And if additional
evidence were needed of human folly, and stupid disposition, like dray
horses to go perpetually, on 'one's nose in t'others tail,' we have it
in the astounding fact, that when the Spanish Cortes proposed the
abolition of the Inquisition, the populace of Spain considered such
proposal, 'an infringement of their liberties.' [78:1] We have it on
respectable authority, that Torquemada in the space of fourteen years
that he wielded the chief inquisitorial powers, robbed, or otherwise
persecuted eighty thousand persons, of whom about six thousand were
committed to the flames.
Inquisitors made no secret of their hatred towards heretics; to destroy
them they considered a sacred duty. Far from ashamed of their cruelty
towards heretics, they gloried in it, as undeniable evidence of their
enthusiasm in the cause of Christ. Simoncas, one of their most esteemed
writers, said, 'the heretics deserve not merely one death, but many
deaths; because a single death is the punishment of an ordinary heretic;
but these (the heretics) are deserving of punishment without mercy, and
particularly the teachers of the Lutheran heresy, who must by no means
be spared.
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