t the height of his sufferings
confessed everything they wished! This enraged the nobleman, and
feigning a dangerous illness he begged the inquisitor would come to give
him his last spiritual aid.

As soon as the Dominican arrived, the lord, who had prepared his
confidential servants, commanded the inquisitor in their presence to
acknowledge himself a Jew, to write his confession, and to sign it. On
the refusal of the inquisitor, the nobleman ordered his people to put on
the inquisitor's head a red-hot helmet, which to his astonishment, in
drawing aside a screen, he beheld glowing in a small furnace. At the
sight of this new instrument of torture, "Luke's iron crown," the monk
wrote and subscribed the abhorred confession. The nobleman then
observed, "See now the enormity of your manner of proceeding with
unhappy men! My poor physician, like you, has confessed Judaism; but
with this difference, only torments have forced that from him which fear
alone has drawn from you!"

The Inquisition has not failed of receiving its due praises. Macedo, a
Portuguese Jesuit, has discovered the "Origin of the _Inquisition_" in
the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to allege that God was the first
who began the functions of an _inquisitor_ over Cain and the workmen of
Babel! Macedo, however, is not so dreaming a personage as he appears;
for he obtained a Professor's chair at Padua for the arguments he
delivered at Venice against the pope, which were published by the title
of "The literary Roarings of the Lion at St. Mark;" besides he is the
author of 109 different works; but it is curious to observe how far our
interest is apt to prevail over our conscience,--Macedo praised the
Inquisition up to the skies, while he sank the pope to nothing!

Among the great revolutions of this age, and since the last edition of
this work, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal is abolished--but its
history enters into that of the human mind; and the history of the
Inquisition by Limborch, translated by Chandler, with a very curious
"Introduction," loses none of its value with the philosophical mind.
This monstrous tribunal of human opinions aimed at the sovereignty of
the intellectual world, without intellect.

In these changeful times, the history of the Inquisition is not the
least mutable. The Inquisition, which was abolished, was again
restored--and at the present moment, I know not whether it is to be
restored or abolished.

FOOTNOTES:

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