mile, and the number of the damned to an hundred thousand millions: _De
Damnator_, _Carcer_, &c. Rogo. But Mr. Swinden thinks he need not to
have been so sparing in his number, for that there might be found an
hundred times as many; and that they must be insufferably crowded in any
space he could allow them on our earth. It is impossible, he concludes,
to stow such a multitude of spirits in such a scanty apartment, without
a penetration of dimensions, which, he doubts, in good philosophy, even
in respect of spirits: “If it be (he adds,) why God should prepare, _i.
e._ make, a prison for them, when they might all have been crowded
together into a baker’s oven.” p. 206.
His arguments for the sun’s being the local hell are: 1. Its capacity.
Nobody will deny the sun spacious enough to receive all the damned
conveniently; so that there will be no want of room. Nor will fire be
wanting, if we admit of Mr. Swinden’s argument against Aristotle,
whereby he demonstrates, that the sun is hot, p. 208, _et seq._ The good
man is “filled with amazement to think what Pyrenian mountains of
sulphur, how many Atlantic oceans of scalding bitumen, must go to
maintain such mighty flames as those of the sun; to which our Ætna and
Vesuvius are mere glow-worms.” p. 137.
2. Its distance and opposition to the empyreum, which has usually been
looked upon as the local heaven: such opposition is perfectly answerable
to that opposition in the nature and office of a place of angels and
devils, of elect and reprobate, of glory and horror, of hallelujahs and
cursings; and the distance quadrates well with Dives seeing Abraham
_afar off, and the great gulph between them_; which this author takes to
be the solar vortex.
3. That the empyreum is the highest, and the sun the lowest place of the
creation; considering it as the centre of our system; and that the sun
was the first part of the visible world created; which agrees with the
notion of its being primarily intended or prepared to receive the
angels, whose fall he supposes to have immediately preceded the
creation.
4. The early and almost universal idolatry paid to the sun; which suits
well with the great subtilty of that spirit, to entice mankind to
worship his throne.
II. As to the eternity of _hell torments_, we have Origen again at the
head of those who deny it; it being the doctrine of that writer, that
not only men, but devils themselves, after a suitable course of
punishment, answerable to their respective crimes, shall be pardoned and
restored to heaven.—_De civit. Dei._ l. xxi. c. 17. The chief principle
Origen went upon was this, that all punishments was emendatory; applied
only to painful medicines, for the recovery of the patient’s health. And
other objections, insisted on by modern authors, are the disproportion
between temporary crimes and eternal punishments, &c.
The scripture phrases for eternity, as is observed by Archbishop
Tillotson, do not always import an infinite duration: thus, in the Old
Testament, _for ever_ often signifies only for a long time; particularly
till the end of the Jewish dispensation: thus in the epistle of _Jude_,
ver. 7, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are said to be set forth for an
example, suffering the vengeance of _eternal fire_; that is, of a fire
that was not extinguished till those cities were utterly consumed. So
one generation is said to come, &c. but the earth endureth _for ever_.
In effect, Mr. Le Clerc notes, that there is no Hebrew word which
properly expresses eternity: עולם _gnolam_, only imports a time whose
beginning or end is not known; and is accordingly used in a more or less
extensive sense, according to the thing treated of.
Thus when God says, concerning the Jewish laws, that they must be
observed לעולם _legnolam_, for ever, we are to understand as long a
space as we should think fit; or a space whose end was unknown to the
Jews before the coming of the Messiah. All general laws, and such as do
not regard particular occasions, are made _for ever_, whether it be
expressed in those laws, or not; which yet is to be understood in such a
manner, as if the sovereign power could no way change them.
Archbishop Tillotson, however, argues very strenuously, that where _hell
torments_ are spoken of, the words are to be understood in the strict
sense of infinite duration; and what he esteems a peremptory decision of
the point is, that the duration of the punishment of the wicked is in
the very same sentence expressed by the very same word which is used for
the duration of the happiness of the righteous, which all agree to be
eternal. “These, speaking of the wicked, shall go away εις ηολασιν
ονεωνιον, into eternal punishment; but the righteous, εις ζωην αιωνι,
into life eternal.”
Oldham, in his “Satires upon the Jesuits,” alludes to their “lying
legends,” and the numerous impositions they practised on the credulous.
The following lines are quoted from these legendary miracles, noticed
under the article LEGEND, and the amours of the Virgin Mary are narrated
in vol. ii. under the article _Religious Nouvellete_:—
Tell, how _blessed Virgin_ to come down was seen,
Like playhouse punk descending in machine,
How she writ _billet-doux_ and _love discourse_,
Made _assignations_, _visits_, and _amours_;
How hosts distrest, her smock for _banner_ wore,
Which vanquished foes!
