Roman Catholic Inquisition.
MOTLEY’S History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic contains the following interesting facts respecting the murderous policy of the Roman Catholic Church: “The number of Netherlanders, who were burned, strangled, beheaded, or buried alive, for the offense of reading the Scriptures, and looking askance at a graven image, or of ridiculing the actual presence of the body and blood of Christ in a wafer, has been placed as high as one hundred, by distinguished authors, and have never been put at a lower mark than fifty, thousand.” Vol. I., p. 114. “In the eighteen years of Torquemada’s administration (of the Inquisition in Spain), ten thousand two hundred and twenty individuals were burned alive, and ninety-seven thousand three hundred and twenty-one punished with infamy, confiscation of property, or perpetual imprisonment, so that the total number of families destroyed by this one Friar alone amounted to one hundred and fourteen thousand four hundred and one.”—Ibid, p. 322. “A sheriff was once met by Littleman, the inquisitor, and wonderingly asked him, ‘How can you venture to go about alone, or at most, with an attendant or two, arresting people on every side, whilst I dare not attempt to execute my office except at the head of a strong force armed in proof, and then only at the peril of my life?’” “‘Ah, Redrod,’ answered Peter, jocosely, ‘you deal with bad people, I have nothing to fear; for I seize only the innocent and virtuous, who make no resistance, and let themselves be taken like lambs.’”—Ibid I., p. 332. “Upon the 16th of February, 1568, a sentence of the Holy Office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. From this universal doom only a few persons, especially named, were excepted.”—Ibid I., p. 158.