no area of time, and remains
unshaken. The Dominican democrat who took his seat with the Mountain in
1848 never swerved from the principles of his order. More often, and, I
think, more deliberately, Mr. Lea urges that intolerance is implied in
the definition of the mediaeval Church, that it sprang from the root and
grew with "the very law of its being." It is no desperate expedient of
authority at bay, for "the people were as eager as their pastors to send
the heretic to the stake." Therefore he does not blame the perpetrator,
but his inherited creed. "No firm believer in the doctrine of exclusive
salvation could doubt that the truest mercy lay in sweeping away the
emissaries of Satan with fire and sword." What we have here is the logic
of history, constraining every system to utter its last word, to empty
its wallets, and work its consequences out to the end. But this radical
doctrine misguides its author to the anachronism that as early as the
first Leo "the final step had been taken, and the Church was definitely
pledged to the suppression of heresy at whatever cost."

We do not demand that historians shall compose our opinions or relieve
us from the purifying pains of thought. It is well if they discard
dogmatising, if they defer judgment, or judge, with the philosopher, by
precepts capable of being a guide for all. We may be content that they
should deny themselves, and repress their sentiments and wishes. When
these are contradictory, or such as evidently to tinge the medium, an
unholy curiosity is engendered to learn distinctly not only what the
writer knows, but what he thinks. Mr. Lea has a malicious pleasure in
baffling inquiry into the principle of his judgments. Having found, in
the Catechism of Saint Sulpice, that devout Catholics are much on a par
with the fanatics whose sympathy with Satan made the holy office a
requisite of civilisation, and having, by his exuberant censure,
prepared us to hear that this requisite of civilisation "might well seem
the invention of demons," he arrives at the inharmonious conclusion that
it was wrought and worked, with benefit to their souls, by sincere and
godly men. The condemnation of Hus is the proper test, because it was
the extreme case of all. The council was master of the situation, and
was crowded with men accustomed to disparage the authority of the Holy
See and to denounce its acts. Practically, there was no pope either of
Rome or Avignon. The Inquisition languish