ecessarily a
proof of intelligence. If we would judge an epoch intelligently, we
must be able to grasp the viewpoint of other men, even if they lived
in an age long past.

But although we grant the good faith and good will of the founders
and judges of the inquisition--we speak only, be it understood, of
those who acted conscientiously--we must still maintain that their
idea of justice was far inferior to ours. Whether taken in itself or
compared with other criminal procedures, the Inquisition was, so far
as the guarantees of equity are concerned, undoubtedly unjust and
inferior. Such judicial forms as the secrecy of the trial, the
prosecution carried on independently of the prisoner, the denial of
advocate and defence, the use of torture, etc., were certainly
despotic and barbarous. Severe penalties, like the stake and
confiscation, were the legacy which a pagan legislation bequeathed to
the Christian State; they were alien to the spirit of the Gospel.

The Church in a measure felt this, for to enforce these laws she
always had recourse to the secular arm. In time, all this criminal
code was to fall into desuetude, and no one to-day wishes it back
again. Besides, the crying abuses committed by some of the
Inquisitors have made the institution forever odious.

But in abandoning the system of force, which she formerly used in
union with the State, does not the Church seem to condemn, to a
certain degree, her past?

Even if to-day she were to denounce the Inquisition, she would not
thereby compromise her divine authority. Her office on earth is to
transmit to generation after generation the deposit of revealed
truths necessary for man's salvation. That to safeguard this treasure
she uses means in one age which a later age denounces, merely proves
that she follows the customs and ideas in vogue around her. But she
takes good care not to have men consider her attitude the infallible
and eternal rule of absolute justice. She readily admits that she may
sometimes be deceived in the choice of means of government. The
system of defence and protection that she adopted in the Middle Ages
succeeded, at least to some extent. We cannot maintain that it was
absolutely unjust and absolutely immoral.

Undoubtedly we have to-day a much higher ideal of justice. But though
we deplore the fact that the Church did not then perceive, preach or
apply it, we need not be surprised. In social questions she
ordinarily progresses with the m