n Him
still remain in their sins--their sins are retained."

"Oh, what hideous blasphemy!" exclaimed the Inquisitor, he and his
associates lifting up their hands as if in horror at what Antonio had
said. "But go on, go on, fill up the measure of your iniquities. How
do you interpret, `Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven'?"

"Much in the simple way that I interpret the previous passage. The
apostles, as employed in preaching the Christian doctrine among the
Jews, were to release or loose them from certain obligations of the
Mosaic law; but as they were not to release them from them all, they
were to pronounce what were to be retained, or by what they were still
to be bound; in other words, when a thing might lawfully be done among
the Jews, it was a common mode of expression to say that that thing was
loosed to them, and that if anything was unlawful for them to do, it was
bound to them. The meaning of the expression was thus very clear to the
Jews who heard Him. So Peter understood the same expression, and he
knew perfectly well that he was simply to declare, both to Jew and
Gentile, what was to be believed, and what was not to be believed, thus
unlocking to them the doors of the kingdom of heaven, inviting them to
come in, to become subjects of Christ. Such are his keys. On the great
truth which he had confessed, `Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God,' was Christ's spiritual Church to be founded, as on a rock
against which the powers of hell are never to prevail."

"Most horrible! most horrible!" cried the Inquisitor. "Then you do not
acknowledge the authority of the Church, that his Holiness the Pope is
the successor of Saint Peter, that the priesthood have power to forgive
sins?"

"The Scriptures speak nowhere of Saint Peter having a successor, nor
does our Lord give authority to him to appoint one," said Herezuelo,
boldly. "No Church can have authority with regard to spiritual matters
except such as is clearly derived from the Bible, which is equally open
to all men, while the only priest a Christian can acknowledge is the one
great High Priest standing at the right hand of God, ever making
intercession for us."

"Horrible! horrible!" again cried the Inquisitor. "Then, if you do not
acknowledge the priesthood, you deny the doctrine of transubstantiation,
the great work performed at the Mass, the chief g