——How fish in conventicles met,
And _mackerel_ were the _bait_ of _doctrine_ caught;
How cattle have judicious hearers been!
How consecrated hives with bells were hung,
And _bees_ kept mass, and holy _anthems sung_!
How _pigs_ to the _rosary_ kneel’d, and sheep were taught
To bleat _Te Deum_ and _Magnificat_;
How _fly-flap_, of church-censure houses rid
Of insects, which at _curse_ of _fryar_ died.
How _ferrying cowls_ religious pilgrims bore
O’er waves, without the help of sail or oar;
How _zealous crab_ the _sacred image_ bore,
And swam a catholic to the distant shore.
With shams like these the giddy rout mislead,
Their folly and their superstition feed.
These are all extravagant fictions in the “Golden legend.” Among other
gross and equally absurd impositions to deceive the mob, Oldham also
attacks them for certain publications on topics not less singular. The
tales he has recounted, says Oldham, are only baits for children like
toys at a fair; but they have their profounder and higher matters for
the learned and the inquisitive.
One undertakes by scales of miles to tell
The bounds, dimensions, and extent of hell;
How many German leagues that realm contains!
How many hell each year expends
In coals, for roasting Hugonots and friends!
Another frights the rout with useful stories
Of wild chimeras, limbos, PURGATORIES!
Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung
Like a Westphalia gammon or neat’s tongue,
To be redeemed with masses and a song.
Topographical descriptions of HELL, PURGATORY, and even HEAVEN, were
once favourite researches among certain orthodox and zealous defenders
of the papish church, who exhausted their materials in fabricating a
hell to their own ideas, or for their particular purpose. There is a
treatise of Cardinal Bellarmin, a jesuit, on _Purgatory_, wherein he
appears to possess all the knowledge of a land-measurer among the secret
tracts and formidable divisions of “the bottomless pit.” This jesuit
informs us that there are beneath the earth four different places, or a
place divided into four parts; the deepest of which is hell: it contains
all the souls of the damned, where will be also their bodies after the
resurrection, and likewise all the demons. The place nearest hell is
_purgatory_, where souls are purged, or rather where they appease the
anger of God by their sufferings. The same fires and the same torments,
he says, are alike in both places, the only difference between _hell_
and _purgatory_ consisting in their duration. Next to _purgatory_ is the
_limbo_ of those _infants_ who die without having received the
sacrament; and the fourth place is the limbo of the _Fathers_; that is
to say, of those _just men_ who died before the death of Christ. But
since the days of the Redeemer this last division is empty, like an
apartment to let. A later Catholic theologist, the famous Tillemont,
condemns all the _illustrious pagans to the eternal torments of hell_!
because they lived before the time of Jesus, and, therefore, could not
be benefited by the redemption! Speaking of young Tiberius, who was
compelled to fall on his own sword, Tillemont adds, “Thus by his own
hand he ended his miserable life, _to begin another, the misery of which
will never end_!” Yet history records nothing bad of this prince. Jortin
observes, that he added this _reflection_ in his later edition, so that
the good man as he grew older grew more uncharitable in his religious
notions. It is in this matter too that the Benedictine editor of Justin
Martyr speaks of the illustrious pagans. This father, after highly
applauding Socrates, and a few more who resembled him, inclines to think
that they are not fixed in _hell_. But the Benedictine editor takes
infinite pains to clear the good father from the shameful imputation of
supposing that a _virtuous pagan might be saved_ as well as a
Benedictine monk[52]!
The adverse party, who were either philosophers or reformers, received
all such information with great suspicion. Anthony Cornelius, a lawyer
in the 16th century, wrote a small tract, which was so effectually
suppressed, as a monster of atheism, that a copy is now only to be found
in the hands of the curious. This author ridiculed the absurd and horrid
doctrine of _infant damnation_, and was instantly decried as an atheist,
and the printer prosecuted to his ruin! Cœlius Secundus Curio, a noble
Italian, published a treatise _De Amplitudine beati regno Dei_, to prove
that heaven has more inhabitants than hell, or in his own phrase, that
the _elect_ are more numerous than the _reprobate_. However we may
incline to smile at these works, their design was benevolent. They were
the first streaks of the morning-light of the Reformation. Even such
works assisted mankind to examine more closely, and hold in greater
contempt, the extravagant and pernicious doctrines of the domineering
papistical church.
INQUISITION.
