The Inquisition and Papal Interference by John Norton Loughborough

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 1, 1876

The Inquisition and Papal Interference.

By John Norton Loughborough

(Concluded.)

As a sample of their cruel spirit let me present you one of their curses. The following is part of a Romish form of excommunication, taken from the Roman pontifical: “By the authority of Almighty God, and of his holy apostles, Peter and Paul, we solemnly forbid, under the curse of an anathema, that any one draw away these present virgins or holy nuns from the divine service to which they have devoted themselves, under the banner of chastity; or that any one purloin their goods, or be a hindrance to their possessing them unmolested. But if any one shall dare to attempt such a thing, let him be accursed at home and abroad, accursed in the city and in the field, accursed in waking and sleeping, accursed in eating and drinking, accursed in walking and sitting, accursed in his flesh and in his bones; and from the sole of his feet to the crown of his head, let him have no soundness. May there come upon him the malediction which, by Moses in the law, the Lord hath laid on the sons of iniquity. May his name be blotted out from the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.

“May his portion and inheritance be with Cain, the fratricide, with Dathan and Abiram, with Ananias and Sapphira, with Simon, the sorcerer, and Judas, the traitor; and with those who have said to God, ‘Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.’ Let him perish in the day of Judgment; and may everlasting fire devour him with the devil and his angels, unless he make restitution and amendment. So be it—so be it.”

Romish cruelty is still further illustrated by the fact that “Benedict the Dominican, in his history of the Albigenses, approves of all the inhumanity of the holy inquisition and the holy wars. Mariana, the Jesuit, in his history of Spain, eulogizes persecutions, and the inquisition, and recommends ‘fire and sword, when mild means are unavailing and useless.’ ‘A wise severity,’ he says, ‘is the sovereign remedy.’ Cardinal Bellarmine contends that for ‘the honor of religion, heretics should be consigned to the flames.’ ‘The apostles,’ he says, ‘abstained from calling in the secular arm only because there were, in their day, no Christian princes.’

“Dens advocates the same views as Bellarmine. This Dens of whom I speak, was a doctor of the university of Louvain. About 1760 he published a system of theology, which is better known to Catholic priests than the Bible. This work awards to heretics ‘confiscation of their goods, banishment from the country, confinement in prison, infliction of death, and the deprivation of Christian burial.’ I quote his exact words, which you may verify for yourselves. ‘Such falsifiers of the faith, and troublers of the community,’ says this divine, ‘justly suffer death in the same manner as those who counterfeit money and disturb the State.’

“This work was recommended to Christendom by the doctors of Louvain university, on account of its orthodox faith and its Christian morality.”

The church of Rome has a code of laws she calls “the canon law.” “Cardinal Wiseman, says of the canon law, that it is the ideal and complete code of the church.”

. . . Your canon law, which is the growth of many centuries, is made up of the bulls of the popes and the decrees of councils, and traditions which have received the pontifical sanction. In this canon law, in the decretals of Gregory IX., we read, ‘Archbishops and bishops, either personally or by representatives, are commanded to visit their dioceses once or twice every year and inquire for heretics. Princes are admonished to purge their dominions from the filth of heresy. This work is to be conducted as follows: First—Excommunication; Second—Proscription from all offices, ecclesiastical or civil; Third—Confiscation of their goods; Fourth—Death, sometimes by the sword, more commonly by fire.’

“In the decretals of Pope Honarius II. concerning heretics we find this: ‘All heretics, of both sexes and of every name, we damn to perpetual infamy; we account them accursed, and their goods confiscated; nor can they enjoy their property, or their children succeed to their inheritance, inasmuch as they grievously offend against the Eternal as well as the temporal king.’

“And we find such statements as these in the canon law: ‘The bishop of Rome has power to absolve from allegiance, obligation, bond of service, promise and compact, the provinces, cities, and armies of kings that rebel against him, and also to loose their vassals and feudatories.’ And this: ‘The bond of allegiance to an excommunicated man does not bind those who have come under it.’ And this: ‘An oath sworn against the good of the church does not bind, because that is not an oath, but a perjury, rather, which is taken against the church’s interests.’

“The persecuting edicts of infallible(?) popes are infallible still; but they are not just in accordance with the sentiments of the present day. The ark of Rome has dashed on the rock of infallibility, and is fast going to pieces.”

Gavazzi says, “A Roman Catholic archbishop in being installed in office,” is required to take this oath: “Heretics, schismatics, and rebels to our said Lord, or his aforesaid successors, I will to my power persecute and oppose.”

Relative to the tortures of the inquisition I will quote from Hemphill: “The victims were apprehended commonly at midnight. The familiars of the holy office surrounded the door of a house, whispered the name of the tribunal, and the inmates, transfixed by the dreadful word, delivered up their dearest relatives. The victim was consigned to a dungeon. All communication with friends was cut off. The accuser and the accusation were alike unknown to him. He was urged by the most treacherous means to criminate himself. And when he refused, the rack was employed to extort confession.

“The accused, whether man or woman, was stripped naked; the arms were tied behind the back. A pulley, fastened to the arms, raised the sufferer off his feet, and held him suspended in the air. Then he was let fall several times and raised with a jerk, which dislocated all the joints of his arms, while the cord with which he was suspended

entered the flesh, and lacerated the tortured nerves.

