The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

ENORMITY OF THE INQUISITION. 453the sign of the cross. In a small adjoining apartment wowere shown a recess in the wall, with an oubliette or trapdoorbelow it. In that recesB, said the guide, stood animage of the Virgin. The prisoner accused of heresy wasbrought, and made to kneel upon the trap-door, and, inpresence of the Virgin, to abjure his heresy. To preventthe possibility of apostacy, the moment he had made his confessionthe bolt was drawn, and the man lay a mangledcorpse on the rock below. We had seen enough ; and aswe re-crossed the moat of the Castle of Chillon, the lightseemed sweeter than ever, and we never in all our lives feltso thankful for the Reformation, which had vested us in theprivilege of reading our Bible without having our limbs tornand our body mangled.That religion, whose birth-place is heaven, and whose missionis love, should be propagated over the earth by meansof racks and stakes, is utterly repugnant to all that we knowof her and of her author. No ; it was not Christianity, butits counterfeit, which the Inquisition was erected to promulgate.These were not priests, but demons ; this was not a" Holy Office," but a Den of Murder. Of the enormouscrimes and the horrible cruelties there enacted, much isknown ; but, alas ! that much is but an insignificant portionof the whole. When we take into account the countriesto which the Inquisition extended, the length of timeit flourished, and the countless thousands of every rank, andage, and sex, who entered its gates, and never more saw thelight of day or heard the voice of friend,—the virgin whoseyouth and beauty were her only crime,—the rich man whosepossessions were needed to swell the revenues of the Church,—the heretic, for whom are reserved the strongest racks andthe hottest fires of the Holy Office,—the imagination is overwhelmedby the number of the victims, and the awful aggregateof their sufferings. Yet, though but a tithe of thesehorrors is known, enough has been disclosed to cover theChurch of Kome with eternal infamy, and to convict her beforethe world as but an assemblage of miscreants and vil-