СНАР. more than two centuries it maintained its authority, effectually preventing the diffusion of Gospel light and liberty within the territories of from her. She farther entreated them to be assured that this was her final resolution, which no torments should induce her to alter. The inquisitors were so little affected, that they instantly commanded her to be racked a third time, the agonies of which she underwent with amazing firmness. For thus refusing to ratify her confessions, and having thrice borne the torture, which was the regular extent of punishment in the holy office, she was condemned to be whipped through the public streets by the common hangman, and then to be banished for ten years to an almost savage island. This sentence was pronounced against her when she came out at the Auto da Fe, with her two sisters, who had likewise been accused of Judaism. Dr. Isaac Orobio was accused of Judaism by a Moor, who had been his servant, and whom he had caused to be beaten for theft. After being kept three years in prison, and interrogated several times, still persisting in denying the crimes laid to his charge, he was tortured in the following manner :they put on him a coarse linen coat strained so very tight that his breath was almost lost, when loosing it on a sudden, this instantaneous motion put him to incredible pain. His thumbs were tied so very hard with small cords, that the blood gushed from under his nails. He was next seated on a bench, his back against a wall, wherein little iron pulleys were fixed, through which ropes were run which took hold of several parts of his body, and particularly his arms and legs; then the executioner, pulling these ropes with the utmost violence, drew his back so close to the wall, that his hands and feet, and particularly his thumbs and great toes, were so much squeezed, that he felt the most acute pains. The bench was then suddenly drawn from beneath him, so that he hung solely by the ropes, and, being unsupported, the weight of his body drew the knots still tighter, causing him inconceivable agony. An instrument in the form of a little ladder, crossed by five pieces of wood, and made sloping before, being set directly opposite to him, he received, on a certain motion of the torturers, at one and the same time, five dreadful blows on the cheek, which caused him to faint. Ropes were next fastened about his wrists, then wound round his body; after which he was laid upon his back with his feet against a wall: the executioner then drew him with all his might, so that the ropes pierced to his bones. This torture was thrice repeated, the cords being fixed round the Portuguese, and thereby impeding the advance of Christianity in India. During this long period, who can tell how many hundred victims were sacrificed on its blood-stained altars! We pity the infatuated Hindoo females, who immolate themselves on the funeral piles of their deceased husbands; our indignation is roused when we hear that any undue influence has been used by others to induce a reluctant widow to burn; and the exertions of the Christian world have been called forth to put down the horrid practice, and pluck from the flames the helpless victims of such a superstition. Yet what is even this, compared to the system of slaughter carried on through so many generations by the inquisition, and that under the pretence of maintaining the Christian religion entire and without rebuke! Well may we demand of them, Who hath required this at your hands? Assuredly not the God of justice and mercy; and in the sequel it will be seen, that instead of promoting the interests of the Church which these inhuman means were employed to uphold, He defeated all her priests' designs to propagate their creed his arms, not above two fingers' breadth from the wounds which the first torture had made. The ropes now slid into the first wounds by the violence of the jerk, which occasioned so great an effusion of blood, that he seemed expiring. The physicians were then consulted, to know whether the same torture might be practised a third time without endangering his life. As these were not enemies to the doctor, they answered that he might suffer it a third time without the least danger. This declaration again saved him from undergoing again the various sorts of torture above mentioned, his sentence specifying that he should suffer successively all these different kinds the same day. Thus tortured for the last time, he was remanded to prison, where he remained above seventy days before his wounds were healed. He was at last banished for life. A. D. 1560. CHAP. in India, and thereby showed, that He gave no countenance to their prostitution of the sacred names which the Inquisitors inscribed on their banner. It was not by such barbarous and unrighteous means that Jesus Christ commanded His religion to be propagated upon earth, when He sent forth His disciples to preach the Gospel to every creature. Let us read the terms in 8 To obviate the necessity of reverting again to this abominable institution, we may here anticipate its subsequent history in India. It continued to wield its iron sceptre within the precincts of the Portuguese possessions, and sometimes venturing to step beyond them, until the year 1775, when it was suppressed by royal edict. "It was the humanity, and tender mercy of a good king which abolished it," said an old Franciscan father, who had witnessed the annual Auto da Fé, from 1770 to 1775. That humane king was Joseph of Portugal: "but immediately on his death, in 1777, the power of the priests acquired the ascendant, under the Queen Dowager, and the Tribunal was re-established, after a bloodless interval of five years." When restored, in 1779, it was placed under certain restrictions, the chief of which were the two following, "That a greater number of witnesses should be required to convict a criminal than was before necessary; and, that the Auto da Fé should not be held publicly as before, but that the sentences of the Tribunal should be executed privately, within the walls of the Inquisition." "In this particular, the constitution of the new Inquisition is more reprehensible than that of the old one; for," as the old father, just adverted to, expressed it, "Nunc sigillum non revelat Inquisitio. Formerly the friends of those unfortunate persons who were thrown into its prison, had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing them once a year walking in the procession of the Auto da Fé; or if they were condemned to die, they witnessed their death, and mourned for the dead; but now they have no means of learning for years whether they be dead or alive." Such a suspense regarding those whom we love is more agonizing than the most painful certainty. "The policy of this new mode of concealment appears to have been this, to preserve the power of the Inquisition, and, at the same time, to lessen the public odium of its proceedings in the presence of British dominion and civilization."-(Buchanan's Christian Researches, pp. 167172.) But the torture of feeling occasioned hereby to the which their commission is defined, and then judge whether it gives any sanction to the horrors of this Tribunal.-"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." (Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.) friends of the sufferers, would tend to increase the terror of its dominion; and thus its object was the more effectually accomplished by the very means which, as they pretended, were meant to moderate its operation. How extreme was this refinement of cruelty! But such an appalling system could not long withstand the influence of the light and freedom consequent upon the growing power of the British, and in the year 1816 it was again abolished by the Prince Regent of Portugal. The Archbishop of Goa was supposed, however, to retain all the power that had been lodged in the court of the Inquisition. In Europe, this infernal tribunal was re-established soon after the restoration of the Jesuits' order: but it does not yet appear to have resumed its jurisdiction in the East; and we trust in the God of all mercy to prevent its rising again from the ruin in which its buildings there have lain these twenty years. A. D. 1560. CHAPTER V. FIRST ATTEMPT TO BRING THE SYRIAN CHURCH OF MALABAR UNDER SUBJECTION TO ROME. 1. IN entering upon a relation of the attempts made by the Romanists to reduce the Syrian Christians of Malabar into subjection to their Church, it is necessary to bear in mind, that up to this period they had existed without the remotest connexion with Rome. Ecclesiastics employed in their subjugation, and historians who have recorded their proceedings, have endeavoured to justify what was done, by appealing to the papal supremacy. It is asserted, as 1 The following note on the papal supremacy is too important to be omitted here. It is " worthy of remark, that on a Papist, a Jesuit of "learning and distinction—a Professor of Rhetoric, History, "and Philosophy in the Universities of Rome, Fermo, and Macerata, and, in the latter place Counsellor of the Inquisition-being employed about the middle of the last century "to prove the Pope's supremacy, by showing from century "to century, that since the Apostles' time to the present, it "had ever been acknowledged by the Catholic Church, he soon found that he had undertaken more than it was pos"sible to perform; viz. on coming to the close of the second century. Nay, says he, while, in order to support and "maintain this cause, I examined, with particular attention, "the writings of the Apostles, and of the many pious and "learned men who had flourished in the first three centuries |