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the virtues and recounting the miracles of some saint or martyr to whom the day is dedicated . He reads his religious duties , not in a Bible , but an Almanack ; and his Almanack is but
a sort of Christian mythology . His saints are more numerous than the deities of the pantheon ; and , to say the truth , there are many of them Jittle better than these . *
He is told , however , that his country exhibits the proudest triumphs of orthodox Christianity . Schism and heresy have been scattered , or at least silenced : and if in Spain the
eye is constantly attracted , and the heart distressed , by objects of unalleviated human misery ; if the hospitals are either wholly unprotected , or abandoned to the care of the venal
and the vile ; if the prisons are crowded with a promiscuous mass of innocence and guilt in all its shades and shapes of enormity f —what does it matter ? Spain , Catholic Spain , has preserved her faith unadulterated and unchanged , and her priests assure us that an error in creed is far more
dangerous ,, ( or to use their own mild language , ) far more damnable , than a multitude of errors in conduct . A depraved heart may be forgiven , but not an erring head . This is , in fact , the
fatal principle , whose poison spreads through this strongly-cemented system . To this we may attribute its absurdities , its , errors , its crimes . This 1 ms created Dorninicks and
Torquernadas . In a word , intolerance , in its widest and worst extent , is the foundation on which the whole of the Spanish ecclesiastical edifice rests . It has been called the main pillar of the
consti-Feijoo , a Benedictine monk , says that his order have fifteen thousand canonized saints . + Of the numerous banditti , for which Spain has heen always distinguished , there 'S perhaps , not an individual who neglects any of those ceremonies which are con ^ sidered binding on all faithful Catholics .
These murderous hands In holy water wash their hands j * hey never miss a mass—thoy wear A rosary and scapulaire : They damn all heretics , and say * heir pious Aves twice-a-day ; ^ hey bend at every virg-iVs alta r ; ^ nd can such saints deserve a halter ?
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tution , and is so inwrought with the habits and prejudices of the nation , that the Cortes , with all their general liberality , dared not allow the profession of any other religion than the " Catolica Apostolica Romana unica Verdadera . " * The cry of innovation
there , as elsewhere , became a dreadful weapon in the hands of those who profess to believe that errors become sanctified by age . Too true it is , that if long usage can sanction wrong , per *
secution might find its justification in every page of Spanish history , from the time when Recaredo , the gothic monarch , abandoned his Arian principles ( with the almost solitary exception of the tolerant and ill-treated
Witiza )* Long , long before the Inquisition had erected its frightful pretensions into a system , or armed itself with its bloody sword , its spirit was abroad and active . Thousands and tens of thousands of' Jews and Moors
had been its victims , and its founders did no more than obtain a regal or a papal licence , for the murders which would otherwise have been probably committed by a barbarous and frenzied mob , excited by incendiary monks and friars .
The Inquisition has , no doubt , been greatly humanized by the progress of time ; as , in order to maintain its influence in these more enlightened and inquiring days , it has availed itself of men of superior talent , these have softened the asperity , or controlled
the malignity and petty tyranny of its inferior agents . Its vigilance and its persecutions are , indeed , continually at work , yet , I believe its flames will never again be lighted . Its greatest zeal is now directed against
Freemasons , of whom immense numbers occupy its prisons and dungeons . 1 have conversed with many who have been incarcerated by the Inquisition , and they agree in stating- that torture is no longer administered , f But its
* The absurdity of introducing- such an expression into a constitutional code could not be unnoticed by the illustrious body of deputies , to whom the Cortes had confided its arrangement . It is believed their object was to remove any suspicion as to to their thorough orthodoxy , in order that they might effect hereafter some plans of ecclesiastical reformation . f Torture has been abolished in Spain
Untitled Article
State of Religion in Spain . , 593
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1819, page 593, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1777/page/5/
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