Thomas Timpson

“ I was condemned to receive that night eleven strangling torments in my dungeon; and then, after Easter holidays, I should be transported privately to Granada, and there, about midnight, to be burnt, body and bones, into ashes, and my ashes to be flung into the air. Well, that same night, the scrivan, sergeants, and the young English priest entered my melancholy prison, where the priest, in the English tongue, urging me all he could, though little it was he could do, and not prevailing, I was disburdened of mine irons, unclothed to my skin, set on my knees, and held up fast with their hands ”

“ Are they not stronger in your own parliament-house than yourself? What a number of bishops, abbots, and priors, are lords of your parliament! Are not all the learned men in your realm in fee with them, to speak in your parliament for them, against your crown, dignity, and realm; a few of your own learned council only excepted? What law can be made against them that will be available? Who is he, though he be sorely grieved, that, for murder, ravishment, robbery, debt, or any other offence, dare lay it to their charge by way of action? If any one do, he is by-and-by accused of heresy ”

“ So truly horrible was this bloody work, that a native of Thoulouse, a poet and a Catholic, who witnessed this crusade against the Albigenses, afterwards delivered the following denunciation against Antichrist:—“I know I shall be censured if I write against Rome, that sink of all evil; but I cannot hold my peace. It is no wonder that the world lies in wickedness. It is you, treacherous Rome, who have sown confusion and war. By the baits of thy delusive pardons, thou deliverest up the French nobility to persecution, and dost establish thy throne in the bottomless pit. ”

“ Why do they teach that all heretics, above all other malefactors,{197} ought to be punished with death? And why do they never resent the secular magistrates having so little regard to their earnest and joint petition as never to fail to burn all the heretics which are delivered to them by the Inquisition, within an hour or two after they have them in their hands? And why, in Rome, where the supreme civil and ecclesiastical authority are lodged in the same person, is this petition of the Inquisition, which is made there as well as in other places, never granted? ”

“ If I choose to make myself a martyr to infidelity, as the saints of old did to religion, and to suffer the loss of property and personal rights, what is to become of my wife and family? The same ruin would overtake them, though they are Catholics: for I am obliged, not only to conceal my true belief, and profess what I despise, but I must bring up my children in their abominable idolatries and superstition ”

“ This disgrace to humanity, whose entire history is a mass of atrocious crimes, committed by the priests of the church of Rome, in the name of God and of His Christ, whose vicar and representative the Pope, the head of the Inquisition, declares himself to be—this abominable institution is still in existence, in Rome and the Roman states. The Inquisition existed in full vigour during the whole period of the pontificate of Pope Gregory. ”

“ Determined to humble their victims, they employ extensively a most cruel system of torture, the records of which have justly procured for the Inquisition the character of sanguinary and diabolical. Surely, none but the evil spirit, “the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning,” could have devised such revolting methods of cruelty, and prompted men, with the most ingenious devices, so to outrage all the dictates of humanity, as to act on the system which was the practice of the Romish inquisitors. ”

“ All who have seen those remains of clothing and bones, feel justly indignant at the inhumanity of those assassins, who, under the cloak of religious zeal, permitted every kind of cruelty. Would that those who wish to excuse that hellish tribunal, and who do not believe what others say to be truth, would come and see them with their own eyes. I wish that the friends and defenders of popery in England would come and touch these things with their own hands, and then tell me of what papal ministers are not capable, when they{334} have the heart to perpetrate such barbarities. ”

“ The social state of that beautiful land is as sad and melancholy, as its skies are bright and joyous. In the addresses of the preachers at the several receptions of novices and nuns, at which we were present, there was one pervading idea—one, too, not lightly put forth or incidentally alluded to, but running through the whole discourse, and forming the main substratum of everything else. I allude to the idea, that it was very difficult for a young female to preserve herself pure and holy from the sin and vice of the world, except within the walls of a monastery. ”

“ At each altar a scaffold and a pile had been arranged, where were very cruelly burned six people, amid the marvellous shouts and rejoicings of the populace, so highly excited, that it was with difficulty they were prevented from snatching the victims out of the hands of the executioners and tearing them in pieces. But if the fury of these was great, the constancy of the martyrs was greater still. The cruelty of the people, in tearing these sufferers to atoms, would have been mercy, compared to the barbarity of the king. ”

“ Like an enraged beast, thou devourest both great and small. Rome, your head and whole body is arraigned for having committed that horrible murder at Beziers. Under the appearance of a lamb, with an air of modesty and simplicity, you are inwardly a wily serpent and a ravenous wolf. ”

“ The Roman Catholics, ignorant of the nature of the Gospel, have endeavoured wholly to destroy this people, or to compel them to profess the Christian faith. Edicts, the most severe and cruel, have been published against them, from time to time, by different Popes, in France and Spain. They have been oppressed, fined, and banished, unless they would turn Christians. Thousands of them, in Spain and Portugal, professed the name of Christ to escape punishment, yet, in heart, remaining Jews, abhorring the idolatry of the Papists. ”

“ Pre-eminence being thus acknowledged by the patriarch of Constantinople to the pontiff of Rome, it cannot be matter of wonder that Justinian, the nephew and successor of the emperor Justin, in his epistle to the new Pope, John II., writes, A.D. 533, “We hasten to SUBJECT and to unite to your holiness all the priests of the whole East. Nor do we suffer anything which belongs to the state of the church, however manifest and undoubted, that is agitated, to pass without the knowledge of your holiness, the head of all the holy churches!” ”

