The Church of course could answer to all this that the Inquisition merely acted as a spiritual health officer whose sworn duty it was to prevent contagious errors from spreading among the masses. It could point to the leniency shown to all heathen who acted in ignorance and therefore could not be held responsible for their opinions. It could even claim that few people ever suffered the penalty of death unless they were apostates and were caught in a new offense after having forsworn their former errors.
But what of it?
The same trick by which an innocent man was changed into a desperate criminal could afterwards be used to place him in an apparent position of recantation.
The agent provocateur and the forger have ever been close friends.
And what are a few faked documents between spies?
CHAPTER VIII
THE CURIOUS ONES
Modern intolerance, like ancient Gaul, is divided into three parts; the intolerance of laziness, the intolerance of ignorance and the intolerance of self-interest.
The first of these is perhaps the most general. It is to be met with in every country and among all classes of society. It is most common in small villages and old-established towns, and it is not restricted to human beings.
Our old family horse, having spent the first twenty-five years of his placid life in a warm stable in Coley Town, resents the equally warm barn of Westport for no other reason than that he has always lived in Coley Town, is familiar with every stick and stone in Coley Town and knows that no new and unfamiliar sights will frighten him on his daily ambles through that pleasant part of the Connecticut landscape.