a mild, and meek, and
learned man, whose controversy with Limborch is well known. When he
escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died
a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself
in the cell of the Inquisition. "Inclosed in this dungeon I could not
even find space enough to turn myself about; I suffered so much that I
felt my brain disordered. I frequently asked myself, am I really Don
Balthazar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so
greatly enjoyed myself with my wife and children? I often imagined that
all my life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born in
this dungeon! The only amusement I could invent was metaphysical
disputations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and praeses!"

In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous inquisitor; six
pillars surround this tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to
his being burnt. On this St. Foix ingeniously observes, "If ever the
Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb,
this might serve as an excellent model."

The Inquisition punished heretics by _fire_, to elude the maxim,
"_Ecclesia non novit sanguinem_;" for burning a man, say they, does not
_shed his blood_. Otho, the bishop at the Norman invasion, in the
tapestry worked by Matilda the queen of William the Conqueror, is
represented with a _mace_ in his hand, for the purpose that when he
_despatched_ his antagonist he might not _spill blood_, but only break
his bones! Religion has had her quibbles as well as law.

The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in France; but it
may perhaps surprise the reader that a recorder of London, in a speech,
urged the necessity of setting up an Inquisition in England! It was on
the trial of Penn the Quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury,
which highly provoked the said recorder. "_Magna Charta_," writes the
prefacer to the trial, "with the recorder of London, is nothing more
than _Magna F----!_" It appears that the jury, after being kept two days
and two nights to alter their verdict, were in the end both fined and
imprisoned. Sir John Howell, the recorder, said, "Till now I never
understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in
suffering the Inquisition among them; and certainly it will not be well
with us, till something _like unto the Spanish Inquisition be in
England_." Thus it will ever be, while bo