rry with you, you must first
renounce your idolatrous worship and adore our God. He will then bless
you in this life, and after death he will receive you to heaven to
enjoy eternal happiness; but if you persist in the worship of your
idols, which are devils, you will be drawn by them to their infernal
pit, there to burn eternally in flames of fire."

He then presented to them "a beauteous image of Our Lady, with her
precious Son in her arms," and attempted to explain to them the
mystery of the incarnation, and the potency of the mediatorship of
the Virgin.

"The God of the Christians," the Tlascalans replied, "must be great
and good. We will give him a place with our gods, who are also great
and good. Our god grants us victory over our enemies. Our goddess
preserves us from inundations of the river. Should we forsake their
worship, the most dreadful punishment would overwhelm us."

Cortez could admit of no such compromise; and he urged the destruction
of the idols with so much zeal and importunity, that at last the
Tlascalans became angry, and declared that on no account whatever
would they abandon the gods of their fathers. Cortez now, in his turn,
was roused to virtuous indignation, and he resolved that, happen what
might, the true God should be honored by the swift destruction of
these idols of the heathen. Encouraged by the success of his violent
measures at Zempoalla, he was on the point of ordering the soldiers to
make an onslaught on the gods of the Tlascalans, which would probably
have so roused the warlike and exasperated natives as to have led to
the entire destruction of his army in the narrow streets of the
thronged capital, when the judicious and kind-hearted Father
Olmedo dissuaded him from the rash enterprise. With true Christian
philosophy, he plead that forced conversion was no conversion at all;
that God's reign was only over willing minds and in the heart.
"Religion," said this truly good man, "can not be propagated by the
sword. Patient instruction must enlighten the understanding, and
pious example captivate the affections, before men can be induced to
abandon error and embrace the truth." It is truly refreshing to meet
with these noble ideas of toleration spoken by a Spanish monk in that
dark age. Let such a fact promote, not indifference to true and
undefiled religion, but a generous charity.[C]

[Footnote C: "When Reverend Father Olmedo, who was a wise and
good theologian, heard this, being