenth century--fear and jealousy.

If the history