“The Inquisition ruined and branded with infamy more than 340,000 persons, whose disgrace was reflected on their families, and who bequeathed only opprobrium and misery to their children. Add to these more than 100,000 families who emigrated in order to escape from the blood-thirsty tribunal, and it will be seen that the Inquisition has been the most active instrument of the ruin of Spain. But the most disastrous of all the acts which it occasioned was the expulsion of the Moors. If we add to those who were banished from Spain the countless numbers who perished in the insurrection of the sixteenth century, and the 800,000 Jews who left the kingdom, it will be seen that the country lost in the [pg 228] course of a hundred and twenty years about three millions of its most industrious inhabitants.” [Weiss, vol. 2, pp. 60, 61.]
“The advisors of Phillip III. said to him with affright: The houses are falling in ruins, and none rebuild them; the inhabitants flee from the country; villages are abandoned, fields left uncultivated, and churches deserted. The Cortes in their turn said to him: if the evil is not remedied, there will soon be no peasants left to till the ground, no pilots to steer the ships; none will marry. The kingdom can not subsist another century if a wholesome remedy be not found.”
What was the cause of the ignorance so general and so profound in Spain? The Catholic Inquisition. “The commissaries of the Holy office received orders to oppose the introduction of books written by the partisans of modern philosophy, as reprobated by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and ordered information to be given against persons known to be attached to the principles of the insurrection.” [Liorente, vol. 4, p. 99.] “Theological censures attacked even works on politics, and on natural, civil and international law. The consequence is, that those appointed to examine publications condemn and proscribe all works necessary for the diffusion of knowledge among the Spaniards. The books that have been published on mathematics, astronomy, natural philosophy and several other branches of science connected with those, are not treated with more favor.” [Liorente, vol. 4, p. 420.] “The Inquisition is, perhaps, the most active cause of that intellectual death that visited Spain at the close of the seventeenth century.... It encouraged ignorance, and instituted a censorship even for works on jurisprudence, philosophy, and politics, and for novels that reflected on the avarice and rapacity of the priests, their dissolute conduct, and their hypocricy.” [Weiss, vol. 2, pp. 319 to 321.] “Lastly, if it be asked what has corrupted the morals both of the clergy and the laity of the former times and of the present day, the answer is still, Catholic superstition!” [Napoleon Roussell.]
Infidels, who are noted leaders in “Free Thought,” as it is termed, are invariably men whose religious education [pg 229] was in the religious literature of the old creeds of centuries gone by, or otherwise in the religious literature of Roman Catholicism. They live in thought upon religious matters centuries behind the times, but, in scientific thought, are too well informed to adhere to their religious training. Such is the philosophy of infidel making. Let a man be trained in the obsolete religions of an hundred years or more ago, and otherwise well educated, and he is, at once, an infidel. No man is to blame for setting his face like a flint against old-fashioned Roman Catholicism, and high-toned Calvinism, nor for repudiating Papal and clerical authority known in the Spanish Inquisition with all its horrible, unscriptural and ungodly barbarities. But why it is that the infidel's religious foot should set away back yonder in the smoke of the dark ages, and his scientific foot away down here with the railroad and telegraph, is rather difficult of solution. It is rather amusing, since all well-educated American Catholics condemn the Inquisition along with all the abominable cruelties of the dark ages. And, as for Calvinism, there is not enough left for seed if it was properly distributed—it is old and thin.
“Even Now Are There Many Anti-Christs.”
Col. Ingersoll says: “He (Paine) knew that every abuse had been embalmed in scripture, that every outrage was in partnership with some holy text.” If such was really true every rascal, scoundrel and villain should carry a copy of the Bible. Do they? Are they in affinity with the Bible? Are they even friendly to it? Things that are in affinity with each other are drawn together. “A fellow feeling makes us very kind.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.” “Birds of a feather flock together.”
Before the Bible went to the Sandwich Islands Col. Ingersoll would have been hailed as a very proper object for a sumptuous feast. He would have acted wisely in making his [pg 230] last will before starting, but now, since that book has gone there which embalms every crime (?) he would find an asylum of safety in which to repose his weary limbs. How is this? Is every outrage in partnership with some holy text? If so, the Bible would be just one more reason for the continuance of cannibalism. The secret of Mr. Ingersoll's tirade upon the Bible may be accounted for when we measure the magnitude of his infidelity. It is no shallow sort of unbelief, but, on the contrary, it is deep seated, and one with the infidelity of his excelling predecessors. Ingersoll intends to have no superior in unbelief—you know he is ambitious. Let us give you a little speech that was made, by one of his particular friends and co-laborers in this unholy crusade, at Geneva, in 1868. Here it is:
“Brethren, I am come to announce unto you a new gospel, which must penetrate to the very ends of the world. This gospel admits of no half measures and hesitations. The old world must be destroyed and replaced by a new one. The Lie must be stamped out and give way to truth.
“It is our mission to destroy the Lie; and to effect this, we must begin at the very commencement. Now the beginning of all those lies which have ground down this poor world in slavery is God. For many hundred years monarchs and priests have inoculated the hearts and minds of mankind with this notion of a God ruling over the world. They have also invented for the people the notion of another world, in which their God is to punish with eternal torture (not a Bible term) those who have refused to obey their degrading laws here on earth. This God is nothing but the personification of absolute tyranny, and has been invented with a view of either frightening or alluring nine-tenths of the human race into submission to the remaining tenth. If there were really a God, surely he would use that lightning which he holds in his hand to destroy those thrones, to the steps of which mankind is chained. He would assuredly use it to overthrow those altars where the truth is hidden by clouds of lying incense. Tear out of your hearts the belief in the existence [pg 231] of God; for as long as an atom of that silly superstition remains in your minds you will never know what freedom is.”