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 116 THE PORTUGUESE POLICY IN THE EAST convenient on the coast, might easily degenerate into a system of piratical descents. As a matter of fact, Goa, by far the largest acquisition of the Portuguese in India, was captured with the aid of a famous corsair, Timoja, during the absence of its lawful prince. But however we may stigmatize such attacks, they merely extended to Asia the state of war then chronic between Christendom and Islam in Europe. The Papal Bulls seemed to the sixteenth century the literal fulfilment of the Scriptural promise and command: " Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." The Portu- guese historian De Barros denied to unbelievers the international rights pertaining to states within the comity of Christendom. A similar sentiment may be cited from our own Coke, and although Coke's view was afterward condemned by Lord Mansfield, it is not the less representative of the age to which it belonged. The Holy See distinguished, indeed, between nega- tive unbelievers who had never heard of the faith, and positive unbelievers who, having knowledge of the faith, received it not, or subsequently renounced it, and, in judging the Inquisition, we should not forget that it seemed at first a defence of Christian Spain against Islam. King Emmanuel of Portugal met the difficulty from the outset, by embarking in 1500 A. D. a band of friars as mentioned in the preceding chapter, with his expedition of 1200 fighting men, and instructing Cabral