Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/476

450 450 RISING IN THE ALPUXARRAS. PART II. Aggravated m the fifteenth century. Efferts of the Inqui- eilion. science and reputed sanctity, that were supposed to have given it the key to the dread mysteries of a future life, not to enlighten but to enslave the minds of a credulous world ; and which, making its own tenets the only standard of faith, its own rites and ceremonial the only evidence of virtue, obliterated the great laws of morality, written by the divine hand on every heart, and gradually built up a system of exclusiveness and intolerance most repugnant to the mild and charitable religion of Jesus Christ. Before the close of the fifteenth century, sever- al circumstances operated to sharpen the edge of intolerance, especially against the Arabs. The Turks, whose political consideration of late years had made them the peculiar representatives and champions of Mahometanism, had shown a ferocity and cruelty in their treatment of the Christians, which brought general odium on all the professors of their faith, and on the Moors, of course, though most undeservedly, in common with the rest. The bold, heterodox doctrines, also, which had occa- sionally broken forth in different parts of Europe in the fifteenth century, like so many faint streaks of light ushering in the glorious morn of the Reformation, had roused the alarm of the cham- pions of the church, and kindled on more than one occasion the fires of persecution ; and, before the close of the period, the Inquisition was introduced into Spain, From that disastrous hour, religion wore a new aspect in this unhappy country. The Spirit of in-