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Untitled Article
and heretics and Freemasons , histories of apparitions , arid so forth , are generally introduced , not by a mere licence of the inquisitor , but by long and laboured eulogiums .
It is no novel observation , that the most cruel and intolerant persecutors have often been men wholly devoid of religious principle ; men , wjio consider the religion of the state only as a part of its civil policy , and who treat the denial of a national creed with
the same severity as the infraction of an established law , or rather as a species of treason against the supreme authority . No plea of modest inquiry , of conscientious doubt , or honest difference of opinion , is allowed to
oppose for a moment their sanguinary and despotic sway . There are no terms of safety but those of unresisting , instant , absolute prostration . Such men are generally the prime movers of the gagging engine of religious intoleand such to be fo
rance ^ men are und too abundantly in Spain . Others there are who imagine they see in the pomp and parade of the Romish ritual , a system of delusion admirably adapted to beguile , or even to bless the
ignorant . They fancy themselves beings of a higher and nobler order , and that , while they bask in the sunshine of intellect and knowledge , they may be well content that the uninstructed
mass should trudge on in darkness below . Why should they throw their pearls to senseless swine ; or shower down truth and virtue on those who fatten on vice and error ?
But perhaps a larger class , which would include too the majority of the learned clergy of Spairf , are they whose honest opinions are made up of heresy and infidelity ; but their wordly
interests are so inwrought with the existing system , that the thought of sacrificing those interests to the higher claims of right , has never occurred to them ; or , if it has occurred , has never
Jesus ; they all squint and are palsied , and have their mouths filled with little nauseous worms , which , in truth , ( adds our author , ) is the ease with all Jewish women after the age of 25 , because it was a woman who iutreated the tribe of Joseph not to sharpen the nails used for the crucifixion of our Lord . ' ' This is a fair specimen of a book of 220 pages .
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obtained a moment ' s attention . To them it is a glorious and gold-giving superstition . If they can persuade themselves that , on the whole , it is
harmless , they are satisfied . They do more—they say ft is beneficial , and they have repeated this so often , that they , perhaps , almost believe it is true . Would they look round them they might see the melancholy effects which superstition and intolerance have produced in their hapless
country . What is Seville—the once renowned Seville , with its hundred and twenty-five churches and convents ? The very shrine of ignorance * It was there that the Spanish chart of liberty was trampled under foot , amidst tea thousand shouts of " Live the King
and tllP TrtniiittitinnP' « Pjmeli + Un , and the Inquisition ! " «« Perish the Constitution I" Or Cordoba , so long the cradle of the arts , the favourite seat of retiring wisdom ? It is become the chosen abode of vice and barbarism ! The press , which was established there in the short era of
Spanish liberty , has been torn in pieces by a frantic mob , who , excited by the monks , paraded the streets of this unfortunate capital , threatening death to every individual whose name had been connected with that of liberty . How many a town and city , once illustrious , has sunk into nothingness 1 * " What remains of their
ancient glory ? The ruins of palaces , of fabrics , of store-houses and dwellings ; and undilapidated churches and monasteries and hospitals , outliving the misery of which they have , been the cause . " f
* Seville , Cordoba , Santiago , Burgos , Toledo—in a word , all the places where ecclesiastical authority is most active , have been the most strenuous opposers of the progress of civil , to say nothing of religious
liherty . And these , too , are universally the most barbarous of the Spanish cities . How the clergy at Santiago frustrated the attempts of the heToic Porlier to establish the Constitution , is notorious .
f Informe de la Sociedad de Madrid sobre la Ley agraria , § 166 . At every step one finds in Spain enough to excite the most [ melancholy recollections * I went to Alcala . de Henores to visit the house in which Cervantes was
born . ( If I had undertaken a pilgrimage I could not have repaid the enjoyment , the deligbt , I have received from tin ; works of this wonderful genius !) It had been
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State of Religion in Spain * 5 $ §
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1819, page 595, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1777/page/7/
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