Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/375

231 THE INQUISITION. 231 being, however exalted, to invade the sacred rights chapter of conscience, inalienably possessed by every man. 1_ _ We feel that the spiritual concerns of an individual may be safely left to himself, as most interested in them, except so far as they can be affected by argument or friendly monition ; that the idea of compelling belief in particular doctrines is a sole- cism, as absurd as wicked ; and, so far from con- demning to the stake, or the gibbet, men who pertinaciously adhere to their conscientious opinions in contempt of personal interests and in the face of danger, we should rather feel disposed to imitate the spirit of antiquity in raising altars and statues to their memory, as having displayed the highest efforts of human virtue. But, although these truths are now so obvious as rather to deserve the name of truisms, the world has been slow, very slow in arriving at them, after many centuries of unspeak- able oppression and misery. Acts of intolerance are to be discerned from the onginofthe earliest period in which Christianity became the quisition. established religion of the Roman empire. But they do not seem to have flowed from any systema- tized plan of persecution, until the papal authority had swollen to a considerable height. The popes, who claimed the spiritual allegiance of all Chris- tendom, regarded heresy as treason against them- selves, and, as such, deserving all the penalties, which sovereigns have uniformly visited on this, in their eyes, unpardonable offence. The crusades, which, in the early part of the thirteenth century, swept so fiercely over the southern provinces of