In the civil and canon law, inquisition implies a manner of proceeding
for the discovery of some crime by the sole office of the judge, in the
way of search, examination, or even torture. It is also used in common
law for a like process in the king’s behalf, for the discovery of lands,
profits, and the like; in which sense it is often confounded with the
office of the
_Inquisition, or the Holy Office_,
Which denotes an ecclesiastical jurisdiction established in Spain,
Portugal, and Italy, for the trial and examination of such persons as
are suspected to entertain any religious opinions contrary to those
professed in the church of Rome. It is called _inquisition_ because the
judges of their office take cognizances of crime or common report,
without any legal evidence, except what they themselves fish out.
Some people fancy they see the original inquisition, in a constitution
made by Pope Lucius, at the council of Verona, in 1184, where he orders
the bishops to get information, either by themselves or by their
commissaries, of all such persons as were suspected of heresy; and
distinguishes the several degrees of suspected, convicted, penitent,
relapsed, &c. However this may be, it is generally allowed, that Pope
Innocent III., laid the first foundation of the _holy office_; and that
the Vaudois and Albigenses were what gave the occasion to it. The
pontiff sent several priests, with St. Dominic at their head, to
Tholouse, in order to blow up a spirit of zeal and persecution amongst
the prelates and princes. These missionaries were to give an account of
the number of heretics in those parts, and the behaviour of the princes
and persons in authority to them; and thence they acquired the names of
inquisitors: but these original inquisitors had not any court, or any
authority; they were only a kind of spiritual spies, who were to make
report of their discoveries to the Pope.
The Emperor Frederick II. at the beginning of the 13th century, extended
their power very considerably: he committed the taking cognizances of
the crime of heresy, to a set of ecclesiastical judges; and as fire was
the punishment decreed to the obstinate, the inquisitors determined
indirectly, with regard both to the persons and the crimes; by which
means the laity was cut off from its own jurisdiction, and abandoned to
the devout madness and zeal of the ecclesiastics.
After the death of Frederick, who had long before repented the power he
had given the churchmen, as having seen some of the fruits of it; Pope
Innocent IV. erected a perpetual tribunal of inquisitors, and deprived
the bishops and secular judges of the little power the Emperor Frederick
had left them. And this jurisdiction, which depended immediately on
himself, he took care to introduce into most of the states of Europe.
But the inquisitors were so fiery hot, and made such horrid butchery
among the reputed heretics, that they raised an universal detestation,
even in some Catholic countries themselves. Hence it was that their
reign proved very short both in France and Germany; nor was even Spain
entirely subject to them till the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, in
1448, when their power was increased, under the pretence of clearing the
country of Judaism and Mahometanism. The power of the inquisition is
very much limited in some countries, particularly at Venice, where it is
received under such modifications as prove a great check on its
authority. Indeed at Venice it seems rather a political than a religious
contrivance, and serves rather for the security of the state, than that
of the church. There are appeals from the subaltern inquisitions in
Italy, to the congregation of the holy office at Rome.
It is the constant practice of the inquisition to affect, in all their
procedures, to inspire as much terror as possible; every thing is done
with the most profound silence and secrecy, and with the greatest rigour
and pretended impartiality. When a person is seized all the world
abandons him; not the nearest friend dares to speak a word in his
defence; that alone would be enough to render them suspected of heresy,
and would bring them within the claws of the inquisition. The criminals
are seized, examined, tried, tortured, and unless they recant, are even
condemned and executed, without ever seeing or knowing their accusers;
whence the revengeful have a fair opportunity of wreaking their malice
on their enemies. When the inquisition has done with them, and condemned
them to death, they are turned over to the secular arm, with a world of
prayer, and pious entreaty, that their lives may not be touched.
Time is no manner of security in point of heresy, nor does the grave
itself shelter the accused from the pursuits of the inquisition; even
the deceased have their trials, and they proceed in all their form and
solemnity against the dead carcases. The execution is always deferred
till the number of condemned is very great, that the multitude of
sufferers may strike the deeper horror, and make the scene more terrible
and shocking.
The inquisition of Rome is a congregation of twelve cardinals and some
other officers, where the Pope presides in person. This is accounted the
highest tribunal in Rome; it began in the time of Pope Paul IV. on
occasion of the Lutheranism.
The inquisition is very severe in the Indies. It is true, there must
there be the oaths of seven witnesses to condemn a man; but the
deposition of slaves or children are taken. The person is tortured till
he condemns himself; for his accusers are never brought to confront him.
Persons are accused for the most slender expression against the church;
or even for a disrespectful word against the inquisitors.
The standard of the inquisition is a piece of red damask, on which is
painted a cross, with an olive branch on one side and a sword on the
other; with these words of the Psalm, _Exurge, Domine, et judica causam
meam_.
