hat the
church might rob their wives and children. The property of all
heretics was confiscated, and on this account they charged the dead
with being heretical--indicted, as it were, their dust--to the end that
the church might clutch the bread of orphans. Learned divines
discussed propriety of tearing out the tongues of heretics before they
were burned, and the general opinion was that this ought to be done, so
that the heretics should not be able, by uttering blasphemies, to shock
the christians who were burning them. With a mixture of ferocity and
christianity, the priests insisted that heretics ought to be burned at
a slow fire, giving as a reason, that more time was given them for
repentance.

No wonder that Jesus Christ said, "I came not to bring peace but a
sword!"

Every priest regarded himself as the agent of God. He answered all
questions by authority, and to treat him with disrespect was an insult
offered to God. No one was asked to think, but all were commanded to
obey.

In 1208 the inquisition was established. Seven years afterward; the
fourth council of the Lateran enjoined all kings and rulers to swear an
oath that they would exterminate heretics from their dominions. The
sword of the church was unsheathed, and the world was at the mercy of
ignorant and infuriated priests, whose eyes feasted upon the agonies
they inflicted. Acting as they believed, or pretended to believe under
the command of God, stimulated by the hope of infinite reward in
another world--hating heretics with every drop of their bastille
blood--savage beyond description--merciless beyond conception--these
infamous priests in a kind of frenzied joy, leaped upon the helpless
victims of their rage. They crushed their bones in iron boots, tore
their quivering flesh with iron hooks and pinchers, cut off their lips
and eyelids, pulled out their nails, and into the bleeding quick thrust
needles, tore out their tongues, extinguished their eyes, stretched
them upon racks, flayed them alive, crucified them with their head
downward, exposed them to wild beasts, burned them at the stake, mocked
their cries and groans, ravished their wives, robbed their children,
and then prayed God to finish the holy work in hell.

Millions upon millions were sacrificed upon the altars of bigotry. The
Catholic burned the Lutheran, the Lutheran burned the Catholic; the
Episcopalian tortured the Presbyterian, the Presbyterian tortured the
Episcopalian.