e
are the people so devout, the churches so crowded, the clergy so
numerous. But the sincerity and honesty of purpose by which the Spanish
people, taken as a whole, have always been marked, have not only been
unable to prevent religious persecution, but have proved the means of
encouraging it. If the nation had been more lukewarm, it would have
been more tolerant. As it was, the preservation of the faith became the
first consideration; and everything being sacrificed to this one object,
it naturally happened that zeal begat cruelty, and the soil was prepared
in which the Inquisition took root and flourished. The supporters of
that barbarous institution were not hypocrites, but enthusiasts.
Hypocrites are for the most part too supple to be cruel. For cruelty is
a stern and unbending passion; while hypocrisy is a fawning and flexible
art, which accommodates itself to human feelings, and flatters the
weakness of men in order that it may gain its own ends. In Spain, the
earnestness of the nation, being concentrated on a single topic, carried
everything before it; and hatred of heresy becoming a habit, persecution
of heresy was thought a duty. The conscientious energy with which that
duty was fulfilled is seen in the history of the Spanish Church. Indeed,
that the inquisitors were remarkable for an undeviating and
uncorruptible integrity may be proved in a variety of ways, and from
different and independent sources of evidence. This is a question to
which I shall hereafter return; but there are two testimonies which I
cannot omit, because, from the circumstances attending them, they are
peculiarly unimpeachable. Llorente, the great historian of the
Inquisition, and its bitter enemy, had access to its private papers: and
yet, with the fullest means of information, he does not even insinuate a
charge against the moral character of the inquisitors; but while
execrating the cruelty of their conduct, he cannot deny the purity of
their intentions. Thirty years earlier, Townsend, a clergyman of the
Church of England, published his valuable work on Spain: and though, as
a Protestant and an Englishman, he had every reason to be prejudiced
against the infamous system which he describes, he also can bring no
charge against those who upheld it; but having occasion to mention its
establishment at Barcelona, one of its most important branches, he makes
the remarkable admission that all its members are men of worth, and that
most of them ar