This infernal engine of tyranny, bigotry, and superstition, did not
become known in Spain before the year 1484. The court of Rome owed this
obligation to another Dominican, John de Torquemada. As he was the
confessor of Queen Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise that if
ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to extirpate
heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Grenada, and had expelled
from the Spanish realms multitudes of unfortunate Moors. A few remained,
who, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians: they at least
assumed the name, but it was well known that both these nations
naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Christians.
This race was afterwards distinguished as _Christianos novos_; and in
marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its purity by
mingling with such a suspicious source.
It was pretended by Torquemada, that this dissimulation would greatly
hurt the holy religion. The Queen listened with respectful diffidence to
her confessor; and at length gained over the king to consent to the
establishment of the unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada, indefatigable in
his zeal for the holy see, in the space of fourteen years that he
exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have prosecuted
near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were condemned to the
flames.
Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal
horror such proceedings spread. “A jealousy and suspicion took
possession of all ranks of people: friendship and sociability were at an
end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children.”
The situation and feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the
inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a mild, and meek, and
learned man, whose controversy with Limborch is well known. When he
escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died
a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself
in the cell of the inquisition:—“Inclosed in this dungeon I could not
even find space enough to turn myself about; I suffered so much that I
found my brain disordered. I frequently asked myself, am I really Don
Bathazaar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so
much enjoyed myself with my wife and children? I often imagined that all
my life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born in this
dungeon! The only amusement I could invent was metaphysical
disputations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and phæses!” In the
cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous inquisitor; six pillars
surround the tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to his
being burnt. On this St. Foix ingeniously observes, “If ever the
jack-ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb,
this might serve as an excellent model.”
Bayle informs us, that the inquisition punished heretics by fire, to
elude the maxim, _Ecclesia non novit sanguinem_; for burning a man, say
they, does not shed _his blood_! Otho, the bishop at the Norman
invasion, in the tapestry worked by Matilda, the queen of William the
Conqueror, is represented with a _mace_ in his hand, for the purpose,
that when he _dispatched_ his antagonist, he might not _spill blood_,
but only break bones! Religion has had her quibbles as well as law.
The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in France; but it
may perhaps surprise the reader that a recorder of London, in a speech,
urged the necessity of setting up an inquisition in England! It was on
the trial of Penn the Quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury,
which seems highly to have provoked the said recorder. “_Magna Charta_,”
says the preface to the trial, “with the recorder of London, is nothing
more than _Magna F——_!” It appears that the jury after being kept two
days and two nights to change their verdict, were in the end both fined
and imprisoned. Sir John Howell, the recorder, said, “Till now I never
understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards, in
suffering the inquisition among them; and certainly it will not be well
with us, till something _like unto the Spanish inquisition_ be in
England.” Thus it will ever be, while both parties, struggling for
pre-eminence, rush to the sharp extremity of things, and annihilate the
trembling balance of the constitution. But the adopted motto of Lord
Erskine must ever be that of every Briton, “_Trial by Jury_.”
Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of seventy, so late as the year 1761, was
burnt by these evangelical executioners. His trial was printed at
Amsterdam, 1762, from the Lisbon copy. And for what was this unhappy
Jesuit condemned? Not, as some imagined, for his having been concerned
in a conspiracy against the King of Portugal. No other charge is laid to
him in his trial, but that of having indulged certain heretical notions,
which any other tribunal but that of the inquisition, would have looked
upon as the deleterious fancies of a fanatical old man. Will posterity
believe, that in the eighteenth century an aged visionary was led to the
stake for having said, amongst other extravagances, “that the Virgin
having commanded him to write the life of Antichrist, told him, that he,
Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John the Evangelist;
that there were to be three Antichrists, and that the last should be
born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; that he would
marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies.”
For such ravings as these the unhappy old man was burnt in recent times.
Granger assures us, that a horse, in his remembrance, who had been
taught to tell the spots upon cards, the hour of the day, &c. by
significant tokens, was, together with his _owner_, put into the
inquisition, for both of them dealing with the devil! A man of letters
declared that, having fallen into their hands, nothing perplexed him so
much as the ignorance of the inquisitor and his council; and it seemed
very doubtful whether they had read even the Scriptures.
The following most interesting anecdote relating to the terrible
inquisition, exemplifying how the use of the diabolical engines of
torture forces men to confess crimes they have not been guilty of, was
related to Mr. D’Israeli by a Portuguese gentleman.
A nobleman in Lisbon having heard that his physician and friend was
imprisoned by the inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism,
addressed a letter to one of them, to request his freedom, assuring the
inquisitor, that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The
physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the
torture; and, as was usually the case, at the height of his sufferings,
confessed every thing 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 this 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!”