THE INQUISITION by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 1, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 39.

THE INQUISITION.

By Editor

WE reprint elsewhere two articles on the Inquisition. The first is by Arthur T. Pierson, D.D., editor-in-chief of the Missionary Review of the World. The second is by a Roman Catholic layman, James I. Conway, in defense of that noted tribunal. It appeared in the Catholic Mirror of August 29, the organ preeminently of the Roman Catholic Church in America. The writer's prominence is sufficient to secure for his article the position of first page. We hope that these articles may be read in the light of the Gospel. Some of the more prominent and crucial statements of Mr. Conway we have printed in bold-faced type. The Italics are as we find them. Where the writer has used Italics and we have used bold-face, we have placed his Italics in BOLD-FACED CAPITALS.

Some Points Worth Noting.—It may be well to note especially the following in Mr. Conway's article: (1) He not only admits, but contends, that at the time of the Inquisition all were Catholics, "king and subject, prince and peasant, rich and poor, priest and people, all believed her [the church's] doctrines not only to be true, but incapable of being false." Therefore the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for all that was done.

2. Mr. Conway contends that as "all statesmen and public officers were at the same time Catholics, it is most easy to understand that they enacted laws and punishments in keeping with their religious convictions. To put it briefly, in those Middle Ages there was the greatest union of church and state. . . . The state then, as it should now, protected and defended her holy bride from danger," etc. We may therefore expect, according to Mr. Conway, and presumably Catholics in general, that if this government should come into the absolute control of Roman Catholics, the Inquisition would be restored, that one who was counted a heretic by that church would be "diligently sifted out and indicted," and his heresy would be considered prima facie evidence that he was "in opposition to the spirit of the laws and customs of his country, . . . a disturber of the public peace, and an underminer of civil society."

3. That if the "heretic" was open and bold enough to declare the honest convictions of his heart, and warn men against what he thought to be evil, he would be "punished to the full extent of the law," and that as of old "it was not only not unjust, but even obligatory and praiseworthy for the Catholic Church . . . to exclude from within her sacred fold [the country or the world] those who sought to prey upon the innocent lambs," etc., so it would be now. This of course means death or extermination to the greater heretics.

4. The only means the Catholic Church knows by which to purge the church from hypocrites is the Inquisition,—"a difficulty which, as all will agree, could be overcome only by an Inquisition." We would suggest that the true Gospel method is much more effective, and never causes physical injury. The gospel of force, the gospel of the Inquisition, seeks to prevent hypocrisy, but in her methods the brave and the noble and the honest suffer, while the time-serving and cowardly become hypocrites. This method of preventing hypocrisy, a method necessary to the Roman Church, results in increasing it.

5. While it is contended that the Spanish Inquisition was "purely secular," the responsibility of the church is trebly admitted in what Mr. Conway says: (a) That all—rulers and people—were at that time Catholics; (b) that the inquisitors "were priests and prelates and theologians of the church, and were for that reason under the jurisdiction of the popes;" (c) that "because the Inquisition was instituted to try people on matters of faith." The church was therefore, according to this defense, trebly responsible for all the evil done by the Spanish Inquisition, which indeed grew so evil that the humanity of Catholics rose above their religion and abolished the "Holy Office."

6. That all that was done—and it was all done as a matter of religion—is justified by this defender because it is against the state, civil society, etc. It is by the same means that persecution has always been justified. The fiery furnace of Daniel 3, and the lions' den of chapter 6, were not opened for heretics because of religion, or religion alone, but because of the state. The word of the ruler was defied. The crucifixion of our Lord was not because of "blasphemy"—he was guilty of that and worthy of death, said the priests, but he was guilty of crime against the Roman state, an enemy of Caesar. The Jews, the Moors, the Christians, who suffered in Spain—whether to the number of twelve thousand or two thousand, matters not so far as the wickedness of the thing is concerned—suffered because they were enemies to Spain; and "the Inquisition purged the Spanish nation of the plotting Jew," and Moor and Protestant.

7. It is the same now. Protestants are justifying Roman Catholics and the Inquisition to-day. Earnest, devout, humble Christians, who worked the same days of the week as did Jesus of Nazareth, who observed the same day of the week as the Sabbath as did he, have been arrested, tried, fined, imprisoned, and forced to work on the public highway in the chain-gang, the whole thing instigated, incited, and pushed through by professed Christian men, not of course as a matter of religious persecution; O, no! but because these Christians violated the laws of Arkansas, or Maryland, or Georgia, or Massachusetts, or Tennessee! True, some state laws in the interests of religion, dead letters in the case of almost everybody else, were technically violated, but the animus of it all was religious bigotry, for the faith, as truly as in the days of the Inquisition.

It seems at first glance a marvelous thing that Rome will defend the Inquisition in this "enlightened nineteenth century." Many think that she has passed far beyond this. But it is her boast that she alone is infallible and makes no mistakes. Such evidences as the article we are reviewing continually multiplying, ought to open the eyes of all who are not willingly blind. And when professed Protestants, by the same principles and arguments, justify the same course of procedure against religious dissenters, it seems to us that every Christian and lover of liberty should be aroused. When "Christian Citizenship" or "National Reform" principles rule in this country, we shall have the Inquisition restored. Its principles are already crystallized into law.