condemned by the inquisition, of whom one thousand six hundred and
twenty were burned alive."

It is the constant sophism of those who would cast christianity bound
hand and foot at the mercy of her enemies, that the pope desires to
exercise no interference in the internal concerns of kingdoms; that, if
he had the desire, he has not the power; and that, if he possessed the
power, he would be resisted by the whole body of the national clergy.
For the exposure of this traitorous delusion, we are to look to the
times, when it was the will of popery to put forth its strength; not to
the present, when it is its will to lull us into a belief of its
consistency with the constitution, in defiance of common sense, common
experience, the spirit of British law, and the loud warnings of insulted
and hazarded religion.

Of the multitudes who perished by the inquisition throughout the world,
no authentic record is now discoverable. But wherever popery had power,
there was the tribunal. It had been planted even in the east, and the
Portuguese inquisition of Goa was, till within these few years, fed with
many an agony. South America was partitioned into provinces of the
inquisition; and with a ghastly mimickry of the crimes of the mother
state, the arrivals of viceroys, and the other popular celebrations were
thought imperfect without an auto de fe. The Netherlands were one scene
of slaughter from the time of the decree which planted the inquisition
among them. In Spain the calculation is more attainable. Each of the
_seventeen_ tribunals during a long period burned annually on an average
ten miserable beings! We are to recollect that this number was in a
country where persecution had for ages abolished all religious
differences, and where the difficulty was not to find the stake, but
the offering. Yet, even in Spain, thus gleaned of all heresy, the
inquisition could still swell its list of murders to thirty-two
thousand! The numbers burned in effigy, or condemned to penance,
punishments generally equivalent to exile, confiscation, and taint of
blood, to all ruin but the mere loss of worthless life amounted to three
hundred and nine thousand. But the crowds who perished in dungeons, of
the torture, of confinement, and of broken hearts, the millions of
dependent lives made utterly helpless, or hurried to the grave by the
death of the victims, are beyond all register; or recorded only before
HIM, who has sworn that "He who leadeth int