lth,
and honor, like all other systems of religion?

Have there existed within their jurisdiction, confraternities, with secular
power, directly or indirectly under their control, seeking by secret
measures to manage the government of the nations of this earth?

That great Creator, whose word is truth which can not change, declared as
law to govern all his creatures, "THOU SHALT NOT KILL." What saith history
of those who claim to have acted in his name? Why, and in what manner did
they act? {79}

The south of France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries became a scene
of blood, the immediate cause of which was the erections of the "tribunals
of faith," better known to us as a secret society called "THE INQUISITION."
Innocent III., who ascended the papal chair in 1198, conceived the project
thereof, to extirpate the rebellious members of the church--the
Albigenses--and to extend the papal power at the expense of the bishops:
and his successors carried out his plan. This tribunal, "_the holy office_"
or "inquisition" (sanctum officium), was under the immediate direction of
the papal chair: it was to seek out heretics and adherents of false
doctrines, and to pronounce its dreadful sentence against their fortune,
their honor, and _their lives_, without appeal. The process of this
tribunal differed entirely from that of the civil courts. The informer was
not only concealed, but rewarded by the inquisition. The accused was
obliged to be his own accuser. Suspected persons were secretly seized and
thrown into prison. No better instruments could be found for inquisitors
than the mendicant orders of monks, particularly the Franciscans and
Dominicans, whom the pope employed to destroy the heretics, and inquire
into the conduct of bishops. Pope Gregory IX., in 1233, completed the
design of his predecessors, and, as they had succeeded in giving these
inquisitorial monks, who were wholly dependent on the pope, an unlimited
power, and in rendering the interference {80} of the temporal magistrates
only nominal, the inquisition was successively introduced into several
parts of Italy, and into some provinces of France; its power in the latter
country being more limited than in the former. The tribunals of faith were
admitted into Spain in the middle of the thirteenth century, but a firm
opposition was made to them, particularly in Castile and Leon, and the
bishops there maintained their exclusive jurisdiction in spiritual matters.
Fo