“ We did not know that our art was forbidden in Portugal, and we were discovered by the barbarous zeal of a lady at confession. The officers of the Inquisition engaged a jeweller, a familiar of the Holy Office, to send for Mr. Mouton on pretence of mending a diamond weighing four carats. This was a mere pretence to know the person of Mouton. I happened to be with him, which gave the jeweller the highest joy. He made his report to the inquisitors; and, two days after, Mr. Mouton went alone to fetch the diamond, computed to be worth a hundred moidores. ”

“ The avarice of the popes has dictated the necessity of a less sanguinary policy at Rome, while it has been enriched by multitudes of foreigners of the higher ranks, who had been attracted as visitors to Rome, to view the monumental remains of its ancient greatness and glory. But a feeling of dread would have prevented the approach of many, if the tribunal in that city had made a public exhibition of its victims. Persecution and punishments were, therefore, not permitted to the same extent in Italy as in Spain and Portugal ”

“ Out of regard to my duty to Almighty God, and from my great affection to the most serene prince, Philip II., my dearest son, and from the strong and earnest desire I have, that he may be safe under the protection of virtue, rather than the greatness of his riches, I charge him, with the greatest affection of soul, that he take special care of all things relating to the honour and glory of God, as becomes the most Catholic king, and a{85} prince zealous for the Divine commands, and that he be always obedient to the commands of the church. ”

“ While the Roman pontiff opposes the worship of God, by enjoining the worship of images, of saints, and angels, and the authority of his laws, to enforce subjection to his own edicts, he himself may be called the great idol, as well as the great tyrant, of the Romish church!”
Human sagacity could by no means have conjectured such a character rising up among the people of God, and such deeds perpetrated in the name and form of religion. This required the prescience of the Infinite Mind. But we shall see them all in their dreadful enormity, as we pursue the history of the Romish Inquisition. ”

“ Infamous as the woman is for her idolatry, she is no less detestable for her cruelty, which are the two principal characteristics of the antichristian empire. ‘She is drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,’ (ver. 6) which may indeed be applied both to pagan and to Christian Rome, for both have in their turns cruelly persecuted ‘the saints and the martyrs of Jesus;’ but the latter is more deserving of the character, as she hath far exceeded the former, both in the degree and duration of her persecutions. ”

“ Elevation in office generally rendered the inquisitors above all law; and the peculiarity of their stations shielded them from accusation, rendering it dangerous in the extreme for any one to breathe a whisper against them. They, therefore, commonly rolled in luxury, and indulged in licentiousness that would appear incredible, were it not for their other enormities and abominations recorded on the faithful pages of history. ”

“ Bishop Burnet remarks, on this cruel policy of the prelates, “Pope Paul was in the right in one thing, to press the setting up of courts of inquisition everywhere, as the only sure method to extirpate heresy. And it is highly probable that the king, or his Spanish ministers, made the court of England apprehend, that torture and inquisition were the only sure courses to root out heresy.” ”

“ At length, after a year’s captivity in Spain, Francis obtained his freedom, on most humiliating conditions, to the performance of which he was bound by a solemn oath. From this oath to the emperor the Pope gave him absolution, and thereby bound him more closely to himself by such faithless bonds of perjury and deceit. But this favour rendered it the more difficult for him to change the policy which, under the regency of his mother, had delivered up the heretics of France to the inquisitors of Rome. ”

“ Romanism, as will appear from these various facts, instead of promoting the pure and saving knowledge of Jesus Christ—by keeping the people in ignorance of the holy Scriptures, it impedes the advancement of true religion. And, while the intolerant jealousy of the priests disgusts the people, their whole system produces that infidelity which so fearfully prevails in all the states of Europe, to the hindrance and dishonour of pure Christianity. ”

“ What need I say of the vulgar crowd of priests, who, coming, as the Spanish phrase has it, from coarse swaddling clothes, and raised by ordination to a rank of life for which they have not been prepared, mingle vice and superstition, grossness of feeling and pride of office, in their character? I have{347} known the best among them; I have heard the confessions of young persons of both sexes, who fell under the influence of their suggestion and example; and I do declare that nothing can be more dangerous to youthful virtue than their company. ”

“ From the enormous hypocrisy and unparalleled cruelty that we have seen recorded of the inquisitors, every one will be prepared to believe that they must have been guilty of the most atrocious personal immoralities. Many of them were priests; and the celibacy of the clergy, as enjoined by the{276} Romish religion, was the occasion of the most shocking violations of the laws of God. These crimes are testified by papal historians of the highest character, and proved by laws of the popes made against them; but the records of the lives of the priests exhibit the most disgusting and dreadful crimes. ”

“ The prisoners, being thus in the hands of the civil magistrate, are presently loaded with chains, and carried first to the secular gaol, and thence, in an hour or two, brought before the civil judge; who, after asking in what religion they intend to die, pronounces sentence on such as declare they die in the communion of the church of Rome, that they shall be first strangled, and then burnt to ashes! or such as die in any other faith, that they be burnt alive! ”