“The last scene in the dismal tragedy was the act of faith—auto da fé. The ecclesiastical authority transferred the condemned to the secular arm. The heretic, dressed in a yellow coat variegated with pictures of dogs, devils, serpents, flames—typical of his destiny hereafter—was then led to the place of execution, tied to the stake, and committed to the flames, amid the joyful acclamation of the populace.”

On the tortures of the inquisition, we will next quote from Gavazzi: “There are, I said, fourteen different species of tortures, all of which I, of course, cannot describe, as it would take many hours. One of the worst was the deprivation of rest, not allowing sleep for fourteen, twenty, or thirty days and nights continuously. Sometimes I have said, Let a description of these tortures be read and all their cruelty cannot be conceived; but if I can here reproduce them I can more clearly convey what was the pain suffered.

“The first was called the ‘queen of tortures,’ namely, the ‘torture of the cord.’ In the middle of the prison stands a massive iron beam reaching from the floor to the ceiling; at the top is a pulley, and a rope passed through it, one end in the hand of the executioners (these always are two masked Dominican friars), the other end fastened to the arms of the victim, which are tied behind his back, while to his feet is attached a weight of a hundred pounds. At the signal the rope is drawn, the victim hoisted, and by the weight of the body and the hundred pounds attached to the feet, the arms are wrenched backward and upward, until they are drawn over his head. While in this position the victim is often cruelly flogged, and tormented with hot pinchers or iron nails, and then comes the question, ‘Are you guilty? Confess!’ He denies—then the rope is suddenly relaxed by the executioner; the victim descends, and is stopped within a few inches of the floor with a violent jerk, which completely dislocates the arms. If he do not then confess he is sent back to the dungeon, to lie there three or four weeks, until sufficiently recovered to be able to bear a repetition of the torture, which is often applied three or four different times.

“Another torture is that ‘by fire.’ In the middle of the prison stands a brasier filled with live coals, within a few inches of which the naked feet of the victim are made to approach. Soon they become inflamed—then they break into wounds from which blood and matter fall into the brasier. The torture is continued for twenty-five minutes; then the feet are often scorched off, and the charred bones drop into the brasier; upon this the executioners remove the victims in their arms.

“The torture of the wheel is especially used against delicate women. The undressed female is tied on one of these wheels, which is armed with sharp cogs; two strong men turn it round rapidly, stop it suddenly, and the cogs enter the flesh of the suffering woman, who remains always senseless, and often lifeless.

“The last, which is especially used against courageous men, is the torture by water. The victim is tied on a rough bench, his face is covered with white linen, and a funnel filled with water points towards his mouth. There is the inquisitor, there is the victim, and there the executioner. On one hand is the inquisitor, on the other the executioner, between them the victim. The sign is given, and slowly, drop by drop, the water in the funnel begins to fall upon the cloth which covers the wretch’s face. The cloth is moistened, and, as it is, the breathing becomes more difficult. Gloom, sternness, secrecy, silence, except that one small, fearful sound, drop, drop, drop; and now the breathing grows thick, and thicker, and becomes a second sound, breaking the dreadful silence of that scene.

“Drop, drop, drop—still they come; and now the sensation of strangling, drowning seizes the victim, and a third sound is heard, low moans join the chorus of torture. The question is put, ‘Are you guilty?’ A weak voice answers with difficulty, ‘No! I have not committed’—Drop, drop, drop; still thicker breathings—still feebler moans; and the question is put again, ‘Are you guilty?’ A weak voice, almost inaudible, piteously gasps forth, in broken syllables, ‘No—I have not’—Drop, drop, drop; again the question; but now there is no voice—no breathing—once more the sound of that merciless drop is heard alone, as if in triumph at its victory; for it has arrested the blood and stilled the tongue—there is no more any answer, for there is no more any life.”

This is a sample of what Rome has done in her work of exterminating heretics. As we have shown, this terrible inquisition has been established at the request, and under the direction of Catholic popes. A bull of Paul III. established the Roman inquisition in 1540. A bull of Clement, styled by Webster, “A Protestant Pope,” abolished the Roman inquisition in 1773. A brief of Pius VII. restored it to life in 1814. It was again abolished by the Italians under Garibaldi, in 1848, but restored again the same year by Pius IX., when French and Austrian soldiers had restored him from Gaeta to Rome.

In this chapter we have given you some sample of what the church did when she had the power. She has not changed. “Give her the power again and she will strike more fiercely than before. When the news of the massacre of Bartholomew Day reached Rome, Gregory XIII. went in procession to the Church of Saint Louis to render a Te Deum of thanks to God for the happy victory. Aye, and Pius IX. would do the same if he heard that every Protestant in America was ‘butchered to make a Roman holiday.’”

Rome cannot change. She can so glove her iron talons as to make them appear soft and delicate as an infant’s fingers, but, despite her fair pretensions, her character is the same as in the darkest of the Middle Ages. She glories in her unchangeableness.”

I ask, are there not facts coming to the surface that fully justify Mr. Hemphill’s statement? Let us see. The Catholic Guardian of San Francisco, only a few months since, came out with this statement, “The church is superior to the State, and as such the State has no right to dictate any law which shall have force in the spiritual order against the rights of the church.” That statement, surely, looks like again desiring to make the Government the bond-slave of the church.

But we read also in the Catholic Review of 1873. “Protestantism of every form, has not, and never can have any rights where Catholicity is triumphant. ‘The Catholic church is the only church of God, all others must be suppressed before God can reign on earth.’”

The thoughtful reader who is any way familiar with the history of the Romish church, can readily decide what such hints mean, and what the church of Rome would be and do if she had the power.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.